Hi everyone, sorry I haven't been posting for a while, but finals week just ended for me a few days ago and I've been pretty busy lately.
Anyway...
If I knew for sure that God was telling me to do something, I would listen to Him. It doesn't matter how nonsensical or wrong it would seem to me.
But let me be very clear about something: If I want to know for sure that it's God telling me something, I'd better be SURE it's God. It can't be a feeling I have, because feelings can come from the world. Drugs, colors, pictures, even magnetic waves can influence feelings. It also can't be an audible voice, because then I can't be sure whose voice it is. For all I know, it could just be my mind hallucinating. (This has happened to me twice when I was younger, once when I was extremely tired and once when I had a fever and had taken Motrin. But I digress.) There is one place I can go to know what God wants from me, and it's this 2000-year-old book you want me to forget about.
Sorry, but that's not going to happen. I can honestly say that I have more faith in this book than I do in my own senses. (Yes, I know how insane I sound, but I said I'd tell the straight truth, and this is it.) I have so much faith in the Bible and the biblical God for much the same reason C.S. Lewis said: Not because I can see Him, but because of Him I can see everything else. PBB, this, in a nutshell, is what I was trying to explain earlier. I believe more than what I myself, with my 18 senses, can sense. I believe that the Bible is completely, absolutely true. This is why I disagree with the man who killed his son, and it is why I would not kill all left-handed people.
This is the straight truth. If it makes me sound ignorant, stupid, insane, wicked, or all four at once, so be it.
One more thing:
So my question to you is: Why is there no record, no literature, no evidence of any kind, that anyone from after the fact knew the prophecy was a fake? Or is there evidence like that? (I haven't found any, but I may not have looked hard enough.) Without that, all the evidence points to this book being truly prophetic.
You don't have to answer these questions. I know this thread is all but dead now, and this might be the last post I make on it. If I haven't cleared anything up for you I hope I've at least made some of you think about this stuff and you've gotten more out of it than just one more resident theist's existence on the forum.
God bless,
Avodaiah
Anyway...
BadWriterSparty Wrote:Mental gymnastics to follow. If not, then Avo will have some respect when true honesty ensues.Nope, no mental gymnastics. I'll answer it as simply as I can.
If I knew for sure that God was telling me to do something, I would listen to Him. It doesn't matter how nonsensical or wrong it would seem to me.
But let me be very clear about something: If I want to know for sure that it's God telling me something, I'd better be SURE it's God. It can't be a feeling I have, because feelings can come from the world. Drugs, colors, pictures, even magnetic waves can influence feelings. It also can't be an audible voice, because then I can't be sure whose voice it is. For all I know, it could just be my mind hallucinating. (This has happened to me twice when I was younger, once when I was extremely tired and once when I had a fever and had taken Motrin. But I digress.) There is one place I can go to know what God wants from me, and it's this 2000-year-old book you want me to forget about.
Sorry, but that's not going to happen. I can honestly say that I have more faith in this book than I do in my own senses. (Yes, I know how insane I sound, but I said I'd tell the straight truth, and this is it.) I have so much faith in the Bible and the biblical God for much the same reason C.S. Lewis said: Not because I can see Him, but because of Him I can see everything else. PBB, this, in a nutshell, is what I was trying to explain earlier. I believe more than what I myself, with my 18 senses, can sense. I believe that the Bible is completely, absolutely true. This is why I disagree with the man who killed his son, and it is why I would not kill all left-handed people.
This is the straight truth. If it makes me sound ignorant, stupid, insane, wicked, or all four at once, so be it.
One more thing:
MindForgedManacle Wrote:This couldn't have been easily added after the fact as a post hoc rationalization of why their war god had failed them against Babylon? Seriously? Dude, this is what I mean when I say you need to think more critically about these. These are easily explained by human folly and/or malice.Sorry, I was focusing on the fact that some of the prophecies were specific instead of them all being vague. As for the time when they were written, as far as I know, we have little/no more in the way of evidence for dating the prophets than for any other historical writing: We have the unanimously accepted dates from the Jewish people, who learned and copied these writings from their teachers. Not only that, but the modern consensus on the dates of these writings give dates that would make the writings prophetic as well. Isaiah 1-39 was written before the exile to Babylon; 40-55 were written during it, the rest was written after, for example (link). Even Muslim and Baha'i religions accept him as a prophet.
So my question to you is: Why is there no record, no literature, no evidence of any kind, that anyone from after the fact knew the prophecy was a fake? Or is there evidence like that? (I haven't found any, but I may not have looked hard enough.) Without that, all the evidence points to this book being truly prophetic.
You don't have to answer these questions. I know this thread is all but dead now, and this might be the last post I make on it. If I haven't cleared anything up for you I hope I've at least made some of you think about this stuff and you've gotten more out of it than just one more resident theist's existence on the forum.
God bless,
Avodaiah