To explain knowledge of God

[Tonus]

Not blueprint. OUT LINE. We do not see it as empty because we followed the outline as per Luke 11 and found God!

The outline is no less vague and no less simple. Jesus only says to ask, and to persist, and his example does not imply that one must persist very long or very vehemently, because god is like a loving parent or caring neighbor. Any attempt to explain away someone else's results by going beyond that are self-serving.

Again our acts have no intrinsic value in God's economy in of themselves. (It's not what we do it's why we are doing it that makes all the difference in the world.)

If sincerity of motive is all that is required, then those of us who were raised in a faith and served and worshiped faithfully would have gotten that response. If it's a simple and straightforward process, then success should be easy to attain and failure just as easy to identify and correct.

Paul was seeking out God in his worship, and when God corrected him he changed with the correction. You all earnestly seek out God and when God moves to correct, you turn on Him because He is not granting your wishes.. Or He let something bad happen to you so as to get your attention, and rather than stop and turn to seek Him on his terms you all seem to turn on a 'God you can not respect or love.'

I did not have any such event or problems in my life. As I have explained before, I have always been a happy and optimistic person. I was happy as a theist, and am happy as an atheist. The only thing that made me stop believing was that I continued to test my beliefs and ultimately found them wanting once I stripped away the presuppositions and fallacies that supported them.

To date, the discussions here have shown that those who hold the beliefs I held (or similar ones) rely on the same presuppositions and explanations that I find lacking. For you, this may be sufficient to rationalize my results. I've seen people hang on to belief on flimsier premises-- I used to be one of them, after all.