1984 & A/S/K revisited

[Godscreated]

[Ryantology]

I did not say that, it's not even suggested in my statement, so tell me why did you reply as if I had. I believe you are trying to bring confusion into this conversation.

So, every time a Christian tells me that I didn't find God because I didn't look hard enough or do it correctly, that Christian is lying? Does God open himself up to those who seek him cynically, or doubting his existence and not wanting to find it?

If the answer to those two question is 'no', then indeed one must first believe in God so that one can believe in God, and when one fails to find God, it is because he does not first believe in God. You have to completely devote yourself, mind body and heart, to God before he'll open up to you and 'prove' his existence to you. Which is exactly what the likes of Drich, strodel and most of the other Christbots here repeat endlessly as if programmed to do so.

Confirmation bias is what that is called.

[Godscreated]

I did not say that, it's not even suggested in my statement, so tell me why did you reply as if I had. I believe you are trying to bring confusion into this conversation.

So, every time a Christian tells me that I didn't find God because I didn't look hard enough or do it correctly, that Christian is lying? Does God open himself up to those who seek him cynically, or doubting his existence and not wanting to find it?

If the answer to those two question is 'no', then indeed one must first believe in God so that one can believe in God, and when one fails to find God, it is because he does not first believe in God. You have to completely devote yourself, mind body and heart, to God before he'll open up to you and 'prove' his existence to you. Which is exactly what the likes of Drich, strodel and most of the other Christbots here repeat endlessly as if programmed to do so.

Confirmation bias is what that is called.

Either you're being thick headed or you're trying to rewrite what I stated. I really do not know how you came to the conclusion you did from what I wrote, it just does not seem logical.
I said God gives the faith so one will search and accept, then faith leads to belief while walking with God. At both of these stages of relationship people believe in God, yet some walk away. It's when one reaches the knowledge of God, truly understanding who God is, that they can't, IMO, walk away from God, it is at this point a person realizes what their salvation really means, they see God in a light never experienced before. I'm not giving you confirmation bias, this is experiencing God. I'm not going to write all this out so I'll give you the passages. Read Matt. 13:1-23 and keep in mind that faith is the seed and take it through the progression of F/B/K. After you have done this and you still do not understand what I've been trying to tell you...well.

[FallentoReason]

[FallentoReason]

Before I start to answer your statements I want to say this, Undeceived stated and I should have the beginning of faith comes from God, by the Holy Spirit, referred to as being called by the Father, so faith doesn't even begin with us, it originates with God.

To believe what you just said, I need to believe in God, and round we go...

I do not have it backwards where God is concerned, nor do you have it wrong where known things exist. To start with knowledge you are starting with some things known. When you start with faith you start with the unknown, concerning God even the faith is unknown at the start. If one has knowledge of something then why do you end up in faith, to me that is not logical.

Ok, if you don't have it backwards where God is concerned, then why did you pick the Christian god and not the Islamic god to begin with? At the very beginning, you don't have knowledge of either, yet you chose to put unjustified faith into one of them. Why is that?

It makes sense that knowledge leads to faith only when we're talking about an action that follows from that knowledge. I could have the knowledge that the chair is made of sturdy parts and from there I could form a belief that it can hold my weight. We could just stop there, but the moment I go sit on it, I'm putting faith into it that it won't collapse on me.

Great, so I have to first a) believe in God so that I can then b) believe in God...

I did not say that, it's not even suggested in my statement, so tell me why did you reply as if I had. I believe you are trying to bring confusion into this conversation. Did I not say F/B/K, why did you jump over faith, the whole F/B/K starts and ends with God, it's up to us to accept. God gives us these gifts it's whether we accept them or not as to hoe deep we go in the relationship wit God.

I said what I said because you are asserting what I said. Look at my bolded bit; I need to believe in God in order to believe in God. You've in fact ditched the entire F/B/K process and just said "our starting point is that God exists". It's unjustified leaps of faith everywhere we look...

Again my faith was not unjustified, it began with God,

To receive anything from said being, you need to believe in him first... round in circles we go

It was given to me as it's given to all as my starting point. It was up to me to act upon the faith given me,

Wait, so now it's not you putting faith into him, but rather him giving you the faith?!?! What is going on!

I could have rejected it at this point, in my case I did not,

Of course you didn't, because even before your "disbelief" you in fact already believed, hence why you can make such statements as "God gave me this, God gave me that".

many do, then belief comes through revelation from God and I believe most through the scriptures, at this point people will still reject God, for some reason they choose not to believe.

Because they're at the beginning of the entire process. You dress it all up in a way which makes it seem like everything's good so far when in fact you've smuggled in your god's existence into this already.

Then comes knowledge through the belief in the relationship one has with God, and this knowledge leads to an awesome relationship in the knowledge of God. This is the point I arrived at many years ago and because I've experienced this, with an open mind by the way, I can not understand how it's possible to reject God.

Having this knowledge of God is as I said before where I have contention with those who say they have come to this point and rejected God. I personally can not understand how one could get the point of knowledge and still reject God.
As far as the 66 99 you purpose I can see that, and can accept it as why many leave God at the points of faith and belief, but not when one comes to the knowledge of God.
Why haven't I accepted other gods, none of them have ever given me the Faith to get started with.

The rest isn't really worthy of a response because it doesn't follow as a logical conclusion. Even your reasoning for not accepting any other god is not logical because you aren't treating them the same way. If you presupposed their existence, then "they" would be more than happy to "give" you faith, as long as you've compromised yourself and decided they are real for no apparent reason like you have done with the Judeo-Christian god.

[Neo-Scholastic]

My objection up to this point would be that the line is now being blurred between experiencing God and "experiencing" God. Literally experiencing him (as I talked about in the OP) could arguably be said to have little room for ambiguity in the believer's mind i.e. they're pretty much convinced that what their senses picked up was in fact God.

I would not discount the fact that religion is a least partly experiencial. I practice a number of meditative disciplines: compassion, non-duality, mindfulness, contemplative, and the path of negation. Each of these cultivates within the practitioner a receptive metal state that improves with practice, allowing a better understanding of their own inner life. It isn't all that much different from the study in any other discipline in art or science. A deeper and more fuller understanding of your own consciousness brings you closer to the origin of that consciousness.

Or at least so it seems. Could it be a delusion? Possibly. That position requires a radical skepticism that denies the evidence of the senses, the brain being, in its own way, the most important sense organ.

[Undeceived]

So, every time a Christian tells me that I didn't find God because I didn't look hard enough or do it correctly, that Christian is lying? Does God open himself up to those who seek him cynically, or doubting his existence and not wanting to find it?

Do you consider yourself a good person worthy of heaven?

I am a good person, therefore I can't be tempted by "heaven".

There are no places you (addressing everybody) can look for God. The belief He responds to requires a state of mind: a repentant one. You are only going to look for God if you want Him to exist. If you believe you are self-righteous, you are not giving God the chance to forgive you. You remain filled with sin and in fear of His judgment. You do not want Him to reveal Himself, because the God you know will judge you. So God will withhold from revealing Himself through revelation for two reasons: 1) He respects your desire; and 2) He wishes to give you time to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Revelation requires the entering of the Holy Spirit into your mind (which is why we say He gives you faith). The Holy Spirit can only enter if you are pure. If not, His holiness will destroy you. Therefore it is impossible to know God unless you recognize you are a hopelessly sinful person and want to change.

[Ryantology]

Either you're being thick headed or you're trying to rewrite what I stated. I really do not know how you came to the conclusion you did from what I wrote, it just does not seem logical.

I didn't come to it just based on what you wrote, hence my sharing the credit with other Christbots.

I said God gives the faith so one will search and accept, then faith leads to belief while walking with God.

This is obviously untrue. If it was, Christianity would have appeared spontaneously throughout the world. Instead, it spread in one tiny and irrelevant backwater and all growth can be traced back to it.

At both of these stages of relationship people believe in God, yet some walk away. It's when one reaches the knowledge of God, truly understanding who God is, that they can't, IMO, walk away from God, it is at this point a person realizes what their salvation really means, they see God in a light never experienced before. I'm not giving you confirmation bias, this is experiencing God.

More Christbot programming, the pretentious yammering about how one can magically know something is true merely by wanting to think it is really really hard.

I'm not going to write all this out so I'll give you the passages. Read Matt. 13:1-23 and keep in mind that faith is the seed and take it through the progression of F/B/K. After you have done this and you still do not understand what I've been trying to tell you...well.

I have never not understood you. You're just full of shit.

Therefore it is impossible to know God unless you recognize you are a hopelessly sinful person and want to change.

Thank you for demonstrating the necessity of confirmation bias in order to 'know' God, because Godschild is apparently not paying any attention to what other Christbots are programmed to repeat.

[Darkstar]

The belief He responds to requires a state of mind: a repentant one. You are only going to look for God if you want Him to exist. If you believe you are self-righteous, you are not giving God the chance to forgive you. You remain filled with sin and in fear of His judgment. You do not want Him to reveal Himself, because the God you know will judge you. So God will withhold from revealing Himself through revelation for two reasons: 1) He respects your desire; and 2) He wishes to give you time to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Revelation requires the entering of the Holy Spirit into your mind (which is why we say He gives you faith). The Holy Spirit can only enter if you are pure. If not, His holiness will destroy you. Therefore it is impossible to know God unless you recognize you are a hopelessly sinful person and want to change.

But to whom would we desire to repent, and why would we recognize the authority of "sin", if we did not already believe in god? He revealed himself plenty in the OT, why did he disappear before cameras (and significant scientific knowledge) came about?

[Undeceived]

The belief He responds to requires a state of mind: a repentant one. You are only going to look for God if you want Him to exist. If you believe you are self-righteous, you are not giving God the chance to forgive you. You remain filled with sin and in fear of His judgment. You do not want Him to reveal Himself, because the God you know will judge you. So God will withhold from revealing Himself through revelation for two reasons: 1) He respects your desire; and 2) He wishes to give you time to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Revelation requires the entering of the Holy Spirit into your mind (which is why we say He gives you faith). The Holy Spirit can only enter if you are pure. If not, His holiness will destroy you. Therefore it is impossible to know God unless you recognize you are a hopelessly sinful person and want to change.

But to whom would we desire to repent, and why would we recognize the authority of "sin", if we did not already believe in god?

Once one realizes their guilty sinful state, they see that the Bible describes exactly their predicament. Sin need not have authority. All the person needs to do is be disgusted by it and to see the flip-side--love, which is demonstrated perfectly in Christ.

He revealed himself plenty in the OT, why did he disappear before cameras (and significant scientific knowledge) came about?

If God revealed Himself physically today, unrepentant people's hearts would still be unrepentant. Half the Hebrews saw the Pillar of Fire and the parting of the Red Sea and turned right back around and crafted golden idols. The Old Testament is partly a record of what doesn't work. Hebrews with repentant hearts followed God, but the others didn't. Today we have a new way to receive revelations: Jesus speaking, "But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26). With the Holy Spirit, repentant people learn the Message of Christ, while unrepentant people (who would reject it anyway) are left in the dark. Yes, there is a suspicious division. But God has always allowed unbelievers a "way out" of learning His mystery. In OT times, demons were more active, and so were the number of fake "gods". People (like half the Hebrews) could choose to follow another divinity. Today, unbelievers decide to follow presupposed science religiously. They are mirror images of each other. But the truth remains.