No Proof = No Knowledge

[Polaris]

I have had a direct experience with the Holy Spirit. How can you say that I actually have not had contact with Elohim?

There is literally no reason to believe you did. Every other ostensibly possible explanation is likelier.

I am certain Jesus Christ exists. Do you doubt the claim I have made on my own personal beliefs and understanding? Do you claim to know me better than I know myself?

I doubt it. You did not have any way to plausibly confirm the nature of whatever experience you claim to have and the veracity of your claim rests entirely upon your assumption that you have the ability to flawlessly interpret the signals produced by your own brain, assuming that your belief is honestly held and not something you doubt, as you appear not to. You have a confidence in that ability you do not deserve to possess and you are a fool for jumping to the absolute wildest of conclusions over what was virtually certain to be a mere hallucination or some other cognitive glitch that pretty much all people are prone to having.

I felt experiences I had never felt while drunk, while experiencing life through other facts of pleasure, through passive meditation (don't know how to do Buddhist meditation) nothing like when I was in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The closest feeling I felt to that was love and that was nothing compared to what I felt when I really prayed, which I have not done in nearly three years. Even if I were to become an unbeliever, I could not discount those experiences as being genuine.

Your response is like a blind man who questions someone who describes a rose to him.

[Esquilax]

I felt experiences I had never felt while drunk, while experiencing life through other facts of pleasure, through passive meditation (don't know how to do Buddhist meditation) nothing like when I was in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The closest feeling I felt to that was love and that was nothing compared to what I felt when I really prayed, which I have not done in nearly three years. Even if I were to become an unbeliever, I could not discount those experiences as being genuine.

Your response is like a blind man who questions someone who describes a rose to him.

Your experiences are only proof of the experiences themselves. They do not testify to the source of those experiences.

If you wish to say they do, then the experiences people have with other, competing gods must be given equal weight.

[Polaris]

I felt experiences I had never felt while drunk, while experiencing life through other facts of pleasure, through passive meditation (don't know how to do Buddhist meditation) nothing like when I was in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The closest feeling I felt to that was love and that was nothing compared to what I felt when I really prayed, which I have not done in nearly three years. Even if I were to become an unbeliever, I could not discount those experiences as being genuine.

Your response is like a blind man who questions someone who describes a rose to him.

Your experiences are only proof of the experiences themselves. They do not testify to the source of those experiences.

If you wish to say they do, then the experiences people have with other, competing gods must be given equal weight.

I can't attest to knowing the experiences of people of other faiths because I only dabbled in one other faith before becoming a Christian.

[Esquilax]

I can't attest to knowing the experiences of people of other faiths because I only dabbled in one other faith before becoming a Christian.

So, great: there's a ton of different religions, whose adherents are all having experiences, and they can't all be right. That alone should give you second thoughts about the veracity of your own experiences, where they relate to divine, supernatural claims; if all those other people can be mistaken, why can't you?

[Polaris]

I can't attest to knowing the experiences of people of other faiths because I only dabbled in one other faith before becoming a Christian.

So, great: there's a ton of different religions, whose adherents are all having experiences, and they can't all be right. That alone should give you second thoughts about the veracity of your own experiences, where they relate to divine, supernatural claims; if all those other people can be mistaken, why can't you?

How can they not all be right in their own? Why can't my coworkers in India have their own gods and I have mine? In my Bible, it says to not have any gods before Him, but that applies to me. God did not say that the entire world could not have any gods of their own, just the fact that He was infinitely stronger.

[Esquilax]

How can they not all be right in their own? Why can't my coworkers in India have their own gods and I have mine? In my Bible, it says to not have any gods before Him, but that applies to me. God did not say that the entire world could not have any gods of their own, just the fact that He was infinitely stronger.

... Which might work fine on a polytheistic sense, except that those followers of other gods are also generally hitching their beliefs to them as the determiners of the afterlife, but you also have different interpretations of the same god, too. Jesus, for example, cannot both be the son of god, as christian sects believe, and not the son of god, as the jews and muslims believe. That's a mutually exclusive set of positions: someone is wrong there.

You think you're going to either heaven or hell, right? Are there any other options? If not, then I guess we've got another exclusive proposition, contradicting the visions of all those other afterlives that can't be true under your system. There are more points of conflict than you might think, even within different denominations of your own religion; homosexuals will burn in hell, according to x preacher, but y preacher says their faith will save them. Rabbi z tells us salvation is through faith and not works, but father a says otherwise. And so on, and so forth.

[Ryantology]

Your response is like a blind man who questions someone who describes a rose to him.

It's because when I reach out, I feel no rose. I smell nothing. Obviously, not getting anything from the taste department. Most other people I talk to give accounts of the "rose" that are both fundamentally divergent from yours, and a growing number of people with the sense I lack telling me that the rest of my senses are telling me the truth and there really isn't a rose there.

My response is like a blind man who is dealing with someone who seems to think missing one sense makes all the rest not work, too. If I had the sense you insist is there and there was still no convincing change in affairs, you'd just move the goalposts and draw upon an infinite regression of arbitrarily-assigned and utterly imaginary special abilities that you will insist I lack.

Your argument is an insult to anyone's intelligence.

[Bad Writer]

What the fuck is the theists' fetish for equating atheism with materialism (and even naturalism, for that matter)? Why do I feel you are parroting what your pastor claims about atheists without ever thinking for yourself or doing your own research?

If you don't believe in God, a higher power, the supernatural/transcendent reality or whatever else you want to call it just the physical universe as it is that we can see and nothing else then what the fuck else are you meant to be than a materialist? You would be the definition of materialism if you reject or don't accept the existence of anything that is beyond the material and the natural world. As a belief it's possible but if it's actually true that's as big a deal as the alternative/s.

I have a belief that it's possible. Many atheists do. So are we all materialists/naturalists/whateverists? (I had to...I just had to do it.) Can you answer that question truthfully, for once?

Bottom line, putting every atheist into the same box is going to rub people the wrong way. You get on here to parrot what you heard on some Xtian say on a Youtube channel; well their woo woo words don't work on us.

[Sword of Christ]

I have a belief that it's possible.

Anything is possible so that goes without saying.

Many atheists do.

I should hope they do but they don't believe in God or anything else equivalent to this so they are going to be left essentially with the material stuff. If they believed in something else specifically which underlies and/or created this material world then they wouldn't be materialists. Either you do or you don't it's fair enough.

So are we all materialists/naturalists/whateverists?

Well yes what else would you be?

Bottom line, putting every atheist into the same box is going to rub people the wrong way. You get on here to parrot what you heard on some Xtian say on a Youtube channel; well their woo woo words don't work on us.

If you don't have a belief in anything beyond this material world and this specific life here now then you will be a materialist/naturalist by default it's not something you avoid. Here is your wordview.






Well that's the Christian spin on it Epicurus may be a better take on it.

[Mothonis]

[/quote]

Seems to me you're including all CFC's, you are leaving out information so why should people trust what you are saying. Some CFC's break down before they enter the ozone layer and those CFC's are the ones blamed for the damage of the ozone layer, and those responsible for the banning of those CFC's knew they were wrong about that, now it cost you a great deal more to heat and cool your home be cause of their ... what ever it was.
Now to get to the real question here, I observed and saw, I asked and was answered, God gave me the information I needed to make a decision. You have ignored what I have said, that in no way means what I said was not the truth, your ignorance is no excuse for you missing out on reality.

GC
[/quote]

I observed, i saw, and was answered by Talos.you have ignored what i said that in no way means what said was not the truth.

[/quote]

Born again experiences outside the Christian realm are of satan. DO NOT BE DECEIVED. Until you have been born again of Christ and have spoken in tongues you have not ever experienced true awe and fulfillment.
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How do you know this isnt your lord