GOOD Apologetics?

[Brian37]

The title of the thread is an oxymoron. "Elaborate" or "Slick" would be a better description.

[MindForgedManacle]

I would not be so quick to dismiss the testimony of Christians. Some of us recognize our need for a savior only after hitting our rock bottom. YMMV.

I'm not blanket dismissing Christian testimonies, I'm dismissing the kind that have the sort of mark of bullshit in them. The kind that paint an absurd picture of the Christian in question, wherein they were the scum of the Earth and a humongous asshole beyond all comparison prior to comverting. There are believable testimonies, but the extent to which testimonies like these crop up and what they contain is not believable in the slightest.

[Ryantology]

Do you know what apologetics is?

I used to be heavy into the Silent Hill fandom, a game series with a highly-interpretive story. People (sometimes including myself) could get really into it, and get into heated, long arguments over what this meant or what that symbolized, to the point where some were convinced that there was a single, correct way to interpret everything and rabidly defended this viewpoint against all comers.

Apologetics is what would happen if these people lacked the cognitive fortitude to remember that Silent Hill is fiction.

It's why there's no point in taking theology into account for anything of substance. Theology is nothing more than fan fiction for real idiots and apologetics is the tool by which those idiots try to legitimize their fan fiction for people who didn't grow up eating paint chips.

[Michael Schubert]

[quote='Drich' pid='589366' dateline='1390487085']
Your arguement fails because on must approach Harry or God with a closed mind. Before you see any evidence you must already know that no matter what you will see it will not be proof of anything. That is why My statement that supports Luke 11 does not make sense to you.

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[quote='ThePinsir' pid='589364' dateline='1390487077']

Does God have any material manifested qualities?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I would reverse that. All material qualities are manifest by God.

[Ryantology]

And for all that explains, to say nothing for all that you can do to substantiate the claim, you might as well say that all material qualities are manifested by me. After all, my existence isn't hypothetical.

[Whateverist]

Proof of the existence of God comes from God and not from speculations about him.

Lets grant that you are completely sincere in having experienced what you took to be the presence of God. I'll concede that you are absolutely sincere in that. What I would need to know is how you -who presumably never had such an experience before- would 'know' what exactly it was you were experiencing. We know the human mind is capable of a lot, how can you rule out that it was your mind itself which presented you with this? Exactly what aspects of the experience mark it as god-inspired?

Then, even if we were to concede that it was god-inspired -which I can't possibly really allow- how in the world could you possibly connect that to the bible? Surely it is more than a coincidence that every experience of revelation is always in relation to the god that predominates in the culture of the person having the revelation? That's got to make you at least a little suspicious.

More likely the experience was entirely murky even if it did feel special at the time. It is highly unlikely that you were explicitly informed that this was the god of the bible speaking. From where I sit it just seems a hell of a lot more likely that in your extreme state you just interpreted what you experienced in the only way that made sense to you. No one knows what would count as an authentic experience of God. It is only after the fact that certainty creeps in.

[Ryantology]

From where I sit it just seems a hell of a lot more likely that in your extreme state you just interpreted what you experienced in the only way that made sense to you.

Or, he interpreted his experience according to the instructions of a religion he either already believed in or absorbed through cultural osmosis throughout his life.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Certainty is part of the experience…kinda. You don’t need any ‘belief’ that you are in pain to know that you are in pain. Likewise you do not need to have ideas or thoughts about what you are experiencing…it’s more like sense data. A mystical experience puts you in direct, unmediated, and undeniable presence of the ineffable.

God-inspired? That’s an after the fact attempt to put the experience in some kind of intellectually recognizable context. If it was ‘just’ my own mind, then it calls into question the nature of mind itself. The experience itself is not culture specific. Christianity is the path with which I am most familiar for trying to reconnect with that calling. Out of the Christian traditions of which I was familiar, New Church theology seemed to match up best with what I experienced. I do not discount the experiences of people from other cultures who try to do the same within their own traditions. In my experience, people who share mystical or visionary experiences have the same understanding and so not share the fanaticism of their purely intellectual or emotional peers.

I do not disagree with your closing remarks. I was in an extreme state. Many traditions cultivate these states as part of their specific traditions. This does not mean that the extreme state was the experience as opposed to facilitating it. And you are correct, certainty comes later when you try to make sense of what happened. As for being murky, that also happens after the fact. While you have it, your mind feels raised up and you have a sense of clarity unlike anything you know during waking experience. It’s very disappointing to return to normal consciousness, but you come back with a different perspective on it.

So from my perspective, to summarily dismiss mystical explanations as hallucinations or tricks of the brain is based on prejudice towards a specific worldview.

[Ryantology]

A well deserved prejudice. If you were from Tehran, you'd be just as certain you experienced Allah. You had a brain fart and merely assigned it to the locally-acceptable deity. I would expect that a real god would reign over a universe, not just a handful of continents.

Honestly, it sounds like someone sprinkled DMT in your Cheerios.