Good challenge, Jythier, and I encourage you.

When asking how you can act more lie you believe in God, I would challenge you to read books. The first, "The Cost of Discipleship" is by Deitrich Bonhoeffer. You have probably heard me speak of Bonhoeffer, but in case you are unfamiliar with him, he was a Lutheran Pastor in Nazi Germany and a prominent member of "The Confessing Church"; the church that broke away from the state sanctioned churches and actively opposed Hitler. For his role in an assassination attempt, Bonhoeffer's life ended in a concentration camp. His words are filled with deep meaning, and, more tellingly, deep joy. Follow this up with "Letters and Papers from Prison" if you enjoy this book.

The second book is titled "An Arrow Pointing to Heaven", by James Bryan Smith. It is a biography of Rich Mullins.

Both books tell the tale of men who lived their faith, not pretended it. One of my most earnest searches is for a living faith; sadly, I find it lacking more often than not. That may be why I find myself a misfit more often than not as well.

God be with you on this journey.

"I think it's about time, since I DO believe in God, that I start acting like it"

If you have taken the easy route of "I believe", and ignored the standards of whichever Faith you have - you are probably right.

If however you are living your life following the Spirit of the "rules", if not the precise definitions, I would contend you are wrong.

To give a silly extreme example by way of hypothetical illustration - if you only counted 49 roseary beads today not 50, who cares - if your god does go find another because He's not worth a candle. If however you are a closet chainsaw murderer, yup, start caring ....

Faith is what you carry deep inside you, its not a Mail Order Guide.

I'm going to offer a different angle than Gid, with no disrespect at all to his points.

STOP reading books. Here's my reason why.

I don't know exactly what I believe IN, but I do know one thing I do have faith in...as much as I'm not a fan of faith in any of its forms. I believe we are not the only sentient life in the universe. I believe this with all my being. And so, it occurs to me, that if the Christian way is the right way, then one of two things must be true.

Either:

Jesus went on a universal tour doing the Cricifixion act on every planet with sentient life so that they could understand how to be saved and earn a spot in eternity -

Or:

People can get saved without ever having heard of Jesus.

Now if that last one is the true one, which I find more likely, then it means that living right, and being saved, can be reasoned to using no tool other than the brain God gave you. All you have to do is think about it. Perhaps long and hard, but you are equipped with a mechanism that can do it. The brain.

A big problem I have with the reasoning of Christians (and you pretty much already know this) is that it isn't THEIR reasoning. It's someone else's...told to them by bibles which get rewritten every time an IMPERFECT human decides something needs changing. And I'm not ragging on the church...we're ALL imperfect. But this very simple thing indicates there's only one way to truly believe in anything, and that's to come up with the reasoning all by yourself with no reference tools, because the reference tools existant are impossible to know the validity of. THAT fact you can easily reason to. If you only will.

So don't take the words of others from books. Sit down and think about it. After all, doesn't God deserve that? For each person to do their own work? I think so.

Ock,

I'm not stating that books are one's salvation, what I am doing is trying to point Jythier to some books that I feel will be inspirational. They certainly have been inspirational to me, and since Jythier is on a similar path, I believe they could be to him as well. These are not the "self help guru" types of books. They are the thoughts of a couple of men who knew what it was like to have a living faith.

But that doesn't negate your bigger point, which I feel is extremely valid.

Thanks for the books, Gideon. At this point, I even have to get better at just reading THE Book. For some reason, I love to read.. except the Bible.

"To give a silly extreme example by way of hypothetical illustration - if you only counted 49 roseary beads today not 50, who cares - if your god does go find another because He's not worth a candle. If however you are a closet chainsaw murderer, yup, start caring ...."

How did you know? Now I have to hide my chainsaw, and move to a new town...

"I believe we are not the only sentient life in the universe."

I don't know much about that. It's not really discussed in the Bible, is it? Regardless, I cannot say for certain that this is the only place where God is working. That would certainly limit Him. But it may be that on other planets, He's working in different ways to show His greatness, or Jesus made a universal tour. Either way, HE is the way to be saved on Earth.

"After all, doesn't God deserve that? For each person to do their own work?"

It isn't, and wasn't meant to be, work to choose God. No, the work comes after that.

As it is, some people just aren't as smart as we are, Ock. They don't have the ability to reason like we do. So God left them a book to look at... but not just them. He left it for us to, for the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men.

How did you know? Now I have to hide my chainsaw, and move to a new town...

Then reading the bible more may not be a bad idea, people tell me it contains a great witness protection programme for those who come clean with the Judge

I don't know much about that. It's not really discussed in the Bible, is it?

Hehe...I rest my case, your honor.

There IS a third option, Ockham, and it revolves around the idea of covenants.

Christ's sacrifice was, in the view of many Christians, a fulfillment of a covenant made with man. It is not unlikely to assume that God made covenants with His other creation elsewhere, but that the Bible remains silent because, well, it's not relevant. I mean, laws dealing with four tentacled creatures not lying with six tentacled creatures wouldn't really apply here, would they?

I hope you realize that, while I'm trying to make a valid point(that there may be options we have not considered), I am being just a tad facetious.

Great point on relevance, Gideon.

It finally dawned on me, Ock, what bothers me about this whole 'don't use a book/think for yourself, don't let other people think for you' thing you have going on. Were you just born logical, or did you discover how to think logically by yourself? I know in Math class we learned logical process. Scientific method in science class. Where do you think those things come from? Other people who have come before you. If you had to figure out scientific method for yourself, sure you might come to it. Someone did, after all. But it went unthought of for a long time.

So now we have a lot of logical reasoning skills and scientific methods and so on that we did not have, and you have been able to reap the benefit of them, yet you do not allow me to use the experiences written down of the people who came before me.

Also, if I think up an argument for myself, which I have, and someone else has used it before, is it then not thinking for myself? I don't think so. And I reason through every argument I come across, from you or from my pastor or in a book, including the Bible. But I didn't learn reason by myself - others taught me to do so. I'm pretty sure others taught you to do so, as well.

Knowledge of the Lord can come through both faith and reasoning. He's certainly not a one-or-the-other God. But, since he is not here now to tell you, "Hey, I exist, and the Bible is my words to you" you have to go on at least a little faith. Something even Christians have a hard time with.

Also, if we fail to learn from the experiences of others, we may repeat the mistakes made in the past.

did you discover how to think logically by yourself?

There's a difference between learning what the concept of "logic" is, and developing one's skill in it. What I am trying, clumsily, to impart, is that in order to approach your own skills in logic, you have to start each concept from scratch. You can't start a logical argument from the place someone else left off at, because...well, you tell me because why?

I'm pretty sure others taught you to do so (logic through things), as well.

And what makes you think this?

"And what makes you think this?"

Because you are debating with me right now. You have debated in the past. Those are learning experiences involving other people. Based on how good you are at it, you have probably had a lot of practice with logic and reasoning with other people. Logic and reasoning with yourself has very little meaning, as there is nobody on the other side to test yourself against.

Regardless, as that was not your actual point, your point being:
"in order to approach your own skills in logic, you have to start each concept from scratch."

"You can't start a logical argument from the place someone else left off at, because...well, you tell me because why?"

So in order to prove to you the Bible has any truth in it, we have to go through every bit of evidence on the subject, that would prove each point that is true... prove that it was written when it was written, and that the Bible today is mostly the same as it was then (I saw mostly because I don't read it in the original languages, I read it in English, and there's got to be some lost meaning that English doesn't have... but the Bible I read has explanations of the original words and what they mean, so it's as close as I can get without learning a third language)

So yeah, we could go ahead and do that, write our own history of the Isrealites based on the evidence now, and our own story of Jesus' life based on the evidence now.

There are stories of people digging deep into Christianity expressly for the purpose of disproving it, and finding that all the evidence was in fact, pointing towards the Bible as being a true and accurate record. I chose, rather than to waste my time going through the evidence, to stand on their shoulders and believe. I think a lot of science is done that way, too. You don't go back and prove what's been proven, you go forward and try to prove something new BASED on what has already been proven.

So, if you feel that in order to believe, you need to dig up all the evidence, be my guest. It won't be a waste of time. But it would be a waste of time for me to do so, as I already believe, and no-one would take my work seriously anyway. "Oh, he's a believer, he's just making his findings up to prove Christianity." So I will continue to believe in The Bible, which I haven't found an illogical bit in yet.

Well, sorry. You're wrong. I don't know why I began to feel safe to question things others had told me, but I didn't debate it with anyone to practice. I am an only child which, were I to use logic, which I will, probably indicates a whole lot of instropection for lack of having anyone else to discuss things with. I won't claim that's an absolute truth, but it is my current theory.

Me:


you:


This had nothing to do with your beliefs. It was a logical thread asking why you cannot pick up in the middle of a logic thread and continue along that course.

The answer, (since, sorry, you didn't get it right) is that humans are fallible and might have gotten some of the first part of that logic wrong. Or from where you sit, you might see something they missed.

My logic further tells me, as I have expounded on endlessly to the sound of my cranium punching a hole in the wall, that one cannot believe something that they do not rationally conclude, from SCRATCH, using NO reference tools, all on their own. Because belief is an indiviual thing. It is a conclusion you come to. But if a large part, or in your case I'd wager about 99%, is just someone else's conclusion, then it is no conclusion of your own at all. You're just a lemming at that point.

I'd further contend that if the Christian God DOES exist, that he'd rather see you try and fail, than to just parrot the words of some other guy whose ability to comprehend matters of this nature you cannot POSSIBLY have any sincere knowledge of. At least then it was YOU doing the thinking.

You seem to feel no responsibility to your thoughts at all. Will you say, if you die and go to the pearly gates, and they turn you away, "b-b-b-but....I read it in this book!" Because if you do, my guess is ole St. Peter will say "Yeah, but the idea is *still* in the book. It's just a copy in your head, because you never thought about it."

Think that's wrong? Stop this dance. Let's take an easy one. Explain the logic to me of light being created before stars. No quotes from the bible allowed. (And, there IS an answer that still supports the bible, but lets see how you, as you claim, have logicked through it all.) This was one of the first puzzles I worked on, all by myself, without debating a soul.

I wouldn't be too hasty to even peripherally suggest that my mind is the sole composite of others. That's you projecting, bro.

Forgot to address this. No real science is done this way at all. My wife is a scientist, and I know a lot about all her experiments in the field of proteomics. Scientists will NEVER say something is true. They will only say when things are false once they have proven an exception to a theory. Just for the record.

There are points they get to when they're "pretty sure" but due to things like Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle and other choas theories dealing with the interaction of particles, they'll never stamp it true.

"It's just a copy in your head, because you never thought about it."

I do think about it, have thought about it, will continue to think about it.

"I wouldn't be too hasty to even peripherally suggest that my mind is the sole composite of others. That's you projecting, bro."

Not the sole composite, but others will certainly have an effect on you, challenging you, enabling you to think for yourself. Again, without someone to test your conclusions on, how do you know they're right? Again, if humans are infallible and I have to go back and check everything, do I not also have to check myself? And, while I'm at it, I'll have someone else check my work. Because I know I get things wrong, but I often don't see the mistakes. While I may be projecting, there is a high probability that you are not infallible either.

"Explain the logic to me of light being created before stars. No quotes from the bible allowed."


I'll think about it.

How can a star give off something that was not created yet? Light must have been created first in order for the star to emit it. Heat, too. And whatever the gases were that it's made up of. And UV Rays. And countless other things I don't know much about.

I feel that this may only be a partial answer - please let me know if I need to add more. As it is, I will keep thinking about it regardless.