> Suzanne wrote:
>

>> "Robert Epstein" verizon.net> wrote in message
>> news:ibswj.25284$v57.11764@trnddc05...
>>

>>>Suzanne wrote:
>>>
>>>

>>>>"Robert Epstein" verizon.net> wrote in message
>>>>news:PHQrj.1255$Uq4.437@trndny02...
>>>>
>>>>

>>>>>Suzanne wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>

>>>>>>"Robert Epstein" verizon.net> wrote in message
>>>>>>news:J4xpj.2435$EK3.2051@trndny04...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>

>>>>>>>Suzanne wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>"Libertarius" wrote in message
>>>>>>>>news:47a1445e$0$26043$88260bb3@free.teranews.com...
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>Free Lunch wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:31:01 -0600, in alt.atheism "Suzanne"
>>>>>>>>>>flash.net> wrote in
>>>>>>>>>>nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com>:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>"Mike Painter" sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
>>>>>>>>>>>news:6Lsnj.42230$Pv2.22079@newssvr23.news.prodigy.net...
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>Michael Gray wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:44:13 -0600, Free Lunch
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>True, that is a part of my case, but not all of it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>The claims made for the biblical Jesus are historically
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>impossible,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>as they set up two or more mutually contradictory claims.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>The fact that the claims are contradictory neither tell us
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>that the
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>claims are unreliable,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Eh?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Did you phrase that incorrectly?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>It *does* tell us that the "claims" are contradictory!

>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>Perhaps you should explain that if they contradict each other
>>>>>>>>>>>>only one can be true and both can be false.
>>>>>>>>>>>>If this was examined from a scientific viewpoint which tried to
>>>>>>>>>>>>show the book was litterally true, it would be falsified at this
>>>>>>>>>>>>point.
>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>My point of view is...
>>>>>>>>>>>that when people are talking about scripture, and
>>>>>>>>>>>they think that two scriptures seem to contradict
>>>>>>>>>>>each other, then they don't understand one of them.

>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>Why do you assume that the scriptural claims are true? Some are in
>>>>>>>>>>conflict with reality.

>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>===>And many are in conflict with others, the Bible being a
>>>>>>>>>man-made
>>>>>>>>>compilation of selected and edited literature, of the
>>>>>>>>>private expressions of their authors' ideas,
>>>>>>>>>opinions, speculations and fantasies.
>>>>>>>>>No two men think alike, and those authors lived cultures and
>>>>>>>>>centuries apart. They believed in different names for the
>>>>>>>>>gods which each created in his own head. So, the differences,
>>>>>>>>>though ignored or explained away, are not at all surprising.
>>>>>>>>>So long, that is, as one resists the Big Lie that their
>>>>>>>>>writings are the "Word of God". -- L.
>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>The Bible is the written word of God, and says that
>>>>>>>>the Lord wrote it through men whom God did
>>>>>>>>inspire.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Suzanne

>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>that assumes that this is the truth.
>>>>>>>there is no extra-biblical truth of this possible.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>it is quite strictly a matter of faith, isn't it?
>>>>>>>

>>>>>>
>>>>>>I guess it depends upon what you mean by faith.
>>>>>>To me, faith is trusting in something that is
>>>>>>revealed to me inwardly in my heart, which I
>>>>>>have not refused but accepted, based on the
>>>>>>assurance that is given to me by the Lord. But I
>>>>>>do not consider faith to be just blindly deciding
>>>>>>to do something whether you really think it is
>>>>>>right or not.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Suzanne

>>>>>
>>>>>no of course not. faith means following something that you feel is
>>>>>true based on inward conviction, as you say, *without* what would
>>>>>normally be considered concrete factual proof. That is what makes it
>>>>>faith. You believe it is true without direct evidence. Now, if you
>>>>>were lucky enough to touch the hem of Jesus' garment or to see the
>>>>>loaves and fishes or the parting of the Red Sea, then you wouldn't need
>>>>>faith - you would have direct evidence that God is there and is able to
>>>>>do these things. But if you do not happen to experience a miracle in
>>>>>person, then you are dependent on faith. Jesus said that those who
>>>>>believe based on faith are more worthy than those who require proof, as
>>>>>he expressed when Thomas touched him to make sure he was really there.
>>>>>Jesus was disappointed that Thomas doubted and did not have faith and
>>>>>required proof. So the issue is whether faith is justified, whether it
>>>>>can be shown to be justified, or whether those who practice it are
>>>>>deluded. Most likely it is an issue that will never be resolved
>>>>>between believers and those who doubt; only agreed upon by fellow
>>>>>believers in the same faith system.
>>>>>

>>>>
>>>>Pardon my delay, Robert. I just had cataract surgery. : )
>>>>I can see again. Wow...it's great.
>>>>
>>>>This is difficult to explain since you are talking about
>>>>something else other than what I was meaning. I see
>>>>what you are saying. Yes, sometimes I guess people
>>>>can do things the way that you describe...but that was
>>>>not exactly my experience. I felt the pressure and the
>>>>power of the Lord pulling me toward making a
>>>>decision to give my life to him...the Bible calls this
>>>>him "drawing" you. Now, I'll try to explain this. Have
>>>>you ever held a north pole magnet next to a south pole
>>>>magnet? Or held a north pole magnet next to another
>>>>north pole magnet? You have this "pulling" or this
>>>>"repelling" sensation as you hold those two REAL
>>>>magnets to one another...? This is like what I felt like
>>>>on the inside of me. It was something beyond myself
>>>>that I am describing. It was not coming from me, at
>>>>all, but from a force that was external to me. This was
>>>>the Holy Spirit acting upon me, drawing me to the Lord.
>>>>I also experienced this lostness. It was not an emotion,
>>>>and it was not just a "feeling." Again, it was outside of
>>>>myself coming to me to make me understand that without
>>>>him a person is lost. That is what is called "conviction,"
>>>>and it is from the Holy Spirit. It sounds like I am
>>>>describing "feelings." It is not feelings, but a force that
>>>>was acting upon me. If you have not experienced this,
>>>>then it will probably not make sense. There was nothing
>>>>ethereal about it, or dreamlike, or trance-like, or any
>>>>thing but wide-awake awareness of the presence - the
>>>>very real presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, if this sounds
>>>>like so much gobbledy-gook to you, you will now know
>>>>it if it happens to you, and what this is. It is the Holy Spirit
>>>>seeking you. This may not happen to everyone in this same
>>>>manner as it did to me, but this is what happened to me.
>>>>I knew that the Lord was present and that he was calling me
>>>>to trust him as my Savior, and to be the payment for all of
>>>>my sins, past, present and the future ones as well. When I
>>>>"received" him, then I experienced this joy and he would
>>>>talk to me inside of my heart and his words came to me
>>>>in thoughts like sentences given to me from an outside
>>>>source. It had nothing to do with the imagination.
>>>>
>>>>Suzanne

>>>
>>>I am aware that you don't think I understand the nature of your
>>>experience, but I am not accusing you of imagining what happened to you
>>>or of it being misinterpreted. I *am* saying that there are some aspects
>>>of an experience that are direct, and then there are others that are
>>>extrapolated based on a belief system and may or may not be correct
>>>conclusions to draw from it. For instance, if you realized the direct
>>>presence of the holy spirit within you, pulling you to Jesus and letting
>>>you know that he was your savior, does this automatically mean that
>>>everything in the Bible is literally true, and that it is the word of
>>>God? Or is this a decision made based on the combination of belief and
>>>this powerful experience of the living Spirit?
>>>

>>
>> I was not an adult when I made this decision...so let
>> me explain where I was coming from...
>>
>> Let me go back a minute. I have a unique experience
>> that many do not have. I was seven when I had all
>> this happen to me and accepted Jesus as my Savior.
>> I did automatically believe that the Bible is the Word
>> of God and so I read it with that in mind. It has never
>> failed me. I've put it into my life and it just plain works!
>> So...when I get older and find that there are some that
>> had doubts about the Bible, since I came into the
>> knowledge of it from a child's point of view, I can
>> tell them that I have the experiential knowledge of
>> having put it into effect my whole life and it works.
>> If the Bible were a train that someone was riding on,
>> I am on the train and I see people looking at the train
>> wondering if it is going to hold them up if they get
>> on it. I am saying to them from the train, "Yes, it will
>> hold you up, come on board."
>>
>> Now, as I look back, the Lord led me to trust the Bible.
>> There are direct statements that Jesus said about the
>> Bible that verifies that it is the Word of God. The New
>> Testament tells that Jesus prayed in the Garden of
>> Gethsemane, the night before he went to his ordeal and
>> then trial, he prayed for all of his followers and that
>> prayer is in the Bible. He prayed also for all those such
>> as us in the future, to be sanctified by the testimony of
>> his followers. That is what the New Testament is, the
>> testimony of those followers that he left on the earth
>> in the beginning of Christianity. The New Testament
>> tells about how Christians first met in homes and
>> that as they did so, "the word increased." We read in
>> the New Testament the letters of those early leaders.
>> Jesus also verified in the Bible that the Old Testament,
>> is indeed God's Word as well. He read it and taught it
>> in the synagogs and in the temple. But I learned these
>> things later. The influence of the Holy Spirit led me to
>> trust the Bible. So that part was definitely determined
>> by me spiritually by his communication with me through
>> my innermost thoughts. I can only tell someone about
>> that and naturally can't take my thoughts out to show
>> someone and I can't say "this sentence came from the
>> Lord...this sentence came from my own mind..." etc.
>> So someone hearing what I am saying has no concrete
>> thing to see. HOWEVER....as I tell someone something
>> like that, the Lord can simultaneously be working in
>> that hearers "heart" (his innermost being) to trust what
>> I am saying, since it is all through the faith route.
>> The spirit in a person is not understood by some.
>> They are not aware that they even have a spirit, or
>> that they can discern things through it.
>>
>> Many people are so intelligent and because of their
>> great intelligence, they have learned to rely on their
>> own expertise. So for that person it is doubly hard
>> for them to trust anyone outside of themselves. Many
>> gifted children are children that grew up really smarter
>> about many things than even their own parents. So
>> that person has trouble trusting anyone else. One of the
>> fascinating things that I studied in college was about
>> gifted children and the particular problems that they
>> have, if they have difficult environments to grow up
>> in.
>>

>>>It is my contention that people who experience the Holy Spirit sometimes
>>>mistake the conclusions that they draw from this. That is all I am
>>>saying. This experience does not necessarily justify the entire modern
>>>American Christian belief system, which goes a lot further in its
>>>conclusions than the inner experience of the Holy Spirit. I hope this
>>>makes sense to you, whether or not you would agree with it. I
>>>distinguish between the direct relationship with God, and the
>>>relationship with the Bible, which is taking the word of those who wrote
>>>it. I also think the teachings of Jesus in the world before he died are
>>>quite a bit different than the teachings of Paul, and that Paul's
>>>interpretation has put a very different spin on Christianity. So I don't
>>>have a problem with the direct relationship with Jesus and the communion
>>>with the Holy Spirit, but I do have a problem with the Bible beyond
>>>Jesus' own words.
>>>

>>
>> I do hear you and understand what you are saying, Robert.
>> You know, children see things quite differently than adults
>> do. I count myself to be fortunate to have gotten to know
>> about Paul before I got grown and before I heard people
>> talking against his leadership. What I marvelled at with
>> Paul is that he was this romping stomping enemy against
>> Christians, who was completely broken down by the
>> presence of the Lord witnessing to him on the road to
>> Damascus. He must have been totally stunned to find
>> out that he was not doing God a favor but was actually
>> fighting against him. He was at first shunned by the
>> others, who probably were afraid of him. They probably
>> wondered if he was a spy. Then he claimed to be an
>> Apostle called by Jesus. But they came around to
>> accepting him. I could see Paul's personal growth
>> shown in the scriptures as his life went onward after
>> he became a Christian. He became this ideal person
>> who could be trusting of the Lord even while in
>> jail, and he and whoever may have been with him in
>> that would sing songs of joy even in jail. He displayed
>> this marvelous calm when he found himself to be
>> in chains and on a ship going the opposite way from
>> the direction the Lord told him to go in. He was
>> supposed to go to Rome and there he was going the
>> opposite direction.
>>
>> Paul had faith, though, that the delay in direction was
>> a god-given delay. Most of us would not have that
>> presence of mind and we might panic when something
>> unexpected happens. As they were going away from
>> Rome, a storm came up and the ship he was on, started
>> breaking up in the water. It was the custom that the
>> person escorting prisoners had to kill them in such a
>> case because if they got free, then the guard would
>> be hunted down and himself be put to death by the
>> officials. Paul told the man "don't do that, because
>> you may need us to help get us all to shore." The
>> guard decided to follow what Paul said, and he
>> released the prisoners. They all swam for shore,
>> and came to the island of Malta. The natives in
>> that place were very friendly...sort of like you might
>> have expected the Hawaiian Islanders to be in early
>> days. They wanted to throw a kind of Maltese luau
>> (for lack of a better word!) for Paul and those with
>> him. He preached there a while and today there is
>> a cave there that is the one he lived in and preached
>> in, dedicated to him. When he left, he went to Rome
>> as he was supposed to do, and that is where he was
>> later martyred for his faith in Christ. He was an
>> advocate of women being respectful to their
>> husbands and of men giving their love sacrificially
>> to their wives "even as Christ also loved the church
>> and gave himself for it." I think that his writing of
>> 1 Corinthians chapter 13 (the LOVE chapter) is one
>> of the most beautifully written works in the Bible.
>> He shows that agape love is the ultimate form of
>> love, and that this is the goal we should have with
>> people. I admire his ability to be content in whatever
>> circumstances he finds himself in. I believe that a
>> God that can create a universe, a galaxy, and all
>> the wonderful and mighty things that exist, can
>> certainly put together the Bible that he wants
>> people to have. It's not men that I trust to have
>> put the Bible together the right way, so much as
>> it is that I trust that God did that, himself, as he
>> worked through men who were inspired and who
>> were obedient and trusted him enough to be
>> obedient to the pathway that he set before them.
>> He knew who he could trust in order to get
>> what he wanted done, in other words. This is
>> what I believe with all my heart. So I do trust
>> the Bible to be God's Word. My trust of it came
>> at first from my trust in Jesus who led me to
>> study the Bible. Now, I have experiential knowledge
>> that when I followed what the Bible teaches, it
>> works. If someone only follows parts of the Bible,
>> it doesn't work like following all of it and trusting
>> God through it. I hope this answers what you have
>> asked to your satisfaction.
>>
>> Suzanne

>
> Hi Suzanne.
> I like your description and appreciate your sharing it. I have no doubt
> that the Bible works for you, and I would only say that there are many
> paths in my point of view, and there may be a few that are especially
> effective, but not just one.
>
> However, I understand your commitment and I don't doubt that it works.
>
> I also find your talk on Paul very interesting. I will have to revisit
> him as it is both a fascinating story and puts his personality in a
> different light. I will look into that.
>
> By the way, your story is quite inspiring.
>
> I am basically an interfaith person and so I appreciate and embrace those
> aspects of the paths I am exposed to that resonate with me. I know that
> is not a very good thing to do from a Christian point of view, but it
> accords with my basic makeup as an eclectic spiritualist.
>
> Thanks again,
> Robert
>

>