That to me is it in a nut shell. What makes life fascinating is the variety of people and their beliefs. I could never understand why some people would want to homogenize everybody to be the same, to believe the same things. Variety is the spice of life. I can't help think of the Borg when talking to born againers as I have talked with hundreds of them over the last 40 years and I can easily predict what they are going to say next.
Rational Faith
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Those I have met are usually ex-druggies or recovering alcoholics, on a mission to save everybody because "they" have seen the light........
Sorry, DS. I have yet to understand the relevance of the wildlife and Magic School Bus photos that you keeping posting : )
I'm interested in knowing your perspective on this term "born againer", Cliffy.
One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron. (Francis Collins)
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/franciscol555127.html#Q4lQA1X8VimSpD7D.99
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Gilbert - Being "brought up" Christian does not guarantee faith. So, yes the Holy Spirit has to act. Faith is a gift from God. "Ask and you will recieve".
Reagarding what spread the gospel - "not some natural inborn sense" - I would agree with that. The gospel was spread by people speaking and reading, yes. But faith is born of the Holy Spirit. "Ask and you will recieve".
Read Acts, Chapter 9 - Conversion of Saul of Tarsus. It is an interesting account of how the Apostle Paul (Saul of Tarsus) came to faith.
Cliffy, .."when talking to born againers as I have talked with hundreds of them over the last 40 years and I can easily predict what they are going to say next."
Yes, Cliffy - the gospel, truth and the working of the Holy Spirit are consistent.
The Neo-Platonic philosopher, Plotinus, has a remarkable passage in which he makes it clear why the soul or god in man was under the necessity of taking incarnation in an animal body. As I regard this passage as the clearest statement of the philosophy of incarnation ever given, I take the liberty of quoting it:
"Thus although the soul have a divine nature, though she originate in the intelligible world, she enters into a body. Being of the lower divine, she descends here below by a voluntary inclination, for the purpose of developing her power and to adorn what is below her. If she flee promptly from here below, she does not need to regret having become acquainted with evil and knowing the nature of vice, nor having had the opportunity of manifesting her faculties. . . . Indeed the faculties of the soul would be useless if they slumbered continuously in incorporeal being without ever becoming actualized. The soul herself would be ignorant of what she possesses if her faculties did not manifest by procession, for everywhere it is the actualization that manifests the potentiality. Otherwise the latter would be completely hidden and obscured; or rather it would not really exist, and would not possess any reality. It is the variety of sense-effects which illustrates the greatness of the intelligible principle, whose nature publishes itself by the beauty of its works."
We are on earth, then, to come to self-consciousness as divinities, but to do it by working through and with an animal. We are here to educate, refine, humanize and finally divinize, an animal! We are in bodies, which properly are not ours, but those of the animal soul, who is our appetitive or instinctual lower self. We are assigned the duty of "taming" this creature and conforming it to ways of intelligence and brotherhood. We must teach it the better way of curbing its savage instincts, its lusts and greed inherited from its wild experience in the animal orders, and must lead it upward to a final assimilation into the nature of the angel, its tutor. Little wonder the task can not be done in a single incarnation!
But how was the god to link his higher nature with the body of the animal so far below his stature? The very fundamentals of religion are interwoven with the answer to this question. For religions grew out of this relation between the god and his animal protege.
Religions were not originally forms of mere cult sentimentalism and piety. They were regimes of ritual and ethical practice designed to keep man in memory of his divine estate, and to hold him to the obligations of the "broad oaths fast sealed" (Empedocles) of his covenant to raise up the lower self, while keeping himself "unspotted from the world." New Lectures on the Ancient Wisdom--No I
"Thus although the soul have a divine nature, though she originate in the intelligible world, she enters into a body. Being of the lower divine, she descends here below by a voluntary inclination, for the purpose of developing her power and to adorn what is below her. If she flee promptly from here below, she does not need to regret having become acquainted with evil and knowing the nature of vice, nor having had the opportunity of manifesting her faculties. . . . Indeed the faculties of the soul would be useless if they slumbered continuously in incorporeal being without ever becoming actualized. The soul herself would be ignorant of what she possesses if her faculties did not manifest by procession, for everywhere it is the actualization that manifests the potentiality. Otherwise the latter would be completely hidden and obscured; or rather it would not really exist, and would not possess any reality. It is the variety of sense-effects which illustrates the greatness of the intelligible principle, whose nature publishes itself by the beauty of its works."
We are on earth, then, to come to self-consciousness as divinities, but to do it by working through and with an animal. We are here to educate, refine, humanize and finally divinize, an animal! We are in bodies, which properly are not ours, but those of the animal soul, who is our appetitive or instinctual lower self. We are assigned the duty of "taming" this creature and conforming it to ways of intelligence and brotherhood. We must teach it the better way of curbing its savage instincts, its lusts and greed inherited from its wild experience in the animal orders, and must lead it upward to a final assimilation into the nature of the angel, its tutor. Little wonder the task can not be done in a single incarnation!
But how was the god to link his higher nature with the body of the animal so far below his stature? The very fundamentals of religion are interwoven with the answer to this question. For religions grew out of this relation between the god and his animal protege.
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Religions were not originally forms of mere cult sentimentalism and piety. They were regimes of ritual and ethical practice designed to keep man in memory of his divine estate, and to hold him to the obligations of the "broad oaths fast sealed" (Empedocles) of his covenant to raise up the lower self, while keeping himself "unspotted from the world." New Lectures on the Ancient Wisdom--No I
My position needs no defense. I am not arguing doctrine here. I am simply stating my knowing that there are many paths that lead home. I am debating the assumption that you and cj44 have that there is only one path. I think your position is based on false data and false assumptions as to the authenticity of literal translation of the texts. I can walk into any meeting of any religious or spiritual group and feel comfortable there because I know that, once you get past their terminology, they are all talking about the same thing and are all trying to get home.
The commonality is that doctrine does not get you home but the following the finger pointing the way. As Watts wrote, most people, once finding the finger, suck on it for comfort and never let go to go in the direction it is pointing, thinking that to let go of the finger they will fall into the abyss. Nothing can be farther from the truth. One must let go of the rock in order to learn how to swim.
I find it difficult to follow your thinking without clarification, Cliffy. What is a "born againer"?
A born again Christian. An evangelical type. What did you think I was talking about?
A "born againer" is generally one of advancing years who has been a bit of a d!nk all his life and as the "man with the scythe" advances decides not to take any chances.
Actually I've found the born againers to be generally the young and naive without enough experience of life to know they're being offered a poisoned chalice.
Narrow minded "Christians" that tell everyone that will listen, and even those that won't, how the only way to heaven is the way THEY say and if you don't listen and do what THEY say then you are going to hell. You and cj are prime examples.
Gilbert - Getting back to the "what if" and "if" being a really big "if". If there is a Being - a personal God that wants a relationship with you, then maybe you might think there would be some use for faith?
What's the harm in saying something like this to God:
God, I am talking to you now, but I sure don't even believe in you, so that may very well make me some sort of a nut.
Just the same, if you are there, if you exist, please show me the error of my way. After all, I would be kind of foolish to go on about my life without acknowleding you or getting to know you. So, if you exist, please let me know you.
I John 5
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
Nice, JLMDexter, How is it poison? What is the negative side of being a Christian?
By their self righteous zealotry and their insistence that their way is the only way. Unfortunately they are misinterpreting mistranslated ancient texts that they have no idea how or why it was put together or by whom. They take metaphors and allegories as literal truth and selectively pick and choose passages to justify their ignorance of the book. They glom onto the words of Paul and create a fantasy religious outlook with a definite Disneyesque flavour - what I call Paulianity. Would you like me to continue?