Some Thoughts on Christian Faith

[Ben Kenobi]

Faith becomes a fundamentally transformative experience and there's a REAL difference between those that get into Heaven and those that don't, the Heaven-bound have experienced a mystical connection with God and have reached a point where God is an intimate part of their life while the rest of us haven't tried or haven't gotten the knack of it and are thus separate from God and thus it makes some sense for us to not end up in a position of basking in the presense of God for all eternity.

I've bolded the most crucial point of a connection with God, where God becomes an intimate part of one's life.

How many Christians claim this connection, though not in a mystical sense? I think you are looking at the outside, and not at the inside. What one person might see to be a mystical connection might be the exact same thing in a housewife as in a monk.

The second problem is Hell. Everyone who doesn't get the hang of this Faith thing gets fried painfully for all eternity. Ouch.

What's the problem with hell? Yes, that seems to be the deal, if God exists than so does heaven and hell. Mind you all we know about hell is that it is some form of eternal seperation from God.

So basically just about everyone agrees that getting a real meaningful mystical connection with God is damn hard and rare but Christians say that everyone who doesn't have this connection with God (ie doesn't have Faith and get transformed) gets tortured forever.

No. What counts is the connection and not the supposedly 'mystical' portion. Everyone who believes in Christ will be saved.

Acknowledging it. In Late Medieval Catholicism it was said that the ratio of people going to Heaven to the Hell bound was about equal to the number of people who ended up in Noah's arc to those to drowned.

And on what biblical grounds do they cite this proportion? We simply do not know how many will be saved.

I just don't buy this, it all seems too easy and too fake. Do you really think that all Pentecostals who speak in tongues have been "baptised in the holy spirit" and that all people who are "born again" have a meaningful mystical connection with the Divine and have reached the Christian equivalent of Enlightenment?

Yes. Why does it seem too easy and too fake? That's the way that God works, if you repent from your sins, you experience God's blessings on your life. For some this might include speaking in tongues, it varies on the person and the talent.

It just doesn't square with what I've seen or with what EVERY other religious tradition with a mystical component says about mysticism.

Perhaps the Pentecostals have it right. Just because Christianity does not conform with other religions does not make Christianity less true. If Christianity were true, we would expect the precise opposite.

for whom cultivating a relationship with God is their #1 priority and what they spend most of their time doing.

Again, I ask that does this require one to go to a monastery to live a life in Christ? Christians are called to be in the world, though not of it, so they have a responsibility to the rest of the world, to love their neighbours as well as God.

Some Christians are called to be contemplative, and these ought to stay in the monasteries. Others are better suited for other tasks.

Other religions deal with this sort of thing a lot more gracefully (and without making God a sick sadistic bastard). Sufism says that all you have to do is follow the rules of the Sharia to get into Heaven (or at least the lower bits of heaven where you get the wine and the women)

Can anyone always follow the rules perfectly?

Sikhism and Buddhism give you unlimited second tries until you finally make it, which seems like a pretty fair set up.

How do you know what try you are on?

In Hasidic Judaism and Shi'a Islam the mystic acts as more or less and intermediary between the common believers and the divine (at least I think that's how it works, I'm not an expert on their group) so everyone ends up more or less OK.

So the only one here who can be a mystic would be the preists. That's a good setup. Are some believers less than others?

I think this is the cruicial complaint you file against Christianity, that they have all believers equally valuable, regardless of their particular talents. Some will speak in tongues, others will not, but one is not considered superior to the others.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Infinate knowledge would require an infinate mind. An infinate mind would need infinate space to exist.

The problem with this is that you are thinking on the material plane only. God is present in all aspects - both spiritual and material. Material reality is a mere shadow of true, spiritual reality.

[Japher]

Infinate knowledge would require an infinate mind. An infinate mind would need infinate space to exist. etc.

Whatever happened to size not counting!

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Omncient = all knowing. This means knowing even the movements and positions of quarks and the particles which make them up, and the likely even smaller particles that make them up, off into the infinate reaches. Even a mote of dust requires a magnitude of knowledge beyond our abilities to even begin to comprehend. It would be required to understand the relationships that this mote of dust shared with a mote of dust on the other side of the universe.

Infinate knowledge would require an infinate mind. An infinate mind would need infinate space to exist. etc.

I think that you are missing some ideas that are common to physics and maths

Jon Miller

[SlowwHand]

Let's get to the nut-cutting.

" can't justify Faith by reason alone"

Faith requires no justification by reason.

[Ben Kenobi]

Che:

Infinate knowledge would require an infinate mind. An infinate mind would need infinate space to exist. etc.

That might work, however God is outside space and time.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
An omnicient being would require infinate space.

youd think an omniscient being would have figured a the best possible ways of compressing and storing information, no? So is the secret of G-d really buried in Moore's law?

[Japher]

If god is omniscient and this mind would require infinite space could it not also exist over all time? And, if time is infinite, could he not exist in a really small space but over this infinite time and still be infinite in size, but small in space?.. of course assuming time is planar and dimensional.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Omncient = all knowing. This means knowing even the movements and positions of quarks and the particles which make them up, and the likely even smaller particles that make them up, off into the infinate reaches. Even a mote of dust requires a magnitude of knowledge beyond our abilities to even begin to comprehend. It would be required to understand the relationships that this mote of dust shared with a mote of dust on the other side of the universe.

Infinate knowledge would require an infinate mind. An infinate mind would need infinate space to exist. etc.

you seem to assume an infinite number of DIFFERENT particles.

Lets assume a universe with 100 different particles, each with a million different charecteristics. Lets assume that these hundred particle are arranged in a simply pattern - something like a giant salt crystal lets say. I need 100 million items of information to descrrbe all the types of particle. Now all I have to do is describe the locations of the infinite particles. Now if i had to store a location for each one, id need to store an infinite amount of data (though i think clearly each location could take up less space then the particle, so we might be dealing with a "smaller" inifinity) But I dont need to store each location. All i need to store is a mathematical description of the crystaline pattern. Which is probably a trivial amount of space.

Now granted this is a simplification - but the point remains - a regular pattern, at any level and degree of complexity, should make it possible to contain a complete description of the universe in a finite space.

(all leaving aside the fact that assuming G-d's "brain" exists in space is a heresy to my religion anyway)

[Saint Marcus]

This is why you can't justify Christian faith on purely logical grounds.

you can't even justify your believe in the existance of a world outside of your own head, on purely logical grounds either.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Since all space is not occupied by a deity...

What makes you think it's not?

[Buck Birdseed]

I don't think God is a logical impossibility. I do, however, think that the idea of God (with the attributes normally ascribed to Him by the Judeo-Christian tradition, specifically omniscience, omnipotence, creation and infinate benevolence) is incompatible with our world.

(And don't give me any Plantinga-Modal arguments for why he has to be necessary if I think he's possible, please.)

[Buck Birdseed]

Originally posted by monkspider


What makes you think it's not?

Whoo! Berkeley! Phenomenalism! Whoo!

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed


Whoo! Berkeley! Phenomenalism! Whoo!

Hey, at least it's better than Missy Elliot.

[Bosh]

Wow, am really pleased with the number of responces. I thought something of this length and subject would fall straight off the front page. Will do some serious replying over my lunch break tomorrow, but its really late here so gotta sleep.