http://ex-robhu.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] ex-robhu.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] nameandnature 2006-09-10 08:07 pm (UTC)

But God wasn't so concerned with St Paul's free-will and autonomy that he could not knock him off his horse on the way to Damascus, yet St Paul's sort of experience is rare.
I find the argument that God does not make himself more obvious because it would conflict with our free will to choose him to be highly fishy. I have found Christians that make this argument think that we already have so much evidence that it is plain to us that God exists, and that by not becoming Christians we are choosing to reject God rather than choosing not to follow someone we don't think exists.

I suspect you and I would agree that in our experience the evidence for God's existence is quite poor, and we would expect God to be much easier to find if he does indeed exist.

There are more sane Christians though who would argue that God does not make his existence clear to everyone, only a few. This seems more reasonable to me - it allows some to have had this revelation while others of us are left in the cold.

It was interesting listening to Paul asking you what evidence you would find convincing. The question suggests there is a checklist of things that would need to be fulfilled for one to believe. It doesn't work like that though does it? What happens is you get a variety of evidence that increases the confidence you have that a certain thing is true. Your comment that whatever the appropriate level of proof is for you - God would know it (and presumably then provide it), was insightful.

As you know I've had various 'supernatural' experiences in my life - they are highly convincing at the time when they occur but not so good as time goes on. I would hope though that God would not rely on magical tricks to persuade us, but rather that the evidence would already be there and be plain all around us all the time.

I don't think that Paul Clarke's response to my killer argument against inerrancy holds up. To say that the "we" of St Paul's "we who are still alive" in 1 Thess 4 could encompass later Christians presupposes that St Paul knew he was writing to such people.
Have you considered holding a more extended debate with Paul? I doubt he has the time (or perhaps the inclination) for such a debate, but I would personally find such a debate / discussion helpful. I've emailed St. Helens with the link to this page in the hope that he might appear and say interesting things.

I stumbled a bit when I mentioned Occam's Razor because Paul Clarke rightly jumped on the fact that in some sense God's miraculous healing of someone's fibroids is a simpler explanation than them getting better naturally by some unknown mechanism.
I've always wondered about this. Is God a simpler explanation for anything? If not then why not? If it's because it leads to more questions... well isn't that true of any answer? Surely its turtles all the way down?

Paul Clarke was right in saying that the fact that some people leave Christianity doesn't prove it's wrong, but it does make you wonder about CICCU and similar organisations, doesn't it?
Does it? I don't see how this makes one wonder at all.

I loved the question about "a god that suits your lifestyle", because lifestyle is a Christian code-word for "having sex in a way we don't like".
LOL - that is so true. When I stopped being a Christian I spoke to my old church leader who at the time I still respected greatly. He kept asking me if I had stopped being a Christian because I wanted a different lifestyle. I told him repeatedly that I quite liked the Christian lifestyle but he was entirely unconvinced. This has been the kind of reaction I've had with a number of my Christian friends which has led to me thinking that they must be brainwashed (in the sense that they have lost their ability to rationally listen to and evaluate what they are being told).

I found Paul Clarke's summing up quite affecting...
Do you think he sincerely cared? Maybe he did, I don't know - I've met a number of St. Helens type people (9:38 web (http://www.ninethirtyeight.org)) and I would err on the side of saying they're terribly well trained at what they're doing rather than that it comes from an actual concern for the person.

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