Out of body religious experiences

[TomOfSweden]

I admit that my groupings are simplified, and even biased. For one thing pantheism is not the same as polytheism.

To be honest with you monotheism is not even the grouping that appealed the most to me emotionally or intellectually. I preferred a form of solipsism that Robert Heinlein proposed in Stranger in a Strange Land and The Number of the Beast. Multi-person solipsism basically says that the universe is a big joke that we all agreed to play on ourselves.

Not sure how this would fit into the other classifications, but it is the one I was most comfortable with. Trying to keep up with all the ramifications of this theory is always a challenge, and actually ends up with Christianity as a subset thereof.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here but Descartes was not a proponent of Solipsism. It was just a thought experiment about validity of proof. To date there's no philosopher, (or scientist or psychologist) who has seriously floated the idea that the Solipsism is even worth considering. I'd say it's a gross simplification of what Descartes was trying to say and is purely in the realm of science fiction. Schrödinger wasn't a proponent of Solipsism either in spite of his cat.

What makes you think I don't accept that? This is a challenge I always present to others, in Christendom we call it putting God in a box. I do not attempt to define what is indefinable by my standards, this is one reason I can accept suffering as part of a larger plan, one that I do not fully understand.

So how do you know god is omnipotent? It's a pretty basic part of Christianity isn't it?

I am going on the admittedly biased assumption that if God exists He wants us to know it. I do not think He wants or needs our worship, but unless we were a school project that got tossed into the back of His closet, He did have a reason for creating us. I just assume he wants to communicate that reason. And, yes, I know this is anthropomorphizing, but I am human, and that is what we do.

erm...but with this insight then you know you can't know if god had a reason for creating us, can you? Seriously, god does not want us to know jack shit. If god wanted us to know anything about anything it would make an effort. Right now it feels more like it's trying it's damndest to make it as confusing as possible. A little bit like it would be if god never said or did anything and all we're doing is guessing. Sometimes when things are mysterious, they're mysterious because there's nothing to find. You know, like a cigar might just be a cigar.

It is nice to run into someone that knows enough about the various ancient bibles to at least discuss them. I am not trying to defend the Vulgate here though, mostly because I agree that Jerome was biased in his translation, and I consider a lot of what he did to be indefensible.

Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

This is a thought I grew up with, so yes I have considered it. This still does not rule out the existence of God.

You're not exactly putting up a fight here. It's as if you've accepted that your faith is arbitrary. I'd have expected a little bit more here.

Never said it wasn't. We are all products of our culture, something that anthropologist contend with every time they study another culture. the only way to really learn about a culture is to grow up in it, but then all the conditioning becomes so ingrained that we tend to think of it as instinct. I admit to my bias, and am always willing to look at any argument to examine my position and learn.

But isn't the fact that you are Christian in spite of your insights, proof that your aren't willing to look at arguments and learn?

I agree with this, which is another reason that I declined to offer a logical proof of God's existence. Lewis made what He thought of as a strong argument for God's existence, but his underlying assumptions are currently being challenged. Nonetheless Lewis's journey from atheism to belief is not contingent on this argument being true, it is simply one of his attempts to try to define the indefinable.

Again. You agree that we can't know but still make a leap of faith. But you deny it is a blind leap of faith. Ermmm.... does this make sense to anybody or am I just a bit slow.

edit: My problem with Christianity is that it is four distinct faiths.

1) The belief in the supernatural.
2) The belief in a personal omnipotent god which judges you when you die.
3) The stories in the Bible and the claims they make.
4) The moral and ethical guidelines and rules.

None of these are in any way connected and there's no reason to believe in one just because you believe in the other. If you believe in the omnipotent being, there's no way of knowing what it wants, is there? I mean, besides making baseless assumptions