The idea that we must believe something in order to be saved, which is taught in the Bible, doesn't sit well at all with the atheists out there. There is something suspicious about the idea of belief or fatih to them. Dawkins is always saying that faith simply means belieivng something for which there is no evidence. I keep answering that no, the evidence is there and it is witness evicdence, which iis the only kiind of evidence you can have for something that occurered only onece which you weremn't there to see for yourself. Jesus Himself is to be known only by faith because it is impossible for anyone to meet Hims today. All the events and peroplld ofthe Bible are knowlable only by faith.
And they are knowlable. That word is appropriate enough. Wek know many things by witnesse evidence alone that we can't witness ourselves. Most of our knowledge ois of this kind. But when it comes to the supernatural claims of the bible in particular, that's where they get all fidgety and annoyed and try to dismiss it all as fiction because there is no way for any of us to witness it now.
But th whole thing from Genesis to Revelation is kowlable only by faith. All the people are dead and all the events are in the past. All we hae is the words of the people in the bible that any of it happened, or the bible itself presenting them as real. So of course they have to bring the Bible into doubt and disrepute if they simply cannot entertain the idea of a miracle for half a second.
That way of course they stand no chance of ever believing in Miracles unless God grants them one of their very onewn and tchances are they won't believe that weither beause they can always interpret it out of existence as a miracle, or ir not always then certainly most of the time, by doubting their own perceptions, suppossing it to have been a neuropsycholgoial experience rather than real and that sort of thing.
Futile it for John to write his gospel with the aim of giving evidence "that you may believe" since they will doubt the very existence of John among other things. Who is this John anyway?
There really isn't any point in trying to discuss these thins with someone who discounts any or all of it as possibly fictional because there really isn't any way to prove that it's not. It's a matter of judgment. You either have an ear for the truth or you don't. Fallen humanity is born into this world, acording to Christian understanding, lacking the faculty of spiritual discernment, it having been lost at the Fall when our fistrst parrents disoveyed God. We are all born dead in that way, unable to know God. We may or may not logically decide that a God must exist but there is nothing in our nature to require it of us. to actually discern God requires the regeneration of the faculty of the spirit in our natures, requires, in orther words, being born again. Without that we are confined to what we can know through our senses and that keeps us tethered to the physicla universite. this is why science deals only with the material world and why it is so common for people to seek physicalistic interpretations for spiritual things. Such as to say that it must be neuropsychological. everything is physical to the fallen mind. It all originates in phsycial reality. that is the basis of evolutionary theory too of course. It all started with something physical happening in the primordial ooze, some coming together of atoms and molecules, an evlution itself is of coruse all a matter of physical beings making more physical beings, and thn in the end when they have to try to account for consciousness all they have is the physical and that's when we get all the fanciful notions about how it could arise from the physical. In sohort, again, it's all because the human rce is fallen. Fallenness is being relegated to the physical realm.
"The They are but flesh" God says I think in Genesis five or six, therefore He will not always strive with us. After the Fall we becmae "but flesh" unable to relate teo Him because He is Spirit. I think it was Watchman Nee who pointed out in something I read recently, or maybe it was Andrew Murray, that we are the only creature with the tripartite nature of body, soul and spirit. the animals have a body and a soul but not the spirit withich communicates with god. the angels and demons are pure spirit. But we are this unusual combination of matter and spirit. Or we were originally since at the Fall we lost the spirit, or it fell into a corrupted state, not sure hjow to think about that. It's "dead" however, acording to sciprture, and needs to be "quickened" by the new birth for us to be saved. Being saved is first o all being regenerated in our psirits so that we can apprehend god. We have to grow into it after being merely born into it again and that thakes time but it is in fact renewed in us and is the foundation of our salvation. We receive the Holy Spirit through this rebirth.
that is mre or less a side trip here though probably necessary. I mostly wanted to get into the futility of trying to confince a fallen person about the things of the spirit, to confince him or her about the truth of the Bible for istnace or the need for salvation. I know that God must do that work and that is because we can't, mere persuasion isn't going to accomplish anything you must be born again. yet they must hear it in order to be in a position to be born again. there's that too.
Most of the debates on these subjects I hear lately are frustrating because they are usually trying to compromise something to make the truth more accessibly to the fallen mind. TIt doesn' work but it continues anyway. Far better in my opinion just to state the flat facts as the bible presents them no matter how unpalatable to the fallen ear and leave it to God to sort it out.
There are parts of the discussion that do seem to be more or less amenable to simple locial arguent such as that it seems to me that the Biblcial presentation doesn't read like fiction to me at all or to other believers. Still the fallen mind will turn it into fiction even though it has none of the marks of fiction just beuase the content doesn't fit into their worldview. So even that little bit of argument doesn't go anywheresjere either.
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I keep frgetting to add my new email address that is managed by my daughter:
faithswindow@mail.com
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