Monday, February 18, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
What Christians mean by the "word of God".
The whole word of God thing is a bit complex because what most christians mean by this is:
- What the pastor told me I had to believe,
- because of what he was taught that something in the bible means,
- that was translated by someone,from their selection of possible texts,
- of books chosen by one particular group in the fourth cenury,
- based on the translators particular theological background,
- using modern understandings of word usage in ancient times,
- from a text copied and recopied over hundreds of years,
- which was written by a human being,
- who was usually claiming to be someone else,
- writing about things he had not directly witnessed,
- quoting conversations verbatim that he could not have heard,
- claiming that this was inspired by God.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Argument against proof for the existence of God from experience
One of the responses I have had from a few Christians to my deconversion story can be summarised like this:
"If you had experienced God like I have experienced God then you would believe too."
Yet, I have experienced similar things to the people who have said this (and in some cases in exactly the same places or organisations). I just seem to have interpreted them differently. Rather than looking for unlikely supernatural explanations I have tended to look for more obvious explanations based on reason and knowledge of how the world works. For example, the person whose life has been transformed by prayer, might have just found the confidence to turn their own life around, or the person healed of a gammy leg might already have been a lot better, but just needed the confidence to stop using a stick.
I think this is where the argument for the existence of God based on experience falls down. The whole thing is subjective and cannot be tested objectively.
There is also a certain element of over egging the pudding by Christians. I knew one person who had to go and have tests for cancer, was prayed for and found not to have cancer. This was proclaaimed as a local miracle when, in fact, she had never actually had cancer. The doctors just wanted to investigate it further because they were concerned about her condition.
"If you had experienced God like I have experienced God then you would believe too."
Yet, I have experienced similar things to the people who have said this (and in some cases in exactly the same places or organisations). I just seem to have interpreted them differently. Rather than looking for unlikely supernatural explanations I have tended to look for more obvious explanations based on reason and knowledge of how the world works. For example, the person whose life has been transformed by prayer, might have just found the confidence to turn their own life around, or the person healed of a gammy leg might already have been a lot better, but just needed the confidence to stop using a stick.
I think this is where the argument for the existence of God based on experience falls down. The whole thing is subjective and cannot be tested objectively.
There is also a certain element of over egging the pudding by Christians. I knew one person who had to go and have tests for cancer, was prayed for and found not to have cancer. This was proclaaimed as a local miracle when, in fact, she had never actually had cancer. The doctors just wanted to investigate it further because they were concerned about her condition.
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