If you want the Atheists to respect your faith position … you have to respect their “Lack-of-Faith” position.
If you want to make progress with your “Design” discussions… you need to ask Christian Evolutionists why they are not Christian advocates for I.D.
Every time you ask an Atheist a question about his lack of faith, you are taking a giant step backwards, and will never get closer to a better rapport for I.D.
I disagree. People value their faith, they build churches and communities that are important in people’s lives. Faith matters. None of this requires Christianity to be true.
So here I am, an agnostic, making the case that faith matters. Go figure! 
I suppose the difference is not in understanding, but in experiencing that understanding changing as I change, and paying attention to the difference. I have had many verses change in my mind as I grow. A few weeks after I came to know God, I tried to memorize the following passage:
Mark 4:21-25: Also He said to them, “Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set on a lampstand? 22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. 23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”
24 Then He said to them, “Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. 25 For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.”
Initially I thought it was about my walk, my new understanding of the word, that I needed to study and learn, perhaps it was. Then it became about how I listened to God, how I could find Him. Then it became how God knew me regardless of what I tried to hide, or that I would be treated as I treated others. Then it became how I presented myself to others. Then it became how I used the understanding that God gave me to help others. At different points as I studied and tried to memorize and learn the true meaning, the meaning changed. The meaning became deeper as I prayed for understanding. It means all of those things, and more that I have yet to learn. The same scripture means more than just the words and continues to change in my heart and mind as I grow.
My point is that this occurs with all scripture to me now, because I have a relationship with Him. The scripture itself is Jesus to me, talking to me and instructing me. What I read today may or may not mean something different tomorrow. I have to listen and pray, then He teaches me how to be better and how to live with the goal of entering into eternal life with Him. He has written it all down for me, but I have to seek Truth, I have to converse with Him, I have to know Him, not just read the words.
So often in my former life, I would read something and disregard it if it didn’t mean anything to me. I know not to do that with the bible. If I seek truth, I find it. I can’t just go “pfft” and put it down. That is the relationship part, knowing that there is something there and it goes two ways.
So there’s a book you really like, and every time you read it you feel you understand it better.
Still not seeing how this amounts to a personal relationship with Jesus.
@Faizal_Ali I recall you are from more of a Muslim context originally. How much do you appreciate the difference between Islam and the type of Christianity represented my Christians like @Mark10.45 and myself?
I don’t see much difference of substance, TBH. The people at the Mosque I attended could tell stories exactly like what @Mark10.45 describes, only involving the Quran rather than the Bible. There are differences in terms of theology, of course. But I don’t see those as the main issue, particularly WRT the present discussion.
If you are transposing you experience from them to this conversation, it might explain quite a bit. Muslims don’t actually report the sort of experiences that many Christians do. That is a common point of dialogue with Muslims.
Curious, this is not a jab - honest questions…As a psychiatrist, how do you diagnose mental disorders? How do you know what to prescribe to help someone? Do you think people are just making stuff up? How do you know if they are being truthful?
Exactly what sort of experiences are you referring to here? Certainly, the one that @Mark10.45 describes is very common, though people would attribute it to Allah rather than to Jesus.
The kind of problems I treat people for are not usually something someone would lie about, though there might be occasions when someone is trying to fake insanity to get off from a crime, or to collect disability insurance. There’s not otherwise much reason to lie about hearing voices or having paranoid delusions.
This is not at all what I meant, but I don’t think I can explain it any differently.
Nor do I have a reason to lie about what I believe to be a relationship with Jesus. I gain nothing by deceiving myself, and I accomplish nothing by lying to you. So, why would I make myself vulnerable to scrutiny if I did not believe it to be completely true?
I learned in another thread that Muslims do not believe that you can understand the word of God without a human interpreter (I don’t know if that is true)…I would find that potentially confusing. Maybe that is where the disconnect is in cultures. Obviously there are differences with any religion, I don’t contend that my belief is superior, just different.
I do not think you are lying, and I did not intend to suggest this at all, so my apologies for giving that impression. I have no doubt that you actually experience what you describe. What I am questioning is your interpretation of that experience. I am still waiting to hear something that indicates it is a manifestation of the existence of a god, as opposed to being a psychological phenomenon.
That is not something I was ever told. On the contrary, the Quran is believed to be the direct word of God, that anyone can read for themselves.
Ok, that explains a lot. So, basically the evolution vs creation argument on a personal level. There could be a logical scientific explanation for the intelligent design, or it could be random thoughts of misfiring synapses…not that I am a proponent of either stance, I don’t know enough, but the argument sounds familiar. I’ll think about it, I can only say that even if it were psychological phenomenon, that wouldn’t rule out God…which is again the same familiar argument.
Its okay Mark. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There is nothing no evidence. Maybe just lack of scientific evidence. Scientific principle - Aphorism.
The basic christian experience imo is one of renewal… being born again so to speak.
It’s about connecting to God in a very tangible sense.
It’s not just about reading the bible and understanding it, but having one’s life and perspectives transformed through the word. This usually involves an influence at levels that transcends our understanding (or atleast is not merely confined to our understanding).
It’s an encounter with the Spirit of God (and I mean Spirit).
I like this kind of analysis as it shows inconsistencies in the way we interpret words depending on their context
Loose use of words is ubiquitous in language, with the context modulating the meaning of the word. According to Relevance theory, exact dictionary definition interpretations are not to be seen as the norm. Examples abound in the scriptures with reference to all the people area going out to John the Baptist etc (Matt 3:5). I once heard someone say “all means all, and that is all that all means”, this is a bad understanding of language.
I guess Relevance theory has something else to offer here, namely the notion of optimal relevance. For something to be optimally relevant it needs to produce enough positive cognitive effects for the processing effort to be worth it. In other words, the more effort you make someone go through to understand an utterance the less relevant it may become. The audience will expect a bigger pay off for any increased effort in processing, for example through unnecessary information or difficult concepts. In the example of Joseph and the famine, and possibly the flood, we analyse it in these terms.
Note that the following is assuming a localised nature of the events and then asking what is reasonable to put in the narrative
If the text intended to indicate the severe nature of the events and the catastrophic impact on all known people, to reference people unknown by the audience would be pointless, especially if they were not impacted. This would lead to more questions and therefore processing effort on behalf of the audience than leaving them out. Describing Australia and America to Middle Eastern audiences would be too much information, with no real cognitive pay-off corresponding
So I would argue, if the events were relatively local, I would expect to see the exact same language as we have in the text. This doesn’t prove it is referencing local events, merely that it is possible.
We also have to ask what the literary conventions were at the time with regard to universal language. We find a number of instances in the Old Testament of language of universal destruction of people groups or armies being accomplished. We then find later that there are still people from that group around. The convention is not conveying a literal notion of the all, in some mathematically all encompassing manner, but rather than comprehensive nature of the conquest. Given that we have this kind of language, is it possible that it also applies to natural phenomena.
This is related to the above notes on processing effort. If the audience were comfortable with universal language as loose use of notions of “all”, then we would not expect to see clarifications in the text.
As 21st century people, we don’t share the same literary conventions. Again, this only leaves the local ]used versions as linguistically possible and not certain, but I figured that the notion of making space for an idea would be acceptable here given GAE.
Too vague.
I understand why you would think these explanations are vague, because they are hard to explain. However, I do think that @Ashwin_s and @Mark10.45 descriptions of the born-again Christian experience are similar to my own and to that described by others in the church communities within which I have been involved. I am currently debating whether to share my personal testimony on this public forum (as I would usually only share it in more private settings). My hesitation comes from an expectation that my story would be met with criticism by skeptics, but if there is genuine interest, perhaps I’ll work on a post and share later.
The problem is that these descriptions are similar to experiences I and, I’m pretty sure, everyone has had, only with a superfluous religious aspect tagged on. It’s the equivalent of saying “I ate a chocolate fudge sundae and it tasted really good, and I knew I was having an encounter with the Spirit of God.”
The difficulty in explaining these experiences is analogous to the difficulty in explaining the feeling of love and explaining how you know that you love someone