lol… when you raise objections with respect to those beliefs of others, they become to you-- objectionable by definition…
Terms like ‘implausible’ and ‘unbelievable’ are the heartbeat of objections concerning beliefs.
I do appreciate that you recognize that a person’s “beliefs” are exactly that, and as such-- personal.
The issue is when you post a dissenting idea, or perhaps show the science that disproves their construct. and admins back them up not as a free speech issue, but as being correct and you are then tossed or even banned.
These Fundie folk see every issue in black and white-your kindergarten analogy is very appropriate. And you can’t disengage because they overtake a forum and most threads in it. Their confirmation bias knows no bounds.
But I don’t raise objections to those beliefs. I find them unbelievable but acknowledge that others of intelligence and good faith believe them. I acknowledge that they could be true. I don’t try to persuade those who believe them to believe as I do.
An interesting phenomenon that our young friend @Rev12_11 might ponder: No one ever engages in a deep spiritual quest, one that really confronts all the theological, philosophical, scientific and historical issues and ends up as a literalist inerrantist fundie. It just doesn’t happen. The evolution is always away from the cocksure arrogance of fundamentalism. The result is inevitably a deeper and stronger faith that embraces mystery and even doubt.
Some people do, of course, manage to retain an L/I/F mindset for a lifetime, but I believe they pay a great price and are always living in a shaky house of cards.
And how many have left the faith altogether? So sure, so dogmatic, then a bit of reality gets through. And the house of cards crumbles.
Even though they may speak the absolute truth, they may not do it in an attitude of love (Eph 4:15). And remember, God is Love. Not God = Love. God’s message is love in the same way. By the way, that ‘reality’ you’re talking about is often labeled as ‘doubt/disbelief.’ Not saying that’s you, that’s just what it’s called.
Absolutely true. Certainty is the place where people stand afraid to venture down the path of inquisition. -and think themselves virtuous.
No. It is not called doubt. It is truth, fact, or getting out and experiencing God’s world beyond the restrains of fundamentalism. That slap in the face-seeing how wrong your ideology up to that point is- causes many to crash. Not sin not Satan not backsliding. Truth.
@Rev12_11 I want you to challenge yourself and some of the ideas you hold dear. What a lot of folks here are encouraging you to do is to set your little sword down, the way we would talk to a five-year-old playing soldier who just knocked over a house plant. That might sound offensive to you, but it isn’t meant to be. It is, however- how you are at times portraying yourself.
What you have is an intellectual house full of furniture. A bunch of ideas that you’ve collected and assembled together to create a comfortable space for yourself. Folks here, many of us with a few wrinkles and some of us with a few whiskers are old enough to know that -with certainty- you will in the days ahead exchange some of those old furnishings for new ones.
Faith and doubt are not opposites, because doubt properly questions an idea or dogma.
Doubt is not a sin. It’s a tool. And Faith is not a crutch-- it’s the thing that makes life worth living, and it coexists with doubt.
This statement has such a powerful ring to it. I mentioned it to some of my colleagues and ended up discovering this very old piece with this statement:
Take heart and remember, doubting can be a step toward faith – it is not the opposite of faith. And remember also,
“Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. And have mercy on some, who are doubting” (Jude 1:21).
Yes, brother I hear you. Doubt is not a sin. I agree; I’ve experienced doubt myself. I have a problem when people don’t doubt the doubt. I can’t stand to see people there. I want to expose the truth to them so that they don’t have to stay there. I want them to be able to experience the power of God in their lives. I want to get back to being the Early Church. We can’t have a world revival until we have a Church revival. I’m just trying to stimulate everybody to love and good deeds (Heb 10:24-25).
Here’s the problem. You can’t share the truth, when you don’t know the truth. You can certainly share your beliefs, while understanding that at least some of your beliefs are not ‘the truth’ at all. There can be a vast difference between what is true and what a person believes to be true. You can be sincere, and sincerely wrong.
The same goes for fundamentalism. You can be fundamentally wrong. If what you believe to be true, is not-- then even in your sincerity you promote falsehood. While wanting to ‘get back to the Early Church’ you should understand it better-- they didn’t share most of your doctrines, dogmas, or beliefs. (most of them hadn’t been invented yet).
On the flip side, much of the same can be said of progressivism. Mostly, everything in this world gets progressively worse.
Give me some examples.
The entire New Testament, to begin with. The Gospels, all of Paul’s teachings (letters), the revelation of Jesus Christ, by John and so on… the early Church had none of these. It consisted of mostly Jews who left Judaism to follow the teachings of Jesus.
If you really want an image of the early Church-- imagine a forum, where this nobody, comes along with some really strange ideas and beliefs that people had never conceived of before, and that were contrary to everything they “knew” to be true.
Then imagine the Administrators kicking that person out, and banning him for the blasphemous heresies he was promoting.
That’s the early church.
I am not all that great at theology. But perhaps all thinking people are plagued by doubt? As for knowledge as opposed to faith, I believe there is such a thing as spiritual insight that is beyond science. And I can argue this–for surely our capacity to understand even in the best of circumstances with evidence and data is limited. We are not omniscient. Yet there exists a Spirit of Truth that makes you feel truth instinctively. Along these lines there is a God who informs. That does NOT mean that everybody’s experience is God. Or, that everybody’s understanding of the Bible is divine truth. I’ve seen here and there illuminations, the same as you would see, for example, in philosophy or among the common reader.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:9
When it comes to the Church, I would have to say that Jesus Himself endorsed that. In fact, He was the first person to ever teach that.
The Gospels are actually based on the OT. ‘The New is in the old Concealed, the Old is in the New revealed.’ God used the epistles and the Gospels to provide instruction to the Early Church on how to live out their new life. They’re interrelated. Some things in the OT don’t apply to us today, but that’s only because Christ nullified them on the cross.