In a recent comment thread, the question was raised regarding my own Christian experience. If you are a Christian apologist looking to interact with someone who has deconverted from Christianity, one of the fundamental points you want to establish is that something was amiss about the deconvert's Christian experience. "True" Christians who are supposedly filled with the Holy Spirit and who dwell in an authentic loving living relationship with their Lord and Saviour Jesus cannot just walk away, right?!?
I claim to have experienced Christianity to its fullest from every angle possible. I felt that I had intimacy with the Christian God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I studied and believed the Bible cover to cover. I lived in close community with other Christians. My faith matured. I had experiences which I thought should be attributed to God. I prayed. I chose my wife primarily based on our shared Christian faith. I shared and defended the Christian faith to others…agnostics, atheists, etc. I took very, very difficult stands on Christian moral issues in opposition sometimes to family and friends, and even resigned a steady, good-paying job over a Christian view. I was urged on multiple occasions by different people throughout my Christian experience to become a pastor, youth pastor, bible study leader, deacon, missionary, etc. I was trusted. The Christians around me “experientially knew” that I was a real Christian full of faith.
So I do not accept now and will likely never accept the attempts by any conversational friend or foe to suggest that the reason I am not a Christian now is that I never was one or was an incomplete or immature one. This is simply not the case. So, if you want to discredit me or if you want to win an argument with me, you are going to have to come up with another angle.
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I was not advocating that for someone to walk away they could not have experienced all of Christianity. People can walk away for a number of reasons even though they had real experiences. What I was inquiring about is how it is you encountered Jesus and yet not believe in God at all? I've seen many who had authentic relationships with Jesus who decided not to follow Him for whatever reason, but I haven't encountered someone who knew Jesus and then denied He is real. That is what honestly baffles me, and I don't bring this up as an argument against your worldview, but as an attempt to truly understand you.
Yes, of course, I want to see you reconnected to God, but I don't expect to accomplish that by a mere conversation. I am really intrigued about why people believe what they believe so I ask a lot of questions. I hope I am not being annoying. I have been searching out atheist and agnostics for a while now and wanting to just learn about that worldview. It's not right for me to assume their beliefs or to read them in a book in the abstract. I want to know from direct conversations and friendships what people believe and why.
First, I have no reason to deny that Jesus was a real man who lived and died roughly 2000 years ago. (just making sure we don't misunderstand each other about what all I deny at this point)
For my experience, I simply began to suspect that the divinity of Jesus and the rest of the Christian account of God was manufactured, that my faith and perceptions had been the result of deceit...by self and others. And I finally realized that my "conversion" experience to Christianity had never involved any inkling of reasonable evidence for the existence of God. At some point, because of a number of influences, I had just unwittingly accepted the existence of God by faith which of course jammed my epistemology such that for years, I was building faith and experiences and "knowledge" on a faulty foundation. I was misinterpreting every aspect of my life because of an epistemology that had been thrown off track by a faulty presupposition.
Okay. That's what I was looking to know. Thank you. I think a lot of people don't take the time to really take stock of what they believe and why, Christians and non-Christians. I think it is vital to be able to have that reasonable groundwork on which faith (trust) is based. I think without that faith isn't real faith at all. I think many think faith is merely believing despite insufficient evidence, when in actuality, real faith is rooted in evidence and built upon that foundation.
Faith based on personal experience alone can become very gnostic in substance whereas Biblical faith was rooted in reason as well as personal experience with God.
"reasonable groundwork on which faith (trust) is based"
I've heard and read plenty of references to this sort of groundwork as if it exists, but have yet to actually encounter it. It's not for lack of trying or even at one time thinking that I actually had that groundwork.
But ultimately I didn't have it, and now do not believe it exists.
It seems to me you are seeking groundwork for what to believe in now. Do you not seek reality and truth? Have you not left Christianity because it began to look false? You doubted your experiences because there seemed to be intelectual invalidness to the whole Christian belief system as well as hypocracy because you weren't seeing the unity Christ spoke about in Christians. It seems to me that you are looking for something stable on which to believe if it exist, and if it does not you are resigned to not having the answers because there are none to be had.
Are you familiar with the Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer? There was a time in his life where he looked at the church and did not see what the Bible says he should see in believers and he set aside his ministry and did nothing but rethink everything he believes in from scratch to ascertain if it was all really true or not. He read the whole Bible again from cover to cover. He came out of it with a stronger trust in God than before. He saw that even though the failings of humans was still mixed in Christian life, it did not mean it was all false. He wrote many books starting from scratch about the philosophical necesity of God who has revealed himself to man. Maybe his books would interest you?
The groundwork I seek is reality and truth based. I do not seek "reasonable groundwork" on which to base Christian faith, because I do not believe it exists. However, I would love to be shown otherwise. And I will even volunteer to help you sort out the mass media attention that you and your groundbreaking book will receive if you are able to come up with "reasonable groundwork" for Christian faith.
Yes, I am familiar with Schaeffer as well as many other defenders of the Christian faith, which is why I think you will be the recipient of great wealth and worldwide attention if you are able to establish a reality based argument for the existence of God which does not rely on an epistemology presupposing the existence of God.
No one else has done it that I know of.
But you seek what is true. So if that search happens to bring you back to Christianity as what is true you would go that direction. Correct? You may not be seeking to find Christianity to be true, but you are seeking truth so I would imagine that you would be open to truth even if that was Christianity. Or I should say Jesus. Christianity is not the embodiment of truth, Jesus is. As for the book there are many on that subject that I believe does a good job. But I guess a skeptic would have to be the judge of that not me. I plan to write many books one day. I'm working on one now, but it's not about apologetics. It is about truth and culture.
Have you read books by Schaeffer?
Yes, if the Christian account of truth is true (including its claims to exclusivity), then I will embrace it whole-heartedly and with great joy and adulation, and I will be one of its best and most active defenders. Please bookmark this page and remind me of my commitment here if it ever is established (without reliance on the presupposition of the existence of the Christian God) that Christian faith is reality and truth based.
Yes, I have not only read Schaeffer's writing, but have also sat under the pastoral teaching and preaching of a man who was personally trained by Schaeffer.
I know from your apologetic methods that you admire Schaeffer's work and I imagine that you regard him as a man who was "mature" in the Christian faith.
Have you read what Schaeffer's own son wrote about him in his book Crazy for God?
That's good to hear. However, you say without the presupposition of the existence of the Christian God. But sometimes you can presuppose something for the sake of argument, but as the argument and evidences progress they show the validity of the presupposition. So instead of B through Z hanging on the presupposition of A, A is given validity because of the strength of B-Z even though B-Z started with an unproved A. So the existence of the entire structure would not be based on unfounded faith, but on a full reasonable foundation on which to base trust in God.
If a truth claim can be shown by evidence to be valid, then yes, it can be used as a presupposition on which to establish further points. You think the existence of the Christian God can be shown by evidence to be valid. I say it doesn't matter what order you go in, whether that truth claim is in position A or J or Z, all you have to do is show through evidence that the claim is valid.
I know that my opinion will not deter you, but I must reiterate that I am not optimistic for you in this endeavor. I am mainly concerned that because of your epistemology, you will only have "evidence" which is either subjective or not exclusive to the Christian God (for instance, also attributable to the Flying Spaghetti Monster).
I just wrote a blog on my site about evidences for Christianity. It is by no means exhaustive. But it's a starting place. I don't expect my conversation to convince you to believe in the Christian God. I do hope to interest you in examining Christianity further for yourself.
I also suggest reading if you haven't already.
The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer
The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel
Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharias
The Real Face of Atheism by Ravi Zacharias
Consider this: How is it that reason is our starting place? How do we know that our reason is trustworthy? We do know that we have to use reason to attack reason and thus our questioning is self-defeating. But without presupposing the existence of God we elevate human reason with no foundation to rest it upon as supreme. How could this be possible? How can human reason be sufficient, by it self, to disprove the existence of God if there is no God from which we have the ability to reason?
So has reason led you to conclude that reason is insufficient and that it is necessary to presuppose a specific supernatural explanation?
See my last post on my blog.
I've read it and my question remains. Do you have an answer?
Was it reason which lead you to believe that reason alone is unstable without the presupposition of God's existence (and not just any God, but your God specifically)? Is it your reason which tells you that reason can only find stability in something infinite?
I see no need for me to establish the sufficiency of reason and knowledge as a starting place. We grow in reason and knowledge from birth. It is a starting place quite by default. You are the one making the challenge here, you need to establish why our natural reason and knowledge should be considered insufficient. You say it is insufficient, and you give a whole post at your blog to claiming the insufficiency of reason. But I cannot find in your statements any reason to accept your claim. You throw it out there like it just has to be accepted.
Reason is sufficient because it comes from Reason not non-reason. Nature is not reason nor is it rational. How can reason come from a non-rational source? If reason is based on nothing, it is not reason. If we can reason about nature, we are coming at it from without it in a way. For if reason was merely an instictive natural phenomena of random brain waves we really could have no certainty of anything we reason about. But yet we intuitively trust our reason. I am not advocating that we should not accept reason as valid, but that we can accept it as sufficient to lead us to truth because it came from God. Reason comes from reason and at some point must rest on self-evident reason: Reason that just is and does not need to be proven to be. So do we say that human reason is autonomous and exist on it's own apart from any rational cause--that it just happened? Or that it came from some other Reason? A self-evident reason; God. Nature/Evolution does not explain our ability to reason about nature.
Karla,
Your comment is difficult to answer, not because you make a great point, but because it reads like utter nonsense. Would you mind re-reading it to see if you mistakenly copied and pasted some legitimate sentences in a nonsense way or if something in your room (like a cat) might have fallen on your keyboard and just mashed a bunch of buttons right before you hit "publish".
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