Yes there are plenty of intelligent Christians. But I think there a lot of intelligent people who pretend to be Christians for social reasons too.

If you think cussing and insulting on a religious forum is going to get you anywhere, your wrong. But yes, you have made it pretty clear your incapable of stopping this anytime soon. I think lack of trying is whats going on.

This is not a religious forum. It is a forum about religion.

I also have never experience God in the way that many people talk about. I honestly don't believe everyone can. I have come to the conclusion that I am just not made in this way. Personally I feel that it has to do with how emotional you are. I don't know about you, but I am an extremely unemotional person. I just don't feel any emotions in the way that you commonly hear about.

So I guess my point is, if you are blind maybe you can find consolation in the fact that I am standing right there with you attempting to feel my way through life.

definitely an important difference.

What's your opinion on people who claim to experience God? Do you feel that they're embellishing their experiences, or do you feel God just skips over people like us for some reason?

I'm similar to you in that I'm not emotional. Not completely devoid of emotion, but not even close to allowing emotions to take over my life. I do however have this hypothesis that the more emotional someone is, the more likely they are to "see" things they want to be true as opposed to what is actually true. Deep emotions have effects like that in other walks of life and religion shouldn't be any different.

Honestly, I am extremely skeptical of anyone that has an emotional experience. But I think that can stem a lot from the fact that I cannot relate to them. I believe that it is possible, but I just struggle with how to evaluate an experience that I have not had myself.

As far as "does God skip over us", I don't think so. I have had this conversation with my mother many times over the years, and one thing that she has said in my conversations that I feel in noteworthy is that some people (mainly emotional type people) need to have these experiences and that God knows this. For them everything is about emotional connections.

That makes sense to me from a theological standpoint, as personally even if I had a strong emotional experience after a week or so I highly doubt that I would trust it anyway. Now I obviously don't know this for sure because it has not happened, but I suspect that would be the outcome.

I totally agree. I don't like the emotional approach that many christians take. Be it positive or negative. A lot of evangelism is based on this. Either giving people this great emotional high, or trying to scare them with Hell to make them believe. IMO, it doesn't usually stick and causes more harm then good.

Ah the ole "Orwellian argument". Stop reading Orwell's 1984....there's no brainwashing....at least not usually....

We have a genetic basis throught the VMAT-2 gene and hence will always have a natural proclivity to spirituality in addition to other things that might induce spirituality in us.

Why don't you actually try polling believers before making such statements. I didn't attend church at all until my late 20s....and I can vouch I was never brainwashed. On top of that I travel a lot so no church has had the opportunity to have sufficient time to brainwash me. You know one hour of church a week and the occasional extra hour a week in church bible study is not enough to brainwash anyone. Not if you think about it. You can't even read the bible in a year on such a schedule.

If people went several days a week to church or were forced to pray which they aren't then you might have a case for brainwashing but once a week for an hour...Nah...the theory of brainwashing is juvenile.

Its just a theory that lets the real juvenile delinquents think they can dismiss God's Word as unimportant.

Also any empirical research anyone points to can be skewed so studies aren't as authoritative as you think. A study is manipulable so so-called empirical studies on this are questionable.

***I haven't read the whole thread. I just find the brainwashing theory to be totally preposterous and a cop out and had to point out a few fallacies.****

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1NgF...eature=related

Billy Graham says "What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? It is not necessarily an emotional experience, nor will it necessarily bring us some type of spiritual experience that is obvious or open. To be filled with the Spirit is to be controlled by the Spirit. It is to be so yielded to Christ that our supreme desire is to do His will. When we come to Christ the Spirit comes to dwell within us - whether we are aware of His presence or not. But as we grow in Christ, our goal is to be controlled by the Spirit." (from his The Secret of Happiness).

The way he describes it parallels the believer's experience.

Your question was about belief in God, yet this opening salvo relates to the belief that the Bible is literally true (despite later in the thread feigning surprise that anyone takes the Adam and Eve story literally). It never occurred to you that perhaps people believe in God for reasons other than "because it's written in the bible"?
Again - your question is about God, this is about miracles. I believe in God, I don't believe in miracles.
No you assumed it. I personally would prefer there wasnt a God (as far as such a preference makes sense, anyhow).
I dont believe in an afterlife either.

For someone as successful and intelligent as you, it's amazing that none of your "points" actually relate to a belief in God - rather to a whole bunch of other beliefs.

Does your mom know what ad hoc means? If not, explain it to her.

Your mom is right its just a lot of people don't know they can take a more proactive role than they usually do. Take a look at Joyce Meyer's book Battlefield of the Mind if you get a chance. We can actually assist God with working with us emotionally. All the keys are in the bible and the key to repentance is "a contrite heart". Meyers just takes the time to bring out multiple areas that people can work on. A lot of people try to take the mystery road but you can have more personal insight along the way.

If he says he saw Jesus and it helped turn his life around, who are you to say he didn't?

Easy, killer. I wasn't trying to put anyone down for being unable to experience God. I was only trying to say that putting down others for experiencing (or believing that they are experiencing) God is not a good way to go about things, either. I apologize if I came off like an ***hole. It was not my intent at all.

As to whether or not I ACTUALLY experience God, I would say that I experience God just looking around me. Go to Lake Tahoe or the Grand Canyon, lol.

Who are you to say Allah didn't command the hijackers to take down the World Trade Center? (Or does this logic only work on things you consider to be good?)

No problem, it's cool.

When I look at those things, I see beauty in nature and nothing more. I'm sure you'll agree though that if I claimed to see that a reincarnate of Elvis in a UFO created those things, I'd be at least somewhat delusional. This is because most other people don't share my beliefs. Does the number of adherents to a belief change the validity of it?

Who does he need to be?

Yes, nature can be very beautiful, and even awe-inspiring in some places. But it can also be extremely cruel. If you're experiencing God when you're in Lake Tahoe or the Grand Canyon, what were the people in New Orleans experiencing when Katrina came through, or in Haiti when the ground started shaking? Is that also experiencing God?

That's why you can't understand God. You keep looking around at everyone else and pointing fingers.

By doing that you will never get down to the important business of examining yourself. When you examine yourself that's precisely the point at which you encounter God the most.

If you let the world distract you from that then you're the big loser. There's always a chance though some event later in your life could force you to get down to business. Until then you're in limbo.

And if you want to know what I mean by all that then go to the OT and study the Israelites wandering in The Wilderness.

So it's impossible for someone to have examined himself and not found god?

That looks a lot deeper and longer than you think.

The famous Focus on the Family psychiatrist James Dobson told the story of his grandfather on the radio.

His grandfather appeared to be an upright man. He once walked away from a company that he owned because his partner wouldn't live up to his high standards of business dealings. Dobson's grandfather said his word or handshake was totally good but his partner started to stray from that so he left the company to the less upright partner. Years later the company became a multimillion dolllar company. All this time Dobson's grandfather was not a believer but his wife prayed for him for 49 years. At the age of 69 he had a stroke....he said he felt cold and darkness around him and finally asked her to pray for him....she fell down beside the bed and prayed for him and he felt amazingly better and accepted Christ as his Savior....2 weeks later he suffered another stroke and died.

It ain't over til its over.

No puts this so eloquently and humorously as astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tysone. I love this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_nqySMvkcw

By your standards, he has to be someone that can prove that the person in question didn't see Jesus, doesn't he?

Of course it is. Without tragedy and horror, there is no place for redemption.