You are comparing someone else claiming to be certain, with my believing in God. Just because I believe in God doesn't mean that I have to believe everyone who claims to be certain about something, they could be lying for all I know. It would also depend on how well I know the individual making the claim. If a good friend of mine whom I trust was convinced about something, I'd be more willing to trust him.

That's why I said it's not always black and white. Sometimes it takes faith to walk in the door, but once you're in the room, your faith is rewarded with information you would not otherwise have been granted.

The historical record for Christ is biblical, many scholars use this as evidence for Jesus being God.

I may not be convinced, but I would be more inclined to check it out for myself if the person was someone I trusted, and they were convinced. If someone came to me with an impressive claim, my first reaction is not to reject it and look at all the possible ways he could be wrong, and when he suggests he himself could be wrong, to reject that for another explanation of my liking.

If you concede that we may not have shared experiences, how can you be so sure that these experiences are not enough to convince me of God?

My experiences were convincing because they carried with them a conviction. I believed it was Christ, as it was part of the revelation, and I later went on to study the bible and met many people who corroborated my story. I still have a relationship with Christ, this is not just a one-time vague feeling that I thought to label "Christ", it's an ongoing part of my life, that I cannot dismiss.

What I fail to understand is how you can claim that nothing would convince you of God. If God came down and spoke to you himself, you're saying you would reject it altogether, and that does not seem objective. To be that rigorous with your beliefs, you would need reject almost everything, all your senses can misguide you, things you see, things you touch, things you think. I have heard many people say, "I'll believe it when I see it", but you're seemingly saying that even then you won't believe it, which seems surprising.

Biblically. I have no hatred of gay people, I don't think they are different than someone who is having sex outside of marriage, in that it is not God's will. There's no need to pick this particular sin as something worse as some Christians are in the habit of doing.

This simply doesn't make sense. You're not engaging in faith until the point where you decide to believe something and specifically when you decide to believe something that you have no good reason to believe. I think that you're conflating a number of things including curiosity, a desire to learn or being forced or encouraged to learn, with faith, but they're not faith. They might lead to something that requires faith, they don't require faith themselves.

You believe in god, i.e. you accept the truth of god’s existence, despite that fact that you can’t prove there is one, can’t even offer an explanation for your belief beyond some personal experiences that you’ve interpreted in a certain way, and yet you believe in god. I think that it’s unlikely that there are gods but do I believe that there are no gods? No, I don’t, because I don’t know that that’s true and that would require proof that I don’t have, it would require a leap of faith to go from ‘unlikely’ to ‘definitely not’. I can’t do that, and that's the big difference between me and a someone who believes in a god, or anything else that requires faith.

This is something else that you keep saying. I think that you think it adds weight to your story, as if you couldn't have known what you now believe and so couldn't have been primed by a religion but as Neeel has pointed out, and as I have, of course you knew about Christianity.

I didn't claim that NR. I said that I couldn't imagine what could convince me. You've heard voices in your head and for you it's more proof that god exists. To borrow your own words, that wouldn't have been my 'go to' explanation.

Since I can't trust my own experiences given how easily we are fooled, and especially by ourselves, what could I experience that could convince me? Bear in mind that I can't use faith in this hypothetical, I can't just say 'ok, I believe you', there has to be something convincing, what can you suggest that might do it? You can literally suggest anything.

Yes, but I'm saying that faith may lead you to learn something which you otherwise may not have learned.

Someone may believe Nessie exists, simply by faith, and then travel to Loch Ness and look for her as a result of that faith. In that sense, someone who has faith is more likely to discover proof for Nessie, than someone without faith.

When the bible says "knock and the door will be opened", the knocking part requires faith, but when the door is opened, you have been rewarded for that faith, and it is no longer "blind".

It's not entirely true that I can't offer an explanation beyond the spiritual, as I've mentioned, scholars argue for Jesus' divinity based on the historical account. I linked WLC's article on this, earlier. That is, there is corroboration. Also, there are people I respect highly who also claim to know Christ, as well as the biblical account for both, the spiritual aspect, and the intellectual aspect. It's not as if it's just a one-time encounter that propels me, it's a lifetime of things, there is a case for Christ being God after all.


Yes, but your argument amounts to Christ not being able to reveal himself to me, because I had already heard of him. I understand that it could just be me inserting the label "Christ", but it could also be Christ.


Sorry, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. Can you elaborate what the implications are of you "not trusting your own experiences"? When you trust in scientific data, you are also trusting in your own experiences. When you run a trial and see the same results, you are trusting in your senses to be reliable in determining the results are consistent. I'm not sure how you differentiate between this and other times you use your senses.

It’s very simple: just do whatever you would do if you believed ‘God exists’ is true. I’d imagine for most that would involve doing what the religions of the world say you should do. And while there are a lot of particulars, many of the world’s religions prescribe a surrender of you and your will to God and his. That’s basically a means of transcending the individual self, that, in one form or another, all the religious traditions of the world advocate. So if you really want to know the veracity of the theist claim, or whether or not their belief is self-confirming, I can’t think of a better way than that.

You know god's will?

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If you believe in the bible, you can believe in God's will.

Do you know god's will?

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I believe what the bible says about God's will, I don't think I can actually know with certainty, philosophically speaking, but I believe.

So the author(s) of the bible knew god's will?

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I can't know what they knew. I can say they believed they knew God's will.

Without knowing god's will how can they accurately document it?

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It depends how you're defining knowledge. I can't know that you exist, but I believe you do.

I can't know the bible is true, but I believe it is.

The authors likewise were confident about Christ. Can they know with certainty? I'm not sure.

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They describe what they believe. What is it that you want me to say? I've already admitted that I can't be certain.

So you are not sure they knew god's will?

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Admit then you are uncertain that's god will and stop making statements like you did previously that homosexuality is against god's will because you don't know that.

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Depends on how you define knowledge. Can you know that I exist?

I'm not sure they knew, like I'm not sure I know. I believe the bible describes God's will accurately. Of course I could be wrong.

Of course I can't know with certainty. I simply believe it.

Fair enough. So is everything in the bible true?

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I think so, although there are different interpretations on many things.

What language was it written in?

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Depends which portion you mean. Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic.

Taking a leap of faith I assume you neither speak all of those languages or have read any originals of the bible what bible do you rely on?

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KJV is the closes to the original afaik, although I've read some interlinear bibles which are word for word translations. Very accurate, but incredibly painful to read. Right now, I'm reading the ESV.