God and the human mind

Would you ask this of, say, Halle Berry if she said I Love you sidelined, sleep with me?

First three words of the bible, In the begining.That means before that there was none.

A full baptism of the Holy Spirit.Hey, just ow many coincidences would it take for you to believe in God?
A miracle? A felling? Something supernatural?I think you are making a mistake to try and use science and human rational explanations to reason away God's exsistance. The limited knowledge you and I pocess about the universe and our exsistance is not enough.As far as critical thinking goes, it can sometimes be a long process. You can use it to find God, or disprove God in your own mind. Nothing special here. Its just a word. IF people are teaching you how to think, instead of teaching you knowledge and letting you figure it out for yourself, sounds like brain washing to me.
I do not feel as though I have been brain washed by religion. I only read the bible, and compared the lessons within to real life, present time, and then was able to see the truth.You know when you know the truth about something? And then someone tells you the truth, the feeling you get? Times that by 1000 and thats the feeling you get when God is awakened in you.You are going to be a great person in the Lord once you figure out what you were created for. I really feel that you are going to help a lot of people, once you find the Lord. You will, God just let me know.
You are going to travel and help needy people. Your skills are going to be great tools of the Lord, God bless you.

The word schizophrenics does not apply here, as I do not meet all the criteria for being one.
I have not experienced any of the following:
hallucinations, delusions, blunted emotions, disordered thinking, and a withdrawal from reality.
The truth is a feeling not covered by any of the above.
The nine gifts of the spirit, might fit one of the critiria, but that does not constitute it as schizophrenia. When 2 people have the same exact delusion, it would be hard to connect that with schizophrenia. That is irrelevant evidence that niether falsifies one religion or the other. You would be a hypocrite if you claimed that the fact that millions of people believe in something, then it disproves another thing, because then one of them would have to be right. Your using the evidence of millions of people believing in something to say, "your religion can't be real". Well one of them could very well be real, or all of them. Each of them have went their own way, so that one day they would come to know Christ, and the prophecies would be filled.If we truely followed what Christ was teaching us, then this world would have no problems. But man won't let that happen.

By your response, I would say that you wouldn't question her love for you with reasoning.I don't think you would stop her and say, "wait, I don't believe that you love me, prove it scietifically so that I will indeed make love back to you"So is Christ's love for you.

Yes, I agree, but when science starts saying "in the begining" too, then I start to take it as fact, that there was indeed a begining.Astronmers theorize about the big bang, hubble confirms this, as far as we can tell at the present moment. So before that what was there? another universe and collapse?I reason it with a question. The fact that we can sit here and ASK where we came from, means that we did come from somewhere, and there was a begining. Time is a physical thing that exists solely for our existance. Wouldn't you accept this as being possible?

Live by the sword, and die by the sword.Please don't let me catch you using the big band theory in any discussion.I hope your not saying because I'm Christian, I can't agree with science also. I did feel this way before I became Christian as well.Don't get me started on odds either. It is not a 50/50 chance. It either happened or it didn't. That doesn't make the chances of it happening 50/50, or me guessing, or God telling me that it did. I would tend to think that it did, because of several things, mostly subjective, but some objective.Let me ask you. You think numbers are infinite? You must if you think we have a chance at going backwards infinitly.

Yes, and no. I agree that teaching you knowledge can be brain washing also, if that knowledge is wrong
But teaching you how to think, instead of learning on your own, can be brain washing also. Who the heck is the authority on thinking anyway?I may be a bit ignorant here, because I have not actually learned critical thinking, just read a little bit about it. But it does raise my eyebrow, as to what this can or cannot accomplish. I don't think you can teach someone to be smart.If critical thinking would keep me from the truth, then I would say it is brain washing.Imagine mis-interpreting critical thinking, and then thinking that way your whole life

You said it was a 50/50 chance. I asked you about infinity.If there was no begining, then it always was?

Stop thinking so linear.
I got your point, you once again have dis-proved the bible, congrats!

Parrots copy words without thinking. But dispite what you think, it has been proven that parrots learn what the words mean, and then answer questions that they have never been trained to answer correctly. They do this by there own thinking power, given to them by God, not taught to them by some critical thinking process.Teaching someone how to think can be far worse than brainwashing, its like brainwashing times 2 if its not done correctly. Whos to say what the correct way of thinking is? The panel of experts. I guess with the "right" way of thinking you could reason away anything, even a persons Love for you, how neat Should we all think the same? How would we think of anything new, or think outside the box? You think thats a healthy way of thinking?

I fully intend to learn more about it. So I can give a more qualified opinion about it. Won't happen over night though.Got any good links on it?

No, what you said was, they had a 50/50 chance of getting it right when they wrote it in the bible.I'm telling you, that if God spoke to them and told them he created it, then they didn't have a 50/50 chance, it was 100% garaunteed.Your implying that they guessed.

I don't think I have to, its pretty obvious if you teach someone how to think wrong, it could be, not good.I will study critical thinking, so I can have a better understanding of it, to give a better opinion of it.

I started reading some of those links.
Judging by your avatar, which is an awesome picture of the northern lights, you might be into astronomy?I studied astronomy on my own for about 7 years, and own a 8" reflector, and take pictures of the stars.I am also an amatuer radio operator. Between the 2 I have a very good understand of what is known about frequencies, starting from sound all the way up to gamma rays.I was also a layout mechanic for sheet metal for 11 years, and constantly make 2d things into 3d things. Out of nessecity I created trigonometry, without being taught to help me figure out angles of triangles. Its all about triangulation you know. ALso calculations of airflow.I am also a service mechaninc for A/C refrigeration, and need to know a little chemistry to understand what is happening in the refrigeration cycles. Asorption too.Most of this stuff in the links I have been taught already and in spite of it all, I still found God.Just not critical thinking specifically, so I will study that one a little more. I find nothing wrong with logical thinking. But even one of the pages you gave me says it doesn't always apply, right on the home page. They were talking about non-elucid geometry, which intrigues me.Question, just because something seems "magical" does that mean we should dis-regard it if there is no logical explanation at the current moment?Also, why exactly are you an athiest?This message has been edited by riVeRraT, 09-14-2004 09:04 AM