Testing The Christian Apologists

HOW do you know? You can never explain how you can tell the difference between a "transcendent experience" and a bad burrito. Until you can explain it, you don't know any such thing.

The "bad burrito" is intended to illustrate that our perceptions can be altered chemically. Ebenezer Scrooge said the same thing when he saw Jacob Marley's ghost and concluded that "a fragment of an underdone potato" might cause his senses to cheat. You mentioned drugs, so you know that they can affect your senses. And different drugs can affect them in different ways.So you had one experience that was not the same as any drug experience you have had and you conclude that that is an indication of something different? Not surprising, since that is the cultural belief that they all grew up with. Warm and loving like Faith? But it isn't a difference. It's all part of the same cultural milieu.

Are you the same guy who wants to preserve his retirement at all costs?

You haven't been able to tell us how to recognize a "transcendent experience" or how to distinguish it from any of a number of other experiences that warp our perception. I am certainly going to look at other possible explanations before I jump on the transcendental bandwagon. Nobody's denying that fundamentalists could become a dangerous force in the future. Do you think that helps your case?

God created Satan.

Do you really want to go with that analogy? Smith and Wesson created a revolver too. So did many others. Do you really want to reduce your god to one of many who created bad things?If Sam Colt was the only one who ever created a deadly weapon, then yes, we would hold him responsible for every death by deadly weapon. So yes, since your God supposedly created all things seen and unseen, including all things deadly, then He is, in fact, responsible for every death.

What fruit did he eat?

Then show us their arguments. Show us that you understand them by putting them in your own words. Clearly not, since you keep refusing to bring their arguments here. No. You bring it here. This is a discussion site, not a do-your-homework-for-you site. If you're so confident in that, why are you afraid to bring their arguments here? You have submitted nothing but opinion - and you won't even tell us what your opinion is based on. You're making the apologists look even worse.

So he was talking to himself?

You keep diminishing the power of your God. He's not supposed to be just any old father who has no control over what happens to His children, is He? If there's something He can't control, He's weak. If there's something He can control and chooses not to, He's responsible.

Don't you see how silly the idea of being "saved" is?First, you can only be saved from something. That something is damnation - by God. So God is supposedly saving you from Himself. (That should be fairly easy, even for the weakling god that you posit - all he has to do is nothing.)Second, you can not be saved from something before it happens. A firefighter doesn't rescue you before the fire. You can hope you'll be rescued. You can be pretty sure that you'll be rescued. But you can not say that you have been rescued when what you need to be rescued from hasn't happened yet. (And if the firefighter is the one who started the fire, I wouldn't trust his promise to save me from it.)

No, the ball is in your court. You started a topic titled, "Testing The Christian Apologists". Do that.Stop this moronic preaching. Bring an apologist argument here and let us test it.

Refusing to question your own conclusions is dishonest, period. It's also hubris. Nope. "By their fruits ye shall know them." That's bizarre. You're in favour of critically evaluating Islam but not Christianity? So truth is not important to you.

In Message 609 you said, "...I disagree with the conclusion that an honest man would throw even his beliefs away in the name of truth. Of course you should throw your beliefs away if they conflict with the truth.But what does that have to do with what Jesus said to Pilate?And by the way, it seems ironic that you quote Jesus, "Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice," (John 18:37) when you're the one who scoffs at His message.

That isn't true. Jesus told the rich man that he had to sell what he had and give to the poor to be saved. He never excluded anybody from that requirement. But you scoff at the idea. You say it's impractical. You call me an "extreme socialist' for quoting Him. Also not true. You have never given an argument. You've only given an opinion with no rationale at all to back it up..