Basically, yes. The point of my entire last post was that this is no revelation for any religion -but the fact is that they're religion. I may belive I'm right to the very core of my being -that is I may belive it's fact- but I don't deny its faith.
But I don't deny that people of other religions have had religious experiences. But I doubt the authenticity of some of them (and the origin of most of them), and some of even my religion.
I think we may be closer than it seems. I doubt the authenticity of all of them, and the origin of all of them. On most religions, we completely agree.
I don't.
I believe the Bible is infallible.
The Bible is a written work; all written works require interpretation to some degree by the reader; on top of this, it makes heavy use of metaphoric language and parable... for much of it, to decide on one meaning alone, you have to rely on your own interpretation; you have to rely on yourself. That's why I asked.
Even assuming the Bible is infallible, it still requires the reader's personal judgement to decide, for example, whether "feed My lambs" is an instruction to preach to the masses, or a request to administer grain to livestock. Many other Biblical metaphors and parables require much more discernment; even deciding that a passage is meant literally and not as a metaphor is an interpretation. Any message found in the Bible must be filtered through the reader's interpretation, which itself is human, imperfect and fallible, regardless of the perfection of the source material.
To proclaim that your way is without question the only true way, you have to implicitly claim that you yourself are infallible, because you (like any other reader) are the instrument by which the words on the printed page of the Bible gets translated into messages for thought, belief and action.
I can't speak for roli.
I don't think so.
Hmm... I recall what he posted previously:
How can you negate and or discount what experience another person has with Jesus Christ, who not only reveals himself ,but is literally tangiably expereinced by those who reach to him.
Any non-universalist Christian, by definition, negates and discounts the experience that all sorts of people (the majority of humanity, in fact) have had with a vast assortment of deities in various forms. It certainly seems to me that he's asking for consideration to Christianity that he's not willing to give to other faiths.
It'd be good if he came back and let us know the thoughts behind what he wrote.
I've always found this explanation remarkably convenient.
The fact that there were accurate predictions, that the priestesses only flew off the handle when someone called on them for a prediction suggests at least some degree of authenticity.
From a religious perspective, it only remains to be found what caused those visions. Though not throwing out the ethylene explanation.
Going by the documentary I saw on it, the fissure runs right beneath the altar in the temple at the Oracle. Only the priestess doing the prophesy would be standing right on top of it, and only while performing rituals.
And it's easy to give an "accurate" prophesy. Babbling from someone in a hallucinogenic state would require a fair bit of interpretation. If things turned out differently than the way they thought, the believers could blame the "faulty" interpretation rather than the Oracle.
We shouldn't. Objectively, I'm saying that we shouldn't throw them out.
Even religiously we have to consider.
Yes, we have to consider that effects have causes. Something causes people to have religious experiences; that does not mean that the cause must be God (or Odin, or Shiva, or Horus, etc., etc.), though.
Of course not -I'd be the first to tell you that.
What I was saying is that beliefs have to be taken into account. Speaking objectively, the fact that every culture on the planet has at one time or the other been ferverently religious suggests (does not prove) the existence of a god -whatever or whoever it/he/she may be.
Why do you make that assumption?
If a god or gods did exist, and did present itself/himself/herself/themselves to humanity at various points in time to give instructions on how to worship and live, don't you think we'd see more similarity in the beliefs amongst
all religions? If God wanted humanity to worship Him alone, why is
ancestor worship so prevalent all over the world? Do you think anything about the myriad religions of the world suggests any commonality other than belief in things beyond this world? Actually, now that I think about it, not even
that is shared by all world religions.
I don't see why we should treat religion differently from any other cultural trait. For example, if we were to find that prehistoric peoples on two separate continents both used clay pots, but that the pottery styles were completely different in method of construction and final form, we'd likely conclude that the two peoples developed clay pots separately and on their own. We would not suggest that some mysterious agency visited both peoples by unknown means, taught them both to make clay pots (and
nothing else, since their cultures share no other traits), but one of them immediately diverged from their instructions and began making pots in some way other than the "proper" one.
If we conclude that supernatural influence is a ridiculous explanation for the origins of
pottery, why should we think any more of it as an explanation for the origins of religious beliefs?
If you're talking about a scientific, objective observation: you'll have to take it into consideration.
Yes, and consider
all possible explanations, not just the least likely one.
