The_Walrus wrote:
pokerface wrote:
Seems to me you lost weight just by changing your eating habits from relatively unhealthy to healthy. I don't understand where god comes in.
What also strikes me is the fact that some people are convinced that god actually talks to them. How does he do that. Does he have an enormous megaphone or something when he talks to a selected few from the heavens above?
God is usually not held to be a physical, material entity, so the idea of him using a megaphone is nonsense.
In the Christian faith, it is held that humans have a relationship with God and can communicate with him simply by using thought. Studies of religious experiences by the likes of James and Otto have found that people generally acquire knowledge without memory of learning- they just experience something with a "noetic quality" which confers knowledge, and their experience is ineffable.
Sounds familiar, and perhaps not far off the mark.
I prefer to think of it as God talks to all of us. I've never thought that the Bible has a monopoly on divine wisdom. It DOES have a monopoly on the proper attribution of wisdom to a deity, but God's gift of wisdom is available to all. The concept of being "born again" in Christianity is similar to reincarnation in Greek and eastern religions. Nirvana entails a loss of personal identity, which in Christianity is understood as "the first shall be last and the last shall be first," implying that all are equal in heaven. The act of a deity dying and being transformed by rebirth or resurrection is not limited to Christianity, nor is Christianity the first religion to describe such. After all, if the account in Genesis holds true that we all came from Noah, it follows that all religions have a common ancestor. Stories of death/resurrection, birth/rebirth simply have their origins in messianic prophecy. Nor does it follow that God would reveal himself ONLY to an exclusive group of people.
So I think God reveals himself to everyone and speaks to everyone. What's missing, though, is the willingness to listen. If you won't allow yourself an open mind, probably one of the only conclusions you'll draw is that hearing God is a product of an overactive imagination. If you really, REALLY don't want to believe in God, you'll tune it all out eventually. I tend to think that a denial of God's existence is delusional rather than acceptance of it.
25 Jun 2013, 10:12 am
