What lead you guys...

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

It's really irrelevant what the bible says about it since I consider that equally as unlikely as your story

That is NOT what you said.  You said it was a case of "monkey-see-monkey-do."… I can have the forum moderator read your comments back to you if you'd like...  You said, "monkey-see-monkey-do."  I said, "I was NOT aware of any of that before it happened to me." And now you contend that "it's really irrelevant what the bible says"?!

Can you explain that?

If it really is a case of "monkey-see-monkey-do,” then why was there the need for you to ignore the bible?  Why did you see a need to change from “a case of monkey-see-monkey-do” to “it's really irrelevant what the bible says“? 

Can you explain your contradictory opinions?

The truth is there was no "monkey-see-monkey-do”, isn’t that correct?  And when it became clear I had not read those portions of the bible, you cut your "monkey-see-monkey-do” theory loose.  You doctored your opinion and claimed "it's really irrelevant what the bible says".

What happened to me alone in my apartment the moment I believed was exactly, down to each explicit detail, what the bible prophesied God would do for believers.  And you really can not speak intelligently on any of these matters.  You can't handle the truth.  Isn’t that right, fezzyfestoon?!

fezzyfestoon, I hope you enjoyed my "A Few Good Men" impersonation.   But, regardless of the tone, I think my argument is valid.

[Keystone Phil]

once I found out that Santa Claus was bogus, I figured out that God had nothing to do with reality either.

Interesting connection.

Kind of similar to when I found out that the Easter Bunny was a fraud and so, at the same time, realized the American moon landing was a hoax.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I said you only tell this story because it's supposed to happen and regardless of what the bible says, it did not.

so, you're accusing me of making up a story and being part of a conspiracy?!

It is said that in every decent crime there are 50 ways to get caught, and that the perpetrator is a genius if he can think of 25 of them.  So, certainly, if such an intricate story was made up by little ole me, there should be some obvious mistake or contradiction. 

So, exactly, what part of my story is made up?  Do you doubt I used to watch The Worldwide Church of God’s TV program “The World Tomorrow” in the wee hours of the mourning because we did not have cable and that was about the only thing on very late at night?  Do you doubt that as a teenager I subscribed to their “Plain Truth” magazine, ordered their free book “The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy”, ordered their “Ambassador Bible Study Course”?  Do you doubt that I met a guy in college who became one of my best friends, and that during one of the first visits to his house I saw the Plain Truth magazine lying around, to which responded, “Hey, I take that magazine”, which led him to explain that he went to that church and his dad was a pastor in that church?

Do you doubt that I lived in an apartment in the The Woodlands from 1990 to 1994?  Do you doubt I owned a King James bible that I received from dating a Baptist girl in the late ‘80s?  Do you doubt I met a girl through that friend in the World Wide Church of God?  Do you doubt I feel in love with her?  Do you doubt that I ended up marrying her?  Do you doubt we have four kids?

What possible motive would I have had to go to a girl that I was in love with, whom I valued so much that I didn’t even attempt to hold hands with her, that I would make up such a story and tell her that I had a word from God that she and members of her family and all my closest friends were deceived by their Church that was the center of their lives?!

You are more than welcome to come to Houston and verify the story if you’d like.  You can meet my family (mother and brothers), wife (the girlfriend in the story) and kids.  You can meet some of the friends who used to go to that church, and they will tell how my testimony exactly matches everything that I did during that time, they will tell you about how I went to them and gave my testimony which they originally rejected.  They can tell you how my life was completely turned upside down and how all my friendships, work/family/friends were shaken.

To say that I made up the story just doesn’t make since, for they can testify that I knew NOTHING about the bible and how they did NOT teach anything matching my experience and how it would have been so much easier to go along with their church since my closest friends and girlfriend already went there.

So, exactly, whom was I trying to please by making up such a story?!

Dude, you are forgetting that my whole life, prior to 1992, and since 1992, is defined by that pivotal night late in October 1992 when I met Christ alone in my apartment.  The testimony I told you is the EXACT same testimony that I’ve given to everyone in my life, everyone prior to 1992 and after 1992.

The simple fact is: YOU, though lacking any evidence to the contrary, have much more motive to dismiss my story than I had to make up such a story!!! 

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

And everyone around you already believed it before you even told them....The motive to tell such a story is to woo people into believing there must be a God.

[/quote]

So, I made up a story to woo those who already believed in God into believing in God?!

That doesn’t make sense.  And, I’ve already told you that they did NOT believe me, NOR had they been taught what I was telling them.  Basically – they believed NEITHER me NOR my message.

---

You didn't make it up, it was already made up. …It's a social thing; monkey-see monkey-do.  When people are a part of a social group, they can convince themselves that what they're being told is true to be accepted.  It's not conscious, it just happens.

Dude, I was raised Catholic, which doesn’t preach the style of conversion I received.  But my family stopped going to church after I was about 7 or 8 years old, after which I probably averaged only one church visit per year, if that….Which is why the experience was so foreign to anything I had heard, that I pondered if I were the only one on earth with such an experience!!!

So, in what “social group” was I?  You’re attempting to place my story in a context that I was NOT a part of.  In fact, I didn’t find a church to attend until 5 months AFTER I was saved.  So, it was 5 months before I even found a “social group” that accepted my experience!

---

But, in giving my attitude on this forum some thought.  I have concluded I am lording my relationship with Christ over many unbelievers on this forum.  Maybe it’s the impersonal nature of the internet, maybe it’s my overreaction to the baseless taunts of unbelievers.  But, regardless, I have no excuse.

A byproduct of witnessing is that the story becomes somewhat about the witness, instead of the subject of what was witnessed.  It’s a natural byproduct since the life of the witness have been impacted in a positive way.  But, all too often, my approach – my willingness to continue the debate – is counterproductive.

Obviously, I do not feel like I deserved to have been chosen by God, because God’s choice of me was not about me, rather it was about God – God wanted to pick something lowly like me in order to show what was done in me was of God.

Even though I can not cleanly separate myself completely from the subject of God – since it is through me that God chose to echo his message – I should do more to minimize myself and elevate God more in these discussions.

So, the invitation to come to Houston still stands.  All I can tell you is my “social group” PRIOR to my conversion, and my “social group” AFTER my conversion are two completely different types of groups.  My life changed when God stepped into it.  God changed my life, hence the change in “social group”.

I apologize for my eagerness to debate vigorously.  It’s counter-productive given the audience of this forum.  It’s just that, once an unbeliever like you has rejected the word of God, I can only offer you the substance of my life for you to examine.   Because, only in the evidence of my life, can I prove to you that God is real.

If you were here with me in person, then you could see how God has changed my life and how everything I was told you is true, and then all this counterproductive debate could cease.  As it is, the “social group” you’re attempting to identify me with simply was NOT present in my life prior to my conversion and did not enter my life until 5 months afterward. 

And as intricate and detailed as my testimony is, you won’t find a single thing in contradiction, for my testimony is NOT a product of myself, NOR is it a product of my doctrine since I had no doctrine at the time of my conversion.  If I had made the story up, then I would be afraid to have it examined.

As it is, I regard any examination of the truthfulness of the details of my testimony with as much anxiety as I would someone examining the description of my house to see if I really lived at the address where I say I lived.  To me, our house that we had built and lived in since 1996 is a trivial matter of fact that I live and breathe everyday and is a part of me that is known by hundreds of people.

So, feel free to examine every brick of my testimony, because the accuracy of the description of my life is a near effortless task on my part.

[Eraserhead]

once I found out that Santa Claus was bogus, I figured out that God had nothing to do with reality either.

Interesting connection.

Kind of similar to when I found out that the Easter Bunny was a fraud and so, at the same time, realized the American moon landing was a hoax.

Last time I checked, we had video and piles of actual evidence backing up the moon landing.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

FezzyFestoon,

I understand how you feel – I spent the first 25 years of my life in unbelief.

I go to an inter-denominational church, Grace Christian Family Center, in Tomball, Texas.  Our pastor was raised in a denomination that claimed to have Christ exclusively – as if there was no other path to salvation outside of their denomination.  If I remember his story correctly, he was saved at 18 and was quite a punk before that and even busted a hole in the sheetrock at his parents house in an drunken rage of an attempt to scare his dad by swinging inches from his face. 

He was drafted not long after being saved, and was only 1 of 3 out of a boot camp class of about 200 to go to Vietnam.  Of the 3 that went, 2 volunteered to go to Nam, he was the only one ordered to go to Nam.  His drill sergeant didn’t like the fact he was a devout Christian and sent him to Cu Chi, Vietnam to end his life – right along side the Ho Chi Minh trail.  His drill sergeant knew how to pick ‘em – that base got hit every single night he was there.  (there’s a lot written about the Cu Chi tunnels and how dangerous it was to be based there, google it sometime if you have the chance)

Soon after arriving at base camp, my pastor attended a chapel service where the sermon was laced with profanity because the Chaplin wanted to show the boys that they didn’t have to remain clean in order to still be a Christian,  My pastor was disgusted by it and attempted to hold an off-hour prayer service in the dirt floor Chapel just for the boys, but the Chaplin wouldn’t allow it. 

So, my pastor went to the commanding officer (forgot the title, I think it was the Inspector General) of the base camp, who happened not to like the Chaplin.  The I.G. asked my pastor if he had had any training, which he had not.  Then the I.G. told him to write back home and have them send something that looked official.  So he wrote his pastor stateside and his pastor sent a hand written certificate stating that he was a “Licensed Christian Worker”.  The I.G. loved it and laughed hard, “This is PERFECT!  Follow me.”  He followed the I.G. down to the Chaplin office, the I.G. told the secretary to sit down and not to bother to inform the Chaplin, and burst into the Chaplin’s office and plopped the certificate down on his desk and told him to give my pastor the Chapel for one hour every Thursday night.   

My pastor planned to introduce the doctrine of his church and convert all the Christian boys to his denomination.  When he realized they were entrenched as he was, the compromise was just to read a couple of verses where everyone gave his opinion and then to pray for one another.  Some of those whose turn it was to go on patrol that night handed over letters to their parents in case they didn’t return alive.  So they would cry and pray for each other for God to forgive their sins and bring them back safely.  Some didn’t live to see another day.  It was during such times that the denominational battle lines would melt away.  My pastor saw many of those boys, from almost every major Christian denomination, receive the Holy Spirit.  This confused my pastor because he was led to believe that only his denomination had the Holy Spirit.

So, to make a long story short – my pastor’s first introduction to a nondenominational service was in Vietnam.  He would later leave denominationalism altogether and realize that his going to Vietnam was God's choosing.  And since I found Christ in my own apartment, not even belonging to any church, inter-denominationalism seems natural to me.

[afleitch]

It is most unfortunate that you appear to be dismissive of nearly everyone elses spiritual experiences on this forum.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

It is most unfortunate that you appear to be dismissive of nearly everyone elses spiritual experiences on this forum.

when have I ever done that?  In fact, just brousing the first page of this thread, I did find this, which I DO ACCEPT:

No Hallmark Channel special for me.

I was baptised Catholic. And I went to Catholic schools from ages 5-18. I had nothing to rebel against, as the Catholicism I was steeped in, was that of my family and of my Jesuit school environment; it was always non judgemental but self critical. Asking questions of and getting damn well pissed off at the Church was probably part of that. I have a connection with Catholicism and the Catholic rite, but I am distrustful of the hierachy and the Vatican; my connection with individual churches and priests is at a purely local and personal level.

[pbrower2a]

I had difficulty with the idea that a supposedly loving and just God could consign people to Hell for failing to believe in any God whatsoever, for believing in too many Gods, believing in the wrong God, believing in Him but the wrong way, or failing to believe in the right Prophets or Savior.  I find it hard to believe that a child molester-killer could get cheap grace from God if he "gave his life to Jesus" while facing imminent death, but that some innocent child who did nothing wrong didn't do so while in a Nazi gas chamber goes to Hell.

I could never make sense of the idea of the Holy Ghost, anyway.  

[Scam of God]

Because what will happen if everybody embraced populism?

'Three strikes' and 'zero tolerance' will be increased. Crackdowns on drugs and illegal immigrants will rise. Abortion and possibly homosexuality will be criminialised. This means that America's already insanely high incarceration rate will skyrocket - that alone will probably cause enough harm to entirely cancel out the benefits of national health care, even assuming this government magically manages a competent Canadian-style implementation rather than the likely US horrible private-public compromise (and remember you weren't prepared to grant such competence to the libertarians). Foreign powers will be alienated or outright antagonised; foreign aid may actually be increased but it will come with mandatory missionaries. You will be rolling back the rights of women, homosexuals and most likely racial minorities, and teaching an entire generation of children that this is right and proper (and that the earth is 6000 years old and that ultimate truth comes only from the bible). By putting religious nuts in power you will be giving US society as a whole a strong push away from science and towards fundamentalism; keep that up for long enough and the eventual endpoint will be another Iran (not Afghanistan; the US populace is educated and relatively peaceful), but with the world's largest military to go crusading with. I'm honestly not sure what they'd do about gun control; libertarians obviously hate it, but US fundamentalists aren't exactly fans of it either, so I wouldn't expect either of these parties to increase it.

In short: my atheism is wholly political.

[Mechaman]

Because what will happen if everybody embraced populism?

'Three strikes' and 'zero tolerance' will be increased. Crackdowns on drugs and illegal immigrants will rise. Abortion and possibly homosexuality will be criminialised. This means that America's already insanely high incarceration rate will skyrocket - that alone will probably cause enough harm to entirely cancel out the benefits of national health care, even assuming this government magically manages a competent Canadian-style implementation rather than the likely US horrible private-public compromise (and remember you weren't prepared to grant such competence to the libertarians). Foreign powers will be alienated or outright antagonised; foreign aid may actually be increased but it will come with mandatory missionaries. You will be rolling back the rights of women, homosexuals and most likely racial minorities, and teaching an entire generation of children that this is right and proper (and that the earth is 6000 years old and that ultimate truth comes only from the bible). By putting religious nuts in power you will be giving US society as a whole a strong push away from science and towards fundamentalism; keep that up for long enough and the eventual endpoint will be another Iran (not Afghanistan; the US populace is educated and relatively peaceful), but with the world's largest military to go crusading with. I'm honestly not sure what they'd do about gun control; libertarians obviously hate it, but US fundamentalists aren't exactly fans of it either, so I wouldn't expect either of these parties to increase it.

In short: my atheism is wholly political.

Yeah, I always thought libertarianism and atheism went hand in hand. I mean think about it, why are a lot of libertarians atheists? I'm not sure about the rest of you, but at least 75% of the libertarians I've met are atheist, as opposed to the so-called "atheist left" which is like barely 10% of the liberal population. I bet if there was a survey on which political group was the most atheist, the percentage of atheists who are libertarians would be alot higher than liberals and conservatives, hell it might even be as high if not higher than socialists.
Why is this? Because the belief in an omnipotent all powerful being seems to correlate with the belief in an omnipotent all powerful state. Granted there are a few instances where there are godless super statist dictators who kill millions, but in the place of an invisible sky daddy they replace it with big government, which becomes their own "God". The worship of Big Government is another form of religion. Libertarianism as a philosophy replaces the need to be subject to any higher power, therefore the want to worship God or Government is scant. There are some libertarians who believe in a god or some other deity, but they still at least acknowledge that man has free will, in time a lot of them will inevitably conclude that the rules and regulations of their belief make it impossible for man to have total control over his own destiny.
As for populists on gun control, it's only a matter of time. A philosophy obsessed with national security will treat all potential suspects, whether it be foreign or domestic, with extreme cautiousness. This means that when the outcry of White Moral America against immigrants, Muslims, and gays takes over this government the time will come to disarm those "threats deemed by the Department of Homeland Security" of any and all firearms or other tools of "terrorism against the US government". You see, populists are for gun rights, only for those that agree with them. This is what Adolf Hitler did: He revoked all gun laws for the "Aryan German who has supreme liberty" but later on he banned gun ownership for the Jews. Granted, Hitler was a fantastic liar who said he was just "protecting the Jews", but a majority of Nazi Germany applauded his actions for disarming the "Jewish threat to pure German society". Many people assume that the only way a tyrant can be effective with gun control is if he bans all guns, they forget that the best statist policy is empowering a large segment of society with the right to unregulated gun ownership whilst all out banning those who oppose them. I've noticed that alot of my progressive friends are becoming more and more pro gun as alot of my neo conservative friends are becoming more and more pro gun control because they're falling for the same feel-good bullsh**t most progressives used to fall for until George Bush.
George W. Bush is the turning point for gun politics in America. I'm convinced that many liberals will look back on what happened in the Bush era and realize that there is not much difference between a state that doesn't believe people have the right to privacy and a state that believes people don't have the right to self defense. Likewise, many of the neo conservatives that fell hook line and sinker for Bush's disregard for individual rights for the sake of "national security" will inevitably conclude that the government should have the right to disarm those who may be labelled "threats to American freedom".
Now I'm in favor of unregulated gun ownership, I'm just saying that giving one group full gun rights while banning it outright for others is still gun control and is still a very statist policy.

[the artist formerly known as catmusic]

My parents never told me about it. I never had any knowlege about god or jesus or anyone like that. Then when I heard about it, it sounded like crazy talk. No other reason than that.