Why is god mysterious?

[Humous]

Well, why shouldn't you aim for what you can't achieve?
And to the questioning of subjective reasoning being irrational...
It may be more irrational to quote that anyone, at all, is capable of making an objective statement.
Ayer. The Logical Positivists.
Find someone completely removed of any experience, and yet capable of making a rational decision, not based on opinion, and I will conceed.
Maybe.
And don't say Christ or Blake, please.

[Stopper]

Bertros, your reaction to the gifts - i.e. "since i can't apprehend it, it must be make believe" - seems a bit egocentric, and not really logical. Very subjective reasoning there. I have never been able to reach A level in chess. Shall i then assume that players who have must be cheating?

Well, no, because losing at chess is something that can be subject to outside verification. Speaking in tongues appears not to be.

[b.k. barunt]

Good point. I would still hold however, that egocentricity is a prevailing factor in the suggested paradigm. The less centered one is on self, the more objective one is able to be. Should we not aim for that?

[Bertros Bertros]

Your choice of wording seems a little inflamtory there, bk? Do you mean egocentric purely in terms of "centred on myself" or in the more negative sense of "centred on an inflated feeling of superiority"?

Either way I can only speak from my experience and can only draw my conclusions from those experiences. The experiences I talk of were as a child, and if we were to assume that speaking in tongues and the other manifestations I witnessed others experience are really the power of God, then ultimately his choice to not extend that to me was a turning point in my belief. I honestly don't think that God would choose to give these gifts to some and not to others, do you? I saw other children and adults fill with the power of the holy spirit and as a child wholeheartedly believed it would happen to me, but it didn't, and I'm not the sort of person to pretend it did purely to fit in.


I think I am a little harsh in suggesting its make believe. I think people can be swept away by their feelings and their desire to be a part of the worship and as such their subconcious mind could manifest speaking in tongues but I don't believe it is a manifestation of the holy spirit. If I am brutally honest I think this sort of pantomine worship ultimately devalues Christianity.

[heavycola]

Bertros, your reaction to the gifts - i.e. "since i can't apprehend it, it must be make believe" - seems a bit egocentric, and not really logical. Very subjective reasoning there. I have never been able to reach A level in chess. Shall i then assume that players who have must be cheating?

I think it is those people who claim to speak in tongues who are egotists. What, the penetcostalists have hit on just the right way to pray to get the holy spirit - god himself - to talk gibberish through them? And it IS gibbersih, as far as my (very limited) research has shown. Speaking in tongues as I understood it was a gift given to the apostles by god to allow them to be understood by people of all languages, not for them to ululate randomly and be understood by nobody.

Egotistical might be a bit strong. Religious fervour I am sure it is. And maybe the pentecostalists have got it right. Big if, though.