If you read the Gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles that were written at the same time of the Gospel, you would have read that Jesus didn't simply live, die, and become the Resurrection.

Jesus sent "the Paraclete".

Jesus was clear: "No one has seen God." "God is Spirit." "God desires worshippers in Spirit and Truth."

Skeptics have intellectual ideas that are not complete and experienced, but patchworks of bits of reading from this source and that source. Skeptics never become truly wise because wisdom is only furthered when the compilation of "facts" is applied to "personal experiences" and "logical certainty".

The Paraclete was poured out of God at a particular time in human history--the fullness of time after the Way, the Truth, and the Life came and left, after the Light of the World shined upon humanity and left his light still shining.

The Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. You've heard of it, yet you haven't listened.

Before the fullness of time, there were only a few people born in each generation who were close to God and knew his wisdom. History is filled with these special people.

Today, and for two thousand years, anyone can be close to God, experience God, and live with a lion's share of his Spirit. This is what Jesus did for humanity. This is how Jesus became humanity's Spiritual Messiah.

...

Paul received a direct revelation of Jesus on the road to Damascus, and it changed everything for him. He was filled with the Holy Spirit until his death. And all his talents and abilities were poured into his writings that were anchored in his "personal experience" that gave to him the absolute certitude that Jesus was still alive and the Messiah he said he was.

You can read. Good. But you can't apply your reading to personal experiences that will take your reading where it should go for you to become truly wise. All your reading hits your mere opinions and falls like a stone instead of rising upwards on the wings of personal triumphs and gifts from God.

...

Paul's experience was not a one-off. Jesus has knocked human beings off their horses for two thousand years.

Skeptics cannot get off their high horse of prideful opinions.

"The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone."

This stone is the Holy Spirit. Seek it. Desire it. Stop talking and listen for it. Stop moving and wait for it. And, above all, ask for it.

ThinkOfOne, you have many questions. Today's skeptics BELIEVE that asking questions is all we have.

Your questions are a beginner's questions. Not everyone is a beginner about the Gospel.

The greatest person who ever lived was Jesus, but I can tell that you really don't think anyone even knows if he existed or what he said or what he did. And that's just not realistic or logical. Where in your experience has a nonexistent person changed any part of the world, never mind the whole world?

And you ask me what I "believe" because in your experience of the Gospel all you have is belief, or nonbelief. But the Gospel talks about something more than belief: "We are speaking about what we have seen and heard", Jesus said to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a person who thought he could read his way to knowledge about God. Jesus always showed that he was experiencing God, not reading about God. But you can't even bring yourself to acknowledge Jesus existed, never mind acknowledging what he said or did when he was alive.

I sacrificed 7 years when I was in my twenties and dedicated every moment to finding out if the "stories" in the Gospel were actually true. I only "believed" at the beginning of those 7 years, but I believed enough to deny myself the opinions that were bouncing off the top of my head. I gave a million-dollar effort, not a five-cent one, and ended up in a monastery for 5 years. And I was rewarded. And I now have absolute certitude that the stories in the Gospel are all true, and Jesus was the person he said he was.

I cannot give this certitude about the Gospel to anyone.

To "believe" in Jesus is just the first baby step. Jesus said that God wants to be known in "Spirit and Truth". And that takes many more steps in the right direction. Reading won't get you there.

God is not a book. Until you stop reading and go in search of God where you have been told to look by the Gospel (and by 2,000 years of truly wise people, not skeptics who read like you), you'll only find words on a page, and questions. The answers you will only find yourself. That's God's wisdom at work, because only his obedient children are his favorite children. Who rewards a lazy disobedient child who just won't listen?

You guys pride yourselves in being critical thinkers who don't go around believing in stuff you don't know for certain.

Yet ...

You ask each other about "The Real Meaning of the Gospel" and could care less what 2,000 years of philosophers and theologians have written about it since.

Your critical thinking skills have given to you the strange and unproductive idea to only ask each other.

You seem to never come to the honest conclusion that you and your fellow posters aren't doing a very good job with this question. And that's not very thoughtful, critically speaking.

...

The real meaning of the Gospel is simple to understand in three easy steps:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

"You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth"

“Go into the world. Go everywhere and announce God’s good news to one and all.”

...

It takes the most basic critical thinking to judge what person has been the greatest human being who ever lived, and to understand that when we know for certain, as this person did, that we have an eternal life, IT CHANGES EVERYTHING.

An Ellipsis is ALWAYS a set of three dots.

After a period at the end of a sentence, an ellipsis is part of a set of four dots, but still three dots.

If you’re gonna write all day long to pleasure yourself, learn how to write correctly.

No serious academic will read messy uneducated writing because there is ALWAYS a messy uneducated person behind it.

… understand?

Mental Masturbation is a thing.

Look it up on your Google Machine.

You boys are getting all icky together.

Nasty mfs.

Take a field trip to a monastery nearby to speak to a person who spends their day dedicated to a “spiritual” life.

Then your judgement of “spiritual” will include actual research into what it is, rather than a one-sided trip into your own head.

@180 Proof

I said he’s an atheist and told you what he said about Dark Energy, in other words, I juxtaposed his atheism alongside his view of Dark Energy as the best argument he has seen for an omnipotent God.

And you gave me a rebuttal by searching for a video that shows me he’s an atheist and doesn’t show me his comment on Dark Energy.

And you gave me talking points attacking religious people.

See, this is what happens when a person is uneducated in higher education and hasn’t taken courses such as Logic and Rhetorical Theory, which I did when getting a Philosophy degree and Graduate degree in Professional Writing.

You had to show me where he didn’t say what I said he said about Dark Energy, and actually said that it wasn’t a good argument for an omnipotent power, not what his poor philosophical mind says about God when equating God with religion and faith. The point I made was that even with his poor philosophical mind he still logically deduced that Dark Energy displays the characteristics of an omnipotent power.

I get it. You sat on the toilet one day reading a book by Dawkins and had an epiphany about God. Good for you, you circumvented getting the proper education for thinking upon God beyond what you heard from religious people, like Neil’s lopsided education in science did to him.

But his education at least gave to him a moment of logical deduction when he thought upon the mystery of our universe expanding at an ever-increasing speed through the power of an even more mysterious Dark Energy.

You think poorly, write poorly, and are simply a face in a crowd of others like you with very big mouths attached to very small minds.

And to you and them, no Google machine was used in the writing of this actual very good rebuttal.

Stop embarrassing yourselves. It’s ugly to watch.

@lll

Seems you’re a man and not a boy.

Good luck to you, too.

And ...

Grandpa Joe is a foreman and owner of a painting company, can work twice as fast as any of his workers, does all the dangerous high (60' sometimes) work, and has this little game he plays with people where he offers them $100 if they can guess his age. At Sherwin Williams today, while he was checking out a large order of paint, he grabbed a can of paint from an elderly customer he was talking to and said he would pay for it if he could guess his age. The old guy said, "45". Grandpa Joe replied, "I'll be 70 this year". The old guy then said, "You're lying".

Grandpa Joe enjoys playing this game and has gotten guesses from 40 to about 55, and never in the 60s.

Grandpa Joe is a living Dúnedain Ranger. His grandsons, who have worked on his crew, call him "The Ninja".

@180 Proof
@lll
@Fooloso4

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, an atheist, disagrees with you three boys, and calls the discovery of Dark Energy the best argument he's seen for the existence of an omnipotent God.

But, hey, you have each other and adolescent emojis for an argument against it.

I said to watch the responses, and you boys have not disappointed.

To an objective rational mind, and not an adolescent giggling mind, an omnipotent power would create an ever-increasing energy, while a finite power would create an ever-diminishing energy.

It's not even a philosophical debate, but a logical deduction.

You boys are on the wrong forum. Try like a video game or television forum. That way you won't keep embarrassing yourselves to actual persons who know how to think upon meanings beyond what makes an adolescent giggle.

I asked a simple question:

Does the scientific discovery of dark energy logically reveal an omnipotent power at work?

And so far I received a confused and sloppy hypothetical response that included dark energy may not exist and avoided the actual question about whether or not the power behind it could be logically an omnipotent power.

Why are you silly uneducated people on a philosophy forum when all you do is pull shit out of your asses and plagiarize the Internet?

Look up the word “philosophy”.

It isn’t defined as “love of bullshit”.

Sometimes Internet trolls are legitimately mentally ill.

Do not give Eugene any personal information.

Watch the responses to this:

Question: Would the recent scientific discovery of dark energy, which is the mysterious force behind our universe expanding outward from a single point at an ever-increasing speed, be more logically an energy originating from an omnipotent power or from a finite power?

Child: Why is there a universe?

Atheist Father: For no reason. The universe just showed up. Now go to sleep. Your brain’s neurotransmitters need to slow down for a time.

Theist Mother: The universe was created for you, darling, by God who loves you. It is his wonderful place for you to live and play. Go to sleep, now. You’ve had such a busy day. I love you.

@Shwah

Now read the last two replies to me from the Internet troll you are wasting time trying to have a philosophical discussion with, and you will see what a poor thinker looks like.

I have written that I spent 5 years in a monastery and “received” direct revelations from God, but he wants to phrase it as me saying that I still “receive” such revelations.

And who would claim that God doesn’t want us to display emotions but a mental midget?

Flee … he’s probably stoned and here to giggle to himself like an idiot.

@Shwah
Aristotle taught us how to think more than what to think. To spend a few weeks carefully reading his “Metaphysics”, and never proceeding until the paragraph your reading is understood, is to become a different thinker. His Prime Mover is one of many rational conclusions with “God” at the end.

You are spending a lot of time here arguing with potheads and uneducated bigmouths.

When your thinking becomes evolved, one of the benefits is to spot a wannabe thinker immediately, which will save you from wasting time on them.

I spent some time here looking for a thinker to interact with. I found only one or two.

Most posters here are Internet trolls who Google their asses off to plagiarize and sound intelligent.

Flee …

Watching materialistic atheists write about the "evidence" for the existence of God as if they're looking for this evidence on a microscope slide is exhausting.

And watching these same limited analytical minds do it on a Philosophy forum is laughable.

Aristotle wasn't "religious", and he is known as "The Philosopher". And he came to numerous well-thought-out step-by-step conclusions, after simply observing the physical universe, that the existence of an omnipotent God was a necessity. How many of today's atheists do you think have read through Aristotle's "Metaphysics" to see for themselves if his logic is sound? Well, actually, how many of today's atheists actually could read through it?

John Locke certainly wasn't religious, and some consider him to be the greatest philosopher, and he stated this:
"Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all."

I was just accused above of being illogical. Was I accused by a philosopher, or one of today's atheists with an agenda? I have a Philosophy degree, so I know what is illogical and what isn't. When I wrote awhile back on this forum that from the discovery of our universe expanding outward from a single point at an ever-increasing speed, we can logically deduce that an omnipotent power is the power behind the "dark energy" causing this expansion, and not a finite power, which could not be behind it. How is this illogical?

And I wrote many other actual logical reasonings that only one or two members of this forum had the thinking to address coherently.

Today's atheists are not philosophers, and that they have taken over a forum called "The Philosophy Forum" has been in my experience a lot like Alice falling down the rabbit hole and discovering all sorts of characters who don't make a lick of sense.

You know what is very sad about modern thinkers today hard at work on their Google Machines?

You can present to them the greatest person who ever lived, a person whose life is relevant to our calendar, whose words and deeds changed humanity for 2,000 years, who actually said that we will never die and gave everything he had to show us, and modern thinkers will not spend a moment pondering what this person actually means, but will spend weeks and weeks pondering what language this person spoke.

Here’s a question this person asked in Aramaic:

“When the Son of Man returns to the earth, will he find any faith?”

What a clever fellow this person was.

Jesus was a carpenter talking to fishermen at the Last Supper.

To look up on Google if he spoke Greek is idiotic.

@Apollodorus

I’d answer you, but you’re obviously way too smart for me.

I only got a scholastic education, and didn’t spend time on the Internet Googling my ass off.

And isn’t it weird how our calendar represents an imaginary person’s life?

And all those crosses in the sky, and becoming the greatest person who ever lived — just weird.

Thank us for the Internet, where everyone can become a genius overnight.

@Gnomon

I know you believe that you wrote a reasoned unbiased unemotional post, but you didn’t come close to one.

Your Protestant evangelical background is not where philosophical reasoning is found. Scholastic education is, which is found in Catholicism. So, your experience in religion is actually a hindrance to understanding rational theists, from Aristotle to today.

You gave an example of posters you met who used the “Bible” against you, ignoring that no one on this thread is using the Bible to counter the claim that the brain is responsible for the existence and nature of consciousness.

You spoke about truth as only a question of observables and unobservables, but not about empiricism and the place of logical empiricism in knowing what is true and false.

Everyone on this “philosophy” forum is hard at work using their Google Machine to write long posts in support of their thinking, all the while ignoring, like you have, posts that are actual philosophical arguments against the dominance of “Scientific Truth” over logical metaphysical truths.

This philosopher and theist is not taking his books and going home, but still here waiting for one of you “thinkers” to actually display the ability to think beyond the second degree of abstraction to a higher metaphysical level.

And I’m surely not “forced to grapple” with anything I have read on this forum.

It is you who was forced to ignore me and gravitate towards evangelical religion and the Bible to support your long post aided by the Google Machine.

It is not a small thing that today’s skeptics and atheists nearly always pick on Bible thumping Protestantism and very seldom on scholastic Catholicism that demands a Philosophy degree for all its priests before they study Theology.

@Mww

"philosophy ... rejects empirically grounded cognitive science ..."

You are defining "empirically grounded" as "physically grounded", aren't you?

Logical empiricism is a thing. Look it up.

A truly educated and talented philosopher, who would be only known by another one, does not "reject" the physical existence and functions of a brain, but logically knows that a physical brain is merely the "seat" for consciousness and not the power of consciousness itself.

I've posted this above, and you ignored it, didn't you? And now you are calling philosophy and philosophers pathologically stupid for not paying homage to your limited and false definition of "empirically grounded".

And then you place Metaphysics after Science, when scientists couldn't take a simple step in the scientific method without first having metaphysical logical empirical principles to draw further empirical knowledge from.

The formulation of the scientific method itself is a metaphysical reality, not a physical one.

And a truly stupid person full of only his own thoughts would see all knowledge that he doesn't understand as "pathological stupidity".

Anyway ...

Your post above contains two blatant falsehoods that I "empirically grounded" the corrections to.

What do you think the chances are that you will ignore this, too?

@Daemon

You write that you’re going to do this and not do that as if it’s something anyone cares about other than yourself.

Of course you only do and do not do what you tell yourself. That’s the point — you’re merely close-minded and opinionated, and not truly wise.

And “managing ok” is the mantra of mediocre human beings everywhere, not those of us who become much greater from taking the path least traveled and entering the narrow gate.

You are satisfied with yourself because you have not entered into the Kingdom of God within you and gone on the great quest that awaits you there.

We become as great as our hopes are, and our greatness we can “see” by the love that surrounds us.

@Daemon

You equate God with religion because your eyes cannot see the Kingdom of God within yourself and others.

And you trust only your eyes to be the measure of reality.

And then there’s the possibility that some religious person shoved a Bible up your ass when you were young and you are still trying to shit it out.

The necessity of God is a logical reality, as Aristotle took great pains to think out in his “Metaphysics”.

Have you taken great pains to read it and think out the necessity of God for yourself?

Of course not. No one on this forum has.

You work out the Google Machine.

This forum is a place of untrained intellects going to great pains to appear otherwise.

The “Soul” is the touch point for the presence of God.

We think because God thinks and with the power of God’s perfect omniscient mind.

We love because God loves and with the power of God’s perfect all-loving heart.

We exist because God exists and with the power of God’s perfect omnipresent being.

Our Soul is the center of God’s omnipotent presence in us from where all his perfect attributes spring forth.

We do not think, love, and exist because we have a physical body evolved from matter and energy.

@praxis

If your story actually happened, it would be empirical to you, not empirical to someone who wasn’t there.

You really can’t understand even simple philosophical language.

And your writing doesn’t qualify for literary criticism. But you qualify for all sorts of criticism.

@Garrett Travers

Translation: You have never heard of a physical seat of an immaterial power before, and you can’t get yourself to admit it in public.

Have another beer and get even more pissed off. That’s the measure of your worth.

@Garrett Travers

You answered my long reply in seconds.

You’re a bigmouth who acts like a drunk.

@Garrett Travers

First, you did pronounce that consciousness is solved, which was truly comical.

Second, I didn’t insult you, but told you exactly why you chose to take a study you read on the Internet and make a grandiose pronouncement about it, which it didn’t deserve.

Third, I gave to you the actual philosophical argument against neuroscience ever being able to solve what consciousness is and where it came from, and you lamely ignored it to soothe your hurt feelings.

And fourth, telling someone with a degree in scholastic Philosophy to go study philosophy is just stupid. Your pronouncement wasn’t philosophically sound, but just more materialistic bullshit from an untrained intellect.

Have you even heard of a physical “seat” for an immaterial power?

Try to answer without lying.

@praxis

I have a Graduate degree in Professional Writing.

I write screenplays, short stories, nonfiction quotes, etc.

And I was a journalist at my city’s paper for two years.

So what do you think I think of your writing?

@praxis

“empirical validity”

You do not know or understand what it means.

If I have experienced the existence of God through both direct special revelations and general revelations, then I have experienced God “empirically”, not merely theoretically. I didn’t have to look up the definition of “empirical” to know this, but you need to.

And I don’t have to empirically verify the existence of God to you for my experiences of God to be empirical. Verification of our experiences to others is not a mandatory requirement for our experiences to be empirical. Again, look it up.

And philosophical empiricism is logical empiricism, to which my principle is an elegant and profound example.

Today’s skeptics are in an intellectual cult populated by untrained intellects redefining words and concepts to fit their ignorance and inexperience.

Why don’t you test your theory about religion and do some empirical research?

Go to church this weekend to see for yourself the joy and love present, and not the blind loyalty to religious authority you ignorantly project onto religious people gathering together to celebrate the spiritual joy and love that renews them.

And, while you’re at it, if that church has a group of selfless volunteers giving of their time and monies to help those of us less fortunate, see for yourself how your intellectual ramblings don’t give to you the inspiration or power to join them.

@Garrett Travers

Pronouncing that you have certitude that consciousness has been solved because you read the proof on the Internet is only you telling everyone that your reading skills are infallible and your judgment of evidence is infallible.

And the one person who supported you even mentioned Google with excitement.

From where I sit, you’re more of a comedian than a philosopher or scientist.

Consciousness, and every great evolutionary event, was not a bottom up event, and that is why philosophers and scientists just stare at it dumbfounded.

Understanding how the brain works ends there because the brain is merely the physical “seat” for the immaterial power of consciousness, not the power itself.

Just like eyes are not the immaterial power of sight, but the physical seat for living physical beings to see.

To equate a seat of a power with the power has never been philosophically or scientifically valid.

Now that neurologists know what consciousness is, where it is, and how it is, I guess it won’t be long before they go into into a lab and create one.

Let’s see: One part living tissue, two parts electricity, and a dash of physical elements. Heat it up for a couple billion years and let it cool to 98 degrees. Yup that should do it.

And let’s just forget the most important part of Paul’s “conversion” — that he had a direct special revelation of Jesus that blinded him until a leading Christian showed up and touched his eyes giving him his sight back instantly.

Nope, Paul was just another Jew, too.

He wrote about Jesus and sacrificed the rest of his life for Jesus because he “believed” it was the right thing to do, not because he had absolute certitude that it was the right thing to do because he saw with his own eyes, and had a conversation with, the resurrected Jesus.

I mean, if we talk about Jesus actually doing anything after he died, we would be acknowledging the Resurrection, and we can’t do that.

No. Let’s talk about a psychological conversion and beliefs, not actually seeing things and hearing things and knowing things.

And let’s not ever talk about an act of God? No way, man. They’ll put us in the loony bin.

God ain’t doing anything. We do everything.

@praxis

So now you’re an expert on religion.

Religious people don’t think metaphysically when they become religious or stay in a religion the rest of their lives.

They become religious because something far more profound than their intellectual thoughts takes hold of them, i.e., the Spirit of God already within them.

You don’t even understand yourself, and how you have limited your vocabulary by excluding “spirit” and “God” when you pontificate what motivates religious people.

Your dry and rattling thoughts are leading you towards ignorance and nonsensical ramblings you make up on the fly,

And your adolescent jabs at me are because you actually think you’re the one with knowledge and experience, so you lash out at me, who is obviously pummeling your intellectual delusions.

Read your last post again with an eye on what proof you have to support any of your regurgitations of other skeptics who taught you that becoming religious is merely an intellectual decision of fearful and dumb people.

@Paine

Right to ad hominem because you can’t allow yourself to actually consider reading and pondering anything from someone else who very well may be vastly your superior on a particular subject.

Your critical thinking is inexperienced and self-centered and therefore boyish.

@Paine

Words not matching and words contradicting each other are two very different things.

I pointed out to you boys that Jesus and Paul were not differing on the Spirit being greater than the Law.

Jesus used “fulfilling” and Paul used “replacing”, or some similar term.

But both knew that strictly adhering to religious laws was not what we were supposed to be doing, because the life of Jesus gave to us the Way to God, the Truth about God (and us), and the spiritual Life we now can live.

Before Jesus, there was a holy person or two around.

After Jesus, and through the coming of the Paraclete, every person living had the spirit of God within them and could do great things.

Jesus and Paul both taught this.

And the “Acts of the Apostles” tell this story.

And we have only to look at human history and the spread of Christianity around the world, and the witness testimony of countless individual persons claiming to know and love God, either through Jesus or not, either religious or not, to see this story playing out.

Other religions can claim the power of this Spirit within its followers, but no other religion can claim to be the reason for the presence of this Spirit.

When some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God was coming, he answered them that it wasn’t “here” or “there”, but “within you”.

Jesus was not only not just another Jew.

Jesus was not just another human being.

@praxis

A True authority on a subject is not only educated in the subject but experienced in the subject.

You fancy yourself a critical thinker, as all skeptics today do first and foremost, yet you can’t understand the simple notion that someone who has only read about God could not possibly know more about him than someone who has both read about and experienced him.

How do you know the stories you here about knowing and loving God, mine and so many others throughout human history, aren’t simply True? And if they are simply True, then I am an authority and you are not, but just someone who reads?

You accuse me of being “desperate” because you are projecting yourself upon me.

Your posts are like so much sand. They have no lasting effect on another person’s life.

A tree is known by its fruit.

And I have a rich harvest of helping others, which I still reap every day.

I am the only possible authority on God and the Truth because I didn’t just study it.

And you could not possibly be.

@praxis

Taking a line by line approach to answering someone’s posts is what every skeptic does, by the way.

Skeptics have this idea in their heads that they become the best thinkers by going point by point when attempting to write a good post that can be classified as critical thinking.

It’s not, and they’re not.

The best thinker is talented and experienced, not detailed.

In your post above you say many things that are not motivated by your intelligence but by your desire to correct me.

When a moderator moves a thread because he personally does not like it, he has moved the thread for an arbitrary reason, for arbitrary means a personal whim. You make a distinction between “purely personal” and “personal whim” when there is none.

To ask me to explain what value is in a logical metaphysical principle, which scientists refuse to consider when it is a principle that gives to us an understanding for the unanswered question how the evolution on our planet happened, is to ask a stupid question, and a question I have answered numerous times already.

And you can’t possibly know that this thread was moved because of low quality posts unless you spoke to the moderator who moved it.

Talent and experience, praxis, and a great big dose of love for the Truth.

I have no feelings about or interest in what anyone here says and does towards me after reading the principle I have given to them.

That most persons here didn’t understand it and mostly looked at me instead, like you did, is exactly what I expected to happen.

But I also knew that the hearing of a Truth is worth the telling of it, no matter how it’s received off the top of a person’s head.

@praxis

This thread was getting a lot of traffic when it got moved to The Lounge.

As I have already outlined, I get on a forum and start a very popular thread because I am a different poster than the groupthink regulars, and then a Moderator steps in to stop it for purely personal reasons.

So, your judgment that this thread was at its end and I had a good run is bogus, and kinda self-serving if you have never been able to start a thread that lasted.

Some moderator arbitrarily moved this thread. There was no critical thinking involved, just panties in a bunch.

I’ve read every moderator here. They are some weird dudes who actually live in books and their intellects.

They must smell musty like books, too.