The paradox many of us are faced with

[OnceConvinced]

We have Christians telling us that for us to be able to understand the bible, we need the holy spirit to guide us.

The problem is, this puts us in a Catch 22 situation…

For us to be able to get the holy spirit, we first have to repent and accept Jesus Christ as our savior. Only then can we get the holy spirit.

The thing is to do that we first need to believe what the bible tells us about these things. If we don’t believe, then how can we genuinely repent?

However for us to believe what the bible tells us we need to be able to understand it and we need to be able to see it’s true. We need to be able to resolve the many varied issues we see when it comes to the bible. But how can we do that if we don’t have the Holy Spirit in us?

So we are left in a situation we just can’t possibly resolve.

How do we resolve this paradox?

And before someone suggests prayer, we have the same problem there. The bible seems to us to be full of nonsense, lies and fantasies. For many of us we just don't believe the God of this bible to be real, so why would we pray to something we don't believe in? We must first believe in God to pray to him and then we must first believe the bible about what it says about God. Same vicious circle yet again.

Also please don't try to say I can "Choose to believe", because I know I can't. My mind is not that fickle. I can't choose to believe in the bible God any more than I can choose to believe there are fairies in my garden or boogyman hiding in my closet.

[dianaiad]

[Replying to post 9 by dianaiad]

You know...read the bible (or whatever is in front of you that proclaims divine origin), think about it, and then, keeping your mind open to the possibility, pray sort of like this:

God, if you are up there, it says right here that if I ask, you'll answer. So, if You are there, how about it?

Or even more basic: "God, are you there?"

What about: "God, please. I'm scared, I'm really scared because I've been trying to reach out and communicate with you, or at least feel like you're there. But nothing works. Please do anything to make it clear to me personally that you're out there. I don't care about proof, I just need something to keep me faithful to you. Anything. Anything at all"?

That almost became my regular plea on a nightly basis. And I got nothing. I suspect many fellow ex-christians had a similar experience.

I'm certain that many believe that they have. Perhaps they, indeed, have. I'm not going to insist that this hasn't happened; how would I know what someone else's experience is, or is not?

It is also true that many have received answers, or what they perceive to be answers. I have. I'm not going to decry their experiences, either.

[OnceConvinced]

The problem is, this puts us in a Catch 22 situation
For us to be able to get the holy spirit, we first have to repent and accept Jesus Christ as our savior. Only then can we get the holy spirit.

So what's the problem?

Why are you asking this? The problem is quite clearly explained in the rest of the OP.

The thing is to do that we first need to believe what the bible tells us about these things. If we don’t believe, then how can we genuinely repent?

Repentance is the starting point. A person shouldn't have to "believe" anything in the Bible to know they need to repent.

Of course a person has to believe something first before they repent. They have to believe that there is a need to repent of something and that there is a higher being that requires this repentance. They also have to believe that this higher being is the God of the bible. They also have to believe in Jesus before this repentance means anything. I mean what good is it to repent to Allah? It has to be the bible God right? I have to acknowledge Jesus, not Mohammed, not Buddah, not anybody else. So therefore I have to believe the bible's take on repentance and sin before I can repent. See the problem?

Did John the Baptist believe he had to repent to the God of the bible? Or did he think it was ok just to repent with no God involved?

I don't trust the bible. My distrust of the bible is a result of many flaws I see in the bible and I'm being told I only see those flaws because I supposedly don't understand the bible. But I'm never going to understand the bible if I don't have the Holy spirit (supposedly). Why would anyone in their right mind trust a book that in their mind appears to be so flawed? Would you say I should put trust in the Koran?

However for us to believe what the bible tells us we need to be able to understand it and we need to be able to see it’s true. We need to be able to resolve the many varied issues we see when it comes to the bible. But how can we do that if we don’t have the Holy Spirit in us?

That is a problem for non-believers trying to read the Bible. The New Testament Bible was written to the Church of believers. Believers are Christians with the Holy Spirit.

You clearly don't get the problem. How can I get the holy spirit if I don't believe it even exists? Why should I trust anything the bible says when I supposedly don't understand it?

So we are left in a situation we just can’t possibly resolve.

That's not true.

Of course it is

How do we resolve this paradox?

Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Then read the Bible again with the help of the Holy Ghost (Spirit), God's gift to believers.

Why would I even believe that it was necessary to be baptized? Because the bible says so? But I don't believe the bible! The bible just seems like too much of a flawed book to take seriously. How can I be expected to follow the instructions of a book I don't believe in and supposedly can't understand due to not having the Holy Spirit?

I just can't believe you aren't seeing the problem here. Would you blindly follow a religious writing that seemed like nonsense to you? Follow a set of instructions it says to follow when you don't believe it? If the Koran told you, you needed to perform certain acts to be able to understand it, would you do those acts? Would you do anything based on what the Koran told you?

[OnceConvinced]

Background:
I sympathize as a religious person who hated YHWH for the crimes He committed against us yet convinced a huge gang of self righteous people to accept.But as religious person I was drawn to understand reality by taking into account relation definitions, so I was not totally atheistic. And so I arrived at the place you mention here. Encouraged by a friend to find out if christianity was real I started to read the bible. The one thing I got from my first few months of reading was that YHWH's description of HIMself and the description of HIM from the other religions was so diametrically opposite that I knew someone was lying to me. Then my friend encouraged me to find out if YHWH was real and a real GOD.

It seems to me that it is other Christians who are often responsible for talking nonbelievers around. This obviously requires the non-believer to trust the believer and even believe what the Christian is telling them.

For a lot of us here though, a Christian making unsupported claims is not enough to get many of us to believe, no matter how close that person is to us or how much we trust them. For myself, I now need to see that the bible really is accurate and that it really does add up. It doesn't for me. At least not anymore.

A non-believer can become a true believer by seeking God by a commitment to short prayer once daily to whomever and with no commitment, to please show you the truth of who is God and to give you a repentant heart, followed by a short daily bible reading in the New Testament, of any length but in linear order to the end. 1 Chronicles 28:9 If you seek him, he will be found by you; seems to have held true for me even though my seeking was not for any person in particular but for proof of who GOD was.

Whomever? Praying to nothing will get you through to the right God? Out of all the thousands of them if there are indeed thousands? Or can I guarantee it won't be Satan trying to fool me? How would you know?

Why would anyone who doesn't believe in God even bother praying and what good would it be without sincerity? To believe I have to repent to some God requires me to believe in some kind of religious doctrine, which I don't, so how could I possibly do this with any sincerity? And why would I?

When I first lost my faith I cried out to God regularly, begging him for a fresh touch or a boost of faith so that I could believe again. It did no good. I got nothing at all.

Now I don't believe in any Gods and even less so the God of the bible because the bible has proved itself to me to be a flawed document written by men. Of course many Christians are telling me I don't understand it because I don't and never have had the holy spirit in me to begin with (which I kind of dispute, because every Christian I rubbed shoulders with as a Christian believed I understood scripture).

Now, when someone tells me now that I should pray to God, to me it's pretty much the equivalent of someone telling me I should pray to Santa Claus.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 3:

Invariably though they end up dredging up bible verses or bible claims to back up their arguments and we have to rely on THEIR interpretation. Once again we are left with that same problem of how do we know the interpretations are accurate?

So on goes the loop of asking 'em to support new claims presented in support of older claims, to the point where eventually we conclude, "This'n here can't no more show he speaks truth than I can stop looking at the pretty thing when she's done got nekkid".

If we end up with false Christians giving us false interpretations of the bible, we'll no better off.

I'm unaware of any Christian being able to support biblical claims beyond maybe a place. So, what then?

We conclude the Christian's got it wrong, but at least we can pin down the locations it is he's wrong about.

We could be believing lies. I would think the only sure fire way to get the truth out of the bible would be to tap into the holy spirit ourselves. But we can't do that until we first believe, but I'm not gullible enough to be taken in by some deluded person claiming to "speak the truth" and/or claiming to be a spokesperson from God.

That's just it...

Who here among us can show they speak for God?

That's the quickest way to the truth.

Then, when asked, who here among us, on this planet, can show they do?

None.

Conclusion - Those who claim to speak for God are as delusional as me when the voices set in, and I know it's the voices, only I do what they tell me, just so's they'll hush up for a spell.

One thing I get from this site is there are many Christians all who believe different things, but yet still claim to have the holy spirit guiding them. They can't all be right. Only one of them could possibly be a true Christian, the one that really is hearing from the Holy Spirit, but which one is that?

That one that can, at last, show he speaks with it, for it, and from it. Then noticin' none of 'em can.


Now here's where I kinda gotta tell on ya a bit, for it is, I've come to respect your opinions and notions a big ol' bunch. It's you who "speaks" for the Holy Spirit. It's you, OnceConvinced, who has helped -ahem- convince me of my position. For you've done the work. You've "walked the walk". And you report your findings. Your findings indicate there's no "Holy Spirit" to bother with. Your posts represent an honest person who tells it as he sees it, and don't it beat all, you ain't seen you no Holy Ghost either.

So, to consider the OP, I'll tell it, that there ain't no "Holy Spirit", for if there was, there'd be something other'n "I swear it y'all, there is" for our considerationin's.

[OnceConvinced]

I figure it's more like, oh, being willing to open one's mind and heart to possibilities.

You know...read the bible (or whatever is in front of you that proclaims divine origin), think about it, and then, keeping your mind open to the possibility, pray sort of like this:

God, if you are up there, it says right here that if I ask, you'll answer. So, if You are there, how about it?

Or even more basic: "God, are you there?"

Something like that.

I would say this would be reasonable for some, but for someone like myself who spent the first 38 years of his life believing it without question because I was indoctrinated to believe and then coming out the other side believing it to be false, I can quite safely say I have been in that situation. I have been completely open to the bible. Even when I lost my faith around 8 years ago I spent much time crying out to God and hoping desperately that he would reach me.

It didn't work. There are many people who have tried to open their mind and prayed to God but yet have not received any confirmation. Of course the other problem we're faced with is the whole problem of Satan. If he exists he is trying to work against us to stop us from believing, so we are in an even more hopeless situation.

As a Christian I believed 100% I was in a relationship with God and believed that the Holy Spirit guided me. Now according to many Christians I was never a true Christian and never had the holy spirit to begin with. If a sincere person can go for so many years completely mistaken, then how can anyone possibly trust that communicating to God is as simple as a sincere prayer?

Of course, the kicker is that one must not have already made up his mind so firmly that God doesn't exist that something of the answer might actually get through.

Yes, a gigantic kicker and a seemingly insurmountable one to many of us. Many of us have come to conclusions that the bible can't be relied upon and that the God of the bible can't possibly exist and have done so sincerely as a result of solid reasons. So for someone to tell us we need to pray or look at the bible with an open mind is probably not gonna happen, especially if we've already tried that and it didn't work for us.

[OnceConvinced]

[Replying to post 10 by Neatras]

Sounds very similar to many prayers I prayed as I started to lose my faith. So when someone tells me I should be praying such prayers I think to myself. "Yeah, been there done that. Many many times." All it did was bring me down when I got nothing.

I'm done with the whole lamentation faze and crying out to God faze of my deconversion now. I don't want to go back to that misery again.

[OnceConvinced]

Now here's where I kinda gotta tell on ya a bit, for it is, I've come to respect your opinions and notions a big ol' bunch. It's you who "speaks" for the Holy Spirit. It's you, OnceConvinced, who has helped -ahem- convince me of my position. For you've done the work. You've "walked the walk". And you report your findings. Your findings indicate there's no "Holy Spirit" to bother with. Your posts represent an honest person who tells it as he sees it, and don't it beat all, you ain't seen you no Holy Ghost either.

Thanks Joey. I do try to be as honest as I possibly can when it comes to my Christian walk. I'm glad some members here can see that I am being sincere.

[Divine Insight]

You know...read the bible (or whatever is in front of you that proclaims divine origin), think about it, and then, keeping your mind open to the possibility, pray sort of like this:

God, if you are up there, it says right here that if I ask, you'll answer. So, if You are there, how about it?

Or even more basic: "God, are you there?"

But how long should a person be expected to keep doing that before they realize that they aren't getting an answer?

The overwhelming majority of Christians themselves confess that they believe entirely on faith. (i.e. they never got a convincing answer from any imagined supreme supernatural being).

In fact, those "Christians" who do claim to have made contact with God are usually seen as being fruitcakes who are deemed to be without merit even by the vast majority of Christians. Christians typically don't believe anyone who claims to have actually had an encounter with God and claims to have specific divine knowledge. Even the Christians dismiss those people as being weirdos.

Christians ultimately know there is no God who is willing to make itself known to anyone. On the contrary most of they will argue that if God actually gave you a convincing sign he would rob you of your free will to believe as a matter of pure faith.

Christians basically demand that Christianity must be treated as MAKE BELIEVE.

That is the very basis of Christianity. This is why they can so easily claim that belief is simply a matter of choice.

It's like saying, "Oh come on, if you really wanted to believe in Santa Claus you could. Just ignore all the logical problems and pretend that he really could exist. It's that easy!"

This is precisely what Christians expect people to do with Jesus. Just ignore the fact that the whole religion is utterly stupid, including the demigod Jesus himself. And instead just pretend in spite of all the stupidity that it could be true. It's like Mr. Rogers Make Believe Neighborhood. Just pretend. You can do it!

Don't ask for it to be reasonable or make sense. Just PRETEND that it makes sense.

That's what Christianity is. It's the great pretense.

[JoeyKnothead]

Now here's where I kinda gotta tell on ya a bit, for it is, I've come to respect your opinions and notions a big ol' bunch. It's you who "speaks" for the Holy Spirit. It's you, OnceConvinced, who has helped -ahem- convince me of my position. For you've done the work. You've "walked the walk". And you report your findings. Your findings indicate there's no "Holy Spirit" to bother with. Your posts represent an honest person who tells it as he sees it, and don't it beat all, you ain't seen you no Holy Ghost either.

Thanks Joey. I do try to be as honest as I possibly can when it comes to my Christian walk. I'm glad some members here can see that I am being sincere.

Well don't that beat all. Them that think you ain't, well they'll be the first'ns I think ain't.

Credibility.

Maybe that's an argument from incredibility, but there we go


It ain't so much your honesty I find compelling, as much as that matters, but your conclusions.

[dianaiad]

You know...read the bible (or whatever is in front of you that proclaims divine origin), think about it, and then, keeping your mind open to the possibility, pray sort of like this:

God, if you are up there, it says right here that if I ask, you'll answer. So, if You are there, how about it?

Or even more basic: "God, are you there?"

But how long should a person be expected to keep doing that before they realize that they aren't getting an answer?

The overwhelming majority of Christians themselves confess that they believe entirely on faith. (i.e. they never got a convincing answer from any imagined supreme supernatural being).

Prove that, please.

Prove that 'faith" means "never getting a convincing answer from any imagined supreme supernatural being."

Prove that the "supernatural being' is 'imagined.'

Prove that "the overwhelming majority of Christians' agree with your definition that 'faith' means that they never got an answer to prayer that convinced them. (that IS what 'convincing" means, after all, something that convinces).

Prove that this same 'overwhelming majority of Christians' has never had such an answer...that is, an answer that convinced them that their beliefs are true.

In fact, those "Christians" who do claim to have made contact with God are usually seen as being fruitcakes who are deemed to be without merit even by the vast majority of Christians. Christians typically don't believe anyone who claims to have actually had an encounter with God and claims to have specific divine knowledge. Even the Christians dismiss those people as being weirdos.

So....you are setting up a false dichotomy here, in that either an answer to prayer has to be a full fledged visit from God Himself (and a call to prophethood) or there wasn't any answer at all?

So far, now, we have a fallacious generalization and a false dichotomy. What will happen next?

Christians ultimately know there is no God who is willing to make itself known to anyone.

We do, do we?

On the contrary most of they will argue that if God actually gave you a convincing sign he would rob you of your free will to believe as a matter of pure faith.

Christians basically demand that Christianity must be treated as MAKE BELIEVE.

That is the very basis of Christianity. This is why they can so easily claim that belief is simply a matter of choice.

It's like saying, "Oh come on, if you really wanted to believe in Santa Claus you could. Just ignore all the logical problems and pretend that he really could exist. It's that easy!"

This is precisely what Christians expect people to do with Jesus. Just ignore the fact that the whole religion is utterly stupid, including the demigod Jesus himself. And instead just pretend in spite of all the stupidity that it could be true. It's like Mr. Rogers Make Believe Neighborhood. Just pretend. You can do it!

Don't ask for it to be reasonable or make sense. Just PRETEND that it makes sense.

That's what Christianity is. It's the great pretense.

You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion and the expression of it.

However, you have made several very 'positive' claims here. I am challenging you to PROVE every single one of them.