Is the Christian God's love unconditional?

[Woolmark]

Ok, some questions which have been playing on my mind, I am genuinely interested.

Surely his love is on the condition that you are a) a Christian and b) follow his rules?

Also, if God loves everyone as much as he does, why can't he save everyone by simply appearing to them? If I could save my children by doing this then I would in an instant, rather than turning up at the end and destroying the ones who weren't Christian.

Do you actually know what empiricism even means, Capsium? Or for that matter, what John Locke actually meant?

I said earlier on in this thread that I did not believe in empiricism. There are flaws. I could ask you the same question... Anybody could about something that anybody else has said.

Er, Niminy

Her argument in her post to me was that Christianity & faith makes people happy and changes their lives.

I showed that while that may very well be true, it says nothing about whether that faith is based on anything real.

I was very clear, my analogy was simple. My point was made. Sorry it bypassed you, but it's hard to know how to simplify it further.

Yes, it can be proven that Christianity is not true.

The proof game is one with no winners

Oh, really?

Person A: I have an enormous amount of evidence that the Earth orbits the sun. Here's the evidence.......

Person B: It doesn't orbit the sun. It orbits Jupiter. I don't have "proof", I just know it does.

No one wins? Equal positions?

Proof matters usually.

Maybe we are talking at cross purposes but I don't understand the point you're making. I don't think I reject the idea of god because of and in favour of science, I just don't see any proof of there being a god that is interested in us, although science has now explained much of the phenomenon that people once attributed to the supernatural. Clearly there are many Christian scientists so it can't be a case of mutual exclusion, which is fascinating to me.

If atheism was a religion, it would be a religion that makes no supernatural claims of an afterlife or anything else. It also has all the weight of evidence on it's side so doesn't require faith to join. A pretty mundane religion by Christianity's standards. Plus there is only one tenet. 'There is no evidence for an all-powerful, supernatural being'.

Also you could be a follower without ever even having thought about it. My dad, for example, is a passive atheist. He doesn't talk or think about it, he just doesn't see any reason to even wonder about it because it seems so obvious there is no interested god, whereas I was a Christian for most of my life so I enjoy trying to understand the way beliefs can be held in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Capsium, do you really put all your faith in god? Do you ever visit your doctor? Or look when crossing the road?

Sorry, Hettie, but you can't provide positive proof of things. That is elementary philosophy of science. Evidence and proof are not the same thing. And there is evidence that Christianity is true. Whether when you weigh up that evidence you conclude that for you it is not sufficient is one thing, but it is not the same as saying that there is no evidence.

I understood your analogy. I thought it was tendentious.

head God can work through people. He has given us our minds. I don't, as it happens, go to the doctor very often in all honesty (6 years ago last visit) because not much has worried me. I don't tell many people that - because it is very counter cultural. However because God works through people my Faith does not prohibit me going to the doctors, not at all.

Similarly I look (usually anyway) when I cross the road.

I think we are taking at cross purposes a lot of the time head much is lost in translation, so to speak. Your definition of faith, belief and the supernatural seems to differ from mine somewhat. There are supernatural things in science, since the supernatural is only that which does not conform to the known laws of nature. Much is unknown, there is much left to discover.

There have been interesting arguments recently that if you look at what faith does for people, that is, if you look sociologically and anthropologically at faith at the kinds of benefits it provides for people, the way it functions in society, and so son then atheism does in some ways resemble a religion.

Atheists often tend to overvalue their own investments in rationality and ignore their own irrational moments such as shouting at the car when it won't start. And you might see the current idea that science can tell us everything we need to know a kind of faith one that ignores the shortcomings and limitations of science.

Gods gives us thoughts and feelings.
I have lost count of the number of times I have chosen the way of my feelings, rather than rely on my own insight.
And things have turned out to be very blessed for me. Because I listened to my thoughts and feelings on something that was screaming at me to go another way if I had relied on what appeared to be the right way to go.
I take a leap of faith and go the other way.

don't you ever wonder why we do?

That's largely why I'm here, because I used too and I'm trying to work out why. But what I'll also say is that many people believe very strongly in some very weird things that they claim make their life much much better, and I don't doubt that. I can see how beliefs make people feel good but that isn't evidence either way unless you are prepared to believe there is good evidence for all the beliefs people have ever held. I don't doubt the sincerity of the beliefs but can't understand the way they are held in the face of reality.

I do wonder if my faith would have lasted so long had I had the opportunity to try and defend my beliefs in the same manner as believers do here, but then believers here don't seem to even wobble which again makes the whole belief thing highly interesting.

reality is highly flawed.
I am constantly aghast at what humans dont know and what they change their minds over.
And how flawed humans are.

Great posts Italian

Reading and enjoying....a bit busy but will try to contribute more over next couple of days.

I think it is just so difficult to explain or represent what faith actually does and how it is real in an individual's life, to someone without faith, because there is a great leap of understanding - some would say cognitive dissonance, but I'd argue faith and reason can go more closely together than that - from being in an atheist position to understanding why we have faith.

My dad said this. He was a strident atheist for a good portion of his life (until his thirties), and said he always looked at people of faith as a bit odd as he could not reconcile how people could believe in something so unproveable and still claim to exercise any kind of reasonable faculty.

Until he met with God, that is It turned his world and his thinking upside down. It didn't suddenly make him into an unthinking brainwashed puppet. If anything it made him think even more deeply.

Having faith in God, for me, doesn't mean life is all roses and I am immune from all suffering (those who know me will know that's blatantly untrue in my life) but means there is an extra dimension of hope, of being who I was meant to be, of utter freedom and knowledge of being so absolutely loved. I'm loved completely by my husband and children but the love of God is even more mind blowing, even stronger and deeper if that were possible. It carries me through the worst of storms and sustains me in the tedium of the every day. You could say this sounds like it's a mere crutch, a comfort I have concocted to make me feel better, but the power of it goes far far beyond that, and for a crutch of comfort it's a very uncomfortable and scary place to be sometimes especially on mumsnet

All the arguments in the world, all the presentations of evidence for Jesus and astounding number of NT fragments etc are not going to convince those who feel they need absolute proof. The only thing that can do that is encountering God, which makes all the difference, and being open to the possibility that could happen.

Belief doesn't equal certainty.

Wobbles are part of the life of faith. Doubt and faith are often inextricable (in fact, you can't doubt something you don't believe in.)

Oh head I do have wobbles frequently, and am suspicious of those who say they never do. Wobbles help me to think more clearly and more deeply and come to an even stronger faith, and without them it would all be a bit bland and unthinking. Doubt and faith are like two sides of a coin, and one needs the other, I think, to have integrity.

Cross post niminy

My son became a Christian a few years ago.
He came to me one day a bit upset. He had been having a bit of a wobble. When I told him that that was perfectly natural, he chastised me for never having told him that, as he had been quite worried.

It's often thought, quite wrongly, that empiricism is a philosophy that shows that we can discover through the experimental method what exists, and that only what can be empirically evidenced can exist

I don't know anyone who thinks that...that only what can be empirically evidenced can exist. That doesn't make any sense

Empiricism is a theory about how knowledge comes to us - it says nothing about what does and doesn't exist, just how we know.

Just because our knowledge is based on experience, and experience is subjective it is a logical fallacy to conclude that therefore all knowledge is subjective.

You are forgetting that there are two components to "experience". The act of experiencing and the thing that's being experienced.

I am typing on my laptop. I am experiencing that & my experience is subjective. The laptop itself is not subjective - it's an objective thing. It's existence does not, in any way, rely on my subjective experience of it. It's either there as a thing, or it is not.

Descartes was right in that it's impossible to truly know with 100% certainty that the laptop (or anything else) is truly there - I could be imagining/dreaming it.

Therefore, empiricism - which is all about evidence & testing our knowledge against natural world observations & data - is the only reliable method we have that at least attempts to sort out for us the subjective from the objective.

It certainly does not lead to the "problem of solipsism" - although it depends what you mean by that.

That we can only be sure that we're thinking and nothing else? That's true, as I said above.

That my mind is the only mind there is? That might be true, but empiricism doesn't inevitably lead to that. Not sure why you think it does.

I have to go out now.

The problem with empiricism is that there is no way of knowing that the laptop does exist no way of knowing that it is any more than your sense impressions. There is no way of knowing that your sense impressions are truly caused by anything in the external world, or indeed that the external world is anything more than my sense impressions it really could all be in my head. That is why solipsism is the problem with empiricism, and it is a major problem that philosophers are still thinking about.

Empiricism as a philosophy is not about evidence and testing, it's about trying to determine the grounds of knowledge.

I can remember having wobbles as a Christian too. And learning from others that the way to deal with it was to 'have peace' about it. I remember asking an older Christian about the OT shenanigans and that was her response, so I adopted that as a way of 'not thinking', at least that's how I think I did it, I just don't know! It just seems such a dodgy way of reasoning. 'I don't understand this, this passage seems to suggest that god is really horrible so I must have it wrong and will 'have peace' about it'. Would you do that anywhere else in your life? You see in the paper that your husband has a string of child murder convictions from before you were married but you chose to 'have peace' about it?

There is a problem with empiricism in that it denies the possibility of any type of innate knowledge..

HeadinHands I think that is bad advice. I have found that critical thinking about my faith exploring the difficult bits of the Bible for example has been vital for me in strengthening my faith.

On the other hand I have found Keats's famous definition of negative capability "capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable searching after fact and reason" has also been really valuable, in learning to rest in difficulty and contradiction. This phrase, by the way, was quoted many times by the noted atheist Philip Pullman in the His Dark Materials trilogy -- lest you think that this is Christian special pleading!

I have to admit, I'm not au fait with words like solipsism and empiricism. If you reject empiricism as dodge, how do you then keep hold of a faith in Christianity? I mean if you got a house brick and asked 1000 people if they thought it was real, how many would say 'no'. So are you saying no one should believe anything any of their senses tell them? I don't understand

I reckon, and I might be wrong, but the way you think critically inside Christianity is different to the way you think critically about other religions and other stuff in general?

Not finished catching up yet so will post some more later.

Italiangreyhound you said I think people who come on here and debate regularly are so brave, because it can feel risky.What are people who have no faith risking?

You are right and we are not risking in the personal sense that you mean. I think of it as more like a political debate in front of an audience. I don't expect to convert you and I don't really want to break your faith - not if it would upset you. Which I can see it might if you've had it a long time.

What I want in the long run is for people to read threads like this and say "It's not true/safe/desirable to be religious so I don't think there should be compulsory worship, bishops with extra votes, exemptions from laws for the religious and so on" and I want people to base decisions on what they know rather than what they guess or what some guy tells them in church.

If I don't make the effort I am risking ending up living in a true theocracy with prison sentences for not believing in the nativity and beating children for not praying enough. Think Ireland and Saudi for examples of how bad it can go.

head I don't reject the empirical method completely. There is consensus in what our senses tell us however perceptions also vary. If you read,for example, anything about the psychology of eyesight, you'll come across some very interesting material.

Also if you are interested in language, it's definition and the human capacity for it, Daniel Everett's study of the Piraha people is mind boggling.

Studies which show a parent who has experienced the traumas of war passing an altered gene expression and brain physiology (which can alter perception) down to their children and children's children is also very interesting when considering John Locke's ideas of empiricism.

HiH -- the point about empiricism is that you can only believe what your senses tell you. You can't know in any other way that the brick exists, and you can't say that the brick has any kind of objective existence independent of your sense impressions.

Philosophy operates on a conceptual level -- of course we all have to operate as if the brick exists. But there's no proof that it does and the only evidence, empirically speaking, that it exists is the evidence of our senses. Which, as Descartes showed, cannot be shown to be true.