Ah. I see what you did there. 
Lets eat Grandma.
Yes, childlike trust in God. Not child-like belief he exists. I have the former but denounce the latter. Your reference to the disciples is meaningless to me. If I saw a man walking on water and still the weather I’d have more intellectual faith. It actually takes a good amount of intellectual faith and “child-like belief” to accept the historicity of those stories. They aren’t a point to argue * from*, they are a point to argue for.
A few points:
Evidence of something and proof for it are very different things. In the lack of proof, there is room for doubt. Scientists don’t even presume to fully understand the nature of gravity or why it happens despite all that evidence. Science never settles an issue definitively.
Childlike trust in God yes, Absolute certainty in the factuality of my beliefs is not to be had.
Am I supposed to believe God exists like a child believes Santa Claus is real? Surely you don’t mean this.
Maggie’s story was strong and powerful and I don’t doubt it was real for her but it can easily
be deconstructed.
My background in science tells me the mere fact that it’s based upon human testimony and interpretation of a sensual experience decades ago during a traumatic period in a person’s life that can’t replicated or externally corroborated tells me it’s a low form of evidence. Our memories are not nearly as certain as we would like to think they are. We often read things back into our experiences. We have no way of knowing in most cases.
In terms of proving something, personal experience is the weakest form of evidence there is. I’m sure Allah has appeared to millions of people convinced he was real as have ghosts, big foot, ufos and all manner of strange phenomenon. Think of suicide cults and all sorts snake handlers and so on. People truly can believe just about anything and be convinced it’s true. One only need only pit mutually exclusive religious testimony against itself to cast doubt on it and consider it part of the human imagination.
Also, several of her five highly improbably things occurring are also solved by the one thing (the nurse hit three of them from what I remember). The other two were solved by her spmtwneously deciding to drove down a different road. Not to mention for every story like hers we might find 100 that ends with a person starving under a bridge homeless.
I don’t doubt the validity of her experience. But I don’t proclaim it as it as Gospel and irrefutable proof God exists.
I never commented on them, as far as recall, because it’s not my business to critique other people’s call stories or personal experiences with God. I will comment, however, if you advocate it as public proof of God’s existence. You have mentioned that conversion story here so many times it’s almost as if you think it single-handed settled the issue of whether God exists or not for all people for all time. If you think that sort of evidence is supposed to render all doubt impossible, our science training has been very different.
I thought it was an evil generation that requires a sign? And calling them tricks was a sign of respect for God’s Providence. I don’t expect him to stop what he’s doing and come down here and fix my doubts. He’s not a cosmic vending machine that I can demand things from or a dog that will give me paw at my command. We are the dog.
Vinnie
Punctuation saves lives!
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It’s about a Father-child relationship. Not ‘signs’, proof, demanded by unbelievers. What are the rewards in the citation? Nothing?
Not so easy for some of us when we watch kids die of cancer or millions of them die because they just don’t have access to clean drinking water. Or when a tsunami comes and kills a couple hundred thousand people and so on. Proof of a benevolent Father looking over us is very difficult to have absolute intellectual faith in. What Father let’s their child die of cancer if they can stop it? What father doesn’t stop a hurricane from killing his children if he can stop it? Your whole Father-Child argument only goes so far for many of us.
But again, I am genuinely happy for you that you have a completely doubt free faith. I am also happy that Jesus had doubts and fears. Gives courage and hope to a wretch like me 
Sure, other’s experiences are not compelling to unbelievers, I get that. They can always express their faith in statistical outliers. But the meaning infused in the otherwise disjoint events is beyond probabilities. How about Rich Stearns. Have you seen that sequence?
That you appear not to rejoice in it maybe tells us something.
I don’t agree with you that we can prove the event was beyond probability.
Vinnie,. Maggie here. I was educated as a research scientist and demanded empirical evidence before I would believe anything, 52 years ago. However, faith is certain knowledge gained from experience. God proved himself to be omnipotent, loving, personally caring and compassionate to everyone to wants a relationship with him in 1969, but I still had many times when doubt engulfed me for years. Now I no longer have any doubt. He IS. Nothing is impossible to him, but not all things that we want are best; God knows best. Sometimes even he is restrained, however. God cannot work where we refuse to cooperate. For example, if he puts it in our heart and mind 20 times to call a certain person, but we never obey the prompting, we may miss an opportunity God tried to set up for us. He wants us to learn to be sensitive and obedient To his “still small voice”, without having to spell everything out in capital letters. God is observable everywhere in nature. He said his name is Y. (YAH) He said he stamped his name throughout creation. He did. YAH (Y) is visible absolutely everywhere; God signed all his handiwork. Look for Y between your fingers, veins, tree branches, river tributaries, every bone attachment, leaf attachment etc. If God made it it is signed with a Y. God does not have to do anything more to prove himself. The next step is up to us, to tell him we want to know him PERSONALLY; to have a personal relationship with him. He will not force himself on anyone, and he has no reason to do anything more than he has already done, to prove he is. However, his love is immense; he will respond if you accept the invitation he has already given to call out to him.
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Um, where did I say that it could be proven. I have been saying the exact opposite. Your failure to follow means this conversation has reached its limit, as far as I’m concerned.
Shalom, again.
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If you can’t prove it, there is room for doubt.
You said you have no doubts at all. To me that means you are absolutely certain. Your words.
You believe, put your trust in and have absolute certainty about all kinds of things that you do not doubt and have not personally proven. If you cannot think of any, I can point out everyday examples to you.
Cause and effect is one. Thanks Hume. But go ahead and make the list. My worldview and behavior takes God’s existence for granted. His light is how I see the world. Still doesn’t mean there isn’t any doubt there for me or that it isn’t natural. And you would be surprised what I put absolutely trust in or don’t. But I’d be happy to compare evidence for different beliefs of my own.
Vinnie
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If you are your Father’s child, why wouldn’t you want to see his activity in your life, even yearn for it?
How about a chair you haven’t sat in before? How did you know it wouldn’t collapse under you the first time you sat in it? Did you prove it before you put your butt absolute faith in it? Did you have any doubt?
Are we taking about the existence of the chair or the presumption that it works?
I never said you need absolute proof to believe anything. Cause and effect isn’t a certainty but we afford it an extremely high level of belief. No one would dispute it. Just as I am as certain as I can be that the chair I am sitting in exists. Maybe I am a brain in a vat but I’ve no time for that. I have to live. William James and the Will to Believe.
And trust in the efficacy of the chair presumes it exists. You analogy is bad. You are trying to show that proof is not needed to be confident in a belief. I don’t disagree with that. Being confident in a belief and living by it does not require living completely doubt free in my view.
I’m with you on your first statement. His degree of separation from Holy God with whom He had complete fellowship from infinity past as He took on the accumulated sin/sins of all humankind is beyond our comprehension. No words for it. He (“The Lamb of God Slain from the foundation of the world”) knew what was coming.
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No, I am not. I am simply showing that you can believe true things confidently without needing scientific proof. That is not the same thing.
Exactly. Thank you.
Yes he knew what was likely, but He apparently did not always think it was a forgone conclusion or absolutely necessary. He prayed to the Father that it would not happen. That is a fact of scripture. The question is why? To be sure it says Jesus was sorrowful and disturbed. And He asked quite urgently that the disciples to stay up and pray with Him, but they did not. Then after praying the same thing 3 times and the disciples falling asleep all 3 times, Jesus became resolved. What is this all about?
- Many like Vinnie say that Jesus just didn’t wanna die and suffer for the sake of all mankind. Vinnie even thinks sorrowful means scared and full of doubt. But then why would his disciples not keeping awake to pray change His mind? Seems to me that this pathetic display would make Him more reluctant sacrifice so much for them.
- Others like Dale throw out the doctrine of the Trinity to say that Jesus and Father can and would be separated and it was this separation which Jesus couldn’t handle. Though the failure of His disciples to pray with Him wouldn’t change His mind at all about that.
- My suggestion is that Jesus wasn’t convinced that dying on the cross was the only way or the best way of saving mankind. There was so much more which He could teach us. But then maybe after seeing that even His disciples couldn’t do something so simple as staying up with Him to pray, He gave up on this idea. Perhaps He understood them well enough to know His death and resurrection would change them more completely – His teaching them didn’t seem to be working.
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I would say he momentarily had doubts and anxiety. The accounts then show him resolved to do God’s will. Even without supernatural knowledge he could see the end of the road the way things had gone. I personally don’t know for certain that Jesus knew he was dying for the sins of all mankind beforehand. Did he know this at 12 in the temple? This is an assumption based off of ascribing a high level of historical reliability to Mark. Smells of post-easter theology to me. The only hint of that in Mark is one verse about being a ransom. That He was going to die may have been a surprise to Him towards the end of His ministry for all I know. The beauty of the incarnation is that we believe God became man somehow. God chose to lower himself and show us the way. God then allowed his Son to die on the cross. I believe God knew the plan all along but the fully human Jesus? Not convinced. I don’t think Jesus was omniscient or omnipotent and neither do the Gospel writers (he couldn’t perform miracles due to a lack of faith, he didn’t know the day or hour nor who even touched his robe at one point).
Maybe God through an angel warned Jesus what was going to happen prompting Gethsemane. One speculation is as good as another. I believe Jesus walked around Galilee preaching the kingdom of God, not telling people he would die for their sins. We probably learn that after the resurrection.
Vinnie
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