Dear kosta (I am being sincere), I don't expect you to believe me, why should you? You don't even know me except for our posting history going back, what, a year? But, why would I lie about something like this? I'm not interested at all in winning an argument, if I was, I could come up with much more fantastical stories than this. I have a great imagination!
I am sure you have considered a lot of things to have the knowledge you have. I admire your capacity for knowledge, but I am saddened that I can't see wisdom in what you say. You have an understanding of what you've experienced, but it is flavored by pessimism and a certain telling despair.
I am trying to ask you to step out in faith, maybe once again, and believe Jesus for who he says he is. Between you and God - don't admit it to anybody you're doing it - just ask him to show you the truth, and mean it, cuz he knows ;o) I think there are enough people praying for you that you WILL find what you are looking for. I know God is true because he answered that request for me. He wants faith if you come to him and I know it seems impossible to do. All I ask is for you to try.
You have an understanding of what you've experienced, but it is flavored by pessimism and a certain telling despair.
Boatbums, I am not filled with despair and there is no pessimism in me. I don't think God owes me anything. I have no resentment towards the world or God. I do dislike some thing s I see as man-made attributes (anthropomorphisms) of God, but that's another story.
I simply realized and admitted that I don't know what this is all about or why. There are horrible things in the word and then there are incredibly wonderful things. There is beauty and there is ugliness, and there is "feel good" and "feel bad."
To a large extent we are the ones who are repsonsible for both the feel good and the feel bad, as if nature itself doesn't provide enough of her share.
I appreciate the concern and the prayers but I assure you that I am not angry, pessimistic or sad. I have nothing personally against the people of faith, or God.
All I do is ask question of those who make claims. If I were to say that I can see you, I am sure you would wonder how. If I told you I have special eyes and ears, would you believe me? Of course not!
I was a practicing Christian because I never asked myself that crucial question: "How do I know that?" Once I did I realized that it was all my imagination. I am not saying it is yours, all I am saying is that I failed where everyone else failed, namely to answer the simple question without offering faith as fact.
Just as you can't, on my word, accept that I have special eyes with which I can see you, I can't accept it either because it is now how the real world is.
Some faiths, such as the Eastern Orthodox faith I was raised in, which is basically an Eastern version of the Catholic Faith, or the Roman Catholic Faith, profess that dead people can hear our prayers.
The Protestants don't believe it. They say they are dead, and we say they are alive and therefore can spiritually hear us. You see, what I am doing is not much different than what believers do amongst each other: they reject each others' beliefs as unfounded.
I may resort to scientific proof, but believers resort to Biblical proof; the method is the same. I look for objective evidence and so do Bible believers. The Bible is an objective fact—it's a ook! That doesn't mean that ist words are objecotbvely true, but they do objectively exist.
The Catholic/Orthodox Church says what the whole truth known to her has been known from the start, and not all of it contained in the Bible but in the Holy Tradition (in the liturgical life of the Church).
To which the Evangelicals simply say "only the Bible is the authority," hence sola scriptura, even tough there is no sola scripturea mentioned by name or as a concept anywhere in the Bible!
As regards my "mental state" please do not practice psychoanalysis, because there is nothing to analyze. I realize that most of the people who react to my questions do so because they are actually concerned for my soul, and I am very appreciative of that. But I am not doing this for sympathy or for attention. I am simply asking questions I couldn't answer myself, out of curiosity to see if someone might be able to answer them.
Consider my questions not an attack on your faith but an inquiry into what makes it true, and don't be offended if I don't agree. :)