CHRISTIAN FAITH DEMANDS TO BE TREATED LIKE SOME KIND OF MAGICAL KNOWLEDGE
The Bible does not mean mere belief by faith. It means God is giving you
light and faith is trusting in him. Belief has no personal element while
faith has. It's about connecting in a relationship to someone. The
Bible says that faith is a gift from God.
Many religions teach that faith is knowledge or that
though you say you believe you should treat and think of this belief as one
hundred per cent certain for you even you it is not in the sight of correct
reason. They say that it is certain for you and only a miracle by God could make
it that persuasive for you. Where are the psychiatrists and psychologists who
can’t explain such religious faith? Nowhere. They explain it as delusion.
Wouldn’t embracing faith be an attempt to become insane?
It isn’t faith but delusion and self-deception so why is it called faith? The
promise of real faith is used as a bait for believers to work on their
transformation into insane people. The Church wants people that way to mould and
shape them into her distorted idea of perfection.
Jesus was as bad when he said we must love God totally, that is alone, and to
love ourselves and others for him which is not really loving them at all. God
commanded the same via Moses. You can’t do that if faith is just accepting what
is probable for that leaves a part that is not sure. It would then be a case of
"I love God yes but only in so far as I believe. In so far as I doubt or
disbelieve, I do not love him." Jesus specifically said that God has to be loved
with all the mind and not just with the heart or will. He did not say loving God
as much as we could do was the ideal. God does not command the impossible. So
Jesus was saying the true lover of God does not believe in the faith but knows
it is true. He was endorsing delusion. You cannot know - period.
Jesus did not refer to proofs for God and indeed the Jews had none but their
allegedly miraculous scriptures so we can’t make the excuse for him that he
thought God should be put first for he can be proved. Even if he can be, I am
still more sure I exist than God does. What if correct reason shows God exists?
I am still more sure I exist for I don't need to think it out. I merely see it.
You need total proof for the existence of God and the veracity of what he has
reportedly revealed before you can consider obeying God’s command to die for the
spread of the faith or to avoid abjuring it. This proof does not exist so it is
clear that faith is considered to be magical knowledge. That means that nobody
can lose their faith without malevolently departing from divinely given
knowledge. To accuse them of insincerity and heresy would be to condone
suspicion and sectarianism. And that accusation is being made implicitly.
Jesus claimed to be the way, truth and the life (John 14:6)- that is he gives us
the life of God and we experience God living inside us. It follows then that he
came to be truth and life for us. It follows then that once you believe in him
and experience his life-giving power you have no excuse for departing from the
faith or any part of it. The New Testament claims to be the truth and that those
who believe have the truth (2 Timothy 6:3,4). So it is forbidden for the
Christian to say, “I believe I have the truth”. The Christian must say, “I have
the truth.” There is no doubt that Christianity advocates stubborn arrogance.
Truth is naturally intolerant of error so if you have the truth then tolerating
those who differ or their views would be wrong.
And what if you think you have the truth? Unnecessary intolerance ensues.
Thinking you have the truth is no justification for intolerance. Thinking is not
good enough and what you think one day will be reversed the next day. You need
to know the truth. Thinking you have the truth is intolerant in itself because
truth or imagined truth are both intolerant of what is regarded as error. The
arrogance of the believer who pretends she knows what she is not really that
sure of is evil but becomes gross evil and puts evil off the scale when the
faith involves doctrines such as that God sends those who die divorced from him
to Hell forever and that contraception is a grave sin and so on.
Jesus claimed to be the Truth and Catholicism and Christianity claim to be the
one true faith. They say Jesus commanded we must worship God in truth, that is
by having his truth. So you are not allowed to treat say, your Catholic religion
as probably true or possibly true. You treat it as the truth and as if
everything was proven even when it is not. In other words, you obey the papal
ban on birth-control no matter how evil or absurd this ban seems to you. This is
a very arrogant, stubborn, pig-headed, irresponsible, dangerous and fanatical
example that the Roman Catholic religion is setting.
Jesus said that it was eternal life to know him and God in John 17:3. There is
no hint that he meant know to be likely to be true so it was know in the full
sense. See 1 John 5:20. Chapter 2 speaks of the early Gnostics who sinned freely
but claimed to know God and John says only a person who is obedient could say
that. The Gnostics said that magical knowledge was superior to belief so John is
not denying that there is such a thing as such knowledge but is saying that they
do not possess it.
The doctrine that faith is magically knowing proves that those Christians who
say that an unfair bias necessarily exists in those who say that Jesus never
rose or worked miracles are wrong. The sceptics are or should be biased towards
the truth but the early Church was a fruitcake cult intolerably biased towards
false doctrine and therefore unworthy of trust. And today's Christians are its
successors.
If faith is experienced as knowledge it might as well be real knowledge. If I am
sure of something 100%, whether I am right or wrong, it is like knowledge to me
and may as well be. God could implant the necessary education and proofs into
your mind like you put files on a computer program. He can make faith that way.
And yet there are excuses for why God can’t give real knowledge miraculously
like, “Oh God would rather we were not completely sure for it is more
sacrificial to sacrifice for things that you are not sure of,” and, “God would
be forcing us to believe and stay believing if it was knowledge. Others would be
forced by our knowledge to start believing just like we are forced to see that
one and one is two by mathematicians." That is as stupid as saying the
following. I have given my all in sacrifice for my baby's happiness. I know my
baby exists and loves me. Therefore it follows that the good I have done for my
baby is worthless for as I have that knowledge." The doctrine that knowing God
exists means your good works for him are devalued is an insulting one.
The idea that if we can’t believe but if we obey God we will find ourselves
receiving the gift of faith just means that we are to hypnotise ourselves by
telling ourselves that God exists and religion is true until we succeed in
believing it. People accepting the notion that the proof of the pudding is in
the eating have been lured into Scientology and all kinds of nonsense. It is
manipulative.
The Church says that faith is not just belief. It is like an experience of God.
It is a gift of God. The Church says that faith is knowledge. It is belief in
the sense that knowledge is loosely called belief. Doubters and those who
struggle to believe are told to act as if they know. Indeed, the Church would be
unable to function if the pope resigned every time he had a doubt. It is thought
that if you act as if you know you will know.
The notion that faith in the true religion of God is knowledge implies that the
members of the contrary faiths and creeds only imagine they know. A Mormon
cannot know that the non-material Catholic God is a fiction if the Catholic
knows that there is no God but that one.
The thought that you know your religion is true is the corner-stone of
fundamentalism. They see their beliefs as facts. As it is sometimes necessary to
impose facts on people - for example, a Geography Teacher who denies the
existence of Australia will be fired or forced to agree that Australia exists -
fundamentalists say their doctrines are facts and so must be imposed on society
and on civil law.
A person who thinks they know their religion is true cannot get together with
members of other religions for prayer and so on. There can be no ecumenism or
"agreeing to disagree." Agreeing to disagree suggests that the truth of the
religion they are in is not that clear or that it is understandable to mistake
it for untruth or possible untruth. Grace means it is not understandable.
You are to blame if you have not asked God for light.
The doctrine of faith being caused by grace or God's miraculous power clearly
opens the door to fundamentalism. Islamic terrorists don't go that far with
faith. They would be worse if they did. Christianity is creating an atmosphere
that can lead the Islamists to go too far.
Paul said that the grace that is faith saves for it is humble and good. We see
that it is really a pride-filled deceptive form of opposition to God and true
decency. Faith being the work of grace is a harmful doctrine.