Steve:
I can see that we all pretty much agree on the terms and definitions being laid out.
Makes a change, huh?
Your comments about prayer though may need to be thrashed out a bit.
Sure, I'm game, and no doubt others are as well.
Prayer is at least self-affirmation and/or a placebo; at best, communication with the Divine. To that end surely even the materialist can see some benefit in it, even if it isn't their tool of choice?
I spent some time in Thailand with a swami. He explained that the closest a human can get to bliss is in the deepest of sleep. At this point we are the closest to God. SO, it's interesting that you mention sleep.
That's interesting and I guess I would agree. However we are also material beings, spending most of our time in a mode that promotes conscious thought (wake state). It is my belief that the hypnagogic state is the bridge between each. WIth practice, a level of control can be exercised that brings these together with potentially remarkable results.
I'm not sure if I agree with you regarding our atrophying of the search of the 'inner' world.
While the search is on it is most often with the view to being taught and learning parlour tricks, rather than standing on the shoulders of others. IMHO this dilutes rather than concentrates. When the arcane becomes orthodox, "who will guard the guards"?
DDog:Could anger, pain, sin or something else cause derek to suppress the truth about God?
Anything is possible, but your question presumes suppression, conscious or unconscious. I think that's a specious starting point, unless you are going to take the tack that we were all once connected to the Divine and individually departed and suppressed the memory.
Is knowledge (including relationship, not just intellectual awareness) inate or by revelation?
When you say "Belief has to rest on knowledge" it sounds so JW like.
Only if you read it that way. To know someone in a relational sense don't we at least need to know in an intellectual sense that they at least exist? Otherwise, how do you interpret Rom.10:17 "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."? Hence I would posit that there is at least a minimal amount of knowledge needed to form a catalyst, even if that knowledge is merely (?) the direct experience of meeting an individual whom we previously were oblivious to.
I hear people say the same thing about quitting smoking.
I think that's an awful analogy. Unbelief isn't an addiction, it's a state.
So, could people exchange God's truth for a lie?
Sure they can, but that assumes they have "God's truth" in the first place. Otherwise how can they exchange it? If you are looking at this from a Christian viewpoint, as I suspect you are, how many on this site do you believe were raised with "God's truth", as opposed to "The Truth™"
To paraphrase Pilate, in your opinion, "what is [God's] truth?"
Didier:"One is better sitting than standing, lying than sitting and dead than lying."
That's a good one, though I'm afraid my Viking heritage causes me to reject it outright
Ah the old rhetorical trick of switching tables, reversing the burden of proof, turning apology into prosecution...
I think he's been hanging around me too much - LOL
A temptation faith cannot give in except by forsaking itself and becoming (circular) knowledge.
I like the sound of that, but I've not come across the phrase "temptation faith". Would you mind elaborating, please?
Smuggling him [Paul] from the mystical to the rationalistic (although potentially gullible) side is not quite fair I'm afraid.
Hehehe. So do you see a potential for Paul to be talking about gnosis enlightenment leading to faith? Intangible yet confirmatory?
