Since I don't know them or understand their time, I can't say why they missed it. The only thing that I can think of is that it is a completely different style of thinking.

They treated their wives in a way that we would find to be deplorible, but I'll bet that many of them really did love their wives and their wives loved them. They just had a completely different way of thinking and a completely different outlook on life. So our modern physcology that we have learned can't accurately be applied to their thinking back then.

Cause and effect. Everything has a cause, we choose to believe. But if you follow this, it will go back on forever in an infinate chain, where everything has a defined cause and everything has a defined effect. Meaning that everything is predefined, nothing can just happen randomly without a cause. So that would imply that we cannot truely make our own decisions. All of our choices will be completely dictated by past events that and infinate minute conditions. That principle I can't accept, because it has two outcomes.

Outcome 1) I'm correct that for not accepting complete cause and effect and thought on my own to make my own decission to find truth,

or

Outcome 2) I'm incorrect and that cause and effect dictates everything, and so my believing what is not true is not my fault since it was predetermined by the past causes.

So I feel that I have to believe that cause and effect can not be completely true and there have to be instances where there is no cause, but there is an effect. That is caused by our free choice and free thought. We can act and make an effect with no cause other than our free will (which is not dictated by previous causes, if we don't want it to be).

Now I can not accept that we just somehow came to have this free will/choice/thought without having something grant it to us, as seeing that there is no other living things that shows to share this gift with us. So I believe that there must be a God that granted this to us.

I believe that he is the cause that wasn't caused before hand, he is the beginning of the cause and effect chain, allowing it to make sence, and he is able to adjust things by adding new "effects" (like stearing evolution, or the wierdness of Quantum Mechanics, or the spark that began the Big Bang).

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

...but again, they never came to the conclusion that Christianity was somehow all-inclusive. So, presuming that you're starting from a standpoint of appreciating the work that those authors produced (in the modern, heavily edited and translated form that you have it), where did you come up with the notion that Christianity was all-inclusive?

You're making an evaluation of what is true based on what you want to be true (because you "can't accept" the alternative). Does that sound like a logical argument to you?

Again, you believe this because you want to believe it, because you're frightened of the alternative. Does that sound like the basis of a logical argument to you?

And yet God, who must surely be the most complex and powerful entity in existence, is allowed to exist without having had a cause? Where did he come from?

That came from my interpretation of their writings. I try to see how they would see things and work backwards to try to find what really was (I know that this method won't work well, since I can't understand their thinking and social behaviors, but it is the best I can do and so it's what I got to work with). Than from that I came up with the notion that God was all-inclusive.

No, I'm making an evaluation of what I believe to be true, I never had said that it is true, and never will. I "can't accept" the alternative because it makes far less sence and does not adequetly desribe the world as we see it. Quantum Mechanics (so far to the best of our knowledge), doesn't work on cause and effect (though we will likely find that it does). Infinite chains don't make logical sense. So, without proof for either A or B, B is far more illogical than A, so I go with A. Since in the scientific method, hypothsises with a greater scope and that are simpler are considered better hypothsises.

Not frightened, it is illogical because it does not match up with what the world is showing us.

Yes, he is the cause without a cause. That is the way that the cause and effect chain can have a beginning and not run forever. A cause and effect chain, must always be causing and effecting (even if it is only a little), it can not stop and must always be moving and active. On the otherhand, God, who has no cause and can create an effect at will, would be able to be dormit, making it far more plausible for him to be eternal rather than a cause and effect chain.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Sure: floods, hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, fires, pestilence, etc.

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Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."

Is there anything you can point to, specifically, which gave you this impression? Is there a reason you omit all of the blatant references to exclusivity?

Lastly, is there a reason that you're ignoring the fact that the text itself was produced, in its current state, by an organization which had no intention of it being subject to individual interpretations (nor, certainly, any sort of all-inclusive philosophy)?

Quantum Mechanics isn't well enough understood to make a judgment by. Moroever, you haven't explained why and infinite chain of causation doesn't make sense, or how a thing can come to be without a cause. You're also constructing a fallacy with your, "If not A, then B" approach. Why does the rejection of an infinite chain of causation necessarily require a god? Or, for that matter, a specifically Christian god.

I don't see how that's the case. The world shows us cause and effect, and you've somehow arrived at the conclusion that A) Cause and effect cannot regress infinitely, and B) Christianity is the only other explanation. That seems like an enormous leap of logic.

What evidence have you that anything has ever been produced without a cause? You claim that you base this on "what the world shows us." What have you seen to deduce this from?

My kitchen must have moods too. Perhaps I'll deify it.

Society and culture

I would disagree with your interpretation of the organization which produced it. There are many different bodies of the church (different denominations), most of which have different interpretations, so there is not one interpretation that is trying to be distilled on us. Either way, their reason for it is not important. If it is up to individual interpretation than it cannot minipulate. If it is designed not for individual interpretation, but individual interpretation is done anyway, it still can not minipulate. So either way, I cover myself by thinking for myself.

Which is why I put in the little disclaimer.

That is based on the limits in believing that absolutely everything must follow cause and effect. The process of elimination is not a fallacy so long as you have all options in front of you. It only becomes a fallacy when you say, "if not A, than B" when there is a "C" that you ignore. Either the chain of causation is infinite, or it is finite, no other options, so I know there is no "C" so I can safely believe in process of elimination.

It doesn't require a "christian God," but it requires something greater than, something above cause and effect that is capible of minipulating cause and effect without being effected by it, if you want to call this "God" or "nature" or whatever, that is up to you. But because it is not effected by causality, it would have to have free will, which is why I call it a God. I believe it was this "God" that effected the christians and was the actual topic of the bible.

No, my jump to Christianity is independent from the causality part. Causality was part A and christianity was more like part C. You can't say that I "leaped" ti christianity, because you haven't yet asked me why christianity and not some other religion.

From what we know, we can't find a cause for the Big Bang, or many events in Quantum Mechanic. Now these can be argued that we just haven't found them yet, that there are causes and we will find them eventually. And eventually we will find WMDs in Iraq if we keep looking and no one ever questions them not really being there.

We also have our free will. Meaning that if you looked at and examined every last detail of the universe, every possible "cause" and determined all of it's "effects" than asked me to say either "one" or "two," you could not garentee that you could predict correctly, you can only give which is more likely. If cause and effect is perfect, than with all the information, one could know everything with no doubt about the outcome in any situation.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

What part of John 14:6 is difficult to understand?

What part of John 14:6 has anything to do with the quoted post?

John 14:6 is nothing more than a definition of Christianity - a reverence for Christ (Jesus).

Both the quoted descriptions of Christians are capable of doing both and adhering to John 14:6.

By the way - on another thread you mentioned being Catholic - don't you pray through Mary to Jesus and not pray directly to Jesus? I'm not sure Catholics adhere to John 14:6...(not really, j/k)

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"No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities."

...Christian Nestell Bovee

I think that says that there is only one God and that's pretty much that.

Since Saints are known to be close to God, we occasionally ask them to pray for us and intervene. Sort of like asking a committee member for a favor from the chairman.