Brand-new, and this is what I believe...

[Shawna]

I know that God exists.
I know that He is a person, who actually loves and is interested in me... not just an impersonal oversoul of some sort, not just The Force.
I know that God loves all of us.
I know that God talks to me.
I know that God is Love.
I know that we have been put on earth to learn how to love.
I know that God wants us to be part of a community of believers.
I know that sometimes we think we're doing the right thing, and we really aren't.
I know that Jesus shows us the character of God, and reconciles us to God, and makes us free.
I know that Jesus wasn't Just a Good Teacher.
I know that God loves colors, and song, and joy and laughter and dancing.
I know that there is more to this existence than the world that we see around us. It is as though we are waterskaters living on the surface of a pond; there is so much more to the pond that we cannot see. This analogy isn't quite right, though, because I know we exist also into the depths, although we usually sense only the surface.
I know that the Lamb's War is going on at this very moment, and has been for thousands of years, maybe longer... but I don't know how long.
I know that the devil exists, and that he whispers at us.
I know that God doesn't want us to be afraid.
I know that taking the oath of fealty will change your life forever... it has changed mine.
I know that life in His service is an adventure.
I know that our spiritual growth depends on learning to Care more and more, learning to Love God and our fellow travelers more and more, and that each time our heart breaks while we are learning, God will mend it and make it bigger.
I know that you don't have to know Jesus' name in order to be saved by Him.
I know that God answers prayers.
I know that God intervenes in the world.
I know that a lot of people who say they believe in God, who say they are Christians, don't trust God as much as they trust their own strength and creaturely resources.
I know that being faithful involves being willing to attempt things that we know are impossible, if the Lord calls us to do it.
I know that I would rather be me today, than one of those Wise Men then. To only be privileged to see the child (only still just a dream of hope), and to never see the work completed.... that must have been hard. To go to the mountaintop, and to see the vision of the world to come that you will not be part of....... but, I suppose, better to have been to the mountaintop than never to have seen the hope at all.
I know that sometimes God's love pours down like stars.

That is what I know.  I have been reading this forum for a couple days now, and I am intrigued.  We shall see how things go.

[mr]

I'm new also Shawna.  I also visited your website.  It's REALLY good.   

[leese]

Hello Shawna and Welcome! 

[Sunnysweets]

Welcome to IGI Shawna!   

[catwixen]

Hello Shawna...welcome to the forum. 

[Fit2BThaied]

Welcome, and bless you.

[Vynn]

Welcome!

Do you know those things or just believe that you know them?

[JustMyron]

Hey Shawna. I too have had a look at your website, and was impressed. Welcome to the forum!

[Shawna]

Thank you for the welcome, everyone.
Thanks for the blessing, Fit2BThaied.
Thank you for your kind words about my blog, mr and JustMyron.  I have enjoyed browsing through your blog, too, Myron.

Hi, Vynn.  I know them.  But I could be wrong. 
The reason I use the word "know" is because, once upon a time, I was having a conversation with someone about God, and I was telling him, "Well, I believe...."  And he said, "What you believe is all well and good, but what I'm really interested in is what you Know.  Tell me what you know."  So I created a list of all those things that I can attest to experientially, and I call it "knowing."  Quakers try to avoid simply reciting memorized doctrines, or logical propositions.  We prefer to stick with what we have experienced ourselves.  In the sense that I have experienced these things, I know them.

It is, of course, always possible to misinterpret what one has experienced... so it is always possible that I only believe I know....  But I think I have that covered under "I know that sometimes we think we're doing the right thing, and we really aren't."  I am always willing to be proven wrong.  After all, when I discovered that I was wrong in believing that there was no God, I changed my mind. 

[Codswallop]

Hi Shawna,

It is the custom of this forum to award positive karma just for joining. My +1 to you, and welcome.

It occurs to me to simply make snarky comments after each line of your OP. This would be easy, fun (for me, at least), and unkind. I have a brother who is a Quaker, so in consideration of him, I will refrain from doing that to you. Instead, I would like to address the question of how you know what you know. I don't use smileys and other cutesy-pie devices in my posts, so please imagine me smiling while I say this stuff (though with a less maniacal grin than that in my avatar.)

Here is what I really look like:

OK, to proceed:

So I created a list of all those things that I can attest to experientially, and I call it "knowing."  Quakers try to avoid simply reciting memorized doctrines, or logical propositions.  We prefer to stick with what we have experienced ourselves.  In the sense that I have experienced these things, I know them.

Experiential knowledge is of limited value. People experience hallucinations every day.  If you personally saw a six-foot bunny rabbit named Harvey, spoke to him and developed a relationship with him, we would call you delusional. But because your claim centers not on a giant bunny, but on "God," whom you "know" exists and you "know" talks to you, we say you are spiritual.

I wonder if you can see the problem I might have with this.

It is, of course, always possible to misinterpret what one has experienced... so it is always possible that I only believe I know....

You seem to have merely devalued the concept of knowledge. You know what you can demonstrate, what you can provide objective evidence for. You believe things that you do not actually know but imagine to be true.

Sometimes we have good reason to believe something: I believe my wife is faithful to me, and I believe there is one more chocolate chip cookie in the jar. These beliefs are based on partial evidence. Everything I have seen in her behavior convinces me that my wife love only me, and I remember leaving one last cookie after dinner last night. Of course, my wife could be a consummate liar, and one of the kids could have taken the last cookie, so those beliefs could be wrong. And it could be that I really, really, really want these things to be true. But on the whole, I have some good reasons to think they are correct.

But these are not really the kind of things I mean by "belief." I mean the non-evidence-based kind, and these are what I refer to when I tell people I have tried to eradicate all beliefs from my life.

Sometimes we simply trick ourselves with our beliefs.  Physicist Richard Feynman said, ?The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool.? We want some belief to be true, because it is comforting, because it is empowering, because it gives us a sense of self or purpose...there are probably dozens or even hundreds of explanations for why people believe thing. But in our desire to believe in the supernatural, we frequently miss the fact of the absence of evidence, or of our inability to critically evaluate the evidence we think we have.

When people tell me they "know" God exists, et cetera, it occurs to me that they trying to convince themselves as much as me.

Anyway, welcome to the forum. I hope you find the talk stimulating. Stay away from the weirdos.

[Vynn]

Hi, Vynn.  I know them.  But I could be wrong. 
The reason I use the word "know" is because, once upon a time, I was having a conversation with someone about God, and I was telling him, "Well, I believe...."  And he said, "What you believe is all well and good, but what I'm really interested in is what you Know.  Tell me what you know."  So I created a list of all those things that I can attest to experientially, and I call it "knowing."  Quakers try to avoid simply reciting memorized doctrines, or logical propositions.  We prefer to stick with what we have experienced ourselves.  In the sense that I have experienced these things, I know them.

I liked that reply!! Thanks. Also, i like the fact that you say you could be wrong. I find it difficult to have a meaningful relationship with people who cannot admit that they might possibly be wrong. I hold that i could be wrong about anything at all, and remain open to any and all arguments that challenge my stance on any issue. I've found this policy to be quite beneficial in my life!

I too really enjoyed your site. It is unique and beautiful. A reflection of yourself, i presume.

[Shawna]

Remember what Elwood P. Dowd said in Harvey, "I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it."  You choose a good example... Harvey is, after all, about how the hallucination turned out to be real.

Some people call me spiritual.  Other folks have less sympathetic terms for me.  Don't worry about being snarky.  I put up with a lot of snarkiness in my house.  You'll make me feel right at home!

I am not trying to convince you of God's existence.  In the end, that can only be done between you and God.  But this is the place for testimonials, and I thought I might as well begin by being completely forthright about my position.

Now that you know that I believe I have a Pooka following me about, you can treat me with appropriate forbearance, such as one reserves for hopefully harmless crazy people.  But what if my Pooka exists after all?  What if it turns out that your "concept of knowledge" is the hallucination?  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[Shawna]

Thank you, Vynn.  Flattery will get you almost anywhere!

[Jdaaawg]

Hey Shawna thanks for your testimony 

  to IGI.  Looking forward to reading your posts.


+1 for joining.



J 

[Codswallop]

You choose a good example... Harvey is, after all, about how the hallucination turned out to be real.

You do know that even though in the play, Harvey turns out to be real, the story itself is fiction, right?

I am not trying to convince you of God's existence. 

Good call.

But what if my Pooka exists after all?  What if it turns out that your "concept of knowledge" is the hallucination?  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Of course there are more things in Heaven and Earth, etc. That's my view; that's the materialist view! Human knowledge of the Universe is extremely limited, partly because of our still-developing technology for examining it, and partly because it is so amazingly vast and varied.  Human knowledge of the Universe is approximate and subject to revision as more and better data become available. But all knowledge is based on real-life observation of tangible reality, not myths from the semi-literate minds of provincial, superstitious, pre-scientific cultures.

If you were seriously ill, you wouldn't want to go to a 1st century physician. You wouldn't let an Iron Age builder put up your new house. You wouldn't try to subsist on the kind of diet people were forced to eat in biblical times (when they could get food--famine was a regular feature of life then). The truth is, all romanticizing aside, hardly any aspect of daily life from the 1500 or so years during which the Bible was written would have any appeal for a 21st century person. So why in the world would you want to adopt the greatly mythologized--not to say fictional--stories in the Bible--written as they were by men who were long on agendas and short on knowledge of the physical world--as the foundation for your thinking and morality? Why would you suppose them to have been so backwards in everything to do with reality, but on the cutting edge where God and spirituality are concerned?

[Shawna]

Thank you for the lovely Welcome mat, Jdaaawg!

[Auz]

No fancy welcome, just a G'Day!

Enjoy your time here!

[Shawna]

You do know that even though in the play, Harvey turns out to be real, the story itself is fiction, right?

Gosh, really?  Thank you for explaining that, my dear.

Seriously...  Don't you ever find useful insights in works of fiction?  Don't you ever find important Truths about human nature in works of fiction?

I'm afraid I don't agree with you that "all knowledge is based on real-life observation of tangible reality."  There is far more to knowledge than merely those things that are tangible... dreams come immediately to mind, for example.

I am reminded of the old Quaker joke:  The old Quaker was talking with a realist.  The realist said, "I only believe in things I can see."  The old Quaker replied, "Friend, does thee believe thee has any brains?"

For Quakers, the primary source of spiritual knowledge is the Inner Light of Christ, not the Bible.  Quakers, at least Christian Quakers, regard the Bible as a very useful outward record of other people's experiences of God.  And since human nature does not change in the same way that fashions in housing change, the record is still useful to us today.   But the Bible is not the foundation of my spiritual life.  My relationship with God is the foundation of my spiritual life.

Methinks you protest an awful lot, Codswallop... I am not worried about your particular hallucinations.  Why do you seem to be worried about mine?

[Shawna]

Thanks, Auzzie Souldi3r!

So far, so good.

[Vynn]

I find useful insights in fiction all the time. Quakerism sounds more groovy than the religious brands to which i've been exposed.

[Fit2BThaied]

Christian Quakers are, indeed, a breath of fresh air, usually.  They just do not think and talk like run of the mill church goers, thank God.  Their worship services lulled me to sleep, but I  am a diagnosed narcoleptic, and Baptist sermons did that, too.

Speaking of mythologies, the OT has its share, as do most cultures, including the USA about manifest destiny, its Christian foundations, etc.  And England, with its superiority complex about the Queen's English and other things like meat pies.  I found the creation story amazingly accurate (considering it never attempted to be scientific) compared to other creation stories.  The OT characters are there in all their glory and their warts, insane King Saul, lecherous murdering King David, Solomon's hippie son raping his father's harem on the rooftop in daylight hours, etc.  Four thousand years later, we still refer to the patience of Job, the wanderings of Abram, the cedars of Lebanon, etc.  But the Mayas, Olmecas, Aztecas, and Totonacas seem to have abandoned their holy stories. 

[Sita]

Hi Shawna   

[Shawna]

Thanks Vynn... I think Quakerism is pretty groovy, myself.  Within the Religious Society of Friends (which is what we Quakers call ourselves when we are feeling uppity), there is a wide range of beliefs.  There are liberals, who might be Buddhist or atheist or universalist or Jewish or Christian or pagan or younameit, and there are evangelicals who look a lot like your typical evangelical Protestant, and there are what are called "conservatives", who lean more towards a classical approach similar to George Fox's (that's more or less where I fit), and there are some other variations.....

Getting all us Quakers together is a little bit like herding cats.... sort of like IGI, I think.

Sorry about the worship services, Fit2BThaied!  I fall asleep sometimes, too.  And I don't even have narcolepsy as an excuse. 
You're right.  We all indulge in our own chosen mythologies.

Thanks for the welcome, Sita.

[Dragnet]

But the Mayas, Olmecas, Aztecas, and Totonacas seem to have abandoned their holy stories. 

Most of that can be blamed on the Spanish and their forced conversions.

[Codswallop]

Seriously...  Don't you ever find useful insights in works of fiction?  Don't you ever find important Truths about human nature in works of fiction?

Sure, including the Bible. But I know that dead people don't really come back to life, the sun and moon cannot be made to stand still in the sky, and animals don't talk. The Bible tells such stories and more, but real-life experience--what can actually be seen first-hand by reliable observers under proper observing conditions--always always always indicates that these things do not actually happen.

I recognize the fictional, symbolic and metaphorical elements in the Bible, and can distinguish them from the broader insights I gain. I hold a Master's degree in English Literature--it's what I was trained in. I know how to read a work of fiction and draw larger meaning from a text. But I do not confuse fiction with real life, and I do not need miracle stories to be true.

I'm afraid I don't agree with you that "all knowledge is based on real-life observation of tangible reality."  There is far more to knowledge than merely those things that are tangible... dreams come immediately to mind, for example.

It's not a matter of agreement or disagreement. I cannot show you a dream, but I can show you physical manifestations of the human dream state, quantifiable by many objective, observable, repeatable and unambiguous means. I actually have some experience of neurological studies in "sleep clinics." A neurologist can tell you more about your dreaming than you can. The only thing left is your subjective experience of the dream, which is potentially interesting but, except in cases of psychological trauma, is not especially useful to anyone else.

Methinks you protest an awful lot, Codswallop... I am not worried about your particular hallucinations.  Why do you seem to be worried about mine?

Because yours affect me directly. You don't live in a cave. You live in the real world. You may even a registered voter. Your views are out there in the world, they come out in conversation, they influence the opinions of others and your selection of candidates. How your religious beliefs determine your views on abortion, stem cell research, vaccination, war, public funding of religious institutions, public funding of scientific research, science curricula in public schools, and a host of other topics is a matter of grave concern to me.

I do not say reasonable people cannot disagree about these subjects, but if your ideas of right and wrong on any of these topics is informed to any large extent by a literal belief in a collection of millennia-old fairy tales written by poorly-educated, superstitious men who themselves were the products of pre-scientific, barbaric, backwater societies, you and the billions of people like you are a danger to the well-being of many and a hindrance to real human progress.

I hope you don't think I'm protesting too much.

[Shawna]

*Deep Sigh*

Codswallop,
You are assuming a great deal about me, and you are not listening very carefully to what I have to say.

You appear to be assuming that I must necessarily be a fundamentalist Biblical inerrantist, simply because I am a Christian.  I am not against discussing the theory of inerrancy with you, but it would probably be best to start another thread if you want to do this.  It isn't likely to be a very interesting thread, though, because I am not an inerrantist.

For the record, I am against abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, and war.  I do not vaccinate my own children, but I accept that other people might choose to do so, and if I lived in a different part of the world, I might do so too.  I believe in the separation of church and state (the Quakers pioneered this, and I still think it is a good idea), and therefore do not support government funding of religious institutions.  I do support public funding of scientific research and I support the teaching of science to children in school.

How your religious beliefs determine your views on various important issues like these, is also a matter of concern to me.  Do not imagine that non-theists cannot be a "hindrance to real human progress."  The Reign of Terror was instituted by thoroughly "enlightened" materialists.  Atrocity does not limit itself to any particular Religion.  But again, we would probably be better off exploring such issues in a new thread.

Regarding dreams:  Coleridge (just to provide one example) wrote some very good poems inspired by his dreams.  They have apparently been useful to many people for many years.  Certainly, his poems are more often published and more often read than any given neurological sleep study... as useful as sleep studies are.

"That sunny dome!  those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."

Dreams not useful?
Your philosophy is still a little limited, Horatio.

[Codswallop]

Post deleted per Mod iaw Rule #10 - Forum Boards - You must comply with each board's description.

Describe your beliefs here. No disagreements please - implied or otherwise.

[Vynn]

Oh please. The only people at risk are the unvaccinated children, correct? And, the children may choose when they come of age to be vaccinated. Plus, these kids would have to travel somewhere were the diseases were in existence in order to get the disease.

People do what makes sense to them. If god belief makes sense to them, they believe. If atheism makes sense, they are an atheist. Obviously, Shawna thinks that it makes more sense to not vaccinate. Unless it was mandated by the gov't, she's just exercising the rights she has as a parent. You can hardly get upset for somebody simply behaving as makes sense to them. You could try to influence what she finds sensical, but i doubt posts like the one above are going to do that.

[Dragnet]

But it could be argued that having the position of being against abortion and vaccination are somewhat inconsistent.

I know apple to apples and all that but it does have some basis. Unless these children are NEVER exposed to other children and their parents who may have traveled abroad. The risk is real.

[kevin]

. . . I am furious over this . . .  Do not respond to this post. I find you ignorant and loathsome, and most of all dangerous.

Wow, codswallop. I thought the fool's cap in your picture was just a joke.