Most beliefs that one has arrises out of a few main deductions. Do not take this to be a comprehensive post on how man completely established his beliefs, but rather a simplistic overview. I am posting this, as a result of my posts which some people misinterpreted as me saying that we should not use our minds. My point is that we do not create God with our thoughts... God lives in our hearts, not our minds. We need to base our beliefs on our relationship with Him, not simply or intellect alone. Most beliefs that I am committed to through: [b]Empiricism[/b] are points of faith that almost have to be through experience to be established firmly. A couple of those beliefs are the gift of tongues, and the gift of healing. These are both gifts that must be experienced to be understood, or at least to have some comprehension as to what they entail. Others, who have not experienced such things, simply lack the experiential knowledge that is needed to have an understanding of these gifts. [b]Reasoning[/b], there are several beliefs that I am committed too. Abortion is murder. This is a belief based upon how I reason that Scripture deals with killing babies. There is no specific reference made to the physical process of abortion in the Bible, so we must use our judgment. [b]Intuition[/b] is not something that I tend to base beliefs upon. Really, it is not good to base your beliefs on intuition. Our flesh is a whirlwind of emotions, and if we base our beliefs on things that we “feel,” we are in big trouble! HOWEVER!!!! Some would place the working of the Holy Spirit in this category. I would not. I would place the gift of Revelation in empiricism. Intuition is different than Revelation of the Holy Spirit. [b]Faith[/b] is the foundation for such things as me believing that I am saved and going to Heaven. We can not know from experience, nor can we know from intuition, we simply have assurance in salvation because of our faith in Him, and our faith in the fact that His Word is True. Scripture is read, and then applied. Scripture is not a process by which we gain beliefs, it is the Truth that we use to found our beliefs. I guess the best way to explain it is to ask a question... Why do you hold Scripture as an authority... The answer to that would "most likely" lie somewhere in the 4 reasons above. Once we have a belief that Scripture is the Word of God, "THEN" it is used as a foundation... So please do not take this topic as meaning that we do nto use Scripture to base our faith... That is not what it says. Again, this is a simplistic overview, not a complete analogy... however it encompasses the vast majority of mankind's basis for their individual beliefs. B) -Matt

An interesting topic Matt that I do not think many people consider. I had done a little lesson on this awile back, so with your opening: If you grow up in an Islamic family, what are the odds you will end up a Baptist? If you grow up in a Baptist family, what are the chances you'll end up a Catholic? If you grow up a Catholic, what are the chances of you becoming a Conservative Jew? If you grow up an Orthodox Jew, what are the chances you'll end up a Reform Jew? The examples are endless. Why is this? How can we explain how people - specifically in Christianity - end up with drastically different understandings of the exact same book? In my case I grew up in a non-christian home that was christian (lol). My grandparents had a bible under the coffe table and condidered themselves christian even though we never once went to a church. They taught me nothing of the G-d of Isreal, but I learned plenty of the god of yourself. I ended up attending a polytheist baptist church for the better part of my christian life then ended up attending a polytheist Messianic congregation. I consider myself blessed not to be shackled with a religion from childhood that I would now have to overcome. It has left me free to pursue "Truth." What we are convinced is the "Truth" is influenced by how we learned it. In fact, in religion how we learned it generally determines what we learn. Likewise how we accepted it determines what we accepted. Please do not miss this, how we develop our religious beliefs, largely determines what those beliefs are! Here's the point. All your religious beliefs were aquired though some sort of conditioning. We get trained to believe certian things and rewards and punishments were used to guide us down certian paths we have allegdly chosen. It would seem very few christians actually converted to christianity. This same scenario would apply to all faiths. Most people simply take on their family's traditions much like ancient peoples adopting of their familys idols. Besides this, there are other reasons why people become christian, and almost all have nothing to do with unbiased reasoning from Scriptures. But by far, the most prominent scenario is family tradition. By this means we are conditioned to accept certian religious world views. For instance, your mother and father were baptist; therefore you are as well. All you ever would hear or have in-depth knowledge of would be a baptist world view. Any knowledge of other faiths would be filtered through this baptist bias your parents held on to. Rarely would anyone ever venture outside of this to independently learn. Without realizing it you would be conditioned to be baptist and view everything from that paticular angle. Another reason would be location. This is the bible belt that I live in and the odds of me walking into a baptist church when I sought the L-rd would have been extremly high. If I grew up in Boston or Mexico, the odds would have said that I would today be a catholic. Or if I grew up in Jordan, I would have bowed to allah a time or two so far in my life. So, the question on the table would be: Why do you belive what you do?

I don't use any of those 4 to determine my beliefs about scripture being an authority. I just look at Israel. Everything G-d said would happen happened, or is happening. The odds are astronomical of an exiled people keeping a national identity through 1900 years. Likewise, by human reasoning, a few of the wars she has fought should have been lost. But they were not, and every day Israel stands a sovereign nation testifies to the truth of G-d's Word.

[b]MattBob_SquarePants wrote:[/b] [quote]I don't use any of those 4 to determine my beliefs about scripture being an authority. I just look at Israel. Everything G-d said would happen happened, or is happening. The odds are astronomical of an exiled people keeping a national identity through 1900 years. Likewise, by human reasoning, a few of the wars she has fought should have been lost. But they were not, and every day Israel stands a sovereign nation testifies to the truth of G-d's Word.[/quote] You just "think" that is how you base your beliefs. However, you are only using reasoning, by its definition alone. You see, you are saying, "God said xyz would happen, and then xyz happened.. thus it is true... that is reasoning... B) -Matt