Because both Alex and I, as far as I can tell, currently share the belief that a religious experience appears to be the most promising (and perhaps the only) means for us to convert to Christianity, a belief which is informed by a vast amount of conversion testimonies. The only alternative to this that I'm aware of is being convinced through purely intellectual arguments, but as Alex eloquently put it, hardly ever do you hear that someone suddenly dropped to their knees after reading a syllogism that they found particularly compelling.
I get what you're saying here and I understand your concern that a "religious experience" may seem (to many people) to offer the most promising, or the only, avenue by which to authentically engage God. But this is a conjecture at best, I think, and within that epistemic conjecture reside complications that often go unnoticed or unaccounted for. Sometimes they're just outright ignored out of personal frustration, which I can also very well understand, because I too have often experienced those same frustrations.
The epistemic crucible comes, though, in recognizing that the Christian experience isn't really about reaching a sublime sense of certainty about the possible presence of God in the world and of His reported providence of Grace in Jesus of Nazareth, at least not the Modern, post-Enlightenment version of that experience.
Obviously, where the act of perceiving either the direct presence and providences of God is in question, most of us are not afforded a superlative level of cognition and certainty of these things . It's on this sort of epistemic point that, for instance, Pascal disagreed with Descartes and averred that Christian Faith isn't something to be entered into via a full form of foundationalistic, deductive rationality. And although I may disagree with both Pascal and Descartes on some of the finer points, I'm going to lean over in Pascal's direction on this epistemic 'evaluation.' Moreover, the general idea is to deal with the Sartrean nausea of it all, but rather than give in to that epistemic delerium, we decide to journey on toward a hope in Christ.
Anyway, my approach is Existential and yet, I think it is still reasonable, which isn't to say that it's about applying cheap shots at either Deduction or promising a method that concretly resembles a firm, scientific process by which to "arrive" at faith, or even just belief. That's not how Christianity was made to work on the epistemic level. No, floating in the midst of it all is a Gestalt that we all have to engage and through which we will either decide to persevere, or languish in and sink down into material cynicism.
They explicitly discuss divine hiddenness from 1:49 to 5:00. Alex actually cites J. L. Schellenger at 2:17. But yeah, my bad for not making this explicitly clear in my previous post.
Oh, don't apologize. DH was obviously a part of the overall set of issues being discussed in the video and I know it's relevant to most of us.
Now you are confusing me. At one point you talked about "Christianity" (which I asked you to define in more precise terms), but now you are talking about a "wider scope of engagement with the question we all have"?
Correct. Christianity is "that thing of belief, that historical instituion of faith" which Jesus began in his earliest disciples, assuming the reports about those alledged events in the New Testament offer even a semblance of the ontological essence of the Christian faith and of the truths it is said to carry along.
It is this "thing" that we not only each engage in by all too typically reading the bible passively, but by which we each decide what our own praxis will be in doing so. My insinuation here is that there may be various choices in praxis that we want to avoid so as to not lock out the avenues in our respective epistemic journey we each will place ourselves on. One such choice would be "Philosophical Naturalism," but there are, as I'm sure you know, many others might challenge and thereby avoid clinging to too tightly. ... Another might be not assuming that all that Mythvision incorporates into his youtube channel is the latest and greatest of cutting edge insights of "actuality" where Christianity is the focus.
Could you please clarify your terms? Are you suggesting that "Christianity" = "wider scope of engagement with the question we all have"? If so, why not label that as "open-mindedness"? Why use a loaded term like "Christianity" that has so many connotations depending on the denomination providing the definition when there are less loaded terms to convey the same idea? I know I asked several questions here, so I would appreciate it if you could answer them one by one.
So yes, I am suggesting that Christianity be engaged on a wider scope of inquiry than what any one Trinitarian denomination will advocate on its own behalf; you can consider all of them and also consider those which sit upon or just outside of those individual, systematic boxes of thinking. Some will protest this, but I would tend to think it doesn't mean you'll slide off to dress up in Mormon garb or incline toward some other offbeat, non-Trinitarian group, however.
Moreover, an existential mode of "handling" the loaded term of Christianity means that you'll engage all of them and more than all of them-----and yes, that will mean having an open mind. But at the same time let's not conflate the act of having an open mind with some sort of automatic subscription to firm pluralism. Having an open mind is merely being willing to check further and again; it doesn't necissitate taking any and every option available with the same seriousness or assuming that each model of the world or of Christianity we scrutinize has the same qualities as any other.
Well, that's not an entirely unreasonable expectation if you consider many conversion stories, including many in the Bible itself.
Possibly. But I don't think the expectation of perceiving God's being or experiencing any manifesations of, shall we say, "His Spirit," can be argued conclusively in any direction. We don't know whether we should be Cessationists or one of an assortment of other conclusions on a continuum of possible answers. What we know is: we don't know.
And how do you propose to do that? Any concrete, actionable steps?
Sure. The operative word here is "challenge", as in challenge not only the apologetics of Christians but also, at the same time, your own epistemic beliefs that you personally think should delineate and define your sensibilites and perceptions. That's where you start. Obviously, that will include the personal decision to "be open" and to maybe do some further reading or other sourced learning. You could pray, but I think learning is meant to be a community interaction and not merely a dropkick by fiat from God's Spirit as so many tend to peddle today.
Hopefully, when doing so---and with some help from God along the way to the grave----you won't end up in Nihilism.
I'm not currently struggling with the problem of evil. I think you mistakenly got that impression from the video clip of the discussion between Alex O'Connor and Trent Horn that I shared. I shared that video in response to your comments about Divine Hiddenness, which the video addresses from 1:49 to 5:00. In that sense, it would be fair to say that the problem of Divine Hiddenness is my main stumbling block at the moment in what could become my eventual conversion to Christianity. Primarily because I strongly believe that the opposite -- a divine encounter -- would tremendously facilitate my conversion, which, again, is an idea supported by lots of conversion stories, both within and outside the Bible.
That's completely understandable. A divine encounter would facilitate a lot for most of us, wouldn't it? But there are a number of inconclusive assessments going into a desire for that sort of experience, and I don't think it can be stated clearly enough that desiring such a thing
wouldn't definitely enable any or all of us to respond with faith to Christ, at least not in the long term. Drinking from the Living Water that God gives in Christ isn't, I think, going to amount to opening and downing two cans of Red Bull ... or a Damascus Road experience.
