How does one "choose" a Belief System?

[Pavlos Maros]

@Pavlos Maros

You are most welcome to continue believing I have been brainwashed if you like.

I don't have any beliefs in that regard whatsoever. Facts don't need anyone to believe them.

If you are taking the stance that all religion is brainwashing (which is what I understand you to be saying).

Brainwashing can happen in many forms, Be it a belief in a god or something else. I.E. Enforcing anybody to believe a thing is brainwashing, doing it to children can also be deemed child abuse. It is taking advantage of another human being by not giving them the ability to have a free choice. It's inculcating a belief through persistence in order to control.

I don't know how you expect me to demonstrate that you are generalizing. That particular stance meets the definition of generalizing as I understand it. Perhaps you have a different working definition of the term.

To generalize is to make a broad statement by inferring from specific cases. Which I haven't. To make a thing more widespread. Which again I haven't.

As to why I stayed with the religion of my childhood, there are a variety of reasons. I have touched on some of them already on this thread.

The question was rhetorical. Indoctrinated people tend to stay with the faith of their childhood. some simply keep their god belief, because that is all dependent on how persistent the enforcing is. The first thing they inculcated with is the god belief. The particular religious version comes later.

I wonder where (if anywhere) I might have gone seeking had I been raised without religious faith.

You would probably feel there was no need to seek anything.

 

[paradox3]

I was so predestined. Things I did NOT say...

- I was alone in being predestined.
- I was predestined because of some kind of special merit or worth in me.

I see no pomposity, no arrogance. All the credit and glory is God's.

Agreed that you didn't say any of those things. But I am curious about being predestined before the creation of the world . . . since we are talking here about the formation of Belief Systems, how did you arrive at this one?

 

[Jaebius]

Agreed that you didn't say any of those things. But I am curious about being predestined before the creation of the world . . . since we are talking here about the formation of Belief Systems, how did you arrive at this one?

Think I already answered that paradox3. I wrote, "Since that time, he has built within me intellectual assent to the faith he gave me in Christ." How did he do that? Chiefly through my parents, various churches, university and seminary.

 

[Mendalla]

Agreed that you didn't say any of those things. But I am curious about being predestined before the creation of the world . . . since we are talking here about the formation of Belief Systems, how did you arrive at this one?

It's bog standard Calvinism. @revjohn believes it, too.

 

[paradox3]

It's bog standard Calvinism. @revjohn believes it, too.

How does one arrive at such a standard form of belief is what I am wondering about. Have our Calvinist friends always been Calvinists? Did they explore other expressions of Christianity and pick this particular one?

 

[Mendalla]

How does one arrive at such a standard form of belief is what I am wondering about. Have our Calvinist friends always been Calvinists? Did they explore other expressions of Christianity and pick this particular one?

I doubt anyone is raised Calvinist anymore save maybe in Christian Reformed (and I'm not sure even they are orthodox TULIP Calvinists anymore). It would be interesting to know. I actually came across it in history class (the Reformation and early Protestantism) before I ever encountered it in a religious context but I doubt that would spur someone to start believing, though maybe it would tweak their interest.

 

[paradox3]

Think I already answered that paradox3. I wrote, "Since that time, he has built within me intellectual assent to the faith he gave me in Christ." How did he do that? Chiefly through my parents, various churches, university and seminary.

So faith is a gift from God as you see it?

 

[Jaebius]

I doubt anyone is raised Calvinist anymore save maybe in Christian Reformed (and I'm not sure even they are orthodox TULIP Calvinists anymore). It would be interesting to know. I actually came across it in history class (the Reformation and early Protestantism) before I ever encountered it in a religious context but I doubt that would spur someone to start believing, though maybe it would tweak their interest.

I was raised in the UCCanada, and then went Baptist (where most people I've met are 4-point Calvinists).

 

[paradox3]

What is a 4 point Calvinist?

 

[Ritafee]

Spirituality revolves for me around transcendent feelings in lived experience - not abstract propositions of 'belief systems'.

I would describe transcendent experience as

• immediate and vital personal experience of being connected to something larger than myself.

Feeling some unseen order or truth in the world.

'I am consciousness' - more like a 'knowing' rather than a 'believing'.

A knowing feeling that the infinite I am is far beyond the limitations of my neuro-chemical brain and biological being interactions.

 

[Jaebius]

What is a 4 point Calvinist?

A person who agrees with only 4 points of the Calvinist TULIP (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints). All those whom I have known have not agreed with the L.

 

[Luce NDs]

How does one arrive at such a standard form of belief is what I am wondering about. Have our Calvinist friends always been Calvinists? Did they explore other expressions of Christianity and pick this particular one?

Its bogus 'T ... or as said in alternate traditions a Beau Jest? Perhaps on behalf of Janus a Republican God (IDEAR) that once came up as IONess ... or the essence of a thought on the other side of the dark veil we call mind. Sometimes one has to walk through it to see what we really performed as praxis ... a wind from the Greek Dark Ages of mythos? Tis a power used to counter a lot of lies told us by oligarchy (you know the God-Emperor powers)! They are a type of poly tyke that prevents the common people from knowing much as a consequence of the pall that hung over aeropaegian staging ... it may be a parallel to the Celt Pagan Eire! It does tend to satirize things told by enthusiastic people about Prosper ...

Thus we can tell unknown myths about something that is unacceptable to physical powers that say they believe only in humanized gods .. something from an unknown location, site or citii of haunts ... the non-existant soul that is beyond us as we act out destiny in emotional domains. Furthermore the inhabitants won't understand us as they don't know the undercurrent to myths ... pervasive sub verses? Could belong to a partisan group in the isles Ellenism ... really quite unbelievable in the Dark Ages of Greece ...

 

[paradox3]

Spirituality revolves for me around transcendent feelings in lived experience - not abstract propositions of 'belief systems'.

I would describe transcendent experience as immediate and vital personal experience of being connected to something larger than myself.

Yes, I understand (and agree with) what you are saying about lived experience.

Our belief systems can help us make sense of transcendent experience.

 

[Luce NDs]

Spirituality revolves for me around transcendent feelings in lived experience - not abstract propositions of 'belief systems'.

I would describe transcendent experience as immediate and vital personal experience of being connected to something larger than myself.

Feeling some unseen order or truth in the world. 'I am consciousness' - more like a 'knowing' rather than a 'believing'.

A knowing feeling that the infinite I am is far beyond the limitations of my neuro-chemical brain and biological being interactions in this world.

This sometimes passes through, over, beside, or even under the target as Taurus wonders and gets into the aye thingy ... yes that's the dreamy spot of the railway to heaven ... heaven being a state of mind it turns in a fiery place when well rooted! Tis kind of sectarian belief in stuff lasting infinitely ... when it is really temporal ... that haunting drift of lighter ethereal senses? Thus you can see him as a dark mire ... Allah Gory of alternate understandings?

Whatever these idealisms of mortals are mortally toxic as death wishes --- some philosopher of imaginary domains! Even science believes that eternity ends 18 B Light Years away ... and we say time exhausts quickly through it ...

 

[Luce NDs]

Yes, I understand (and agree with) what you are saying about lived experience.

Our belief systems can help us make sense of transcendent experience.

It'll pass unless your stuck ... leaving much of the unknown gods as outlanders ... things distant from your understanding until one learns to read deep stuff ... dark? The occipital ranges ...

 

[paradox3]

A person who agrees with only 4 points of the Calvinist TULIP (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints). All those whom I have known have not agreed with the L.

Could you define limited atonement for me?

 

[Jaebius]

Could you define limited atonement for me?

I could give it a stab. I'm sure @revjohn could do a better job.

Basically, it's the belief that Jesus died only for the sins of God's elect rather than for the sins of everyone. The idea, as I understand it, is that Jesus didn't need to die for the reprobate, since they aren't elect.

The Baptists I know, on the other hand, believe that Jesus did die for the sins of everyone and hence salvation is available for one and all.

 

[paradox3]

From another thread, quoting myself,

"...A more interesting question, to me, is "can you choose your belief system"? I don't think it's possible. I believe what I believe, not because I chose it, but because this is the vision that life has unfolded before me, based on what I have received via my senses in the past, and how my brain has organized that information. And I'm not entirely talking about our five physical senses. I believe we have at least one more sense - call it intuition, spirit, inner vision - that also informs this logical process in my brain."

Also, if I use the words BS in this particular thread, I'm usually referring to belief system...that is not the case everywhere.

Really good discussion you have kicked off for us. Quite nuanced with folks coming at it from different angles. I like it.

 

[Luce NDs]

Also in limited atonement ... some choice pieces need to be recycled in life ... to improve on the screw-ups in reality! So remember you may have to experience that come-back ... backsliding to some beliefs ... just to learn how bad we are when physical!

 

[revjohn]

How does one arrive at such a standard form of belief is what I am wondering about. Have our Calvinist friends always been Calvinists? Did they explore other expressions of Christianity and pick this particular one?

Jean Calvin was a Roman Catholic. Through study of scripture he, like other Reformers, took issue with traditional Roman Doctrines.

Most of the early Calvinists were products of the Reformers most heavily influenced by Calvin and his students Theodore De Beza and John Knox.

The first Generation of the Protestant Churches chose that over Roman Catholicism.