So that means you don’t have to be a boring intellectual and get it all right to feel his presence. What if your whole argument for Jesus to exist is the feeling you get when you’re saved? What do you call that in Philosophy?
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There must be an evil conspiracy going on to steal feelings off of innocent people that just need Jesus.
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Some words that trigger are anti-intellectualism, irrational intuition, and the argument from desire. I call it the hunger.
But Christ is not “just a feeling”. I haven’t looked at this recently, but I think the witness of the Holy Spirit is some kind of properly basic belief. It doesn’t mean there isn’t other evidence, both historical and deductive, available to people outside of your experience.
I’m pretty sure that people’s experiences vary greatly upon contact with someone wholesome who loves them despite all their crap and sustains the entire everything.
Imagine you’re in the middle of doing something horribly despicable. It’s not going to be a pleasant… feeling.
If you were born on an island somewhere and lived to be 70 without ever having come into contact with ‘christianity’, nothing about it would have ever crossed your mind. You would wonder about the universe and life and all that shit but none of your reasoning about this stuff would have led you to believing anything remotely similar to the ridiculous nonsense you would find in the bible.
Why is everybody looking for Jesus? That’s a very long story, and i no longer tell it for free as i have been doing for decades. But i will lead you in the proper direction. You want to know why this world is shit. It is because of these kind of people…
Brian, you should read “eternity in their hearts“ by Don Richardson. Uncontacted people are prepared (by dreams and visions, or cultural memory of pure monotheism and often of that God making things right with them) for Christian missionaries before the missionaries even get there. Monotheism didn’t evolve, socially or culturally, but spread outward from the cradle of civilization… with variations diverging from there.
Read it before they cancel it. Very not politically correct.
‘Monotheism’ didn’t spread from anywhere but the overheated brains of ancient philosophers struggling to resolve the logical problems of there being many of these figments (gods) of their imagination existing at the same time instead of one.
You call that “religion”. For that’s what all religion is at bottom: believing what you feel like believing.
I must disagree.
I wanted to know what it is called in Philosophy so I am still waiting for a decent reply.
Why? Because of the feeling(s) you get when you (dis)agree?
Here’s a more specific one:
“Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality.”
You’ve obviously never been to church. Or witnessed people falling to their knees and worshipping Jesus for the first time because they have felt Jesus’s power and presence.
It is a real feeling, not imaginary.
I never denied that the feeling was real. What I assert, however, is that the cause of the feeling is imaginary. People imagine Jesus, his power and presence, and this causes that feeling in them; not some actual Jesus.
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Genesis 17:3 records that Abram collapsed when God spoke to him.
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Joshua 5:14,15 tells us that Joshua collapsed when he experienced the presence of the Lord.
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Ezekiel 1:28 and 3:23 say that Ezekiel collapsed when the glory of the Lord appeared to him.
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Daniel 8:17 and 10:15 state that Daniel collapsed on the ground when he encountered the glory of God.
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Matthew 17:6 records that when God’s glory was manifested to Peter, James, and John, all three of these men collapsed to the ground.
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Acts 9:4 and 26:14 reveal that Paul collapsed to the earth when he saw Christ on the road to Damascus.
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Revelation 1:17 tells that the apostle John collapsed at the feet of Jesus at the beginning of his vision on the island of Patmos.
You should try going to a Church and find out for yourself. I have been to places like Bible camp and had this happen to me. I collapsed on my knees and could feel Jesus’s presence there. At the time I was kind of ignoring him and didn’t really know what to do. But if anything, if you want some excitement in your life I’d say it’s more fun than watching tv. Who knows, you might even turn into a believer.
I’d probably call it gnosis.
Thanks, cutie. 
Want to go out?
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So you’re saying you’re a second generation monotheist.
…because that was after the divergence away from the original monotheism.
No, dude. Moses was not a sociologist. He was a fraud. Monotheistic ideas have two origins. The first phase occurs once animism and fetishism have become anthropomorphized, and natural forces are believed to be the work of intelligent human-like agencies. Then, from this polytheistic henotheism comes the single god theory. This god is the result of working out logical problems involved in there being many gods. Socrates demonstrates an example of this very simply in one of his arguments. He is told that the gods are always right… so he asks the obvious question: Why, then, are they always fighting and disagreeing? See what he did there? If a god is always right, but these gods are in constant disagreement, then some of em gotta be wrong and therefore not gods.
The only way out of the logical mess created by polytheists was to reduce all divine power to a single being.
Spoken like a true non-sociologist.