As much as you could question my search for god, I could question your investigation onto whether your religion was true or not, or your claim that god revealed himself to you. Like I’ve said many times before, personal experience is not sufficient evidence for belief.

Your statement that you gave up looking and then he revealed himself to you to be quite interesting, especially since you had come to the conclusion that there simply was no proof. Of course there is still no proof that god exist, nor any proof that god doesn’t exist. But if you give up looking for the truth, it makes sense to me that you would come to a more comfortable, easy explanation for things you can’t explain. Giving up on the search for truth is something I cannot and will not ever do. Because finding a lost pen, and finding god are quite different, and sometimes when I give up looking for my pen, it stays lost.

Personally, everyone in my family was atheist/agnostic.. as was I as a child – I’m now a Christian..

Though it’s commonly understood that more often than not people take on the belief system of their family (A child in a Republican family is more likely to be Republican) this is more than anything a result of exposure, experience and a tendency towards trusting role models. I’m testament to the fact that it isn’t an across the board though and to reason that it is would be a gross exaggeration.

jesseryan1215.. as far as your earlier statement asking why God hasn’t revealed himself to you – and has for others.. there’s a couple answers I would have. One, I fully believe that those who seek God receive affirmation of his existence in their lives, my first inclination is to doubt the sincerity of your search – but that isn’t my place to judge or to know, we can only take you at your word. My second answer would be that in my case I actually had to mentally give up my search before I found God… I find this fact to be very intriguing, I literally had to reach a threshold where I said ‘there’s simply no proof’ and ended my search and then God saw it as the perfect opportunity to say ‘here I am’. It made me look all the more foolish, although I can’t necessarily say it’s the rule, just the way it happened for me – it caused it to have a greater impact. Have you ever noticed that you sometimes have to cease looking for something to find it? Sometimes it’s like our mind has been caught in a loop where we keep searching the same wrong places and ceasing the search frees us from that ineffective process. I repeat though, I don’t know that that is always the case, I do believe wholeheartedly though that all who search earnestly will find.

Do you believe that Muhammad was a prophet like Moses? If not, why?

Are you not a victim of circumstance where religion is concerned? If you were born in Isreal, would in not be likely that you would be a jew today? If you were born in other places of the Middle East, would you not likely be a muslim? If you were born in certain secluded places in say, Africa, and you would have never heard of Jesus, would you be a christian?

But this brings me to a bigger question I’ve been thinking about. During this conversation I’ve noticed that I am mostly on the offense and you, the defense. It leads me to believe that you don’t really feel the duty to prove the truth in god like many christians seem is imperative to their own salvation. I started this with questioning the cohesion of religion and science, and I’m a person who believes strongly in your (anyone’s) right to believe. Why this was a problem for me, was that there has been problems with pushing psuedoscience like intelligent design into public schools, starting government religious incentive programs, banning research (i.e. stem cell) on religious grounds. Are these battles you wish to fight using your religion as a catalyst?

When I was talking about god revealing himself to people I was talking about the whole bible, including jesus, but I like this train of thought. What about Muhammad? Why are you not a Muslim? What about Joseph Smith? Why are you not a Mormon? If I made the claim that god had spoken to me would that be enough evidence for you to believe? This is what I’m talking about when I say I need evidence for the beliefs I have. If you don’t have a standard of evidence how do you decide what to believe?

I see what you are saying about the anomaly, but what I see happening is anomaly hunting, searching for things to fit into your faith. The big question I have is what gives you any idea that there exists anything supernatural? If you can’t study or reproduce it or falsify it, or analyze it why is there any reason to believe its real?

This post was mentioned on Twitter by sammahlstadt: The second installment of The Conversation featuring the one and only @jesseryan1214 http://bit.ly/mjfBX – beautiful dialogue…