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Originally Posted by peter12
I don't believe I did that at all. Do you believe that a non-believer can understand something that requires belief?
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I think you did, you said that a non-believer can never understand a truly religious experience; that's a blanket statement about a group of people. I think that a non-believer CAN understand, because many of them used to believe. I know exactly what it is like since I spent a large part of my life doing it, and it's only now that I'm struggling with the various questions and issues.
I think your point that discussing individual points directly with people rather than making a blanket argument against "religious people" is valid (though the arguments against religion as a whole are very reasoned and are equally valid). And I think it goes the other way too; rather than saying a whole group of people cannot understand something, you have to treat them the same way you want to be treated.
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As for religious experience becoming a sort of prologue to belief... I think that the process is far more complicated than that. I personally don't want to talk about my own personal experiences on this message-board, it too often becomes a subject of mockery.
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Any personal experience that is powerful enough to change a life should be strong enough to withstand random attacks, but I can understand why you wouldn't want to share something personal on a public forum. I wasn't really talking about an individual experience though, I was talking in general.
So many people I talk to say they have faith, but then point to real experiences to support their faith (they felt a presence, heard a voice, saw a vision, whatever). That their way of thinking is based on a real experience (real to them at least) precludes faith!
Or if you define faith as a mash of trust and belief as some seem to (I've heard the analogy of comparing faith and the trust you put in an airplane pilot), then it gets back to my original point, why do some people merit special attention from God? Why does Paul get knocked off his horse?
God would know exactly what it would take to change my (and others') mind. So either He does it for them and not for me (in which case God is capricious), He's waiting for something to do His work on me (which is fine I guess, I've been waiting a long time, I can wait some more), or God isn't the personal God I was raised to believe (in which case it doesn't matter).
Anyway, random thoughts.
