How would I know the difference between experiencing God's word and Spirit and incorrectly interpreting a feeling (not in the MBTI sense) as experiencing God's word and Spirit? If the metric for deciding the legitimacy of the religious experience is my own gut, being correct and incorrect would seem to me to be exactly the same. So if I "understand", I can either be correct or delusional.
This line of reasoning is why I don't view personal experience of God as evidence for God.
There are plenty of people in asylums who are absolutely certain that they are Napoleon, or that their hair is made of snakes. Their certainty doesn't make it objectively so, though their subjective experience is indisputable.
I have no reason to doubt God for the reasons I've already stated repeatedly. 'Absolute' is a personal choice. 'Flexible' is a personal choice. And the two can coexist.
Ah, the acceptance of contradictions. Christianity does seem to require that. Jesus was god and man. God so loved the world that he sent his only son to redeem it; but was so disgusted he killed nearly everything in the great flood. Let the little children come, until it is time to sacrifice them on the mountainside. Cling to the wife of your youth, unless she is barren; then you can sleep with her handmaid. In God there is no longer slave or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female; but only females must cover their heads and keep silent.
Yes, I am prooftexting, negatively. Highlighting the kinder, gentler bible quotes to justify one's faith or promote Christianity is just as much prooftexting, though. It is faith with blinders on, seeing only what we like in the bible. Yes, the bible itself is not religion, but an entire religion is predicated upon it. If you follow Christ, it is your primary, usually your only, "primary source material". There are plenty of Christians out there who know enough not to take the bible literally, to understand its cultural and historical context, and to see how it can inspire us in the modern age. There are also Christians who do not limit themselves to the bible in attempting to know Christ. Unfortunately, there are far too few.
i think there is a very important distinction between logic being internally and externally coherent. in the system of a religion, many religious beliefs are logical. others may look at it from the outside and say it is illogical because they are looking at external coherency. but if you skip that step - a leap of faith, so to speak - then logic can abound within religion. and i think that is largely how we have logical thinkers who embrace religion - especially if they are raised in a certain religion (primed to endure that leap of faith) or encouraged toward it via some major life experience.
As someone mentioned earlier, it comes down to assumptions. External viewers may find a faith illogical because they are questioning the logic of holding certain assumptions, and not just the conclusions drawn from those assumptions. Even from the inside, I could see the illogic and inconsistency of my childhood faith, which quickly led me to start questioning the basic assumptions. At that point, it all began to unravel like a great ball of string.
Can you prove there is a god?
I think that saying god does not exist is as illogical as saying he exists is. It also depends on how you define it.
One of my biggest issues is the lack of impeccable, precise vocabulary in this thread.
When you can break god, the christian god, down to it's most basic parts, and say it is rational, I will believe those who think it is entirely rational.
As soon as you look beyond the Christian god, you find notions of deity that are more rational, and more healthy. Christianity and unbelief are not the only options.
True atheism is just as much a matter of belief as religious faith. As someone wrote earlier, perhaps on another thread, agnosticism is the only logically defensible perspective on god. Nonetheless, it can be logical sometimes to accept what cannot be rigorously proven through evidence and logic. I would have been hard-put to prove my mother loved me, but I have always believed it.