Quick synopsis:

1) Father: outside of space and time, invisible, omniscient, omnipotent, etc. The self-sustaining foundation of the Godhead

2) Son: inside of space and time, observable at times, not omniscient (can't observe the entirety of the future), power and knowledge subject to the Father. The representation of God

3) Spirit: omnipresent, active force in the world. The force keeping everything together and creating change

haha, is this serious? Sorry, I wasn't sure if you were trolling with that one or not. God the Father is our father in the sense that we have spirits like him, that we can love, have compassion, intellectual intelligence, good intentions, etc.

It's not so much about need as it is about love. If there were only one person of God from the beginning, and it was only God alone for awhile, then the strength of the argument that God is love would be much, much weaker (I'd say it couldn't be made). God is love because God is a community, of loving persons who treat each other equally. Yes, the Son does defer to the Father, but because He is inherently greater than him. But as I've said before, the trinity is interdependent. Sure, the Son wouldn't exist without the Father, but the Father wouldn't even exist without the Son, because then He wouldn't be a father at all... the entire nature of His being would be non-existent. Without someone to love, He could not in fact be a lover. And the exchange of their love wouldn't be possible without the Spirit.

Sure. Oh, that's for very different reasons. That's because the claim about blaspheming the Holy Spirit was made by Jesus against the religious leaders who were equating His ministry with Satan's. How can an atheist make a claim like that? They were saying that His ministry of restoring the outcast and the downtrodden, healing the sick, hanging out with the despised, etc, was inspired by the enemy of mankind and of God. It was a very twisted, outrageous claim to make and one designed to make him their political prisoner. But the blasphemy was much like the warning, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil." (Isaiah 5:20) Are most of the atheists who take the blasphemy challenge going out and telling charities that their services are inspired by evil agendas? No, I think not.

The thing that bugs me about the trinity is first you have to presume the trinity exists, *then* pontificate endlessly about how that might make sense.

Evidence should lead to a conclusion, rather than a conclusion leading to evidence.

I disagree. The law of entropy is in effect because of the incompleteness of our original creation, awaiting the new, full and complete creation, according to Christian scripture ( Romans 8 ), and possibly even because of the fall of the twisted trans-dimensional being often called Lucifer (or light-bearer).

You mean if you take passages out of context?

Actually it would be illogical to claim that the most transcendent being of all would not be good - after all, everything good came from him.

I was talking about the capacity for such things. Even a feral child has the 'capacity' for them.

I did mean that. Acknowledging God as Father (which he already is for everyone) comes through acknowledging Him as Creator. The two ideas are linked, but one is a bit more impersonal on its own (creator). Yet it is not on its own and anyone acknowledging God as Creator will come to know him as Father, too. I mean the analogy does work - after all, earthly fathers are also creators, and our God takes care of us, whether we acknowledge him or not.

Also, I think C.S. Lewis makes a really great point in this vein when he outlines the distinctions thus:

The Father is our destination, the Son is the pathway to get there, and the Spirit is the force inside of us leading us onward. 

haha, I like that question, actually. But as I just posted, the relationships are completely different. I'll give you a kind of personal take on this. To me, the Father is the One behind all of creation, yet intimately intertwined with it all. He's the One I came back home to after so many years of searching. Before this it seems as if I only knew the Son (which explains the faith of many) because my understanding was fairly spotty and my faith was more external and seemingly dependent upon the weather. But through a hellish experience that I went through where I was totally stripped away, I began to see the face of the Father. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't actually seeing a literal face - but when I was walking around breathing in nature, looking at the seagulls dipping into the pond and watching a beautiful sunset, I felt His love immensely through everything, and somehow - I'm not sure how - I got this sense that I never had before that there was a love reaching out for me from beyond all visible existence, and through it. It was at once personal yet not personal in the human sense. At first I wasn't totally aware that it was a person at all, only as I kept turning my internal eyes to the fact, and the awareness grew in me, especially when I looked at the sunset, and the experience just swallowed me up and I realized that my Father knew the real me and had loved me all along...

Again, don't get me wrong - I had known the Father all along through the Son, because the Son is the Father in a more limited fashion, therefore made more visible/experientially knowable to us. But not in this fuller sense (and I imagine there's much more room to move in this area as well, especially as my experience has kind of deadened again, but will inevitably rise up again in the future). In this sense, I saw the Father Himself, again through my internal eyes.

On the Son - well, He was the One I'd come to know first. The experiences are far too many and varied for me to indulge them here, but these experiences were much more distinct, especially earlier on before they led to intimate experiences with the Spirit (of course, any experience of the Son is also just as much an experience with the Spirit as with the Father, but the emphasis can be different). Sometimes I'd have visions or I'd feel a presence, sometimes I'd see Him through other people in their faces, expression and inflection of tone, and through their actions, sometimes I'd sense Him in worship, and many times it was just clearly hearing His voice through reading the gospels. But it grew from an original, historical and scriptural understanding into a more poetic and then finally a more mystical experience. In fact, the mystical aspect was there all along, from when I was a child, it just seemed somewhat separate and then finally merged when I entered my late teens/early twenties.

Lastly, my experience of the Holy Spirit began in that transition period from the emphasis on the Son into that final breathtaking experience of the Father. This mystical presence I was feeling (sometimes when I was merely reading the bible, which bugged me at first, ironically) became so well-rounded that I began to feel her as a different person altogether. I say her because she felt like a feminine presence almost (which I later found is what Christian mystics have often declared). Like the woman of sorts I'd never fully recognized, though I felt her essence in many of my dreams from a child until then. The deepest compassion and love, the most intimate reveries and ecstasy that I'd ever known came to a full head. It was romantic in a sense. I hadn't ever known before that I could have a distinct relationship with the Spirit on its own almost. I'd always thought that the Spirit was merely around us or inside of us and that's that. Perhaps that's when the Spirit began to more fully live inside of me. I don't know.

As you can see, though, my experience of each is vastly unique and they have contributed different facets to my relationship to God. I can't look at them as the same, or that in any sense I'm 'sharing' love between them, as if they were on the exact same plane to choose between. It seems that if I love one, I love them all, and any violation of love toward any of them hurts them all, as they share the same core. But it's as if looking at any one of them causes me to focus in on that person alone... I don't know, I've never had to really describe this before, so maybe I'd have to get back to you on it. It's as if they're completely individual while sharing the same exact essence of love and holiness.

Anyway, even though I've had these more distinct experiences, the actual dynamics of how it works in everyday life is much more synchronized. The Father is my ultimate destination (and all of ours if we were completely honest with our motivations and deepest desires). I just want to make Him happy, as any son would want to do in a healthy relationship with his father (though here on earth those relationships are often so flawed). The Son is the one beside me, leading me further and further, helping me when I'm in trouble and strengthening my weak points. The Spirit is within me, giving me the internal sense and mystical experience of God, the presence of God, and strengthening me from within and transforming me day by day. Giving me the thoughts I need to have, and burning up the thoughts I don't in purer ones. Fulfilling my deepest longings and giving rest to my heart.

No, my experience of the trinity is highly synchronized and thoroughly romantic. And of one overall essence.

This may be a bit of a misnomer. I wouldn't say that He's exactly "equal" to God. In fact, the scriptures say that he's equal except in regards to the throne. The reason being that they are two completely different types of beings. The Father is beyond space and time and thus cannot be dethroned, and yet can't be seen with external eyes either - only through spiritual experience. The Son can make himself be seen, though, and can know certain bits of the future even while not knowing the entirety of it. The Son is the one that the Jews interacted with in the OT, thus why it often seems as if God doesn't know everything or is reacting to things. The Son does represent the Father perfectly - that is, communicates His very essence and love through the Spirit that they share together. The Son communicates in smaller, more understandable forms what the Father is doing. I like how George MacDonald (and later Lewis, his 'student') talks about this: God the Father is always making grain grow and wine ferment, etc, but the Son demonstrated the miracle in it through the feeding of thousands and turning water into wine. The miraculousness of the natural world and the everyday is often beyond our immediate grasp, but once you get to know the Father, you'll see how miraculous the everyday is - even more breathtaking than any of Jesus' miracles! This is why I can never be swayed from my belief in God. I'm a God-of-the-non-gaps kinda guy.

But, anyway, I see the Son as sort of an artist in a way, because He's not merely imitating, He's interpreting. He looks at each situation and judges by the Spirit of His Father what His Father would do in that situation, or rather, wants Him to do. Again, I like the way that C.S. Lewis put it his space trilogy, where "Maleldil" is the supernatural being who is actually the Son, "what Maleldil read in the mind of his Father from the very beginning," or something like that. It's the eternal dance, the divine community, of which we are all invited to take part in. Even moreso than the divine sons of the holy council are allowed to, I would say..

Well, I try to be respectful until someone deserves otherwise, heh.

Out of curiosity, why would empiricism lead to being dead and uncreative?  I think the most amazing things I've ever known are all empirical and intuition (or creativity) still has an important place, you just acknowledge that it doesn't result in truth unless it can be verified.

Maybe it is our categorization of empirical?  To me, love, art, music, story-telling, awe...all of those things have a perfectly valid place in an empirically based (or physicalist, or rationalist) world-view.  I (think) feel just as much passion as anyone.

What do you mean?

Well, yeah. Intuition necessarily always plays a role (for instance, inferring whether or not anything we experience is real in the first place), but I'm saying that our threshold of proof is generally a bit lower than others, although I know that there are claims that there's more room to believe in Jesus and what he said on a historical basis than there is to doubt him. Regardless, I don't know all of the ins and outs of that, even though I've learned alot especially recently, to say that my threshold is exactly the same as a militant atheist's. However, there are many, many other aspects to my faith that buffer that and make it very difficult to disbelieve.

Yeah, totally. But love necessarily has more intuition involved in it than empiricism, and art more often than not has implied meaning (even if subconscious to the artist), as well as music and story-telling, etc, etc. I am just like you in this regard, but we had a different definition. I was talking about the strictest forms of empiricism that science often employs.

Before I start, I'd like to say that I've been watching your posts for awhile now (I've lurked the forums a few times besides the times I've actually posted) and you tend to make entirely unfair generalizations which puts Christianity/theism in general on a lower footing from the get-go, without actually supplying justification for it. It seems rather low to me. I've discussed with atheists who are much more respectful and end up getting a great deal of respect from them as well, not just for my attitude but my intelligence. I'll admit I'm no scientist although I have interests in a few fields, but there are other realms of knowledge even apart from that.

Anyway, I figured the purpose of this particular forum was to be respectful and keep the debate on a more or less equal footing without resorting to generalizations, especially before you even hear the other person out.

However, Revelation 21 describes the commencement of another order of things to be executed, an existence and universe of a different nature. The truth is that we know very little of our universe, 4% if that, and now we're discovering so much more - multiple dimensions, and a vastness beyond our comprehension - I think that believing that it could absolutely not be any other way would be dishonest.

And like I was saying, our universe is necessarily imperfect, in preparation for a new creation. In Christian theology the reasoning is that there must be an old (decaying) creation first so as to allow for the individual development of beings separate from God in the first place. As you pointed out, a flawed universe allows for our existence. In order to create an individual other than himself, God would have to separate beings from himself in the first place - and if God's the definition of perfection, then these beings would necessarily be separated from perfection. Although, not completely. Even the features of decay in this universe allows for new life (a theme which recurs in Christ's death and resurrection), such as stars dying to give us life.

It's conjecture on your part to imply that this was my intention or the intention of anyone else who has described such beings. Simply because you find things easier to explain within your worldview does not mean that others do not have good reason to beleive otherwise.

Very often that simply means 'using immediate biblical context while ignoring the implications of the story in the first place or other bits of context in order to conclude that God appears just as cruel as he seems to upon first glance.' It would be more helpful if we went into specifics, perhaps in other threads. One solid point I can make here is that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Did you realize that the story has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality and that even the Canaanites and surrounding people were crying out to God for their destruction? That's only a hint at the wider story, though.

Working from a presupposition that the bible is the sole attempt made by God to reveal his nature to humanity, then it would definitely be easy to feel as if it is far too inadequate. The contexts that we often have to work from are indeed often so troublesome that it requires further analysis beyond just the textual variety and sometimes is not even fully understood until further archaeological discoveries are made.

However, that is not necessarily all of Christendom's presupposition. For one, it is only the Protestants who claimed sola scriptura - and no, I'm not Protestant or Catholic, or Orthodox for that matter either. It doesn't even seem to be necessarily to believe in sola scriptura to be a Protestant, although it goes well with the spirit of their movement, and why? Because they used that claim to obtain their freedom, although it is used for the converse purpose these days, it seems.

Yes, sometimes scripture is hard to understand and very easy to twist, just as Peter says in 2 Peter 3:16. But not everyone feels as if that is God's sole revelation to us. Very many, even of those who claim that, act as if God inspires many people outside of the Bible as well. In fact, Christianity has typically held that nature is God's supplemental revelation to us as well as scripture. And then there are the mystics with their experiences, etc. Coupled with the fact that the early Christians were mostly illiterate and there were few if any actual scriptures among them. In the new testament we have records that they were coming to understand God through mutual discovery as a group, through communal revelation.

Is the Bible God's 'clear' message to us? Is it Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth? I think that concept is ridiculous. While I do think that God on some level has established what we know of as scripture (through the consensus of the early Christians), to say that God intended us for to find revelation in scriptures alone, is a concept that Christendom should have shedded centuries ago. This essay makes great points in that vein.

I do believe that very much of scripture can be cleared up through very careful analysis, but there are always a few of those nagging questions left behind (although there are so few now that I can barely count them on my hand from memory), yet I've been surprised at so many of the discoveries coming from every direction at better explanations at what these ancient texts mean.

Actually, how can it be said that there is such a 'thing' as badness? For one thing, that's a value that we project on our world. It's necessarily a metaphysical concept. Regardless, it can be said that everything 'bad' results as a lack of something good that could've prevented it. Or in other words, that 'badness' is a lack of goodness. I made this point with a Satanist admin on the Does A God Exist Facebook page (where I'm also admin), when he posted the verse Isaiah 45:7:

"I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things."

'Darkness' can't be created because it's merely the absence of light. It can be created, in a shadow for instance. The shadow is created by an object in the light's path. The light hits the ground around the shadow, thus 'creating' darkness there. In the same sense it could be said that the darkness is attributed to God, but only indirectly.

I defined the issue in the first place when I described how God is our Father, and that is precisely what I meant - that He is our Father in the sense that He created in us the capacity to have those things.

Very interesting! So the virgin birth makes just a bit more sense than I had previously thought.

Did you realize that there is some room to believe that God was called by a feminine name as well? El Shaddai. I don't have the link handy right at the moment and I'm about to walk out the door, but in one context it seems that it meant "big breasted one" since "shad" is Hebrew for "breast."

You say this in such a way that the only response I could come back with (without a lengthy diatribe, perhaps a thesis even) is a simple denial, which you could then say shows that I doth protest too much. That's why these generalizations are unhelpful. You know little about what I believe until you dialogue with me, and peoples' beliefs are generally different from each other, minus the meaningless parroting and rhetoric that some engage in out of ritual.

Actually, there's an extraordinary amount of references to things we did not know until modern times, such as the expansion of the universe. In 11 different places scripture states that God stretches out 'the heavens' like someone would a tent. Again, I'm running out the door, so I can give references later.

Thanks for being willing to dialogue with me.

Just what I said.  I *attempt* to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this forum doesn't bring out the best in people.  I'm not usually interested in being nice to people unless the effort is mutual.

I'm not sure I understand.  I'm not aware of anyone advocating becoming a Vulcan.  Love *is* a physical process though, and there isn't any reason why we shouldn't try to understand that as well.  Knowing the cause of something doesn't make it less interesting...honestly, understanding even a little bit about what our brain is really doing when we feel even the most trivial thing is awesome to me, and love is not a trivial thing.

I'm a fire-bug, I love fire.  I remember the feeling I got when I learned a bit about the actual process that is taking place just to get heat and flame...amazing.  Now I can look at a fire and get the usual burst of happy chemicals in my brain, or I can switch gears and get an even greater feeling my really thinking about the process.

I'm still not sure why you would think you have more capacity for passion than someone without belief in religion, as you seem to be saying.  Maybe I'm mistaken about what you are trying to say, but "dead and uncreative" is hard for me to integrate into the joy and creativity I feel when looking at the world through a irreligious lens.

Calling empiricism a faith system is also a bit touchy, unless you define "faith" as simply, "philosophy" or something equally vague.

Yeah, I understand that. The reason I didn't fully address it is because I was talking in general about the imperfection in the natural world. I see now that the distinctions are more significant for your point.

Well, I understand that the law of entropy is the reason why our universe even exists in such a state where life can develop, which was part of my point. I know that my belief in a new order of creation is merely in the realm of the hypothetical as I'm not sure how an omnipotent creator would structure things in such a different way that they would not tend toward chaos. Regardless, I also realize that my knowledge in comparison with infinite understanding is extremely limited.

If that's still not your point, then perhaps you could clarify even further.

True, there are quite a bit of interesting points to be made in that area that I haven't quite grappled with yet. I have a pretty good amount of confidence that my faith would see itself through to the other side of that as it has with much more difficult and challenging aspects, but I'd still like to learn more about these things.

True, but that wasn't exactly my point. I was asserting a general principle (which perhaps might be too general to apply to every instance) that usually unnecessarily negative qualities are the result of an incompletion in the natural order - possibly in some cases that we're unaware of since the complete picture would be foreign to us at this point. Like I said, I'm no science buff and am more of a philosopher, so there's a good chance I sound like an idiot right now.

I'm not asserting that the ancients were 'observing' the universe expanding. That would be nothing short of ridiculous. I'm asserting that it's possible that God actually inspired them to understand that fact.

I know of the similarities in creation myths, but Genesis tends to be the most plausible one. Have you ever heard Hugh Ross' interpretations? They're actually really good. The Hebrew scriptures apparently make more sense using the days of creation as metaphors for epochs. I actually have a link to the appropriate article still up in my browser too.

I definitely think that's the case. I find your challenges pretty moderate compared to what I've encountered before (at least insofar as I can assess), but I'm sure you have much more than just this to say.

Well, I appreciate the sort-of compliment, haha. Seems like you're fairly intelligent as well, and I see that you can be pretty agreeable.  I'd like to add that while I agree that there are difficulties in defending the faith, I am not dishonest in this endeavor. I went through a crisis in faith years back (especially after encountering ChristianBurner.com and having some difficult exchanges with people there and elsewhere) after which I became only interested in finding the truth. However, I found that I couldn't escape the implications of Christianity or run from the experiences that kept staring me point-blank in the face and making it extremely difficult to believe otherwise. The more I search and the more I find things that seem like they will totally dismantle my faith, the more it's refined and seems to come out even cleaner and more convincing than before. Not through my own efforts to shore it up as I've ceased the tiresome task of attempting to make things fit together, but it tends to come together on its own.

Just recently I had a rather bad encounter with a rather laughable theory of the origins of mankind and religion in general which shook my faith to the core. It seems ludicrous now, but I couldn't seem to escape the implications. However, doing some honest research I found that it was all debunked by a serious scholar and that this silly theory had been hung on one supposed expert's interpretations of ancient languages.

And though it makes me feel stupid to think of it now, it at least illustrates that I'm not attempting to dig my head in the sand and escape all the implications that seem to plague my faith. I know them very well and will patiently explore them as time allows me to, yet the core center of my faith is well-established from so many directions and in so many dimensions that it would take something rather big to annihilate it. Heck, I'll believe evolution if the evidence is absolutely inescapable, but from what I've learned so far it's wanting as far as I'm concerned. But that's for another thread. I'd still believe in God, though - a universe that is that finely tuned to produce life as a natural chain reaction would make the implication of an intelligent designer even more inescapable to me.

I'll just go in order, I dislike giant quote walls with more than two responses.

I think the difference is, you make the assumption that the universe is, 'miraculous' and 'supernatural' and I do not.  What, exactly, do those even mean?  One thing I run into is those concepts aren't usually coherent, like how something can even exist 'outside' our universe but still interact with it.  Once you know how something works, why would it still be miraculous and supernatural?

So overall, what is your justification?  I can honestly see an argument for some "force" or something that instigated the Big Bang.  I think it adds unneeded complexity and there is no reason to anthropomorphize whatever that force may be other than superstition, but speculation on that force is difficult because of our point of reference, so whatever...it doesn't really matter to me if someone is a deist.

Where I break down with most theists is when they start claiming there is a personal deity that has powers of intercession, or gives moral commands, stuff like that.  Everything I know about the universe, physics, and reality in general, points to the fact that everything is just atoms bouncing around, from stars, to our brains.  I don't see any room in that system or theism, and when people make concrete claims they always (so far) turn out to be incorrect....the realm of the theist is constantly pushed back by our knowledge of how the world really works.  I'm not sure how people justify continued belief when the responsibilities of their deity shrink drastically every generation...it is like throwing good money after bad, if that makes any sense.

So with that in mind, and with your stated desire of knowing more about the universe and yourself, I'm not sure what there is that is not more adequately explained by psychology, neuroscience, physics and chemistry.  Do you have any particular places that you feel God is the only solution for?

I would agree that our observations of reality are an experiment in process.  That is a nice way to put it.

Well...see, I'm not the most hostile atheist here.  To me, once a person reaches the point where their morality is defined by secular processes, my urgency in debunking a specific theism lowers drastically.  As above, where I will break down is where you consider your deity concept to fit into this whole picture.  If it is comfortably cerebral and you don't think that concept is a personal thing that actively influences your decisions, my interest is purely academic.  If you think your deity concept is actively interceding in your thoughts and actions to change your behavior, then I've got a serious problem, because there is no root rationality behind that influence.  If you get a particular idea in your head that you think comes from your theism, no-one can do anything to talk you out of it because of faith.  When you have groups of disparate beliefs all following the same principle it is a certain recipe for conflict since nothing can be resolved objectively between competing ideas and coercion is the only possible result.

If you revisit your old thread, at least you don't have to worry about Hamby or Deluded God, lol.

Sorry for the wall-o-text.

Who un-crashed this party?

It may amount to nothing more than a question of semantics, but no, I'm not trolling.  If it appears as trolling, that perhaps has more to do with the inherent nonsensicality of the doctrine itsef.

From the Nicene creed:  "...We believe in one lord, jesus christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father...by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man..."  So in the very same creed, we apparently have an profession of a Father "begetting" the Son, yet that the holy spirit did the actual fathering.

This is certainly curious.  By your response, it would appear god is constrained by rules beyond his/their control; as if all-powerful god cannot but exist in 3 interdependent parts.  Almost as if -- dare I say -- the christian god was designed. 

It's also curious that you previously defined the Son and Spirit in terms of space/time and the world - but now are outlining their roles presumably prior to the creation of the world.

Your final sentence almost sounds like a scientific claim:  Father and Son have to exchange love to exist, and the holy spirit is the transport molecule, without which the process could not occur.

You're looking at it as a physical thing and forget the whole spiritual aspect of it.  Basically you're saying that because the Doctor delivered the baby, he's the actual father despite the fact that the husband actually did the creating.  

it is understood that Jesus is YHWH's son.  That's clear.  "By the power of the Holy Spirit HE WAS BORN...." not conceived.  Therefore, you could look at it as the Holy Spirit doing the delivering.