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ChrissiM
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That’s cool. I like her, too. So I’ve chosen the name Joan as my confirmation name.
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SSTeacher
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kesa82,Unfortunately these forums have distinct limitations. I think I could explain why I believe what I believe, but to do so in detail would require an encyclopedic book, and to condense 30 years of study and thought into this brief space would simply be impossible. My point would become unintelligible.
But – it so happens I am eager to try and explain one small part of it.
I fell in love with Joan of Arc when I found an illustrated biography of Joan in the 5th grade.
However, at the time I was a deist, indeed, i would remain a milatant, anti-christian deist for 30 years. I loved Joan of Arc merely as an appealing girl. Nothing more.
In my infatuation I began to investigate her. Very soon I arrived at the certain conviction that Joan of Arc was not a con artist. She was not a 15th century cross-dressing feminist. She said she did NOT want to be a soldier, she did NOT want fame, glory, money, or the life and social role of a man. She WANTED to stay in the kitchen with her mother. And she was stating the truth.
She went to the Dauphine of France to be put at the head of his armies because she felt she was obliged to. She was ordered by God to do so. she believed that.
So, for a long time I thought she must have been crazy. She was seeing things and hearing things.
Unfortunately that theory , to be maintained, must flatly ignore a mountain of sworn testimony that she did things , many many things, that defy rational explaination.
far too many things to be simply dismissed as the product of blind luck , or shrewd manipulation.
Likewise, while there is no doubt that Joan was brave and intelligent, and a good character, she was a functionally illiterate peasant girl of 17, in no way prepared previously in any degree to fill the role she assumed.
She had no training as a soldier, she had recieved no previous instruction in tactics or strategy, but led an army in repeated successes at the age of 17.
Again I point out she was functionally illiterate, but she held her own in a trail with no council, against a battalion of trained theologians and trained interrogators.
Native intelligence simply would have carried her only so far. She simply could not do what she did do.
Mark Twain, in the introduction to his book he wrote about her, lists an even dozen predictions she made, all of which came true to the letter.
On one occasion for example, she described what was taking place on a battlefield 20 miles away as it happened, and this was sworn to in court by multiple witnesses.
I will not go here into all the many details, but in brief , many of the things that Joan did were like as if you yanked a 4 year old out of class his first day at kindergarten, and sent him to deliver a lecture on physics at a university, and he carried it off successfully.
In sum, the only plausible explaination that fits all the known and established facts is the one she gave ; St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Margaret of Antioche, and the Archangel Michael came to her and told her to go crown the Dauphine, raise the siege of Orleans, and break the power of the English in France. And, in repeated councils there after, they told her what to do and what to say.
I HAVE TRIED, HARD, to find an alternate , plausible explaination.
What interest had God in the dynastic struggles of 15th century France? I do not know.
But the explaination she gave is the only explaination that fits the facts.
I do not have to believe Joan of Arc. She satisfactorily proved her case.
As I said, I am not a theologian. History is my pet hobby.
Here is a reliably documented case. If Jesus Christ, Christianity, and the Catholic church, are false, then please do disprove the assertions and explainations of Joan of Arc.
I hope this has been at least entertaining if not enlightening.
These forums do indeed have limitations – actually a maximum of 6000 characters per post, isn’t it? – but I thought you used your space adeptly. Thanks for taking the time to put together such an engaging contribution.
Appreciatively,
Mick
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SSTeacher
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Chrissi,
Would you mind declaring why you put your faith in atheism in the first place?
Curiously,
Mick
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ChrissiM
Guest
Of course. The answer is simple. My parents were atheists and so I was raised atheist, too. I hadn’t willfully chosen atheism. It was just the philosophy of life I had grown up with, and there was no question for me that atheism is true, untill I began to think more intensively…Chrissi,
Would you mind declaring why you put your faith in atheism in the first place?
Curiously,
Mick
The problem was also that when I was a child I had this picture in mind of God as an old man with a long beard sitting on a cloud.
And of course this was no God I could believe in and I thought that atheists were much more clever because their philosophy is based on science and not on fairy tales. I still had to learn that when Christians talk about God, they don’t talk about an old man on a cloud. 
Chrissi
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SpiritMeadow
Guest
As usual, you chose interesting topics. I would say C and E for me. I think an “instinct” for God is inborn. When we know little, we ascribe what is unknown to God, as we learn the real reasons behind thunder and failed crops, we revise our estimations. Perhaps that is why some get stuck. They think God will shrink to nothingness and there they fight to retain the God of Thunder (figuratively speaking but it does cut against truth handed down for 2000 years in a sense)Is that what faith is: belief that flies in the face of evidence? Maybe that’s too harsh. Maybe by faith, people mean believing even when one doesn’t have evidence?
To which of the following viewpoints do you most relate?
a) Faith means believing something you know is not true.
b) Faith is a great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
c) Faith is based on a deep–seated need to believe.
d) Faith is simply filling in the gaps when you have probability but not certainty.
e) Faith is a gift from God given to everybody
Why do you believe what you believe about Christianity? Are you able to explain your faith or lack of it? If you can, feel free to do so.
Cordially,
Mick
I think our egos can interfer with our ability to see the God within. Some never do, and frankly I know of no reliable way to persuade them. It happens if it happens. It happened to me. No fuzzy 'belief" for me, I wanted sound testable answers. I was a serious atheist, and after reading the bible remained one, (which tells you that reading on your own almost always gives you bad conclusions)
Two things changed my mind, and allowed me to “hear” God. I read in a book about the big bang, that it would be clearly impossible to figure out what caused the big bang or to know what came before (wow, a place for God)! and two, I in a moment of inspiration, realized that billions of folks, a good many of them brilliant were believers. I had no proof that God did not exist, and could never have that. It was an even prop. for me, so I concluded they might well be right. It started my active journey.
That said, God is meant to be faith. I mean if he wanted it unalterably known, it no doubt would be. That is why the Bible is not for me a “God dictated thing” God could do a much better job of that had he wished to. We journey from understanding less, to understanding more, hopefully. We grow in faith and understanding, and again that cuts across the notion for me that there can be truths on anything but the basics that are unchanging. They must change, as we group up, and mature in our understanding. Or so it seems to me.
When we can reach that place of perfect quiet, I think we can unite with God in a way that leaves no doubt whatsoever about his reality. I work at that every day in two meditation sessions beyond my regular devotionals. I may never get there, but I am sure that I can at times see God waving his arms wildly from the back of the room, and I can but stop thinking about how a worm knows its rolled over, I may hear him.
Humor aside, I don’t believe God can be proven, and its not supposed to be that way. It is a journey, one we take knowingly and/or intentionally or unaware. I’m not sure but that those who disavow the journey, benefit anyway. I tend to think that God is as perfect as anything I can imagine, and then 1 million fold that…it means that God is pure goodness to me. Man has been trying to define his experience of God for centuries, but we probably get more wrong than right.
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