I
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.
:
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.
