This conversation on Christian Mysticism began with a question posted on one of Amazon's religious forums. The question was: "What is your one most important question about God?" And like most forums a question can develop into a full blown debate. It has been altered from the original response.
Before we get started it is important that you understand what is taking place. Joe W. is believed by the Mystic Post to have questions as to the validity of God and Eric, The Mystic Post's editor and resident mystic is answering.
In this debate, Eric is coming from the side of mysticism as a whole, as he believes it would be more healthy for the different cultures to not cling so tightly to one belief over another, which in this case would be Christian Mysticism and learn from the wealth of information offered by people around the world.
His stance is that many of our troubles come from the divisions we've set up for our-selves since the beginning of religion and that the benefits we seek as a world community, can be found by sharing in the wealth of information that every culture has to offer.
Jewish Mysticism, Christian Mysticism, Islamic Mysticism, Hindu Mysticism and Buddhist Mysticism together can find the common ground if they would seek the similarities rather clinging to their differences. This idea comes from Eric's mystical experience at the age of twenty one and the forty years since of contemplating how his experience can benefit the mysticism of all religions.
Here is Part of the Christian Mysticism Debate.
Joe W says:
On the contrary Eric, the characteristics of God are irrelevant to the issue. Attribution (or not) the qualities of "love" and "judgment" to God are largely irrelevant from my point of view. While I might discuss such things to demonstrate the internal contradictions of the argument for the morality represented by the christian mysticism god, that is not the fundamental problem.
The fundamental problem is that there is no evidence of that god, and there is no evidence that anyone has the ability to possess the knowledge that they claim. There are no markers in those claims to distinguish it from the imagination of the believer. In this way claims of "God" by Christians are no different than claims of "source" by you.
