January 7th 2006- My "faith"

There are two separate aspects to my belief.
1.) What I have deduced from the evidence.
2.) Conformation of those evidences from the Holy Spirit.
Now before you jump all over the Holy Spirit part :) let me explain further. First of all I would never use the independent confirmation by the Spirit as evidence in any sort of apologetics dialog. That is simply a matter for believers and thus irrelevant to an outsider to the faith. Also that conformation to me is worthless without a basis in evidence and reality.

My Faith is the same as what is ment by faith in the New Testament which is the word Pistis:
An obligation of loyalty or fidelity based on past performance. Pistis is also ment as belief based on the evidence or a technical retorical term for forensic proof. Yes you heard right PROOF.
The Christian Faith is not as Mark Twain put it:
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so"

The Christian "Faith" has its basis in a historical event or events. It was not conceived in any sort of metaphysical sense but was based on the actions and teachings of a historical person. Now we can debate whether these events actually occurred and were faithfully written down etc etc. but for the intent of this post I won't go into that as I am explaining why I believe what I believe. Obviously I believe that these thing which are written in the NT are factual, accurate and worthy of placing trust in for a variety of reasons and based on a variety of substantial evidences. To put it succinctly I do not simply believe these things (existence of God, Jesus as savior, truthfulness of the bible etc. etc.) out of blind "faith" (the "faith" I am using here is the one as defined by Mark Twain) I believe them from a reasoned deduction of the evidence that I have seen and studied. And so, based on my interpretation of that evidence, I am compelled to follow a path that is based on the reality that is presented in those evidences. Thus it would be foolish of me to choose any other path. I am not simply choosing a "religion" that conforms to what I want and desire but instead I am led to conform my self to a belief that resides in truth. (For instance: Say that it was raining outside my house. I may or may not want it to rain but it matters little as the fact still remains that it is indeed raining, so when I go out into the rain I wear a rain coat. I.E. I conform my self to reality in a sensible manner) Truth by its very nature is exclusive. So, by default all other beliefs that are contrary to the truth are therefore false. Truth can not contradict itself.