Originally Posted by lamplight

Well, I understand what you mean... But i genuinely think that he has a map to bring to the table. All you have to do is use it actively for it to stick.

How do you use it actively?

And I know it has helped me a great deal in maturing a lot during the last year. Though I really can't wrap my head around it yet. I'm only 24, so I'm gonna give myself some slack... hehe...

Here is where I can agree with you. We can benefit personally by all kinds of paths to truth that are not logical, rational, or empirical. We can listen to music, look at great paintings, love your own child, lose a loved one, become spiritually centered, meditate, do yoga, etc. Life is something that is learned about from every faculty that you have going for you. So I can believe that something like this can mature you if it makes you aware of many different modes of thought.

The questions is, how does one actually apply this in any different way than just living life and learning its lessons? What technique would you use to have religion inform public policy, for example, without doing as much evil as it does good? How does one separate a true belief from a false one?

For example, which Christian value should we use when we create policy about homosexual marriages? Should we be informed by God's infinite Grace and forgiveness, or should we be informed by a Christian zeal for purity and sin aversion? Tell me how you would apply Christian theology to that problem? And tell me how you would know it was true?

But I'm sure if we all put our heads together, we could come up with something helpful in this thread.