My father isn't and raised me as an atheist. My mother is and doesn't talk about it though.

12/22/2008 9:09:33 AM

Here comes

12/22/2008 9:12:40 AM

^^
and the other questions....?

(you may not have noticed that I edited my post^^^)

12/22/2008 9:33:34 AM

I'll repost my questions for this page:

Quote :

"The problem is, that doesn't really answer the question(s). I don't know anything about this "six definitions of sin" or "chaotic faith"; in fact, that sounds like christian stuff -- I'm not asking for that. You can't answer a question about how and/or why you chose christianity over all other choices by referring to christian stuff, because then how and/or why did you choose that?? You see? You can't use things like "Christ is the only way to God", "God sacrificed Christ for us", or "No other god could love us so much" to justify why or how you came to believe those things. I'm asking: before you chose to be (or otherwise ended up,) christian, what happened such that you didn't choose to be (or otherwise end up,) something other than christian? (Remember, you can't use any ideas derived from your belief in christ or the christian god to explain why or how you got those beliefs, and not any beliefs in, say, vishnu or shiva.)"

You replied:

Quote :

"There is no explaining, you're right. Communication with the Holy Spirit brought me to Christ."

Then I asked:

Quote :

"Are you parents christian? (You already answered that one.) Describe this "communication"? Do you understand that I am skeptical of that? If you hear voices, that is not god, that is you -- suffering from schizophrenia. How did you know this communication wasn't coming from zeus or osiris? How did you know it was the "Holy Spirit"? How did you know what the "Holy Spirit" was? Also, instead of simply saying "There is no explaining", could you [please] address each question or point I put forward? There must be some explanation as to why you're a christian and not something else..."

???

12/22/2008 10:18:53 AM

I'll try my best but I suck at this, lol. And by the way, don't ask questions, and when people try to answer, tell them that their answers suck and that they can't use them. I'm trying.

I did a lot of research on my own when I was about 20 years old. I had a lot of the big questions and nobody wanted to give me their two cents, so I just read. As an atheist my whole life I answered those questions on my own for the most part, but I found they all lead back to one gap in human knowledge, which is where my faith began.

Quote :

"Describe this "communication"? "

I was on campus at the time. There were no actual voices or images involved, but it was tremendously crystal clear. It's hard to describe. After studying the Bible and fasting for the spring, something clicked into place like the last ball in a lottery. I accepted Christ and felt a spiritual change.

Quote :

"Do you understand that I am skeptical of that?"

Sure.

Quote :

"How did you know this communication wasn't coming from zeus or osiris?"

Not colorful enough to be schizophrenia, not mute enough to be indecipherable. It was a powerful sensation that this is the one. I could go on comparing gods but that's not the issue. One of them called me out. The same for your other question about the Holy Spirit. Identity need not be established through recognizable media.

Quote :

"How did you know what the "Holy Spirit" was?"

Research and meditation.
[Edited on December 22, 2008 at 11:10 AM. Reason : It's probably worth mentioning that I was on the verge of converting to Islam for years.]

12/22/2008 11:07:49 AM

Quote :

"....I answered those [big] questions on my own for the most part, but I found they all lead back to one gap in human knowledge"

What gap? What questions (in particular)? How did the questions "lead" to this gap?

Quote :

"it was tremendously crystal clear. It's hard to describe. After studying the Bible and fasting for the spring, something clicked into place like the last ball in a lottery. I accepted Christ and felt a spiritual change."

When you say you "accepted Christ", do you mean you decided to "accept Christ"? What did the "spiritual change" feel like? How did you know is was "spiritual"? Is it possible that you simply decided to be christian?...the same way someone decides their political affiliation, career, etc.?

Why did you fast? Had you ever fasted before?

Quote :

"It was a powerful sensation that this is the one."

When you had the sensation of "this is the one", how did you know what "the one" was? Did you just happen to have christianity on your mind after your reading?

Quote :

"I could go on comparing gods but that's not the issue. One of them called me out."

Actually, it is. Both I and fatcatt316 are specifically referring to that issue. Why christ? Were you studying about lots of different gods and religions while (perhaps unknowingly) taking each into consideration on a personal level?...like you were shopping for faith?

Quote :

"Research and meditation [is how I knew what the "Holy Spirit" was]"

So, by meditating over your (presumably christian) research, weren't you sort of "seeking" something? You had whatever you'd learned from research about the "holy spirit" in mind when you decided to meditate, right?

Quote :

"It's probably worth mentioning that I was on the verge of converting to Islam for years."

How did you know that it wasn't Allah "communicating" with you?

[Edited on December 22, 2008 at 12:08 PM. Reason : ]

12/22/2008 12:07:32 PM

Quote :

"I... wanted to chat about God? "

hai I'm here

12/22/2008 1:08:00 PM

A couple of days ago I took a shit with such an enormous girth that it ripped my asshole. The toilet paper was bright red and soaked with blood. As I sat there waiting for my sphincter to return back to its normal size I suddenly thought of Christ suffering on the cross.

Is this a sign?

Why would that image flash in my mind. I could have thought an infinite number of other things.....and yet there he was.

12/22/2008 1:55:29 PM

Quote :

"Quote : "How did you know this communication wasn't coming from zeus or osiris?" Not colorful enough to be schizophrenia, not mute enough to be indecipherable. It was a powerful sensation that this is the one. I could go on comparing gods but that's not the issue. One of them called me out. The same for your other question about the Holy Spirit. Identity need not be established through recognizable media."

Sounds like the typical religious experience reported when the inferior parietal lobe is activated. You can mimic this sensation by practicing transcendental meditation (your religious experience was actually induced by a non-structured form of transcendental meditation), doing salvina divornum (after a light meditation session to "focus" your brain on religious experience), or doing acid (LSD) in the right setting.

Here's 2 good studies if you really want to know what happened to you: http://tinyurl.com/8t6rl5
[link] http://tinyurl.com/78us4j[/link]

THis is a better study, but I can't find the full text online anywhere:
http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/9/3/498

To summarize, you had a "religious experience" but it wasn't a god or deity touching you. It was you inducing it.

[Edited on December 22, 2008 at 3:04 PM. Reason : tiny]

12/22/2008 2:43:36 PM

^
...good point.

cddweller, have you ever used salvia or lsd?
If so, did that experience feel similar to this "powerful sensation" or "spiritual change" that you felt?

12/22/2008 5:26:24 PM

Quick exercise:

Christians - Prove there is a God

Atheists - Prove there isn't a God

12/22/2008 5:40:26 PM

that's why im a "militant agnostic"

i don't know, and you don't either. so stfu.

12/22/2008 6:31:23 PM

Quote :

"good point. cddweller, have you ever used salvia or lsd? If so, did that experience feel similar to this "powerful sensation" or "spiritual change" that you felt?"

Merely using these things won't recreate the exact same feeling.

If you read the study using the complex magnetic fields, once the subject was coaxed in to the ethereal perception, they reported the "entity" changing based on their awareness of it.

Which means it depends on what you want your state of mind is before and during the experience, you'll experience different things. SOme people, for example, report salvina being a very terrifying experience, when not used in the context of spiritual meditation.

12/22/2008 9:18:40 PM

I'm guessing those that choose to stray away from religion are also those that eschew rules for their own personal gain or pleasure, so by adhering to religion, they would give up those freedoms and have to answer for their crimes.

/can of worms

12/22/2008 9:21:32 PM

^ maybe it's because they didn't want someone who asserts the world is only ~7000 years old telling them how to live their life...?

And also the concept of Heaven as an afterlife is completely illogical.

The only logical afterlife theory (that i've come across...) is non 1:1 reincarnation, where all humans share a single "soul" and each new born human is a manifestation of a fragment of this soul.

[Edited on December 22, 2008 at 9:27 PM. Reason : ]

12/22/2008 9:23:54 PM

I'm still trying to reconcile science with religion. It's hard with absolutist Christians. I like Christians who are borderline secular humanists, except for the afterlife part.

One of the problems with reincarnation is that it rarely leads to eternal satisfaction and nasty caste systems.

12/22/2008 9:49:29 PM

Quote :

"borderline secular humanists"

bjs

12/22/2008 9:51:15 PM

12/22/2008 9:52:06 PM

12/22/2008 9:53:08 PM

Quote :

"One of the problems with reincarnation is that it rarely leads to eternal satisfaction and nasty caste systems. "

did you mean NOT rarely?

And the form of reincarnation I described isn't practiced by any major religion, as far as I know.

^^^ umm... what is bjs?

12/22/2008 9:55:58 PM

^ I assumed the Hindu form of reincarnation. Sorry. That version of reincarnation is interesting. On the surface, it follows a derivative form of the 3 in 1 concept of Jesus, without all the bothersome textual and historical basis for a religion. Dissenting opinion: it makes about as much sense as a guy whose death on a stick guarantees eternal life.

I'll concede that I'm not trying to convert anyone to Christianity. If your lifestyle gives you a sense of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny, then more power to you, because ultimately, that's what it's all about.

To be honest, I'm going to a Christian conference this weekend that I am not looking forward to, because it's a Grace function and their extremist absolutist beliefs only hurt the entirety of the church. Also, the last couple times I went on a Christian retreat, I was hazed slightly, which is not cool. I promised a friend I'd give Grace another try, so I'll go.

12/22/2008 10:07:20 PM

Quote :

" it follows a derivative form of the 3 in 1 concept of Jesus, without all the bothersome textual and historical basis for a religion."

I guess so (although I wouldn't say it was derived for that), but it's a pretty critical difference when this applies to all humans, and there is no single, seperate overarching entity.

Quote :

"Dissenting opinion: it makes about as much sense as a guy whose death on a stick guarantees eternal life."

I don't see the connection.

12/22/2008 10:10:05 PM

I didn't really understand the reincarnation concept, since you didn't delve into what happens when people die. I assume they go back to the big soul pool. Also, is there any reward for living a good life or punishment for living a bad life?

12/22/2008 10:15:44 PM

Quote :

"As an atheist my whole life I answered those questions on my own for the most part, but I found they all lead back to one gap in human knowledge, which is where my faith began"

What a dumb fucking statement. Do you know why ancient humans thought that the sun and the moon were gods? Yep, that's right. Gaps in human knowledge.

Don't be a cave man.

12/22/2008 10:15:49 PM

It was a comment on the origin of life.

12/22/2008 10:16:48 PM

What should be done with the gaps in human knowledge? Not to say that one should directly go to faith, but shouldn't there at least be a queue?

12/22/2008 10:18:39 PM

Can God microwave nachos so hot that he himself couldn't eat them?

12/22/2008 10:19:07 PM

Once I recognized it for what it was, it lasted all of 5 months.

12/22/2008 10:19:13 PM

Quote :

"Can God microwave nachos so hot that he himself couldn't eat them?"

Perhaps, but then He would blow on them.

12/22/2008 10:21:59 PM

Quote :

"I didn't really understand the reincarnation concept, since you didn't delve into what happens when people die. I assume they go back to the big soul pool."

This is what happens, yes.

Quote :

" Also, is there any reward for living a good life or punishment for living a bad life?"

Not explicitly, no. However, your tiny bit of life retains a fragment (how much, I don't know) after you die, and this is also dumped in to the soul pool. Which means that everyone born after you is affected by your life. So if you're a shitty person, you donate a bit of your evil and misery to the soul pool. If you're an industrious or kind person, this is donated as well. If you're just an average, apathetic person, that too is donated (and possible has no net effect on the soul pool).

I actually thought of this one night wondering about the Flynn Effect, and I was theorizing maybe it is due to the slow collective accumulation of knowledge via the soul pool. which means you should see slight fluctuations in the collective intelligence of humanity after massive plagues or wars, or any event where lots of people die or are born.

Note also that I don't believe this, but it was more logical to me than other types of reincarnation, heaven, hell, or a benevolent, mingling God.

12/22/2008 10:22:19 PM

I like the idea that God is too obsessed with His own greatness and is completely unresponsive to the outside world*, because it makes more sense that way. The only hole is that it gives God a negative character trait, which, post-Old Testament, He doesn't really have any**.


* As portrayed in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series book #7 "And Eternity".

** In the Old Testament, He had a bigger role in punishing evil, like genocide and such, which is supposed to be evil. In the New Testament, He has two proxies (Jesus and the Holy Spirit) and a kinder, gentler nature.

12/22/2008 10:28:41 PM

Quote :

"It was a comment on the origin of life."

I've come to the conclusion that your faith is solely based on your ignorance. This "reading" and "studying" that you did was clearly not enough. If you were educated on the science around the origin of life, the Anthropic Principle, and other theories, you would not be in the position you're in now.

12/22/2008 10:30:36 PM

^ which wouldn't be problematic, if she didn't feel the need to spread her idiotic perspectives on religion.

12/22/2008 10:36:20 PM

Ergo the problem with religious people.

12/22/2008 10:40:39 PM

That's a pretty blanket statement.

12/22/2008 10:45:11 PM

Sorry, but I'm in a bit of a Hitchens mood tonight.

12/22/2008 10:48:13 PM

^^ you have to read it in the context of the thread...

he's obviously only referring to the type of religious person that refuses to analyze their beliefs, and grow from what they learn. Where "grow" doesn't necessarily mean "become an atheist/agnostic"

12/22/2008 10:50:12 PM

We need to somehow combine the thread in the soapbox with this one so I don't have to keep tabbing between them.

12/22/2008 10:51:39 PM

^^ Oh ok.

12/22/2008 10:53:28 PM

How come it is thought that the highest levels of human knowledge are those things that can be answered with certainty?

When something living dies, the chemical compounds still exsit, the only difference is that elusive thing called life. Chemistry we can explain. Life we can't. What would you consider a higher level of knowledge, or more interesting to speculate about?

12/22/2008 10:57:54 PM

^ when something dies, the arrangement of those chemicals, which is the MOST critical aspect of what determines what a chemical does, changes pretty substantially. You just kind of blithely glossed over that fact.

12/22/2008 11:02:43 PM

There is a lot of concentrated stupid in this thread.

12/23/2008 8:34:31 AM

cddweller:

Could you please answer my questions? (from here: #12442363)

12/23/2008 9:30:47 AM

[Edited on December 24, 2008 at 2:27 PM. Reason : .]

12/24/2008 2:26:43 PM

thats a very concrete way of looking at it.

12/24/2008 3:57:22 PM

Quote :

"To me, Old Testament God was kind of a dick, but that could be because He was new to being God and was trying to get used to his super powers, like Spider-man."

hahaha

Quote :

"Another reason is that He wants us to reach out to those who are suffering for no reason and to comfort them, as a medium for bringing them news about God."

That assumes that people who suffer for no reason don't know about God to begin with. Even in the Book of Job God punishes the faithful for little more reason than to be a douchebag.

2/21/2009 6:39:51 AM

did she friend her beaus brother

2/21/2009 11:24:02 AM