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Former Athiests, What Changed Your Mind?

Magikol

Magikol

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 6, 2015
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28
I'm curious what might make someone decide not to be an atheist anymore, and if drug use had any impact on that decision.

When I was younger, probably early to mid teen years, I was a fairly confident Athiest. Then, as I got into exploring psychedelics, I had enough experiences that I couldn't really justify being an Athiest anymore but I've also not really latched onto any religion.

I read a lot of religious text, probably most closely identified with Buddhism, but I think the most accurate way to label myself would he a spiritual agnostic.

I'd be very interested to hear what other people's religious experiences have been throughout their lives.
 
I wasn't taught any religion, my mum was an atheist who said she'd be closest to buddhist if she had to choose one. We just had to remember hundreds of things that were bad luck so we didn't bring any home with us. So I wasn't quite raised to believe nothing and I believe in a scattering of teachings from anywhere, including fiction novels that got incorporated into the pseudo-religion that my sister and I made up as stoned teenagers. she believes in Angels, I almost typed I don't then couldn't bring myself to do it, the bad luck thing stops me. We don't have exactly the same beliefs when we made up our religion it allowed for differences, lol.

I don't really hold any christain beliefs even though all my grandparents were of that religion and the school taught it.

Anyway I just think people like religion because it makes them feel safer and ike there's a purpose. I was looking out the window yesterday thinking of how we are all life, life is change, death is stillness, a pigeon looked at me and I thought we have similar lives. We live, eat, fuck, reproduce, raise the chicks and do whatever feels besst to do. We follow a programming of sorts, couldn't guess whether there is a direction to life, I expect we just keep moving in cycles and I'm stoned and rambling.
I'd love to have something that I really believed in, I'm a bit envious of people who have that.
 
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Being seriously injured in Iraq. The hospital staff queued up to give blood to save my life. They are all Muslims. They didn't want anything but for me to be OK.

I'm not a Muslim but I appreciated that prayers were given and my name and the name of my lost friends are remembered as people who brought them together to do good.
 
i was kind of an athiest as a younger teen but then i started to notice too much synchronicity happening for me not to believe there is a higher power or something unknown going on.
 
foodcrisis said:
i was kind of an athiest as a younger teen but then i started to notice too much synchronicity happening for me not to believe there is a higher power or something unknown going on.
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The human brain is designed to match patterns. It's how ALL of our senses work. It's our ability to match patterns in more abstract ways that is the basis of our success as a species. 50% of the oxygen we absorb is to keep the brain working - now for such a terrible extra burden, their has to be a payoff, right?

But having heard from people who have experienced a single episode of sensing something nobody else does to people who have such feelings all the time, it's often interesting to see how people have preprogrammed their minds to find specific patterns.



There are a few videos of George Hotz talking but it was at the SWSX conference (apparently now deleted) where he gave an unannounced speech where people saw genius cross that thin line to madness. He explained that while watching a movie, he realized that the entire universe is a game running on an immensely powerful computer (see Simulation Hypothesis AKA Simulation trilema). Now that is a VERY interesting choice because it applies some quite complex logic including Kurt Gödel's proof that mathematics can NEVER be complete. Their will always be statements that are undecidable. It also takes in issues such as it being impossible to measure the entire universe because to do so, you would have to take the measurement from OUTSIDE the universe.

But (and this is the question that caused him problems) was 'Aren't you building your entire position on both unprovable (mathematically speaking) and unfalsifiable statements? I admit, he went quiet for a good 20 seconds... then he set of in an entirely different direction. It seemed that so strong was his belief that when faced with discrete formal logical fallacies, his brain simply could not process them. I'm supposing it's a defence mechanism. MANY people would have dealt with it in far worse ways. He stuck in there and carried on... he lost the audience a little, but he stuck with it.

If you DO find that lecture, it's worth a watch. Because he is someone who clearly has a deep knowledge of science and logic but possibly not quite the ability to use such knowledge as readily as HE thought. Knowledge is merely a tool used in understanding and given time, may become wisdom.

I'm not saying he or anyone else is wrong, but even on BL the single most common issue I face is people saying 'of course you can mix drug X with drug Y, it's TOTALLY safe because I did it and I'm OK.

So when people tell me about their own particular belief system, I'm always interested. But it's interesting how people become so hard-wired to THEIR belief system being the only correct one and is applicable to all others... well, that's when their are sometimes problems.

I'm interested that so many belief systems seem to sidestep the fact that we all die. That the world does not rely on us viewing it for it to exist. I think that's a valuable use of psychedelics. The happiest times are when their ceases to be a 'me' i.e. total removal of ego. No problems, no issues with past or future, only now...

Sorry, well OT there and I have to say that a minority take things to extremes like those Heaven's Gate people. They didn't harm anyone else but their faith was based on side-stepping death.

My mother's view (given 45 years ago) seem the most reasonable 'I don't want to die, I want to know what happens next'.
 
I became an atheist at 16.. I eventually also became a materialist.. determinist..

But I met a girl who I was in love with.. and she gave me a tarot reading and I immediately became a spiritual person..

A few years later on an amp come down.. I felt what I would call the presence of God.. kind of hazy and partly based on projection.. but it changed my mind for good..

Later I read the Course in Miracles and there was a line that said "God is love".. this made me an atheist again.. but I eventually attained a real personal relationship with God.. though I believe Adam Kadmon is the soul and creator.. but God has been around since the beginning as well.
 
TripSitterNZ said:
nope the messiah does not exist. No one is coming to save this world.
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I wonder why so many people apparently believe in a single agency? I always talk to the DMT elves after a decent hit, but it's elves plural. Not that I mistake them for god, but most likely my brains way of dealing with sensual changes that it cannot 'pattern match'.

In fact, didn't William Gibson even wrote a story called 'Pattern Matching'? How one person became allergic to patterns?
 
Magikol said:
I'm curious what might make someone decide not to be an atheist anymore, and if drug use had any impact on that decision.

When I was younger, probably early to mid teen years, I was a fairly confident Athiest. Then, as I got into exploring psychedelics, I had enough experiences that I couldn't really justify being an Athiest anymore but I've also not really latched onto any religion.

I read a lot of religious text, probably most closely identified with Buddhism, but I think the most accurate way to label myself would he a spiritual agnostic.I was militantly atheist.
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In my teens and 20s I was militantly atheist.
Around the age of 30 I became a "Born-Again Christian." (lasted about 6 months)
Since then I've been a tree-hugging existential humanist spiritual agnostic open-minded skeptic.

First took acid at age 15 and have tripped throughout my life hundreds of times since. Yeah, it has influenced me.
 
Used to be an atheist, now an agnostic. Mainly, the simple argument that there is as much proof AGAINST the existence of a god as there is FOR the existence of one. We simply don’t know, which is a good and reasonable point to be making, thereby I revised my original assessment.
 
I think agnosticism is the most reasonable view-point. The burden of proof does lie wit theists but their is no formal definition of what such proof would be. That is why I find some atheists difficult to talk to. In a polytheistic universe, it's assumed that gods may only act on certain aspects of existence and only within specific environments.

So while someone else has the right to their own beliefs, it seems to be the monotheistic faiths that will seek to influence the beliefs of another. It seems to be a way to make sense of a chaotic universe and worse, the judge others. It's ironic that those professing faith will judge others based on their system of belief.

If it helps people to lead a good and happy life, I can have no opinion on their position, but when someone judges me for having different beliefs... they make a joke of their own professed faith.

There might well be some truth in the observation that 'nobody acts in a less Christian manner than professed Christians'. A minority, I'm sure, but I don't see other Christians actively disagreeing with them.

I use the Christian faith merely because it's the dominant faith (if any) of the nation where I reside.
 
To me it all boiled down to divine will for my life, my life as a whole. That I was a new creature set apart from the rest of mankind. At first I would think of myself a super soldier. Leaving humanity behind until God spanked the crap outta me. It wasn't something I conjured up. Intervention is what I would call it, no doubt today I'd be dead. I saw to many real and false miracles that kick started my faith. Not many get that privilege. That's why the Apostle Paul said he's in chains. I can't do anything out of God's Sovereign will. No matter how hard I want to if I go left He pushes me right. Granted I would be spitting on the sandals that saved me from outerdarkness. You are all apart of God's Great scheme in winning more for Him. God has been so misrepresented. He is Love in the truest sense. Do I fail? Everyday I beg God to forgive a wretch like me. I'm no less or more then anyone else but I consider myself less so I might win you to Christ. There's just a divine interaction that happens when you lock on the most piercing loving eyes imaginable. You can't run from it. Where am I gonna go? I just met God and if He's real then Hell is too. I just want to make Him real for yall
 
God is just a word that has different meanings for everyone.

The truth about reality is that reality is non-dual.

There is one without second. Only awareness.

Some call that god. Others call a magic man in the sky god.

God is infinite reality and we are just small parts of the infinite fractal of reality that goes on forever. Only you can save yourself.

All religions are 100% bullshit.
 
I suspect 100% of organised religions a BS. But I cannot experience what another person has... and I'm not so certain or so cruel as to dismiss them without good reason.
 
I don't believe in any official religion, but until I did mushrooms I thought what we see is what there is.

Since doing psychedelics, it's hard for me to deny the existence of some kind of 'magic' out there.

Also, I've had so many crazy fucked up situations that should have killed me and out of 'luck' everytime I come out unharmed.
 
I like the point someone made about recognising patterns.

Teaching religion has to start early because you are teaching patterns of thought the kids will never see backed up by physical proof, there seems more proof of Santa existing than proof of any religion being correct.

So those unusual thoughts you don't recognise when you're tripping or that shadow moving oddly just out of sight, or those fricking imaginary mice and beetles that scoot everywhere in withdrawal, making me jump, driving me crazy, just out of the corner of my eye, or phantom touches, all those patterns are matched to whatever otherworldly thing a child has been taught is most likely when it seems impossible (or impossibly fast like those mice or beetles).

So I was raised with a belief in the local Faeries, the big toddler sized ones, and I've seen them, glimpses here and there, there are spirits in trees and streams and other places in nature, one used to protect our old house, in fact the people who moved in after we left wouldn't use one bedroom because the daughters both described the same electric blue spirit in the same room as my toddler son used to tell me about. The mom came here to ask if we'd known there were spirits in the house, my husband panicked and told me to deny it all. Somehow I don't think we could get sued for that, but who knows, lol, I knew the spirit felt at ease with us until I said something I shouldn't have, then it was angry, so we moved two streets away and it's tree promptly died! It must have left just after us.

Yes, that's right, we moved house because I offended a spirit in our old one.

Other people's otherworldly beliefs always sound bonkers when first heard (and often at all times of hearing after as well). I am completely mystified at what the attraction of christianity is unless you like being controlled your entire life.

The bible's contradictory, misogynistic, condones slavery, lots of very unenlightened thinking in there for a book supposedly by the timeless, all knowing wisdom of the world. Perhaps there was a mischievous spirit told some people he had created all the world and he got believed because he was a spirit, they wrote it down and people still worship those words today. I'd want a bit more evidence, like my faeries, then I might believe it, 😇
 
I haven't changed my generally sceptical view about the physical reality of a deity or the lack of moral and philosophical validity in any of the thousands of worlds religions, but I do now think there is a value to religion- maybe even a necessity. There is a God-shaped hole in the modern world which I think people need filled or we are left with massive polarisation and failure to find a common path forward- chaos and disorder. That said, filling this hole 'legitimately' seems almost impossible given what we now know about our place in the mighty cosmos, so we are left with what I've heard called a 'hole-shaped God', the new religions of politics and ideology. In many ways, the old beliefs in the Great Sky Daddy may have been better than what has replaced it. Which says something pretty fucking appalling.
 
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