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Belief in god or not?

You can't PROVE it though it's simply a choice to comfort you because you can't believe this is it.
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I can prove it to myself, as much as anyone can prove anything.
It's not something I want to believe, for comfort sake.

There's many explanations for the chemical reactions in your mind that makes you see a bright light or hear voices telling you to do certain things or to live your life a certain way.
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I didn't hear voices or see a light.
What you're describing sounds like psychosis.
You're making assumptions.

There's nothing in this world that can't be explained eventually.
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Maybe. I don't really know how you can say that with any certainty.
And, God isn't in this world.

But its human nature to try to fill in the gaps when we encounter something unknown to us it doesn't mean what our brain tells us is right.
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My brain didn't tell me anything.

We hear a voice we assume there's a higher power talking to us when in reality we don't know this and there is a logical explanation for what is happening.
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I'm not making any assumptions. You are.
Nobody mentioned hearing voices. But it makes us sound crazy, doesn't it?

It's difficult, nigh impossible, to explain if you haven't encountered God / had a fully transcendental divine experience.
I don't expect you to take my word for it and I have no intention of attempting to explain it to you.

I will say this, however: before I encountered God, I was a skeptical "non-believer".
I didn't want to believe in what I'd experienced and I tried as hard as I could to find some other explanation.
I didn't seek out God.
God found me.

I have seen and experienced extraordinary things, that I cannot put into words.
The atheist argument is, often: concisely explain the ineffable or it doesn't exist.

I have experienced psychosis.
Encountering God is nothing like psychosis.
God is clearer and more certain than anything in this life. It is not a matter of faith.
Some people who haven't encountered God, have faith that there is a God.
You could argue that those people believe what they want to believe.
Me: I don't have faith; I don't believe; I know.

It's a little revealing that you assume so much.
How do you know about something you haven't experienced?
It seems like you - for whatever reason - really don't want to believe.
Stop making assumptions about the divine. It's foolish and patronizing.

If you think "we" hear voices, ask us.
Don't just assume "we're" psychotic, for convenience sake.
It says more about you than it does about "us".
 
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a mixture of cynical pseudopantheism, with some eastern spice essentially illustrate my views on God. The "answer" to your question would be yes. the traditional sense of "God" isn't on point to me. unrelenting light, omniscience, glory, and love have MANY sources. the self... the spirit... the world around.... th world within.


Damn.. you got me going down this existential hole again ;D
 
God is not a singular being to a lot of people. instead God refers to the divine presence of existence itself. Some people (myself included) have had experiences we feel are genuinely divine. It is logical for you to state that you believe there is no God. To dismiss somebody else's experience as psychotic, delusional, or even sensory at all is absolutley illogical.
 
If the belief in God was akin to psychosis, then the majority of the world would be psychotic.
And if the majority of the world was psychotic, sanity would be insanity and insanity sanity.
Based on the definition of mental illness, the majority can't be "mentally ill".
So, if anything, non-believers are "mentally ill"... Get me?
 
ForEverAfter said:
If the belief in God was akin to psychosis, then the majority of the world would be psychotic.
And if the majority of the world was psychotic, sanity would be insanity and insanity sanity.
Based on the definition of mental illness, the majority can't be "mentally ill".
So, if anything, non-believers are "mentally ill"... Get me?
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Definition: Mental Illness - a condition which causes serious disorder in a person's behaviour or thinking.
Definition: Insanity - the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness.
or...
Definition: insanity is a legal term pertaining to a defendant's ability to determine right from wrong when a crime is committed.

Actually the majority CAN be mentally ill - the definition of insane is nothing to do with how many people are that way, nor to do with 'normal' so the logic fails.
Logic CAN be applied to belief, God and Religion, but you will not like it if I do... :D
 
The Doc. said:
So you've seen god? He talks to you?

You can't PROVE it though it's simply a choice to comfort you because you can't believe this is it.
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LOL. How would you know? Why are people so threatened by someone's personal encounters with God? And most who say things like that simply choose to believe it because it's what hey feel most comfortable with.

Yes, I can feel him in my heart an as an energy field around me. It feels kind of being wrapped in balm or a protective energy. And yes, he speaks to me telepathically, but this is between him and me, and no, I can't prove it objectively. If there was any way to prove it, or to proove that he didn't exist, someone would have done so a long time ago. The whole challenge lies in that it's something you need to find for yourself.

Anyway, I've been feeling a lot closer to God lately, I don't know why. Maybe because I've given up all drugs and have purified my "temple". It's satisfying because I've always longed for it, but I have to say it's strange. At the same time it's so easy, it reminds me of the state I would be in as a child.

But I do feel it as rays of a sort of higher energy entering me. I can feel it near then I can draw it in through my crown or into my heart. It feels like a radiant energy radiating out from your heart in all directions.

I feel radioactive.
 
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Mental Illness - a condition which causes serious disorder in a person's behaviour or thinking.
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How is "disorder" defined, if not against the norm?
How do we know there's something "wrong" with someone, without comparing them to someone that there isn't anything "wrong" with?

Your definitions are incomplete.

Sanity is, and always has been, defined by comparisons to the "norm".

...

Back to the voices: if everyone heard voices, it would not be "insane" to hear voices.
Rather than discounting it as psychosis or auditory hallucination, we would be investigating the phenomena scientifically.
Because it occurs in a fringe group, we dismiss it as "disorder".
 
Threads like these always turn out the same way.

The only difference is there's not enough here to say "At least I have come to the basic conclusion that the concept of God is completely illogical, Christianity just social programming for the mindless, and embraced the more realistic outlook of evolutionary science which can actually be PROVEN".

Those thoughts can occupy many for a whole lifetime.
 
sanity
noun

a) the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner; sound mental health.

(Source: Oxford Dictionary)
 
ForEverAfter said:
sanity
noun

a) the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner; sound mental health.

(Source: Oxford Dictionary)
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It seems there would have to be an absolute normal for normal to "exist".

I believe absolutes exist, even if we can't know absolutely what they are.
They may not be circumscribable for a human,
but they exist.
As you move in the spectrum of what is absolute and what is not you will move in an inversely proportional manner.
 
While sane has a definition including 'normal,' insane does not. Insane is very specific and the opposite of sane is not insane but rather unsane. But of course, unsane isn't a word AFAIK - but it fits much better. You can be un-normal without having a mental illness and you can have a mental illness without being un-normal - just observe any psychopath, totally normal behaviour (well, until you put them under threat of course :D)

Personally I don't think much of absolutes - they are too manipulative and they always seem to involve opposites as the only choices. Aristotelian logic. One of my issues with the God of the Judaics and the Religions spawned by them is that too much of it is absolutes. Humans have choices and lots of shades of grey.

For example – it’s wrong to kill, right?

OK, but what if it's killing a man who is in the process of murdering a child? That would be OK wouldn’t it?
But what if the child was the first person in the world to have AIDS and you know 20 million people will die from it in the next 2 decades? Is it STILL right to kill the man?
How about if he GAVE the child the AIDS in the first place? Kill both of them perhaps? Kill him and isolate the child for their entire life?

Do you see how grey things can get?

As for voices, Julian Jaynes (Bicameral Mind) has some interesting ideas about that - I don't necessarily agree with what he says but it certainly opens up a few conversations, and not just Religious ones. :D
 
JM said:
or example – it’s wrong to kill, right?

OK, but what if it's killing a man who is in the process of murdering a child? That would be OK wouldn’t it?
But what if the child was the first person in the world to have AIDS and you know 20 million people will die from it in the next 2 decades? Is it STILL right to kill the man?
How about if he GAVE the child the AIDS in the first place? Kill both of them perhaps? Kill him and isolate the child for their entire life?
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Killing and murder are not the same thing.
I would think you would know that.
Your example of "what if you knew child with aids ......" is fallacious because you are asking someone to act with unknown powers and then limiting these unknown powers. If you could control the future you may very well be able to work out perfect scenario to fix situation. This could be stopping child from even being born . Who knows.
 
Just to complete a thought on the 'normal' situation... normal is like average, handy perhaps for statisticians but not really applicable to humans. Normal as applied to humans is an artificial point on a line, a place marked only by, in some way, selectively defining Human. It doesn't actually have a real-world example and so, a discussion about Human, doesn't really fit. A person could be 'normal' on the subject of marriage but abnormal when it comes to sex.

But is marriage 'normal' for a human? There's a lot of polyandrous people out there who would disagree.

What type of marriage is 'normal'? Given divorce rates in both 'love' countries and 'pre-arranged' countries, it would seem most people don't actually know what a 'normal' marriage is... unless it's a state you enter so you can get divorced. :D

What is abnormal sex? By the definition above about the numbers involved, perhaps anything other than Missionary position is abnormal. Given our near relatives hardly ever do face-to-face sex, perhaps Missionary is abnormal.

And any subject you care to name has similar problems with normal. It all comes back to initial assumptions and we know what assume means.
 
ForEverAfter said:
There is definitely a slingshot effect.
(God loves a sinner.)



To achieve absolute neutrality is to not have an opinion. I don't think that's possible, unless you're a robot. All agnostics I've spoken to reveal the fact - after some interrogation - that they sway in one direction or another.

To sway towards atheism is to believe something, without any evidence / reason.
Nobody can know that there isn't a God. How do you prove that to yourself?

On the other hand: I know there is a God, because I have encountered Him.
I can prove it to myself.

Theism / Deism is based on evidence.
Atheism is based on nothing.

Before science proved that the Earth was spherically-shaped, the world believed it was flat.
The argument for atheism is similar: since we cannot prove it, we don't believe it.
We know only what we can see, now and here, and nothing else exists.

While people may insist - for various reasons - that there is no God, I give them more credit than that.
So called atheists are actually on a path towards God. (Via the slingshot effect.)

Why do people who don't believe in something spend so much time and effort discussing it?
I don't chase Elvis conspiracy nuts, and try and prove that he's dead.
I have no motivation to do so.

Atheists try a bit too hard to convince others.
It often seems like - maybe - they're really trying to convince themselves.

...

Does that (regardless of whether or not you agree with it) make sense?
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Yes, it makes sense and is valid as it's your belief. I appreciate and respect that.
People can believe what they want, it's their right completely. I've just witnessed some religious folks that seem robotic clinging to belief systems, but this is just who I have encountered, and not all cling, nor need to be right :)
Folks I've met who live in the not knowing seem to be okay with that and rather open minded…. I've had some wonderful discussions in these arenas. You also seem open minded to discussion, even though you have a God of your understanding.

It really comes down to the individual though… I don't feel a need to convince anyone… but some do I guess
The need to convince in itself is something the individual needs to look at perhaps.
 
methamaniac said:
Killing and murder are not the same thing.
I would think you would know that.
Your example of "what if you knew child with aids ......" is fallacious because you are asking someone to act with unknown powers and then limiting these unknown powers. If you could control the future you may very well be able to work out perfect scenario to fix situation. This could be stopping child from even being born . Who knows.
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But the bible says, "Thou shalt not kill" - do we interpret that to mean murder is wrong but killing is fine? It seems quite apparent God had no compunction about making the Hebrews kill innocent men and women - he even wiped out almost all humans himself.

My example is not fallacious, because it says, "But what if the child was the first person in the world to have AIDS and you know 20 million people will die from it in the next 2 decades?" The question is valid I think. It is asking 'if this situation, it that action still wrong?" And after all, we live in a world where the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, right? Isn't that almost a definition of Democracy?
 
Ninae said:
But who has said they see a bright light or hear voices telling them to do certain things or life your life in a certain way?
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OK... I'll give into temptation... Isaiah, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel, Noah, Jesus... :D Should I go on?
 
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