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Talking with God

whippa craka

whippa craka

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 11, 2011
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571
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Buffalo, NY
PLEASE fill me in on what people mean when they "talk with god".

I am coming from a Christianity aspect. I keep myself as unbiased and informative as possible. But I am really trying to grasp this. I hate seeing kids who'm dont know what a variable is in Math saying "I am in love with god, and he loves me...", or something similar.

Basically, My thoughts are that a sub-conscious fallback, AKA "God", is very comforting to any person to be able to communicate with and use to help deal with issues. Just about anything is possible psychologically (placebo). Personally, I think more and more that it is crazy, god is a figment of something in a persons head that grows and consumes. No different then any other psychological disorder.

I am just going off the fact that there is nothing to show for it, ever. These are thoughts inside a person's head, their own reality twisted by those around them to follow "god". Please respond in kind-hearted ways, I am trying to be understanding.
 
I know tons of Christian who constantly talk about how they either spoke with God or experienced God and this or that. When I ask them what they mean by that they just give vague descriptions that make no sense and then go on to quote the Bible or something.

I've also been to a Pentecostal Church (a friend of mine went to pick up her mom who went to that church) and I saw people speaking in tongues. Literally scared me half to death. People speaking hysterically in gibberish and looking like they were having a seizure or something. I looked at my friend and he looked at me and he just gave me this look of "I know dude these people are crazy!!!" When my friends mom got in the car she just kept asking me whether I was a Christian or not and I kept saying no I don't believe in that sort of thing.

And she kept saying that God has spoken to her and that what I saw in the church was people being taken by the holy spirit and all that nonsense. I just kept respectfully nodding my head and saying that I'm open to the idea of God and yaddy yadda yadda. Long story short I have no idea what people are talking about when they say they have spoken with God.

IMO they are either delusional, making stuff up, or have completely convinced themselves that they have indeed had a conversation with the almighty which I guess coincides with the delusional thing.

Funny enough though later that night me and my friend took a bunch of mushrooms and tripped out really hard in the woods. And I felt like for a second I understood what my friends mom was saying earlier about speaking to God. But then I came to the conclusion while I was tripping that if God existed he wouldn't take the time to talk to me or anybody else. as that would be like us humans trying to have a conversation with an ant or some bacteria in a Petri dish.
 
Freddy I completely agree with you. The mind is very fragile and easily maniptulated. Emotions, feelings and thoughts are just different balances of hormones and electrical signals in the brain. Think in regards to psychology and what the body naturally craves and the reward centers. I really think god is just one giant complicated blob of "I need something more in my life". Which is true, if you didn't want something more, why would you see "god"?
 
^Yeah I agree. While I do not consider myself a total atheist I do lean heavily towards atheism. Its just that IMO I don't think anyone can ever truly know either way so I prefer to keep my mind open to even the slightest possibility.

But yeah in the end I think this whole "I talked to God" stuff is almost like a self fulfilling delusion. In that some people want to believe in God so badly they actually might have had a conversation with something. Whether it be themselves or some construct within their minds that they believe is God whatever. Its not IMO a straight up hallucination but something pretty close. I'm not gonna go as far to say that all people who make such claims are mentally ill or anything. I've known some very intelligent and completely sane people who are Christians and talk about experiencing God and such.

But I don't know in some sense I think they are essentially fooling themselves.
 
whippa craka said:
Freddy I completely agree with you. The mind is very fragile and easily maniptulated. Emotions, feelings and thoughts are just different balances of hormones and electrical signals in the brain. Think in regards to psychology and what the body naturally craves and the reward centers. I really think god is just one giant complicated blob of "I need something more in my life". Which is true, if you didn't want something more, why would you see "god"?
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God is an imaginary friend that plays your emotional crutch. A Superficial ego boost to people who are either to stupid to get by on their own or can't grow up and act like an adult that does what needs to be done; or people who were so enamored with fairy tales and happily ever afters that they can not or will not act like adults and admit that fairy tales are exactly that. The god construct can also be used to cover up guilt they equate their actions to spiritual equity, going to beat their children then go to confession and they feel better about it.* Hitler was one of those people types of people. Its why "there is no atheist in a fox hole" because in grips of desperation the idea that there is som higher power protecting you gives people the courage to not just shoot themselves in the face. You are entirely on the right path to self realization.




* disconnected side note. Christian parents are some of the worst parents I know state side.
I've also ignored religiously indoctrinated people because they are a different case.


A post I made a while back.
NSFW:
Through out my life I was never the most accepted child. I was chubby, and then I was Asian, and then I was the chubby Asian. I was suicidal by the age of 10. I'd often take knifes and rub them on my arms, grind the tips into my sternum until I bled. Then, one day I my friend invited me to church. Later I was a regular at church. I became your average double thinking anti-logic christian. After I was indoctrinated into their community, as they do, they begun to tell me I was a horrible person because I had gone against "god" i saw many a girls self-confidence crushed. Many people lose faith in themselves and I too fell back into my old patterns. And eventually over time my interest in science liberated me from that cycle, I found the logical fallacies in my thinking and fell out to being a deist or following Spinoza's view of the universe more or less and over time through social and personal altercations I slowly began to restore my self-worth. I realized that I might not be the most attractive person or rather, there isn't a large market for masculine looking Asian men these days. And so I restored my self-worth far surpassing any false self-worth I had attributed to religious practices in the past. Eventually I realized that I was and am god. I AM GOD. And if you've ever felt a boost in confidence or strength ect. that you've attributed to god. You are god as well.
---------------------------------
part two (second point)
This obviously doesn't apply to any type of supernatural powers. E.G. I cannot shoot lightning out of my ears. But rather to the constructs of the mind that lead one to believe in a higher power. Beyond the most common logical fallacies. The mind structure that people get into where they are so full of self-doubt that they cannot uplift themselves and tell themselves "You can!" That is, that to many people rely on god(s) as essentially invisible persons. These imaginary friend's hold many functions; you have them hold you accountable for your actions: I can't steal that because god would frown on me for it. This is one of the situations where you remove responsibility from your person and place it on the imaginary friend (to a point). You do steal it, the response is not "Man, I'm responsible for this action I should hold myself accountable" it is "I fell short of god's expectations of me he'll hold me accountable for that."
The other situation being self empowerment "God give me the bravery to snowboard down this hill." Here you'll convince yourself or not that your imaginary friend is supporting you.
Third situation is where you may need help or something, God wills save me, which is self-assurance. There are plenty of other scenarios which boil down to other forms of reassurance or self empowerment.
Why this bothers me; I'm for people's empowerment. It hurts me to see people with image problems. It hurts me to see people. Who can't empower themselves to accomplish things. People who have been told to many times that they "will never" when they needed to be told that they can. I seek to empower everyone and to let people know that they have the power in and over their lives. So I leave off saying

What ever you do. YOU have the power. YOU are as beautiful as you make yourself out to be. YOU will be as "good" as YOU hold yourself to be. and YOU, are god.


Music to help you on your path to self-realization :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiqmEibSY0I
 
With Christianity considered, I'll have to say, things have loosened up. Consider the times where the Holy Crusades took place and compare them to now. At least you don't get killed for disagreeing with them nowadays.
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It has loosened up a lot sure. But not entirely. Christians in America killing doctors that offer abortions come to mind.

Or perhaps they try to convince you, bugging you out in the process, etc. I have yet to see the variants freddy47 talked about, though lol.
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Check out a movie called Jesus Camp and you will see some really fucked up examples of what I've seen in just one day. It is a documentary where they pretty much take kids from all over America and brainwash them. Albeit I don't think the Christians in that movie are Pentecostals but they do speak in tongue and shit. Which actually is the least fucked up thing they do in that movie. Seriously after seeing that movie it became hard for me to see Christianity as any different than your average doomsday cult.
 
Its why "there is no atheist in a fox hole" because in grips of desperation the idea that there is som higher power protecting you gives people the courage to not just shoot themselves in the face.
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"There are no atheists in foxholes' is not an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes." ~James Morrow
 
"Fill me in on what other people mean"?

What we would be telling you would be nothing less than what you would come up with yourself. How can we be any more sure than you are?

Even among people of the same religion, God means different things. A group may think they all have the same idea, but when things go towards the deep end and they begin to question each others inner beliefs and personal faith, they might back off. I don't know and neither do you. All you can know is yourself.

All you should be concerned with is how you can "talk with God" and what you see "God" as. I have a strong conviction that EVERYONE has some idea of what "God" is, no matter if they believe or not or use a different word to describe him/her/IT.

A scenario where I would personally talk with God is going into the forest alone and walking along and observing and simply feeling at ease, calm and caressed by all creation. Meditation. Prayer. Pyschedelic drugs. Talking with God is personal and people do it different.
 
^ I agree with himynameispaul.

I pray once or twice a day and that is like talking to God. I say what I am thankful for, ask God to help people, and ask God to help me.

I also consider a redwood forest to be like a way of communing with God. I also believe that life is predetermined and we may think we have free will (and maybe to a small extent), but there is a powerful, influence by a higher power, of which everyone has access to. The belief that there is God within all of us. So yes, meditation is a form of connecting with the divine or God.
 
itsok said:
^ I agree with himynameispaul.

I pray once or twice a day and that is like talking to God. I say what I am thankful for, ask God to help people, and ask God to help me.

I also consider a redwood forest to be like a way of communing with God. I also believe that life is predetermined and we may think we have free will (and maybe to a small extent), but there is a powerful, influence by a higher power, of which everyone has access to. The belief that there is God within all of us. So yes, meditation is a form of connecting with the divine or God.
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( y.-) determinism and god do not go together.
 
Christianity is a pretty good thing. It may be just a piece of fictitious literature, but its produced a hella amount of intellectual thought. I don't really know about the whole talking with god or whoever. Its good to talk no matter who the audience is. When ever you symbolically express an emotion, it is a positive in my mind.

Our ability to see symbolically is very special. The only difference between "religion" and "science" is the idioms they use within their paradigms. They both have the same teleological function and because they serve the same purpose they are both equally important. People always think that their way of explaining the world is right.

Pick your poison, if you must.
 
Over at the Orient, where I live, you are forced by governmental decree to take Islamic content if you are a school pupil, whether you like it or not (although taking the Islamic subject can be circumvented, Arabic, which is infused with all manner of Quranic passages, is an obligatory subject). Not much luck where I live, the cycle is being repeated with my younger siblings and I could only grunt over it all as for now. Hypocrism can reach deranged proportions where I live.
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I always found it strange that the Arab world use to be highly advanced in Science and mathematics. Having invented algebra and keeping the Greek traditions of philosophy alive and well while Europe was being consumed by religious idiocy. It is very interesting to note how the two cultures have essentially traded sides. Now it is the Muslim world that is backwards and intolerant while the west is (in terms of science and technology) thriving and new ideas are still being produced.
 
Sounds like the pots calling the kettle black.

Sorry but your oppression doesn't change my opinion.
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Religion and science are opposites. I don't think they share any real common ground at all.
 
^I don't know about them having the same psychological function. Yeah both try to understand the world better. But essentially religion is an understanding based on the unknown and unknowable. Christians for example often say how no one can truly know God or look upon his face and stuff like that.

Science depends on empirically obtained information that can for the most part be replicated by other scientists. And through this science attempts to build an understanding of the world based on what is knowable and to know exactly the limits of that knowledge and what that knowledge can achieve.
 
I concur, most of western religion condemns thought and progress. I'm far from your science worshiping atheist though. Science has it's equal share of fuck ups and fucked up processes. Most scientists are out to make a buck very few are into science to actually push the boundaries or further human understanding.
that said

Most people flock to religion to find self meaning(worth) and purpose in the universe.
Most people flock to science to find self meaning(worth) and purpose in the universe.
Real scientists Think they universe is great and just want to know hoe it works because it is cool.

Other dichotomies, Acts of faith vs logical perceptions based on available evidence.
Trying or establishing meaning in life and the universe vs not giving a shit and just studying the universe because it's awesome.
Morality vs "nihilism"
Typically embrace ignorance and mental stagnation vs the pursuit of knowledge and mental advancement.
arts and letters vs maths and sciences
lame sex vs freaky deaky
universe was planned and is infinite vs universe kind of just fucking happened and is finite.
 
Wonkamonk said:
Science is generally very reliable, and it helps with everyday life (common sense here). But the things religion generally explain are all about lies that came from charlatan's imaginations and therefore cannot be defined by science in a way that approaches the lies of religion, because that would be science bearing us lies, which is pretty much an impossible event. The only explanation there is, in my opinion, is the fact that we are all organisms that are living in the Universe and our existence is going to invariably end in the hopes of offspring further ensuring the survival of our species. Religion is, in its very basic form, all about politics. Do this, do that... As for dichotomies, they aren't very reliable.
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Science is never reliable, if you believe that it is than you aren't much of a scientist. You are supposed to question the axioms of science constantly. Religion also helps bullshit people through their days. Your also concluding on a false premise that the lack of evidence is evidence of non-existence. Science is also marred by I would say more politics than religion. It's why there are still people arguing that traditional (and even modern)quantum theory are completely correct when substantial evidence has been introduced to the contrary. The patters of "human ignorant standardiz(stagn)ation" present themselves in even the most intelligent of of our species.
 
The bible and other mystic writings mostly deal in metaphors, the problem exists when these are taken as literal interpretations such has history has shown.. i would say it is unwise to dismiss something as prevalent as religion as 'nonsense' in favor of science; they both serve as an inquiry into the nature of existence and are as equally valuable for the integration of truth. This thread reminds me of a movie i watched today: 'A Dangerous Method' which follows the meeting of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and the eventual breakdown of their friendship over a dispute between Jung's attempts to approach psychoanalysis from a more archetypal perspective and Freud's more stark views on the concept of the unconscious.

The joke of it all however is none of this means anything.. but we'll defend our views right down to the very last moment before accepting our own existentialism :) So who enjoys beer? ;p
 
freddy47 said:
Religion and science are opposites. I don't think they share any real common ground at all.
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Sure they are. The only reason religion exists is to explain which cannot be explained.

Good thoughts all. It seems the consensus always come to science over religion in logic and the religious folk saying "I don't care what you say, I love god and he loves me and I will follow him."
 
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