So...um...how do I go about getting one of these spiritual experiences? It seems unfair that loads of people have them and yet a vast majority of atheists are skipped over.

Hey there, thanks for the welcoming. The initial experience was when I was looking at a landscape..it was a large vista which had mountains in the back, a river next to the mountains, a field before that with many trees and lush green grass everywhere, and there were birds and there was a gentle breeze..and as I was standing there admiring it, everything suddenly came into perfect focus..meaning, there was no background or foreground to the scene..I could see everything with the same sharpness and clarity at the same time..it was an impossible perspective, but it also went beyond that..as there was this lushness of life, and also love just radiating from all of this..as if it were all alive..and it was personal..I could feel there was personality in it. It brought me to a place of complete peace and harmony, to the point where I was glowing the whole rest of the day from it.

This is what initially clued me in that there is more going on than appearances would indicate. That was just the beginning though. I really started to learn that there was no such thing as coincidence.

Let me ask you..what initially brought you to believe there was a higher power, and what led you to dismiss that belief?

(September 17, 2011 at 1:04 am)Justtristo Wrote: Welcome to the atheist forums

(September 16, 2011 at 9:24 pm)lucent Wrote: The one belief system I had always rejected was Christianity. I did not believe for a moment that Jesus even existed. However, though I would argue strongly against it, I really didn't know anything about Christianity.

I received revelation that I needed to investigate it, and when I finally got to it, I found it was about the God I already knew. God had shown me beforehand that He is a triune God, and that He has a Messiah..ie, someone whose job it was to save the world. So the bible was confirmed true to me before I had ever read it.

What kind of revelation did you receive if I am curious. If it just a gut feeling of some sort, I would very wary of making such big decisions on the basis of gut feelings. Believe me I have made some awful decisions based on just mere gut feelings.

I have always been non-religious, however until a few years ago believed in a higher power or maybe god. However at most I believed Jesus Christ was based on a historical character. However I believed a lot of the events in the gospels did not happen.

Precisely because figures of the period whose writings have survived such as Tacitus, Seneca, Suetonius, and especially Philo and Josephus would have written pages upon pages about the events portrayed in the gospels if they had happened.

Right now given the lack of hard evidence concerning the existence of a historical character whom the Jesus of the Gospels would be based on. I am agnostic towards the actually existence of such a character. Even if such a character existed he cannot have been more than a very marginal figure, because even if the say what Josephus wrote about him was authentic, it only at most a passing remark.

The vast majority of Christians too Tiberius. They have to be content with opening themselves up to the possibilty, although they still get to reap the full rewards.

Hey there.

Once I realized there is a God, it was only really a matter of finding out who He is. I was prepared to believe none of the religions represented God, or all of them did. I only became Christian because it was revealed to me that it was true. Yes, I do believe that scripture is the inspired word of God. I don't think all translations of the bible are accurate, and there may be some things missing, but overall the history is literal and the message is real.

I don't ignore facts, I think my faith in God is reasoned and reasonable. I was a proponent of evolution when I became a Christian, and I assumed at the time that Genesis wasn't literal and that there had been some sort of guided evolution which had taken place. I was suprised to learn, when I actually investigated evolution, that it was predicated on a number of unproven assumptions, and that there wasn't a shred of real evidence that it actually happened. I had always assumed that it was true, as it was taught to me as fact, but upon investigation it doesn't hold up.

It may seem ridiculous from your perspective, but you don't believe in God, so anything spiritual will probably look ridiculous from your point of view. I'll just try to explain my rationale as best I can.

(September 17, 2011 at 1:23 am)5thHorseman Wrote: How do people get from being someone who isn't sure of the the existence of god, to then worshiping someone who claims to be his son with no proof. In a universe of billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each, how can you come to this conclusion? Do you believe the bible to be the inerrant word of god?

With such massive evidence behind natural selection and DNA testing showing how we are related to other species, how can you come up with this conclusion?

Or do you just ignore hard facts, logic, reason and bypass that stuff and take on board a 'revelation'?

Going from being not sure if there is a god or not, to someone who believes in the abrahamic god and being a Jesus freak is ridiculous.


But either way, welcome to the forum and keep posting

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Well, faith is a gift from God. I certainly did not earn this gift, nor was I looking for it, so I couldn't tell you exactly why God chose to let me know. Sometimes He gives people dreams and visions, like this man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvvClFSMIzA

Sometimes he sends a messanger to talk to someone directly like this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7dpGWYZMDc

What I would recommend is that if you honestly want to know what the real truth is, pray to God and ask Him to reveal Himself to you. Say to Him that you're a sinner, and you want His forgiveness, but you have to be sure that He is for real..and ask Him to prove Himself to you in a way that you will be certain. He proved it to me, and many other people..so maybe he'll prove it to you too. I'll pray that He does. God bless.

(September 17, 2011 at 2:41 am)Tiberius Wrote: So...um...how do I go about getting one of these spiritual experiences? It seems unfair that loads of people have them and yet a vast majority of atheists are skipped over.

Welcome.

When you say evolution is based on unproven assumptions, what would those be?

(September 17, 2011 at 3:14 am)fr0d0 Wrote: The vast majority of Christians too Tiberius. They have to be content with opening themselves up to the possibilty, although they still get to reap the full rewards.

So it's all about the benefit and not the validity of beliefs then.

(September 17, 2011 at 3:09 am)lucent Wrote: Let me ask you..what initially brought you to believe there was a higher power, and what led you to dismiss that belief?

You ask a good question, I came to realize there was no gods, no higher power through gradually finding out about the universe and how it works. Once I became convinced that religion and it's deities was a human created thing, I stopped having any belief that any higher power or god/s existed.

Welcome lucent.

(September 16, 2011 at 9:24 pm)lucent Wrote: The one belief system I had always rejected was Christianity.

I bet.

Quote:So, that's when I decided to give my life to Jesus Christ. I was baptized and received the Holy Spirit this year. Since then, my life has been transformed. Joy where there was pain. Self-control where there was addiction. Peace where there was anxiety. Hope where there was despair. Love where there was hate.

Oh boy. For your sake and everyone else's, stay Christian please.

You're just like my mother, who wishes she was never born (by extension my sisters and I as well) if there was no god out there. >.>

Quote:I seem to defy stereotypes that I have heard because I wasn't looking for God when He tapped me on the shoulder.

You may think you do. In reality, you're only the millionth or so egocentric person we've spoken to who believes that.

luceient... Here there be Dragons ..

Welcome sir...

But, seriously, pass around whatever it is that you have been taking... It is unfair that we don't get mental trips and you do.

I have had the exact same experience, lucent, and then I sobered up and reality reasserted itself.

Damned tequila.