(March 1, 2016 at 1:00 pm)Lek Wrote:(March 1, 2016 at 5:48 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Perpetual question of why some people believe in wizards and delusions, it's like asking why are some people insisting on being racist? Very similar thing of deluding yourself and approaching world with this emotions that are planted in you by others and for some reason totally ignoring rationality and evidence.
Maybe it's just that people didn't learn how to think.
And also let's say you're Catholic and you decide you can't believe in that nonsense anymore, next step is facing with the fact that your parents, teachers and sometimes whole society blatantly lied to you, wasted your time and in many cases your life - which is not something that many people can do.
How about the people who have come to believe in God who were not raised that way? CS Lewis was a very educated person who came to the faith from being an atheist. If billions of intelligent, educated people have said that they experienced God, I would think that there might be something there. You just assume that a God who doesn't have to follow the rules of the natural world doesn't exist because you can't prove his existence through natural means. You're trapped by the boundaries of that little box you live in. Science has no idea of what exists beyond the boundaries of our universe. If he is God, he can reveal himself to me and the billions of others that he has revealed himself to. It doesn't prove it to you, but it does prove it to those to whom he speaks. Please don't judge those you don't know, and are more intelligent than you, and say that they don't know how to think.
There are many people who at one time sincerely believed they "experienced God" who still believe in the experience, but understand that it was brought on by their emotions and their brain filling in the gaps with what they wanted to see.
I also had an experience that is still real to me. Once, I felt overcome by emotion at the altar in a Pentecostal church. I didn't understand it, but I was weeping uncontrollably. This happened after about 6-8 solid hours of praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. No tongues happened, but afterward I was told by others that I had received the spirit and spoke in tongues. I didn't understand what happened, but I knew that there was no spirit filling and certainly no tongues. Now I realize that I was just emotionally fatigued and broken down. I could have easily listened to them and accepted that this was God, but I couldn't settle for self-deception.
