(January 26, 2010 at 1:53 pm)tackattack Wrote: TW- I've been through depression to elation and nothing in the wide range of emotions I've been though in my life (possible including some unproven drug use) isn't even a 1/50th of the sum of the holy spirit. If it was closer it would seem more feasible to be just another strong emotional response, but it doesn't. I'm not saying it's not a physiological reation, just that its source isn't from self.Your extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Else, it is no more suspect than the classes of chemical reactions in your brain the give depression and elation, or the drugs that artificially affect them. Also, what you wrote just there reminded me very much of what I've seen in other people - working themselves into a mania without the use of drugs, scares, or of the like. One doesn't need to external events to work oneself up - it is well documented in bipolar and schizophrenic patients. Bipolar disorder was, and sometimes still is, referred to as manic-depressive disorder.
(January 26, 2010 at 1:53 pm)tackattack Wrote: EvF- I can feel inner peace from finishing a good book, satisfying some inner desire, or helping a friend through a rough time in his life etc.. It's easily measurable, repeatable, susecptable to peer experience and doesn't affect my immediate ability to commmunicate or change my physiology (save for a mild pleasure). I feel calm and satisfied, patient and completely passive. This isn't the same as peace from God. The foolowing are perceptions from me only: That peace starts as a warm all over feeling with a heavy tingle, then for me it makes me almost giddy and happy with the world around me. I'm speechlesss and feel if I speak the air would just escape and never come back in. Time sort of slows. Thoughts, not in line with what I was thinking, suddenly pop to the front of my consciousness. Simply focusing on that thought instintaneously plans flash on how to accomplish it, the end result and post plan conversations. All warmth and tingle continues to steadily increase until I've gathered the plans and made a choice of action towards/away from that. Then it's instintaneously back to the how I was before, the only thing that remains are a few hairs on the neck standing up and a new plan and purpose in the forefront of my consciousness.
This is reminiscent of an opiate high. Then again, the endogenous opioids include all endorphins, dynorphins and opiates. So, you got 'high' on life. It happens - that doesn't prove there is a Holy Spirit, only that you have assigned the term 'Holy Spirit' to the chemical over/under stimulation of your brain in a manner that may be provoked multiple times, a psychosomatic disorder if you will.
