Dear Atheists

[robvalue]

Hello there

My position on gods is very simple. I don't care. They can exist or not exist, makes no difference to me.

Can you tell me why I should care?

Hey Rob.

There is one reason that you might be interested in it; that neuroscience is engrossed in. That various mystics try to explain but fail. And the general public are so confused that they mistake it for a faith, a dogmatic principle, or an unreasonable assumption. In fact they don't understand it in so much as even Daniel Dennet the philosopher, thought of it as something without evidence.

Here's the catch. You have to be born with it or try to develop it through meditation or prayer. After you experience it, that divine reality is what mystics call God. So it's more of a attitude you develop or a temperment. William James, the great psychologist talks about it in his book: The Varieties of Religious Experience. In it he describes ineffability, something that defies expression or explanation of the contents. Undefinable. A subjective experience but based on evidential insight. The next reason is a ideational quality or conceptive. It's a feeling but it's so much more beyond. It turns the experience into a state of knowledge, a kind of comprehension. It does this because your mystical experience is receiving revelation, presage, but whats strange is this experience has a hold of you it has authority. Power and control. But mystical states have impermanence. They don't last long, this is why i believe the Lord Jesus Christ appears to the disciples but the next instant he disappears!

Thanks for your answer. I really don't understand why I should care about any of this though. I'm missing out on a cool experience? And knowledge? What is it that you "know" that I don't? Why do I need to know whatever it is? What use is it?

I've every reason to believe that everything you describe is explainable through psychology and biology, and that nothing special is happening at all. I can most likely experience everything you say by taking drugs, and I don't know how you're meant to tell the difference.

If God wants to interact with me in a sensible way, he is quite welcome to. If instead he sends a middle man to tell me to do a load of things and that I should interpret the results as interaction with him, he can get lost. I have better things to do.