How to be a strong atheist in a rather straightforward way

[fr0d0]

I'll say I won't take Fr0d0's substantiation on this because he calls it an emotional rush amd he's bound to skew things more to comedy than to the point. Also the Holy Spirit is personal and doesn't require substantiation from any other source for those who've experienced it.

That's you off my Xmas card list Mr serious face!

[TruthWorthy]

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.

Actually I think it constitutes psychological disorder, true that PNS (peripheral nervous system) would interact via endocrine system, etc as Synackron pointed out, that psychosomatic is more of a pop term that is over used and misunderstood in general much like "multipersonality disorder".
A little trivial: psycho, of the psyche; soma, also from latin meaning of the body.

[you explaining to EvF what inner peace is like]

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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.

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Would please explain how the holy spirit is experienced? In what ways is it more powerful?

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.

If you said that you were walking down the street and all of a sudden it starts bucketing rain, saturating you and a heavy winds sweeps through you and you become freezing cold then you can say outside forces made you feel 'freezing cold' physically - no problem, right?!
It's the same with emotions. You could be on your way to work and (I would get this checked out if I were you) experience the holy spirit - unexpectedly and without attributing good feelings to real life circumstances like happy with job, life, seeing what god does for you, etc.
If you're experiencing god 'emotionally' and there's no sense behind it go and get a fkn cat scan or an mri (magnetic resonance imaging) too be sure [who knows, the experience might be god's way of telling you that something needs looking into]. At least make some enquiries - with professionals - Don't take it the wrong way, but it could very well be a tumor or environmental poisoning (less likely).

[Autumnlicious]

That's you off my Xmas card list Mr serious face!

Well, since you choose to represent yourself with a clown, how do we know you /won't/ skew it to comedy?

[leo-rcc]

That's you off my Xmas card list Mr serious face!

Well, since you choose to represent yourself with a clown, how do we know you /won't/ skew it to comedy?

The clown thing started with me. Fr0d0 just added his own.

[Violet]

And the clown thing only furthered my belief that clowns are evil

[leo-rcc]

But we are really not.

Well most of the time we are not.

Well we can be good sometimes.

We have know to be nice to kids every once in a while.

We hardly kill anyone anymore.

I am down to off only 3 people a day.

[Edwardo Piet]

I've experienced an insanely high 'High' (yet peaceful and pleasant feeling) very much like tackattack describes it for 8 weeks while I was in hospital and I ended up getting diagnosed with the possibility of bi-polar due to the kind of psychosis I experienced. I then had a weird residue of the feelings during my recovery and I still take 800 mg of Lithium a night now. Now I feel very empty then suddenly pretty good then suddenly very empty again. Dunno if that's anything to do with the drugs or if I am just not the sort of excitable person I used to be (apart from for brief moments).

It takes a long while to come off a drug like Lithium even if it's thought to not be required anymore, I have to come off it very gradually. Unless I have a 2nd mental episode I'm not confirmed as actually having Bi-polar and it may have been a 'one off' due to a lot of stress and other factors.

One can feel the most amazing things when one is delusional... and heck, I would have believed anything back then, if someone mentioned the holy spirit, sure I'd believe it. I was super high and ultra gullible. I was high and could have easily attributed it to the Holy Spirit. I don't see how being high and attributing means fuck-all. You have to have some way of genuinely knowing it is the Holy Spirit if you are to claim it is... and I know of such way. How can you know what the 'holy spirit' feels like? And personal experience isn't remotely valid evidence for such things anyway (as I said, how can it be anyway - how can you discern what the 'Holy Spirit' feels like? That's crazy).

EvF

[TruthWorthy]

Hey EvF, I had suffered from drug induced psychosis about 8 years ago. Through some relapsing due to repeating drug use habits, I learned to stop taking particular drugs and to monitor myself for changes that aren't rational. This can mean looking for times when I'm elated, or when I put too much energy/time into activities that aren't healthy. Yeah, I also need to keep an eye on my stressors when I feel like life's challenges are out of my control and I need to reclaim some perspective occassionally.
Not lately, but I need to remember to keep it in check. Mostly because of the way psychosis can "sneak up on you; evade the radar".
Besides this, I learn as much as I can about the illness, about myself and psychology in general. I have a huge interest in the field and would love to prove that bipolar and schizophrenia as we know them are illnesses which are completely curable.

[Edwardo Piet]

I have become a much more rational person ever since all that happened. I've learnt a lot about myself and if anything I think more good came out of it than bad (after all, it only lasted 8 weeks (of madness yeah, but then it was over)).

The problem is as of late.... things are starting to seem a lot more samey for me. I mean a lot more. Everything seems so incredibly mundane I think my frustration levels might hit the roof (the imaginary, hypothetical roof mind).

EvF

[TruthWorthy]

Something that wasn't apparent to me throughout much of my recovery process (and which I'd like to have been) was the very basic truth that I'd changed. Even though I knew I'd grown it somehow didn't sink in that I'd grown out of who I was before hand. The trouble with this was that I could really only remember who I'd been before becoming ill. I was changing so dramatically that I couldn't go back to being an adolescent skater doin drugs all the time (mostly because I couldn't do drugs anymore - lol) but all for the better, and I'm growing to this day and will continue to grow and learn as all mature adults do.