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Current time: March 28, 2024, 6:27 pm

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Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
#21
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
Sure, I had a confident experience of immanent transcendence.
It was drug induced and after I recovered, I concluded that the weirdness experienced came from a malfunctioning brain.

I also had a period after a serious intracranial bleed (secondary to a motorcycle crash) requiring craniotomy and decompression. Every day I had many exceptionally vivid sensations of deja vu. I HAD been there before. I was a veterinary student at the time and very personally interested in the phenomenon. Presuming some validity to the sensation I tried repeatedly to expand the events into not just sensation of having been there before. I tried to predict the short term future. If I 'knew' I'd already been in what was currently happening, couldn't I get a hint of what was to come? Specifically, knowing short term future events can be exceedingly profitable in playing the numbers, the lottery or options trading. It never worked, needless to say, and I concluded that my sensations came from inaccurately tweaking a brain circuit that under normal circumstances was excited by actually recognizing a situation that had been previously experienced.
I also had hallucinations of a lilac fog and a hum and some migraines, but these were really prosaic and boring.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? Huh
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#22
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
How is a religious experience different from a spiritual experience?
[Image: Untitled2_zpswaosccbr.png]
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#23
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
I've had a variety of religious/paranormal experiences throughout my life - probably every 5 or 10 years from early childhood to now in my late 40s.

I had a nervous breakdown in 2009 after visiting a friend, and I had many experiences for about a year afterwards. When I opened-up about these things with a therapist, she told me about psychosis. It took me several years to accept that explanation, but I am 99% there.

Some people believe that psychosis happens when a person can't cope with spiritual experiences (the shaman swims and the psychotic drowns). Sometimes I wonder about that too.
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#24
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
(January 18, 2015 at 11:41 am)thesummerqueen Wrote: How is a religious experience different from a spiritual experience?

Religious experiences cost money.
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#25
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
If an orgasmus is a religious experience, then i could answer = YES.
Guess what i did.
If God is the answer to your question, it means that you have asked the wrong question.
A good question always ask how never why.
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#26
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
(January 18, 2015 at 11:41 am)thesummerqueen Wrote: How is a religious experience different from a spiritual experience?

It includes hallucinations of deities, along with the hallucinations of having (spiritual) being which is somehow separate from your physical being.
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#27
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
Nope.
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[Image: 146748944129044_zpsomrzyn3d.gif]
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#28
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
I've felt a mix of awe, joy, and incredible humility a few times looking up at the night sky with absolutely no light pollution in Yellowstone National Park. Being in a place so geologically and biologically active, as well as interesting historically speaking, while being able to see the face of the universe clearly is simply incredible. But those feelings aren't divine in nature. They come from me understanding how small and precious we are in this sea of stars.

Now, if only we could stop killing and abusing each other over myths and/or profit..... Undecided
"I was thirsty for everything, but blood wasn't my style" - Live, "Voodoo Lady"
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#29
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
I can't say that I did, all that I got was some hair on the back of my head raising on some heavy metal concerts and I was once god after an LSD tab.

It's an experience, but it will fry your brain if you do it too much.
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#30
RE: Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?
My experience of religion is one of boredom, feeling out of place and uncomfortable.
Like a lion in a den of daniels.



You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.

Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.




 








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