Share your experiences with God

[Exian]

I remember being a kid and hearing things like "I talked to God." or "Just talk to God" and I just assumed it was a grown up thing to be able to do. Like when there's an old wise monk in movies who achieves the highest level of whateverdom. So, based on that, I would just talk to myself and then talk back to myself, it felt very fake and forced at first, and I was certain I was doing it wrong. But wouldn't you know it, I was eventually able to either convince myself it was God, or I just forgot that it was me.

I glazed over the part where I forgot it was me talking, but that's a huge part of it, and it took much of my childhood and into my teens to make it happen. And I guess I just didn't notice the switch or something.

[robvalue]

Thanks for sharing that Exian.

It does really seem there is a halfway between people making it up and actually having delusions: they convince themselves they are deluded. The human brain seems so good at this kind of doublethink that I reckon this is very common.

[Foxaèr]

My experience as a theist, since I have reflected upon it with reason, was that it was always a deep need for god to be real than any real evidence I could rely upon that god was real.

Religion loves to prey upon emotion, for that is what reels them in and keeps them hooked.

[Lucanus]

I remember being a kid and hearing things like "I talked to God." or "Just talk to God" and I just assumed it was a grown up thing to be able to do. Like when there's an old wise monk in movies who achieves the highest level of whateverdom. So, based on that, I would just talk to myself and then talk back to myself, it felt very fake and forced at first, and I was certain I was doing it wrong. But wouldn't you know it, I was eventually able to either convince myself it was God, or I just forgot that it was me.

I glazed over the part where I forgot it was me talking, but that's a huge part of it, and it took much of my childhood and into my teens to make it happen. And I guess I just didn't notice the switch or something.

I can totally relate to this. I remember whenever I was sad in my childhood or in my early teens I would just lay in my bed, close my eyes and think very hard that there was someone who understood completely what I was going through and who was there to help me.

Didn't take me too long before I realised that this someone was myself. And, funnily enough, my life has been a whole lot happier and 'successful' ever since.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

My experiences with God was very limited.I was truly a devoted Christian when i was really little.I used to attend church as much as i could and prayed like my life depended on it,i really really really did believe in Jesus.I used to dream about Jesus saving me from Ghosts that were chasing me.I felt great comfort and could sleep really well when i prayed to Jesus and slept at nights. I didn't really have much more experience but believing in Jesus made me comfortable and courageous.

It wasn't until i was in 3th grade that i started noticing little inconsistencies here and there,but i was sure that it was nothing,that it was all just a misunderstanding,that there really is a God up in the sky watching over me.For me,the idea that someone may not be watching over me seemed ridiculously frightening that i dismissed it altogether.
The same happened for me in 4th grade,the inconsistencies with logical became more apparent but i still refused to believe that someone might not be watching over me.

In our 5th grade,we were taught real (general)science,it was one of my favorite subjects.I loved it because i was the best at it! Not because of my superior mathematical or analytical skills but because of my ability to just sit somewhere and zone out all the outside distractions and just generally sit there and think about it.Anyway,my belief in God was almost non-existent by the end of that year because,according to my rationalization,i had no evidence of his existence.Even then,i wasn't entirely fixed on my beliefs.(I was kind of hoping Jesus would jump out of hiding and go I"M REAL SON so that i could be ^-^ again)

For almost 10 years(i think) i remained a Strong Atheist(mostly secretly because my family was very religious and i was scared),i didn't really think about God anymore,for me, i had made up my mind that he didn't exist and i didn't really needed to think about it anymore.He doesn't exist.End of story.Until one day i for no particular reason started questioning my beliefs again.What if my beliefs were wrong?What if God was real?But that seemed like an impossibility to me,or was it? *dm* *tss*
I started thinking about whether my stance as a strong atheist was rational or not.After hours of lying like a dead body on my bed thinking about it i finally concluded that there is a 50-50 chance of a God to exist.Thus - Agnosticism .I was satisfied and it seemed like a wonderful position to take.

Not until after a year or two   .This time i thought about going back to Christianity and theism.My rationalization was that,i didn't even know everything about anything.
For example,i didn't even know everything there is to know about a grain of sand.I didn't know everything there is to know about my small town.Hell,I didn't even know everything there is to know about myself.Imagine that,i was with myself for about 16 or 17 years now and i still don't know everything about at least something about myself.So i asked myself: "Then how can you be certain that there might not be a God given that you don't know shit?".Add to that my theory that anything is possible in the universe given that the universe is infinite so the mutations that can happen to other beings are also infinite and there are infinite possibilities of different types of beings existing in the universe and that some of these beings may have some characteristics of a God and that i could be wrong.
For me, the 50-50 chance of a God ever existing became 50.1 - 50 in favor of the existence of a God.Even though,i was convinced that my rationalization was in fact logical i couldn't get myself to become a theist or go back to Christianity,because even though it seemed like that it was correct i couldn't get myself devoted to my idea because i felt that there was something wrong with it but couldn't quite put my finger on it.So i went online and argued with others that there is a God and gave my rationalization in the hopes that somebody could prove me wrong(nobody could).

It was only after joining this site that i finally began to think that God being such a vague term how can someone believe that there might be a God or not?I argued this point with others and many of them didn't agree with me.Until one day Rob came along and told me that it is not poolism but rather Ignosticism.Although i was quite devastated that somebody came up with this awesome idea before me i was happy that i was not entirely wrong or that i was alone in my beliefs.
Ignosticism is now my current stance.


That's about sums up my whole experience with God.At times i believed in him,at times i felt doubt in my beliefs and refrained.At times i believed in him again but came back again.But i feel like this position(Ignosticism) is the right position for me to take.
Although i had many "God experiences" in my younger days,i knew deep inside that it was nothing special and that it was just me trying to deceive myself,because i've had people tell me that God only talks with the true believers and his special set of people and i was quite obviously special so God had to talk with me too,so i talked with myself and pretended that God was talking to me..So i've never experienced one of those in the true sense.

[robvalue]

That was a very interesting read! Thanks so much for sharing it with us

Just because there's already a name for it, you deserve no less credit for coming up with the position on your own. You've clearly put a lot of thought into it all over the years. That is what I respect the most, properly thinking things through, whatever conclusion may be reached.

I had not heard about ignosticism either until recently. I expect it is a position a lot of sceptics would relate to.

[hilary]

Can you show me on the doll where mr Jesus touched you

im done 

[Anon Khan]

I Belive in multiple Gods but still Belive in Jesus as the Messiah. The Old Testament is BUllshit tho. I got in a car accident and had a dream, of the gods, of Heaven, It was nice. But I had to go back to Earth, and finish Life.