If you were ever a theist...

[*Deidre*]

Nice reasoning MTL!

It always shocks me how the message from religion is often to turn off the perfectly good brain God gave us, and just believe what we're told.

That's not the only message. Some of us believe faith is an experience.

[robvalue]

I don't understand what that means, but sure, I appreciate not everyone spreads the same message

Unfortunately, empty vessels make the most noise. So religion probably gets a worse rap than it should.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Nice reasoning MTL!

It always shocks me how the message from religion is often to turn off the perfectly good brain God gave us, and just believe what we're told.

That's one the only message. Some of us believe faith is an experience.

I have wondered of this too, and you can't really say that the experiences accumulated by the world's scientist's aren't more varied, and often more intense than for people who spend their time in churches.

Do you think you can be a little more specific about this "experience" which you (and so many others) refer to?

[The Inquisition]

Finally, I began to reason that if God is Truth, then Truth is God.  That means that there's no reason to hide from ideas that have traditionally been considered faith-breaking.  Truth can only confirm God, right?  Thus, I disembarked to prove my God and found the evidence took me to a different conclusion entirely...

Not that far-removed from my own experience, and my own reasoning.

Basically my 'Eureka' moment was when it occurred to me that Religion and God are not the same thing.

Religion tells you what they believe is the "Truth" about God.

That doesn't mean it REALLY IS the Truth.

And if it turns out that there really is a God,
and He really is synonymous with the Truth,
and that I failed to question the "Truth" that Religion was teaching, which was actually a pack of Lies,
then God/Truth is going to be pissed with me,
for not using the perfectly good brain that He gave me to use
to figure that shit out,
and that I chose instead to take the word of fallible human idiots.

I can relate to that, part of my realization was that the bible was written by men, and these men were absolutely more ignorant than me on certain subjects. A rudimentary education in cosmology far surpassed anything the writers of Genesis could conceive about the universe.

When you realize that, and then you start reading the bible with that in mind- then the ignorance of the biblical writers jumps out at you. It doesn't take long before you realize they were just too ignorant of the world to convey much of anything useful. Their is no reason to view the bible as anything but an ignorant book.

[Old Baby]

Hi old baby, thank you sharing all of this. I've never really understood the concept of speaking in tongues. I always took it to mean that everyone was speaking in different languages and understood each other lol I'm sorry you went through all of that. In my view, the idea of God just can't be contained in a religion etc...in a neat little box. The way I view it is faith should be a positive, freeing experience, and for many, it is far from that, largely, because people want to control others through it. It's a personal experience for me, now.

Your story is interesting to me, and resonates. Again, thank you.

Well, I always thought the bible agreed with you on speaking in tongues.  The original appearance of tongues was miraculously speaking in existing languages so that those from distant lands could hear and believe the gospel.  I never quite understood how this got morphed into "prayer language" or speaking a jibberish non-existent language and then waiting for someone else in the church to come up with an interpretation.

Ah, the holy rollin' memories. 

I attended Pentecostal services most of my churchgoing life, and I credit that as the source of some (not all) of my doubts towards religion. When I was baptized, I felt absolutely nothing. I sensed that everyone expected a nice show afterwards, but I didn't come through; no falling out, no tears, no elation. Nothing. For a  fleeting moment, I thought maybe I felt nothing, because there was nothing...but I quickly dismissed it. Should've ran with it, but I just chalked it up to being a result of my reserved nature.

I never attempted to speak in tongues myself, because I was never able to be convince myself that it was more than made-up gibberish. I made the mistake of sharing that with my mother once, who immediately asked if I thought she was making it up when she did it. When I told her "I believe that you believe you're speaking in tongues" she hit the roof. 

I got pressured into going up to the alter once, for extra special prayer with a side of olive oil, and finally felt something at long last: full blown panic. After getting slapped in the head with Extra Virgin, ten prayer warriors swarmed me like SWAT and proceeded to lay hands on me. They commenced with general hooting, hollering, and insane jibber-jabbering for several minutes, as my pastor invited/yelled for the Holy Spirit to do it's thing in me. I remember I felt hot. I felt nauseous. And I'm almost certain I felt my pastor trying to force me to fall to backwards.

But I never felt any Holy Spirit. Go figure.

My father is a Pentecostal minister, and for a long time I thought that he spoke in tongues even if no one else did.  Just to listen, my father has a very developed "language" while most others I heard just pretty much repeated the same phrase over and over. 

I remember a woman who was trying to get into the church about 10 years ago coming into one of our bible studies and claiming she wanted to be baptized in the Holy Ghost.  The service was spent praying for her.  They prayed and prayed but nothing happened.  Finally, after about 20 minutes, most of them started getting a little burned out and stopped praying.  At that point they started counseling her with their theories about why it wasn't happening.  One said there was sin in her life that she was hiding.  Another said she had not been broken enough.  The third said we needed to "bind the strong man".  The fourth recommended we rebuke demons.  At the end of the night, she never did speak in tongues and there were probably 10 competing theories for why it didn't happen. 

I had another friend who tried for months to receive the Holy Ghost Baptism under pressure from the pastor.  With each passing week, she felt more and more dejected and depressed.  She was told that she needed to just "keep trying" and that for some people it's just harder than others.  Finally, she stayed after church one morning with some other women in the church to pray.  One was my grandmother, whose practice was to scream in people's face things like "Just open your mouth and let him talk, babe!  Just let him have your tongue, babe!"  Finally, my friend consciously made some jibberish sounds thinking that God would take over but nothing happened.  Afterward, the women all assured her that she had spoken in tongues and she should thank God, but she was honest enough with herself to know nothing happened.

Not that far-removed from my own experience, and my own reasoning.

Basically my 'Eureka' moment was when it occurred to me that Religion and God are not the same thing.

Religion tells you what they believe is the "Truth" about God.

That doesn't mean it REALLY IS the Truth.

And if it turns out that there really is a God,
and He really is synonymous with the Truth,
and that I failed to question the "Truth" that Religion was teaching, which was actually a pack of Lies,
then God/Truth is going to be pissed with me,
for not using the perfectly good brain that He gave me to use
to figure that shit out,
and that I chose instead to take the word of fallible human idiots.

Totally agreed.  That's why I could no longer justify hiding from reality and pretending I believed things that I didn't.  I concluded that either God is Truth and seeking Truth would ultimately lead to God, or something like Calvinism is true and I'm just not one of the lucky few that God has chosen to give saving faith.

[*Deidre*]

That's one the only message. Some of us believe faith is an experience.

I have wondered of this too, and you can't really say that the experiences accumulated by the world's scientist's aren't more varied, and often more intense than for people who spend their time in churches.

Do you think you can be a little more specific about this "experience" which you (and so many others) refer to?

Hello, and sorry, it was busy @ work today, so didn't have a chance to reply sooner. 

I would say that what led me back to Christianity, was an experience with what I'd consider to be a holy spirit. As bizarre as that might sound, I can't explain away what I felt in secular terms. I was not practicing any faith at the time, had grown indifferent to God and the idea of a person named Jesus even existing, wasn't attending church, reading the Bible...nothing. I had explored different religions last year and came to the 'conclusion' that atheism/agnosticism was where I was going to reside. And there were a few more experiences after the initial one, that led me to think that maybe...just maybe...there is more to this life than meets our eyes, ears, and everyday senses. Others could explain it away perhaps as coincidences, but I had a witness for one of the occurrences, and even he tried to explain it away, but had a hard time because it really didn't make logical sense. (he is a believer, but didn't really want to believe that it could be something other than a 'normal' explanation) Maybe we just have a hard time believing that a deity exists...Idk. But, it brought me back to believing again, and my faith is not wrapped up in do's and don'ts and rules and rituals, and reciting the Bible. I feel like my faith is real, now. It's personal for me, which is what is different. That's the best way I can explain it to you.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

I have wondered of this too, and you can't really say that the experiences accumulated by the world's scientist's aren't more varied, and often more intense than for people who spend their time in churches.

Do you think you can be a little more specific about this "experience" which you (and so many others) refer to?

Hello, and sorry, it was busy @ work today, so didn't have a chance to reply sooner. 

I would say that what led me back to Christianity, was an experience with what I'd consider to be a holy spirit. As bizarre as that might sound, I can't explain away what I felt in secular terms. I was not practicing any faith at the time, had grown indifferent to God and the idea of a person named Jesus even existing, wasn't attending church, reading the Bible...nothing. I had explored different religions last year and came to the 'conclusion' that atheism/agnosticism was where I was going to reside. And there were a few more experiences after the initial one, that led me to think that maybe...just maybe...there is more to this life than meets our eyes, ears, and everyday senses. Others could explain it away perhaps as coincidences, but I had a witness for one of the occurrences, and even he tried to explain it away, but had a hard time because it really didn't make logical sense. (he is a believer, but didn't really want to believe that it could be something other than a 'normal' explanation) Maybe we just have a hard time believing that a deity exists...Idk. But, it brought me back to believing again, and my faith is not wrapped up in do's and don'ts and rules and rituals, and reciting the Bible. I feel like my faith is real, now. It's personal for me, which is what is different. That's the best way I can explain it to you.

Thank you for taking the time to try and answer my question. 

I guess you know that if it can't be described in logical terms, then it cannot be discussed logically, and that's fine. But if you had a surge of seretonin and suddenly felt a higher awareness and maybe the presence of something beyond yourself, such an experience may not mean exactly what your conclusion was. I know you're aware of this argument already, although you may not fully comprehend how important it is: your initial religion isn't simple read/write memory when it is taught to you as an infant, this is hard-coded stuff, and with your family still there of course it will mean more to you than other group ideas.

On our everyday senses, in fact there is more to them, which is why we develop technology to enhance them and study what is available from which inferences can be drawn. There will always be more to life than what we can see, hear, and touch because we cannot be everywhere, we cannot observe everything at the same time, and we may never, ever be capable of observing everything. But what this means to me is "We don't know", it's not a valid precursor to a conclusion, but instead to more questions.

[robvalue]

My observation would be that someone who has been soaked in Islamic mythology would have most likely interpreted exactly the same experience as being from Allah, and so on. Yet each such conclusion contradicts the others.

I won't say any more because Deidre isn't presenting it for discussion, just as an answer to a request

[MTL]

 I concluded that either God is Truth and seeking Truth would ultimately lead to God, or something like Calvinism is true and I'm just not one of the lucky few that God has chosen to give saving faith.

And that degree of willingness to be honest with yourself is both painful and brave.

I've observed many times that Religion also professes to be primarily about raising glory to God,
yet it is so obviously really about comforting the faithful.

The Truth doesn't necessarily comfort.  Usually, the Truth hurts.

Any God worth His salt wouldn't have to bribe, or threaten, puny humans into following Him.

And any God that really loved me would offer me eternal life and spare me the fires of Hell
whether I chose to follow Him or not...especially if I am being as honest as you have been,
and as sincere in my pursuit of the Truth.

Again, this is not to necessarily say that there is absolutely no God...

...but it is one more argument that if there IS a God,
He very likely has NOTHING to do with the God described in the Bible.

I am Agnostic, leaning toward Atheism.

But I allow for the possibility...however remote...of God's existence.

I just don't allow that that if He exists, that He has ANYTHING to do with any of the world Religions.

If He exists to be 'found' at all, the path to Him will be through real honest and real Truth,
...read, Science...not through Religious gobbledegook passed off as 'truth'.

It is ironic to me that for all Religion has opposed Science over the thousands of years,
it is through Science that we will likely find Him, if He is there to be found at all.

[MTL]

Nice reasoning MTL!

It always shocks me how the message from religion is often to turn off the perfectly good brain God gave us, and just believe what we're told.

That's not the only message. Some of us believe faith is an experience.

Hm.  I definitely have a response to that.

Please know that I do not share this out of a desire to be harsh or antagonistic,
but I can't handle this with kid gloves.

I once had occasion to thrash this issue out with my grandparents.

It did not go well.

(The conversation initially arose out of my confronting them on their homophobia
and the distress I felt upon perceiving that if I were a lesbian, they'd stop talking to me,
but the conversation evolved into a larger discussion about the hypocrisy of Christianity
and Religion in general).

Anyway,

out of the many arguments bandied-about that evening,
the one I will cite is as follows:

I began to present an argument,

" Ok, Grampa, I acknowledge that you believe that God exists... "

but he cut me off and said,

" MTL, I don't just BELIEVE that God exists...I KNOW He exists! "

Now, he didn't even let me complete my sentence or the point I was going to make;
and, my irritation at this aside, it raised another point:

Asserting the difference between Belief and Knowledge is crucial.

First of all, it is my feeling that my grandfather was simply trying to demonstrate a deep and unshakable faith by asserting that it went beyond mere BELIEF and was actual KNOWLEDGE.

He meant well.  He's been told all his life that his Faith is the most important thing.

And I don't like to upset him...but, like many Christians, he didn't see the damage he was doing to the world,
with this philosophy.

First of all, I pointed out,
Christianity hinges upon Faith.

Faith is Belief without Knowledge.

If God gave everyone irrefutable PROOF of His existence,
it renders FAITH redundant.

And since Faith is REQUIRED to get into Heaven,
then doesn't God,
by giving you PROOF
...and thus rendering your FAITH redundant...
make it IMPOSSIBLE for you to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven???

The real test of Faith is to go your entire life without having Proof,
and even die without receiving that Proof;
...going to your grave...still Faithful.

So, maybe for the "elect few",
whose Faith is so absolute,
God makes the executive decision to reward them with PROOF,
whether that be my grandfather,
or a bunch of swaying, genuflecting Catholics who see Mary's likeness miraculously appear on the side of a church,
or whatever.

You know what?

I am prepared to accept that.

I don't know what your experiences have been; I am not you.

And it may be that you have genuinely had an experience that you are not able to provide proof of,
and that you are NOT crazy, either;
maybe your experience was as real as anything is capable of being.

So let me share MY experience, with you:

(Some of you may have read this story of mine, before, so I'll hide this bit)

---

I was going through an extremely tough time, in my life,
and one of the things I was struggling with, was my Faith in Jesus.

I had had a particularly horrific day, at the end of a horrific week, at the end of a horrific month, etc.

That evening, I dissolved into tears, and cried my heart out.

I flung myself on Jesus' mercy....I confessed I was struggling with my Faith,
I begged His forgiveness and guidance.

I cried myself to sleep.

I dreamt, my usual assorted dreams.

Near dawn, however, my dreams took a strange twist;

Instead of the rambling nonsense they usually were,
My dreams suddenly jolted into "real-time";
that is, I still slept, I still dreamed, but I dreamed that I was in my own bed, at dawn,
which, in reality, was actually the case;

and I dreamt that I was awakening to a horrible sensation in my chest,
a cutting, searing sensation; it felt both hot and cold at the same time;

I dreamt that I opened my eyes and saw light creeping in around the cracks of my window,
I saw my bedroom as it would appear at dawn,
and I dreamed that I raised my head slightly and looked down at my own chest.

I dreamed that a fissure appeared in my chest,
as if being cut from within,
and a bluish light emanated from this fissure.

Suddenly, a wisp of bluish, softly-luminous mist escaped upwards from the fissure,
toward the ceiling...and was gone in a split second,
leaving the hole in my chest empty and dark.

But in that second, in that mist, I had seen something:
the face of a man, looking expressionlessly, yet consciously, at me.

I knew in that second that it was Jesus...and I knew beyond all doubt that He was leaving me,
wordlessly, emotionlessly.


I woke with a start.

My room appeared exactly as it had in my dream...dim, with early light breaking around the window.

My hand flew to my chest, which, of course, was normal.

I sat up to consider the experience.


I had been struggling with my Faith.

I hadn't denied it...I admitted it and had begged Jesus' forgiveness and help.

I had taken a leap of Faith and flung myself on His mercy...

...and He had abandoned me.


Now,


This goes against everything we've been taught about Jesus.

I had Asked, Sought, Knocked.

I had summoned what Faith I could, to admit my weakness and wretchedness,
and begged for His mercy and guidance.

And He turned His back on me.


The Atheist in me says that this dream was almost certainly just my own subconscious,
telling me what I already knew:  This religion is hypocritical useless gobbledegook
and I do not need it and am better off without its illusions and lies;

But the Christian I was raised to be, was heartbroken:

Because I wanted to believe, you see.

I just couldn't.


But here's the real poser:

Why would Jesus,
if He DOES, in fact exist,
and IS, in fact, the Son of God,
and does love me, as He is said to,
...do such a thing?

OR, conversely, if this dream was the Devil's illusion,
or just my own subconscious wrestling with the distastefulness of Religion,

IF Jesus, again REALLY exists and REALLY is who He claims to be,
Why would He ALLOW either the Devil, or my own Subconscious,
to manufacture such a horrid dream?

He would know that such a dream would make it impossible for me to ever believe in Him, again.

---

So there you have it.  That is MY EXPERIENCE OF FAITH.

Draw from that what you will.