You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe. -- Carl Sagan
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About a deity full of love and compassion
- Thread starter Skeptisch
- Start date
Why did you quote this?
Because we can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.
riest:
But what are you trying to convince him of?Because we can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Why did you ask this?
Levite
Higher and Higher
If you like, though it doesn't really translate into words well. There's actually not much to tell. At my mom's request, I went with her to High Holiday services that year. And during the very long third service, as I was standing there kind of wondering what compelled me to accede to my mom's request, I suddenly had a sensation of being close to someone, though the nearest person was several feet away to any side. But I felt as though someone were right behind me, almost as though there was a hand on my shoulder. And I had a great, wordless sense of being loved and appreciated and accepted. And I had an incredibly clear sense of having been told, without words, that everything was going to be okay. And I knew-- I knew with utter certainty-- that at that moment I was very close with God, and that God's presence was there in that place, and in every other place. And it became clear to me that where I was, was not accidental, and that it was, in fact, an entirely appropriate place, where I was supposed to be at that time.
It was after that experience that I began to study Torah and Talmud and Kabbalah again, and to start keeping kosher again, and to begin working myself back into the regular observances of Judaism. That experience changed my life, and while I know exactly what it meant and what it was, I would never expect it to be provable to anyone else, or to be objective evidence of anything. It was an entirely subjective experience, and I am okay with that.
Nothing, I was just wondering whether s/he knows about this Rohr guys powerful experience of crawling naked with a group of men on all fours.
:drunk:
waitasec
Veteran Member
Evandr
Stripling Warrior
I had a close friend who came to a realization one day, he had to evict his son from his house because the son was 25 with no social life and was vegetating in his basement basically sponging off of him. He talked to me about how he had done everything he could to provide help and warning to his son that if he did not get a move on and do somethiong to start supporting himself he would find himself homeless. Well, it happened, much to the anguish, fear, trepedation, and angry stares that came from his son, he found himself living on the streets in his car.
Now, the father was always there monitoring the situation to ensure that the Son would survive but the experience was necessary for the son to gain the experience needed to learn and grow. Well, that was four months ago and guess what, the son is in school with a good part time job and is paying his father a nice little chunk of change for his room and board. Now, expand that scenario to mankind and the realms of God and...well...you get the idea - sometimes the experience is worth the result in eternal considerations.
You make more sense than Francis Collins, the current Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. But for me it is still nonsense, but I know I have the handicap of not finding any scientific evidence for the supernatural and miraculous. So we just have to agree to disagree.
Collins has concluded, from his empirical perception of a frozen waterfall, that God existsnot just God, but the Christian God:
I turned the corner and saw in front of me this frozen waterfall, a couple of hundred feet high. Actually, a waterfall that had three parts to it also the symbolic three in one. At that moment, I felt my resistance leave me. And it was a great sense of relief. The next morning, in the dewy grass in the shadow of the Cascades, I fell on my knees and accepted this truth that God is God, that Christ is his son and that I am giving my life to that belief.
Does the experience include earthquakes, tsunamis and letting children die?
Koldo
Outstanding Member
waitasec
Veteran Member
and this applies to the tsunami how exactly? :areyoucra
The manifest deity is Krishna, Buddha, or Jesus, teachers who all help us to the understand and experience that the energy/intelligence habitating in bodies does not die. Wrong association of the being with an everchanging and perishable body is the cause of all confusions.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
But isn't the everchanging and perisable body a state of being?
To ignore its value is to ignore being.
waitasec
Veteran Member
what qualifies this as wrong?
we have no choice but to be associated with a perishable body...
the bottom line is, we are all the same.
conflicts are manifested when judgment of others come to play...
tarasan
Well-Known Member
depending on which religion you go for not really, for some the physical world is just an illusion and so the spiritual being is the only one that is truely real, giving the material "being" no value.
it also depends if this other form of being has a higher value than the being you state, if so isnt it worth the price?
just a few thoughts btw the dont agree with either
But to consider the discrete localised mortal body as the being, which is unborn and indivisible, is fatal.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
depending on which religion you go for not really, for some the physical world is just an illusion and so the spiritual being is the only one that is truely real, giving the material "being" no value.
it also depends if this other form of being has a higher value than the being you state, if so isnt it worth the price?
just a few thoughts btw the dont agree with either
I realize some religions understand it this way.
However, i can't help but criticize them for this. Even more if they believe in a personal God.
As i see it, every kind of existence can be seen as an illusion. We can only see and know so much in each of them. True enlightment can only be reached via omniscience, and i don't think any human, or whatever we are called in the afterlife, has ever reached such state.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
But to consider the discrete localised mortal body as the being, which is unborn and indivisible, is fatal.
Correct. But that is unnecessary for the question proposed in this topic.
Surely if seem this way it changes the core of the problem, but the problem remains.