Is Belief in God Superior to Experience of God?

[Windwalker]

What if the experience is overwhelming, but the opposite of whatever "traumatic" is? Is there a syndrome for post-extremely-positive-experience-eustress?

Yes, it's called the Mystic Heart syndrome. (albeight it's anything but a disease, much more simply just an apprehension).

 

[Thanda]

let's say you're a christian.
Let's say one day Muhammad talks to you and tells you to start worshipping Allah, than performs all sort of miracles and gives you all sorts of proof that you're not allucinating and the experience is true.

how do you know that is in fact Muhammad and it's not the devil trying to deceive you and drag you away from Jesus?

If I was an honest seeker of truth God would not allow me to be deceived.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

An actual experience of god that, however, you somehow manage to consciously forget ever happened?

This would have more influence on my behavior and life. I have and have had many beliefs-or things I thought true. When I found they were not fact, I dropped it.

However, regardless if it is fact or not, if I experienced god I would base that truth on my experiences. Then I would not care if it is fact because my life would he changed by it. God is not a belief. He is nkt a fact you can test. He is an experience.

 

[cambridge79]

If I was an honest seeker of truth God would not allow me to be deceived.

actually in the story of every saint there's a moment when the devil tries to decieve them to test their faith.
the devil tried to decieve Jesus himself in the desert, why wouldn't he be allowed to try to decieve you?

 

[Thanda]

actually in the story of every saint there's a moment when the devil tries to decieve them to test their faith.
the devil tried to decieve Jesus himself in the desert, why wouldn't he be allowed to try to decieve you?

And was Jesus allowed to be deceived?

 

[Windwalker]

(2) An actual experience of god that, however, you somehow manage to consciously forget ever happened?

I just picked on the oddity of this question as worded. How do you consciously forget? Do you mean to say consciously repress it, to deliberately ignore it? My earlier response was assuming you meant which has greater influence, a belief in God, or an experience of God. I'm not sure what the second part of the question has to do with that.

 

[sun rise]

Which do you suppose would have a greater influence on your life and behavior:

(1) A firm, conscious belief in god that, nevertheless was not based on any personal experience, or

(2) An actual experience of god that, however, you somehow manage to consciously forget ever happened?

Why?

To narrow down the scope, I'll assume an experience of God in this lifetime (as I believe in reincarnation).

I've forgotten many things in life while subconsciously retaining the feelings involved. I can reason by analogy to when I realized I was having a stroke without remembering consciously the symptoms and in fact a book "My Stroke of Insight" that I had read. So in this case #1 and #2 would have produced the same result on my life and behavior.

But a big reason I'm having trouble with #2 is that having an experience, having it alter one's life and then forgetting the original experience is a subject of clinical psychology. So since it's true in the psychological realm, it should be true in the spiritual realm as well.

 

[LuisDantas]

If I was an honest seeker of truth God would not allow me to be deceived.

Honest seekers of truth are deceived all the time. Maybe not in this rather specific matter.

 

[Windwalker]

But a big reason I'm having trouble with #2 is that having an experience, having it alter one's life and then forgetting the original experience is a subject of clinical psychology. So since it's true in the psychological realm, it should be true in the spiritual realm as well.

That's my confusion as well now looking at the way it was worded. Is he asking if someone had an experience of God but it slipped out of conscious awareness into the subconscious, what affect does the subconscious have on them? That's a very different level of question.

 

[Orbit]

Which do you suppose would have a greater influence on your life and behavior:

(1) A firm, conscious belief in god that, nevertheless was not based on any personal experience, or

(2) An actual experience of god that, however, you somehow manage to consciously forget ever happened?

Why?

An experience affects me more by far. After all, believing is kind
of like wishing, and experience is like getting. Forgetting about it doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Windwalker]

An experience affects me more by far. After all, believing is kind
of like wishing, and experience is like getting. Forgetting about it doesn't make sense to me.

If it threatened your sense of security by challenging your beliefs that defined your membership in a group it might.

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

Two halves of the same coin.

 

[Thanda]

Honest seekers of truth are deceived all the time. Maybe not in this rather specific matter.

I submit they are never deceived. They are led by God to truth are learn truth from him. And when lies come to them from the deceiver in many forms they see them for what they are - they are children of light and they despise the darkness.

We have in our LDS scriptures a more expanded story about Moses meeting God. After he met God he was visited by the devil who claimed he was God or the Son of God and that Moses should worship him. This was Moses answer:

"15 Blessed be the name of my God, for his Spirit hath not altogether withdrawn from me, or else where is thy glory, for it is darkness unto me?..." - Moses 1:15​

When we honestly seek truth we are filled with light. And when darkness comes we immediately perceive it.

 

[LuisDantas]

I submit they are never deceived.

Then I would need you to establish very clearly the parameters of your claim, if you want it to be seriously considered.

 

[Jiddanand]

God is always with everyone. There are merely three things in real. Brahm, Jeeva and Maya.