Question for Christians and those Who Believe in a Personal God

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I don't know how you got that because posts have included differentiating hallucinations from spiritual experiences. And what @Kenny has written in this thread and elsewhere has convinced me of their authenticity in his perspective and translatable to imine.

It's what the "blind men and the elephant" metaphor is all about: "ignore the evidence of your senses and ignore your complete lack of intersubjective verification because I, the omniscient narrator, can speak from authority and say that you're all wrong... or at best only have a partial understanding of the truth."

 

[Kenny]

Sorry I haven't been ignoring you, just been very busy these last couple of days.

No problem and I understand

Well, making this thread was one step in the process. I have given it a lot of thought and will continue to. I agree with others, I can tell that you are definitely genuine and not making these experiences up. But one of the things I wonder about is how much of the experiences are a result of different subjective interpretations of experience.

I can grant you that. Even in a roller coaster, each person will have a subjective interpretation of the experience

I often wonder if I had your experiences if they would convince me if there was a god or not, and I am not sure if they would or not. I also wonder if you had my life experiences if you would also agree that there's no way to determine with certainty if a god exists or not. I have had a couple experiences in my life that might make you or others who are theistically inclined believe in a god--it didn't occur to me until thinking about them in retrospect that others might interpret them that way. I don't, but that doesn't mean that I am ruling out the possibility of God/gods completely.

I would have to say “so true”.

After giving my life to Jesus and having multiple manifestations of His goodness, I looked back at my life and thought on multiple occasions, “Hmmmm… How did I get out of that one.” Made me wonder, after the fact, that quite possibly it was a God intervention.

 

[sun rise]

intersubjective verification

Intersubjective verifiability is the capacity of a concept to be readily and accurately communicated between different individuals ("intersubjectively"), and to be reproduced under varying circumstances for the purposes of verification.

Each individual is a subject, and must subjectively experience the physical world. Each subject has a different perspective and point of view on various aspects of the world. However, by sharing their comparable experiences intersubjectively, individuals may gain an increasingly similar understanding of the world.

You like to repeat that phrase. Blind Men/elephant is about theology and the psychological process where people share an experience but talk about it differently.

I can read what @Kenny writes and verify his experience with my own even though we put different words and a different theology on it. I can read words from Kaballah and find exact parallels to what Meher Baba indicated. I can read the Hindu Ramakrishna and find exact parallels to what the Sufis wrote. I can read the Buddhist Four Noble Truths and find that it is exactly scientifically verified in psychology. Christians say that the end of the world is here or nearly here. The mast (God intoxicated Hindu) in India said "Man-made world will end. God-made world will revive" A book Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions is available.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You like to repeat that phrase. Blind Men/elephant is about theology and the psychological process where people share an experience but talk about it differently.

The experiences are different. The sighted audience and the omniscient narrator see that each experience is part of a larger whole.

... but the way you're using it, there is no sighted audience. We're just taking as given that there's an elephant (and only one elephant).

I can read what @Kenny writes and verify his experience with my own even though we put different words and a different theology on it.

If this is true, it doesn't reflect the story. The whole point of the story is that one person’s experience doesn't verify anyone else's experience. The only thing that links the experiences is the observation of the sighted bystanders.

 

[John D. Brey]

If this is true, it doesn't reflect the story. The whole point of the story is that one person’s experience doesn't verify anyone else's experience. The only thing that links the experiences is the observation of the sighted bystanders.

That's a good point. It's like the idea of a million monkeys typing randomly on keyboards for infinity producing a Shakespearean sonnet somewhere in all that random garble.

The real key is deciphering Shakespeare from random and meaningless type. I would say it's the ability to see the transcendental signifier (elephant or Shakespearean sonnet) in a sea of parts and variables (parts which everyone else interprets in a non-holistic manner by not connecting all the parts as a transcendental whole) that's the real issue.

Who has the insight, or vision, of the ground of reality, that everyone else lacks, such that the latter are forced to interpret as best they can in the paucity of insight concerning reality? Where does the ability arise to perceive reality as a whole, rather than as some disjunctive or relative collection of parts unrelated to a transcendental whole?



John

 

[Starise]

This is going to maybe look like a hit and run, and if it does I apologize. I just can't come back with regularity.
I will do my best to get back if there are responses.

Let me begin by saying, I am an overthinker which means I almost obsessively check and double check everything and I mean everything. It isn't necessarily a lack of self confidence, it's simply my wiring, so I re evealuate things all the time. After I post this I will undoubtedly wonder if I over did it or said what I needed to say in a way that it was understood, even if disagreed with or seen as logically in need.

So I had an 'experience' when I was pretty young, fell away and got into some bad things. The whole time I was into those bad things I knew deep down it wasn't me and I knew I was supposed to be something different/better.

How did I know that? I had my background which was religious and which I analyzed over and over again. To be frank, I still have questions about some of it, but for some reason this did not dissuade me because I had faith in the core and what you might call 'it' and what I would call God rewarded that intention and I seen it was a contiguous thing, meaning I was never 'severed' from my faith completely. That thing I call God reached out to me and assured me I was still in the game and I needed to improve by pulling away from the bad stuff. I also OBSERVED those in my life who had fully committed and seen something real.

If you want the mechanicals of that, I can only say I trusted God ( Jesus) and He reciprocated. The reciprocation was in direct response to my obedience, to my realization that if He made me, He could make me a better me. I didn't want my god I wanted THE God, and He had my number.

We hear a lot about deconstruction nowadays and now after people go to college they 'lose' their faith. The way I see this, you're either all in or not in. Dipping your toe in won't do it. Once you fully dedicate you are from then on 'in'. Full dedication and acceptance are a life ticket. Externally it can look like full on dedication when it isn't. Only you and God know if it wasn't. Time will tell.

Anyone following mom's apron strings into religion will fold every time. This is for you and nothing anyone else does or says will change what you decide.

Rationalization comes into play and we play this Russian roulette with the latest finds to disprove the views they taught us, but what if the race to deconstruction is really a bunch or well oiled well doctored lies? The truth is noone can tell us how they think in any logical rational workable way that something came from nothing. Tacking zeros onto numbers doesn't work. The universe is in in a state of decline.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Great point. We interpret experiences according to our nature. @Kenny has experiences that he believes confirm Christianity. Members of other religions interpret their experiences based on their understanding. (Blind Men and the Elephant again). As Rumi said "There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

I don't think it's necessarily just through our nature that we interpret experience, as that would imply that we can't change how we interpret our experience. Ideally, we should be interpreting it using good, sound reasoning and critical thinking.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

This is going to maybe look like a hit and run, and if it does I apologize. I just can't come back with regularity.
I will do my best to get back if there are responses.

Let me begin by saying, I am an overthinker which means I almost obsessively check and double check everything and I mean everything. It isn't necessarily a lack of self confidence, it's simply my wiring, so I re evealuate things all the time. After I post this I will undoubtedly wonder if I over did it or said what I needed to say in a way that it was understood, even if disagreed with or seen as logically in need.

So I had an 'experience' when I was pretty young, fell away and got into some bad things. The whole time I was into those bad things I knew deep down it wasn't me and I knew I was supposed to be something different/better.

How did I know that? I had my background which was religious and which I analyzed over and over again. To be frank, I still have questions about some of it, but for some reason this did not dissuade me because I had faith in the core and what you might call 'it' and what I would call God rewarded that intention and I seen it was a contiguous thing, meaning I was never 'severed' from my faith completely. That thing I call God reached out to me and assured me I was still in the game and I needed to improve by pulling away from the bad stuff. I also OBSERVED those in my life who had fully committed and seen something real.

If you want the mechanicals of that, I can only say I trusted God ( Jesus) and He reciprocated. The reciprocation was in direct response to my obedience, to my realization that if He made me, He could make me a better me. I didn't want my god I wanted THE God, and He had my number.

We hear a lot about deconstruction nowadays and now after people go to college they 'lose' their faith. The way I see this, you're either all in or not in. Dipping your toe in won't do it. Once you fully dedicate you are from then on 'in'. Full dedication and acceptance are a life ticket. Externally it can look like full on dedication when it isn't. Only you and God know if it wasn't. Time will tell.

Anyone following mom's apron strings into religion will fold every time. This is for you and nothing anyone else does or says will change what you decide.

Rationalization comes into play and we play this Russian roulette with the latest finds to disprove the views they taught us, but what if the race to deconstruction is really a bunch or well oiled well doctored lies? The truth is noone can tell us how they think in any logical rational workable way that something came from nothing. Tacking zeros onto numbers doesn't work. The universe in is in a state of decline.

I appreciate the response, because I am also an obsessive overthinker. I'm not a professional but it sounds like you may quite possibly have some degree of OCD. I only say this because I have similar tendencies but I am working on developing cognitive and behavioral practices to stop this and it is improving. DM me if you want to know more.

I don't know what you mean by "all in." When I was a child and young adult I prayed obsessively, 10-20 times or more per day to the point where family members expressed concern over me because I was jumping out of my chair either thanking God for his "blessings" or begging him to forgive me from my "sins." I also remember my parent's pastor telling people to pray something like "Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief" so I would pray that obsessively as well, since I wanted to be sure I "believed" hard enough to avoid going to hell. Before taking communion as a kid, I would also try to recall all the arguments I had heard for the existence of God and remember the stuff I had read in books about people who had supposedly had conversations with God and knew he existed so I could work myself up into a state where I "believed" in him so I didn't go to hell for taking communion. And guess what? All this was a complete waste of life, I never heard a single thing back from this god this entire time I was desperately praying to him. I would even throw myself face down on the floor and start shaking trying to show him my devotion, but nope, not a thing--just the results I would expect from all this obsessive praying if he didn't exist. If this wasn't "all in" I don't know what is. And guess what? I'm not going back to that obsessive lifestyle. If God exists and wants me to go to heaven he'll reveal himself to me, if he doesn't, then he'll save a seat for me in Hell I guess.

 

[Starise]

I appreciate the response, because I am also an obsessive overthinker. I'm not a professional but it sounds like you may quite possibly have some degree of OCD. I only say this because I have similar tendencies but I am working on developing cognitive and behavioral practices to stop this and it is improving. DM me if you want to know more.

I don't know what you mean by "all in." When I was a child and young adult I prayed obsessively, 10-20 times or more per day to the point where family members expressed concern over me because I was jumping out of my chair either thanking God for his "blessings" or begging him to forgive me from my "sins." I also remember my parent's pastor telling people to pray something like "Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief" so I would pray that obsessively as well, since I wanted to be sure I "believed" hard enough to avoid going to hell. Before taking communion as a kid, I would also try to recall all the arguments I had heard for the existence of God and remember the stuff I had read in books about people who had supposedly had conversations with God and knew he existed so I could work myself up into a state where I "believed" in him so I didn't go to hell for taking communion. And guess what? All this was a complete waste of life, I never heard a single thing back from this god this entire time I was desperately praying to him. I would even throw myself face down on the floor and start shaking trying to show him my devotion, but nope, not a thing--just the results I would expect from all this obsessive praying if he didn't exist. If this wasn't "all in" I don't know what is. And guess what? I'm not going back to that obsessive lifestyle. If God exists and wants me to go to heaven he'll reveal himself to me, if he doesn't, then he'll save a seat for me in Hell I guess.

Glad to discuss. So maybe we get each other on that level so far as OCD and overthinking. I had to bring it up because it's very intrinsic to my thought processes, yet sometimes it feels like a tick is in there and won't go away. Occasionally these things lead to a better more well thought out conclusion, or at least in my thinking it is. Hey, we need to try and gain something positive from it right?

By all in I mean I layed everything down. In fact I asked something scary. I said whatever you need to do to make me what you need to make me a better me please do it. Much like the roots of a tree are stronger through storms, a lot of my 'education' has been going through storms. I had a vice I won't mention here, but I was deep into it and I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that without some kind of help I would be in it to this day. That vice, like all vices was self destructive, and as a person who takes things to the hilt, I'll just say I pushed that envelope. After asking that request, a few storms came into my life which had a positive effect on my inner man to the extent that I am no longer in that vice.TBH I seriously doubt it could have happened any other way and had that maximum effect. I believe this was the answer to my request.

Not sure exactly of your religious background, but some of it sounds like maybe it could have influnced you in a negative way. I hated church and to this day I am not fond of religious practices.

As humans I think we are wired for call/response. From birth we learn a language and our expectations are that communication is overt and should be verbal. For me it's more like little instructions I know were from him. I once got on this kick where I asked God to send someone to knock on my bed at night. For some time after that, similar to you maybe, I kept that up and began to get angry that He never complied with my requests. Then I heard one message. " Be still and know I am God". It wasn't verbal. More of a direct line to my inner self. I have found His language system is totally different and that there are also negative influencing spirits who attempt to replicate it. They know better than to toy with me because I know His voice.

I don't think there is any need to get obsessed even though it can be a tendency which I understand. He is gently there and often it isn't in any church.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Glad to discuss. So maybe we get each other on that level so far as OCD and overthinking. I had to bring it up because it's very intrinsic to my thought processes, yet sometimes it feels like a tick is in there and won't go away. Occasionally these things lead to a better more well thought out conclusion, or at least in my thinking it is. Hey, we need to try and gain something positive from it right?

By all in I mean I layed everything down. In fact I asked something scary. I said whatever you need to do to make me what you need to make me a better me please do it. Much like the roots of a tree are stronger through storms, a lot of my 'education' has been going through storms. I had a vice I won't mention here, but I was deep into it and I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that without some kind of help I would be in it to this day. That vice, like all vices was self destructive, and as a person who takes things to the hilt, I'll just say I pushed that envelope. After asking that request, a few storms came into my life which had a positive effect on my inner man to the extent that I am no longer in that vice.TBH I seriously doubt it could have happened any other way and had that maximum effect. I believe this was the answer to my request.

Not sure exactly of your religious background, but some of it sounds like maybe it could have influnced you in a negative way. I hated church and to this day I am not fond of religious practices.

As humans I think we are wired for call/response. From birth we learn a language and our expectations are that communication is overt and should be verbal. For me it's more like little instructions I know were from him. I once got on this kick where I asked God to send someone to knock on my bed at night. For some time after that, similar to you maybe, I kept that up and began to get angry that He never complied with my requests. Then I heard one message. " Be still and know I am God". It wasn't verbal. More of a direct line to my inner self. I have found His language system is totally different and that there are also negative influencing spirits who attempt to replicate it. They know better than to toy with me because I know His voice.

I don't think there is any need to get obsessed even though it can be a tendency which I understand. He is gently there and often it isn't in any church.

I'm at work now so can't address everything here yet or respond in detail. However, one thing I noticed is that it seems that, based on the way you said you phrased your prayer, that your mind was absolutely set on attributing whatever was about to happen to you to God no matter what. Even if no god exists, if bad things happened to you after you said that prayer, you would have attributed them to God testing you, if good things happened, you would have attributed them to God blessing you. At least, that's what it sounds like to me. You mention hearing a message directly to your inner self. Have you considered the possibility that this could be your subconscious mind talking to yourself and trying to convince you it was God since you wanted to believe in God so badly? Just some thoughts.

 

[Starise]

I'm at work now so can't address everything here yet or respond in detail. However, one thing I noticed is that it seems that, based on the way you said you phrased your prayer, that your mind was absolutely set on attributing whatever was about to happen to you to God no matter what. Even if no god exists, if bad things happened to you after you said that prayer, you would have attributed them to God testing you, if good things happened, you would have attributed them to God blessing you. At least, that's what it sounds like to me. You mention hearing a message directly to your inner self. Have you considered the possibility that this could be your subconscious mind talking to yourself and trying to convince you it was God since you wanted to believe in God so badly? Just some thoughts.

No worries.

Here are a few of our scriptures that may help to explain this.

John 10:14-18​

“I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They’ll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father.”

Believers are often referred to as sheep and the Lord is the shepherd.

I had another reference in my mind but it's late here and I can't remember it. Maybe I'll pull it up later. God sometimes speaks to my soul, sometimes He uses others and sometimes the word or prayer help to illuminate a situation. Same as you recognize the voice of someone in your family, like your mother, God has a distinct way believers recognize him and we know it isn't our minds playing tricks.
No matter what happens to me, God allows it. He always has our best interest in mind.Everything that happens to me has a purpose.

I have no need to believe in God. I do believe in God because God is. For me it's a given.

Best,

Tim

 

[sun rise]

we should be interpreting it using good, sound reasoning and critical thinking.

The "mind" and "heart" are both necessary. Three quotes from the Jewish Kaballah that I quite like:

"We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are." - the Talmud

"You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed. And yet, all this is a matter of faith—the faith that there is a truth to be found. It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith." - Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

"Beware of any system which discourages questioning. Anyone who stifles questions is afraid that it could uncover the falseness of the beliefs." - Rabbi Noach Weinberg

 

[Rational Agnostic]

I have no need to believe in God.

Of course you do, your previous posts indicated that very clearly and obviously. You have a deep-rooted need for absolute certainty and constant reassurance about everything and you turned to a manmade religion to fill that need. That is my opinion. Make of it what you will.

 

[John D. Brey]

Of course you do, your previous posts indicated that very clearly and obviously. You have a deep-rooted need for absolute certainty and constant reassurance about everything and you turned to a manmade religion to fill that need. That is my opinion. Make of it what you will.

The atheist Bertrand Russell was infected with the same need for absolute certainty. Reflecting on his eighteenth birthday (in Portrait from Memory), Russell states: "I wanted certainty in the kind of way people want religious faith," and in, My Philosophical Development, Russell says: "When I was young I hoped to find religious satisfaction in philosophy . . .."

Perhaps you're searching for religious satisfaction, or something like it, from what I consider a misplaced confidence in empiricism and the rationalism born of it?



John

 

[Rational Agnostic]

The atheist Bertrand Russell was infected with the same need for absolute certainty. Reflecting on his eighteenth birthday (in Portrait from Memory), Russell states: "I wanted certainty in the kind of way people want religious faith," and in, My Philosophical Development, Russell says: "When I was young I hoped to find religious satisfaction in philosophy . . .."

Perhaps you're searching for religious satisfaction, or something like it, from what I consider a misplaced confidence in empiricism and the rationalism born of it?



John

I'm not looking for certainty, in fact, I think finding certainty is impossible for nearly everything, not just the existence of God. Looking for certainty in everything will only result in failure and lead to an unhappy life full of constant anxiety. That doesn't mean that thinking about things and trying to determine the truth is a bad thing--I do think that it can be a fun activity. But in the end, my position is that there are many questions that can and will never be answered.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

No problem and I understand



I can grant you that. Even in a roller coaster, each person will have a subjective interpretation of the experience

I would have to say “so true”.

After giving my life to Jesus and having multiple manifestations of His goodness, I looked back at my life and thought on multiple occasions, “Hmmmm… How did I get out of that one.” Made me wonder, after the fact, that quite possibly it was a God intervention.

Thanks for the reply. I don't doubt your experiences were 100% real to you and genuine, but they don't convince me that the Christian god exists, just as @soulsurvivor 's experiences don't convince me that Sathya Sai Baba was a divine being or interacting with any god/gods, even though I also believe that their experience was real to them. There are many people who have had profound coincidences and seemingly powerful supernatural experiences happen to them and I believe that the majority of these people are genuine and not making up their experiences. There's a lot about existence that we don't know or understand but that doesn't mean that a god is responsible for every (or any) experiences we have that are out of the ordinary. As another example, I remember watching a YouTube video where someone described his experience on a powerful psychedelic plant. He described his experience of consuming this substance, and in the span of only five minutes, he genuinely felt like he lived 30 years in the life of another person. He was born, lived out an entire childhood, fell deeply in love with a woman, got married, had children, and remembered every single intricate detail of this alternate lifetime, and said that it truly felt like three decades of experience, longer than his entire life at the time. And the most striking thing that he mentioned is that this experience of an alternate life, felt infinitely more real than his actual life that he had been living. The experience ended when he died in the alternate life, and he came back to this present reality, screaming and crying on the bathroom floor, realizing that only five minutes had past, and he was never the same again.

My point of sharing this crazy story is that I do believe this experience was genuine and real to this person. I also don't believe that this experience actually happened in objective reality outside of his own mind. The human brain is incredibly powerful and able to generate experiences that feel entirely real but in the end, are ultimately most likely just delusions. I am not saying that there is no chance of supernatural things existing, or any of these experiences pointing to something objectively real. But overall, I am skeptical of them.

 

[soulsurvivor]

I also don't believe that this experience actually happened in objective reality outside of his own mind.

What part of this story do you think happened in the person's mind and not in objective reality? The Tale of Sathya Sai Baba and the Three Step Snake

 

[Rational Agnostic]

What part of this story do you think happened in the person's mind and not in objective reality? The Tale of Sathya Sai Baba and the Three Step Snake

In all honesty, I think that entire story sounds made up. But that's just my opinion, I dont mean any disrespect.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

We hear a lot about deconstruction nowadays and now after people go to college they 'lose' their faith. The way I see this, you're either all in or not in. Dipping your toe in won't do it. Once you fully dedicate you are from then on 'in'. Full dedication and acceptance are a life ticket. Externally it can look like full on dedication when it isn't. Only you and God know if it wasn't. Time will tell.

Anyone following mom's apron strings into religion will fold every time. This is for you and nothing anyone else does or says will change what you decide.

My take on it is different.

College is often the time when people from religious upbringings come face-to-face with the errors in their beliefs. For instance, maybe they're taught to hate LGBTQ people or non-believers, but then get assigned to be in a lab group with them and find out that they're just fine. Maybe their youth pastor's arguments for faith sounded reasonable when they were surrounded by other kids nodding along, but they lose their sheen when they try them on their roommate and just get a "what? Can you explain that again? It makes no sense."

In the worst cases, the belief system needs constant reinforcement, and without that reinforcement, the homd of the religion lessens. If a kid has been told all his life that he's a worthless sinner utterly dependent on Jesus for salvation, and then you drop him in a new environment where he isn't constantly being told that he's worthless, he can grow enough self-esteem to shatter that old paradigm.

 

[soulsurvivor]

In all honesty, I think that entire story sounds made up. But that's just my opinion, I dont mean any disrespect.

I think it is being disrespectful. You can read the other posts in that blog, she looks like a serious journalist (a bit leftist and anti-establishment perhaps). This is a typical response from skeptics - they either say that you don't have the evidence or you imagined (hallucinated) it or now that you are lying.

One interesting note, this post has been removed from the Google index - you can type all the keywords in this post, Google will not show this post in the search results, although Google has all of blogspot.com indexed. So, it appears someone specifically asked Google to remove this page from their index - another dedicated skeptic perhaps?