• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Should some atheists take the time to study religion/rituals/magic ect.?

leibowde84

leibowde84

Veteran Member
Seeker of Ka said:
Then this means that you are a type of Christian that I have not met before. Tell me if the bible is infallible, then why do you beilive that Jesus can break the laws of nature?
Click to expand...
Jesus was divine. But, I am far more concerned with his teachings than miracles and such.
 
leibowde84

leibowde84

Veteran Member
Seeker of Ka said:
So you are more like a Buddhist in that your are primarily concerned with his teachings than his divinity?
Click to expand...
Some scholars think that Jesus studied Buddhism during his early life. I think Jesus felt the same way I do. The unknown authors of the Bible seem to have missed the mark, IMHO.
 
Theweirdtophat

Theweirdtophat

Well-Known Member
The life-force is very real. There is energy that animated the body, the energy that one calls the soul. It can be amplified to a degree. Such as with Martial artists who are able to shatter wood, ice and stone with their bare hands. There is also another thing. What about hypnotism? You'd think it'd be impossible to influence others through certain words and commands but it happens.
 
leibowde84

leibowde84

Veteran Member
Theweirdtophat said:
The life-force is very real. There is energy that animated the body, the energy that one calls the soul. It can be amplified to a degree. Such as with Martial artists who are able to shatter wood, ice and stone with their bare hands. There is also another thing. What about hypnotism? You'd think it'd be impossible to influence others through certain words and commands but it happens.
Click to expand...
Hypnotism is an understood psychological practice. There is no "mystery" or "magic" as you seem to imply. See below:
"So how does hypnosis work?

Well, hypnosis 're-educates' your unconscious mind. By that I mean your habitual responses, or instincts.

So, for example, you might think of a certain person and feel nervous. How does that happen? You thought of someone, and even though they weren't in the room, you felt nervous! How did you do that? Well, at some stage, a mini hypnotic state glued together in your mind that particular person and the emotion of anxiety. That's what hypnosis does - it helps you learn - and fast.

So, we can use hypnosis to change this response. We can take deliberate control of the way you feel by relaxing you and having you imagine things that make you feel good, and then have you rehearse doing the problem situation while feeling the way you want to feel.

Sounds simple, doesn't it?

And it is! Of course, there are many subtleties involved as well, but this is the most fundamental use for hypnosis. Changing your emotional reaction - how you feel about something.

Think of the applications...

  • If you're a smoker, change how you feel about cigarettes
  • If you're trying to lose weight, change how you feel about fatty and sugary foods
  • If you dislike public speaking, change how you feel about that
  • About exercise, about achieving, about yourself, ...
The list really is endless. And all from one 'simple' tool.

One thing I always make clear to my clients is that hypnosis has not been successful until it has changed the actual situation.

What I mean by that is that it's one thing sitting at home feeling all calm and peaceful about the presentation you've got to do next week, but feeling different at the presentation itself is the only proof that matters.

You can't call yourself 'changed' until you've done what you were aiming to do, while feeling the way you wanted to feel.

And once you've done it, you are changed. Your experience is changed. And no-one can ever take that away from you.

So if the unconscious mind learns so quickly and so effectively, how can we use hypnosis to teach it new things?

Well, the first thing you need to understand is that the unconscious mind needs a clear message about what you want from it.

This is really at the core of all hypnosis. Once you understand this, you will understand the central mechanism of almost all self-help approaches - positive thinking, visualisation, autogenics, the Silva method - all sorts. They (and hundreds of others), all use this 'trick'.

So what do I mean when I say 'give the unconscious mind a clear message'?

Well, think of it like this:

When you can do something without thinking, you have assigned it to your unconscious mind - talking, driving, writing, walking, eating, catching a ball and so on.

And you usually get there by repetition.

But you can get there much more quickly by attaching emotion to it. Here's what I mean:

  • You have an embarrassing experience and afterwards, you only need think of it to blush (it's an unconscious response - try blushing deliberately!)
  • You have a terrifying experience and afterwards, any situation similar to it makes you feel anxious
  • A film makes you laugh and afterwards, just thinking of the scene makes you chuckle
The common factor is all these scenarios is emotion. Emotion makes the 'pattern' stick. The more emotion, the more stuck it gets, and the greater the effect in the future.

Are you starting to see why this is so important?

So, given this fact that emotion causes patterns to 'stick' in the unconscious mind, what happens if you think negatively all the time? Anxiety is the easiest emotion to create - all you need to do is worry!

And what happens then?

The most common mistake (and I mean seriously, startlingly common) is firstly to think of something you don't want to do (like feeling anxious when public speaking, blushing at a party, stumbling over your words at an interview).

Then you feel anxious because you just thought of something scary.

And right away, you begin to 'stick' the pattern! Your unconscious mind has received a clear message about how you want to feel in the situation itself!

This is called negative self hypnosis.

I guess you can imagine how difficult it makes things if you are constantly having to 'battle against yourself' - that is, creating patterns through negative thinking that make it harder for you to perform the way you want.

Using hypnosis a lot trains your brain to focus on what you want, not on what you don't want, giving you control over the contents of your thoughts.

That's why, if you want to get out of your own way, we recommend using hypnosis on a regular basis. This gives you the immediate benefits of the hypnosis itself, plus in the longer term, stops you doing negative self hypnosis and making life difficult for yourself.

In summary

So to sum up, hypnosis works by re-educating the unconscious mind, giving you control over responses that you can't control consciously, or by trying harder."
http://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/articles/uncommon-hypnosis/how-hypnosis-works.html
 
A Vestigial Mote

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
I would say it isn't that I haven't tried - I have prayed, have turned to "something" for answers at times in my life, etc. However, my real problem stems from the fact that I literally can't be genuine in going about it. It never feels "right", always feels fake, always useless and done out of a place of complete ignorance... my own ignorance, I mean. And I have come to realize that I cannot know, and I am fine with that.

In the end I believe I have come to realize that (this is going to sound bad) no one's beliefs actually mean anything to me. And they do not matter. And I believe that this is, truly, the same for every individual. Sure you may find camaraderie in speaking and interacting with people of like mind when you agree on the matters being discussed/debated/etc., but the moment there is some diversion from your own beliefs you will likely discard that information with the ultimate point being that you view the item as unimportant - that the belief does not matter. There are, of course, things you will adopt into your own beliefs as new or innovative (with respect to yourself and your own scope of knowledge) information is presented, but what I am talking about are the things you do not believe - and will never believe - that others do. Do those things matter? Not to you they don't. And when you realize this, then you have to admit to yourself that your own beliefs do not matter to anyone else either - and that, in actuality, this points in the direction of NONE of them mattering at all.
 
leibowde84

leibowde84

Veteran Member
A Vestigial Mote said:
I would say it isn't that I haven't tried - I have prayed, have turned to "something" for answers at times in my life, etc. However, my real problem stems from the fact that I literally can't be genuine in going about it. It never feels "right", always feels fake, always useless and done out of a place of complete ignorance... my own ignorance, I mean. And I have come to realize that I cannot know, and I am fine with that.

In the end I believe I have come to realize that (this is going to sound bad) no one's beliefs actually mean anything to me. And they do not matter. And I believe that this is, truly, the same for every individual. Sure you may find camaraderie in speaking and interacting with people of like mind when you agree on the matters being discussed/debated/etc., but the moment there is some diversion from your own beliefs you will likely discard that information with the ultimate point being that you view the item as unimportant - that the belief does not matter. There are, of course, things you will adopt into your own beliefs as new or innovative (with respect to yourself and your own scope of knowledge) information is presented, but what I am talking about are the things you do not believe - and will never believe - that others do. Do those things matter? Not to you they don't. And when you realize this, then you have to admit to yourself that your own beliefs do not matter to anyone else either - and that, in actuality, this points in the direction of NONE of them mattering at all.
Click to expand...
This is a good point. No one should expect anyone who doesn't see God as a plausible idea to "act" genuine in praying to God, just to try it out. It is an unreasonable expectation.

It's like asking a Christian to Yoda for help. I mean, at the beginning of the film it says "long long ago in a galaxy far far away", so maybe it did all really happen. We are going off mere claims with all of this stuff anyways.
 
A Vestigial Mote

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
Theweirdtophat said:
Do some people make up stories, of course, but the amount of stories you hear who have face such experiences can't be all fake.
Click to expand...

People used to "experience" werewolves, mermaids and vampires also. So often, in fact, that they became permanent parts of human history and culture. According to you, some percentage of those sightings apparently had to have been real simply because there were enough that "they can't all be fake".

Unicorns? Faeries? Griffins? Dragons? Gremlins? Leprechauns? Genies? Where exactly do you, personally, end up drawing the line?
 
outhouse

outhouse

Atheistically
Theweirdtophat said:
The life-force is very real. There is energy that animated the body, the energy that one calls the soul.
Click to expand...

If it was real it could be measured and proved real, scientifically it does not exist outside mythology.

Your spouting rhetoric


Theweirdtophat said:
It can be amplified to a degree
Click to expand...

Your spouting unsubstantiated rhetoric

Theweirdtophat said:
What about hypnotism?
Click to expand...

The human mind is weak, and this shows exactly how weak and feeble being conscious is.
 
A

Awoon

Well-Known Member
Theweirdtophat said:
Lots of atheists will demand proof, yet they don't even bother to attempt to do what other religious people do, like participating in rituals or ceremonies to see if such religions or magic is true. They just say "Nope nuh uh, it's all fake, because my text book says so and if it's not right in front of my face this very instant, it doesn't exist." It just sounds arrogant, close-minded and depressing to me, to not believe in anything. It's especially rude quite a few consider such beings as imaginary and look up to scientists of the past, when very few of them realize that such scientists were religious whether they were monotheistic, polytheistic, animistic or something else. The scientists like George Washington Carver, Newton and Vinci all had religious backgrounds and practiced magic and mysticism. Why would scientists of today dismiss such things as imaginary yet the scientists they try to emulate have practiced the things they criticize about.

Has it ever occurred to some atheists that maybe there is some truth to it? That there is a life force animating us? Has it ever occurred to them that may such souls are present in all things, or that magic is real. Or with people having near death experiences, seeing bright lights, seeing their families and seeing their body as they move up before they go back into their body. But I guess every single one just made up such experiences for no reason, right? Don't you think an atheist would scratch their head and say hmmm

"Hmmm. Maybe there is some truth to this. Maybe there's a reason why people have spent such time and effort practicing magic or spirituality. Maybe there's a reason scientists practiced such things. Maybe meditations and rituals and words and other things have power. Maybe I should look into it and find out for myself"

What can't be proved can at least be experienced. They want proof but they should know that some things can't be proven. It doesn't make it fantasy because you can't prove it. Maybe if an atheist at least attempted to do what religious people have done it'd make more sense.

I know this because I was atheist. I didn't believe such things either until I looked into it myself and thought "Maybe I shouldn't just dismiss it as if it was all fantasy just because the evidence isn't right in front of me." I felt foolish for dismissing such things when I really had no reason to. I found out myself and knew magic and souls was real. If atheists don't want to take the time to find out themselves, that's their loss, and I feel sorry for them.
Click to expand...

Theists GOOOOOD. Atheists BAAAAAAD.

Line up ten people dressed the same. Now, pick out the Theists and Atheists. No second chance and death by Bible execution for making wrong picks.
 
Theweirdtophat

Theweirdtophat

Well-Known Member
I feel as if not enough take the time to participate in it.They tend to think it materialistic ways but there has always been more to it than just materialism. If atheists took the time to look into it, there'd be no such thing as an atheist. Rather, many just dismiss it because it's not found in their text books. There is evidence for it, and experiencing it introduces the evidence. Not having evidence, doesn't mean it doesn't exist or it is false. If we never discovered dinosaurs, does that mean dinosaurs never existed? No, that'd be absurd. Dinosaurs always have existed whether we discover it or not.

Just because you can't see something, it doesn't mean it isn't there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top