Another Joseph Smith; a problem for atheism

[Mr. Perfect]

If there is a god then it would be of course at his pleasure how he reveals himself. In the meantime we should celebrate free speech.

[Enki]

If there is a god then it would be of course at his pleasure how he reveals himself. In the meantime we should celebrate free speech.

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

[Nonc Hilaire]

If there is a god then it would be of course at his pleasure how he reveals himself. In the meantime we should celebrate free speech.

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

To elaborate on this thought (not disagree), the general experience is that God will always reveal himself if one merely attempts to improve on personal purity and asks consistently for revelation. Prepare the garden. Then plant, weed and water the seeds and expect the harvest.

Generally those without a personal experience of the divine have never even made even a half-hearted attempt to connect.

Where is JITIY when you need him?

[Endovelico]

If there is a god then it would be of course at his pleasure how he reveals himself. In the meantime we should celebrate free speech.

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

To elaborate on this thought (not disagree), the general experience is that God will always reveal himself if one merely attempts to improve on personal purity and asks consistently for revelation. Prepare the garden. Then plant, weed and water the seeds and expect the harvest.

Generally those without a personal experience of the divine have never even made even a half-hearted attempt to connect.

Where is JITIY when you need him?

I have heard LSD helps to achieve it...

[Simple Minded]

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

Amen my Redneck Zen brother!

The realization that perception is chosen by the perceiver, and not determined by the object being perceived, is a great religion/ideology/religion/philosophy/prescription for anyone who desires to not suffer a miserable existence.

Tough product to bottle and sell though......

[Enki]

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

Amen my Redneck Zen brother!

The realization that perception is chosen by the perceiver, and not determined by the object being perceived, is a great religion/ideology/religion/philosophy/prescription for anyone who desires to not suffer a miserable existence.

Tough product to bottle and sell though......

The reason it is difficult to prove the existence of God is because literally everything is evidence.

[Endovelico]

The reason it is difficult to prove the existence of God is because literally everything is evidence.

The existence of evil proves beyond any doubt the existence of God... God created Hitler so that he could do the holocaust so that people would see what evil is all about and therefore choose good instead of evil... The six million victims were just collateral damage... Anybody failing to understand this should be crucified...

[Typhoon]

The reason it is difficult to prove the existence of God is because literally everything is evidence.

The existence of evil proves beyond any doubt the existence of God... God created Hitler so that he could do the holocaust so that people would see what evil is all about and therefore choose good instead of evil... The six million victims were just collateral damage... Anybody failing to understand this should be crucified...

On a more fundamental level, one would could not help but wonder about a god that created a physical universe ruled by the conservation of energy and matter which forces the existence of a food chain and never ending competition for finite resources.

One can't help but think that such a creator, if he exists, was having an off day.

[Typhoon]

If there is a god then it would be of course at his pleasure how he reveals himself. In the meantime we should celebrate free speech.

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

To elaborate on this thought (not disagree), the general experience is that God will always reveal himself if one merely attempts to improve on personal purity and asks consistently for revelation. Prepare the garden. Then plant, weed and water the seeds and expect the harvest.

Generally those without a personal experience of the divine have never even made even a half-hearted attempt to connect.

Where is JITIY when you need him?

Odd. I've been an atheist as far back as I can remember.

When people do occasionally talk to me about religion, I hold my peace, but it's no different to me than them talking about the existence of UFOs, vampires, ghosts, or our Lizard Overlords.

[Nonc Hilaire]

If there is a god then it would be of course at his pleasure how he reveals himself. In the meantime we should celebrate free speech.

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

To elaborate on this thought (not disagree), the general experience is that God will always reveal himself if one merely attempts to improve on personal purity and asks consistently for revelation. Prepare the garden. Then plant, weed and water the seeds and expect the harvest.

Generally those without a personal experience of the divine have never even made even a half-hearted attempt to connect.

Where is JITIY when you need him?

Odd. I've been an atheist as far back as I can remember.

When people do occasionally talk to me about religion, I hold my peace, but it's no different to me than them talking about the existence of UFOs, vampires, ghosts, or our Lizard Overlords.

Only a physicist would take the Sir Issac Newton approach to discovering God. Wait for a divine apple of inspiration to konk you on the noggin.

[Simple Minded]

Odd. I've been an atheist as far back as I can remember.

When people do occasionally talk to me about religion, I hold my peace, but it's no different to me than them talking about the existence of UFOs, vampires, ghosts, or our Lizard Overlords.

I'm with you on UFOs and ghosts. I got my doubts about vampires and Lizard Overlords (LG may be an outlier).

Not to wonder about all of which we are unaware is the greatest tragedy.

Life gets kind of boring if you only stick with hard data...... like the oceans rising at 0.1074536" +/- 0.0000001" per year......

[Typhoon]

If there is a god then it would be of course at his pleasure how he reveals himself. In the meantime we should celebrate free speech.

God reveals himself every moment of every day, in every way all the time. It is not really the choice of God when and how he reveals himself, that is what free will is about. We can choose to see God or not.

Some people never see God, others only see God in very limited ways based upon strict cultural doctrine passed down by ancient witch doctors.

Others see God in life, the universe and everything.

To elaborate on this thought (not disagree), the general experience is that God will always reveal himself if one merely attempts to improve on personal purity and asks consistently for revelation. Prepare the garden. Then plant, weed and water the seeds and expect the harvest.

Generally those without a personal experience of the divine have never even made even a half-hearted attempt to connect.

Where is JITIY when you need him?

Odd. I've been an atheist as far back as I can remember.

When people do occasionally talk to me about religion, I hold my peace, but it's no different to me than them talking about the existence of UFOs, vampires, ghosts, or our Lizard Overlords.

Only a physicist would take the Sir Issac Newton approach to discovering God. Wait for a divine apple of inspiration to konk you on the noggin.

I think I'm in for a long wait . . . a lifetime's worth

[Typhoon]

Odd. I've been an atheist as far back as I can remember.

When people do occasionally talk to me about religion, I hold my peace, but it's no different to me than them talking about the existence of UFOs, vampires, ghosts, or our Lizard Overlords.

I'm with you on UFOs and ghosts. I got my doubts about vampires and Lizard Overlords (LG may be an outlier).

Not to wonder about all of which we are unaware is the greatest tragedy.

Life gets kind of boring if you only stick with hard data...... like the oceans rising at 0.1074536" +/- 0.0000001" per year......

Compared to what people have dreamed up, the physical universe turns to out be far far more mysterious.

We don't know why it exists, but the hard work of trying to gain some understanding of at least some small part of it has both it's intellectual and emotional rewards.

[Taboo]

Atheists, unfortunately, have absolutely no weapon to overcome this. God in the end and not surprisingly has the trump cards.

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson espoused about his Christian faith in a recent documentary entitled “The Making of a Champion.”

In the video, Wilson, 24, describes how he found God at the age of 14.

“I had a dream that my dad passed away and that Jesus came into the room and he was basically knocking on my door, saying, ‘Hey, you need to find out more about me,’” Wilson said. “So that Sunday morning I ended up going to church and that’s when I got saved.”.

And back when I was a teenager, I would sometimes dream of people from real life (sometimes dead) or characters from books, movies or computer games. Some of the dreams were disturbingly realistic. I can still remember some faces or parts of them in vivid detail. It doesn't make me conclude that, say, Jaheira from Baldur's gate is *real*, partially because nobody ever claimed that particular fiction to be real, partially because it's rather silly to let dreams guide your waking life. However, to each his own (insert Marcus-like pic of donkey in well here or whatever).

Never heard of the guy (the only US game I kinda got into is baseball -- and as a Boston-educated Red-Sox fan, this past week's been pretty good), so whatever. Some moderately famous sports player reportedly had a dream that led him to become more serious in the Christian faith of his parents. So what?


"is it possible to have agnostic mystical experiences ?"
Yes, or more accurately, it depends what you mean by it. For me, it's a sense of awe and wonder directed at this mysterious and amazing world I inhabit and sense with this amazing sensorium that I've been endowed with. Dozens of times. Off the top of my head, it's been triggered by:
- walking onto warm a bus in a particularly cold and snowy Boston winter, about 10 years ago. The universe suddenly felt like such a huge and alien place, and there was an acute sense that it is so very early in humanity's history.
- watching the sun rise with a very pretty girl one morning while I was hiking one summer - the understanding that I'm standing on a mountain shaped by nuclear powered crust movements deep underground, with a sky red with diffused sunlight from an unbelievably massive nuclear reaction far away - made me feel small and insignificant, and yet so incredibly (if briefly on the timescales involved) alive. I didn't attempt to explain it to her in words, exactly. Luckily, there was no need, since she was there, in the moment, too.
- similarly, with another girl, while, in the middle of a torrential downpour, sneaking into an abandoned house in the old Bucharest city center at about 2am. A sense of being there, truly and completely alive that lasted for many minutes. Again it wasn't just me. Every time i meet her, she still tells me she had never felt more alive since.
- during my attempts at brain-hacking/meditation as a teenager - a strong sense of wonder and "jamais-vous" enveloped everything for minutes during one session.
- late at night one summer, walking under a flowering tree on a deserted street - awe, wonder and happiness that I get to experience all this.
- passing through a cloud during skydiving a year ago, time appeared to slow to a crawl and again the same indescribable joy of being alive.

None of the experiences revealed any sort of presence or external mind of any sort - simply an overwhelming joy in being alive and a temporary sensory overload, as if time stopped. Usually it's in a solitary or intimate setting, and the sensation gradually fades, but the memory of its intensity remains.

"Life gets kind of boring if you only stick with hard data"
I don't think I agree. But again:
“When you start on a long journey, trees are trees, water is water, and mountains are mountains.
After you have gone some distance, trees are no longer trees, water is no longer water, and mountains are no longer mountains.
But after you have traveled a great distance, trees are once again trees, water is once again water, an mountains are once again mountains."
It goes the same with putting hard data into the world. Once you get past a certain level, the sense of wonder rushes back in. Granted, not everyone has (or is capable of acquiring) the level of mathematical sophistication required to get to that level. I don't see how a sunset is made less pretty by the awareness of the proton-proton or the CNO cycle. If anything, knowing that photons take on average a million years to exit the sun and then only 8 minutes to reach our eyes, or the fact that the explosive end nucleosynthesis in long-dead stars is responsible for most of your mass can only add to the sense of wonder and awe.

No one is talking about proof. And it doesn't even need to be visions. Just the still small voice.
I don't mean to put a crass point to it, but people listening to small (or not so small) voices in their head sometimes end up driving an SUV into secured areas of the White House and getting shot, or taking up a gun themselves and causing mayhem. Obviously, most of the time this inner voice people hear is not so malign.

[YMix]

It doesn't make me conclude that, say, Jaheira from Baldur's gate is *real*, partially because nobody ever claimed that particular fiction to be real, partially because it's rather silly to let dreams guide your waking life.

The level-headed one.

None of the experiences revealed any sort of presence or external mind of any sort - simply an overwhelming joy in being alive and a temporary sensory overload

My very few experiences of this sort turned out pretty much the same way. Sunrises are awesome.

[Taboo]

Exactly. ZackMorrisDawkins has produced little if anything to deal with person A. Try telling a gay person they aren't gay.

The whole point of living in a free society is that there can be no coercion of this kind. However, it is a matter of record that many of the advanced industrial democracies are quite non-religious.

These societies are distinguished from the others mainly by the practice of educating their citizens into critical reasoning. Whether or not there is a causal link, they have on average become a lot less religious over the past century or so. Whether this is a persistent trend remains to be seen. That is to say it is unknown if it will generalize to the rest of mankind as it too develops these critical thinking skills, or whether it will die out through some unknown process, perhaps long-term comparatively low fertility perhaps followed by repression.

The fact remains that most of today's would-be prophets inhabit mental institutions and receive medication. If the present condition of these sufferers is generalizable to the past, and there is little reason to doubt that, past religious leaders were undergoing similar experiences. Obviously there is a spectrum of this phenomenon, from where it interferes negatively with daily life (patients reporting a constant sense of screaming demons and such) all the way to the more helpful instances (where this manifests as a soothing calming presence in times of need). It seems that the particulars of the perception depend greatly on the acquired cultural references (Christians see Jesus, Hindus see some elephant-headed god or whatever). Take what you will from that.

[Parodite]

Is this a compromise we can all live with?

Tony Soprano to his son: "Even if God is dead, you still got to kiss his ass". It got me roll over

weOwAPP1_xM

[Nonc Hilaire]

Is this a compromise we can all live with?

Tony Soprano to his son: "Even if God is dead, you still got to kiss his ass". It got me roll over

weOwAPP1_xM

Tony shows great wisdom here. Belief in God is not an academic pronouncement, but rather a command decision which must be executed immediately each and every day.

One morning we all will simply not wake up. There is a lot to lose if God exists, but nothing to lose if He does not.

[Endovelico]

There is a lot to lose if God exists, but nothing to lose if He does not.

Except spending most of your life barking up the wrong tree and waste a lot of time doing senseless things while you could be doing something useful... Besides, every time you say something happened because it was God's will, you will not be searching for the real causes of things...

[YMix]

There is a lot to lose if God exists

To paraphrase another quote, if you're a Christian, you are losing right now about 99% of what the various gods out there want of you and have to offer.

[Nonc Hilaire]

There is a lot to lose if God exists, but nothing to lose if He does not.

Except spending most of your life barking up the wrong tree and waste a lot of time doing senseless things while you could be doing something useful... Besides, every time you say something happened because it was God's will, you will not be searching for the real causes of things...

Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself is not barking up a tree nor is it senseless.

[Nonc Hilaire]

There is a lot to lose if God exists

To paraphrase another quote, if you're a Christian, you are losing right now about 99% of what the various gods out there want of you and have to offer.

Merely admitting my existence is not 99% of why the world exists is sufficient foundation to build upon.

[Ibrahim]

The behavior of devoutly religious people will tend to be very similar, regardless of their specific religion, and historically religious people have, and continue to, contribute to scientific research and other fields of human inquiry or development (and of course others, religious or atheist, have stood in the way of inquiry and progress). Does the member of religion X, who lives ethically and happily for his entire life, really lose out on anything if religion Y is correct, or if atheists are correct? And what is gained by mocking him or persecuting him? Its pointless.

[Simple Minded]

Compared to what people have dreamed up, the physical universe turns to out be far far more mysterious.

We don't know why it exists, but the hard work of trying to gain some understanding of at least some small part of it has both it's intellectual and emotional rewards.

Absolutely!

We do seem to be creatures who are hardwired to increase our knowledge base, thru any number of mechanisms, the five senses, dreams, intuition, extra-sensory experiences, flashes of insight, etc.

Only when we start arguing about whose subjective experience is more valid, does the comparison/competition become meaningless. "A thousand monks.... a thousand religions."

I know more than few people whose beliefs systems seem completely erroneous, but yet if their beliefs make them happier, or better (subjective definition alert!) people, that in itself seems to be a significant accomplishment.

Slight tangent, some have defined periods of progress (bull markets) as time when man endeavors to conquer nature, and periods of regression (bear markets) when man endeavors to conquer other men.

[Endovelico]

Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself is not barking up a tree nor is it senseless.

No, but neither is it particularly religious. Just look at all the love Sunny Muslims pour on Shiite Muslims, and vice-versa, or Hindus on Muslims and vice-versa, or Catholics on Protestants in Northern Ireland, and vice-versa, etc., etc., etc...