True Believers

[Eudaimonist]

I can only share my own rebirth experience, one moment I had no hope, then I had hope. I gave up, but something quite unexpected and illogical happened in my surrender. Rather than falling into deeper despair, another reality invaded my soul, my heart, my mind. Its been there ever since. I've come to know and understand it better. The change was so profound that the people who knew me before don't recognize me now, my own parents were stunned!

Putting aside the issue of scientific proof, I'm wondering why you think that psychological reaction has anything to do with a deity.

The reason I ask is that human beings have natural triggers for the release of neurochemicals that can alleviate suffering. For instance, the release of endorphins in order to mask physical pain.

Nature gave us four kinds of happiness | Psychology Today

I'm not asking you to prove anything. I'm just wondering why you think that divine intervention must be involved.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Colter]

If faith is a gift and god actively chooses who gets it, why does said being punish people for never recieving a gift that might never of been offered to them?

Another good question, I think everyone who seeks finds eventually. Some people who have the gift seem to refund it, they don't want to continue on. That's what makes us alive, free will beings.

My concepts of the afterlife are different from tradition heaven going theories.

I can say that the offer of salvation and ultimate judgment is so fair that the final decree of personality destruction is not carried out until the subject themselves agrees with the fairness of the proceedings.


In my religious understanding, Lucifer, Satan, the "prince of this world" as well as millions of other celestials that fell into sin and rebellion were offered salvation. NONE of the leaders took it and only about half the celestials of various orders repented and chose salvation. My brain just cant comprehend how sin and stubborn pride could warp a bright personality into such suicide but it happens.

 

[Colter]

Putting aside the issue of scientific proof, I'm wondering why you think that psychological reaction has anything to do with a deity.

The reason I ask is that human beings have natural triggers for the release of neurochemicals that can alleviate suffering. For instance, the release of endorphins in order to mask physical pain.

Nature gave us four kinds of happiness | Psychology Today

I'm not asking you to prove anything. I'm just wondering why you think that divine intervention must be involved.


eudaimonia,

Mark

I agree, the brain is like a pharmacy of chemicals that are released for many purposes, pain relief, joy, sadness, all the emotions. What I'm describing is the invasion of a spiritual consciousness that minutes earlier I had NOT been looking for, that didn't subside after the psychological crisis passed. Jesus called it a spiritual rebirth. It was a personality change.

Before my experience I used to find the Christian language of being "born again" so annoying!!!! But now I understand them even though I still find so much of Christian theology to be a mess! BTW, I was alone in my apartment and wasn't thinking about Jesus or Christianity or any of that stuff.

That was April 28, 1985

 

[bhsmte]

Another good question, I think everyone who seeks finds eventually. Some people who have the gift seem to refund it, they don't want to continue on. That's what makes us alive, free will beings.

My concepts of the afterlife are different from tradition heaven going theories.

I can say that the offer of salvation and ultimate judgment is so fair that the final decree of personality destruction is not carried out until the subject themselves agrees with the fairness of the proceedings.


In my religious understanding, Lucifer, Satan, the "prince of this world" as well as millions of other celestials that fell into sin and rebellion were offered salvation. NONE of the leaders took it and only about half the celestials of various orders repented and chose salvation. My brain just cant comprehend how sin and stubborn pride could warp a bright personality into such suicide but it happens.

Anyone who needs to believe something badly enough, will have their mind work overtime to rationalize it.

Psychology 101

 

[quatona]

I think you are assuming degrees of emotion in my responses that aren't there. I admire your articulate abilities, we are not enemies.

While it is true that my experience in general with the Atheist community is, they ask for proof (knowing we can't prove subjectivity) then they use one of 4 or 5 auto-responses that include words like imaginary, assertion, fantasy etc. I question their motives in joining religious forums.

Well, Colter, this paragraph seems to confirm my above assumption: You have experienced a lot of frustration which prompts your pre-emptive defensiveness. That´s completely understandable. I didn´t assume that to hold it against you, but rather found it to be the most charitable assumption. I may be wrong, though.

You have 28,800+ replies on this forum, haven't you figured it out yet? We cant prove God sufficiently to you, you will need to find him for yourself or not. Neither appeal to logic or emotion are sufficient to finding God.

Well, I am in the philosophy forum and the ethics&morality forum. I´m not particularly interested in the discussion whether a God exists or not. I find this question pointless, and I actually never discuss it (even though people perceive me doing it, or want to draw me into this discussion). Just like in the FSM thread, where I intended to discuss epistemological problems (but you, amongst others, felt your God was under attack).
And yes, of course: It doesn´t take a genius to figure out that allegedly supernatural entities can´t be proven, and I did so a long time ago. That´s why I doubt you will find a single post in which I demand proof for God´s existence. And that´s why I am frustrated that obviously you often don´t address what I write but that which your negative preconceptions about atheists have you expect me saying.

Neither the Philosophy forum nor the E&M forum are for General or Christian Apologetics (not my rule, but CF´s rule), and I for one am not seeking to discuss these topics.

I can only share my own rebirth experience, one moment I had no hope, then I had hope. I gave up, but something quite unexpected and illogical happened in my surrender. Rather than falling into deeper despair, another reality invaded my soul, my heart, my mind. Its been there ever since. I've come to know and understand it better. The change was so profound that the people who knew me before don't recognize me now, my own parents were stunned!

Thanks for sharing your story, Colter...but this doesn´t seem to answer my question: What do you expect me to do with it? How do you feel a non-believer should process a story in which a certain belief helped him overcome his depression?

 

[Eudaimonist]

I agree, the brain is like a pharmacy of chemicals that are released for many purposes, pain relief, joy, sadness, all the emotions. What I'm describing is the invasion of a spiritual consciousness that minutes earlier I had NOT been looking for, that didn't subside after the psychological crisis passed. Jesus called it a spiritual rebirth. It was a personality change.

Interesting.

When I had fallen in love for the first time (you could call it an intense crush since it was unrequited), this had a long-lasting effect on my personality.

The experience itself was strongest for the next few months. I had not looked for anything I had found. I felt more compassionate and giving than I had ever felt before. I felt love around me and through me, and it was almost like I could see it in the air. Sometimes I just felt like singing, and I did sometimes sing while I drove my car. It's best described as feeling like I was "on Cloud Nine".

While the euphoria didn't last more than a few months, as I said, there was a permanent effect on my personality. I wasn't quite the same person coming out of the experience as going in. My emotional "barriers" had dropped, and I felt more at peace around people. My emotional state was nearly a flatline beforehand, but had suddenly become much richer so that I could feel emotions more clearly. I was more empathetic towards others.

If my culture had told me that this experience was caused by a spiritual being (such as Cupid or Eros), I might have attributed it to such a being. However, my culture just views falling in love as a natural process, and so I simply attributed it to that alone. Even today, I can't see any reason to attribute it to anything else. Despite any long-lasting effects, it probably was just a flood of neurochemicals that were released by the right trigger. The psychological changes did not depend on the continued release of those neurochemicals. They were a genuine rewiring of the brain, and of course had profound effects on my life.

So, I find the permanency of your psychological change a puzzling reason to conclude divine intervention. As I had said, I'm not asking for scientific proof, and of course I have no rigorous scientific evidence of the interpretation I offer of my own experience. It's just that I see no reason to see unexpected psychological changes as a clear sign of something suprahuman.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Colter]

Well, Colter, this paragraph seems to confirm my above assumption: You have experienced a lot of frustration which prompts your pre-emptive defensiveness. That´s completely understandable. I didn´t assume that to hold it against you, but rather found it to be the most charitable assumption. I may be wrong, though.


Well, I am in the philosophy forum and the ethics&morality forum. I´m not particularly interested in the discussion whether a God exists or not. I find this question pointless, and I actually never discuss it (even though people perceive me doing it, or want to draw me into this discussion). Just like in the FSM thread, where I intended to discuss epistemological problems (but you, amongst others, felt your God was under attack).
And yes, of course: It doesn´t take a genius to figure out that allegedly supernatural entities can´t be proven, and I did so a long time ago. That´s why I doubt you will find a single post in which I demand proof for God´s existence. And that´s why I am frustrated that obviously you often don´t address what I write but that which your negative preconceptions about atheists have you expect me saying.

Neither the Philosophy forum nor the E&M forum are for General or Christian Apologetics (not my rule, but CF´s rule), and I for one am not seeking to discuss these topics.


Thanks for sharing your story, Colter...but this doesn´t seem to answer my question: What do you expect me to do with it? How do you feel a non-believer should process a story in which a certain belief helped him overcome his depression?

It was alcohol and cocaine that I was addicted to. Our experience can benefit others but beyond that you don't need to do anything with it.

 

[Colter]

Anyone who needs to believe something badly enough, will have their mind work overtime to rationalize it.

Psychology 101

If what you say is true then it applies equally to you and your unbelief. If we are imagining things then what we have is much better than what you have to offer. Notice, it wasn't the atheist society that brought hope to the hopeless. No, its much easier to sit on your [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] and critique the world.

 

[bhsmte]

If what you say is true then it applies equally to you and your unbelief. If we are imagining things then what we have is much better than what you have to offer. Notice, it wasn't the atheist society that brought hope to the hopeless. No, its much easier to sit on your [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] and critique the world.

Sure it applies to everyone, that goes without saying.

Now of course, some people's beliefs or non beliefs, can be supported better than others because of this pesky thing called; objective evidence, or lack of objective evidence. And, objective evidence is there for all to see and is not generated in the mind.

 

[Colter]

Interesting.

When I had fallen in love for the first time (you could call it an intense crush since it was unrequited), this had a long-lasting effect on my personality.

The experience itself was strongest for the next few months. I had not looked for anything I had found. I felt more compassionate and giving than I had ever felt before. I felt love around me and through me, and it was almost like I could see it in the air. Sometimes I just felt like singing, and I did sometimes sing while I drove my car. It's best described as feeling like I was "on Cloud Nine".

While the euphoria didn't last more than a few months, as I said, there was a permanent effect on my personality. I wasn't quite the same person coming out of the experience as going in. My emotional "barriers" had dropped, and I felt more at peace around people. My emotional state was nearly a flatline beforehand, but had suddenly become much richer so that I could feel emotions more clearly. I was more empathetic towards others.

If my culture had told me that this experience was caused by a spiritual being (such as Cupid or Eros), I might have attributed it to such a being. However, my culture just views falling in love as a natural process, and so I simply attributed it to that alone. Even today, I can't see any reason to attribute it to anything else. Despite any long-lasting effects, it probably was just a flood of neurochemicals that were released by the right trigger. The psychological changes did not depend on the continued release of those neurochemicals. They were a genuine rewiring of the brain, and of course had profound effects on my life.

So, I find the permanency of your psychological change a puzzling reason to conclude divine intervention. As I had said, I'm not asking for scientific proof, and of course I have no rigorous scientific evidence of the interpretation I offer of my own experience. It's just that I see no reason to see unexpected psychological changes as a clear sign of something suprahuman.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Thanks for sharing that, I've been through that a couple times myself.

I don't know why your love experience was not enough for you to realize that mind is not entirely material, electrochemical, that the chemical releases represent activity around a spirit nucleus but you do seem determined to rationalize or dumb everything down to material explanations.

In my spiritual life the experience continues to grow, I fell in love with God. God is Love, but Love is not God, God is more than love.

 

[Colter]

Sure it applies to everyone, that goes without saying.

Now of course, some people's beliefs or non beliefs, can be supported better than others because of this pesky thing called; objective evidence, or lack of objective evidence. And, objective evidence is there for all to see and is not generated in the mind.

Spirituality is not the realm of materially verifiable objective evidence.

 

[bhsmte]

Spirituality is not the realm of materially verifiable objective evidence.

I know, which is why, spiritual experiences are highly varied amongst people and also, tend to match up with a person's own unique psychological needs.

 

[Colter]

I know, which is why, spiritual experiences are highly varied amongst people and also, tend to match up with a person's own unique psychological needs.

Does it work?

 

[bhsmte]

Does it work?

As I have always said:

If a faith belief makes one a better person and better able to cope with life, then it most certainly is right for them.

Some need it, some don't.

 

[Freodin]

If what you say is true then it applies equally to you and your unbelief. If we are imagining things then what we have is much better than what you have to offer. Notice, it wasn't the atheist society that brought hope to the hopeless. No, its much easier to sit on your [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] and critique the world.

If we are talking abour personal, subjective experiences with that topic.

I have been a sceptic for about all of my life. At the time I was a young adult at university, I heavily struggled with the questions of faith and religion.

And I was, almost literally, struck with my answer.

It might not work for you are anyone else, but I found my life, my hope, my happiness, my inspiration... everything I need... in "the atheist society".


That does not make it "the realm of materially verifiable objective evidence".

But it does not mean it is from outside of this realm either.

 

[Colter]

"TO THE unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.

But such is not man’s end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God’s children on earth.

This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity. UB 1955 ​

 

[Colter]

"The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but rather to afford intellectual constancy and philosophic security, to stabilize and enrich human living by blending the mortal with the divine, the partial with the perfect, man and God. It is through religious experience that man’s concepts of ideality are endowed with reality.

Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason alone can never validate the values and goodnesses of religious experience. But it will always remain true: Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall comprehend the validity of spiritual values. This is the nearest approach that can be made on the mortal level to offering proofs of the reality of religious experience. Such faith affords the only escape from the mechanical clutch of the material world and from the error distortion of the incompleteness of the intellectual world; it is the only discovered solution to the impasse in mortal thinking regarding the continuing survival of the individual personality. It is the only passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment.

Religion effectually cures man’s sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen of a new and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe.

When you experience such a transformation of faith, you are no longer a slavish part of the mathematical cosmos but rather a liberated volitional son of the Universal Father. No longer is such a liberated son fighting alone against the inexorable doom of the termination of temporal existence; no longer does he combat all nature, with the odds hopelessly against him; no longer is he staggered by the paralyzing fear that, perchance, he has put his trust in a hopeless phantasm or pinned his faith to a fanciful error.

Now, rather, are the sons of God enlisted together in fighting the battle of reality’s triumph over the partial shadows of existence. At last all creatures become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a well-nigh limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to attain eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated sons have certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from God’s viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space." UB 1955​

 

[bhsmte]

"TO THE unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.

But such is not man’s end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God’s children on earth.

This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity. UB 1955 ​

And you reveal your motivation a little more, with every post.

 

[Davian]

No, we can't prove our God experience to the stubborn unbeliever

Again you make the mistake of telling my what I think. I am not stubborn, but skeptical. I am skeptical of unfalsifiable, unevidenced claims, be they of gods, fairies, extraterrestrial aliens on Earth, or Bermuda triangles.

Also, I have not asked you to prove anything other that to demonstrate that gods are not simply products of the imagination. Something testable. Start small.

in the same way that the existence of love, morality, ethics can be proven beyond intellectual knit picking. The fruits of the spirit are manifest in the life of the believer.

The character fruits of the unbeliever are manifest in the fact of joining a Christian forum to antagonize believers.

Again, you make the mistake of telling me of my motives.

To quote the sticky at the top of this forum, "The CF Philosophy forum is not intended for general apologetics of Christianity"; it is you making the inappropriate posts for this forum. If you care.

No, the will of the human is at times at odds with the will of God as that will is discerned in spirit.
<spam deleted>

What is "spirit"?

 

[Colter]

And you reveal your motivation a little more, with every post.

Did you think it was a secret that I have faith in God? That I often share excerpts form the UB that others may find enlightening?