An honest cry from an agnostic: Witness to me

Great Debates
41

quix (can I call you that?) I wasn’t trying to imply you were jerking us around. but I do believe the answers you are trying to find are already known to you, just not in your forethoughts. If you want a contrary opinion to what you think (or believe) just stop and reverse your thought (e.g. “I like apples” becomes “I do not like apples, perhaps I like kiwi” - or “I like life-after-death” becomes “I like reincarnation”). I just would hate to see your worldview influenced by someone else’s, that’s all.

nothamlet I like thinking as well. Thinking too much can be a problem (ever start thinking and get stuck in your thought?)

punk snot dead

42

But you’re not embracing them. That’s why I made the request that you take atheism seriously if you really want to investigate it.

Gaudere’s explanation was the very essence of atheism. Atheism is that clear, simple voice which gives you the common-sense answer. It’s the voice which says, “You’ve had that same experience a hundred times before in other circumstances, and you paid it no mind on those occasions. This time you’ve deduced that it may derive from God. The question here is not whether it really derives from God. The question, if there is one at all, is why you’ve chosen to attach special significance to it on this one occasion.”

Frankly, I don’t think you have the temperament for atheism. Let’s see: You grew up in a household with no particular attachment to religion. Upon leaving home for college, you joined up with a Christian organization that was almost a cult, and you stayed with it for four years. Furthermore, you spent four years working on a B.A. in Religious Studies. After graduation you rebelled angrily from the “cult” and from God. Today, you’re hearing voices emanating from your gut, and you suspect God is talking to you. Now you come to the SDMB and ask the community here to explain the voices, coyly asking that we respect your privacy concerning the nature of the voices and what they had to tell you.

It seems to me like you’re drifting from one subjective experience to another. It sounds like you’re looking to be caught up and swept away by Truths so grand and incontrovertible that all other possibilities cease to exist beside them. And until that happens, one answer is no more or less valid than another. As I see it, your history and your attitude toward religion and life have the mark of the ecstatic on it.

Now, I hate to keep waving Gaudere’s posts around like a banner, as though I’m claiming credit for them. But what she posted in them was right. Correct. On the mark. You didn’t reject outright the possibilities that she raised, but you didn’t exactly embrace them either. Okay, so let’s grant that you want to reserve judgment, hold her answers at arm’s length, and weigh them against the alternatives. That’s fine with me.

But consider the view from my angle. You’ve spent four years in college getting a B.A. in Religious Sciences, and you still don’t have a clue as to whether you should be an atheist, Christian, or member of some other faith. You spent four years in a cult-like Christian environment, then rebelled against the cult and God, and you still play at giving equal weight to objective reality and subjective experience. You’re read the world’s great thinkers on religion and atheism, and you still think all answers are equal, even when they’re opposed.

If some measure of clarity hasn’t come to you by this point, then just when and where exactly do you expect it to happen? Here on the SDMB? Will there ever be a day when the objective outweighs the subjective? Will there ever be a day when you acknowledge once and for all that a case of indigestion is just a case of indigestion, as opposed to weighing the possibility that it might be it might be someone’s God talking to you through your guts?

It’s not the atheist’s job to sweep you away with grand Truths so powerful that they will make all other possibilities irrelevant. You will get no ecstatic experiences from atheism. All an atheist can do is provide simple, commonsense answers. After that, the burden is on you to take them seriously. Or not, if that’s what you desire. It’s up to you.

I think that this is the end of my participation in this discussion. Here are the standard disclaimers:

No hard feelings. My posts are just intended as a little hard-edged atheistic “witnessing.” Under other conditions, I can soft-sell my message as much as I want. My ex was a Catholic, and my current girlfriend is a devout Christian with a Methodist slant. Religion isn’t a problem because we acknowledge our differences and don’t attempt to convert one another.

I have no problem with Christians or other believers. Much like a good Christian, however, I do sometimes get my dander up when I see the protestations and quibbling of a fence-sitter like yourself. :wink:

43

Oh, I think you can. Some religions make verifiably untrue claims. Scant few nowadays, though, they’re all pretty good at wiggling out of their previous false statements. But a religion that claimed God told them the world would end unless a white bull was sacrificed at midnight and you don’t sacrifice the bull and nothing happens, well…I think you should perhaps rank that religion lower in truth-value than one that does not make incorrect claims. Of course, there’s so many ways to wiggle out of supposedly divine comments that later turn out to be incorrect; you can say God changed his mind, it was all a test, God chose to have mercy, he meant it poetically and we misinterpreted it, etc. That’s one of the reasons I tend to distrust religion’s truth claims; they’re utterly unfalsifiable as commonly practiced, whereas a reasonable atheist could easily find sufficient proof of God if God decided to show himself. And despite the claims that God wants us to have faith and so he hides his evidence, he apparently had no such compunctions about performing some rather impressive and obvious miracles in the past without worries about people lacking faith if he provides such evidence.

Hm, so when scientific evidence shows no indications that there is any sort of soul-energy that persists past death, will you cease to believe in an afterlife? Or will you insist that there must be some way we survive, despite the lack of any such evidence?

If something lacks sufficient evidence, I think the default position is disbelief. IMHO, the claim that we will get 600 virgins when we die seems to have roughly as much evidence as a belief that a comet is a spaceship and we need to kill ourselves to go to it, or that God impregnated a woman in the form of a swan, or that God impregnated a woman in the form of a spirit, or that there is a teacup currently orbiting Mars. If a religious belief has so little evidence that you cannot even sensibly evaluate the likelihood of it being true compared to any other religious belief, what the heck are you doing considering believing in either anyhow? To choose to believe in any arbitrary religious belief that is so lacking in evidence that you can’t determine its truth-value seems to me like saying, “I choose to believe there is a teacup orbiting mars, but NOT a teaspoon. I know neither have empirical evidence of their existence, but heck, [I have a gut feeling the teacup is there/my dad was a teacupist/I feel happy when I think there is a teacup there/lots of people believe there’s a teacup/Einstein believed there was a teacup there/people who believe in the teacup change there lives for the better/those teaspoonists have silly rituals/a teaspoon orbiting mars? But that’s so ridiculous!/I had a dream where I saw a teacup orbiting Mars/the Holy Book mentions the teacup in verses 23:14 and 23:16/Though the Holy Book mentions a teaspoon, you see, that was just a metaphor/etc.]”

I imagine most theists get their beliefs attached as a “rider” to their original choice of religion. If you believe in Jesus, you get the standard heaven; believe in Allah, 600 virgins. However, many theists do not accept their religion’s traditional beliefs wholesale, and pick and choose. Depending on who you talk to, homosexuality is a sin or perfectly all right. Determining which of your chosen religion’s beliefs you’re going to accept as true is up to the original theist, and I reckon you’d be better off asking them, not me. :wink:

44

Good post Triskadecamus

In support of what you advise, I offer the following scripture:

1 John 4:7-8

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

and also

1 John 4:12

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

In fact, 1 John 4:7-21 covers “loving” pretty well.

45

Sorry I only found your post late in my lunch hour, so I cannot give you a complete witness.

Instead, I leave you with what can be interpreted as a warning, a promise, or both.

Those who ask honest questions of the Lord will receive honest answers. What you do with those answers remains up to you.

Yours in Christ,
Shodan

46

I BELIEVE!!! I BELIEVE!!!

[sub]sorry about that[/sub] :slight_smile:

47

It seems to be my day for religion.

A lot of good stuff on Christianity has already been posted, and if you’ve discovered C.S. Lewis, you’ve already discovered some of the best. I can’t resist tossing in a plug for three books and one denomination.

While you’re reading Lewis, take a look at The Screwtape Letters. I think you’ll like the humour as well as the morality. For Bible guides, I’d recommend Asimov’s Guide to the Bible by Isaac Asimov for historical documentation and Harper’s Pocket Bible Commentary for more in depth information.

I’d also like to put in a plug for the Episcopal/Anglican Church (depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on). For openers, we can claim C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle as members. I’ve also found that it encourages rational thought and discussion, including, as part of one of the standard rites:
“Here what our Lord Jesus Christ has said: Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Note the last word. I have questioned my religion, occaisionally outrageously, but always been welcomed.
That last bit is important. In my early 20’s, I moved well away from home to begin a new life in a city I had never even visited before. The people at the church I attended (ok, it was St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Honolulu) became a second family to me, and I still treasure their friendship. They also stood by me and supported me spiritually, emotionally, and monetarily during some very rough times. In my view, they really did “love their neighbor as themselves.”

Finally, like any long-term relationship, growing into a relationship with God does take time, but it does produce results if you’re willing to be open to it. Prayers are answered, but you have to be open to the possibilities. Case in point:
This fall, I was driving through the Pennsylvania mountains on my way to a church retreat when I passed a couple stranded by the side of the road. Knowing I know nothing about cars, I pulled over to see if there was anything I could do, if only calling for help. There wasn’t, but I allowed I was some sort of Christian (I don’t usually do that in public) and would pray for them at least. I got in my car, started driving and started praying. On the other side of the mountain, I passed a police car stopped by the road to catch speeders. My first thought was to check how fast I was going, but a half a mile down the road, I put 2 and 2 together, turned around, and told the policeman about the stranded couple. My prayer was answered, but I had to realize it an act on it.

This post is way too long, but I wish you good luck in your searching.

CJ

48

I’m going to assume this was not a psychotic episode. If, however, your “innards” directed you to take actions or speak in a way that is completely at odds with your personality, I think you should seek medical attention.

Assuming this is something less profound, I don’t think this is anything unusual. The fact is there is no difference between conscious thought and intuition other than that you can recall some of your conscious thought process. You operating under the mistaken belief that you can recall all of your thought processes (which is provably false), so you think it is odd when a decision comes from a thought process that you can’t recall.

For example, look at how you speak in normal conversation. Your brain has to choose between a multitude of words and phrases to communicate a certain idea. Can you always recall all the words that it rejected, or do you usually only remember the words that you actually spoke? While you may sometimes be aware of the alternate choices, most of the time the latter is true. (I’m not sure how true this is, but I have read that if you spoke at the speed which conscious thought would allow you to choose words, you would speak very slowly and people would either lose interest or think you were mentally retarded.) If there is nothing miraculous or magical about how you choose the words you speak with, then I don’t think this decision was any different.

Now, religious belief or metaphors may be useful to some people for dealing with the fact that much of your thought process is cut off from your consciousness. I will go along with those who recommend Joseph Campbell. The Power of Myth is a good starting point, IMO.

Or, maybe you’d be better of reading some books on how the brain works, both from psychological and neurological perspectives.

49

Texts:
In terms of texts to read, what about the “Desiderata” by Max Ehrman? It’s a short poem that talks about loving the self.

Testimony:
In terms of experiences I’ve had, I grew up with Christian religions, but everytime I went to church or some religious service, and it didn’t matter what denomination–Presbyterian; Catholic; Ba’hai; Zen Buddhist meditations; my own meditations with the trees; when the angels visit me; and yes some cults whose names I can’t remember–guess they really had an effect on me!:-0–I always realized that the good feelings I found came from within. I bring my own faith wherever I go. I have faith in myself and in the capacity that I have to love, and I try to spread that love with most people I meet. It’s not always easy, especially when I read some of the posts on the SDMB or when I encounter ignorant MFs who judge me based on my appearance and don’t take the time to get to know me. A wise woman once said to me: “It doesn’t cost anything to at least speak to and be polite to people and acknowledge their presence.” And I believe that. Many religions talk about the rewards you can get after you die, but they don’t talk about loving oneself in the here and now, at least not that I could see. And by loving oneself, I do not mean narcissism. I mean self respect, treating others with respect, treating your forebears with respect, treating the environment with respect, and accepting your flaws and the flaws of others.
I have experienced visits from angels who do not speak but just communicate love. That’s it. Love. I sometimes wonder if it isn’t just my brain reminding me that I love myself. Who knows? I don’t know if the “inner feeling” you had was angels, a manifestation of your own thought processes, god, or something else altogether. That’s up to you to decide.
I want to believe that human beings have the capacity to love themselves AND others, but it becomes more and more difficult everyday. The willful ignorance and self-hate that have led to the atrocities of American slavery, lynchings, racism, war, child neglect, child & spousal abuse … really make me wonder if the human race will survive, but there’s always hope.
Okay, so I’ve rambled around a little too much. I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I’ve said all of this to say that it doesn’t matter how many books you read; nor does it matter if you decide to be agnostic, atheist, or some denomination of faith. You can do all of these things, but they won’t mean much if you do not love yourself. Good luck with your research.

50

From what you say about yourself, quixotic78, I would suggest the Conversations With God series, by Neale Donald Walsh. Also maybe check http://www.conversationswithgod.com before shelling out for a book.