He’s right there in my face. Obviously I’m going to have faith in his existence at that point.
Worship’s a little more nebulous. I can promise submission, respect, obedience, and that kind of thing. Is that going to count as worship? The Bible only talks about bowing down - it doesn’t specify you have to be happy about it.
You just caused me to have a flashback. Thanks!
I would bitch slap the angel. It’s not real anyway, so what the hell. Then I’d go about my busness. Just another one of my nutty flashbacks. Happens all the time.
I’d say my reaction depends on the exact nature of this “god”, as you call it.
" . . . you will receive enlightenment, it will happen in a moment, . . ."
I’d take notes. It’s quite possible that the notes would be on tape. 'Cause if I don’t take notes, I’ll forget. Maybe I won’t have forgotten if the enlightenment happens within a week, or maybe a month. But longer than that and the odds are that it would fade to the back of my mind and get lost from there.
Also, I know someone who went into steroid psychosis, once, and she recorded the details of the drug operation that was probably going to kill her on tape, to be found after she was dead. So if I ever hear something odd, taping is what I’d think of.
[Steroid psychosis can be caused by abruptly stopping medical doses of steroids. And medical doses of steroids will be abruptly stopped if the patient has an allergic reaction to the steroids. Her doctor hospitalized her for observation and none of the staff recognized that she had gone psychotic because she was quiet about it.
At the hospital, she picked up the phone in her room to call home and heard voices. She couldn’t understand the voices, and immediately knew that it was a foreign drug smuggling operation, that they knew that she was listening, and that if they figured out where she was, they would come kill her. She could not risk saying anything about them, because they would overhear and that would doom her.
She slept in her clothes, shoes included, in case she needed to run. She didn’t mention it to her husband, when he came to pick her up a day later, because she didn’t want to endanger him. When she got home, she hid in the bathroom and made the tape, then hid the tape. In a couple of days, the psychosis passed. She took the tape to the doctor, just to let him know. He was surprised.
She said it gave her perspective on a question she had often heard asked: “why can’t they figure out that they’re not thinking straight?” She said that if she’d hallucinated a helicopter landing in her room, she wouldn’t have thought, “wait a minute, that’s not likely, there are four floors of other rooms above me,” she’d have thought, “now, see, that’s how they’re smuggling in the drugs.”]
So, yup, I’d make a tape. Be a shame to have a visitation from an angel and then forget about it.
A friend of mine who has had a history that includes delusions said that (when he was medicated and rather better) he figured out how to tell which experiences were the delusions: the ones that seemed the most real.
Steven Pinker mentioned a patient in The Blank Slate who was in hospital but completely believed she was at home. Walking with a friend in the hospital corridor the elevator doors opened and the woman said: “You’d never believe how much we paid to have that put in”.
kanicbird, if after the visit everything seemed normal then there is no supporting evidence for the vision and I can’t see how I could treat this as anything other than a full blown delusion.
Listen:
A couple of nights ago, I was driving down the highway, when an evil beat poet decided to kill me by riding his motorcycle directly toward me. He assumed I’d veer off the road and crash, but I didn’t. Instead, I plowed through him and his motorcycle, and wheels and body parts went flying.
But it wasn’t over, because some other unrelated bikers were nearby, and the evil beat poet’s soul drifted its way into their bodies. They each spoke a specific couplet, and their bodies transformed into the beat poet’s body, cadaverous and pale with a stupid scraggly goatee. More and more motorcycles raced at me, and I–trembling and terrified–rammed through them all, leaving a swath of blood and motor oil in my wake, until my daughter’s cries in the next room woke me.
And you’re suggesting I’ll see an angel and have no other way of interpreting it?
What kind of enlightenment are we talking about? Do I suddenly know how to build a cold fusion reactor or end world hunger? Or is God’s idea of my purpose and calling that I spend my life shouting about what a great guy He is, if you ignore all the murder and egotism? Because the latter is neither convincing nor of any benefit to humanity.
cthulu fhtagn! Ia! Ia! Shub-niggurath! Daemon sultan azathoth!!
I think that if you define a being as causing a particular reaction, then ask if people would react that way, there’s really only one answer. If my mind has no other way of interpreting such an event, then it has no other way of interpreting such an event. It’s like saying “Imagine you’re wearing a hat. In that hypothetical, are you wearing a hat?”. Of course I am. The situation as defined inherently provides the answer.
If I met some God that convinced me it was the real deal, not sure it would change the way I live my life. Nor do I feel like I would have any explaining to do. He would though!
If I met god, I would punch him in the dick. Then I would get drunk, because life just isn’t worth living if there is a monster like that with omnipotent power.
Well, assuming for the sake of argument that said vision were real and not some kind of psychosis or seizure or something like that, it would have to depend on what the actual message was.
(But then, I’d probably figure that I was having a seizure, based on the description in the OP)
(My first post to these boards as I’ve just recently signed up. “Hi all.”)
I find it rather telling that so many of the responses here in this thread are very much in line with what the Bible itself says people’s responses would be to this sort of hypothetical situation.
In the Book of Luke, Jesus tells the story of “The Rich Man and Lazarus.” In the story a beggar and a rich man both die and find themselves in heaven and in hell, respectively. The rich man, seeing Father Abraham afar off, across some sort of great divide, calls out to him:
The situation seems quite the same here. People who have already made up their mind about God, angels, supernatural beings, what have you, seem adamant that “neither will they be persuaded if one rises from the dead”.
My own opinion is that if God does exist in the form and state that is claimed by the Bible, that our own earthly opinions theretofore are going to be somewhat moot. It is as one previous writer stated about hats. If the theoretical model says you’re wearing one, then that’s going to dictate your reality.
As I understand, Christianity (and many other spiritual schools like it) would have us to know that it is the person who accepts the message prior to the proof that will be the beneficiary of the message. Consider “Doubting Thomas” who said that he would not believe in a resurrected Christ unless he could put his fingers in the wounds of Christ. When Jesus did appear to him, Jesus’ words were, “You believe because you see it. Blessed are those who haven’t seen and believe.”
-Gleno
The Bible said a single thing that wasn’t completely at odds with reality! It’s a miracle! :rolleyes:
Or more likely, it’s a self-serving excuse for why your so-called god never does anything: it’s not because he doesn’t exist, it’s your fault because you don’t believe.
It’s not that - we’re just not jumping to unfounded conclusions. The existence of the supernatural doesn’t prove God exists, God existing doesn’t prove He created the universe, and Him creating the universe doesn’t prove He’s deserving of any kind of reverence.
If you meet The Buddha on the road, kill him.
*There’s a Buddha on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad…
*
(BTW, Gleno, ever stop and consider that even those of us who believe in God aren’t necessarily Christians?)
How do.
Well, sort of, but some of the things they wanted to do were absent from my bible. I think we had one that wanted to bitch slap the angel, and another who wanted to punch God in his dick, then get drunk.
That’s because we have a better understanding of how nature works compared to several thousand years ago. Natures laws just don’t go haywire, because of someone wishfully thinking it so. Hume asks us to compare one miracle to another. IOW, has natures law’s gone cuckoo or has man bent the facts? Which is more likely? When has there ever been an authentic case of someone whose body had actually stinketh, and literally came back from the dead by simply a laying upon the hands, or someone saying some magic words and/or having faith in God? When was the last time gravity laws was suspended, e.g., someone actually walking on water?
Another problem with the biblical stories, is supposedly the miracles occurred in front of them and were eye witness to it, but yet there were many that still doubted and didn’t believe. If many didn’t believe it then, how can one be expected to believe it in this day and age, when it’s in story form, and describes supposed events happening many thousands of years ago? We could use a good miracle now in the present with many around, could we not?
That can be dangerous. Con men operate similarly. It wouldn’t be wise to just believe, have faith and trust without seeing or offering up proofs. Benny Hinn can give you some lessons on how quick a fool and his money are soon departed by following that advice.
If being a fool is what makes you blessed, then I’ll pass on being blessed.
But I haven’t seen God or Allah or Krishna or Zeus or Odin. So how do I pick which one to believe in?