What do you mean by “supernatural” what makes you think it moves through atheists. It’s never moved through me on any level even though I’ve tried a number of different methods to access it including prayer, meditation, hallucinagenic drugs, fasting and shamanistic drumming. I’ve succeeded in altering my consciousness but I’ve never felt that any of my experiences were supernatural or that ultimately I was in communion with anything outside my own brain.
Am I just dense? Why would the God force allow me to flail around trying to communicate with it and never answer back? Am I being punished?
You know, I actually understand this probably better than you think. I “get it” in a way. You’ve found a way to access the “spiritual” center of your mind and alter your consciousness. You’re using techniques that I’ve used myself. I guess I just interepreted it differently. I’ve never felt like it wasn’t just me screwing around with my own brain chemistry (and I don’t just mean with drugs).
See, that’s just the crux of it for me. I don’t want to believe in something or just get happy emotions. I know how to trigger the happy endorphins. It just dosen’t feel like an authentic revelation to me. I want to know what the truth is. I don’t have any faith in faith.
Yeah, that’s the thing. The logical thing to do, imo, is assume nothing exists and work from there. Belief in a god assumes that a god exists, first and looks for affirmation later.
Because it is something that isn’t natural? Do you have another term you’d prefer?
Because it involves the belief of an existence beyond what natural sciences can show? Hence… supernatural?
It isn’t just “seeing a tree calms me”… it is, “the essence of the tree calms me”
As noted by D the C, the term “essence” in that sentence is null. I could as well call it the “god-force”, but that is awkward and is shackled to that heavily weighted term, “god.” I would prefer to say “supernatural essence”, as that invokes (supposedly) images of an essence which has virtues beyond natural science.
As you noted, how am I to explain the inexplicable? O_o
It may manifest itself in many forms. Humans, when overcome with anything, be it emotional or supernatural or what have you, experience a number of things, and each person views it differently. One person might call it “God”… another person might call it “a moment of clarity”.
Because it is supernatural. Metaphysical. Do you have a unit of measurement for the metaphysical? You can’t get a scoop full of it to analyze. It doens’t have properties of color, smell, size, shape. You could call it extradimensional, if you like.
Does something need a purpose to exist?
shrugs Maybe. Like a scientist, I know that doing certain things gets a certain result, therefore, something must exist behind it. I believe that there is a supernatural force based on my observations and experience in the world, and I know I can reach that via meditation, frequently aided by ritual. I do not know its essence, nature, origin, first and last name, postal address, or how many eyes it has, but I know I can feel it, as solidly as you know you can see something sitting on your desk. That is how real it is to me.
As I said in a very early post on this thread - maybe it is all fluff and fantasy. Maybe it is all made up. As you say, maybe it is all endorphins in my head. I don’t know, and I don’t suppose to know. I just know what I believe, I know what works for me, and I know what I have observed work for other people. I only ask that you do not blindly toss this aside as “mentally ill” or otherwise inferior or flawed thinking.
Or maybe I’m completely nuts, along with a few billion other people.
A god-force wouldn’t allow you to flail around trying to communicate with it, nor would it punish you, any more than kinetic energy punishes you when a brick hits your head.
Everyone experiences it in their own way. Maybe you’re trying too hard, or analyzing your results too much. shrugs It is possible.
If that is how you want to put it, yes, actually, I think that sums it up quite nicely. I’m glad I was able to communicate it to someone.
I don’t, either. Not everything I feel this way is “happy”… I can feel tremendous pain and sadness… If you’ve read any of my posts, you’ll recognize that I’m not a flag waver. But the morning of 9/11, after seeing the first news, I stumbled outside our house and fell against a tree, and I just automatically entered a deep meditation. I felt such a tremendous amount of pain and loss that it shocks me just remembering it. But it also conveyed to me a sense of wholeness, that the world was not going to end, and that everything would continue on. That gave me the strength to get up and go back inside. I have felt similar things with other, more horrific, but never so focused, all at once.
They said I was laying under that tree for three hours. It seemed like an instant to me.
I can not think of another way to describe that force than… “god”… I can use “essence” and “supernatural” and “spirit” and other terms, but those are all empty shells vainly trying to define it.
Maybe it is just, as you say, an intense internal connection. Maybe. If I’m wrong, then, I’m wrong, big whoop, some guys on a message board think I’m mentally ill and incapable of critical thinking.
If I’m right, I have the most intense and precious experiences of my life.
I would like other people to open their minds to what religion can be. I read these accounts of overwhelming love, of bliss, of stark terror, and I know what they all mean. I can feel the same thing - and I do not believe it is natural. I certainly can’t give you a cite for it, and I won’t try to prove to anyone that it exists.
But I do know that other people experience it. They experience it in different ways - different religions, different beliefs - but it is the same thing. You don’t have to believe in it to experience it.
Of course, you have other phenomena… “love at first sight”… I have no clue how that works. I’ve never experienced it, so I can’t discount or support it. I don’t know if it is a supernatural force, or just sexual arousal that happened to work out in the end (it is bound to, sooner or later). So I see where you are coming from - it is hard to believe. My only advise is to not try to believe, but to keep your mind and your heart open.
I’m not sure what I meant either, half asleep and still playing this damn game.
Belief assumes god exists… but god exists through faith? I think that is what I meant, but I don’t believe in that. Oh, maybe, belief assumes god exists, but you can only recognize god’s existence if you will believe in it. Yea, that makes slightly more sense. Not really a catch-22, but…
Alright, that is something of a paradox, there. But that isn’t what I was saying, lol.
What I was saying is that faith assumes a god exists and looks for affirmation of that assertion after making the assumption. Whereas logic assumes a god doesn’t exist and precedes with that assumption until there is evidence to the contrary. This strikes me as the more reasonable way of conducting your life.
I could tell people that there are green elephants with one eye simply because I have no evidence to suggest they don’texist, but that’s unreasonable, right?
What “evidence” you propose for the existence of some super-natural force is all subjective and unquantifiable.
That may be, but the problem with logic is that it stalls when you ask the question “Why are we here?”. Truthfully, there’s no logical reason whatsoever for us to even exist. Fortuitous accident, or intentional creation via supernatural forces? Neither can be proven, and neither is more likely than the other. So what we have is a situation where the “supernatural forces”, aka God, becomes an obvious explanation, whereas there is no obvious logical explanation for our existence.
If it was a fortuitous accident, what mechanism caused it to happen? OK, we evolved from single-celled organisms, I’ll accept that as a hypothesis. So, how were they formed? See? Ultimately the rope ends, and at that point you find yourself holding the knot and asking how the knot got in your hand. Those of us who believe in God have determined that it is a reasonable explanation that God put it there. What else is there?
Your same line of reasoning in the second paragraph can be used on the first paragraph; eg, from whence did God come? The answer is either (logically) the same as “where did we come from”… either happenstance, or nothing, or another God, and so on and so forth.
As to “why are we here”… well, quite simply, why does something need a purpose to exist?
The question faith does not answer is “Why is there god?”.
What you’ve said is just another example of why mankind created gods. Before science we didn’t know the answers to a lot of questions. Questions like “Why does the wind blow?” “Why do things fall?” “Why are we here?” so man invented gods that controlled these things.
As science answered more and more “unanswerable” questions, fewer gods were necessitated. Unfortunately, science can’t tell us why we are here. It can only tell us how we got here.
As to the question “Why does anything exist?” I ask you this: Why does there have to be a reason?
I know I’m way too tired to be doing this, but I have to disagree with you here. Monotheism did not develop because science was answering questions. Monotheism developed (when it developed) in different areas for different reasons, generally related to social ideas (all the gods of all the conquered lands are really one god, and soforth). I don’t think it had much to do with science answering more questions - otherwise, monotheism wouldn’t have developed in the Western world until after the Renaissance. Instead, you see the other gods replaced with psuedo-science.
Many people, for whatever reasons, continue to be polytheistic. Taking a simplified Hellenistic pantheon and saying that it was only there to explain how nature worked is… um, oversimplifying. Many gods existed over a trade or craft - smithing, or farming, or sailing (as oppsed to fire, or rain, or wind). This gives people a sense of ease, knowing that the overall system has some intelligent control.
Accepting it as an open ended, uncontrolled chaos is what makes many atheists feel superior in thinking to theists.
Due to my quirky taste in religion, I end up with one foot in each side here, but then, I believe that questions are generally best answered between two extremes.
Because people are trying to determine it. Why is one meter equal to one meter? Because someone determined that it was.
We have that boundless curiosity that won’t let that question go unposed or unsolved, although only a fool would think that the question could ever be answered. Therefore, it’s no more or less foolish to believe in God than it is to not believe in God because it could never be proven one way or the other. And we’re right back where we started.
However, if belief in God is the gateway to Heaven, and Heaven exists as a place where you can only go as a believer (which is the standard thinking), then what harm is done by believing in God? What cost faith? Nothing. You believe lots of things that may or may not be true, you’re surely not going to tell me that every single thing you do, say, or believe is logical, so what’s one more “irrational” belief going to hurt?
Justifying God is easy. Proving he exists is impossible.
As I don’t have a degree in ahtropology or ancient history, I won’t argue with you on that. However, you yourself said that belief in a god “…gives people a sense of ease, knowing that the overall system has some intelligent control.” I would contend that that is the purpose served by monotheistic gods.
Er, that question would be, “why does a meter exist”, and your answer would be, “because things need to be measured”
… in Abrahamic religions…
Here, I agree with you, though I can see the side saying, "you might as well say that “purple aliens from Mars dance a polka on my desk every night” with the same qualification and “irrationality”…
I believe that’s called Pascal’s Wager… someone might correct me on that, but some philosopher once posed that same question.
The answer to me is that I don’t believe a god or heaven exists and I prefer not to be deluded into thinking that it does.
Aside from which, believing in god just to get into heaven isn’t really “faith”, in the strictest sense, if you ask me.
And of course we’ll never know why the universe exists or what makes it tick. There’s a scientifc law (whose name I cannot think of) that says that it is impossible for something inside a system to determine what makes the system behave that way it does.
So why are we trying? That’s what we’re doing right now, and the basis of the discussion of the existence of God. This argument is an exercise in futility. You parry my “What does it hurt?” argument, and I parry your “But it doesn’t make any sense!” argument. There’s nothing left.
I definitely need to go to sleep now. This is waaaaaaay too deep for 4 in the morning.
