If you read the posts again, you’ll see that I’m merely demonstrating how it feels from my side.
**
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, Mangetout. I did not mean to imply that you are closed minded. That sentence was intended more or less as you meant yours: A demonstration. IF you were to be has hard nosed as said in the quote above, THEN you would be closed minded.
Apologies for the misunderstanding.
*None of these satisfies me in the light of how useful the spoken message turned out to be
**sure, but we’re drifting away from skepticism a bit then…
Oh absolutely - I have been over and over this in my own mind many times.
**Yes, I think first hand experience is essential, and I do understand; the more I try to explain this, the more I sound like just another ignorant raving crackpot.
No, neither would I, but I am prepared to accept my own experience as evidence (insofar as supporting an entirely personal viewpoint), after scrutinising it as carefully as the inevitable bias will allow.
Oops, my bad also for not realising that.
Of course, a hardcode skeptic (like myself) would posit that you simply picked up (perhaps subconsciously) on nonverbal and behvaioral cues from your sister; especially in light of the fact that, if your sister was silently beseeching god to make you come talk to her, she might have also been behaving in ways that manifested those cues.
Or, it might have actually been the voice of God. Who am I to say? I’m not going to tell you your conclusions are wrong, only that I disagree with them.
A joke:
The leading heretic of the town was on his deathbed, with his student heretics all around him to share his final moments. He opened his eyes, and said “call the rabbi, I wish to repent”. The students were shocked. “Here for all these years you’ve been instructing us in the ways of heresy, mocking religion in every which way, and now you want to repent?” And he replied “that’s exactly it. I wish to show that the statement in the Talmud that “evildoers, even at the gates of Hell do not repent”, is also false…”
I have considered this possibility of course, but it would be a pretty impressive feat for my subconscious to have picked up such cues through two walls, from a person who I didn’t (consciously) know or expect to be there and also for my subconscious to present the information to me in such an unusual way.
There’s a lot more to what happened that day than I can fully relate verbally, like the way it felt to hear a completely unexpected voice and so on, but as I’ve said before, there’s nothing substantial that I can present to a skeptic, save from the the testimonies of myself and my sister, but as far as you, or anyone else can tell, we could have just made it all up, that’s why it boils down to faith in the end (not your faith in what I’m saying, you understand, but my interpretation of my experience)
Anyway, we seem to have wandered away from the OP a little;
all I really wanted to show is that my beliefs are emphatically not simply the result of a decision sometime that I would convince myself to believe an obviously transparent and unsubstantiated untruth simply because doing so would make me feel nice.
Mangetout, if you really want to debate “There is no more evidence that your Great Grandmother existed than that Jesus is the Son of God”, get your own thread. You know how to do it, don’t hijack this one.
And, as for the whole “Wouldn’t you rather be contemplating the mind of God”, I think that the mystecism of many scientists best sums up my belief here. Richard Feinman has the famous quote that says that stars are just as exciting (or more so), if you understand how they work. Other scientists talk about seeing the footprint of God, or the Face of God, or whatever, not necessarily because they are religious ( IMHO ), but, because the world is so complex, fabulous, and oddly SIMPLE, that just contemplating it brings the kind of wonder some people have about God.
So, the subtle reading/giving of body signals for dancing or flirting is still a thing of epic beauty, whether or not God exists and/or approves of it. (and, of course, it is a thing of beauty even if thousands of people are also doing it every day. ) So, although I did sometimes wish I was religious to fit in, I don’t EVER feel that I lack beauty, happiness, or philosophy.
Me’Corva
Mangetout, thanks for noticing the thread was hijacking. Please disregard my previous comments!
Embarrased,
Me’Corva
No Problem Me’Corva 
BTW
I’ve already started such a debate (in fact I keep doing it, you could call me a repeat offender I suppose) Here:Occam’s Razor - self referential?, here:Religion/Spirituality and the brain… and here:‘Internal’ Logic (I would welcome your input)
I agree that you can’t make yourself believe, despite the claims of some religionists that atheists have deliberately chosen to turn from God, or the claims of atheists that religionists have decided to delude themselves. I call it the “Deep Down In Your Heart” fallacy–if you believe something DDIYH, then obviously everybody else does too, and if they deny it, then they’re just kidding themselves.
I do not believe that I could sit down one day and decide to believe in God. I would have to have some kind of evidence–a personal experience on the order of Mangetout’s would probably do it. Nor do I think that a religionist can decide to be an atheist just because somebody tells 'em God Is A Lie. A person cannot choose to beleive. A person must be convinced.
Everyone, of course, has different standards for what will convince them.
On the other hand, we can be confronted with evidence or the lack thereof, or a logical challenge to an idea we hold dear, and we can choose to either shy away from it or to meet it head on. It’s a very uncomfortable to admit that your beliefs are vulnerable–it makes me feel physically squeamish sometimes to grapple with an idea that contradicts my well-tread habits of thought. And on the other hand, it feels very good to “prove” yourself right, to seize on a bit of evidence or simply on another person’s agreement and say, “See! My beliefs are true!”
I really do believe that living an unexamined life, philosophically or religiously, is hedonistic. You must grasp the bull by the horns, ask yourself the hard questions, and submit your beliefs to review by unpleasant people–whether you’re a religionist or an atheist. You should suffer and doubt and agonize, or else your beliefs are likely to be soft and weak and flabby and wrong.
Perhaps I should refer myself as a puritanical atheist after all.
(Hey, here’s my 1000th post. I toyed with doing something special, but instead I find myself simply adding a post that people might find interesting to a thread about a topic that I feel very strongly about. Cool.)
I would like to make a suggestion to the Original Poster (feel free to look at my number of posts and ignore me):
Maybe you just haven’t found the right belief system* for you yet.
*Where “belief system” includes religions, philosophies, as well as denials of belief like atheism and agnosticism and combinations thereof.
Or you might want to take a look at some of the work of Robert Anton Wilson. I’ve only really scratched the surface of his work, but as I understand it he advocates a program of spiritual exercise that involves throwing yourself utterly and wholeheartedly into many different belief systems. If you can do this you’re braver than I.
To anyone who says that you can’t make yourself believe something, I say: try it. I’m told that opening yourself up like that is a very liberating experience.