All I have to say is that if God acts in this world, he acts immanently, by definition.
Getting back to the topic…
I recall taking acting seminars or retreats in which we explored something similar to glossolalia as a technique to free up expression. We would enact scenes while babbling nonsense syllables to tap into the emotional content without worrying too much about thinking about stuff or remembering lines. At times, the combination of a group of people sharing in this free babbling had the effect of blowing away the emotional/social boundaries of the participants. In addition to the wide-open expressive outpourings and euphoric feeling experienced by individuals under these circumstances, I can also attest to an almost religious cult-like closeness that could develop under the right conditions. No one in those seminars or retreats was under the impression that this was any kind of religious ceremony. Nevertheless, I am struck by the similar responses as people let go of inhibitions (let go and let God…) in a fairly limited (i.e. with clearly defined boundaries of time and space), safe, group environment.
At one time I could and did ask the above. This was before most of the spiritual revelations that have happened. At this point the only way to entertain such a notion is to accept insanity, and if that is so then it really does not matter at that point for if I accept the world view I would be doing so knowing I am insane and therefor can’t trust myself to make that decision.
So I see there is no reason, not just no compelling reason, but no reason to once again accept the world view.
Incidentally Marley, I appreciate your efforts here but I wouldn’t worry too much about over-modding this. The clear difference in the responses of theists prepared to genuinely engage like Saintly Loser and ToeJam compared to the obscure and insubstantial metaphors of kanicbird and lightwait is telling in itself.
Like I’ve said before, the opponent of the reasonable theist ought not be the reasonable atheist but the unreasonable theist.
(mswas, my understanding of Christian doctrine is that God is immanent only in Jesus, not in physical matter as in pantheism. I may be wrong.)
(rivulus, yes, that seems like collective effervescence through and through to me.)
I’m not asking you to accept it - ie. become an atheist. I am only asking whether you accept the possibility that atheism is true. If denying even the possibility that you are wrong is the only way to keep you sane, I’d suggest that your mental health is already precarious indeed.
I consider myself mentally healthy partly because I accept the possibility that gods exist, and because I feel I can consider the matter rationally. How about you?
What courtesy? Please explain…
May I suggest a look at Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia , once you have seen the truth behind our world, it would be irrational to accept (Atheism in this case) as truth.
That’s a tough one. Because Christ also said that we should be able to do what he did if we had the requisite faith. Acting immanently only in Jesus is a kind of confusing one. If Jesus is the Logos, AKA the underlying informational layer of all physical reality that mediates the infinite and the finite, then it becomes kind of a paradoxical argument, because Jesus as God’s agency is generally considered to be God for all intent’s and purposes by Christian doctrine as well.
But, I am no expert on Christian doctrine by any stretch of the imagination.
However, that doesn’t change the truth of the statement. If God acts in this world it is immanent* by defintion*. In otherwords to act upon the physical world it alters the physical world. So there is no reason to believe that God’s agency is not fulfilled by strokes, epileptic fits or glossolalia.
I personally prefer a more mystical sense on the topics of immanence, miracles and eschaton, that it describes a personal process. In otherwords God is immanent always, and as such all causes and effects in creation, the universe, or the world, however you choose to term it, are mediations of God’s initiation of action.
Science as such deals with parts, as such I feel like you are trying to describe the functioning of some fantastic clockworks with only a partial view of about five gears and two pulleys. You can be an expert in how the gears turn, and what the pulleys are connected to and how they impact the motion of the gears, but in the end it’s a partial explanation.
I am not sure that everything all at once falls under the purview of science which tends to be focused on individual mechanism.
I tend to view religious doctrine as being somewhat limited in the same way. They attempt to explain a particular thing, but there is also an aspect of the separation by role. It’s not that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism are right/wrong, it’s that they separate the mind-space of the entire species into uber-compartments.
**That being said, the point I am trying to make is that I just don’t think explaining individual mechanisms either validates/invalidates personal experience. **
When I am looking at beautiful Joanna (real person not her real name) with the pretty red hair, the light is brought in through the ocular filters set in sockets at the front of my skull, transmitted across axons that connect to the visual cortex in the back of my brain and then send the signals to several parts of my brain from the limbic system to the neo-cortex, inducing a sympathetic nervous response, causing arousal releasing endorphins that stimulate me, and cause me to perk up and devote more resources to my focus and visual acuity regarding the experience of Joanna. This doesn’t tell us anything about my relationship to her, what she thinks of me, who she knows, what she knows, where she’s from, or even the fact that looking at her and chatting with her is the farthest it will go because even though I am interested in her, there is a larger social construction in mind regarding things that I value more than higher stimulation from this particular person, such as my wife and my children, the fact that being further stimulated could disrupt my ability to achieve certain income. In the end, she’s a nice girl, very pretty who I have a professional relationship with and nothing more. As such the symbolic separation I caused by naming her something other than her real name reduced the stimulation in an effort to create a greater separation from the initial sympathetic response. Meanwhile, a complex set of neurological experiences over the course of about 20 hours since I last saw her and now describe the experience to you have occurred, and yet they do not encapsulate the set of experiences described. They don’t even tell you about the fact that I met her once before and didn’t even remember meeting her. So the complex sympathetic, cortical and limbic functions that help me interpret the experience don’t describe much at all about the fullness or lack thereof of our limited relationship.
Maybe Glossolalia is meaningless gibberish, and maybe it is a direct communication of subkind of subcortical machine-code that we don’t fully understand on a scientific level.
I find it highly dubious that understanding the neurological functionality of certain experiences tells us anything of note about those experiences.
I know Plato’s cave well thanks, and indeed referenced it in one of my favourite threads here. But I repeat, I’m not asking you to accept that atheism is true. I’m asking you to accept that it might be true.
You seem to be saying that to even accept the tiniest possibility that your divine explanations are wrong and my scientific explanations are right would be detrimental to your mental health. If so, does that fact that I do accept the possibility that your explanations are right not make me, at least, “open” to God’s truth? And would it not also be fair to say that you simply cannot handle scientific truth?
lightwait, please read the OP again, thoroughly, clicking on all the links.
To which I agreed explicitly twicein the OP. I suggest only that explanations which don’t require external divine entities are more parsimonious.
Then I guess we differ in what we find notable. To each their own, really.
Yes, you did, and I did not mean to make it seem like I didn’t notice that before I posted. And yes, I agree, that explanations which don’t require external divine entities are more frugal, possibly to the point of stingy. 
Ok, poor wording. It’s notable yes, but not fully descriptive of the entirety of an experience. Too many variables other than the neurological functionality.
That’s an outstanding OP!
But I’m going to pick you up on what I see as a weak point:
How does this explain the exhortations to charity? Charity often goes way beyond mutual cooperation. Some charities can be likened to insurance policies - ‘Some day, I or someone about whom I care may be in need of their help’ - but others are clearly not, and the exhortations to charity in many religions go well beyond that anyway.
I don’t know if you understand the fullness of what you are asking, it is far more then what you have done. To me Atheism is a religion, one that extols the glories of man and totally discredits God. It’s rulers control the body (which is a invisible body, much like how the body of Christ is the invisible church, and the rulers are not obvious) by discouragement of seeking out God and offer explanations that let man feel smart about who he is. It is IMHO worshiping man and what man can achieve and discover. It is also intertwined for a scientific quest for immortality through technology. IMHO a path that leads to death, even eternal continuous death in the case of technological immortality. So you are asking me to consider a ‘religion’ that ultimate destination is death, it doesn’t seem that appealing on that basis alone.
It also attempts to discredit much/all of the spiritual, leaving one ‘stuck’ in our physical 3d world, while it has been revealed to me that there are many more dimensions we exist in and can interact with. Things I have seen, you are asking me to ignore, as there is no rational physical world explanation that I have see that could explain what I have experienced, and to say there is would be accepting a obvious lie as a basis of a belief system.
In your case you had a few ‘small’ spiritual encounters which could be explained, I can understand how one can get swayed, but I reached a certain point that it is not reasonable to accept physical world explanations. So your request is asking a lot more of me then what you have done.
You do seem still open, you IMHO were just steered to atheism at a time of your spiritual growing.
And you are correct, I can handle scientific facts (and take them for what they are, what man can prove), not scientific truths, as truths come from God, not man. The famous saying by Pilot "what is truth’ comes to mind here. Man in himself does not / can not know truth.
SentientMeat let me ask you along the lines of your courtesy you asked, could you accept the possibility that atheism is just another religion, one with a actual (invisible) god in control, and really no different then any other religion (as they all have some god/gods as their head)?
Come now, it’s only the ones that don’t allow external divine entities that are being stingy. The rest will let the dieties in -welcome them, even!- if they ever, uh, actually show up in a way we can be sure is actually happening.
I dunno about him, but atheism can’t be a religion becuase it doesn’t worship anything.
However, science (possibly all of science) could, in theory, be incorrect and illusory lies being propogated by a god. This is stated as explicitly happening in the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion. (Naturally, any such god doing this must be very very consistent about its lies, but it remains possible, at least theoretically.)
Science is a cornerstone of Atheism. Science generally has a starting premise of no God. People depend on science and discovery for their hope of the future (prophecy), read about it in newspapers, journals, TV, internet which are scriptures, commentary and services, and it has it’s ‘priests’ and other public figures. Science is the explanation of the world that many Atheists depend on and look to.
But, nobody worships anything! Not in atheism, and not in science either!
By the way, if you own a car, is the user’s manual a scripture to you? Is your mechanic a priest to you? Is your roadmap a prophecy of where will you go?
Ever see a global warming rally? For that matter have you ever heard songs such as John Lennon’s Imagine, which could be called a atheistic worship song.
It depends on where you place them, lets go to the medical profession instead, Are you depending on the Dr for a medical cure? Or are you depending on the Holy Spirit to guide you to the person that He want to heal you through? Do you credit medical science to man’s ability or to God working through His children.
Do you work to serve your boss, I do, but His name is Jesus, when I am sent by man to a jobsite, it is Jesus who I am working for and who provides my pay - through who He chooses. If you serve your boss, that is a act of worship.
How so? Imagine doesn’t make any claim that there is no god.
No heaven/hell, above us only sky, no religion
And note I said it could be called a atheistic worship song.