Oh, and don’t mind lekatt. He’s a one trick pony with a Near Death Experience" jones.
You will occasionally hear from true-believing theistic folks (Christians especially) that, without the sense that God exists (and is running the universe wisely and can be appealed to), you feel an emptiness.
I’ll vouch for that. I prayed to a God I did not know to exist, saying “Are you out there? If you’re not, then you ought to be…”
I could never bring myself to believe something farfetched that I had no reason to believe. I could not even bring myself to believe something farfetched when the sole reason I had to believe was that I wasn’t comfortable with a not-very-nice world of power-struggling and vapid emptiness unless there was a God who was both responsible for and responsive to the part of ourselves that wants life to revolve around caring and sharing and being kind and not controlling other people.
I don’t guess I was an atheist but I was pretty much of an agnostic. In fact, as I grew older and learned more about what the religion (Christian) in which I was raised actually believed and held (historically and currently) to be true, I found it weirder and weirder and less and less comprehendable. So I said things like “They tell me to ‘invite Jesus into my heart and accept him as my Lord and Savior’. I don’t even know what that means! Either explain this to me so I can understand it or cause me to understand why and how I can believe something that makes no sense to me”.
And I said “Look, I’m not going to go through this exercise and then say that ‘I have prayed’ and then see some tree trunk that looks like the Virgin Mary or something and convince myself that it is a sign from God. I’m staying out here until I get an answer or I pass out, and I want some bloody answers. I need some understanding here. This ‘Jesus’ thing…you were supposed to send him back again, or come back as him again, whatever, and finish saving the world. What are you waiting for, better hotel accomodations? Look around: this is not a ‘saved world’. Why are things like this and if you are God why haven’t you made them as they should be?”
And after hours of repeating all that with significant fervor and intensity, I felt a presence/message that said/felt like “Go inside, go to your room and get some sleep. You have been heard.” And I did. As I said, though, answers were necessary.
Over the course of the next six months, + or -, I would wake up in the middle of the night with some huge chunk of STUFF that suddenly made sense to me, and which was on topic for the things I’d demanded answers about, and I wrote them down wondering if they’d still make sense in the morning or if they’d be like “higgamous hoggamous” or other silly shit. And I’d wake up in the morning and read them and they’d still make sense. So I’d remind myself that I had been very desperate for answers and could most definitely be deluding myself into thinking I had them, you know what I mean? So I said to myself, I might be wrong, this could be bullshit, I could be embracing some crap just to have some notions to embrace.
Unfortunately for the traditions of the Christian world of Born Again people and folks who have been Saved and whatnot, the answers that came to me did not tend to overlap the truths they had been touting.
Regarding the “why the hell haven’t you come back as Jesus or sent him again or however you do it?” thing – “We take volunteers my child. Would you do that for me?”
Regarding “Jesus into heart as Lord and Savior” – "We take volunteers my child…he did good works did he not? He was one of you. He was trying to lead you folks here. "
Regarding God, versus Desperately Needing Answers and Inventing Some – "This is prayer, and it is obviously real and functional. It does feel like speaking with another entity, doesn’t it? I am not separate from you. You are more than an individual you, though. This is an experience. You are having this experience. Do you understand that it is because others have done what you did and sought answers with such determination and intensity that there are religions to speak of it? The experience was described. And it does feel like getting answers back from another entity after posing questions to it, doesn’t it? But you did not ‘invent’ these answers. This is not ‘imagination’. This is not ‘merely in your head’. Merely? This is beyond who you are as a mere individual. Is God separate from who you are? Is God you talking to yourself? More the latter, because I am not separate from you so I am not separate from who you are. I am in you and you are in me. So in a sense you are talking to yourself. But there is no ‘merely’ about it.
You may hear that, but I don’t think it’s true…I believe people use that as a drawing card, as Iwasn’t terribly empty before I became a Christian, although I’d like to know from those who did become Christians if this was true for them. It was only after that I realized what I was missing, not before.
As you are clearly a person of intellectual bent, Mottpot, I advise you to read a book, and not the Bible, either. Read Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner – published in 1980 or '81, out of print, but available in many libraries.
Martin Gardner is a famous skeptic, who is a founding member of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He is also a well-known essayist, and amateur philosopher and mathematician (for years he wrote a “Mathematical Games” column for Scientific American.
Whys deals with a wide range of philosophical areas – ethics, esthetics, epistemology, politics. Most of the chapter titles follow the form of Russell’s Why I am not a Christian – e.g., “Why I am not an anarchist,” “Why I am not a Marxist,” etc. It also includes chapters titled “Why I am not an atheist,” “Why I am not a polytheist,” “Why I am not a pantheist,” “Prayer: Why I do not think it foolish,” and “Immortality: Why I am not resigned.”
Gardner is a skeptic who rejects the reality of all purported paranormal or supernatural phenomena. He is utterly familiar with all the arguments for atheism, and he admits they are far more compelling than any arguments to the contrary, and he knows perfectly well that God’s existence cannot be logically or scientifically proven. In scientific fashion, he does not accept the authority of any religious tradition or purported divine revelation. Nevertheless, Gardner believes in, and prays to, a personal God. The main reason Gardner has made this leap of faith is that he wants to live forever after death, and he believes only a personal God can provide a personal afterlife. He explains it all in his book. He explains it all thoroughly and brilliantly.
Now, Gardner is not in any sense a Christian. He characterizes himself as a “philosophical theist.” Jesus has no place in his conception of God. If you read his book and come around to his way of thinking, that will not make you a Christian. And if your Christian friend is right about the way the universe is set up, just believing in God, in the way Gardner believes, will still not be enough to save your soul from eternal torment in Hell. But it’s a start. Maybe if you can make yourself into a philosophical theist in Gardner’s fashion, that will put you in a position to reconsider the merits of Christian doctrine.
I should add that I’ve read the book and remain an atheist. I too would like an afterlife, but I am not convinced God is strictly necessary to provide such a thing. More importantly, I see no reason to believe that, if there is an afterlife, my place in it should be affected by what I believed while I was alive, or what kind of personal relationship I had with God or Christ. The very idea of salvation through faith is morally and spiritually abhorrent to me. But it’s obviously very important to your Christian friend, and you are trying to teach yourself to see things from his point of view – so you could do worse than to start with Martin Gardner.
Well, I was(like everyone on the planet who ever existed) born and atheist.As I grew up I was taught right and left about christianity, but I did not by it.I believe I first described myself as an atheist at the ripe old age of 8 or 9 years old.
I DID hold to a lot of irrational beliefs throughout my life(Sasquatch, ufos, conspiracy theories, psychics and even NDEs) but no gods.WHen I turned around 18 or 19 I had some kind of emotional episode where I thought I was talking to God and he was telling me “everything will be Ok”(God, like psychics never seems to tell you “You are screwed” or “Your mother doesn’t love you”).For a while I came a completely irrational christian conspiracy theorist, ufologist until I was introduce to critical thinking/skepticism.Since then I have come to realize that when we think we are talking to God, we are actually talking to ourselves and answering “as God”(which is why he always seems to tell us “Everything’s gonna be alright”).
Bottom line is that, thinking rationally it is extremely difficult to buy what theists are selling but thinking emotionally, it is hard to escape.
Several well meaning christians here have suggested using brainwashing techniques to “make yourself believe”.Take note of this adn always remember it.If something requires willful ignorance, mindless repetition and presupposition/circular reasoning then it is to be considered not bloody likely to exist.
No one has to make such effort to convince themselves of gravity’s existence.
What evidence are you ignoring? Let’s hypothesize for a second that there is no God. What evidence of non-existense would a non-existing being leave for you to evaluate?
You’ll never come to believe in God thinking like that.
I’m not sure why it should be characterized as brainwashing. You are trying to reproduce conciously something which normally happens unconciously.
And yes, I am suggesting that distinction. A coin landing on its side is something that is physically observable in a very simplistic, factual way. The existence and communications of a being who is supposed to be beyond any physical experience is not anything like a coin. And, as I pointed out, you can’t get emotionally invested in a coin. You can in the belief in God, and you aren’t going to find contradictory evidence or experience regardless of whether God exists or not.
Okay, I have to ask about this – what are you trying to imply here, X~Slayer? Because it seems to me you’re veering verrrrrrrrrrrry close to opening the can of worms that reads “only religious people can be good citizens”…
Burn 'em
Svt4Him, your parable really doesn’t say much to me.
Please tell me why you don’t believe in Vishnu (you are not allowed to use the Bible as justification, since that would be circular logic).
Also SvtHim,
You say you became a christian.
May I ask what you were before, or did I miss that somewhere?
I just knew that someone would say they had a NDE and still didn’t believe in God. I guess I should have qualified NDE. A near death experience is an actual death, yes, I know the words don’t indicate that, but we are stuck with what Dr. Raymond Moody called it over 30 years ago. Although this is sometimes misleading. I have had people tell me that they were almost hit by a car and didn’t see nothing.
The only way to understand is to read a lot of them.
When you feel the love, see the light, you just know you are in contact with God. Your capacity to understand expands and everything is crystal clear. The Oneness is God and you are part of the Oneness of all things.
You can see beyond the physical, but this doesn’t last long after you come back. However, there will never be another time you doubt God and eternal life. Nothing to be afraid of, God loves us all and doesn’t hurt or punish anyone.
That happened to me when I took 'shrooms.
I’m an atheist…well…kinda.
The thing that threw my doubts into, er, doubt was reading ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramahansa Yogananda. I suggest you read it with an open mind and think carefully about the events described in the book - if it’s all garbage surely it would have been discredited by now? So seeing as (to the best of my knowledge) it has not been discredited, what’s the explaination?
This got me seriously thinking about God, faith and religion and now I have absolutely no idea where I stand on the issue, having come from a very firm atheist stance.
Were they also nudged by the bulldozer of God’s joy?
I love it when punishment is used as a metaphor for love.
Nah, they were trampled by the juggernaugts of God’s happiness.
My problem with the heater-bar parable is this: I reached out to the heater, and found out that it wasn’t hot at all. When I come into a room with Svt4him, and he’s telling me it burnt him, what am I supposed to believe? My own experiences? His account of his experiences?
I’m inclined, of course, to believe my own. But I’m not so arrogant as to dismiss his. So I just say, “I dunno.” I’m a soft atheist, in other words: I doubt God’s existence, but I don’t reject it.
Apos, you say I’ll never come to know God if I don’t ignore my doubts. As far as I can tell, that’s a problem with the idea of God, or else it’s a problem with God being a jackass. My doubts are a critical and central part of my thought processes. Either God doesn’t exist (in which case my doubts serve me better than your doubt-suppression serves you), or God does exist, and refuses to recognize that my doubts are a core part of who I am. Either way, my inability to suppress part of my mind isn’t a personal failing on my part.
As for what evidence I’m ignoring – you ask the question in an incomprehensible fashion, but I’ll try to answer it anyway. The evidence I’m paying attention to is the same evidence that leads me to conclude that Zeus, Inanna, Santa Claus, and El-Ahrairah don’t have any literal existence.
Daniel
I just knew that someone would say they were a Scotsman and still didn’t put sugar on their porridge. :rolleyes:
Svt4him, I’m still interested in hearing why you don’t believe in Vishnu (without reference to the Bible).
Translated (for those impaired with the ability to think for themselves): “The only way to understand is to accept what I tell you as law. Anything which contradicts what I believe is automatically wrong and I discount it completely”
On reflection, I’m a bit skittish about the thread title, asking how to “make” an atheist believe. There probably wasn’t any intent to use trickery or force, but making someone believe something sounds fishy to me.