Nuh uh.
Daniel
(realizing that two can play at this game of bald, factually-unsupported assertions, but not so arrogant as to tell lekatt that he’s unable to choose his beliefs)
Yes, I love skeptics that tell me what I know.
Let me repeat, I know that God exists, and I have a lot of company (NDEers) that also know God exists.
Who said the Readers Digest did the research? The research was done by doctors as always.
Remember I said that God harms no one, it is not necessary to run away. God has no religion. Man built the fences, divided the land into countries and established religion. God loves them all.
You have to raise your thinking to encompass the universe when speaking of God and cosmic consciousness.
Love
Leroy
Walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.
Remember the Korean POWs, some were brainwashed in believing we were wrong and others were never touched by the process. Thought control. I think we have stumbled onto a interesting issue here.
Why do people use affirmations? To help replace unwanted thoughts with wanted ones. We have free will, we can think anything we wish. The internet has hundreds of sites on affirmations.
Positive thinking works, there are millions of books written on it.
Education begins when one graduates from formal schooling. It is the time to study reality.
Love
Leroy
Here’s a (soft) athiest who has literally been at the wrong end of a gun:
You’re wrong.
I didn’t even think of praying durring the whole thing. Never crossed my mind. I was too preocupied with doing something that could actually help the situation.
I’d also like to add the comments of about a half-dozen athiest friends who were also at the wrong end of the gun, who also agree. In fact, of all the people I know who have been in life-threatening events, not a single one changed their beliefs either durring or afterwards.
And Lekatt’s back on the warpath.
Hey Lekatt, is there any proof that the lady didn’t “create” those dream-like experiences while her brain was “shutting down” or “starting up”?
Lemme guess: No? Okay then…
First, accept that you are uncertain. That’s okay! That’s not a bad place to be at all if you are open to the possibility that rational thinking is important, but not necessarily all there is. Proof is a math term. No one is going to prove to you that God doesn’t exist and no one is going to prove to you that God does exist. (Even St. Paul had doubts from time to time and I find that a rather refreshing admission.)
I believe that the answers to the questions you are asking can come only from within you – although reading and talking can give you sometimes give you insights.
To find a way of getting at those answers, I hope that you will consider trying the following. It is a simple kind of meditation. It is not Transcendental Meditation or a gimmick. At worst, it is a way of relaxing. At best, you may discover some interesting things.
Remove yourself from ringing telephones and people who might intrude. Let anyone in the house know that you don’t want to be interrupted.
Seat yourself in a comfortable place. I use a comfortable chair. Others may prefer a mat or the floor.
Set a timer for fifteen minutes. The timer will keep you from wondering how long you’ve been meditating or how much longer you have to go.
Relax your body, close your eyes, and begin to focus on your breathing and remain focused on that as long as possible.
Other thoughts will come to your mind. That is perfectly normal. But just gently push them aside when they arise and refocus on your breathing. Don’t be concerned about your mind wandering. Just bring it back to the breathing.
Do this until the timer goes off. Then just rest for a moment and slowly open your eyes and move about when it feels appropriate.
Do this once or twice a day every day. Make it a priority.
Don’t expect anything in particular to happen during these quiet times. And don’t get frustrated if you don’t have startling and immediate results.
After you have done this once or twice a day for a while, you may want to switch to doing this one time a day for thirty minutes or twice a day for twenty minutes. Whatever feels right for you. Start trusting yourself to make these decisions.
You can do this to certain quieting music, but I like it without any sound. Again, trust yourself for the right answers.
Do this faithfully and regularly for weeks and then months. I think you will begin to find some answers that you can trust.
Some fundamentalists are uneasy about meditation. That’s okay. They have their choices to make for themselves. I am primarily a Christian and have come to think of this practice as a “prayer of listening.” But I also value other religions. The great truths of the world’s great religions have much in common. You may want to think of this as an effort to “inquire within.” 
The “realities” that you experience every day are largely based on the chemistry in your brain. If that chemistry is altered in some way, your perception of what is reality may change. That doesn’t mean that what you experience most of the time is necessarily what is “real.” Maybe the changes in brain chemistry put you in touch with many possibilities. Who’s to say which is the most accurate balance of chemicals? Maybe they are all accurate and give you different perspectives.
I was already a believer when I had this experience. I had never heard of it before. (This was about 20 years ago.) When I began to discover than others had had similar perceptions within a state of euphoria, it took my breath away. Not all of these experiences are NDE’s. I tend to think that most are not. People are hesitant to talk about them for the obvious reason that others might think they’re flakey – and understandably so.
Some scientists have been able to recreate similar perceptions in laboratory circumstances. I will see if I can find a link to these experiments. Some religious skeptics will say that since it can be artificially created, it isn’t real. I believe in open-minded skepticism and in not jumping to conclusions either way.
Read his posts again. He’s not saying he wants to believe in God; he’s saying that he is interested in finding out what it would take for him to believe, in the interest of finding out about it. If I want to learn about Abraham Lincoln, it doesn’t mean I want to be Abraham Lincoln. He already doesn’t believe:
I gave my opinion, from my own experience, that he’s not going to get a good answer to his question. One cannot find out “what it’s like to believe”; you either believe or you don’t, and like I said before, the belief precedes the reasoning. He’s not going to logically conclude that God exists.
Your “pie” analogy (yes, it IS an analogy) is flawed because nobody has told him not to believe. He already doesn’t believe. I just said he’s not going to get a satisfying answer to his question. And certainly nobody used the word “dumb”.
No, the analogy was that he’s trying to make a pizza without an oven. In other words, he’s asking how he can believe in God when he doesn’t think God exists. I don’t think you can, that’s all. You’re trying to turn this into a theist/atheist war when none exists.
And what you’re asking is not the same as tasting a pizza. How can you “try” believing? Try believing that leprechauns live in your closet. Were you successful? Belief is not something you can try on like a pair of pants; you either do or you don’t.
Another interjection. You seem so dubious that a non-believer can possibly consider the notion of believeing in God that you project your own defensive walls around him.
How can you not choose what you believe in? Youre an atheist, for God sake! You methodically and unscrupulously investigate every aspect that revolves around your being and you believe in the things that are important to you and ignore the rest. Whether emotionally or rationally, you choose what creates the integral part of you, not the other way around. Each fact and premise that you have ever encountered is judged by you. Some offhand because it goes with what you already know is true, some in far greater detail like this debate, where each word is scrutinized. But anything that goes against the grain of your core beliefs is rejected not because an uncontrollable process does that, but because you choose to reject it.
Your integral self is a mishmash of emotions, reasoning and logic attached to intense sensations. It is the programming that makes you unique. As with all programming it can be modified and edited. Some well, some badly. You say thats impossible, well I say thats your defense. You cant modify a program that you cannot access. Its very effective. Not totally impregnable but it beats any average assault. Not everyone has your defenses. Not everyone wants them. Not everyone needs them.
Thats strange, because this is what was in his post
sounds like wants to believe to me. He asked for guidance.
Well, thats true. You cant find out whats its like to believe…but his question was actually “what would it take for him to truly believe.”
It would take his willingness to believe, and he has that already.
An interesting question, Mottpot. The priest at my parish is fond of saying, “act as if you have faith, and faith will be granted to you.” Not instantly, but over a period of time. It’s entirely true. If you really desire a belief in God, act as if you already have one; pray to God (this needn’t be formal, but can be a simple mental “letter” to God, of the “it’s me, Margaret” variety), go to Mass (or temple, or services, or whatever). There will always be periods of doubt—Mother Theresa, who is on the fast track to sainthood, wrote that she had doubts for almost her whole life—but this does not negate the basic belief, and it does not make you “worse” at whatever religion you’re shooting for.
(TIA disclaimer: I’m Catholic, so a lot of my examples are going to reference that church. This is not meant to imply that examples don’t exist in other churches…)
This all sort of begs the question of why you might want to believe. Most of the atheists in this thread seem to assume that if you don’t already believe, there’s no reason to start now; while most of the Christians find the “why” to be self-evident. Neither answer is especially helpful, I know.
I submit to you that there is no “evidence” that I could ever possibly give to an atheist that would prove to him that God existed, just like there is no evidence that can prove that God does not exist. One of the basic tenets of science is that if there is anything that we can’t explain right now, well, we’ll figure out how it works eventually. So it shouldn’t be surprising that one can look at evidence, decide that everything can be explained scientifically, and conclude that there needn’t necessarily be a God.
So we need to back it up a bit. In fact, Mottpot, the more important question is not “how/why should I believe in God?”, but “why should I want to believe in God?”. This question is often answered with the parable of Pascal’s Wager—if there is no God, it is no real trouble to believe in one, but if there isn’t, we have a lot to lose by disbelieving in Him. But advantages exist even on a more tangible level, too. When I put on my rationalist scientist hat, I can try to objectively look at my religious life and see that it has objective benefits.
First, there’s the community. On the small scale, I have an automatic community of people with whom I have something in common, usually big enough to have subgroups with whom I have even more in common. For instance, I love to sing, so I joined the Catholic Choir here, and sing every week; there’s one of those at any parish I might move to, just waiting for me to join. On a larger scale, I know that I am part of a worldwide community. Wherever I go, I know that I can find a Church, go to Mass, and be welcomed there; and furthermore that (though it may be in a different language) that celebration is just the same as I’d get here. This is really powerful, and not to be underestimated.
Second, belief in the existence of God and a larger plan is comforting at odd times. Anytime my brain wanders into a “what if the car/train/plane crashes” thought, it is immediately followed with, “well, I’ve lived life the best I can and God will take care of me”—a serenity that I just couldn’t have if I believed in no God and no afterlife. Anytime life throws me a curveball, even if it’s just “my god, I have so much work it will never all get done”, I avert my own panic by trusting in The Plan. Maybe I’m not meant to finish it all; I’ll do what I can and the rest is up to God. I can imagine having this sort of serenity even without a belief in God, but it’s certainly easier this way.
Another part of most religions is some level of ritual and common prayer. If you can get past the creepiness of having a whole huge congregation reciting the same thing all at once, you’ll find it’s very alluring. I think maybe we modern folks find that sort of group chanting to be creepy because it’s so alluring. But it’s done in relative moderation. Some weeks, I just can’t bring myself to “get into” the Mass, not concentrating on the readings, not actively praying, but I still find it rewarding on the level of a familiar ritual performed with the rest of the congregation. Protestants don’t do rosaries, I think, but those are downright meditative (and in fact share many properties with various east Asian forms of prayer bead meditation). In any case, there is a part of our psyche that really likes these sorts of repeated rituals, and while there’s nothing technically requiring them to be religious in nature, nearly all of them are. (The Unitarian Universalists probably come closest to having a religion-like ritual that isn’t tightly tied to a theism.)
The last reason I’ll bring up is that membership in a church is often a good way to force yourself to think about moral issues, by bringing them up in homilies/sermons, bible reading groups, or for that matter just conversations in religious settings. Some churches dictate a stance on various moral issues and it is expected that followers will agree, but others are a bit more inclusive. In particular, I know the Catholic Church has official stances on pretty much every moral issue, but one is allowed to disagree with them and remain Catholic—part of the doctrine of “examination of conscience” which I won’t delve into here. I’m sure there are many other such denominations out there.
The important thing to note is that while some people have sudden conversion experiences (e.g. being “born again”), others have a much more gradual introduction. Fundamentalists usually express the notion as “opening your heart to Jesus”, implying that this is an on/off switch sort of thing, and as soon as you flick the switch, your whole outlook will suddenly change. Certainly this is true for some, but for others, opening their heart takes time: don’t say “I did, and nothing happened”. Go easy. Act as if you have faith, and it will (eventually, perhaps gradually) be granted to you.
Returning to a slightly more intellectual level, if you are interested in learning more about a religion before joining it, many churches have some sort of class you can take or sit in on. You’ll want to shop around a bit to find one that doesn’t make you uncomfortable. Some of them focus on “faith sharing”, which may or may not be the right thing but can really weird you out if you’re not ready for it. But they aren’t all like that. Some are more of an exploration of what the church believes and why (which probably is more what you’re looking for). Within the Catholic church, these classes are part of the RCIA program (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults); if you discuss your situation with the priest beforehand he will almost certainly let you go to the class without necessarily committing to getting baptised and confirmed at the end (though that is officially what the program is for). I am quite certain that similar programs exist within other churches, but I’m not as well-versed in how they work.
But the question can’t be “How can I believe in God?”, because first you have to ask “How can I believe in the supernatural?”, then “How can I believe in gods?”, then “How can I believe in the Old Testament God?”, then “How can I believe in the Christian version of said God?”, and finally “How can I believe in the particular sect of the Christian God that you wish me to follow?” Skipping the first four questions, imho, is akin to deciding the outcome of the Miss Universe contest by picking out the loveliest member of your immediate family. If you want to convince me that a superpowerful, supernatural and all knowing sentient being created the universe and is worthy of my worship, show me that the supernatural is real. Then show me that invisible creatures are real. Then show me that intelligent invisible creatures are real. Have said creature do something supernatural.
In other words, how can I believe that you can juggle 30 eggs while painting the Mona Lisa with your feet and whistling the 1812 Overture backwards in three part harmony if you won’t even pick an egg and toss it up in the air in the first place?
I havent read through the whole thread so pardon me if i repeat what someone else has said.
The thing is that you cannot convince an atheist about religion…religion is a faith-based concept and in this day and age, anything without hard proof is not going to run for most people. That is why it is so hard to believe. people say 'if God exists why doesn’t he prove it? why cant he announce from the sky ‘here i am!Now believe!’ but that will kind of kill the whole idea of faith. It is supposed to be hard to believe which is why you have to go on faith. Those who take the gamble do so, but others are still waiting for God’s voice to boom from the sky. Of course i unerstand the atheists views, but i still believe in God and i have no evidence he exists…that is faith.
Well, maybe blind faith isn’t quite the virture some think it is. Outside of your particular religion, can you think of a situation where blind faith would be a good idea? Not just faith, mind you-I have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow based on it coming up consistantly for quite a time now, and I have faith that when I walk on broken glass in my bare feet I’ll need bandages and antiseptic. But I don’t use blind faith-I am relying on recordable experiences to determine my beliefs.
Yes, and I agree with you. It has been addressed on my site in the FAQ section.
However, NDEs, especially the longer ones contain verifiable information about the physical world that the person could not know before or during their “death”.
I think it is the University of Virgina that has a program now of studying “Veridical NDEs”, their label not mine.
I keep repeating this, read a few hundred NDEs if you want to know about them, don’t pay any attention to people who have not had the experience, unless they are experienced, competent, qualified, researchers who have studied numerous NDEs.
If you had read the documentation, you wouldn’t need to ask the question. It was answered.
lekatt, x-slayer, I am not so arrogant as to tell you how your minds work. Please return the favor; you’re certainly ignorant of how mine works, obnoxiously so. If you’re not willing to believe me when I tell you how my mind works, at least have the grace to keep your opinions on it to yourself.
Daniel
Religion is to spiritual, as science is to physical.
Science finds, discovers, makes up laws, methods, procedures for living in, and understanding the physical.
Religion finds, discovers, makes up laws, methods, procedures for living in, and understanding the spiritual.
We are spiritual first by creation and become physical by choice.
It is true that most religious things survive on faith.
It is true that most science things survive on faith (theories).
But one doesn’t have to have faith to know their own spirituality. Numerous methods exist: meditation is the most common.
Love
Leroy
Religion is to spiritual, as science is to physical.
Science finds, discovers, makes up laws, methods, procedures for living in, and understanding the physical.
Religion finds, discovers, makes up laws, methods, procedures for living in, and understanding the spiritual.
We are spiritual first by creation and become physical by choice.
It is true that most religious things survive on faith.
It is true that most science things survive on faith (theories).
But one doesn’t have to have faith to know their own spirituality. Numerous methods exist: meditation is the most common.
Dreams, visions, OBEs, NDEs, are less common and usually just happen when least expected. They are quicker ways to learn about spirit, but can not be artificially evoked. No drugs can’t produce NDEs, some similar feelings, but no cigar. If drugs could evoke NDEs, we could change the world in a month. No wars, no hatred, utopia.
Love
Leroy
This statement betrays a profound ignorance of the nature of science- both in its general methodologies as well as in the specific definition of scientific theory.
I suppose next we are going to be told that creationism is just as valid a theory as evolution.