I’ve often heard theists say that they personally have evidence that God exists–evidence which convinced them but they don’t expect to convince an atheist, in particular (but I can’t seem to find a good thread to quote at the moment, even though I know I read that somewhere on here today).
I’m just curious what that evidence is. Basically, I want you to witness to me. Don’t worry about whether you know it won’t convince me; I want to know what convinced you.
I ask that my fellow atheists at least be civil in picking apart people’s posts (I personally plan to maybe dig for more information, but not to pick your evidence apart and call you stupid for believing it, or that kind of thing).
No, as designed this thread won’t really be a Great Debate. I’m looking for a deeper understanding of theists views, so I can understand their other Great Debates better. If there’s a more appropriate forum to put this in, feel free to move it (but I’d prefer that the GD crowd sees it, since I know not all of us who love GD visit every part of the SDMB).
I had a number of episodes in which I experienced something like a voice, plus a whole load of other feelings and thoughts that I couldn’t attribute to myself (I realise how lame and nutty this sounds and I can’t ever do it justice in explanation) - some of the directions in these exchanges were very specific and were borne out by following them through (which I realise could just be coincidence, it being a large universe and all that). None of this is ‘evidence’ in anything but a purely subjective and personal sense, however, from my POV, it was utterly compelling.
I don’t think that you’ll have much luck “picking apart people’s posts” (smugness rears its head again, and you claim to be objective on this topic?). The main problem between atheists and theists is that most atheists don’t understand why people are religious. It has nothing to do with a scientific proof, a theory, or an encouter with an angel.
What’s next, you’re going to ask for a scientific proof of love?
Because really, that is what religion is, at heart. At least, that is what mine is about, and that is what you asked for. I believe everything living - animal, plant, etc - has a spiritual energy expressed by ability to emote. Through practice and meditation, one can tap into this spiritual energy.
What is my proof for this? Just my experience. I don’t expect you to believe diddly squat. Mass ritual, individual ritual, it is all fairly well documented. The scientific explanation may have something to do with stimulants and the brain, but that doesn’t concern me. I can feel it like I can see something or smell something.
I feel more peaceful when I meditate, and even moreso when I have a living subject with me. Maybe they enhance the ability to meditate. Maybe it has to do with blocking out the conscious mind. I just know that it leads me to respect all life utterly.
No commandments, no guy with a big beard expressing things from on high, no Judeo-Christian basis that you are all so familiar with and love decrying. Just collection of meditative ritual and love.
If you feel like you can “prove” that I don’t feel that love, then knock yourselves out. You may dismiss it is silly, but then, do you really feel like all life is simply a biological shell with no emotion? You don’t need to “believe” to feel it, but if you walk around killing dogs for fun, well, I call that more “silly” than believing that they have a spiritual energy transcending their biological shells.
My “evidence” of God is the universe. Everything that I’ve learned about it puts me in awe of how magnificent it is–it all just fits together and works. From the way species evolve, to the way our planet orbits the sun, to whatever happens in my mind when I feel happy, and to all the physics behind the computer I type this on. When I see a good book, I think it was written by a person, not the proverbial monkeys at typewriters. When I see the world around me, I think it was created, not that it “just is.”
But the previous paragraph doesn’t matter at all, because what is evidence of God to me will not be evidence of God to you. You don’t see what I see or feel what I feel–religion isn’t about results that can be verified by peers, it’s more personal: something “completely different” then science. A reasonable, intelligent person can look at the world and accept that it “just is.” I can’t prove who is correct, I just have what I feel.
I’m not particularly scared of an athiest picking apart my post, because ultimately what I feel can’t be challenged by logic or reason. The devices I use to understand and explore my faith–scripture, the traditional Abrahamic image of God, the divinity of Jesus, etc.–are subject to logic and reason, but only if the underlying premise (that there is a God) is true. And that premise is beyond logic, reason, or science.
I believe that in the great controversy between God and Lucifer, that God can only reveal himself in certain ways to humans, otherwise sin would have no wager, and there would be no test.
It was my miracle. It was a fairly long multi sensory response to doubts, and faith, happening over time, and from all the apparent evidence affecting the external world in ways that were a direct response to my state of mind. It happened twice, two weeks apart, for a subjectively long unmeasured period. Since then, I have only experienced His presence in flashes of awareness. That limit is a limit of my nature, not of His.
The internal part of the miracle was my acceptance that Jesus lives, He loves me, and He is Lord. Later, it included a profound admonishment that I was nothing special because of this, nor did I have authority to use it to “save the heathens.”
I learned one thing. You have to live as if He was standing beside you, every minute of your life, because He is.
Please don’t think of this as some sort of proof of God. It wasn’t. It was a private message. I tell you of it so that you might listen for your own.
I don’t think I would, either. That’s why I told my fellow atheists to at least be civil about it, and said that I myself would not do so. I’m only picking apart the bit where you misrepresented what I said again. I was going to ask that people not to attempt to pick the posts apart at all, but this is GD, and posters always get yelled at when they ask people not to debate. I honestly only wanted to read the stories of theists, and am troubled that I’m getting yelled at for my “smugness” yet again when I’ve done nothing but ask for responses (and asked atheists to please not be rude in here).
That may be true. I’ve heard and read many times people saying that their beliefs are based on observation and personal evidence (you yourself said something very close to that in the Breakthroughs thread). I want to know what this evidence is, so I can understand where you’re coming from.
Not in the least. I’ve experienced love myself. But I didn’t even ask for scientific proof of God here, I asked what convinced you.
So, now to dig for more info (or to check that I’m understanding you, at least): to you, God or some force or something must exist because love (and other emotions) exist, right? Note that I am not trying to sound condescending in any way here; I honestly want to know. Please don’t assume that I’m attacking you. I can’t even say that you made a terrible leap of logic there (in my opinion it’s a slight leap, but I can’t fault you for it; that’s one belief that I can respect, even if I don’t agree with it).
Zagadka, please understand that I am not the type of atheist who will attack your views and try to tear them down. I might discuss them with you, but I won’t attack them. I actually think we agree on a lot of things, from what I’ve read of you in the Science Girl threads. Please stop assuming that I’m trying to tear your beliefs down. Again, I can understand why you’d assume that; there are at least a couple atheists on this board who spend a great deal of time trying to tell people why they’re wrong without listening to what those people actually believe. I am not one of those people.
Thank you, Triskadecamus. This was exactly the type of thing I was looking for.
Just to clarify, how did this happen? What led you to accept “that Jesus lives,” etc? Was it that you accepted it, and then started to really believe, or what? Once more, I am only trying to understand how things worked; I mean absolutely no disrespect.
First of all, let me apologize for being aggressive. I’ve been dealing with this topic quite a bit for the past few days, and frankly, it is all blurring together (except for that whole death threat thing, that is quite distinct ;-). I do understand that your intentions with this thread are “noble,” but all too many threads have been aggressive in their nature recently.
Second of all, as I mentioned in another thread (I think), personifying the essence as a god makes it a helluva lot easier to talk about, so lets stick to that. I merely wanted to get my point across that my form of god is not a deity.
Now, to the meat. I would not say that god exists because love exists (let me define this, I am not speaking only of the love between a person and their significant other, or the love between family members, but the more general concept of love and compassion for living things). I would imply that because love exists, god exists, and I think that makes a little bit more sense to my way of thinking. I’m not used to expressing these beliefs in words, so excuse my unsurity. You can love without feeling god. The god-force exists in everything as emotion. Being in touch with god through meditation allows you to access and affect your subconscious emotions.
Maybe some examples would help.
Sometimes when I’m sitting outside just thinking, say at night, I can look up and see the moon. If it is full, I can feel in the full presence of god. If it is a crescent, I can feel it smiling at me. What I am feeling is the combined emotion of nature. There is something very emotional about feeling moonlight or sunlight bathing your body that you certainly don’t get from a lightbulb, if you see what I mean. This may seem rather ecentric, but when you’re thinking about something, say, feeling lonely, and you suddenly are brought to look up and you feel the presence of the moon shining proudly on you, it has a very nice effect. You are never alone because you are surrounded by nature. If you are feeling bad because something happened to you, you can have the same feeling like a friend is smiling with you. It is a silent encouragement, but it is an encouragement.
Conducting ritual. OK, so you set up whatever incense you are using, spiritually cleanse the area, and go through the startup of the ritual. This helps to clear your conscious mind. When you settle down for ritual, you continue to busy your noggin with chanting etc, and enter a meditative state. If done correctly, you have better access to your emotions, and through focusing, you can do something like boost your confidence for some event, calm down your anger, or concentrate on whatever else is going on in your life. This has nothing to do with the supernatural beyond controlling emotion, though there is an area of “sending” an emotion to someone. This is not controlling their emotions - but you can encourage them to be calm, or happier. I am including this paragraph because I think it is important to know how you can interact with god in order to understand what god is.
Concerning death. I believe that you simply relive your life’s emotions. If they are happy and loving, that’s what you get. If you lived a life of hatred and anger, you’re stuck with that. If you are comfortable with how you lived your life, you will likely be comfortable with the afterlife. No judgement, nothing but who you are.
So, I suppose, god exists for me because of the concept of universal love (more broadly speaking, emotion), that the god-force is something tying everything together. I have had very intense experiences meditating with, say, a tree. There can be much emotion contained in a tree, if you really study it. A lot happens around them.
One caveat to consider is, in effect, murder. All of nature is obviously not love, given that the natural order involves critters slaughtering other critters. Thus, it is not necessarily wrong to kill an animal - as long as it is used for food or other uses as much as possible. In this way, I tend to prescribe to more stereotypical Native American-ish beliefs.
All of this can come into practice if you have a pet. I like interacting with animals. They feel and think, as well, and you can interact with them on a level higher than simply feeding them. In essence, it is a level of spiritual communication that transcends language, culture, communication, etc.
I guess the evidence that convinced me to become a Christian (during childhood) was my parents’ lives. I saw the lives they led, the peace they had and the religion that they claimed was the source. Hardly concrete, but at the time I was just a kid, not a skeptic.
As to continued evidence, I will agree with Metacom. I can’t look at the universe without seeing a Creator.
More along the lines of the sort of evidence being looked for by the opening post, I’ll relate two quick anecdotes, both occuring after I became a Christian.
While driving along a country highway my father’s car stalled while he stopped at an intersection. This was not at all something that happened often. He restarted the engine and proceeded on his way only to see a truck passing a semi while coming over a hill moments later. Without the stall, there may have been a terrible accident.
While nearing completion of my master’s degree, I was struggling with the question of whether to look search for a job or continue on with doctoral work. It was an issue that I’d prayerfully considered for quite some time hoping for some sort of divine guidance. One Monday morning I dropped by the graduate advisor’s office (which was not at all part of my normal routine) and was excitedly told of a university graduate fellowship that I was qualified for, but the paperwork was due that afternoon. I skipped lunch to gather letters of recommendation, rush together a statement of purpose, handle a myriad of other things related to the application and sent if off before my afternoon classes started. Completely a shot in the dark, but I ended up getting the fellowship and sticking around to work on a PhD.
Maybe the first incident was a coincidence and an exaggeration of the possible danger by my father who was clearly affected by the incident. Maybe the second had more to do with the luck of walking in on the day the application was due and good GRE scores. Maybe I remember the good things that happened and ascribe them to God and have forgotten a myriad of times when nothing convenient happened. I don’t really know, but these incidents are meaningful to me.
Thanks for the repy! This is again exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for. Note: Zagadka’s was good, too; I just think Zag has been quoted enough today
I guess it must just come down to the believer gene (and/or environment; I assume both, but that’s a separate discussion :)), and I don’t have it.
I’ve had things like those that you posted happen to me. I don’t attach anything mystical to them. Some days I’m on the end of the bell curve that benefits me, other times I’m on the other end.
Similarly, I’m also amazed by how brilliantly random events have come together in the universe to result in a group of humans sitting on computers all over a tiny blue dot and debating what it all means… but I can’t attach any mystical significance to it. I’m happy that particles have interacted randomly in such a way that I can be happy, but I thank physics for it, not God.
Anyhoo, please keep posting what convinced you. I want to see if there’s anything I can’t relate to, since so far I’ve had what I believe are the same types of experiences; I’ve just interpreted them differently.
From my experiences talking with curious atheists, this isn’t uncommon; I sometimes wonder what, if anything, determines which way people bounce in those situations.
Since I’m posting anyway, I’ll answer the OP in a moderately babbly and incoherent fashion, but what do you expect of three in the morning?
Neither of my parents is (or was) visibly religious; my mother’s primary interest in religions seems to be symbology, my father’s philosophical and looking at and understanding the way people think through the metaphors they use. I say that I was raised secularly Christian; some of the cultural trappings, only a tiny smidge of actual religion. My parents told me some time later that the reason they asked me if I was interested in attending church was that the neighbours were harassing them about the state of my soul. I realise now that my first experience of religion was basically in comparison shopping mode; this probably explains a lot.
So I started going to church occasionally. And unlike many seven or eight year olds I paid a fair amount of attention to it. (Once I’d decided which of the ones I liked better.) One of the things that struck me was that in the Scriptural readings there was a great deal of people interacting directly with Jesus or with God in some way; I could feel a sort of transcendent glowiness in the church – especially during the music – but it wasn’t a glowy awareness that wanted to talk with me. Eventually I sort of decided, “Hey, look, I’m not going to settle for a god that doesn’t want to talk to me” in a mostly subconscious sort of way.
Rather than go through a lengthy discussion of my religious history here, I shall be brief. (No, is too long; I shall sum up.) I found a god who was interested in talking with me; over time I found a number of related ones who not only were interested in me but who had associated with them a religion with an ethic that had words for things I’d always believed.
Of more tangible things, all still subjective: the sound of my Mother’s laughter. My Father’s tendency to hum tunelessly as He works. The feel of Aset’s wings draped across my shoulders and along my arms when I needed Her comfort. The feel of Yinepu’s piercing, intense watchfulness; He has the sort of stare that feels like pressure. Realising that I had lost touch with Stkh and turning blindly towards where I thought He might be and winding up caught up inside His energy, feeling the weight of the huge gold ring He was wearing in one ear against the side of my head, and being whole and healthy of mind again afterwards. Wepwawet’s tendency to pick out things that He thinks I should do, things I’m sure I can’t possibly be adequate to do, but which all my friends tell me I’d be a natural at and they think it’s a great idea. Agh.
Just to name a few. Or there was the time a friend made traditional offerings to Athena (rather than the neopagan style she did normally) and the brilliant pulse of approval that flashed through the room. (She said after that ritual, “Okay, I’ll keep doing it that way. I can take a hint.”)
Basically, my feeling on the whole subjectivity thing comes down to: I know my gods because they talk to me. If other folks don’t want to talk to Them or They don’t want to talk to other folks, there’s nothing I can do about that. :}
I remember I was about 13 and I was in a small pentecostal church and the congregation was praying for a Woman’s legs to be healed they sat her on a chair and put her legs up resting on another chair she walked with sort of a limp and I saw one leg grow and meanwhile other people are seeing this getting really excited, the leg grew a lil’ to long at first and then came down to the appropriate length. I was not sure I had saw what I saw until I heard other people talking about it. I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. I did not expect anything to happen beforehand I thought the preacher would say a lil’ prayer and send her on her way and tell her to wait for a miracle coming soon. Rather I saw the miracle happen right there.
I don’t think “evidence” is the right word in this case, since it implies verification - pretty difficult. I use the term “experience of God”.
I used to think a lot about God and religion, trying to figure it out intellectually. I was raised in a nominally religious family (we went to church once a week, but didn’t spend a lot more time than that on the subject). When I got out on my own and tried to define what my life would be like, I stayed away from Organized Religion, but still considered myself somehow “spiritual”. I didn’t know what this meant, behond a sneaking suspicion that there “must be more than this.”
It wasn’t until I let go of my intellectualizing and defining, and relaxed, that I connected with the Divine. Gradually I started to sense the presence of *other * when I was praying or contemplating. This was intriguing, and I figured the next step was to find out if I was doing it “right” (more intellectualizing - strong force of habit!)
I found a church community that seemed full of deeply loving, faithfilled people. Not a lot of proselityzing going on, just a quiet commitment to a relationship with God and trying to do his work in the world. I learned what it means that Faith is “caught, not taught.”
There are times when I can feel the palpable presence of God surrounding me in quiet moments - it’s a feeling of comforting companionship and rest. This isn’t a feeling I can command, predict, or even “set the mood” for - it happens when it happens.
There have been times when words of advice or direction have come into my head, unbidden; not my conscience, I know what *that * sounds like, and not auditory, but with the definite *feeling * that they’re words whispered into my ear. Never commands, but always helpful, and sometimes rather urgent. This has happened more than a few times over the last fifteen years - not a lot, but each time has been *different * enough to be memorable.
A funny thing - never have I had the sense that God wanted me to button-hole, harrass or convert anybody. All of the advice I’ve received has had something to do with changing (or fixing) me. I assume God will “fix” the other guy on his own, should the other guy require fixing!
Sorry for the rambling dissertation. Religious sensibility is tough to define, since it’s such a personal thing, this relationship with God. It can certainly be shared, as I’m trying to do now, and as I do within the Faith Community of my church, but it really comes down to the feeling I get when I relate to the person of the Divine.
This is a similar thread to the one discussing conversions. I didn’t post in that thread because my own conversion was nothing exciting – it was a gradual process that took place over several years time that began with a realization that my atheism (and later Taoism) could never adequately help me overcome the guilt I felt for the terrible things I do each day. I think that everyday my belief is renewed by my outlook on life as a believer. Meaning that when I see the beautiful and sublime in nature I attribute that to the Creator, when I see people loving one another I see it as a reflection (literal sense) of God’s love, etc. I don’t expect a person who doesn’t believe to see this however. So it comes down really to belief itself. I have read many atheist posters in this forum say something like this: I can’t will myself to believe, belief is involuntary, etc. I believe this to be absolutely true. And likewise the same is true for me as a believer. I can’t will myself not to believe, my belief is involuntary. I can entertain the thought of existence without God, I can imagine a world with God who doesn’t care about humans, but I cannot sustain a belief in those possibilities – it is impossible for me to make myself believe that God doesn’t exist in spite of any evidence that he doesn’t. A good example to compare to this belief is my belief in love. I know my wife loves me with all her heart. I can’t really scientifically prove that she loves me. She may just be fooling me in order to get something that she wants, she may be only pretending to love me because society has forced her into that role, she may only be experiencing a temporary chemical reaction in her brain with the role of causing her to want to produce offspring with me so that our species can survive. I can entertain these thoughts as intellectual ideas but I just can’t believe them to be at true any real sense because I know that she loves me. Any scientific explanation of that love which I could offer would pale in consideration of the intuitive evidence that I experience of that love.
This thread came about because some theists claimed to have evidence which satisfied them (and several have posted such evidence). I still haven’t heard anything that I believe would convince me, but I respect everyone’s right to decide for themself.
BTW, it isn’t my choice. I cannot believe in something without evidence. I can’t really understand how people can believe such things, so I’m trying to understand.
An analogy I hesitate to make, but will nonetheless :-), is again to love. Someone who has never been in love (I mean, lubby-dovey, head over heals) can make no sense out of the actions of people who are in love. It isn’t logical. There is no basis. There are more people out there that may be more available. But when you’re in love, all that you believe is that it is right.
One could come right back and say that such love is foolish, of course, but other people find true happiness compared to dysfunctional relationships of people who take what is most convenient, spend 15 years cheating, then divorce when the kiddies are young.
This might be a nitpick; I would imagine that there are a large number of things you have believed without asking for evidence, or you’d be so busy asking for evidence, then examining it, that you’d never get anything done. I suspect you meant that you could not believe something as drastic as a religious position without evidence, which is fair enough. If this is the case though, I would be most interested (and I ask this from pure curiosity, we’re not leading anywhere) to learn how you differentiate between ‘drastic’ and ‘non-drastic’.
I merely wanted to get my point across that my form of god is not a deity.
