Uh. Is there anything more to this than frozen waterfall = God?
Offline I'm sure most folks here are familiar with Francis Collins. Apparently he was a fairly excellent popularizer of science?
Harris mentioned him in his book, but I wasn't sure our good 'spirituality can still be your friend! And Buddist monks can medidate at high elevations so you gotta know something is going-on!' author was being totally honest or clear about the account when he wrote The End of Faith.
Upon further inspection, though... this is all I ever read. Man sees waterfall, man drops to knees, man accepts Jesus Christ as personal savior.
Uh. Does not compute? Did he have a past history or familial history of mental illness? I don't buy the story that suddenly seeing a giant mass of frozen water will cause you to spontaneously lose your mental equilibrium. What's missing from this story? Anyone have any idea?
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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It's actually quite common for things like that to spark a conversion.
I'd tell you mine, but you'd make fun of me.
Probably...if it's as silly as the frozen waterfall. I'm sorry, but religion shouldn't have a special "ridicule-free zone" simply because it's religion. Maybe I should be more tactful, but part of me feels tact isn't working, hasn't worked in the past and that rationalists must be more forceful before religion fucks us over completely.
It has been my experience that religion preys on those who are in a bad place. Folks in a bad place will accept shoddy logic and go with whatever makes them feel good. I've been there. It wasn't easy to accept reality for what it is. In fact, I had another go-'round this summer at a low point in my life. But I managed to stand erect, look reality in the eye and acknowledge it.
Deciding to be rational in the midst of irrationality isn't easy. On a personal level, you are often completely alone. On a familial level, there will--at the very least--be many, many arguments...perhaps complete ostracism, divorces and FSM knows what else. On a social level (if you remain true to yourself), it may be extremely difficult to find friends.
Most people remain religious due to these fears and the ubiquitous metaphysical fears religion simultaneously exacerbates and relieves: fear of being alone, fear of the unknown and (the biggy) fear of death.
It takes a lot of bravery to admit one's essential aloneness, one's mortality. It takes courage to go against friends, family, society and point out the obviously unclad emperor. My hope is that each person who takes a stand makes it easier for someone else to do the same. That's why I came out of the closet. That's why I would respect you enough to tell you that looking at a frozen waterfall (or whatever sparked your particular conversion) and deciding that god is real in persons three, is, quite frankly, silly.
You believe in an invisible man in the sky, for chrissakes. It is embarrassing. It is absurd. It is dangerous. I hope you find the courage to snap out of it.
“Fear believes--courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays--courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism--courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, devils and ghosts. Fear is religion. Courage is science.” - Robert Ingersoll
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Oh, I agree. I wasn't trying to suppress your right to ridicule it--I was exercising my right to just leave it be.
But then who'll save us from the atheists?
True, but for some it's different. I mean, of course I'm afraid of being alone. And I'm certainly afraid of death. But my belief isn't contingent upon these fears--I've been a Christian while both afraid and indifferent of death.
That's fine. You're entitled to your opinion. But just be aware that my religious beliefs are unaffected by and remain intact in the face of said opinion. You want to talk about being true to oneself? This is me being true to myself. My beliefs are so different from those of my family that they don't even consider me a Christian. And it doesn't bother me.
This is about as accurate as a theist saying to an atheist "You believe that a drop of goo jumped out of the ocean, mated with a rock, turned into a monkey, and magically turned into a man!" It isn't embarrassing to me, and while some dangerous people have done some terrible things in the name of religion, it isn't inherently dangerous. I'm a peaceful man.
And yeah, it's absurd, but so is everything.
And about the whole "snap out of it" thing, this is borne out of the delusion that many of you on here operate from which assumes that theists are "sick" and only "get better" upon becoming atheists. This is anecdotal and completely unfounded.
Ah, Ingersoll. Typical binary thought. Again, superlative and unfounded. These are the opinions of one man shooting from the hip. Makes for a good blurb, but is essentially meaningless.
I actually read "Language of God". My mom sent it to me in the hope it would bring be back into the fold.
There was a little build up to the waterfall. While studying biology, he found himself unable to account for altruism and morality in biological terms. Therefore, god. A few special pleadings (he acknowledges that you have to "make your own search" ) and he landed with the christian god. (As Harris points out in his review, the waterfall fell in 3 streams, which of course indicated the trinity).
Needless to say, I think he's full of it, eminent scientist though he may be. I wish my mom could get a refund.
There are no theists on operating tables.
What would have happened to his conversion had he only known about the Hindu faith? The man would be worshiping Brahman right now. This fact is utterly lost on the faithful and they refuse to consider the reality and impact of the happenstance on where geographically a person is born and what faith they are reared up in.
I've always found conversion stories to be very interesting. To me, it seems like they fit into one of two big, sloppily defined categories. The first type of conversion occurs to the person who is outside the sphere of influence of a church, aside from the marketing aspects that are familiar to everybody. Francis Collins had one of these conversions. These people are often what the evangelicals call "searchers"--they expect or even claim to know that something supernatural is out there, but they cling to a certain amount of agnosticism until they run into a waterfall or some other such thing of immense beauty that pushes them toward a positive belief. I find that I'm not as bothered by this kind of conversion; these people know they're operating out of faith. They know that other people weren't able to convince them and consequently, they're a little bit reticent to push their faith on other people--they're still wrong, but they still recognize the possibility that they had a personal experience that everybody else doesn't necessarily have.
Then there's the peer pressure/ tent revival conversion. This is the one that happens to the born agains. They're already nominally members of the faith, but they've never participated to the degree that their peer group would prefer. One day, the pressure builds up and they feel real shitty about themselves for some perceived inferiority and know exactly how to extract sympathy and feelings of devotion from the community because they've seen the reaction when others do it. I think sometimes these people, often brought up in the faith, are very jealous of people like Francis Collins, people who got to have a private experience and get singled out by God. They artificially construct their "waterfall moment" and get a response from loved ones instead. It's a shallow compensation.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
Pity he published before THIS came out. Funny how arguments from ignorance fail so consistently.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
You couldn't have nailed it more square on the head. Especially in prayer meetings where people are receiving "Gifts of the Holy Spirit" and being "Slain in the Spirit" and other such nonsense, there's a huge double whammy of envy. First, you want to be personally touched by God. You've heard all the miracle stories, and you want to experience it for yourself. Your whole life, you've wondered just how true those stories are. If it happened to you, you'd never have to doubt God again. So there's a lot of inherent bias through which theists interpret their experience.
Second, let's be honest. People like it when they get to be the center of attention for a minute. Getting to have everybody clap for you and pat you on the back and tell you how special you are... well... it's pretty nice. So yeah, there are definitely a lot of reasons to exaggerate one's own experience or even just make it up from scratch.
By the way, I'm embarrassed to say so, but everything I just said comes from personal experience.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
As it may be known about me, I claim about myself to be slightly extra-sensorically perceptive. I evaluated this situation to be professionally interesting for me, so I went there, lowered my head, and waited for the blessing. The preacher came, asked if I'm saved, I answered that I think I am. This puzzled him a bit, but this is what I meant - I think I'm saved, though Christians would consider me to be a godless witchcrafter. So, he prayed for me for a while, and then laid a hand on my heart, and then on my forehead. Do you know, how Christians says that Holy Spirit comes down on them? Well, if this was a blessing, then it was damn weird. That preacher's hand felt like charged with energy, very hot, even burning, and I can tell you, spiritual energies are usually not like that. If this was a blessing from the Spirit, then the Spirit blessed me with a red-hot branding rod. I really don't know, what Christians likes about it. Maybe they're so wooden, that to them it feels much weaker and thus not unpleasant. Or I am such a pansy who can't stand a dose of Holy Spirit.
Anyway, I'm not a person who becomes a Christian, because he sees or feels something holy. (or in this case rather unholy) Not even Christianic practice of exorcizing demons (which that preacher said he did) would convince me to pick the side. Been there, seen that all, nothing new for me.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Well, there you go, Luminon.
Now you know not to leave your tin-foil hat at home for next time.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
But what really pisses me off, is, that people sees a huge frozen waterfall, they fall on their knees, and do what? They start practising religion! Religion has a monopole on spirituality. What are those people searching for, is some kind of God of nature, who created the hydrodynamics and thermodynamics, so there can be such a beautiful frozen waterfall, but instead, they start worshipping Yahweh, the Jewish war god. Does this give any sense? Someone should point that out to those people. Someone should remind them, that there are many other ways how to be spiritual. Christians doesn't really care about their waterfall experience, nor their religion has anything to do with it, they just rake as many people as they can, for any reason.
If Christians think that they can shove their god into anyone's throat, they should prove a validity of their Yahweh, or reject the whole Old Testament and all references to it. They can't have both, war god Yahweh, and an universal, abstract God. Their Jesus did mainly a work of rejecting and reforming the old Jewish religion, and so should they.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Of course you have as much right to continue believing as I do to keep not believing. And both of us have a right to speak our minds.
LOL! I'd never, ever want a law passed that denied your right to believe whatever you want. If we can't convince you with rhetoric, then I guess that's it. Somehow I can't imagine any kind of atheist inquisition. From what I've seen, it just isn't in our nature to become violent. Who ever heard of blowing up a building in the name of rationality?
Probably the thing I dislike the most about Christianity is the way it uses fear of death as both a carrot and a stick. It magnifies the very natural fear of death by making the consequences much greater than they actually are. If you die in sin, you go to hell to be tortured forever and ever. It's really hard to reconcile hell with the idea of a loving god, so Christians often change the definition of hell as clearly defined in the New Testament. If you die believing in Jesus, you go to super happy magic land forever and ever.
Manipulating a natural fear like this is reprehensible.
That's another problem with Cristianity. The Bible is so awful and inaccurate that it needs constant reinterpretation in order to match up with evolving human decency and understood facts. That's how we got so many denominations.
Why don't you tell me your definition of god? Does it match up with anyone elses?
Explain how everything is absurd.
Belief itself is an on/off switch: binary. Either you believe in god or you don't. Obviously, belief affects different people differently. I live in a very fundamentalist area, so I see exactly what Ingersoll is talking about.
So, tell me how your your particular beliefs are different. Also explain how believing in something for which there is no evidence doesn't lead to bad logic, fear, oppression, etc. I believe you are a good man, but the Bible leads many to be dangerous people. It's been documented throughout history and I see it in my family on a daily basis. For example, they hate gay people. In the past, they hated black people (based on their interpretation of the Bible; everyone has their own interpretation, eh?). I think they're still racists, but it's gone under the radar, hiding under other opinions.
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You really have to be primed or pre-disposed to react this way.
I have had several experiences of being all-but overwhelmed on viewing and contemplating some magificent natural scene, from my first view down Yosemite Valley, looking around an idyllic palm-fringed bay in Vanuatu, first view of the Grand Canyon, looking up at the Milky Way at midnight from a magnificent sandy beach on the coast north of where I live here in Brisbane, Australia, with negligible light pollution and particularly clear sky.
Non of which remotely triggered any thoughts of a God 'behind it all'.
In fact after coming back from a wonderful holiday scuba-diving in another part of Vanuatu, I had an epiphany, or perhaps an 'anti-epiphany', where I felt I had finally purged the last vestiges of the sneaking feeling that there really might be something intellectually and morally respectable about religion that I had been missing, a feeling no doubt absorbed almost sub-consciously and implicitly from the dominant attitude in even relatively secular nations like Australia, that religion deserves some special place in our thoughts about the world.. It was a wonderful experience, a feeling of deep insight and understanding of 'Life, the Universe, and Everything'.
This class of experience which the religious call 'spiritual' is something virtually everyone feels at some time, colored by the world-view and existing beliefs of the individual. The interpretation of the experience is even more dependent on pre-existing attitudes and beliefs.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Yo Bob, I am God as you, as doing my 40 days in nature repeatily has so revealed to me. Scuba diving is so telling of what I AM ....
Atheism Books.
I agree. I was suckered into Christianity through fear at age 9. Not sure if I posted about the experience in detail (the more I think about it, the more I remember typing it out and then deciding not to post it--sounded too silly), but I was to the point of barely sleeping before I finally gave in and "got saved". In ways that experience was pointless and cruel, but in other ways it was foundational to my development as a philosophical being. The first thing that struck me about getting saved and baptized was the fact that I was the same person before and after my conversion. This struck me as odd, and I began to question how something as slippery and mysterious as God could somehow connect up with me and fundamentally change me.
Yeah, I agree to a certain point. The problem is, I think that far too many people read the Bible as a singular, collective instruction manual of sorts, which of course presents all sorts of problems. Also, very few people are aware of the history of the text (as well as the general volatility of the credibility of ancient texts), and don't realize that even the most acclaimed Koine Greek editions are comprised of hundreds of fragments.
Beyond that, lots of people take the Bible far too seriously. I know that sounds odd coming from a Christian, but it's to the point where people hide behind it, justifying anything and everything in its name.
I'm sure that my definition of God is at least slightly different than anyone else's. In general, I believe God to be the creator/sustainer of the universe. Beyond that I'd just end up sounding silly, so I'll spare everyone the joy.
I didn't mean absurd in the logical sense, but in the Kierkegaardian/existential sense.
I couldn't disagree more. I'm in a constant state of flux between belief and disbelief. It's been that way for years. When I was a younger Christian, probably between the ages of 18 and 21, things seemed more concrete to me. So yeah, then it was binary. But then I got older and smarter, lived a little, and the world became more and more gray as the years passed. In fact, most people I know occupy this gray area between belief and disbelief. It's called grad school, I think.
In a nutshell, my Christianity is far too Nietzschean to be considered legitimate or authentic by most of my family members. It's really all rooted in the American Evangelical tradition, as far as I can tell. As a backwater, Podunk Baptist, your religion is lived out almost entirely in your own mind. That's to say, there's no ritual, no physical touch stone by which to confirm your faith--you go to church, pray silently, sing a few hymns, listen to the preacher for half an hour, and then go about your business. It's very existential in that way.
This always struck me as very odd. There was no intermediary between spirit and flesh (silly as I know that sounds at this juncture). You just sort of think about God, agree with other people about those thoughts, and call it a day.
My desire to incorporate physicality into my own personal Christianity has drawn fire from my family, of course, not to mention the silly questions and objections I've voiced in the past about family spiritual traditions. I just feel as though modern evangelicals spend far too much time pacifying themselves with fantasy lands that may not even exist--at the expense of wasting this life. I think you have to live this fucking life RIGHT NOW, regardless of religion. I find the modern church to be the most stultifying, suffocating wet blanket to the development of the human mind and spirit, a piss stain on the wonderful and mysterious contemplative traditions of old.
Not to mention the silly, absurd, and downright dangerous worldviews that codify and cement in the minds of older religious folks. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia (just to mention a few) have manifested themselves in the worldviews of my immediate family members to a disturbing degree. My father is a wickedly intelligent man, but discussing current world events with him is often terrifying. He believes that "Arabs" are lower forms of life and should be enslaved by the Sharia Law that they've created--and somehow conflates this with ideas from the Bible. That's just one extreme example of many.
That's the most disturbing part--when someone overlooks basic human rights violations because of something the Bible allegedly says.
jmm, why not just say you are a jesus fan and explain your jesus? Christianity is so attached to dogma, superstition, vulgar acts, idol worship ...... To say I am a christian is a crime of negligence against the Principal of truth of known knowledge, and a disservice to all, especially the kids. Organized religion is truly an enemy to earth life. To realize the "religious cults" are teaching young kids their hocus pocus god separation idol worship is sad.
To say for yourself, "I am one with the father" (cosmos), a meme in forms found in most all religions, is all it means to be "saved" from superstitious self god separation. This is the gnosis "gnostic" story jesus philosophy of "oneness", opposed to the pauline separatism theologies of christianity etc. The gnostic gospels were rejected by the blind greedy hypocrites of wrong thinking.
The bible is basically a fiction collection book of ignorance, fear, and hope, edited and turned into a control book.
Get free, all is god, no master, as the gnosis knows and science best explains.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosis
I recommend this guy to the idol worshipers,
Neale Donald Walsch - Who is God - 5 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCeSlAvzvCQ
Neale Donald Walsch Discusses The Emotion Of Fear - 8 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4HwFHiYyA&feature=related
Here's 2 gnosis wise angels I like,
Carl Sagan - "Pale Blue Dot" , 3 min http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M
"Wisdom of the Buddha" , 8 mins. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTsb-woP3jI
Atheism Books.
I usually go west for a view like that, what coastal area are you talking about, do you mean Fraser or further north you'd have to go at least that far, right?
I 100% agree, that is exactly what a spiritual experience is.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
www.mathematicianspictures.com
Yes pretty close. It was at Rainbow Beach, not that far from the southern tip of Fraser Island.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I thought you'd say Rainbow Beach, I've only ever been there by day, I've camped at Teewah beach but I guess it's just that bit too close to Noosa, everyone I know says it's best to drive up to Inskip, probably because there's more stars, huh?
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
www.mathematicianspictures.com
I'm sure there would be places where you could get even clearer visibility, but I do recall it being one of the few times I was really aware of the Milky Way...
While I am writing, another magic moment came to mind, also around local midnight: standing at the tip of a slender spit of sand at one end of a small island in the Maldives, looking out over an almost glassy calm Indian Ocean, with the lights of phosphorescent sea creatures flickering beneath the gentle ripples.
Another experience on that same trip was Scuba diving just off the reef arount that Island, and having a manta ray come up and loop up and over in front of me so close I could almost touch it.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology