Question for christians and former believers: Identify the voice of god
Posted on: November 30, 2009 - 3:00am
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Question for christians and former believers: Identify the voice of god
What voice does/did the voice of god speak in when you converse/conversed with him in your head and when you feel/felt called or led to do something by god, what sort of a feeling do/did you feel?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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In retrospect, I always experienced a cognitive bias and interpreted it as "hints." I never heard voices. For instance, I would interpret random events in my environment as "hints" from God whenever they coincided closely with a prayer, or seemed to have some significance with regard to the prayer. For instance, if I was praying about whether I should go home and do homework, or go visit my friend who worked in the coffee shop to try to cheer him up (since his girlfriend just broke up with him) I would take a passing "Folgers" truck to mean God was telling me to go visit my friend.
I think most people think of God's voice this way. It's what I was taught in nearly every church I attended. "God doesn't usually speak in a booming voice. Usually, it's a 'still, small voice' in the form of hints and nudges. We have to be 'in tune' with the will of God to even notice that they're there."
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
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I'm with hambydammit. That's the way I was taught as well.
Never an audible voice. Usually just a thought or emotional impulse that I should approach someone and witness to them, or I should ask forgiveness for sinning against someone...
I guess I'm pretty crazy, I always would ask questions and get an answer in this old man voice saying things like "yes my son" or something like that( I know).
Anyway, I figured out it that every time I asked a question that I didn't know the answer to the voice would stay quiet.
Take that, imaginary voice in my head!
Eden had a 25% murder rate and incest was rampant.
It's fair to say that believers are interpreting their own "voice of god" experiences inside their own heads (or souls, if you theists insist).
My own experience was that god spoke with the voice of my own conscience. I simply interpreted what I knew to be right but with added emphasis and a dollop of awe.
I also interpreted events that happened around me as being messages from god whether or not these events would have taken place as they did anyway.
Particular weight was given to generous acts from people who, in this state of mind, were acting as agents of jesus rather than just being the nice folk they obviously were.
In fact it's fair to say, the whole world began to pulsate with messages from god, from the fulsome blossoms of spring, to my first feelings of love for Marie Henderson on the
flying fox at Riverbend Christian Camp when I was 11.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
For me, it was usually a coincidence. Sometimes when I was on my chair reading a book on a cloudy day, the sun would shine. I thought that god was communicating to me, but it wasn't in a way that I could articulate - so I would label it in my mind as "hope," or "comfort," or "happiness." Various post hoc phenomena like that convinced me that god was communicating with me.
I came to realize that the apparently real time communications I had with god were my imagination, and that I was self-deceiving.
We should all be glad that dogs didn't talk to us, or that to throw a divine party we'd serve Kool Aid or Applesauce, take your pick.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Many years ago, when my mom dated my future dad, one day she decided to break up with him. When she decided and was about to go, she heard a very "loud", intense thought in her head: YOU WILL MAKE THE GREATEST MISTAKE OF YOUR LIFE!
She of course froze by surprise and then decided to not break up with my dad. They're now happily (and busily) together for like 25 years, still doing and learning something new.
So that was the closest as one can get to a voice of God. Except there is no such thing. Obviously, creator of the universe has better things to do. My information is, that care for a single person is typically handled by the person's own soul. The soul influence is usually mistaken for God by most of people, but it's in fact a higher part of personality, that of which the personality is reflection. It is also true, that soul communication is almost always non-verbal, through symbollic or metaphoric dreams, intuition, or synchronicities (signs). All human souls are connected, so they are able to cooperate and arrange synchronicities and lucky or unlucky coincidences, depending on where they want to steer their person. It is therefore good to be open to the intuition and subtle signs, because those who do not listen to subtle signs, may eventually after many years get very big signs, like tumor.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I don't know that I heard a "voice" persay or just a general feeling of well being. My family attempted to indoctrine me in the church(first the disciples of christ then later the catholic church) from a young age. I remember being in the church and when I'd hear a particularly moving sermon this feeling of awe and wonder. At the time I attributed this to "god" or the "holy spirit" and like others I would take hints from things happening in my life as to be the "lord" speaking to me. But as I grew older and reality replaced fantasy and I studied other religions I found this feeling to not be supernatural but rather just an affect of the power of positive thinking. And when it pertains to group settings that would just be an affect of mob-mentality or the collective consciousness. The same as when you are at a rock concert and you feel this rush of energy. When a group is together, thinking all the same at once, it does do something. I am much happier now though, knowing that these good feelings are self-actualized and not something done to me by some unknown outside force. But I did used to attribute them to "god" speaking to me....
"I can resist anything, except temptation..."
~Wilde
Well, the only time that I have ever heard god, he sounded just like Alan Rickman.
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