Dude, where's my personal experience?
Offline OK now... I believe it's time someone asked this as well (or it has already been asked in a long-forgotten thread)
WHAT THE F**K ARE PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH GOD OR J C ???
Christians are so much babbling about their "personal experience with God and JC", that I really really really feel the urge to find out what kind of thing that is.
Personally, I haven't felt any extra-sensorial thingies while praying in my Christian years, I felt just like I should feel: I was staying staring at a blank wall, thinking like "How the heck is God going to give me what I ask him for?" (PS: I asked for a real whale, and haven't got one up to now).
So the question remains. All Christians on this forum are kindly invited to answer, as this might clear up the mess a little.
Thank you in advance.
Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/
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Good question Rigor, I've often wondered about this myself. I mean, people are deeply moved by these "religeous experiences" which should suggest that they actually feel some sort of something. But I've yet to hear a single person explain what this "personal experience" was? Was it a feeling of supreme exhaltation? Joy? infinite knowledge? I've felt all these things before, while under the influence of a certain beautiful, leafy green herb, but I KNOW what brought these feelings about, alteration of my brain chemistry. I've even felt two of them while sober. as for infinite knowledge, I'm ashamed to admit at several times I was cocky enough to feel this, and then quickly realized what an enormously arrogant twat I was being. Carl Sagan helped to teach me humility. That just because I thought myself lord of all knowledge in no way made it so. And that in order to feel justified in a belief, I needed proof. And one of his most pertinent teachings to this board "Extraordinary claims require Extraordinary evedince." I would consider the claim of the existance of god to qualify as "Extraordinary."
I vote YES http//underdogryan.blogspot.com/2005/09/should-men-fling-poo.html
It's the euphoric feeling you get when your mind shuts and you get dumbed down. Ignorance is bliss????
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"I'm an Idiot...SCORE!"
I recommend reading The Belief Engine over at CSICOP for an interesting explanation.
God gave us all personal experiences, we simply hate him so much we refuse to acknowledge them :roll:
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server.
Very much thank you for the link. It provided very useful information. Though the conclusions outlined there have been pure obviousness for me even in high school, I have never actually sat down to scrutinize and link all of them together in an organized manner. So reading that page was overall useful.
However, they weren't much useful in ellaborating an answer for the above question. I've understood the effect of these "experiences", I've understood the cause of these experiences, but the only question that remains is WHAT ARE these experiences? I mean how do they look like ?
Saganite mentioned joy, exhaltation, feeling of infinite knowledge. I'll take them one by one.
The feeling of joy is easy to imagine. Take a kid that's been "secretly" praying for God to give him a bike. His parents overhear that and buy him a bike. The mental link between "I pray" and "I get a bike" is formed... one or two more like this and the more powerful link between "I pray" and "I get what I want" is formed. To considetr that a personal experience is a bit far-fetched. I am joyful when I eat, when I drink rum, champagne or good wine, or when I have sex... but I can hardly call that "personal experiences" (maybe save for the sex part)
Exhaltation comes in the same way, but out of more powerful emotions related to the reward... like praying and your grandpa surviving the first cardiovascular cerebral strike (which actually happens to the vast majority of the cases, but due to ignorance you are oblivious to this fact).
OK, now the feeling of complete knowledge... explain that, please... because it's above my power to imagine what could bring about such a thing... (and do keep in mind that we are talking about theoretically normal brain chemistry)
Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/
Are Christians the only ones that have personal experiences within their religion???? What about Muslims, or Jews, or Hindus??
I've been wanting to bring up the topic of having a personal relationship with God when I'm with my Muslim friends to see what they say. I just don't know how to ask them though.
If I tell people the Gospel, it's not because I care about whether or not they go to heaven or hell. I do it because I honestly believe that this is God's will and purpose for my life... weeeeeeeee!!!
From my understanding, it's simply wishful thinking. :roll:
Reddragon, I admit being a bit biased here... of course you can talk even if you're not a Christian on this point... However, since it's Christianity which I deserted from, I found it easier to ask about God and JC... and you have to admit, the personal relationship theme is far more annoyingly publicised in christianity than anywhere else... think about JWs and other such pseudo-Christian sects...
MattShizzle... if it is, it is clearly of a very large-scale and interesting effect... I'm just wondering about the group hallucinations people have some times concerning religion...
Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/
See my post on personal experiences under the religiouse cow poop thread.
I'll try to reply to your original post later.
If I tell people the Gospel, it's not because I care about whether or not they go to heaven or hell. I do it because I honestly believe that this is God's will and purpose for my life... weeeeeeeee!!!
I know we were talking in my thread. I want to take a different approach here. Do you know what it's like to feel a pressence in the room with you but not see anything there??? In the experience there are at least three things 1. you know something is there(you percieve it with a sixth sense???), 2. there's allways a feeling attatched to the experience, and 3. there's your automatic, inner responce.
For ex.
If some dark demon(I doubt you guys believe in demons and other spirits) is in the room with you, 1. you know something is there, 2. you feel like you're in danger and you get chills going down the back of your neck, and 3. your automatic responce is usualy an attitude of fear.
With the pressence of God, 1. you know something is there, 2. you feel safe, and 3. your automatic responce is an attitude of joy.
A personal experience is good, but a personal relationship is better because a relationship deals with our interaction with God. In a relationship there is getting to know the person, spending time with the person, and two way conversation with the person. With God this ends up being reading the Bible in order to know God better and what He wants from us, spending time in the presence of God through prayer and worship, and two way conversation through prayer and listening to what God has to say to us.
Here is a Christian concept. It may seem like bull doodoo to you but here goes... We're tought that the more spirit you have the more sensetive you are to spiritual things. We're tought that when you read the Bible you're lituraly feeding and building up your spirit. From experience I know that with me that my sensetiveness to the pressence of God has been related to how long or how often I read the Bible. Also when I read the Bible it feels like I'm being filled with substance(it feels pretty good actualy), then when I go before God it's like He shakes up this substance and enhances the feeling of it. Later this substance seems make me want to do right and make right choices. It's a strange concept but it's a life changing experience. So you didn't feel anything, from my point of view it just means that you were empty.
If you were a parent would you give your child anything he/she asks for? I think this is how it is with God. He's not a genie who has to give you everything you ask for, LoL. I think peolpe forget this.
I also want to add that I had experiences before becoming a Christian. After I got baptised the experiences were even stronger though. The bible became even more exciting as it feels even more like I'm being filled with a substance as I'm reading it.
If I tell people the Gospel, it's not because I care about whether or not they go to heaven or hell. I do it because I honestly believe that this is God's will and purpose for my life... weeeeeeeee!!!
What type of hallucinations??? I'm trying to understand so I can see if I can relate to it. So far I haven't seen anything strange so maybe I'm amune(sp?) to these hallucinations.
If I tell people the Gospel, it's not because I care about whether or not they go to heaven or hell. I do it because I honestly believe that this is God's will and purpose for my life... weeeeeeeee!!!
I think it was the realization I was getting sick of having my eyes taped open and watching Bass and Rankin's "The Hobbit" over and over again and would pretty much sign up to anything to make the freakin' pain stop.
J/K.
That being said, I understand I'm posting to folks who are gonna mock me anyways, but I fail to see how that's different from RL, so here goes.
"It's like trying to explain an orgasm to your children when teaching them about the birds and the bees."
The phrase I usually hear is 'wellspring moment'. Sounds about right to me. And it came out of the frickin' blue when I was reading Romans 12 as an Agnostic. I think I was reading it for the purposes of arguing with a damned Christian. Sonuva...
I'm not much in mysticism or anything, being a formerly rational modern secularist and stuff, so I immediately thought I must be brainwashed. That scared hell out of me, too. Jeez, if records played backwards can cause kids to do unsocially acceptable things (how is that different than listening to some of them forward I wonder?
) just what kind of depraved genius could put subliminal messages in a tatty old book I bought in a Half Price Books? 
After months of self doubt that bordered on junior high Gothic in terms of 'pitiful', I came to the conclusion that I was mentally largely still the same person I was before, I just had a slightly different take on things. Although I did become more of a fan of nonfiction as opposed to fiction. History, you can't make up; if you could, you'd be in a padded room tranked to your eyeballs. Oh yes, and the ol' conscience got louder. And I started becoming really Leftist in a lot of matters. I guess when you take a book that says junk like "love your neighbor as yourself" fundamentally, you really are looking to a fast track of perpetual 'kumbayah' singing.
What really annoys me the most is that I can't actually hate anybody anymore. Oh, I can hate what they do, but I actually caught myself not being able to jump in on the hatefests on publicly reviled figures.
Hell, I was even upset for Ken Lay when he died. Folks around me who don't even believe in Cap Punishment were calling me a 'Hippie'. That really busts my chops, that does.
Perhaps I'm brainwashed. If so, whoever did it did a damned fine job. Considering that I'm surrounded nearly 16 hours a day with media that mocks my theology - openly - and I stopped going to the Church that musta 'brainwashed' me years ago (They's Southern Baptists. They were too liberal - theologically speaking - for me
)
It'd be nice to go back to being an Agnostic again. Life was much simpler. Certainly quieter. Perhaps that's why I like apologetics so much? A deep seated hope that I can be convinced that I'm an idiot?
Scott Holmes
Should anyone care, Holmes happens to be one of the theists I regular chat with. Yes we talk about plenty of other things, and yes he is a friend. I pointed him to this website because it seemed like all this site gets in terms of involved theists (save a few) are nut-jobs. I don't mind debating. I do mind under-represented factions in a debate. If a retarded kid tells me he knows Kung Fu and I kick his ass, it doesn't mean that I can take anyone else that knows Kung Fu or that he was a good representation of what a Kung Fu master can do. Know what I mean?
Anyway, I do hope people are civil to my friend. He's a ball-buster but he a good person and he's here for civilized discussion.
Just don't call him a hippy.
-=Grim=-
No Nyarlathotep, Know Peace.
Know Nyarlathotep, No Peace.
I don't mind being called "Hippie". I'm used to it now.
I still blow a gasket when folks talk about fiction being 'more truthful' than nonfiction. That's just stoopud.
Scott Holmes
I'm a Christian, but I've never had anything I would describe as such a "personal experience", and am, in fact, skeptical of people who tell me that they have had them. My belief that God exists really stems from the cosmic issues (why we're here, the expanding universe, and such) and I believe in Jesus because of the historical evidence, not because either one of them came to me and said, "yoo-hoo, Dave. Here I am!"
David
I prefer having personal experiences with my girlfriend...
she is actually real
It's good to see some quality people, even being Christian. So thanks GrimJesta for bringing Holmes in.
KingDavid8 - interesting opinion.
Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/
I know someone who said that they had a dream which lead to them to becoming a believer in Christ.
I for one never had it. except I did have a answered prayer the way I see it. I guess I have felt a pressense in my room before it was kind of a dark feeling and like he said I am here. which made me scared.
I have one friend who said that there are people who could do some type of trick, where there spirit (I guess gets out of the body and they can go to a place) not sure what its called but its like the phsycic stuff.
"God didn't send us a doctrine to learn, or a religion to live, or a philosophy to debate. He sent us a brother to love, a madman to trust, a servant to serve, and a mystery to embrace." ~Steven James, STORY
you're kidding, right?
Propably not. You guys focus so much on Christians that you're missing the big picture. While we(Christians) are focusing on God, there are other people focusing on other types of spiritual activity. Like the wicans and other people who are into witchcraft, spiritual guides, channlers, stuff like that. The guy above is talking about outer body experiences. Do a search on the internet on astral travel. There's other interedsting stuff to, like the martial arts' focus on the study of chi.
If I tell people the Gospel, it's not because I care about whether or not they go to heaven or hell. I do it because I honestly believe that this is God's will and purpose for my life... weeeeeeeee!!!
Hee you go:
http://skepdic.com/astralpr.html
your first example which you for some reason relate to "dark demons" (whatever they are) sounds like anxiety. When you are in a situation that you do not have control over, either unfamiliar, or because your home alone on a dark quiet night...or any situation where you generally have a lack of control, people get anxious, and so their awareness of their surroundings increases (you know something is there)...every little creak you hear will be exaggerated and just further heighten your anxiety level...of course what is anxiety really? Fear....it sounds like with all 3 examples you give, chills down your next, probably racing heart, things to this extent, this is anxiety, a natural human response to unfamiliar surroundings. This is not caused by the demon that lives in your closet. Some people even have anxiety disorders, when this happens where there is no justified cause. I've dealt with my fair share of anxiety, without the use of god's medicine.
as for your second example, well, a god-ified way to express a state of contentness....a state with no anxiety, not relatively happy or sad, just generally not feeling insecure about your surroundings...
I don't see how any of these feelings would be related to any sort of god, however.
The power of the mind is an incredible thing.
*Christian Praying to God*
God can you hear me?
:Long Pause:
God can I have a bike?
:Long Pause:
He must have said yes.
Christians make me laugh.
Yes. You definately nailed it. Wishful thinking can feel very very good.
I still indulge sometimes but at least now I know the difference between wishful thinking and reality.
-It is the same as fantasizing about a love with some one you don't know personaly or some one you think you know. Dreaming of how it will be. It is living a dream.
It is wishful feeling.
I hope I do not get flamed, but I think this is partly why women are more predisposed to a spiritual side than men are. I think.
I dedicate this song to Jesus.
Love hurts
love scares
love wounds and mares any heart
Not tough nor strong enough to take a lot of pain
Take a lot of pain
love is like a cloud
holds a lot of rain.
Love hurts
love hurts
I'm young I know but even so
I know a thing or two I've learned from you
I've really learned a lot
really learned a lot.
Love is like a stove
burns you when it's hot.
Love hurts
love hurts
some fools rave of happiness
Blissfulness
togetherness
some fools fool themselves
I guess
But they're not fooling me I know it isn't true
No
it isn't ture. Love is just a lie made to make you blue.
Love hurts
love hurts.
Love hurts
love scares
love wounds and mares any heart...
This is how I felt after having had my nose rubbed in all of what is in the bible.
Good stuff there, m'boy.
Guys, this really sucks.... What type of response could you say to someone who just says "You've just never had a personal/religious experience"? I mean, what can you really even say to that?
Wilson: "We were afraid that if you found out you solved a case with absolutely no medical evidence you'd think you were God." House: "God doesn't limp."
Christians hate apostates and fear us. We are evil liers. Apostacy is more revolting to a Christian than atheism is. That is for sure.
It is because they are in love. I say bad things about thier love. Their love is not the knight in shining armor that they believe in. It hurts and on some level they see what you are pointing out. Denial does not shut out reason all together and deep down they do not like the bad scripture that atheists or apostates point out to them.
I was in love with Jesus. Just like many of them.