Have you ever had a "religious experience"?

MINISTERofTRUTH said:
You have posted your link several times. Do not continue to do it or it may be considered spamming the forum.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Lisa Simpson


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[qimg]http://www.outersecrets.com/real/image/forum/140888.gif[/qimg]

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It just clicked. This guy's from Bungie. Like ILoveBees. He's promoting Halo 3 with viral marketing.
 
Lonewulf said:
Yes



Yes.



I don't know how widespread it is.



On the contrary.

Many atheists on this thread seem to have had a sensation of euphoria much like what you might call the "experience". Yet they are still atheists.


Curious. Maybe it doesn't guarantee certainty as much as you thought.
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It's not just a sensation of euphoria. And most of these postings I have read describe something not remotely like it. I'm not trying to devalue their experiences; I'm just saying that they are not the same thing.

Verum.
 
verum said:
It's not just a sensation of euphoria. And most of these postings I have read describe something not remotely like it. I'm not trying to devalue their experiences; I'm just saying that they are not the same thing.

Verum.
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How can you possibly know that?
 
How can you possibly know that?

The vast majority are hardly serious, are they?Of the few that are, I have not seen any accounts yet that sound like an experience of the "Power that made the worlds". I did say that I don't mean to devalue anyone else's experiences, but they don't seem to place much value on them themselves.
Another point, I said the experience gave certainty; I didn't say that ten years later a person couldn't doubt . It is possible to doubt anything real. as good old Descartes pointed out.

Verum.
 
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verum said:
How can you possibly know that?

The vast majority are hardly serious, are they?Of the few that are, I have not seen any accounts yet that sound like an experience of the "Power that made the worlds". I did say that I don't mean to devalue anyone else's experiences, but they don't seem to place much value on them themselves.
Another point, I said the experience gave certainty; I didn't say that ten years later a person couldn't doubt . It is possible to doubt anything real. as good old Descartes pointed out.

Verum.
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This is starting to sound like an elaborate "No True Scotsman" to me: it's not a "real" religious experience if it didn't make you believe in god.
 
verum said:
How can you possibly know that?

The vast majority are hardly serious, are they?Of the few that are, I have not seen any accounts yet that sound like an experience of the "Power that made the worlds". I did say that I don't mean to devalue anyone else's experiences, but they don't seem to place much value on them themselves.
Another point, I said the experience gave certainty; I didn't say that ten years later a person couldn't doubt . It is possible to doubt anything real. as good old Descartes pointed out.

Verum.
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Well, for me, I placed a lot of value on it for years. And it was absolutely of the "Power that made the world" variety, and I had a lot of certainty for a very long time.

As far as doubting things that are real goes, sure. It's also possible for an otherwise sane person to have a psychotic break when under enough stress and lacking enough sleep, and for their perception of reality to thereafter mold into their expectations for an indefinite period of time. The brain can be a quirky organ like that sometimes.
 
kellyb said:
Well, for me, I placed a lot of value on it for years. And it was absolutely of the "Power that made the world" variety, and I had a lot of certainty for a very long time.

As far as doubting things that are real goes, sure. It's also possible for an otherwise sane person to have a psychotic break when under enough stress and lacking enough sleep, and for their perception of reality to thereafter mold into their expectations for an indefinite period of time. The brain can be a quirky organ like that sometimes.
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May I ask you what took your certainty away? One thing I have noticed on this forum is that people seem to be atheists primarily because of what they see as logical argument and scientific advance. I am quite surprised that so far there have been few arguments from the suffering in the world, which is what I usually hear.
 
verum said:
May I ask you what took your certainty away? One thing I have noticed on this forum is that people seem to be atheists primarily because of what they see as logical argument and scientific advance. I am quite surprised that so far there have been few arguments from the suffering in the world, which is what I usually hear.
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Actually, I've seen that on this forum at least more than once. There's usually multiple reasons for posters on here being atheists. It usually isn't just one thing.
 
verum said:
May I ask you what took your certainty away? One thing I have noticed on this forum is that people seem to be atheists primarily because of what they see as logical argument and scientific advance. I am quite surprised that so far there have been few arguments from the suffering in the world, which is what I usually hear.
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It was a little bit of a lot of things. The logical and scientific arguments, the slow realisation that the god of the OT would be a better devil than a god considering the commands to commit genocides and the view of women as property (etc.), the suffering in the world...a lot of stuff like that.
I also noticed how deeply other people believed in their own personal experiences with "the paranormal", and that they couldn't all be true. I also realised that I'd been indoctrinated into a belief in god in childhood, which might have predisposed me to experience what I experienced. So when I gave myself permission to explore alternative explanations for my own experiences, in an objective way, they seemed quite plausible. Knowing that there was a chance that it wasn't real, I felt intellectually dishonest clinging to "faith". So I decided that, in order to know if there really was a god, I had to seriously consider the possibility that there might not be.
 
i had an experience that i positively knew was from god when i was 13 and finally stood up to my dad, i felt powerful and invulnerable really as if god was holding my hand and telling me everything was ok, i felt peaceful and sure of myself and the whole thing was started over the verse about coming to bring not peace but a sword, i don't remember where i found the verse but it felt like a sign to me of how to end the circumstances i was in
i felt as if after years of praying for help and then just for comfort that i finally knew the secret, god helped me when i helped myself and if anything he was only there to watch over me not interfere in my life so it was up to me what my life became
as i got older i started reading more on god and religion and my belief got smaller and smaller till it was gone,then once i was grown and started to really pay attention to things other than myself the pain and horror of others i met just cemented my non belief as i could not reconcile a father god with the things i saw and heard
looking back on that episode i believe i had a psychotic break and every thing i knew i felt was from my own mind saying enough was enough the only wonder is that i didn't actually kill my dad while the episode lasted

gypsey
 
tsg said:
This is starting to sound like an elaborate "No True Scotsman" to me: it's not a "real" religious experience if it didn't make you believe in god.
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Um, isn't that kinda the definition of "religious"? Amazing and wonderful experiences that don't involve some kind of religious belief are by definition not religious.

Posters on this thread have been describing non-religious experiences, since they did not involve God. However, like "real" religious experiences they were profoundly moving and emotional. So in essence they were experiences that were similar to what religious people describe as a "religious experience" except that they didn't involve God, and were therefore not religious.

I think I'm starting to make no sense.
 
I had what I would consider a religious experience as a child. It increased the belief I had in god at the time, but I have since discounted it and have become an atheist.

I'm not sure if it passes the true scottsman test on this or not...
 
arthwollipot said:
Um, isn't that kinda the definition of "religious"? Amazing and wonderful experiences that don't involve some kind of religious belief are by definition not religious.

Posters on this thread have been describing non-religious experiences, since they did not involve God. However, like "real" religious experiences they were profoundly moving and emotional. So in essence they were experiences that were similar to what religious people describe as a "religious experience" except that they didn't involve God, and were therefore not religious.

I think I'm starting to make no sense.
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A discussion about the value of religious experiences is inevitably going to center on the emotional and physical effects of those experiences being evidence of god.

If it can be shown that emotional experiences that don't result in a belief in god are similar to, or even indistinguishable from, those described as "religious experiences", it weakens the case that religious experiences are caused by the hand of god and offers a more mundane explanation that they may simply just be the result of brain chemistry that is attributed to something else. Automatically discounting those experiences that don't result in a belief in god to support the claim that religious experiences are the result of god is no different from supporting the claim that no Scotsmen eat their porridge with honey by discounting all Scotsmen who eat their porridge with honey as not being "true" Scotsmen. The important bit is whether or not the effects (emotional and physical) of the two are similar, not what the end result of the experience was. It's a form of cherry picking: the data which does not support the claim is discounted because it doesn't support the claim.
 
To be perfectly honest, I never have, and I never want to. I don't like it when people mess with my head, and I would absolutely hate to have any supernatural power trying that.

If I want to feel uplifting euphoria or a power to move the world, I go surfing. (And the surf is supposed to be pumping this weekend!)
 
arthwollipot said:
Um, isn't that kinda the definition of "religious"? Amazing and wonderful experiences that don't involve some kind of religious belief are by definition not religious.

Posters on this thread have been describing non-religious experiences, since they did not involve God. However, like "real" religious experiences they were profoundly moving and emotional. So in essence they were experiences that were similar to what religious people describe as a "religious experience" except that they didn't involve God, and were therefore not religious.

I think I'm starting to make no sense.
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Actually, I think you're making a lot of sense...Except that I would disagree that they are "similar" experiences; I would prefer to say , "overwhelimg" or something on those lines.

Verum.
 
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tsg said:
This is starting to sound like an elaborate "No True Scotsman" to me: it's not a "real" religious experience if it didn't make you believe in god.
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But, isn't that really the only workable definition?

Hans
 
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