HelenM

No...it can be immediate.

If you pray and your life is changed immediately you don't need to go read a bunch of literature before you want to go tell everyone you know all about it.

If you got a check for a million dollars you wouldn't have to take a while to think "Hmmm...is this good? Maybe I'd better read up on the benefits of this".

If the doctor's office calls and says the tumor was benign, you don't need to comtemplate for a while whether that's good news or not and whether to mention it to your friends.

There are some things that you just know, which are immediate.

Helen

Hopeful Monsters

PaulPritchard - thanks. I was brought up a Catholic in England by immigrant parents (Asian Indian and Southern Irish) and have always been utterly ignorant of the Church of England - never thought of it that way - High Anglican sort of goes far enough around to meet up with Roman Catholic. That makes sense.

There seems to be a long - and still current - tradition of Anglicans converting to Catholicism - there's loads more examples than I have given above.

As for the OP: I suppose there are austere versions of religion (Lutheran, Methodist) and no frills ones like Church of England - then more emotional branches like evangelical Catholic and different personality types feel drawn to each.

Cat Stevens felt totally struck by Islam, as if he found what he�d been looking for, for a long time. Oh well.

demoninho

I know the whole meme deal is still a bit controversial but try reading the following link. I think it sheds a lot of light on why normal people can believe really weird things.

JHamblin

Helen, first let me say that if I insulted you with my previous post, that was not my intention. In response to this quote, you seem to be talking about two very different things. The first refers to a supposed cause and effect whereas the second simply talks about an effect. In the first case you imply that you would "tell everyone you know" about the prayer, whereas in the second case, you would just tell people about the check. To me, it would not be at all clear that the prayer caused the effect, but of course that is where theists and atheists differ.

I'm getting a little off my original point, though. Try this on for size. Let's say someone (we'll call her Jane) goes to church, says "here are a bunch of happy people getting along, I could go for this" and joins the church. At what point does Jane go from "Going to church and believe in <whatever> has made a big difference in my life and could do the same in yours" (a common theist sentiment, and one you seem to agree with) to "the earth is only 6000 years old and I will argue with you until my eyes bleed until you believe the same as me"?

JH

HelenM

That's exactly right. My response was to excreationist, who was inferring that there would be nothing to tell right away - I don't think that's always true. But since he was responding to you that does make my response indirectly to you, I suppose. Anyway, I wasn't offended - not a problem.

Oh, this restatement makes more sense to me than "when does someone go from being a theist to being a Methodist" which I think happens at the same time, generally.

Now you're asking when/how a theist gains knowledge of all the associated doctrines/beliefs that go with their faith. That would be the same way anyone learns anything; gradually to some extent at the rate one chooses because it depends how hard one wants to study.

So, you could do a degree (in the U.S. anyway, so it seems) quickly or less quickly depending on how many accredited courses you take at a time; similarly, a Christian gains knowledge of the associated doctrines/beliefs of their faith according to how many books they read and Bible classes they attend - and also according to whether they care about doctrine and how old the earth is, etc.

Helen

excreationist

That still involves you stopping to pray which is kind of like reflecting... and I'm talking about people who are "shouting at the top of their lungs that their Truth is the one and only Truth". Maybe this could happen as soon as a person is converted I guess... it would be more likely if they are amongst others who are doing the same thing.

In your examples, the person can be more or less totally sure that what they heard is true. And they were worrying about it beforehand so there was some previous built-up suspense... In conversions they probably came along due to curiousity or something. I guess it might be possible for someone to instantly deeply believe what someone is saying about an unfamiliar religion and instantly change into a ridiculously enthusiastic convert... but I suspect that doesn't happen very often.

HelenM

I don't think you understand about conversion. It can be intensely emotional and quite dramatic - in which case, yes, the person is completely sure something life-changing has happened to them.

And yes, there is a previous 'build-up', if you will, in that conversion confers forgiveness on someone who has struggled with guilt previously.

You may suspect that dramatic conversions are rare but my sense is that you're simply unaware of what conversion involves; it's not just an intellectual decision to agree with some information. If it were you'd probably be right that it's a more gradual moving towards certainty and then a desire to share that with others. But, it's not.

Here's a description of a conversion like many I've heard or read, that I just now found on the Internet:

That's typical of conversion stories I've heard. I suppose you could say "he made that up after the fact - it wasn't really like that". But I don't see that you have any basis for thinking it didn't happen as dramatically as the author described.

Not all conversion accounts are like this, but many that I've heard/read are.

Helen

Hopeful Monsters

Helen M

I would stake my life on it that Kevin�s Testimony falls right into the event type I cite above.

A moment of mind disturbance or mental collapse and off Kevin goes to Jesus! :notworthy

Edited to add:

Furthermore � put �ramachandran religious� into google

- and you find loads of stuff like this � at last they�re onto what�s really going on with all this �revelation� and �direct experience of God� rubbish.

Seizures and the Sight of God

HelenM

You're entitled to your opinion. I see no evidence in many cases that the person's dramatic conversion was part of a nervous breakdown.

But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given who posts on IIDB, to find you and others here attempting to explain and interpret conversions as a) as some sort of malfunction in the person who converted b) in terms of something you believe is a real phenomenon.

Helen

excreationist

HelenM:
I was talking about the period of time between the person being evangelized to and when they are enthuastic about the kind of thing they heard.

In your example, the guy talked to a Christian the day before. And the guy already believed in God. Then slept on it. People actually do some thinking during their sleep - and the thinking they do is directed by their brain/subconscious - not really by their conscious desires of the previous day. Then he felt a kind of deep joy and connectedness, which I had talked about earlier. BTW I have felt the same feelings before - I felt in a state of bliss for days on end where the world seemed like heaven with no feelings of frustration. Then I was hospitalized for what they say was a "manic episode". That story doesn't say anything about him enthusiastically screaming at the top of his lungs - (it talks about crying like a baby though)... on the day of his conversion he seems pretty introverted. It was only a couple *days* later that he had enough courage to visit a nearby chapel! That's hardly the kind of enthusiasm I'm talking about that involves screaming at the top of a person's lungs!

This was JHamblin's original quote:
I was under the impression that JHamblin was talking about a hypothetical person who listens to some religious teaching that they didn't formerly believe in, then instantly starts being super-enthusiastic about it. (In an extroverted way) Maybe that's not what JHamblin meant, but that's what I had assumed he meant.

"That morning I was very emotional. I suddenly burst into tears. I began to weep like I had never wept before. These were strange tears....I had never experienced joyful feelings like these before."

Well he sounds pretty emotionally unstable. And before that, his world-view was quite bleak:
BTW, what about "manic episodes" - they can be triggered by stress or sometimes by nothing really in particular... and I think sometimes people don't have a recurring problem... it could have been a temporary thing.... and people can get the same kinds of feelings when they join a cult, etc... (in my case I believed my feelings were linked to my devotion to Ken Keyes's early philosophies) it doesn't prove those feelings are from God...

Well that explaination seems to explain things, so there isn't much reason to drop that explanation and assume those feelings came from God. (Since I don't believe in God anyway)