David B

You talk to god, too?

Did he tell you anything about Lars being the new messiah?

I have meditation experiences, too, but not of anyone talking to me, more a deep feeling of unity with life, the universe and everything.

That was, of course, what I had been led to expect. Suggestibility can be a powerful thing - especially to people who don't think they are subject to it.

http://www.suggestibility.org/index.htm

David B

Transplanar

The only way such a thing could really be credible is if a person spoke with God (presumably the Christian God) without ever having any prior knowlege of his existence. If a tribesman in the middle of the Amazon rainforest spontaneously witnessed the Christian God and thereafter produced a Christian sect without intervention from any natural source, then I might be more inclined to take such things seriously.

Larsguy47

Right. But that doesn't mean God doesn't talk to them also, only I don't think he'd represent himself as a false god. But yes, I believe the Jews were chosen to have that connection with the "true God."


No, since that "indoctrination" would not include my experience. I've been indoctrinated to believe the Bible is true and it is or it isn't, but what I experienced was in the context of what the Bible had prophesied so it adds credibility to the experience and suggests I'm not simply hallucinating.

Well, I think mine is a little different. I'm actually mentioned and described rather specifically in the Bible. I don't think anyone else can claim that.

LG47

David B

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I seem to remember that both David Koresh and Charles Manson made similar claims.

There was also, some guy who lived near me about a hundred years ago, who had two cult centres, and got a lot of married women to fuck him, sign their worldly goods over to him, stuff like that.

He got some sort of ceremony going at which he was going to be ascended into heaven, as I recall reading about in old local newspapers.

But didn't actually go anywhere.

And no doubt there have been many others with similar claims.

Not that I'm suggesting that you aren't a nice guy. I don't think delusions of being the messiah are confined to assholes.

But induction, while short of being proof in a strong sense of the term, tells me that all the messianic claims so far have been false, and see no reason to treat yours seriously.

David B (found the cloud picture particularly unconvincing)

-Jay-

Check out the late Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Sagan makes a very readable (and plausible) case for many such encounters being sleep paralysis, with components of the event being heavily influenced by the experiences and expectations of the subject. In the past, ghosts and demons have been frequent players, in more modern times, aliens. Strong religious convictions can quite reasonably enter into the equation as well.

If you'd already become convinced that you were specifically mentioned in the Bible, it isn't a big leap to suppose that such a conviction could find its way into what is, essentially, a very vivid dream.

(Sagan's a good read, anyway, even apart from any applicability he may have to your original question.)

regards,

NinJay

axolotl

Really? You are personally mentioned and described in the Bible? Would you mind telling us just exactly where in the Bible you are mentioned/described?

<I'm holding my breath for this one ...>

FatherMithras

People don't speak with god. They have personal, psychologically explainable delusions and altered states that let them believe they have. I've similarly had very deep, emotional, transforming experiences with "God". guess what? I know they were fake now. Reason and logic trump magic every time.


People persist in their delusions. They will find anything to reinforce it and ignore everything that disagrees with it. Nothing new or special. Just well understood, and very sad psychological conditions that lead people into very delusional beliefs.

FatherMithras

Wrong. The demon talked to you. A demon in fact, wrote the Bible, and only the elect get to know the truth from the real god.

That explanation is just as good, and just as ridiculous. You wouldn't know either way. Parsimony omg.

You don't have pictures, just like you don't have a book. If you did, you'd show us. More delusion.

Same thing people have said for a thousand plus years. And you are aware that if you're delusional, you'd be unable to rationally determine the fact?

Ubercat

Quote:
The lady who drowned her children claims that god told her to. Are you claiming that he did?

Why don't you think your god would tell a woman to murder her own kids? He told Abraham to murder his, then he said "April Fools! Just tuggin' your leg man, chill! Aw, come on Abe. You thought it was a good one. Admit it!"

Maybe biblegod was about to let her in on the joke and just got distracted by some christian who was praying about his car keys. Then he went to tell her, but was too late, so he just backed off and let the cops have her. It wouldn't be the first time he abandoned those he promised not to.

-Ubercat

Gawen

Here we go again.

When we come to discuss the role experience plays in someone's belief in the existence of God, the issues are not so clear-cut. One cannot step inside another person's mind and assess the thoughts/experiences they have to see if they match up with reality. Furthermore, if a person claims to see or experience God, while others in the same place do not, can we say they are deluded or imagining their experience?

What is the nature of religious experience? Primarily we are not talking about something that can be verified by simple observation. Someone who claims to see God in the world cannot answer the question, "Where do you see God?" by pointing their finger and saying, "Over there!" Rather we are talking about an inner perception or a feeling. This takes the religious experience argument for the existence of God out of the realm of rational enquiry and into the realm of subjective experience.

What are the odds of a Christian having a religious experience of Confucius? How about a Hindu having a religious experience of the evil Malaysian spirit called BaJang?

We live in a religiously ambiguous world. The world is capable of being understood in a religious or naturalistic way. We can see things as either being divinely influenced (in a direct or indirect way) or the natural outworking of events that have nothing to do with God (or the Divine) whatsoever. Can we truly argue that some people are justified in interpreting their experiences religiously while others are justified in presenting alternative explanations for the same phenomenon? It all depends on one's point-of-view. In the end none of us can stand apart from the world we live in and view things from a neutral perspective. If we want to believe an experience is religious then we will argue the case but if we want to believe an experience has other ways of being understood, then we will adopt a skeptical position.
In the end it seems both approaches are valid. Or are they?

One needs remember that religious experiences are significantly influenced by culture. For example, it is extremely improbable that a Christian will have a religious experience involving Brahman (Hinduism). Christians are likely to claim that they have had an experience or are aware of God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit rather than anything else. Likewise Hindus, Muslims and Jews are unlikely to have religious experiences that involve God in the Christian sense or Jesus or the Holy Spirit unless one has adopted a wider perspective (Inclusivism) and even then one will tend to be tradition-centered. This leads to the supposition that those having religious experiences are not really having an experience of the divine per se (were that possible anyway) but are merely experiencing the world religiously.

Those who wish to claim they are having a real experience of the divine must contend with the issue of which divine figures they are experiencing. If they claim it is an experience of the divine within their own tradition or cultural presupposition, others must suspect that their experience is not void of a natural psychological bias. If so, such religious experience comes suspiciously close to the realm of psychological experience and that these experiences may be or may not be sincerely desired and thus caused to be a mental saturation of a specific religious imagery, text, outlook or worldview. It is unlikely a committed atheist will experience the world religiously.

The claim to be having a religious experience looks suspiciously 'human' when looked at from the angle of deciding how one knows one is having a religious experience of God (or the Divine). For instance, why do people presume their experience is good? Unless they have a direct un-mediated out-of-body encounter with God (which, I understand is not possible because humans are still 'trapped' in the mental realm by language) they are merely presuming their encounter to be from a good source. They are using a human-centered ethical criterion of good in order to interpret a religious experience.

Could it be that people are being deceived by an evil spirit (or another god/gods) and being led astray? No, they are still presuming their encounter to be from a bad/evil source. Why do people presume that good things come from a good source (God) or a bad/evil source (Satan)? Unless one presupposes that good things come from a good 'spiritual' source there is no way of knowing. Even subsequent 'evidence' ('cause and effect') may be or may become corrupted. Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus (and many other believers) may contend that their experience of the goodness of God (or the Divine) concurs with the testimony of their Scripture. They can't all be having a real experience of their God, or can they? This also leads us back to the notion that religious experience is colored by one's culture and tradition and therefore human, rather than divinely, centered.

In the end, claiming religious experience as a proof for the existence of God creates more questions and problems than it seeks to answer. Furthermore, the fact that one claims to have had a religious experience does not mean that God exists. Just because a person believes God is there (epistemology) does not mean God is actually there (ontology). We need something more than the 'feeling' of religious experience for verification of that.

{{bold=Donnmathan}}

Isn't just about every opinion tainted in favour of the one expressing it? However, as I said above, so are religious experiences also tainted in favour of the one claiming the experience.

Correct in-so-far that MY experiences in life would seem to back me up.
When you can show me evidence of any god, deity, entity...when you can say "I just saw God...right there!!!" And I can look where you point and see that god...well, then you will have taught me something new. I simply do not need to search out an omni-everything God to prove it exists when it can so much easier do so.

Hmmm...let me see if I can help you out. However, it may not be airtight. But the odds, I wager, will be tainted in favour of my opinion. But this will teeter on what you define as "god".