Out of body religious experiences

[TomOfSweden]

Took a while to come up with an answer to this. Sorry for that.

It is, but does that make it part of my personal belief? I happen to believe in free will, which negates omnipotence. If God knows what I am going to do then there is no free will. This debate has actually raged in Christendom for centuries, and is based on only a few Scriptures that ignore a lot of Scriptures that counter it.

Well, I'm impressed now. I could argue against humanities free will but I think we might need another thread for it.

I think that what I accept is that my faith appears to be arbitrary to an outside observer. Going back to your experience with your grandmothers voice, if she started giving you advice on what would be happening in the future, and you started following it, it might appear to me that your actions were arbitrary. That does not make them so.

That's a fair point. So how does this relate to you? What happened to you that makes your faith less than arbitrary? If I may ask?

Just to be perfectly clear here, we could imagine talking to my grandmother in my head and getting very valid advice. My Id could be in conflict with my Super ego represented by my grandmother. How do I know the voice of my grandmother isn't just my Super Ego reminding me about cultural constraints my Id would rather ignore? We have quite a collection of beings in our brains. Hearing voices in our heads is not particularly strange or supernatural. Neither is getting good advice in our heads. I could very well imagine that a person who is Christian will dress up their Super Ego as "god". I've given my ordinary appearance of Super Ego a physical look and sound, so I'm very aware of the capacities of our mind. It's just that my Super Ego looks like a smaller and usually miffed copy of me, with a whiny voice....but that's a side note.

My experience with my grandmothers voice was just wonky though. I heard a reply she usually said, but in a silent room without context. I always get this warm fuzzy feeling when I think of her. I still love her so much and she'll be with me always. But I still think she's pushing up daisies, even though she was both very Christian and hard core redder than red communist. I like the Voodoo belief in the afterlife. A person is still alive as a spirit as long as we keep their memory alive and tell stories about them. Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit….

How? My insights have evolved my faith from believing what is taught in the pulpits of American churches to what I now believe. If I have more insights, then I will revise my beliefs. If someone ever manages to prove to me that I am wrong I will listen to them also.

I’d say you’re doing the same error here as any fundamentalist. You put the burden of proof on your opponents but formulate the test in such a way as to make it impossible for anybody to prove you wrong. But the problem is off-course that the same test which makes it impossible to prove you wrong also permits you from making a rational/logical leap of faith.

But I wouldn’t call you a fundamentalist by any stretch. To me it sounds more like you have a very modern and enlightened view of the world and you just chose to call that Christianity. I’m guessing because it was your starting point. Nothing wrong with that. Labels are useful for understanding anything. But you seem to mix in arcane Christian concepts which doesn’t really seem to fit into your world view. Like, god created the universe for a reason and then you point out that we don’t know this?!? Your faith seems a bit unclear to me.

The fact that you use the, (to god) completely unrelated Bible and chose to use that as a base for your morals I’m guessing is also based on your upbringing. Am I missing something? Is there a link between the Christian notion of god and the Bible?

It actually sounds like we’re saying similar things but using different languages. My language is based on what I learned in philosophy class and your language seems to be based on what you’ve picked up through religious literature. To quote Lenin, “everything is connected to everything else”. Off-course the modern paradigm of thought spreads and is accepted even by those who oppose it.

I agree, at least in principle. In fact, I would challenge anyone to prove to me that number 2 is supported in the Bible.
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He he Touche. You got me there. Yeah, it’s hard not to mix up Christians with Christianity and the Bible. Not to mention the Pope. Guilty as charged.

One of the things that I have found to be unique about the Bible as a history is that it records the foibles and defeats of the kings as well as their triumphs. Never were the kings of Israel portrayed as being godlike in power and ability, and they lost battles and wars more than once.

Can you point out the problem with the moral and ethical guidelines and rules? It is the basis of most western laws after all. I prefer it to the strict Islamic interpretation of the Koran myself.

Well, I’d rather not. I don’t like the Bible as a moral and ethical guide because it is old. It uses arcane language aimed at a, (to us) alien culture and has a tendency to be a bit vague in a bad way. When it comes to ethical and moral treatises I think it’s good if who ever is writing it, tries to aim for clarity.

I’m well aware of situations where the writer is being very careful about hammering in for the time uncomfortable “truths” and therefore being vague about certain aspects. Which I certainly am aware might have been wise for the Bible and probably did Christianity a lot of good at its inception. But now we’re so far removed from the context of the Bible that for us it becomes nothing but a problem.

We could have endless debates about what the authors meant with almost every aspect. I read somewhere that in the USA alone there’s at least one new book every day being published which relates to interpreting or discussing the Bible. Since the context has changed so much you can’t read the Bible today and understand how it was the foundation of our legal system, or anything else in our culture today. I’d say you’re better off studying the history of ideas.

The fact that it is written as a story I have no problems with. Fictional or not. Often it is easier to understand moral issues when they’re put in a context and poetically embellished.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is written in a similar style to the Bible but doesn’t even have nearly as many people trying to interpret it. Even though Nietzsche is a tad bit more contemporary and I would have though would be a smidgeon more relevant for people today.

My whole point is that it is hard to discuss a books moral and ethical message if it isn’t clear. Apart from that I have no problems with the Bible, whatever it is trying to say.