Out of body religious experiences

[Rhabbi]

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

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

So could I, I am just pointing out the obvious discrepency between free will and omniscience. Though I can redefine omniscience in such a way that free will exists if I want to play Devil's Advocate.

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….

My faith is intensly personal, mostly because I was not looking for it. One of the reasons I like to point to C. S. Lewis is that his journey to faith was similar to mine. He described God as "The Hound of Heaven," and said that God loved Him enough to drag him "Kicking and screaming through the gates of heaven."

His journey and mine were similar because I had given up finding God, even though I had decided that Christianity was the faith that made the most sense, I was unable to make the leap of faith to believe. Then my life hit a low point, and I tried bargaining with God. Surprisingly enough, that did not work. I say surprisingly because there are a lot of testimonies about how God helps people out of jams like an indulgent father.

My life went from bad to worse, yet I struggled on. Then one day, God reached down and got my attention. He basically told me that He does not make deals to get people to follow Him, they either do it in the midst of trouble, or they do not. That is their choice, and mine. He drug me into His house, made me believe, than let me choose. Very personal thing, but not the sort of testimony that inspires others to believe, yet I do.

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.

You are not the only one that has trouble getting my faith. I do not trust anyone to define it for me, thus it confuses all those who want to tell me what to believe. I try to follow the Bible because, to me, that is the book through which God most cleraly reveals Himself. You are talking about a being that I have as much trouble understanding as an ant would have understanding me.

The problem with fundamentalists, imo, is that they think they have the answers to all the questions. I know I do not, and that makes my faith even harder to define. I believe in God because of a personal experience I had, but he does not always answer my questions.

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.

We are, the language is different is all. I am not defending Christianity as much as I am promoting the existence of God. Most of the accepted tenets of Christianity are not supported in the Bible.

My interpretation of God is based on my understanding of the Bible, and of nature itself. I find myself in conflict with a lot of people who want to paint God in a different light than I see Him. I try not to accept something just because everyone lese does. This makes me quite a few enemies along the way.

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.

You also tend to lump me in with what you think of as Christians, at least you used to as I know you do not think of me that way now.

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.

Maybe it is confusing because we try to read it the wrong way. There really are only a few "rules" in it, most of it is about our reaction to those rules.

I think the concept of god and Christian thinking is very well anchored in our consciousness. So it's not a proof of the existence of god. It's only proof of how spread Christian faith is. Which if you apply the theories of group-think could be used as evidence against the existence of god.

Applying the theories of group-think usually ends up with me trying to swallow my tail.

My answer to thrall was based more on the observation that despite her oppostition to God's very existence she still calls out to him. I recognize this as cultural conditioning more than an argument for God's existence. It just goes to show that cultural conditioning is one of the strongest forces at play in alll our lives, and serves as an example of how difficult it is to overcome bias when making a judgement.

We read the Bible through our cultural conditioning, and impose that on our interpretation of it, and thus try to fit God into what is comfortable for us. I strive, with what I hope is a bit of success, not to do this.