Out of body religious experiences

[TomOfSweden]

I guess I was not clear enough here. I described the event that caused me to believe in the existence of God despite my doubts. This event is the part that is personal, not the chain of reasoning. I am willing to lay it out for you, though not to debate it because I will admit that I cannot prove God's existence. I just learned a bit about a few different scientific disciplines and decided that "Random Chance" has no more validity as an explanation than anything else. This is what opened the way for God to step in and prove his existence to me in a personal manner.

You obviously think you can prove god's existence. Since you believe it. I think that what you mean is that you don't know of how to translate that experience in a way so will make it as convincing to others as it was to you? "Proof" only means something which can be used to prove a case, for yourself or others. Without proof, we will believe nothing. Religious or not. Because without proof we will never have even thought the thought from which to take the leap of faith. There's other types of proof than scientific proof. The handy thing with scientific proof is off-course that the rules for how to judge it are a lot less vague.

But still. You're not saying much.

This is a bit shakier to explain. I know that when I read the Bible I get closer to God. does this mean that this is the only way for God to interact with man? No. I never made that claim, and never will. God is capable of doing whatever he wants as far as talking to His creation. I believe a lot of His communication comes from the very foundations of creation. The Bible actually talks about this process in a few places, and this is why I make the connection between God and the Bible, not between God and the "Christian" interpretation of the Bible.

Yeah, but what's the link? How does it work? What makes you believe the Christian Bible got it any more right than the Bhagavad Ghita? If liberally interpreted they're the same text. Since all gods are reincarnations of Brahma, they have exactly the same myth of creation.

We all do. going from my education and reading to a belief in God was not an easy one. First I had to learn that science did not have the answers. The more I studied the details of creation, even of a simple cell, the less that I was able to believe in the concept that the long string of improbable chances could occur. Having blind faith in science is as silly as having blind faith in anything else. This did not immediately lead me to believe in God, but it opened the door to the possibility of something else.

I'm disappointed. Now your pulling this down to a kindergarten level again.

Yeah.....but that's not much of an argument for anything. Saying that science doesn't have the answers, doesn't really strengthen the case for theism does it? We've been over this before. You're treating it like there's a finite number of choices of faith. There isn't. And just because science doesn't have the answer now, doesn't mean it'll never have the answer.

...and it's also pretty arrogant to say that just because you can't understand a theory, that it doesn't have merit. Evolution isn't random and anybody saying it hasn't a clue. We had you eat your words before here on the Library.

I think your logical error is that you equate life on earth with this life. A bit like rolling a million sixes in a row on a dice. Sure, that's highly unlikely. But if anywhere along the line you would have rolled something else, we still would have life. It would just have looked different. There's no scientific reason to assume life springing up on earth is a particularly unlikely event.

Gravity effects matter on the molecular and atomic level differently than on the macro level. That's why you think that the function of cells are so improbable. We can't really apply common sense because we can't really understand it. [Insert quantum mechanic quote of your choice]. Since our last talk here I chatted some more with my micro biologist friend. There's nothing amazing or unlikely about it. It's just extremely hard to grasp if you don't have a degree in maths. A lot of it is admittedly still blank holes. We don't have a complete picture. But that isn't in the least a case for god and certainly not the Bible.