What led you to God?

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How did you find God?

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Well, I was a believer because I was raised to be one from infancy.I was taken to church, and taught to believe, just like everyone else is taught to believe in their religion.It was also enforced by the culture which viewed my religious belief and practices as normal and appropriate, just like in every other religious culture around the world.

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Why haven't you?

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Well, I used to be a believer, who stopped believing because it didn't make any sense to me to continue to believe. I didn't particularly want to stop believing; it was just the logical conclusion of a great deal of personal reflection and thought.So, I am Agnostic on the existence of the supernatural.So now I have a question for you.How do you know you have found God and aren't just fooling yourself?

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It's not really about what I feel but rather, your decision about whether or not your life on earth actually has any significance what so ever.

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Like he said.Eventually, when you get a little older, you will hopefully realize that you are not the center of the universe. That you think you must be is likely the reason you are obsessed with your own self-importance and why you like Christianity so much; it allows you to feel "significant" without having to do anything to have earned it.

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I am more worried about the 21st century con-men that I encounter. Even the colleges are full of them, although the churches also have their share!

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Becoming an anti-intellectual who despises and mistrusts education and higher learning, Phat?

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I know a woman personally at the time this happened, and she said she thought people were faking it, and then one night, God literally knocked her so out in the Spirit, and I kid you not, she fell over straight down on her face and bounced, and yet totally unharmed. Never heard her say people were faking after that.

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Were you there? Did you actually see this?...or are you just hearing the story from her recollection?

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Btw, I am sure some people do fake stuff and want attention, but that's humanity for ya. I can tell you it's not fake all the time.

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How do you know this?There is not one bit of evidence to validate the stories of the thousands and thousands of people who say they have been abducted by aliens, raped, impregnated, probed, etc.I think it highly probable that these alien abduction/visitation stories are all fake all the time.Claims of the type your aquaintence described are exactly the same, randman. The only difference is that beliefs that God visits people are not viewed in our culture as quite as loony as visits by aliens.How do you know it's not fake all the time?

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An Anglican bishop from England flew over to Toronto in the 90s to some meetings, and God floored him. He went back to his diocese and reported his testimony to people there, and many of them were equally touched. Reporters from the Times came to some meetings and said they too started feeling it. Say what you want, but it's real.

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Sure, and when I go to a rock concert or a sporting event where there is high excitement and energy, it's infectious.Group validation, wishful thinking, communal relinforcement, groupthink...all of these psychological phenomena are well understood.

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The fact some want to fake the real thing is to be expected.

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What you haven't yet done is provided any means at all to determine the fake from the real.

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What else is there other than God?

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There is life.

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What gives your lives purpose?

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My purpose in life is whatever I choose it to be.My joy in simply being alive drives my choice of purpose.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-15-2006 11:03 AM

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or some seek "meaning" in various pleasures, and there are many varieties of those pleasures. Physical types can throw themselves into sports for instance, intellectual types into books, artistic types into art, and there's always the sexual addict, and there's even the satisfaction of feeling like a good person. Some dedicate themselves to making tons of money. Some are workaholics. People actually do have work or pastimes they really love to do. Sometimes it works, mostly I think as a drug of sorts; sometimes it leaves an empty hole. Then they have a "midlife crisis" or a psychotic break, or spend all their time at the bar.

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...or they "find God".It's just another salve or additction intended to soothe the difficulty of life.

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Ok. Do you have belief in an afterlife?

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I see no reason to believe that there is any sort of life after death.That many humans want there to be is most likely a reaction to the fear of the unknown.We humans know that we are going to die, you see.We have stuck God in the gaps of of our knowledge of many things over the millenia, and many continue to do so:How does the sun travel across the sky every day?The god Apollo drives it in his firey chariot.Where does the lightning and thunder come from?Zeus throws down the bolts of lightning. Or, Thor pounds his mighty hammer upon the earth.What makes us do bad things to each other/why do we get sick?The Devil/our fallen nature/Original Sin/evil spirits/demons/tenukiWhat happens to us after we die?We go to hell/heaven/the spirit world/purgatory/hades/reach Nirvana/become reincarnated/rejoin the cosmic energySee? This question fits right in, and any number of answers have been devised to ease our worry about the unknown.But to answer your question, I don't have any idea if there is an afterlife or not....and neither do you.Nobody does.

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Because if you don't, then the joy in life would be buried with you. Would it not?

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Yep.Why is this a problem that affects my chosen purpose while I'm alive?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-15-2006 11:14 PM

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There's such a mad beauty in it all. Really amazing.

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A "mad beauty" in what?Is it "mad beauty" that humans know we are going to die, are afraid of the unknown, so we make up an afterlife to soothe our fear?

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The reason that there is an afterlife lies in our significance, and within ourselves. God has shown us.

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Blah blah blah.You just wrote two sentences that say absolutely nothing at all.Now, why don't you answer my question:How do you know you have really "found God" and aren't just fooling yourself?

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I am just telling you my own experiences and experiences of others, and I know for a fact it's not all fake.

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Do you believe that alien abdutions are "not all fake", randman?What about Astrology, or dowsing, or Bigfoot? Nessie?Is there anything you don't believe?

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You don't want to believe.

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NOT TRUE.I have told you over and over again, randman, that I would be very excited and awestruck to see some real evidence that showed some kind of real phenomena.The problem is, you keep expecting me to lower my standards of evidence to the level of utter gullibility and credulity.Sorry, I just can't do that. I'm not going to stop using my brain and start believing without evidence, because that's a surefire way to get hoodwinked.

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That's your choice.

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Yeah. It's my choice to not believe everything I see, am told, or want very badly to be true.Unlike some...

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I have said more than you have seemingly could have understood.

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Well, yeah. When you write nonsensical gibberish, it's difficult to understand.

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You have shown me that you believe that we cease to exist when we die, or that we don't really know for sure.

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Nobody knows for sure, that's correct.

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I have told you that if this was the case, then our lives would be totally insignificant.

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Was Martin Luther King Jr.'s life "totally insignificant?"

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That is proof enough for anyone that the afterlife is real.

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No, that is proof enough for anyone that you desperately WANT the afterlife to be real. You want it so bad that you will belive without a bit of evidence.What you want to be real and what is are two different things.

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Because significance in our lives is apparent.

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But "significance in our lives" is unrelated to there being an afterlife as far as I can figure.Perhaps you can explain that more fully.And you haven't really answered my question. How do you know that your belief is real and that you aren't just fooling yourself?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-17-2006 07:31 AM

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Schraf, with what passes for so-called logic in Message 185 why do you think you will get anywhere with this? Some people think that disjointed gibberish can have meaning.

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I don't really expect it to get anywhere.Remember, I do not debate for the apparent audience, but for the fence-sitting lurkers.

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Never been abducted by aliens, seen Bigfoot, Nessie, or any of that stuff. So I can't say.

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But many people are 100% convinced that they have been abducted by aliens, seen Nessie or Bigfoot, etc. There are even Abductee support groups to help them, deal with it.

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I have been healed and touched by Jesus and have seen numerous instances of others having been healed and touched in the same manner. So I can tell you that it's not fake.

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Why should I believe you and not them, randman?Why do you not believe them?

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Once again though Shraf, if you don't want to have an open mind, it's your business, not mine.

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I do have a very open mind.If I had a closed mind, I would just say "that's impossible" insead of asking you lots of questions.It is precisely because I have an open, inquiring, curious mind that I ask these questions ansd wish to investigate further.It is actually you who have a completely closed mind, because you refuse to ask even the most simple questions of verification of your and others' experiences as long as they are talking about God.My mind isn't so open that my brain has fallen out.

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I am just telling you the truth. What you do with it is your business.

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I believe that you believe that you are telling the truth.The question I keep asking you over and over, randman, is how do you tell the difference between the real and the fake, between the real thing and the self-deluded, between the real and the mistaken?I have a tried and true way, but you don't want to use it.

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I have told you that if this was the case, then our lives would be totally insignificant.

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Was Martin Luther King Jr.'s life "totally insignificant?"

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That is proof enough for anyone that the afterlife is real.

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No, that is proof enough for anyone that you desperately WANT the afterlife to be real. You want it so bad that you will belive without a bit of evidence.What you want to be real and what is are two different things.

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If life didn't matter, then why would we live? Or want to live?

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1) For those who come after us.2) For the joy of it.

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It would be finite, and the effects that you have worked for to happen, would EVENTUALLY be in vain.

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Pretend for a minute that there is no afterlife.Was Ghandi's life lived in vain?Was Dr. King's?What about Jesus' life? Even if Jesus was just some wandering preacher who had faith in the God of Abraham but was just wrong about there being a God and and afterlife.Is what he did and said meaningless and insignificant because there is no afterlife, or did what he did and said change the course of the entire world's history in deep and profound ways?