Anonymous wrote:If you want to know if God exists, just ask Him to prove it. Like just genuinely ask “If you are real can you show me” with an open mind. If you genuinely desire to find God or some sign from him I’ll believe he’ll help you. Just try and see what happens.

I’ve heard stories of people who weren’t sure about God’s existence and they literally just asked for a sign or something because they genuinely wanted to know, and they’ve ended up being Christians. It just takes an initially leap of faith.

Can you be specific with an example?

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Anonymous wrote:I used to be like you. Over the years I’ve had several odd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes moving experiences that tell me there is something beyond the known.

Whether you believe it or not, it is always there for you.

+1 you just feel there is something beyond our physical world when you've experienced certain things

How would that be any different than a delusion? How could you tell the difference?

I think you mean “illusion,” not “delusion.”

I always think this board could be interesting if the atheists/agnostic population posting would educate themselves a little before sharing their opinions and trying to tear others down. Instead, it just seems silly.

No, I meant “delusion”. So how would a delusion be different?

Well, an illusion is when you mistake one thing for another. Like a child thinking a pile of clothes is a monster. Asking pp how she knows that she didn’t mistake some kind of experience for something supernatural is a reasonable question.
A delusion implies some kind of mental illness. Asking pp how she knows that her belief in God isn’t evidence of a mental illness is just meant to be offensive. Just asking questions in order to be rude and offensive is boring.

I didn’t say the PP was delusional, I asked what would be different if they were. How could they tell?

In 2007 I had been deluded into thinking the stock market always goes up.
Just about everybody was saying that at the time. Pretty sure I'm not mentally ill.

If you want to know if God exists, just ask Him to prove it. Like just genuinely ask “If you are real can you show me” with an open mind. If you genuinely desire to find God or some sign from him I’ll believe he’ll help you. Just try and see what happens.

I’ve heard stories of people who weren’t sure about God’s existence and they literally just asked for a sign or something because they genuinely wanted to know, and they’ve ended up being Christians. It just takes an initially leap of faith.

? Deluded just means fooling yourself - no reason to equate it with mental illness. That's just a red herring.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to be like you. Over the years I’ve had several odd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes moving experiences that tell me there is something beyond the known.

Whether you believe it or not, it is always there for you.

+1 you just feel there is something beyond our physical world when you've experienced certain things

How would that be any different than a delusion? How could you tell the difference?

I think you mean “illusion,” not “delusion.”

I always think this board could be interesting if the atheists/agnostic population posting would educate themselves a little before sharing their opinions and trying to tear others down. Instead, it just seems silly.

No, I meant “delusion”. So how would a delusion be different?

Well, an illusion is when you mistake one thing for another. Like a child thinking a pile of clothes is a monster. Asking pp how she knows that she didn’t mistake some kind of experience for something supernatural is a reasonable question.
A delusion implies some kind of mental illness. Asking pp how she knows that her belief in God isn’t evidence of a mental illness is just meant to be offensive. Just asking questions in order to be rude and offensive is boring.

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Anonymous wrote:Do you believe in love? Jesus teaches us that God is Love.

Are you really that naïve about Christianity? If God is just Love, then explain all of the requirements for our behavior that God apparently has. The Christian God--for better or worse (mostly worse, IMO)--is MUCH more than just love.

The Christian God judges everyone's souls after they die to determine if they go to heaven, purgatory, or hell. Sound like love to you?

That is dogma not god.

Ok -- so if you separate dogma and God, then you really need to move away from pretty much all organized religions. You likely don't come to a notion that God is the creator of the Universe, the ten commandments, the Bible, etc. on your own.

So it's probably best to forget about Jesus altogether and go for what you can derive from personal reflection/meditation. Then I can buy the notion that you come to the conclusion that God is a stand-in word for what binds all of humanity -- love and compassion.

As soon as you bring Jesus or Moses or whomever into the equation, you immediately get into the world of dogma, which is filled with what makes religion a force of discrimination and violence.

You could move away from all... or move to all or pick one that works for you or not.

There is not playbook for this. Nobody is going to give you all the answers. The true answers are within yourself.

I don't have to "forget about Jesus"... I can say, what did he bring to my personal growth.
I don't have to "forget the 10 commandments" I can say how do those laws help me become the spirit/person I am intended to become.

I completely agree. For me, that means not calling myself a member of any organized religion. I generally like how Buddhists view things because they have relatively little dogma, but ultimately I view things very close to how George Harrison articulated things in songs like Awaiting On You All (if anyone has provided me spiritual guidance, it's him):


You don't need no love in
You don't need no bed pan
You don't need a horoscope or a microscope
The see the mess that you're in
If you open up your heart
You will know what I mean
We've been polluted so long
Now here's a way for you to get clean

By chanting the names of the Lord and you'll be free
The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see
Chanting the names of the Lord and you'll be free
The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see

You don't need no passport
And you don't need no visas
You don't need to designate or to emigrate
Before you can see Jesus
If you open up your heart
You'll see he's right there
Always was and will be
He'll relieve you of your cares

By chanting the names of the Lord and you'll be free
The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see
Chanting the names of the Lord and you'll be free
The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see

You don't need no church house
And you don't need no Temple
You don't need no rosary beads or them books to read
To see that you have fallen
If you open up your heart
You will know what I mean
We've been kept down so long
Someone's thinking that we're all green

And while the Pope owns fifty one percent of General Motors
And the stock exchange is the only thing he's qualified to quote us
The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see
By chanting the names of the Lord and you'll be free

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to be like you. Over the years I’ve had several odd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes moving experiences that tell me there is something beyond the known.

Whether you believe it or not, it is always there for you.

+1 you just feel there is something beyond our physical world when you've experienced certain things

How would that be any different than a delusion? How could you tell the difference?

I think you mean “illusion,” not “delusion.”

I always think this board could be interesting if the atheists/agnostic population posting would educate themselves a little before sharing their opinions and trying to tear others down. Instead, it just seems silly.

No, I meant “delusion”. So how would a delusion be different?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to be like you. Over the years I’ve had several odd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes moving experiences that tell me there is something beyond the known.

Whether you believe it or not, it is always there for you.

+1 you just feel there is something beyond our physical world when you've experienced certain things

How would that be any different than a delusion? How could you tell the difference?

I think you mean “illusion,” not “delusion.”

I always think this board could be interesting if the atheists/agnostic population posting would educate themselves a little before sharing their opinions and trying to tear others down. Instead, it just seems silly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to be like you. Over the years I’ve had several odd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes moving experiences that tell me there is something beyond the known.

Whether you believe it or not, it is always there for you.

+1 you just feel there is something beyond our physical world when you've experienced certain things

How would that be any different than a delusion? How could you tell the difference?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you believe in love? Jesus teaches us that God is Love.

Are you really that naïve about Christianity? If God is just Love, then explain all of the requirements for our behavior that God apparently has. The Christian God--for better or worse (mostly worse, IMO)--is MUCH more than just love.

The Christian God judges everyone's souls after they die to determine if they go to heaven, purgatory, or hell. Sound like love to you?

That is dogma not god.

Ok -- so if you separate dogma and God, then you really need to move away from pretty much all organized religions. You likely don't come to a notion that God is the creator of the Universe, the ten commandments, the Bible, etc. on your own.

So it's probably best to forget about Jesus altogether and go for what you can derive from personal reflection/meditation. Then I can buy the notion that you come to the conclusion that God is a stand-in word for what binds all of humanity -- love and compassion.

As soon as you bring Jesus or Moses or whomever into the equation, you immediately get into the world of dogma, which is filled with what makes religion a force of discrimination and violence.

You could move away from all... or move to all or pick one that works for you or not.

There is not playbook for this. Nobody is going to give you all the answers. The true answers are within yourself.

I don't have to "forget about Jesus"... I can say, what did he bring to my personal growth.
I don't have to "forget the 10 commandments" I can say how do those laws help me become the spirit/person I am intended to become.

Anonymous wrote:I used to be like you. Over the years I’ve had several odd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes moving experiences that tell me there is something beyond the known.

Whether you believe it or not, it is always there for you.

+1 you just feel there is something beyond our physical world when you've experienced certain things

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:..Who lit the fuse of the big bang, then you have it all figured out

I can't answer that, so the answer might be that God did

I can answer that -- no one did. You are thinking of it as an explosion but remember that it is an expansion. At the beginning of time, the universe is made up on only gases -- hydrogen and helium -- and gases expand. It's an expansion of space, not an explosion of space.

The misnomer is that something cannot come from nothing but this is false. Negative and positive matter are constantly created from nothing although they generally cancel each other out. But positive matter can bond to each other, creating a larger and larger positive matter (while a larger negative matter is also created) that led to the EXPANSION (not explosion) of the universe.

Anyway OP is clearly a humanist, which is fine. There is no need to believe or struggle with one of man's many creations (and a relatively recent one at that -- the idea of one God is probably only about 2500 years old -- even the Jewish people originally believed in "Elohim" or many gods). Remember that God did not exist at the creation of the universe 14 billion years ago, nor at the creation of man in recent history. God is one of man's very recent inventions, created after paganism, after holidays, after agriculture, after pottery and tools, and language and art. Man's creation of any God is very new and man's creation of one god is even newer. There is no need to struggle to believe an imaginary being that man created, any more than you should struggle to believe in the Easter Bunny. That's absurd.

I recommend that you find a community at Machar -- the humanistic congregation in DC. I think it is Machar.org. You can have ethics and morals and guiding principles in life without god, since these are fundamental beliefs that man also created -- god did not write the 10 commandments -- man did.

Best of luck.

Also look at WES - the Washington Ethical Society. Machar, like WES, is open to all, but Machar is mainly humanistic Jews, while WES is more mixed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you believe in love? Jesus teaches us that God is Love.

Are you really that naïve about Christianity? If God is just Love, then explain all of the requirements for our behavior that God apparently has. The Christian God--for better or worse (mostly worse, IMO)--is MUCH more than just love.

The Christian God judges everyone's souls after they die to determine if they go to heaven, purgatory, or hell. Sound like love to you?

That is dogma not god.

Ok -- so if you separate dogma and God, then you really need to move away from pretty much all organized religions. You likely don't come to a notion that God is the creator of the Universe, the ten commandments, the Bible, etc. on your own.

So it's probably best to forget about Jesus altogether and go for what you can derive from personal reflection/meditation. Then I can buy the notion that you come to the conclusion that God is a stand-in word for what binds all of humanity -- love and compassion.

As soon as you bring Jesus or Moses or whomever into the equation, you immediately get into the world of dogma, which is filled with what makes religion a force of discrimination and violence.

Then don't waste your time. I'm serious. It doesn't improve your life or happiness one iota by struggling to do so.