I think you'd fit in the M_I category.

Well, *I* wouldn't, but yes, other people with that experience would. I at least understand that it is a psychological experience not a physical one.

The reason for belief is more important to me generally than the belief itself.

If someone shares a belief or lack of belief in one thing or another, but held to that opinion due to a sort of reasoning I lack respect for, I'd be just as critical of their beliefs as I would were their opinions in conflict with mine.

EDIT: And I even abhor some of my own reasons for believing in certain things.  I do not like being emotionally compelled to believe in something, yet as I said I am emotionally compelled.  Fortunately, the belief is in an emotion so I think I might be tautologically justified.

But I would have no excuse whatsoever for trying to convince people of what I believe based on recounting what I feel, and I don't think it would satisfy me at all if I actually were to convince somebody in this way.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:11, Wed 07 Apr 2010.

How do you build a body of evidence without recounting experience?

Dicto simpliciter Fallacy I think.  The accounts of personal experiences are what I am describing, while you are zooming out to imply something I never intended.

Non-personal experiences are transferable by consistently reliable tests and possess very few, if any, interchangeable explanations of equal merit.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:53, Thu 08 Apr 2010.

I think there is some middle ground as well- for example if you saw Bigfoot yoru experience would be a data point in any research to determine whether bigfoot exists. Relaying teh information you saw for this purpose and going out to try and convince people that bigfoot exists are two different things. On he other hand if you tell people what you saw some will be convinced by it. It's not as though you can tell someone else 'stand there and you too will see bigfoot' to make the experience replicable. Early on in any field teh ammount of non-replicable data will far outweigh the ammount of replicable data as the variables still need to be isolated.

(Hauling this back around to the original topic by its nose ring.)

   I was born to a devout Quaker and an agnostic free mason. My father ditched on us when I was 3 and my mother brought me up in faith based communities my entire childhood.

   When I was 8 CPS took an unhealthy interest in me and my mother because I would not be a good little cookie cutter student shaped robot, and through threats and coercion forced me to attend a horrible boarding school known as Wediko. If I ever had faith the Cristian version of God that place ground it into fine dust.

   From then until I was 15 I was a literal dyslexic agnostic. At that point I moved out of my home town and finally began to search for some structure of religious belief. I passed through three polytheistic phases before I came to the moment when I found the light.

   I had bought a copy of "The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer." and was reading it to get some background for a story I wanted to write. As I thumbed through the section of imperial prayers in the back I suddenly felt I was not alone, and then I heard it. It was a voice that spoke with no words, silent but echoing like thunder. This was the voice of the Immortal Emperor, Shepard of Humanity.

   From that day to this I have been a staunch Imperialist, facing bigotry and persecution from every quarter, even my own family. Though my road is hard I believe with all my soul in the truth of the Emperor's message, there can be no bystanders in the battle for humanities survival.

...

Er...

So you didn't know if Dog existed?

(For anyone else like me who failed to get the reference, it's a fictional book written for Warhammer 40k, pretending to be written... about? the terrans theocratic ruler.)

In reply to katisara (msg #76):

You call it fiction, I call it prophecy. If we do not change what happens now this is the nightmare that will come to pass.

What? That the Eldar will sink into hedonism and depravity, creating the Chaos god Slannesh, forming the Eye of Terror and disrupting the galaxy forever?
This message was last edited by the player at 17:35, Wed 05 Jan 2011.

In reply to Falkus (msg #78):

Are we going into RP mode now?

I'm simply questioning how anyone could treat Warhammer 40,000 as either a source for moral guidance or a prophecy. I love the setting and run several games based in it for my Dark Heresy and Deathwatch groups, but I don't consider something that could happen unless we change our ways.

That's the thing about Faith isn't it?

Hey everyone,

I wasn’t sure where else to put this so I suppose this thread will work. Some of you might remember me from some ramblings either here or elsewhere over the years.

For those wondering if people can change their worldview on things then maybe this can give you some insight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I grew up in a completely non-religious household, but went to camp every summer as a kid to a Christian camp. When I was 7 I made a profession of faith of sorts and from then on I was very clear that I had a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Did not go to church and had no friends who were Christians, but read my Bible daily and prayed.

When I graduated I attended a University where I became very involved in a few Christian Campus Organizations. Become involved in door to door evangelism and campus ministry. Loved the apologetics end of things and debating and was a driving force behind bringing in speakers like William Lane Craig etc to the campus to debate professors.

On graduating from University I got married to a Christian woman and we became like many white suburban families in the church - potlucks, kids stuff, bible studies etc.  I also started becoming more involved in youth ministry as a VERY active (15+ hours per week) volunteer with a Christian youth organization.  After 5 years of that I eventually took a position on paid staff and my family and I packed up and moved to a new city and started working in full time Christian ministry. Great community and good neighbours. Love the city.

A several years I became official clergy and was well established in the city.  And then hit the year from hell.  Within the space of one year a young man I knew VERY well committed suicide, a close friend was killed in a car accident leaving a pregnant widow and 2 other kids - mere hours after we all had breakfast together, a third friend died of an epileptic seisure, leaving a grieving husband with a 3 year old boy, and young lady’s mother, who was well known in the community and to most of the kids I worked with was crushed coming home and killed at an intersection.

My wife and I went through a real period of questioning and had our faith in mostly everything sifted through and yet felt we had come out of the other side with a deeper understanding of what we actually believed. Within 18 months of the end of that year I had resigned in my position in full time ministry, mostly disillusioned in the practices of the church and most of Christianity, but still retaining a core belief in a good and loving God amidst a messed up world.  We stopped attending church as a family (our city only has a few, and they were very old school in their methodology and structures) and gave a go at running our own home church.  It went well, and though small, we enjoyed it for what it was, as did the others in the group.
Throughout it all I was realising my introvert nature and struggling to maintain a balance between friendships and introspection/time alone, and pulled back from leadership in the home church setup, leaving the door open to be an attender down the road should someone else step up to lead it.  No one did.  I began to listen to a lot of podcasts centering on the skeptic community and was thoroughly challenged yet again in much of what I believe, and why I believe it. I’ve always been a critical thinker, and skepticism appealed to me on so many levels, even if some of it (when it came to atheism etc) was against what I inherently believed.

A few months after that I sat down and watched ‘The Last Days’, a documentary that featured the stories of Hungarian Jews as they experienced the Holocaust, and while some further research has me wondering about “some” of the details given in the documentary, the end result was a complete and final shattering of my belief in a good God.

That night, as I was in tears, I laid down and told God that I have a true desire to believe in his existence but that I was at the point where the horrific things that happen in this world without any indication that he is able or willing to do anything about it, have led me to the point where I need something audible/visible etc to convince me of his existence.

It’s several months later and I still wait.

The evil of this world, specifically of the Holocaust, but no less in my own back yard where parents torture their children, adults use little girls/boys as sex slaves, and more, have left me with a gaping silence that I can no longer ignore.

My wife and I sat down and I told her of where I was at and she was very understanding, though I couched my phrases in terms that likely made things easier for her. My kids and my family are of the utmost focus for me at this point as I feel there is very little else of value. While there is a part of me that longs for something that has eternal value and truth, I am at a point where unless there is something utterly tangible that can convince me, I doubt there will come a time where my belief will return.

In his book, The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel shares the end of a conversation with ex-evangelist Charles Templeton, who no longer believes for similar reasons.  In it he said:



This resonates with me in a profound way.

No idea what the future holds, but for those of faith, I long for what you have but no longer feel I can intellectually have in good conscience, and for those with no faith, I now enter your world with a sense of loss and little idea of how to progress with much in the way of purpose except to simply enjoy my time with my children and family for as long as I (and they) have life.

Thank you for sharing. That's a very profound story, and I hope you have some success with finding what you're looking for.

I feel like I've found a similar place, also started by an unexpected death. I feel like it's moved me a lot further from the Church, and from the dominant Greek and Roman influenced Christianity. I was raised with images of God being an old guy with a beard on a cloud, and that just doesn't jive with the idea of God standing back while terrible things happen. My wife is far more pragmatic, and generally just 'gets on with living' (she was also not especially Christian to begin with). I'm more spiritual and have branched out more. I think the thing that changed my view the most was reading the Tao Te Ching, the core book of Taoism, which gives a view of 'God' (or however you want to label it) which makes a lot more sense in a context of suffering. (If you do pursue it, make sure you find a good translation. I can dig up the online version I prefer.)

I've had this discussion with my mom. She recommended the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner, although I've never read it.

I suppose, in the end, my answer is 'I don't know'. I don't know that I honestly believe in an active Jesus in the world. I certainly don't believe in a big guy in the sky with a sense of ego like we concieve of it. I do believe in a God, but ... it's complicated :) I don't feel like I've abandoned Jesus. To the contrary, I feel like Jesus has abandoned me; that if Jesus was a friend, especially an omnipotent friend, that he would give me what I need to feel that relationship, no matter how big or small it is. But I do have faith that, should I die and end up at the pearly gates after all, that Jesus will understand that I tried and I searched, and did my best by what I had available.

I've always thought of myself like Mulder from the X-Files, with his UFO poster in the back and big words:  "I WANT TO BELIEVE."  Believing is life and hope and purpose adn goodness; not believing is emptiness.  So even if believing means believing in something that turns out to be wrong in the end, the critical things is the path it leads you down.

I can no more profess to know the mind of God than anyone else, but I do know this: All the suffering I've been through has made me a stronger person.  And now I have to use that strength to fight.

What do I mean by this?  Well, I was typically an intellectual without any real desire for confrontation, but events led me to become a lawyer, where I deal with confrontation daily.  It's not an ideal job, but it is a great training ground for what life has thrown at me.  My youngest son was born with some profound disabilities, and I have had to fight for services for him every step of the way.  Now, the school is suing me for not allowing them to implement their slapshod, insufficient services, and I am using all the training that I have gained to fight for him and get him proper services.  So far (knock on wood), I have won my motions agaist the school.  (This is one reason I have been so scarce around here lately.)

Every trial in life gives us experience; every experience makes us stronger; our strength makes us better.  Some have said that faith requires that one go through the "refiner's fire" like a piece of metal being shaped into a blade.  I try to look at adversity like that, knowing that the fallibility of mankind to misuse free will is a constant opposition that must be countered, not submitted to.

At this point in my mind there is either no God (the most likely in my mind now), or if there is a God that is defined by love, then he will understand and explain all in the end.  If there is a God that exists that is going to be delivering punishment because I lost faith due to the Holocaust and other such events then I feel that every single one of is eternally screwed in that case anyways, so I might as well enjoy life as it is.

I also want to believe but with all reasons to do so removed from my brain now, I can't justify doing so. I see no reason for self-sacrifice, self-denial, helping others (except those who directly benefit me) etc, because I don't see any value in life outside of some sort of eternal end to it all.  If I (and all human beings) are just to become worm food in the end with nothing beyond then the limited time I have now should be truly and fully used for completely selfish ends.

That gets complicated and messy though both on a small/family scale, and on a worldwide scale.

I can say that I have lost almost all desire to care about the third world, people in other cities etc, and have narrowed the focus of my care and attention to those people that I have direct involvement with.  Without any sort of eternal end in sight, I don't see much of a point in pissing away money to Africa for example.  I make a lousy humanist and an even worse Christian.

What you say regarding struggle was exactly what I was saying during that really hard year in my life.  Now, on the other side of my de-conversion, all of that rhetoric rings hollow. I am truly glad it works for you (and for millions of other people) because the alternative is far less joyful.

Let me say though that I feel a faint glimmer of hope in Open Theism. I'm not really convinced it will ultimately answer my doubts, but it's one of the few areas of thought left that I don't feel have dried up.

This is something you will need to work on still, and is its own issue. I personally am very uncomfortable pinning my 'this is my value as a person' on the hypothesis that there is a God (especially when, if that hypothesis is right, the 'me' I will be after God is done taking out all the bad stuff will not be the 'me' who is sitting here chatting with you).

But that doesn't mean that who we are is limited to our lifetimes. My children will carry on part of who I am, as will everyone I touch. I write, and everyone who reads will carry a little bit of that. I share a common thread with all other people; common traits that make us human. My success and legacy as a person is bound to the success of humans in general. My consciousness may not survive my death, but every day I work towards leaving an imprint on this world that will.

Well, and to be fair, though I say these things, I am nowhere near living in that way.  So how much do I truly believe it?  Tough to say.

I suppose I just have lived so much of my life with others as the focus, because of an eternal end goal, that to remove that end goal is a huge shift for me that I am still dealing with.

Keep in mind that Mother Teresa said she questioned her faith every single day.  There's nothing strange about that.  The question is what you do when you question things.  Do you change your behaviors?  Do you keep the same behaviors with just a different understanding of them?  There's no real need to change behaviors just because of a question of faith.

Faith is sometimes compared to a seed.  It must be planted and then nurtured for it to grow.  If it is abandoned, it will die.

Mother Teresa was a fascinating individual. I admire her for her ability to truly live out what she believed in a way that defied all odds.  I recently read a couple books about her life.

The flip side is I feel very sad that perhaps she lived a life in suffering for something that may not even be true.  She self-flagellated and denied herself so much and I see WHY she did it, but it makes me truly sad that perhaps she did it for a lie.

As for faith, as I come out the other side of this journey, I see faith as helpful for those who have it, but impossible to use for those who don't.  The entire concept of faith is a useless word to me now.