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thepyro222
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thepyro222
2,150 posts
Peasant

I grew up atheist for 16 years. I had always kept an open mind towards religion, but never really felt a need to believe in it. My sister started going to a Wednesday night children's program at a church. Eventually, I was dragged into a Christmas Eve service. Scoffing, I reluctantly went, assuming that this was going to be a load of crap, but when I went, I felt something. Something that I've never felt before. I felt a sense of empowerment and a sense of calling. Jesus called upon my soul, just like he did with his disciples. he wanted me to follow him. Now, my life is being lived for Christ. He died on the cross for my sins, and the sins of everyone who believes in him. He was beaten, brutalized, struck with a whip 39 times, made to carry a cross up to the stage of his death. This I believe to be true, and I can never repay him for what he has done.
I still have my struggles with Christianity, but I've found this bit of information most useful. Religion is not comprehensible in the human mind, because we cannot comprehend the idea of a perfect and supreme being, a God, but we can believe it in our heart, and that's the idea of faith. Faith is, even though everything rides against me believing in Jesus, I still believe in him because I know that it's true in my heart. I invite my fellow Brothers and sisters of the LORD to talk about how Jesus has helped you in your life. No atheists and no insults please

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HahiHa
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HahiHa
8,255 posts
Regent

This was asked. Jesus said: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah." And the sign of Jonah was "Repent, since in 40 days Nineveh will be destroyed". They did repent, and God pardoned them from His wrath.

What exactly is that sign of jonah supposed to be? Is it written, spoken, heard, and how?
Do you realize it necessites an already existing belief in god to repent if someone tells you to do so? How can god expect an atheist to believe in him if, let's say a priest tells him to repent or else his family will die?

You know what? If you reject Him, He will leave you be - alone, without Him to protect you from the devil. That is indeed Hell. Hell is not the place, it's a condition of no God.

An all-loving god would even protect those who don't believe in him and rejected him, because when they die they will see he exists, in the case that he does.
Oh, and what is the exact purpose of the place hell when there is the condition hell?
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

You know what? If you reject Him, He will leave you be - alone, without Him to protect you from the devil. That is indeed Hell. Hell is not the place, it's a condition of no God.


Again we are being protected by that which God placed here to begin with. Also how can one have a condition of no God if God is omnipresent? If the state that atheists are in being with out God, I can tell you it isn't that bad.

But I have found that I don't have enough love for both her and my mother, who is a great mom, being however strict and harsh at times, but still she raised me in principles of responsibility and justness, so I started to seek where can I get me more love.


You make it sound like love is some sort of commodity.
wolf1991
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wolf1991
3,437 posts
Farmer

But I have found that I don't have enough love for both her and my mother, who is a great mom, being however strict and harsh at times, but still she raised me in principles of responsibility and justness, so I started to seek where can I get me more love.


It saddens me to read this. Not because I pity you, but because you once more display that selfishness of humanity. To quantify love as if it were some precious coin. And then to say that religion gave you love... it is abhorent.

You cannot quantify something like love. Love is what every poet has claimed it to be, from a seductive poison to a feeling of euphoric bliss. From the desperate to the pure.

He granted me a feeling of strong love so I can now express love for many people and not deplete.


If you need a god to express love, then it is not love, it is a self deception. If you need a god to feel compassionate, then you yourself must be empty of compassion.

I find it tragic that I, a man who holds no stock in gods, can feel more campassion and love for my fellow man, than a person who claims belief in god, yet without that god they are hollow.
vesperbot
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vesperbot
955 posts
Nomad

Where did you get this information?
I don't think you lie, for the sake of lying. You said this, I think you believe in this, and I want to know how so.
Over here
There are some pictures of medical documents (scanned) here and here, but they are in Spanish. There's also a newspaper article available here. I don't know Spanish, but I have managed to decipher the word "rayo" meaning lightning, which strike led to her body damaged beyond repair. She mentions she had her legs burnt to crisps, her ovaries charred and her lactiferous glands (aka tits) spilled over. After recuperation she was able to walk on her own legs, restored anew, and able to conceive and bear children, and did bear at least one. Please read the full text first.
MRWalker82
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MRWalker82
4,005 posts
Shepherd

He granted me a feeling of strong love so I can now express love for many people and not deplete.


So you had a biochemical reaction to a particular situation, which you were already psychologically prone to creating (being that you had the idea that God is love and that you would find that love in the Church)

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you feel like your life is better now because of your experience, but please do not delude yourself into thinking that it is something supernatural at work, and certainly do not adopt the bigoted and closed minded policies of the doctrine simply because you had an experience.
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

With Gloria Polo the experience she describes can be attributed to the release of DMT from the pineal glad prior to death. It's quite frequent to find NDE when the brain is oxygen deprived. In her case this could have happened when she stopped breathing or her heart stopped.

vesperbot
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vesperbot
955 posts
Nomad

You cannot quantify something like love.
You cannot measure love with any kind of a ruler, that's true indeed. But you can feel the lack of love to someone in the form of disdain, anger, hatred or maybe lack of compassion. The stronger is the kind of a feeling, and the stronger is the feeling itself, the higher is that lack of love. The opposite is also true, if you experience compassion to someone, or patience, or liking for him just to be there, you experience that you have love towards a person, and the same "formula" applies to the strength of love.
You make it sound like love is some sort of commodity.
In fact yes, love is a kind of treasure, though whenever you share it, it increases unlike any other treasure of the world.
Oh, and what is the exact purpose of the place hell when there is the condition hell?
Hell as a place is to show people what it looks like to be in Hell. Hell as a condition is entirely spiritual and can be only felt, not seen or touched. I expect that if you're in Hell as a condition, your soul will be put in Hell as a place.
With Gloria Polo the experience she describes can be attributed to the release of DMT from the pineal glad prior to death.
As far as biochemistry go, how could her body recuperate if there was nothing alive left in some of its parts? You should know that roasted cells can't come back to life, and most organs of a human do not regenerate at all.

E1337, please reply on this as well.
So you had a biochemical reaction to a particular situation
Probably there was some, indeed. I have felt my soul touched, this is beyond the scope of biochemistry as fas as I am aware of.
Mental gymnastics
Given your explanations, yes we indeed practice this. St. Theresa of Child Jesus wrote in her story that she used something like this to find reasons why her fellow sisted does bad to her, and claims this as a route to holiness. So for us, this is normal. You are free to not accept this, as it's not based on logic.
looking at things from a purely reasonable and logical perspective compared to your "default" standpoint could be a great eye-opener.
You know what, looking at something with pure logic means not evaluating your emotions. There's a neighboring topic by Einfach, "Logic-emotions dichotomy", I've stated that this dichotomy is false in general, but later the discussion ended up in an uncertain state.

I still think (and this is IMHO) that purely logical or purely emotional view on something in the real world (that is what you can see and hear and touch and probably taste or smell, not scientific knowledge which indeed requires pure logic and is abstract in its form - you can't touch say third law of Newton, though you always experience that it's true) as lacking completeness, thus misleading. God fitted in my view of world, and indeed became the center of it as Church teaches, and when I look at the system that's formed within my mind, it is logical to the extent of being "true enough" to accept and live according to it.
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

In fact yes, love is a kind of treasure, though whenever you share it, it increases unlike any other treasure of the world.


"Well honey I think we're running out of love, I better go down to the church and pick up some more while I'm out."

If it works as you describe here then you having a lack of love makes no frickin' sense. Love is just a collection of emotional response, arguably an emotion in itself. You can no more run out of love as you can any other emotion.

As far as biochemistry go, how could her body recuperate if there was nothing alive left in some of its parts? You should know that roasted cells can't come back to life, and most organs of a human do not regenerate at all.


I'm so far not seeing anything outside the realm of impossibility for what the human body can do. Granted she was very luck to have been able to recover from such damage.

Probably there was some, indeed. I have felt my soul touched, this is beyond the scope of biochemistry as fas as I am aware of.


Everything you described can be attributed to biochemical responses in the brain.

Given your explanations, yes we indeed practice this.


That is a very self deceptive thing to do to yourself.

You know what, looking at something with pure logic means not evaluating your emotions.


We are fully capable of evaluated our emotions in a logical manner. Also that doesn't mean we have to come up with magical reasons for having said emotions.
vesperbot
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vesperbot
955 posts
Nomad

You can no more run out of love as you can any other emotion.
It's not entirely true. You can run out of emotions, both good and bad. When you repeatedly hear or see someone being killed, tortured or whatever, you can stop feeling compassionate for those victims, and react as if it's normal. When you repeatedly enjoy something like say watching sunsets (no way a drug is an enjoyment!), you might find out that you are less enjoyed than before - it's called saturation and it can lead to lack of positive emotions connected to whatever you were enjoying. When you DO something bad, you can cease feeling guilty about what you do, it's called hardness of heart. You can also run out of love, if you're not get fed with love by your neighbors, for example. A believer can approach God and ask for love, but an atheist can't since he doesn't believe in God, and he needs other sources to fill himself if needed.
Everything you described can be attributed to biochemical responses in the brain.
Since when did the biochemistry describe the soul?
We are fully capable of evaluated our emotions in a logical manner.
Umm, I might choose wrong wording here. Looking at something with pure logic means not taking any information that emotions provide into concern. This approach can apply to abstract and even applied science, but not to the real life in general. Say, you know that if you'll sell your kidney to organ transplanters, you'll get a ton of money, but if you get someone else's kidney to sell, you get the same ton of money while remaining in full health. The purely logical approach will advise the second way of earning money should you be in trouble. But emotions will discard this approach even before country laws will be evaluated.
I'm so far not seeing anything outside the realm of impossibility for what the human body can do.
For some reason you don't accept a roasted body to recover completely being impossible. Let's say you got your legs burnt to the point of leaving only charred bones. Will you regenerate? She did, but not by her own virtue.
driejen
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driejen
486 posts
Nomad

You can also run out of love, if you're not get fed with love by your neighbors, for example. A believer can approach God and ask for love, but an atheist can't since he doesn't believe in God, and he needs other sources to fill himself if needed.
So you don't receive enough love from the people around you, and so you wish to receive love from god? Pardon me if I'm being rude but I see it as no different to making up an imaginary friend because you are lonely.

Since when did the biochemistry describe the soul?
The soul need not be described for it is not assumed to exist, but the experiences you had that might convince you of your preconveived idea need not a supernatural explanation.

Umm, I might choose wrong wording here. Looking at something with pure logic means not taking any information that emotions provide into concern. This approach can apply to abstract and even applied science, but not to the real life in general. Say, you know that if you'll sell your kidney to organ transplanters, you'll get a ton of money, but if you get someone else's kidney to sell, you get the same ton of money while remaining in full health. The purely logical approach will advise the second way of earning money should you be in trouble. But emotions will discard this approach even before country laws will be evaluated.
There is a difference between using emotion as a primary motivation for making decisions, and using logic to understand the world around you and know things such as existence. Your emotions do not dictate existence.

For some reason you don't accept a roasted body to recover completely being impossible. Let's say you got your legs burnt to the point of leaving only charred bones. Will you regenerate? She did, but not by her own virtue.

Can you provide medical documents or perhaps any document besides her testimonial that shows her supposedly impossible recovery? As far as I can tell, the only source for her supposedly irreversible condition was from her testimonial of an out of body experience, which might not actually have been true.
Highfire
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Highfire
3,025 posts
Nomad

I still think (and this is IMHO) that purely logical or purely emotional view on something in the real world (that is what you can see and hear and touch and probably taste or smell, not scientific knowledge which indeed requires pure logic and is abstract in its form - you can't touch say third law of Newton, though you always experience that it's true) as lacking completeness, thus misleading. God fitted in my view of world, and indeed became the center of it as Church teaches, and when I look at the system that's formed within my mind, it is logical to the extent of being "true enough" to accept and live according to it.

I feel like I've mislead you in what I believe. I am not a huge fan of one-road travel. I love logic, surely, but emotion is such a powerful tool in a variety of ways. Hoping for something in itself could help it actually happen (if you are a part of it, the passive effects and effort can amount heavily). Emotions, to me, is something I use to put into my explanation (not too much, however) in order to show passion and a sense of belief in my arguments. Obviously my emotions help me in other cases but I always try to put them aside when I look at reasoning because, like it or not, they may or may not effect yours and mine rationality.

Oh, and Mage, can you please explain to Vesperbot about what you feel fit about the charred bones recuperation, etc. I am ill right now and as much as I wish I could think on the scale I like to and in the way I want to, I really can't. The paragraph above my post Vesper said I can't read through too well. :<

I should be okay tomorrow, but there are no guarantees.

- H
vesperbot
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vesperbot
955 posts
Nomad

Can you provide medical documents or perhaps any document besides her testimonial that shows her supposedly impossible recovery? As far as I can tell, the only source for her supposedly irreversible condition was from her testimonial of an out of body experience, which might not actually have been true.
Well, I gave some links in the post where I gave a link to the testimony itself. If that's not enough, please request off that hospital, I have tried to locate any scans of these documents but failed.
The soul need not be described for it is not assumed to exist
Do I have to prove that your soul exists?
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

It's not entirely true. You can run out of emotions, both good and bad. When you repeatedly hear or see someone being killed, tortured or whatever, you can stop feeling compassionate for those victims, and react as if it's normal. When you repeatedly enjoy something like say watching sunsets (no way a drug is an enjoyment!), you might find out that you are less enjoyed than before - it's called saturation and it can lead to lack of positive emotions connected to whatever you were enjoying. When you DO something bad, you can cease feeling guilty about what you do, it's called hardness of heart.


Your not running out of emotion in any of these examples, your simply being desensitized to the stimuli. This can usually be altered by changing ones routine.

You can also run out of love, if you're not get fed with love by your neighbors, for example.


That's counter to all of your other examples.

A believer can approach God and ask for love, but an atheist can't since he doesn't believe in God, and he needs other sources to fill himself if needed.


The emotions in regards to love hasn't changed much from when I believed there was a God and now. In fact given I don't get as depressed now I would even go as far as to say I may feel such emotions more so.

Let's say you got your legs burnt to the point of leaving only charred bones. Will you regenerate? She did, but not by her own virtue.


The stuff I'm reading doesn't seem to indicate she was burned to that point, only that the doctors thought they would have to amputate but that she ended up recovering.
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

Do I have to prove that your soul exists?


Yes you do.
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

Take some advice from the Dalai Lama. "We must accept reality, we must not rely blindly on scripture."

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