God could NEVER convince me he exists. Weird...

by AlmostAtheist 27 Replies latest jw friends

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos
    I would conclude I was hallucinating. I've hallucinated before, it seems very real. Completely real, in fact. So if I saw a guy claiming to be god, no matter what he told me, I'd conclude that *I* was crazy. Worse, anything he might do to prove he's a god -- miracles and what not -- would just make me all the more sure I was nuts. I'd probably call 911. (In the U.S., that's the emergency assistance number)

    That assumes s/he would leave you the time for a second thought about the experience, out of the experience. While you are hallucinating or dreaming you don't know or suspect you are (unless it's part of the hallucination/dream or you are already waking up).

    Or that the experience would not change even your waking mind; or that you'll not have fallen in love with your experience (however gruesome it might objectively be) and half-consciously choose to believe it rather than reality. A "rational mind" is a frail barque on a deep ocean.

    It's the kind of thing I often think of when I hear or read from people saying "what they would say to God, ask God if..." not wondering what would remain of "them" if... When Job asked to argue with God he was a bit more cautious, by setting in advance the conditions for a meaningful dialogue (13:20ff):

    Only grant two things to me,
    then I will not hide myself from your face:
    withdraw your hand far from me,
    and do not let dread of you terrify me. Then call, and I will answer;
    or let me speak, and you reply to me.

    Actually, as far as our present "mind" is concerned, the only alternative to the uncertainty of becoming is the symmetrical uncertainty of writing. Cf. 19:23:

    O that my words were written down!
    O that they were inscribed in a book!
    O that with an iron pen and with lead
    they were engraved on a rock forever!

    But then the only meaningful encounter (between who/what I am, now, in "God's absence," and "God") is deferred. Mediated by an ambiguous text to be read in absentia.

  • Abaddon
    Abaddon

    Well, if Morgan Feeman or Alanis Morrisette ever ask me to snuff someone, I'll know what to do...

  • Sirona
    Sirona

    SHE exists.

    Sirona

  • Crumpet
    Crumpet

    Superb thread AA! Is this going to be the substance for one of your stand-up routines as i think it could work well and prove thought provoking as well as humourous dished up right.

    I think the problem here is our concept of God. God is someone I worship. Why? Because he merits it - everything he does makes me admire and worship him. I couldn't admire or worship someone who asked me to kill for them or would do so himself. So the God of the bible and the Quorhan and most other religions is not a God to me. He is less than human - not my superior and hence the God tag in my definition does not work for him.

    My God is human!

  • Shazard
    Shazard

    AA you are drawing your own reality and block out anything you are afraid off! Funny stuff with reality is that if you ignore it you get hurt or somebody else get hurt. Ofcourse if you ignore hallucination and illusion, then nothing terrible won't happen.

  • IsaacJS2
    IsaacJS2

    I've had some similar idea to this. What makes God--if I'm wrong and he exists--any different than an alien that is infinitely more advanced than we are? If God popped in one day and said, "What up?" how would you know it was him? A sufficiently advanced race might be able to perform any and every miracle we could think to ask from God as proof. So how would you know it was God and not some alien?

    Even if God stepped in and stopped the aliens from impersonaing him, how would we know it wasn't an even more powerful bunch of aliens that intervened?

    IsaacJ

  • AlmostAtheist
    AlmostAtheist

    >> While you are hallucinating or dreaming you don't know or
    >> suspect you are (unless it's part of the hallucination/dream
    >> or you are already waking up).

    At least in my own case, I knew I was hallucinating. I saw a little dude that looked like Gizmo from the Gremlins step out from behind a garbage can and do a little dance for me. I was talking on the phone at the time, and explained it all to the person I was talking to. I knew full well it wasn't real, and it was pretty amusing. If he'd lit the room on fire, or floated an axe head, maybe the amusement level wouldn't have been as high! I'm sure there are levels of nuttiness that would preclude knowing you were nuts though.

    >> AA you are drawing your own reality and block out anything you are afraid off!

    I wouldn't say it's out of fear, but rather likelihood. I think it's far more likely that I'll be nuts than I'll be approached by a super-entity. Still though, I agree that this amounts to 'drawing my own reality', which is why it was such a disturbing realization to come to.

    Dave

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    This reminds me of an experience. Some time after I left JWs I was invited to a Mennonite church (a pretty liberal one, btw) for a conference on the topic. They had also invited another xJW they knew, a woman in her 50s who was in and out of the psychiatric hospital. After the conference I spent a couple of hours talking with her (mostly listening to her in fact). Her talk was an amazing delirium almost entirely made of NWT phrases. She was Jehovah's wife, recounted vivid mystical experiences with strong sexual overtones. And it was quite obvious she was sincere, not "making it up," and at the same time entirely delusional.

    This encounter made me ponder about my own case, as I had left the Wt on a rather "mystical" mode. Why did I choose to act on some sort of "spiritual conviction," consciously indulging in a measure of irrationality along with rational thinking, yet didn't lose touch with "reality" to the same extent? Mystery of psychological structures, or destinies...

    But my conviction (which is a bit scary, I know) is that no matter how hard you try, you can't protect yourself against going crazy or meeting "gods" if such things are down your way so to say. No more than you can protect yourself against falling in love.

  • zack
    zack

    I don't believe God ever asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. I don't believe He that he did or that He asked to be done the heinous things attrubuted to Him in the OT.

  • Paralipomenon
    Paralipomenon

    Why give mankind free will, then state that they can only use their free will to serve him?

    I'll pass, thank you.

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