So me, of all people, had a religious experience (page 7)

SweetBabyCheezits

lol@ CJ

Your dry humor is good for a thread that grows tense.

I didn't think the thread lacked for humour. (Or humor, as you American folks like to type.). I think sab asked a question about an experience he perceived through his current paradigm and he's getting answers from other people as they perceive it through theirs. Looks like some feathers got ruffled in the process.

jay88

CJC-now lets pray to god.. "our father that is in heaven".... ps. maybe i bought the wrong kind of chinesse food cuz i finished and nothing happened... same results i got when i played the ouija board. i guess satan is shunning me also.. :(

I usually read my fortune with a belly full of noodles and glass of wine or two, it settles down the conscious mind so I can readily accept the affirmation.

Nickolas

My experience has been that rational conversations break down at the moment one of the participants gets emotional. At that point the part of the brain that processes emotion takes over and the part that processes rational thought is pushed aside. The emotions reinforce the intellectual perspective of the individual and he feels threatened, gets aggressive and defensive. The conversation stops. Nobody makes any progress.

cyberjesus

thats whats missing : the wine. oh with wine ive had several religious experiences :) ok now lets get serious per nickolas the non-american : so why is it that the first reaction to an unexpected event has to be religious? whats religious about a texas hold em event? why not think it was the devil? or dead people? or aliens? or magnetism of the earth? or a solar flare? or a matrix "dejavu". why do we feel we have to know the cause of strange events? i mean the virgin mary appeared on a cheese sandwich just recently, at least thats what the woman said after selling it on ebay for over 20k why poker, why u, why religious?

cyberjesus

oh nickolas, rationality is banned in religious forums.... at least here in america. maybe skeptics.org

jay88

How many miracles do you have to over-looked to perceive a random event with cards?

Is life not good enough, or must I hit the lottery?

tec

Ultimately Sab, the meaning OR coincidence is for you.

I personally do not put any stock into 'signs', because I don't know how to read them. Coincidence or communication? The chances are equally plausible for things I might interpret as signs - which then renders a sign as mostly meaningless TO ME. That doesn't mean that they don't happen, but that I am not likely to benefit from one.

However, I put much faith into prayers being answered in whatever manner. You might have been frustrated or angry, but at least it sounds as if there was no bs or semantics or pc language/feelings involved; that you had stripped everything aside and you were just being painfully honest. Coming on the heels of your prayer, I might very well take this as an answer, communicated in a way that would mean something to me. Which brings us right back to the fact that ultimately... its meaning only applies to you.

Tammy

SweetBabyCheezits

True, Nick. We need progress here.

Sab, maybe someone can suggest a methodical approach to analyzing the data. I'm wondering if you could recall the hands well enough to explain it to a resident mathematician(?). It would be interesting to calculate exactly what the odds were.

Also wondering... if you've played "hundreds of thousands of games together", what role might that play in your chances of seeing something like this?

Again, not bashing, mocking, or jealous. Like you, I want to exhaust all other possibilities first, which is what open-mindedness is all about. We just need to ask the right questions.

Nickolas

Thank you, cyberjesus. Shall I expect you to provide British English spellings as a courtesy, too?

We need to give people some space sometimes. Brotherdan's just making his escape from the Watchtower and it still pulls hard on his psyche. He would be a freak if it was otherwise. The transition is difficult enough without losing opportunities to maintain a rational discourse and having a few more lights come on. Understanding goes a long way toward believing. Back in the day I thought I understood the Watchtower message so clearly that I believed it all to be true and I was considering baptism. It was only after I started not being able to figure stuff out, and being told I must stop trying to figure stuff out, that I began to doubt and broke away. It took decades more before I understood the really serious problems with theism. But if you're a theist who thinks maybe he's got a chance to live forever, it would scare hell out of you to be an atheist, and therefore the prospect of actually starting to understand atheism is frightening to you. It's liberating, actually, to base what you believe on what is demonstrable with evidence, however imperfect, instead of assertions completely without evidence. But I understand how it is for some people a frightening realisation.

So me, of all people, had a religious experience

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