Ten reasons that I am an atheist

spidergoat said:
So, no one else noticed anything? It is this lack of verification that makes me doubt what you saw was anything more than a figment of your imagination. Which is a more likely hypothesis - that it was a hallucination, or that it was the action of the same omnipotent being that created the universe itself? People have hallucinations all the time, and there hasn't been any reliable evidence of God... ever.
Click to expand...

no one else was there spider. and it is NOT a lack of verification that makes you doubt. it is your reluctance to believe in something spiritual, or in a god.

i was not hallucinating. and there is no reason to believe that i was. you just want to believe that and so you do. :shrug:
 
Lori_7 said:
no, i mean that my body was "used" by something to write a message. and there were symptoms or physical manifestations that i felt and witnessed to let me know that beyond any doubt.
Click to expand...
That is very much like what the now discredited "channelers" said. As I noted in prior post, they were not being dishonest, only self deluded.
 
Lori:

Knowing that such things can be accounted for by neurology, for instance, why do you feel compelled to your alternate interpretation? I experience things of a quite similar nature all the freakin' time, owing to neurological complications, and--through selective reasoning--I often come up with some rather "meaningful" interpretations. Likewise, as efforts to control these episodes, i.e. medication, etc., have proved futile, I just "go with it" and, as spidergoat remarked in post #22 ("your subconscious is far more powerful than most people realize. It is this resource that is tapped by practices like prayer and meditation. It can solve all sorts of problems that your conscious brain is unable to navigate."), I even pursue it, as it's proved valuable to my occupations. Never-the-less, I acknowledge it's origins as fundamentally neurological and feel no compulsion to offer an alternate explanation.
 
Lori_7 said:
no one else was there spider. and it is NOT a lack of verification that makes you doubt. it is your reluctance to believe in something spiritual, or in a god.

i was not hallucinating. and there is no reason to believe that i was. you just want to believe that and so you do. :shrug:
Click to expand...

How do you know? Humans are subject to illusions of the brain, so our perceptions cannot be trusted implicitly. If I think I see a ghost, does that mean there are ghosts? No, it would need confirmation in some other way. I am indeed reluctant to believe in Gods for this reason, and the fact that no verifiable evidence has ever been offered from the religious community. Indeed, they have made a cult out of the lack of evidence, and they call it faith.
 
Billy T said:
That is very much like what the now discredited "channelers" said. As I noted in prior post, they were not being dishonest, only self deluded.
Click to expand...

really? did they get a sharp pain in the center or their forehead when they were writing that immediately dissipated when they stopped writing? do you know if when they got up from writing and tried to walk, if their feet felt like lead? and then when they say to themselves, "why do my feet feel so heavy?" did they receive an answer in their mind, "when a spirit inhabits a body, it's not used to dragging that weight around so it feels heavy."? and when they get to where they're going and look in the mirror, are their eyes completely dilated (with no environmental reason for them to be that way), and do they stay that way while they gawk at themselves in the mirror for a period of about 10 to 15 seconds, and then in a split second, reduce down to the size of a pin prick, stay that way for a few seconds, and then return to normal? not to mention the fact that i could never make up what it wrote.
 
spidergoat said:
How do you know? Humans are subject to illusions of the brain, so our perceptions cannot be trusted implicitly. If I think I see a ghost, does that mean there are ghosts? No, it would need confirmation in some other way. I am indeed reluctant to believe in Gods for this reason, and the fact that no verifiable evidence has ever been offered from the religious community. Indeed, they have made a cult out of the lack of evidence, and they call it faith.
Click to expand...

well maybe that's the problem. i would definitely trust my own vision over a religious community.
 
So you do have evidence that there was some medical anomaly happening, the dilated pupils. That supports the hallucination theory, not the God theory.
 
Lori_7 said:
really? did they get a sharp pain in the center or their forehead when they were writing that immediately dissipated when they stopped writing? do you know if when they got up from writing and tried to walk, if their feet felt like lead? and then when they say to themselves, "why do my feet feel so heavy?" did they receive an answer in their mind, "when a spirit inhabits a body, it's not used to dragging that weight around so it feels heavy."? and when they get to where they're going and look in the mirror, are their eyes completely dilated (with no environmental reason for them to be that way), and do they stay that way while they gawk at themselves in the mirror for a period of about 10 to 15 seconds, and then in a split second, reduce down to the size of a pin prick, stay that way for a few seconds, and then return to normal? not to mention the fact that i could never make up what it wrote.
Click to expand...

Yes to every single one of those questions, except the bolded one. For me, at least.
 
spidergoat said:
So you do have evidence that there was some medical anomaly happening, the dilated pupils. That supports the hallucination theory, not the God theory.
Click to expand...

The epileptic seizure theory, rather.

In fact, that description pretty much nails it on the head.
 
parmalee said:
Why?
Click to expand...

i had never hallucinated prior.
i have never hallucinated since.
my vision was not distorted in any way.
i was not ill, mentally or physically.
i have never suffered from or been diagnosed with an physical or mental illness that would cause such a thing.
i was not faint.
i was not dizzy.
i was not sleep-deprived.
i had eaten.
i wasn't on drugs.
and once the stuff morphed, it stayed that way.
and, it occured in the midst of, and in relation to, other spiritual phenomena that i was experiencing at the time.
it served a purpose and had meaning.
it accomplished something.
 
spidergoat said:
So you do have evidence that there was some medical anomaly happening, the dilated pupils. That supports the hallucination theory, not the God theory.
Click to expand...

my pupils were dilated when i was writing (channeling), not when the paper morphed on my coffee table. these events were days apart.
 
Lori_7 said:
i had never hallucinated prior.
i have never hallucinated since.
my vision was not distorted in any way.
i was not ill, mentally or physically.
i have never suffered from or been diagnosed with an physical or mental illness that would cause such a thing.
i was not faint.
i was not dizzy.
i was not sleep-deprived.
i had eaten.
i wasn't on drugs.
and once the stuff morphed, it stayed that way.
and, it occured in the midst of, and in relation to, other spiritual phenomena that i was experiencing at the time.
it served a purpose and had meaning.
it accomplished something.
Click to expand...

None of that matters. Sure, it happens to me all the time because I'm epileptic; but 10 percent (roughly) of humans will experience at least one tonic-clonic or clonic-tonic seizure in their lifetime, and the percentage is considerably greater for simple and complex partial, which is exactly what you describe.
 
parmalee said:
The epileptic seizure theory, rather.

In fact, that description pretty much nails it on the head.
Click to expand...

so your theory is that i had one isolated epileptic seizure in 42 years, while in perfect health, and coincedentally in the middle of a bunch of other spiritual experiences and interactions that accomplished a purpose and have meaning?

that's...unlikely.
 
parmalee said:
None of that matters. Sure, it happens to me all the time because I'm epileptic; but 10 percent (roughly) of humans will experience at least one tonic-clonic or clonic-tonic seizure in their lifetime, and the percentage is considerably greater for simple and complex partial, which is exactly what you describe.
Click to expand...

well if that's what it was, then it served a purpose.

but that's not what it was. ;)
 
Lori_7 said:
my pupils were dilated when i was writing (channeling), not when the paper morphed on my coffee table. these events were days apart.
Click to expand...

I would say that's around the same time. I'm not a doctor, so I can't say if it was a form of epilepsy or something else, but it's a clue. In any case, a physical/mental anomaly of some sort is a more likely theory than the one you have come to believe, which is just about as far out as you can get.
 
Lori_7 said:
so your theory is that i had one isolated epileptic seizure in 42 years, while in perfect health, and coincedentally in the middle of a bunch of other spiritual experiences and interactions that accomplished a purpose and have meaning?

that's...unlikely.
Click to expand...

Not really, it's fairly common.
 
spidergoat said:
I would say that's around the same time. I'm not a doctor, so I can't say if it was a form of epilepsy or something else, but it's a clue. In any case, a physical/mental anomaly of some sort is a more likely theory than the one you have come to believe, which is just about as far out as you can get.
Click to expand...

in relation to everything i've experienced, the physical/mental anomaly is way more far out than what i believe.

the existence of a realm that is not physical is not all that far out spider.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top