Do you respect the views of the religious?

Zillah

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Hi,

I had just gone into my bedroom, I hadn't yet gone to sleep, so I was wide awake.

I always find it strange that Jesus only appears to people who have already learned about him from other sources. Like, it's never happened that explorers have found a tribe in a far flung jungle worshiping their saviour Jesus because he came to their elder in a dream. Their Elder tends to only have visions about their own Gods, who also have never appeared in the dreams of someone living in Europe.

It's almost like it's a cultural/psychological phenomenon than a supernatural one.

midlandsmissus

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Well, that's great for you, but why doesn't JC do this for everyone then? What makes you so special that you don't have to rely on faith and faith alone like the rest of us?

Secondly, I would concede if this happened to you it would make sense that you give thought to believing in the Christian God etc. However, for the rest of us, it is just another person providing anecdotal, unsubstantiated evidence on the internet, and should be treated as such.

I've no idea why it happened to me, maybe he might come to you yet?

midlandsmissus

Zillah wrote: »

I always find it strange that Jesus only appears to people who have already learned about him from other sources. Like, it's never happened that explorers have found a tribe in a far flung jungle worshiping their saviour Jesus because he came to their elder in a dream. Their Elder tends to only have visions about their own Gods, who also have never appeared in the dreams of someone living in Europe.

It's almost like it's a cultural/psychological phenomenon than a supernatural one.

Zillah I'd heard about Jesus yes, as much as I'd heard about Buddha, Mohammed etc. But I thought evey single one of these was rubbish. Seriously you couldn't have gotten a more pronounced atheist than me. I argued the toss with everybody.

So psychologically, if I was hallucinating, why would I envision some-one I didn't give a jot about at the time?

freedom of info

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Zillah I'd heard about Jesus yes, as much as I'd heard about Buddha, Mohammed etc. But I thought evey single one of these was rubbish. Seriously you couldn't have gotten a more pronounced atheist than me. I argued the toss with everybody.

So psychologically, if I was hallucinating, why would I envision some-one I didn't give a jot about at the time?

acid will do that:)

midlandsmissus

freedom of info wrote: »

acid will do that:)

Never done it

Zillah

midlandsmissus wrote: »

So psychologically, if I was hallucinating, why would I envision some-one I didn't give a jot about at the time?

Yeah, you're right, the creator of the universe sending you a personalised message is way more reasonable than a human brain (an organ that is known to cause hallucinations for hundreds of different reasons) giving you a hallucination.

Zillah I'd heard about Jesus yes, as much as I'd heard about Buddha, Mohammed

As much as, really? Were you by any chance born in Nepal or Saudi Arabia? Or, dare I hazzard a guess, Christian dominated Ireland?

Tar.Aldarion

I've hallucinated and saw a counter terrorist from a game when younger, I knew he wanted to kill me and that he was a french(so mutual:pac:) counter terrorist but I don't believe in him. I could not tell he was not real for a few seconds. I just shouldn't play that game so much.


Anyway, don't really care about brain vs visit from jesus I want to know what he said, or did, did he wink, are you pregnant?

/gets frankincense and myrrh


If it was jesus, and you now believe, have your morals changed? ie homosexuals are now evil, abortion is wrong etc, whatever you believed that contradicted with Jesus/chrstianity.

Sam Vimes

midlandsmissus wrote: »

I haven't been on here for a while, so will try to reply to everyone.

It wasn't shadows,shapeless patterns etc. It was a complete face of glowing light. Why would I perceive that out of nothing?

Because the human mind has an ability to model, a tendency to hallucinate and a propencity to see what it wants to see

You don't have to be insane or on drugs to see something that isn't there, especially when you're in your bedroom and you don't think you're tired. It happens all the time

Sam Vimes

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Well I didn't say that, so don't jump ahead of me. I'm well aware that Jesus would have been coloured, and I have often pointed this out to people.

What I saw had no skin colour, it was just a glowing face of light, all in gold if you will.

How I knew it was him: the word Jesus formed in my mind. I just really knew it was him, like remembering something I had forgotten, kind of?

I've no idea why I saw it, but I know what I saw.

That sounds to me exactly like people I know often appear in my dreams. I won't have looked at their faces or won't have looked at them at all, maybe only heard them, but I'll still know it's them because the dream involves them and my brain tells me its them

Honestly, midlandsmissus, conjuring up a glowing gold face and implanting the word Jesus in your head is childsplay to the human brain, it's an extremely powerful device, and is a far simpler and more likely explanation than that the creator of the universe appeared to you.

Also I think that if Jesus was going to perform a miracle then curing disease and hunger would be a better use of his time

Mark Hamill

midlandsmissus wrote: »

How I knew it was him: the word Jesus formed in my mind. I just really knew it was him, like remembering something I had forgotten, kind of?

The word Jesus was already in your mind from your younger days. One of the reasons I cant give this kind of claim any respect is the people who see them always know what they are looking at because they know of the thing they have seen before hand. You dont know how much of that glowing face wasn't just the chance reflection of a light and how much of it was your mind just filling in the blacks with the most magical face your know. Ever notice how no-one has ever claimed to have had a vision which they just knew at the time was Jesus, even though there was no way for them to have ever heard of Jesus or Christianity at all? All the elements of your vision were already in your head, all you needed was a tired brain and some light to join the dots into an imaginary picture.
Another reason I cant respect these kind of beliefs is that for every one of you (a christian having a vision of Jesus) there is a jew or muslim etc having the same vision but seeing the face of muhammed or noah or something. And you all will most likely apply my own reasons above for disbelieving your vision to disbelieving each others, but you wont apply it to your own experience.

Sam Vimes

Dawkins deals with it fairly well. I think this is the third time I've posted this video in this forum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKGtcVoBhBQ

vibe666

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Seriously you couldn't have gotten a more pronounced atheist than me. I argued the toss with everybody.

i think (or at least i hope) i speak for all the atheists here when I say that if a hallucination of a floating disembodied head of some hippy was enough to pry you away from atheism in the middle of the night, you weren't a proper atheist in the first place and we'd have probably excommunicated you from the order if you hadn't already left. :pac::pac::pac:

cathysworld

I respect their views as long as they respect mine and dont try to force me into religion

DigiGal

Here's how I feel about religion, I posted it in the christianity forum but they weren't having any of it....I was happy to be annoying though


There are 3 types of Intelligent Civilisation which can evolve from a scientific standpoint.....
Type 1
Type 2 and
Type 3

We are ....type 0

Essentially we are nothing.
Who are we to decide what created a body as large as the universe, to say its this God or that God.
If everyone just kept their mouth shut and were secure in their own faith and beliefs then there would be alot less war and petty arguements alot less of the horrible crimes commited in Gods name.....
Do you honestly think that something so powerful that it could create endless time and space would care if this text is right or if you sleep with men or women
Can't we all just be nice and live well for the sake of making this short time pleasent for ourselves and everyone else rather than a fear of some powerful higher being.

A type 3 civilisation has no need for war or fighting. Until we are that intelligent we will most likely never know the face of God or whatever is out there and we will most likely have destroyed ourselves by then being to absorbed by petty arguements about race, religion, creed, sexual habits.....It is a sad world one that needs a fear of Hell to stop anarchy

In the end it all stems from a fear of the unknown, a fear of death a search for higher meaning, a feeling of insignifigance.
But to be signifigant just treat others well, make a difference and then ytehre will be a lasting impression on those you leave behind, thats how you live on..
and either way death is a release from suffering of life no matter where you go.

Oh and creationists piss me the hell off I don't see how they could be so ignorant!

Zombrex

midlandsmissus wrote: »

How was I 'predisposed to read non-existent religious connotations into visions', I was an athiest, from an atheist family.

By being human. Our brains are basically massive pattern matching systems.

I often wake up and can see people lying on my floor. I'm not dreaming, I'm wide awake. But there are people moving around on the floor. I switch on my light and there are none, unsurprisingly.

What is happening, as far as I can work out, is that my brain is working just of the fresh information of the dark floor because I just woke up. It has no context to put the dark floor into, and so it goes into default mode of pattern matching for humans.

Just to clarify, when I wake up it is not that I'm seeing fuzzy shapes on the floor that I think might be people. I see people. I see people as clear as if there was actually someone lying on my floor in the dark. Some times they are even moving. I can make out faces and hands and legs and clothes. They are dark and shadowy obviously, but they could not be any clearer than if it were actuallying lying on my floor. It is not a waking dream, I'm fully awake, I just haven't turned on the light yet so my brain is having trouble working out what it is actually seeing, and so defaults to pattern matching. One of these days I'm going to wake up to find someone robbing my house and just roll over back to sleep thinking I'm imagining it.

People forget that the image that we "see" in our brain is a processed image It is not the raw data from our eyes. Our brain has put the image through an awful lot of post-processing in order for us to understand it. And sometimes, given lack of data or context, this processing makes a balls of it, and we see things that are not accurate or real.

dvpower

midlandsmissus wrote: »

I was in my bedroom one night when a glowing face just appeared to me. I knew it was Jesus.

Only last week, I was adducted by aliens. They brought me up to their spacecraft where they carried out a series of experiments on me including ... (well, I'm not ready to talk about that yet :mad:).

I never gave much thought to the existence of aliens. I don't have a history of mental illness and I don't drink or do drugs, and yet I'm finding it difficult to convince people that this actually happened. Thankfully, I've found someone who has had a similar experience. You believe me, dont you?

DigiGal

"I've said my story on here before. I was an athiest for a long time, I was in my bedroom one night when a glowing face just appeared to me. I knew it was Jesus."


out of the 6 billion people on earth what makes you so special.....Vanity is one of the 7 deadly sins ya know :P

pts

DigiGal wrote: »

out of the 6 billion people on earth what makes you so special.....Vanity is one of the 7 deadly sins ya know :P

I wonder if Mary's friends asked her the exact same thing when she explained how she got pregnant

DigiGal

pts wrote: »

I wonder if Mary's friends asked her the exact same thing when she explained how she got pregnant

After joseph agve her a good seein too nope quite normal for wimmins to get pregnant with a husband and no condoms all that

funny how jesus has no bros and sisters are you tellin me he didn't do his wife once...poor joseph

A carpenter who couldn't keep his wood

Dades

DigiGal, your next post better be constructive or it will your last here.

DigiGal

Dades wrote: »

DigiGal, your next post better be constructive or it will your last here.

Whoops sorry dades forget i'm not in AH sometimes....
won't happen again

Dave!

DigiGal wrote: »

Whoops sorry dades forget i'm not in AH sometimes....
won't happen again

That wasn't constructive! Banned!

:pac:

DigiGal

Dave! wrote: »

That wasn't constructive! Banned!

:pac:

Smarty pants....

Sam Vimes

DigiGal wrote: »

Smarty pants....

Neither was that

You're pushing your luck missy :pac:

DigiGal

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Neither was that

You're pushing your luck missy :pac:

Stop....I can't resist ahhggh

I find that no matter how hard you try people aren't going to change their religion for you so why try...let them alone...
I still ahte creationists though

Now

vibe666

I'd have to seriously wonder how many people in the Christian forum would genuinely respect the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta's belief in Scientology?

and I don't just mean 'saying' they 'respect their rights to their beliefs' to legitimise their own belief system, but who would actually not laugh at them for believing what they believe?

how could they even take their own religion seriously without at least secretly mocking other religions for being wrong in their eyes?

we can talk about people restpecting other peoples rights to religious belifs all we want, but at the end of the day, if you are religious and can seriously say you respect other religions, how serious can you really be about your own religion? if you REALLY believe your own religion is the right one, then how can you take everyone else seriously when you know they're all going to burn in hell and you're not?

philologos

DigiGal wrote: »

funny how jesus has no bros and sisters are you tellin me he didn't do his wife once...poor joseph

Unreal.

Matthew 12:46 wrote:

While He was still speaking to the crowds, His mother and His brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to Him. Someone told Him, 'Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.' But to the one who had told Him this, Jesus replied, 'Who is my mother and who are my brothers?' And pointing to his disciples He said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, sister and mother.'

Matthew 13:54-58 wrote:

He came to His home town and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so they were astounded and said, 'Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is this not the carpenter's son? Is not His mother Mary? And are not His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? Are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?' And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, 'Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.' And He did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.

John 7:3-7 wrote:

So His brothers said to him, 'Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also make see the works you are doing; for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things show yourself to the world.' (For not even His brothers believed in Him). Jesus said to them, 'My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that it's works are evil.

Know about what you criticise! It's a common weakness I'm starting to see in peoples arguments. If you want to challenge Christianity, do it well!

Many of the people here do do it well though I will admit

Sam Vimes

vibe666 wrote: »

I'd have to seriously wonder how many people in the Christian forum would genuinely respect the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta's belief in Scientology?

and I don't just mean 'saying' they 'respect their rights to their beliefs' to legitimise their own belief system, but who would actually not laugh at them for believing what they believe?

how could they even take their own religion seriously without at least secretly mocking other religions for being wrong in their eyes?

we can talk about people restpecting other peoples rights to religious belifs all we want, but at the end of the day, if you are religious and can seriously say you respect other religions, how serious can you really be about your own religion? if you REALLY believe your own religion is the right one, then how can you take everyone else seriously when you know they're all going to burn in hell and you're not?

This reminds me of a section of the good book (The God Delusion :P) where Dawkins relates a story from Pascal Boyer (anthropologist, professor and author) and his encounter with a Cambridge theologian:

Boyer did research on the Fang people of Cameroon, who believe…

…that witches have an extra internal animal-like organ that flies away at night and ruins other people’s crops or poisons their blood. It is also said that these witches sometimes assemble for huge banquets, where they devour their victims and plan future attacks. Many will tell you that a friend of a friend actually saw witches flying over the village at night, sitting on a banana leaf and throwing magical darts at various unsuspecting victims.

Boyer continues with a personal anecdote: I was mentioning these and other exotica over dinner in a Cambridge college when one of our guests, a prominent Cambridge theologian, turned to me and said:”That is what makes anthropology so fascinating and so difficult too. You have to explain how people can believe such nonsense.” Which left me dumbfounded. The conversation had moved on before I could find a pertinent response- to do with kettles and pots.

Dawkins continues: Assuming that the Cambridge theologian was a mainstream Christian, he probably believed some combination of the following:

-In the time of the ancestors, a man was born to a virgin mother with no biological father being involved.

-The same fatherless man called out to a friend called Lazarus, who had been dead long enough to stink, and Lazarus promptly came back to life.

-The fatherless man himself came alive after being dead and buried three days.

-Forty days later, the fatherless man went up to the top of a hill and then disappeared bodily into the sky.

-If you murmur thoughts privately in your head, the fatherless man, and his “father” (who is also himself) will hear your thoughts and may act upon them. He is simultaneously able to hear the thoughts of everybody else in the world.

-If you do something bad, or something good, the same fatherless man sees all, even if nobody else does. You may be rewarded or punished accordingly, including after your death.

-The fatherless man’s virgin mother never died but was “assumed” bodily into heaven.

-Bread and wine, if blessed by a priest (who must have testicles) “become” the body and blood of the fatherless man.

What would an objective anthropologist, coming fresh to this set of beliefs while on fieldwork in Cambridge, make of them?

philologos

vibe666 wrote: »

I'd have to seriously wonder how many people in the Christian forum would genuinely respect the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta's belief in Scientology?

I think that Tom Cruise and John Travolta have a right to believe in Scientology, but I believe Scientology to be mistaken. I can express this view without mocking it.

Mocking people isn't the best way to encourage another way of thinking, infact it repels people from it and rightly so.

pH

Jakkass wrote: »

I think that Tom Cruise and John Travolta have a right to believe in Scientology, but I believe Scientology to be mistaken. I can express this view without mocking it.

Fine, I can understand a laisser faire mindset, but would you agree that missionary work, with the aim of converting people to a new religion, no matter how gentle or well meaning it is, is actually highly disrespectful of the indigenous beliefs?