New ex-Christian who is lost in his own freedom and uncertainty.

Originally posted by aftershocklegend
you asked for help and all I saw was people trying to rip you away from truth,

Actually truth does not need to be defended, and cannot be taken away.
That which is real cannot be threatened...
That which is not real - does not exist.

Peace

dAlen

reply to post by Good Wolf

Oh, okay; that make sense. I was confused by your pronouns.

As for trusting, and who makes the 'first move', that sounds like the prisoner's dilemma, to me. My opinion, practically, is that trust is earned. But one should always be willing to sacrifice some small, finite part of one's convenience to the possibility of further trust. If that's a 'roadblock' -- meaning, there's a discontinuity where a large amount of trust is required to make the 'next step' -- then two beings who respect each other will discuss that situation openly and honestly.

I see this, for example, with politicians, all the time -- they spin 'high-hopes' ideas of utopian possibilities, but the trust required by those they would 'represent' is too great, and unverifiable. As I've seen it, inevitably, some form of disillusionment and feeling of being deceived results. It's not a fair game to play.

reply to post by Good Wolf


Well I think you should try to focus on the experience of life it self.
Live and do and be in the moment for a while. I believe "god" lives in everything
and that everything is connected in a way that words cannot justify.
After a while you may find great peace in the moment and even greater excitement
in the unknown, unsure and unexplainable...

Another thing you my try to do is learn of other religions and philosophies.
There are two books I have read that gave me great insight, comfort and questions.

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD (not a christian book ) in which the author feels he is talking to god as you have expressed.

I believe this book goes past any dogmatic restraints and deals with spiritual identity crisis'...

I give this book ( I know I only have two but...)

In fact I read this book in one night and as I left for work the next morning book two was sitting in my drive way??? Turns out a friend of mine came to see my roomy
and the SECOND book fell out of his car??? Anyways it was a very powerful experience for me...


SECOND book is Budha by CHOPRA -- this is a partially fictional/"factual book which also deals with spiritual identity...

Another good thing to look into is eastern philosophies/ religions...

They tend to have a lot less DOGMA and a lot more mental/intellectual avenues.

I myself have had the worst two years of my life thus far. I have been taking care of a terminally ill grandmother, father and badly injured mother.

All three of them by myself, diapers. feeding, shots and their every need...

However I have no seen life slowly turn to death and I assure you there is a better place... The process of dying my be frightening but always remember that it appears
that all matter came from the same place and the same. DO not fear death, I no longer do.I only fear the fear I will feel when I will be in the dying process.

Your matter will live forever...

Make your life count!

Geez, I can't believe I am up this late...anyway.

Good Wolf-
I hafta applaud your cool head, because it is obvious the theists are getting frustrated, and resorting to aggressiveness as usual. Typical, imo..

You have made a very difficult decision, I know how difficult it is because I made it myself a few years ago. It wasn't easy, and it basically alienated me from all of my family. I went through a period of regret, trying to find a way to reconcile the differences, where everyone would see eye to eye. The sad truth is, that never happened, and it won't happen for you either.
But in time, there is strength to be gained from faithfullness to yourself.
Believe it or not, those who oppose your decision now, will respectfully back off in time as well.

I know it is tough man, you gotta trust yourself. You are your best friend.
Everyone else has an agenda.

Peace

reply to post by Tattoo1377


Thanks man. I appreciate your in-put. I starred you.



Anywho, I feel I've gotten just about everything I'm going to get out of this thread. Is there anything else anyone has to say?

I started a self-introduction thread

go there if you like.

[edit on 9/1/2008 by Good Wolf]

I am going through the same thing as many here: doubt. This is where i stand though.

I believe in a god as the its more probable to me than a big bang creating the universe out of nowhere, then again I am no physicist. I dont think a just God would care what religion you are as long as you live a good life. If he does care what religion I am then I prefer not to be with an unjust God.

reply to post by Good Wolf


There are too many contradictions in the Bible and in the belief of a God for him to be real. The clincher for me is why would any god create us to be fallible, and then send us to Hell for being fallible?
Your at a tough spot. I understand because I was there too. The world is turned upside down, and all you want to do is be able to believe in God again or have some hope for the future. I'm at the point where I'm fine with the fact that when I die, my brain rots along with conscious thought. Even if I did have a soul that was whisked away, I wouldn't know it, as I would be brain dead .
The way I look at it, when we die, we die. We will have no remorse when we are dead, so the only remorse is if you do not live your life to the fullest.
It's like that banana milkshake I just had. Damn, sure was good when I had it, but it wouldn't have been very good if I was preoccupied with negative thoughts.
Enjoy your banana milkshake.

This what I figured i would come to believe even before i started this thread.
I figure all that I can hope for is to live forever. So far, so good.

You know I envision myself saying to somebody in the future:
A wise man once told me "enjoy your banana milkshake"

Wow, thanks for sharing. It was very personal story.

Very interesting topic you brought up. I could write a long post or a short one. I'll go for a short one and if you want you can always ask any questions.

I will write only from my personal experience and perspective. When looking for an answer to the same questions you are having I red a lot of literature from diverse range of times and sources. My perception of afterlife is influenced by Jakob Lorber, 19th century - he heard an inner voice. I recommend highly and particularly Scenes from Death an Afterlife.

I also studied history a lot and particularly megalithic monuments all around the world to understand where do we come from and if the history thought in schools can be considered true. My perception was particularly influenced by my finds of massive pyramids in China, Egypt, Mexico, Peruvian monuments and Sumerian tablets describing beginning of civilisation.

In order to test religious barrier that prevents us to have a direct contact with beings beyond our "normal" perception I also went briefly into establishing personal contact with other realms by using a legal (in the country of my residence) strong hallucinogen that has been used for thousands of years by Shamans.

The only conclusion I am so far to come up with is that there is another world that is parallel to the current reality and stretches beyond it.

From my experience and knowledge that "other world" has very little to do with religions (Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Voodoo) - it has different laws of physics and psychology.

Currently I am putting a lot of time into research trying to link massive evidence of megaliths built by ancient civilisations with Shamanic doorway to other realm/s.

Few things..

First, OP, by not going to church and worshipping God directly instead, you made the correct decision. This is true Christianity. Idolizing Jesus is evil.

Yes, the Bible is not perfect and was written by men. It is not the end-all. be-all.

But Zeitgeist? OMG .. when I saw that on your post I thought to myself "Oh Lord.. poor guy just got a massive dose of BS propaganda that has been debunked". Zeitgeist is crap .. it has symbolism in it, but no, it is not all true. There IS proof Jesus existed, mainly a piece of the headboard that says "Jesus King of the Jews" in 3 languages, the 3 it said it was written on in the Bible, and then placed atop the crucifix for passers-by to read while Jesus died.

That item was recovered and carbon dated, and determined authentic.

I'm not going back into this arguement of evidence vs evidence, so that everything I say exists will be refuted and told that its fake or not the true item or place where such and such happened. So, if youre a Zeitgeist fan and you like running on empty, by all means do so, but do not try to argue with me about Jesus never existing, this is retarded.

Josephus said Jesus existed. We go off of Josephus for MANY, MANY historical events. For instance, most claim the massacre at the fortress Massada was true; that Romans beseiged the Jewish rebels in the fortress for a long time, and instead of being killed by Romans, the men killed their wives and children, then the men took lots of who will kill the other men etc, then the last man commits suicide. This way there is 1 suicide, and the rest are killings. Historians think it likely happened. And where did we hear about this? In one of Josephus' works! I rest my case!

[edit on 9/1/2008 by runetang]

Originally posted by TruthParadox
reply to post by Good Wolf

 

There are too many contradictions in the Bible and in the belief of a God for him to be real. The clincher for me is why would any god create us to be fallible, and then send us to Hell for being fallible?

Um .. so then, good chap .. let me ask you some questions.

Why/how did the Universe begin? (Tip: dont say big bang because you cant explain it in undeniable, proven facts)

If it was the big bang, where did the matter come from which expanded faster than the speed of light to create our universe? (btw, expanding faster than light is considered impossible by einstein's theory)

matter cannot be created nor totally destroyed, only changed in form. Let me ask you sir, where did this first matter come from which eventually was kept in perfect order and moved into exactly solar systems, galaxies, perfect circle orbits, and the like? If it cant be made, matter that is, how did it get made?!?! everything around us is matter, we are matter of the flesh. And yet its' impossible to create it according to science, and yet something it just "became" when the big bang "happened".

well let me tie the ends up for you here. Yea, it just "happened" you got that right, and yea, maybe there was a bang when it happened, but the entire thing was orchestrated by a higher intelligence beyond our comprehension, the one that keeps everything in the cosmos in order. The one who made the laws of physics, to keep the creation in PERPETUAL HARMONY with NO MAINTENANCE REQUIRED WHATSOEVER! Now that is intelligent!

But you have to get beyond God being a single figure or a man, and get to the point where you realize God encompasses all, can take the form of a man if it liked, but in its' natural form looks like nothing, or maybe light.

You've got one small moment in time -- to shine -- to shine -- to burn away the darkness. You've got one tiny moment in time, in time, to shine, to burn away the darkness. I will be liiiiiiiight .. I will be light.

[edit on 9/1/2008 by runetang]

Originally posted by Good Wolf
I'm desperately looking for the answer to two questions:

1) Does a God(s) exist? and,
2) Is there an afterlife?

I'll give you a preface:
I am exactly 19 1/2 and I have been an ex-Christian for roughly a month or two.

I had always been a christian and from about age 15 onward I was devout bible-bashing. But I had a mind[love] for science and philosophy which lead me to over think things. In biology I decided that genesis was a creation myth, but that raised a problem. If genesis was non-factual, how much more of the bible was non-factual? I couldn't be sure. I decided that ultimately the bible was unnecessary and that a strong personal relationship with God (not Jesus, I thought he was a significant preacher but not the One who I should pray to) was the important thing as he could teach me directly. I also recognised that, if the bible was infallible then it wasn't divinely inspired as God wouldn't do that and then not care to protect it from distortions and that sort.

Then things got shaky for me when 6 months ago I started hearing a voice in my head (which I later attributed to God) and it taught me many lesions and wonderful messages. Acting upon the voice, I applied the ideas to a troublesome relationship I had. A friend of my friend (lets call him Jason) hated me and let me know it. 2 months after the voice started, Jason respected me, and we became close, he confided in me and trusted me for advice.

The voice brought a lot of life and love to me but it made me critical of my Church because of the overwhelming hipocrisy, double standars, and most of all, apathy. I stopped going and sought to follow what I called "pure christianity" which entailed looking inward to where I could hear God and seeking understanding.

...Then I watched Zeitgiest. At first it was so shocking I was unable to watch it as the ramifications of it being true to to painful to consider. I eventually sat through it and for its' significance, needed to know more.

I was glad to learn that revelation talked in code about Nero and rome. Phew!!

Zeitgeist isn't infallible, as I found out, but the fact alone that there was no evidence supporting the christian messiah ever existing threw me into a hunt to prove/debunk christian theology.

I have found a lot and promptly dropped my religion all together.
My christian friends deal with me with caution after one fundamentalist had a go at me and I rendered him literally speechless.

Im so fresh out of the church and so immature in my belief system that I don't know what's what and frankly I'm scared...

I realise that there is a deep seeded desire for life to have meaning and for there to be an afterlife and for 'God' to love us but it all just appears to be derived from an instinctual fear of death.

Do we believe in God because we need there to be an afterlife?!


The idea that God does not exist and that there is nothing after death terrifies me, as you would expect, and for the first real time in my life I am afraid of death.


To all those atheists, agnostics and ex-christians; how do you reconcile these problems in yourselves?

[edit on 8/31/2008 by Good Wolf]

As an answer to your initial questions: Yes, God exists and there is an afterlife.

Like many people in the world, I was familiar with the stories of the Holy books before I even began school. A time comes at about 5 years old when a child begins to become more aware of his surroundings that he figures that the stories in the Bible just don't hold up. You mentioned the Genesis story and referred to it as a creation myth. I suppose it could appear that way. But in the last few years I went back and read the story and interpreted it in a different way.

What if the story in Genesis is really saying that man began existence as an asexual, possibly single celled, organism that procreated by budding? Such an interpretation would be more in line with my biology book.

My point is this: the author(s) of the Bible were trying to communicate exceeding complex concepts which are not as easily grasped as is often assumed. Implicit within the text of that book are discussions concerning the nature of time and the structure and mechanics of reality, including alternates. I don't care what anyone says; these subjects are not childs' play.

I don't push religion as sure as I won't suggest a political belief or what college you should attend or what you should study when you get there. But I will say that: Questioning oneself and beliefs is natural and good. But, arriving at the conclusion that there is nothing beyond what the senses can immediately verify as real is definately incorrect.

reply to post by runetang


To bad your case isn't built on much substance. Josephus is fine and all but he's not immune to interpolation. Many scholars believe his account to be suspiciously pro Jesus for a jewish historian. If josephus was so taken by jesus then why doesn't he ever mention him again.

What is supprising is that he is the only writer of the time to talk about Jesus, and since Jesus was so damn popular and everyone knew about him, why is it that only josephus wrote him?

Its irrelivant anyhow, because his account is hearsay by definition.

mainly a piece of the headboard that says "Jesus King of the Jews"

Show me.

Originally posted by runetang
But Zeitgeist? OMG .. when I saw that on your post I thought to myself "Oh Lord.. poor guy just got a massive dose of BS propaganda that has been debunked". Zeitgeist is crap .. it has symbolism in it, but no, it is not all true.

Well like I said, I researched all the points brought up in zeitgeist and it was more true than it was false thank you very much.

The Solar deities part was the only bit that was incredibly thin.

Originally posted by runetang
Why/how did the Universe begin? (Tip: dont say big bang because you cant explain it in undeniable, proven facts)

If it was the big bang, where did the matter come from which expanded faster than the speed of light to create our universe? (btw, expanding faster than light is considered impossible by einstein's theory)

Oh give it a rest, mate. prehaps if you had read through the entire thread you'd know we covered all this stuff.


[edit on 9/1/2008 by Good Wolf]

reply to post by bruxfain


I believe there was a good thread in here somewhere illustrating that Adam was not the first man, talked about how there were civilisations before but God had glassed them (nothing new there )

At first it sounded like quackery but the research was reasonable and the conclusions fairly open.

Search "Adam not the first man"

[edit on 9/1/2008 by Good Wolf]

Originally posted by Good Wolf
reply to post by bruxfain

 

I believe there was a good thread in here somewhere illustrating that Adam was not the first man, talked about how there were civilisations before but God had glassed them (nothing new there

)

At first it sounded like quackery but the research was reasonable and the conclusions fairly open.

Search "Adam not the first man"

[edit on 9/1/2008 by Good Wolf]

Yes, Adam was not the FIRST man. Yes, there were civilizations before Adam. But this a reference to a physical/material Adam and world. What I am talking about is Energy.

Everything that be can be measured and observed also exists in a fundamentally different condition as Energy, which cannot be directly measured. I haven't read it your book because men are generally stupid, but the Adam of your book is probably referring to a physical Adam, not the Energetic Adam of the Bible. One goes through the cycles of life, while the latter is eternal.

I think that is the first problem with so-called scientist and researchers and their "Proof". They use there understanding of the physical to explain the energetic. Its like using classical physics to explain quantum interaction. Your answers will all be WRONG!!

I found the tone from your response to be quite confrontational, so if you'd like I will refrain from being soft spoken and instead become intellectually violent.

You should be careful that your search for truth doesn't end with your creating just another BS belief system. Like so many other fools throughout history.


[edit on 1-9-2008 by bruxfain]

[edit on 1-9-2008 by bruxfain]

reply to post by bruxfain


Me? confrontational? Not unless I'm provoked. Which post are you referring to?

surely no this one:

I believe there was a good thread in here somewhere illustrating that Adam was not the first man, talked about how there were civilisations before but God had glassed them (nothing new there

)

At first it sounded like quackery but the research was reasonable and the conclusions fairly open.

Search "Adam not the first man"

I would like to add that there is no direct evidence so far that God exists, having said that human brain is the only gateway that allows us to see what it is like on the other side and therefore very hard to take measures of that evidence.

Can you tell me which consciousness is more real - night or day?

reply to post by Good Wolf


Yes, I am very sensitive to what men contain in their hearts. I see through words. When I read your initial post, I said to myself here is Young person who has become disillusioned by the institution of the Church and desires to have a serious discussion concerning the more subtle truths of reality. But through your inappropriate use of laughing faces, I arrived at the conclusion that you may be just baiting believers.

Anyway. I've been wrong about people. So perhaps I jumped to an incorrect conclusion about you and the thread YOU started.

But what I will say is this: I can prove to you that the line of thinking that leads to the conclusion that there is no God or afterlife implicitly includes the acceptance that you don't exist and never have.

reply to post by bruxfain


I didn't do anything to bait believers. I didnt want christians to post at all unless they wern't going to tell me something that has been parroted to me a hundred bajillion times allready. Have you read through the thread? a few churchies got all preachy up in my crib [sorry ill stop now] and I responded thusly.

I don't agree with your conclusion that to note believe in God is to not believe in ourselves. This won't happen if God isn't a necessary part of making life. The mechanics of biology show that man does not have to be divinely inspired and designed, just lucky.