From: (Anonymous)	Date: April 9th, 2003 10:09 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Interesting Article

Very interesting take on the entire process of "Divine Experience". I would like to see you explore in more detail the various types of Devine Experience that people have, and how they can be both beneficial and detrimental.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: September 19th, 2003 06:25 pm (UTC)		(Link)
God experiences - your views...

I've just read your theory on how all God experiences may be the result of wish-fulfilment etc. and would like to post the following questions:

1) Why would someone substitute "God" for a parent when they may already have two perfectly good ones.

2) How does your theory explain people like me who were militantly aetheistic and actually opposed to any notion of God, until God reached out to me?

3) Why would Christians invent a God which is not only loving, but just. In other words, why subject yourself to extremely high moral standards if all you are doing is trying to make yourseld feel better - being a Christian isn't easy!!

4) Your argument implied at one point that by ruling out some God experiences you can rule out all of them ("Once we admit that we can discount some experience of God, and simply state that some people, although they have personally experienced messages from God are actually wrong in trusting their experience, then we are faced with the atheistic possibility that actually all experiences of God are false...") - surely this is illogical. In a multiple choice exam there may be 3 wrong answers and 1 right one to choose from - using your theory, because some of them are wrong, all of them are wrong.

	From: vexen	Date: September 20th, 2003 01:17 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: God experiences - your views...

1) No-one is saying a person consciously chooses to substitute a made-up God for their parents. It's subconscious, and a complex. Also, not all people have two good parents, or even 1 good parent. Parents die. Children grow up and move away. But most importantly, everyone reaches a stage when they realize their parents aren't all-knowing, all-watching or perfectly reliable, that they're also as human as us. This is where the idea of God comes from (for people who go that way, anyway). It's not related to the quality of parenting.

2) Not all people develop in this way. It's probably genetical, or a complicated result of genes and environment. See:
http://www.dpjs.co.uk/needfordogma.html
for some comments on genes/disposition towards "religion" in general.

3) It's not a conscious choice. The reasons for accepting a religion (which is completely different to having a want for a godlike thing) are cultural.

4) My argument didn't "imply" that you could rule out all - it explicitly stated that it was possible. It is possible. Experience of life is not a multiple choice answer where there have to be "right" answers.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: September 22nd, 2005 11:08 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Re: God experiences - your views...

Hi Vexen,

Perhaps the idea that the Self is really God might be considered.

No matter how they are induced, these experiences are real, aren't they. Besides if they can be induced and it is known how they may be repeated, then surely it is real.

So, we have facts on one side and we have an assumption on the other. Change the assumption and review the facts. Instead of looking for God outside or above or below or around, what if the Self is God?

On that note, the question "what is God?" also becomes quite relevant. Not I said, what and not who.

Good luck - Stanley

From: (Anonymous)	Date: September 20th, 2003 06:07 am (UTC)		(Link)

True - life isn't multiple choice and their doesn't have to be a right answer - but that truism is a long way off saying that all experiences of God may be phoney just because some are. For instance, some scientific "facts" are phoney because the researcher's involved fabricated results etc - that doesn't mean that all scientific experiments are wrong. All I'm trying to get at is that saying that just because some experiences can be disproven doesnt mean to say you can disprove all of them.

	From: vexen	Date: September 20th, 2003 07:36 am (UTC)		(Link)

No, but it is still possible that all experiences of God are explained by psycology and neurochemistry.

Talking of science: Unless there is a valid counter argument to a theory, the theory holds. There is plenty of evidence and examples of Human psychosis in spiritual matters, so my theory (not new, of course, the theory is as old as psychiatry) does not shock any atheists or scientists.

The alternative is to say, because people experience things, that those things are true. This means that the evidence for God is the same as the evidence for UFOs, Alien Abductions, etc, and would mean that polytheism is true, monotheism isn't. Etc. Either that, or admit that it's more likely that such experiences are typical human subconscious mistakes and are perhaps the price of species intelligence.

http://www.vexen.co.uk/3/experience.html

From: (Anonymous)	Date: November 3rd, 2003 10:40 am (UTC)		(Link)
So what?

What is your conclusion? What do you think about God? FYI there is one.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: March 6th, 2005 07:23 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I have seen Gods as I know them and even spoken to souls, without realising that I am speaking to a soul. These are all very true experiance I have had since young, so why is that you argue that God do not Exist.Is, because you have not ventured on the same.If you want to see a campfire far away you must make the attempt to journey to the location to see and enjoy the heat. If you fail to do so than it does not mean that the campfire is not happening.Modern Science can not even see or proof that the human soul exsist, I for one know through experiances, beyond believe, that they do, so am I to doubt my very own experiances, which some other beings have also witness to a certain extend?Pl reply with your own experiances, as there are as many Individual Worlds as to the populace of this World???

	From: vexen	Date: March 8th, 2005 07:06 pm (UTC)		(Link)

What *don't* you believe in?

From: (Anonymous)	Date: October 27th, 2005 08:34 pm (UTC)		(Link)

The universe has design, and design is a sign of intelligence. I don't believe that design can just occur. Why does the universe abide by laws? That is the proof which must be disproved.

	From: vexen	Date: March 8th, 2005 07:07 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Do you believe in the Islamic God, Allah? Ahura Mazda? All the Hindu Gods?

If you don't believe in all the other gods, why is it you can't understand why I don't believe in yours?

From: dhevil	Date: March 19th, 2005 11:41 am (UTC)		(Link)
No no no

Thats not the way to think of Gods. You people think way too close to your own minds. You take into account "neuro chemistry" and stuff. You said in one article that if God was fair, he would implant knowlege of Jesus into our brains. This would destroy the test of faith because it would be too easy. So maye these subconcious feelings and neaurotically implanted passions for religion are Gods' way of giving us a chance to believe in God, even if we have never actually read one of His books, so that then we would feel the NEED to read Gods' holy book (In my belief the Quraan, because it held many scientific secrets for thousands of years before they only came to light to scientists recently... how could a "simple illitarete" prophet like Muhammed *PBUH* put those in just out of guessing??!)

You have contradicted yourself here, and I'll do all I can to disprove you Vixen. Of course youll do all you can to disprove my theories and observassions, but rest assured... you'll have defeated a 15 year old and it's nothingto be proud of.

	From: vexen	Date: March 30th, 2005 08:47 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: No no no

Age is irrelevant; productive debate helps people of all ages.

So you're saying that faith is impossible once you have knowledge? OK, so do people have "right faith" when they believe in things you believe in (Such as your own conception of monotheistic god), or do they have faith no matter which religion they believe in? It seems to me that God either has many, many personalities and manifestations (in short, that Hinduism and polytheism is true), or that no-one knows what we should be having faith IN. I mean, how do we even know that any Human Being has thought up a version of divinity even /close/ to how things are? Without knowledge, our faith could be in all the wrong things! The famous question is... the most important question... how do you know that the most popular religions aren't invented by malevolent demons?

From: dhevil	Date: April 1st, 2005 06:43 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Re: No no no

I dont know where you got the assumption about the many manifestations of God. Faith can be given to anything, but there is only one true religious faith which is Islam. Faith and Knowledge are intertwined, as is displayed in the Quraan. I know that noone could have possibly 'thought up' the whole of the quraan. There is a mathematical puzzle in it's pages that I am currently researching into, that I hear had to be decifered using a super computer. An Illiterate person such as The Prophet Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) could not have possibly thought up such a mathematical intricasy at that day and age. It's probably less probable that someone 'thought up' the Quraan than the Big Bang just happening out of nothing, or whatever insane explanation for the universe coming from nothing that Atheists may think up.

How do you know that the most popular religions aren't 'invented' by the Almighty Himself? To simply say that Demons may have created it is just absurd. You might as well say "How do you know that this isnt all a dream?". I know this, because I have faith, something that Atheists attempt to belittle the value of. Without faith, we have nothing to look forward to. You have faith in that you will wake up tommorrow, fit and healthy etc.

Also, the demons must posses incredible scientific knowlege of the universe and the future to be able to right the quraan, which I know only God could possess, because there have been several examples of the fulfillment of both scientific revelations in the quraan and also many prophecies.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: May 19th, 2005 12:44 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Re: No no no

I just want to know one thing that science cant seem to explain how can physical things unlock unphysical things eg thoughts feelings the sense of being. Sure we have brains so we can think and bodys so we can move, but how does that unlock unphysical things. The formless things make up everything.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: November 6th, 2005 10:43 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Experiences of a personal god are illusions

Very thought provoking website as were the replies and comments.

One point was that "If you have knowledge you cannot have faith", which straight away reminds me of the Bible's Genesis account regarding the tree of knowledge. Also how BACs believe they are born again by Holy Spirit and can do no wrong, yet others believe Jesus is within them guiding their thoughts and actions. Hence 'No faith required once you have knowledge." (Or Spirit, or Jesus, or Billy Graham, or George Bush, etc.)

Elsewhere it talks about Aliens and UFOs and how many people believe to have been abducted, possessed by another life form or spirit. We now begin to understand the physiology the human mind.
The article goes on to suggest that such belief in a superior guiding father figure may be the result of a physiological need for humans to have faith in another with superior knowledge, whether a deity or another person, to guide their lives and destiny, a father figure in fact.
We can see this with the blind faith that people have with religion and politicians. Combine religion with politics and despot dictators can rule the world, as they are doing. People will give them their obedience, money, blood (life), even sacrifice their children, to appease them, that fact is so obvious in the world of today. A really scary realisation.
So, from a biological point of view, why do humans have this physiological need to believe and be lead by a superior being?
Could it be genetic memory, or could it be for survival of the species?

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/cosmo/lectures/lec28.html

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/genetic_memory.cfm

I think these two websites go some way to answering the question.

Mike

From: (Anonymous)	Date: December 28th, 2005 04:34 am (UTC)		(Link)
The Wonder Of It All

I'm glad that you are confident in your findings and want to share, and provided the place for others to comment. My comment is this: I believe that the reason there can be no outer proof of God is because God exists within you (within each of us). You alone live inside yourself, seeing, watching, knowing, experiencing your experiences, reading this now. You are the experiencer and the observer of your self - and God lives with you every moment of your life. This is where self-consciousness begins, self-awareness. If you remain aware and follow yourself inward as deep as you can go, "feeling" your way to your core (instead of thinking) you will notice a change in your vibration. You will feel a buzzing sensation in yourself that will lighten and lift you into a happier place inside. But, don't take my word for it, that kind of proof comes only from actually trying it. Why should anyone believe in God if they haven't actually taken any time to seek out if God is real for them? From the seeking I have done in my search for God, I have found that God does exist for me - not the "wanting" of believing for something