Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
June has read a lot on this forum regarding doctrine, dogma, and passages from scripture that would seem to support the existence of God. However, June has a very simple question:
Independently of what you were taught, what you read in the bible, and what you have reinforced through services or pastors every Sunday, what would you say is your experience of God? -Of God's existence?
--Sincerely asked, and wondered about...And thanks in advance.
June has read a lot on this forum regarding doctrine, dogma, and passages from scripture that would seem to support the existence of God. However, June has a very simple question:
Independently of what you were taught, what you read in the bible, and what you have reinforced through services or pastors every Sunday, what would you say is your experience of God? -Of God's existence?
--Sincerely asked, and wondered about...And thanks in advance.
Take gentle care.
My "experience" with Christ preceeded any acceptance of doctrine or dogma. Or "religion" for that matter
Kind of like hearing the music before reading the "notes"
June has read a lot on this forum regarding doctrine, dogma, and passages from scripture that would seem to support the existence of God. However, June has a very simple question:
Independently of what you were taught, what you read in the bible, and what you have reinforced through services or pastors every Sunday, what would you say is your experience of God? -Of God's existence?
--Sincerely asked, and wondered about...And thanks in advance.
Take gentle care.
You already know my experience and when it occurs. I strive to connect nightly. During the transitions through the initial brain states is when I occasionally experience transients . . . but not while in the end state.
Take gentle meditating care,
Mystic
Independently of what you were taught, what you read in the bible, and what you have reinforced through services or pastors every Sunday, what would you say is your experience of God? -Of God's existence?
I think you knew what the answer to this one would be before you asked the question. The truth is that few theists (if any) have ever had a personal experience with a "man" called God. People in the bible claimed to have seen this mysterious sky man. People in the bible also claimed that this sky man will return sometime in the unknown future. It has been said before by "boogieman", and I will repeat what he said here. God seems to be a being that exists in the past and the future; never the present.
June has read a lot on this forum regarding doctrine, dogma, and passages from scripture that would seem to support the existence of God. However, June has a very simple question:
Independently of what you were taught, what you read in the bible, and what you have reinforced through services or pastors every Sunday, what would you say is your experience of God? -Of God's existence?
--Sincerely asked, and wondered about...And thanks in advance.
Take gentle care.
For me, it's just the unshakable feeling that someone greater than myself is watching over me. I have tried to imagine God not existing and I simply can't do it. I cannot conceive of a universe as complex as ours having happened without a Higher Power overseeing it.
I'll tell you a story, though, about my nephew. My sister was raised, along with me, in a more-liberal-than-most LDS family. By the age of eighteen, she was with the man who eventually became her husband. He, while also having been raised LDS, was an atheist. She became agnostic with strong atheistic leanings. I knew how she felt about God and she knew how I felt about God and we simply didn't talk about it -- for 35 years.
She and my brother-in-law adopted two boys. There home has always been 100% without religion or spirituality of any kind. One Sunday evening about two and a half years ago, her oldest son, then seventeen, rolled her car four times on the interstate twenty miles or so outside of Salt Lake City. Four vertebrae in his neck were crushed. Miraculously he not only lived but was not paralyzed. (He also has cystic fibrosis, which added complications to his recovery.) Anyway, about a year ago my sister told me, as we were sitting in my mother's hospital room when she was a couple of days away from dying, that her son confided in her shortly after his accident, that as he was being transported by ambulance to the hospital, he actually felt someone holding him. No one was, but he could definitely feel someone there. Clearly, nobody had put this idea in his head, but it convinced him of the existance of a God (even though he is still not at all religious). My sister now believes again, too, partly as a result of this experience, but because of several other events which took place at about this same time. She continues to be non-religious. She did tell me, however, about the first time she prayed after 35 years of strongly doubting the existance of God. Her first prayer went like this: "Okay, God. You win. You're there."
I have "experienced God" many many times throughout my life beginning when I was just a little girl.
I have "experienced" Him in my most joyful moments, the most beautiful things of nature. In moments of great sorrow, and moments of fear and despair the "experience" calms me.
And each time I "experience God" my faith grows a bit stronger.
I wish I could pass those experiences on to others who desire to "experience God"..But I feel that is a personal matter that one needs to first humbly and without question, without doubt, without all the wisdom of the world, open themselves to the "experiences" of God in their own lives
I think you knew what the answer to this one would be before you asked the question. The truth is that few theists (if any) have ever had a personal experience with a "man" called God. People in the bible claimed to have seen this mysterious sky man. People in the bible also claimed that this sky man will return sometime in the unknown future. It has been said before by "boogieman", and I will repeat what he said here. God seems to be a being that exists in the past and the future; never the present.
Actually, no, June did not know the answer to this prior to asking the question. If anything, the question re-occurred to her in a whole different sense. She reads much about what people "believe" but not so much about what their actual "experience" of that God is...So the question arises from a place of genuineness...
June tends to believe that theists honestly feel that they have, in fact, had a genuine experience of God, on some level. She also tends to believe that it is (at it's best) independent of what they have read about in the bible, although may in some cases be supported by it. June is therefore curious about this "experience" that believers claim to have that would be soley their own....
Actually, no, June did not know the answer to this prior to asking the question. If anything, the question re-occurred to her in a whole different sense. She reads much about what people "believe" but not so much about what their actual "experience" of that God is...So the question arises from a place of genuineness...
June tends to believe that theists honestly feel that they have, in fact, had a genuine experience of God, on some level. She also tends to believe that it is (at it's best) independent of what they have read about in the bible, although may in some cases be supported by it. June is therefore curious about this "experience" that believers claim to have that would be soley their own....
Take gentle care.
To wit, yep.
I appreciate your open mind on the subject. No doubt that is one reason the powers that be figured you'd do well as a Mod here.
With that said, there is a reason why the well thought out arguements of the atheists fall flat to us. Logic fall when it suggests that what we have have experience is not real.
Example: Love. Can I prove that I do indeed love my wife? Well what sort of objective, verifyable proof can I give? Nothing that that can't be explained away by logic. So it is with God. Perhaps when the atheist can prove that the universe " just can to be" without a creator came to pass He or She might have a strong point. Until then, if ever-which I doubt- the atheist is operating in a type of faith. Belief without evidence. OTOH logic and reason says that every effect has a cause.
My case rests on both logic and reason with that last sentence. It is illogical to suggest that the universe "just came to be". Nothing according science just happens without a cause. The primary cause? Got two choices. Nothing or God.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
