We don't exist?
How can we say we no longer believe in Jesus, after meeting Him and experiencing God?
Comments?
How can we say we no longer believe in Jesus, after meeting Him and experiencing God?
Comments?
How can we say we no longer believe in Jesus, after meeting Him and experiencing God?
Comments?
Comments
What a wonderful in depth perception Baldy has for the atheist point of view [sarcasm]. Basically its, "Im sticking my fingers in my ears, nah nah nah".If you listen close, its funny that its pretty clear that he has no idea what an atheist worldview is, or why it is so utterly ridiculous to 'know' something exists without being able to measure it.
Its also quite funny that they don't know what an agnostic is.
What explained everything, what liberated my thinking, was giving up the notion that there was anything supernatural to believe in. I should have known it before -- every paranormal event I investigated as a scientist and researcher proved to be the result of deception or fraud -- but it took time to bring me to the point where I really could give it up.
Now I am truly free, if I may use the Biblical expression.
People can delude themselves so easily into believing anything they want. They can easily delude each other. I wanted so badly to hear the voice of God because "everyone else was" that I deluded myself into believing that I did. Brainwashing is very powerful (look at Manson) and it WORKS. People believe in crazy irrational crap all the time, since they believe it so strongly does that mean they are right?
You can brainwash yourself just as easily as you can brainwash each other. When you're surrounded by an idea, you want to believe it to be "normal". People of other religions and other gods also have a relationship with their god. They also hear their god. They also walk with their god. But its not YOUR god. So are they crazy? Do they REALLY have a relationship with their god? They think they do JUST as strongly as you think you do, but I'll sure as heck believe that YOU wouldn't believe that they do. Because you don't believe that THEIR god exists, only YOUR god exists.
Basically ex-Christians are the ones who have stepped outside of the "my god is the only god" box to see every religion sounds the same. Every religion is blindly devoted to their version of god. Every religion believes they hear and see and walk with god. How can every single one of them be right? How can I claim to have heard someone who isn't in front of me and feel "power" from some holy deity derived from the air (and by the way, adrenaline is also very powerful, its quite easy to get caught up in whats going on around you and produce adrenaline rushes that make you feel "Gods power"...thats what Christian conventions are for. Its nothing but an adrenaline "high", Christians are basically all drug addicts.)
Since brainwashing works, I was brainwashed. That is how I "walked and talked" with god at one point and now no longer believe he exists. I am no longer brainwashed.
-ExFundie
The sheer power of their argument has changed my life. Watching the bald guy flail his tongue like a coked-out Pentecostal at a cunninglingus festival really made me think "Hmmm... maybe Jesus IS real! Maybe I just haven't hung out with the dude, ya' know, like took him to Taco Bell for crustos and shit..."
Do these people realize that they our making OUR arguments for us? I really don't think that they are bright enough to see it!
What was the word that caleb used?
Oh yeah...FUCKTARDS. Good word, dude....
ah-bdee ah-bdee ah-bdee ah-that's all folks.
It is truly being subjective.
You walk around daily knowing that you are American [presumably?]knowing that everyone you meet will probably be American with American ideals.
This is called a paradigm.
Just like the belief that the universe was infinite,
or that the we were the center of it, or that the earth was flat.
These were 'obvious' convictions
that every man held back in the day, just as a European walks around knowing in their 'heart' that they're European. That's how you 'know' you're a christian.
What we're talking about here is raising your level of consciousness. It will break your groove, it will give you alot more to think about on a day to day basis. It will turn your perspective inside out.
then again we know that consciousness is what adam had after he bit the apple. Evil evil consciousness. I only wish you could see how your religion is a stumbling block fashioned against intellectual improvement.
It's the 1960's jesus freaks in a VW microbus, all over again.
Should't they have had background music to go with this deluded thinking?
I can hear that old song lyric...."One toke over the line, sweet jesus".
I swear, I thought any second now they would be passing around a joint.
Nothing better than using one addiction to help support another.
ATF (Who thinks if god is truly handing out the brains, some are obviously made from swiss-cheese)
Doesn't matter how you say it -- "I know with all my heart" or "I know from the core of my being", it's still just a metaphor explaining the delusional workings of the brain. No matter how much you "feel" it's real -- it doesn't make it real.
Get real!
--S.
I believe that none of you who post on here have ever truly experienced God before. None of you have ever been truly touched by him.
That is why many of you so called, "Ex-Christians" have supposedly fallen away.
I think it entirely possible that at least some of us were, in fact, as you are now.
And if we "fell away", so can you. Simple as that.
Ok John, tell us exactly what you experienced, beyound your own self-induced emotional imagination.
- "None of you have truly been touched by him."
Where exactly did he touch you, and is he gay?
You've got a point, BJ. Since Bible-gawd is imaginary, no one has ever experienced HIM outside of the magical world of Imagination Land.
The more active the imagination, the more real Imagination Land can appear to be.
"Thank you Yokeup for encouraging me to see that the I made the right choice in becoming an ex-christian."
I'd like to thank Brother John, because he apparently knows my heart like only Jesus is supposed to.
The entire Christian experience is completely delusional. This is why the Christians push faith so much. Your rewards in Christianity are based entirely on how much faith you have,i.e., how delusional you are.
faith = delusion
Read "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan
Brother John,
I used to be an evangelical Christian. When I was in my teens, I led a Bible study on my high school campus. In addition, I used to go to our local park every Saturday and witness to people. I used Chic tracts and talked with people about the love of God and the Bible. I can't tell you how many people I either prayed with or led to Christ - many.
As a member of the Assembly of God church, I was baptized in the Holy Ghost and received the gifts of speaking in tongues. I was a true Christian.
However, at the age of nineteen, after entering college, I was exposed to critical thinking, skepticism, and the scientific method. Jesus, God, and Christianity simply did not hold up under the litmus test. You must have blind faith to be a Christian, and the result is just that: blindness to reality.
I have now been an atheist for 28 years. I am also anti-Christian. I used to lead people to Christ; now I try to lead people to clear thinking and reason. If you look at the hard evidence, you will find that Christianity simply can't be true. All you have to do is read your Bible.
Jesus never existed
This I know
For the Bible tells me so
The New Testament itself proves the non-existence of Jesus. The Pauline Epistles (circa 50 A.D.) are representative of first century Christian thought (at least one major sect, the one that became dominant).
They speak of a heavenly Jesus who never set foot on earth. There were no references in the Epistles to the 'historic' Jesus later found in the Gospels. Paul never spoke of the Second Coming of Christ - he spoke of the coming of Christ. Perhaps the most telling of Paul's letters is Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter 8 and 9, Paul speaks of Jesus' blood sacrifice in Heaven, not on earth. (In fact, the term 'come again' is used, but the first coming is in Heaven, as well as the second.(1Thess. 17, " ... to meet the Lord in the air." (NIV)) Read it.
Christians didn't begin to believe that there was a historic Jesus until way after the supposed time of Christ, about 80 A.D., after Mark's Gospel was first written. And Mark's Gospel is filled with outright lies:
1)'Jesus preached in the synagogues in Galilee.' There were no synagogues until after the Diaspora (70 A.D.) Jewish society was a temple centered society. Synagogues were established only after the Diaspora. They were teaching establishments for the purpose of preserving the Jewish faith in lieu of the absence of a temple.
2) 'Jesus would return in this generation.' Mark quotes Jesus twice (9:1, 13:30) saying that the Second Coming would occur within this generation. What? Jesus, the creator of the universe, got it wrong? No, Mark lied. (These verses are echoed in Matt 16:28, 24:34, Luke 9:26 -27)
The New Testament and Bible are full of errors, inaccuracies, and outright lies. (Read Randel Helms' books: Who Wrote the Gospels?, Gospel Fictions, The Bible Against Itself: Why the Bible Seems to Contradict Itself)
Another thing, Christianity began as a lot of small Christian cells cropping up all over the Eastern Mediterranean, each of whose beliefs were quite different from each other. They didn't converge until Christianity was adopted by the Roman Empire, who simply ignored divergent forms. Christianity started disparate and converged, which tells us that it didn't start with a single man.
Paul and the early Christians didn't believe that Jesus ever set foot on earth. Why should you or I?
A critical study of the New Testament reveals that the whole thing is bogus, a sham.
Jesus never existed.
For further reading:
"Who Wrote the New Testament?" by Burton Mack.
"The Jesus Puzzle" by Earl Doherty
"Jesus Never Existed" by Kenneth Humphreys
Sorry, but I wasn't able to get thru the entire video. I am sitting in my office and have more important things to do, like watching the traffic go by.
My, my, the days are filled with cretins anymore.
It is obvious that these two Einsteins are the poster children for Christianity as stupidity. They wouldn't know how to frame a logical argument if their lives depended on it.
This video is an example of Christianity at its finest!
Let me try to demonstrate what I mean.
First, you appeal to your outpouring of conviction: "the answer is plain and simple." BJ (I could make a crude joke here, and I aint above it) life is not plain and simple. Only plain and simple people assert such things.
Next, you appeal to belief."I believe that none of you has experienced god" BJ, none of us gives a rabbit's-ass what you believe. Believe what you want. Take your beliefs, and your convictions, and ram them and jam them.
And now, a little rhetoric of my own: "None of you christians have the slightest notion of what it means to be free. You have never known self-respect; you have never known the exhilaration of ego; you have never understood a guilt-free conscience."
That is why many of you so-called christians have never fallen away.
Lemme start with asking you a question. You said that you've met God and you've hung out with God, right? Alright... then give me a specific example of one of these occasions. When you hung out with God, what did you two do? How did the evening (or morning or whatever) begin, what did you say to each other, did you go to a movie, did he enjoy the movie, etc etc. Be specific. If you say you've hung out with him you should be able to give specific details about the event.
Looking forward to your response.
I sought the Holy Spirit; I learned to babble incoherently.
I believed in Jesus' return; He didn't show up.
I studied His Word; I grew more confused with each line.
I guess they are right; I just didn't get "it". But I sure tried my best.
You're right. Of course, based on the evidence, neither have you or anyone else. I know that harshes your Jeebuzz, but reality can be that way.
Hebrews:
6:4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
6:5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6:6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
"Watching the bald guy flail his tongue like a coked-out Pentecostal at a cunninglingus festival..."
LMAO. That gets my vote for the funniest line of the day.
"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination"
"Sacred cows make the best hamburger"
-- Mark Twain
Her example of Jeff being gone after knowing him is lame. I can conceed I did know about jesus and I still know about jesus. I thought he lived on, but it was just in my head. He is dead, therefore, he no longer exists. Just as if Jeff died, he no longer exists. But, also, Jeff was in the flesh. Jesus was never in the physical sense known by me, except, again, in my head. In my ego. The ego might be a metaphor for heart. I was a cocky son of a bitch just as the xtian blah blah blahs are today.
I know realize that god was an imagination in my head. I lived out cosmic rationalizations as xtains do today. I am free of that man made virus disease.
Her example of Jeff being gone after knowing him is lame. I can conceed I did know about jesus and I still know about jesus. I thought he lived on, but it was just in my head. He is dead, therefore, he no longer exists. Just as if Jeff died, he no longer exists. But, also, Jeff was in the flesh. Jesus was never in the physical sense known by me, except, again, in my head. In my ego. The ego might be a metaphor for heart. I was a cocky son of a bitch just as the xtian blah blah blahs are today.
I know realize that god was an imagination in my head. I lived out cosmic rationalizations as xtains do today. I am free of that man made virus disease.
xtianity has taken was is natural and turned it on its ear. xtainity made sex bad for example. It has taken original science, picked what they wanted and discarded the rest. They took the Head, another example, and made up some fucktard idea about how the heart has some kind of thought or magical power. They created the "spirit" from our natural ability to be animated. Its so childish when you think about it, and the fucktardians seem to express well. Xtianity is basically making shit up as it goes along. Its lazy, while making PAT phrases to battle reality and logic.
That reminds of something.
Xmas and easter are good examples of this discussion. If a child stops believing in Santa and the bunny after once meeting them, does that mean the child never "knew them"? We know the child either imagined them into existence or they say someone look like them. The idea is dead at that point. Just as the idea of god in our heads as xtians once made us believe. We wanted to beleive in that Santa-god so bad. We wanted it to be true and we made it true. We lied to ourselves, just as children lie to themselves. Parents think its so cute. Just as xtians see it as cute to believe in an imaginary god. The thought of disbelief is so crushing in either case and people go to big lengths to keep it going. Adults keep doing the xmas thing because they feel good about it. Just as xtians continue in their lie because it feels good.
Overall, when a child stops believing in santa, it does not mean that he was never a santaian in the first place. The whole xtian argument is circular in order to keep current xtians from leaving. If you leave, you were never an xtian... and so on. They believe they are TB xtians. Its reverse psychology. Again, xtianity stealing science when it benefits them. I am sure xtians would love to say none of us could be ex-husbands or ex-wives, because if we were husbands or wives, we would of never got a divorce. Get my drift?
If children can be ex-santaians and ex-easterians, then we can be ex-xtian. Its all about coming into reality.
I am an ex-believer. I once believed out of faith and now I don't. period! To say that my belief was only real if it stuck, is bullshit. I once believed, now I don't. Once an xtian, now I am not. Hence the name "Ex-christian". Your xtian mental dilusion even dilutes this basic fact. Say it together class "ex-christian".
I existed as an xtian. Its god who never existed.
Any Christian who had enough respect for the book to explore what contemporary Biblical studies has to offer would HAVE to disavow their faith. They would have to construct an entirely new God.
In fact, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt: I will let her have this supposed meeting with God. She has met him (funny how it's always a man), talked and walked with him. But this "God" is certainly NOT the God of the Bible, NOT the fictional character of Yahweh or Christ. So I'd like to know who it is she, in fact, met?
Yet at the same time none of you are willing to accept the possibility that these same christian's actually did have some sort of spiritual experience.
Thanks for your comment. You may notice that the site is called Ex-Christian, not Ex-Non-Spiritual-Person.
We once were as they are now in that we believed too. I do not speak to anyone's spiritual experience, but my own. Many of us have been repeatedly accused of having a false conversion so we are a bit touchy when people tell us that we just need to really experience what they experience. Please, feel free to believe what you like, even tell us about it, but don't be so arrogant as to think your experience will be our experience, or that it will change what we believe.
Many folks preach to us exactly what we used to preach to others, so please forgive us if we feel like we have had the same experiences they are having and now consider those experiences to have been false. We don't actually know what they are experiencing, but it sure looks mighty familiar to most of us.
BTW, CS, I'm sure none of us doubt that the xtians who post here have had some sort of experience. I'd be willing to bet most of us have had similar experiences. We're not about to deny them their experiences. We've just managed to come through our experiences to the other side where we recognize them as false.
Thanks for your comment. Perhaps my sources are in error. I'll look it up.
You can have a "spiritual experience" without it being a religious experience. Personally, I think praising a god for those things would cheapen the REAL miracle of nature... the infinitesimal stroke of random chance that we are even here in the first place in a universe so huge.
God lives in the realm of the flat earth mindset.
So... where's your COMMON SENSE?
I stand corrected. I looked at the site that you recommended and others. There is, in fact, quite a bit of evidence for the existence of synagogues in Galilee before the Diaspora - both historical and archaeological. Here are two more sites in addition to the one you gave:
historical:
http://www.pohick.org/sts/galilee.html
archaeological:
http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1470/
Apparently, the source that I previously accessed was inaccurate. Thank you for your correction.
Re spiritual experiences... On Monday in the UK there was a fascinating programme about hypnotism. It appears that people can, under suggestion, really seem to "see" or "hear" things that aren't there. That is, the areas in the brain that process that kind of information are active even though the areas in the brain that manage the eyes and ears aren't. I've read something similar about schizophrenics - they really do "hear" voices.
Thinking back over my past spiritual experiences, where I "experienced God", they seem very similar to that hypnotic state. I "heard" what I wanted to hear - I never got admonished in my own head. I remember being convinced (about 30 years ago) that I'd seen and heard angels as I walked back home late one Saturday night through a particularly rough area of town - I later heard that someone had been murdered in that area at about the same time.
I'm now reasonably convinced that those spiritual experiences were only inside my head, and that I had been made suggestible to them, to the point that I could almost switch it on at will - again, rather like the goal of hypnosis.
It’s stuff like that, that makes me glad to be alive and free from Christianity…
Yet at the same time none of you are willing to accept the possibility that these same christian's actually did have some sort of spiritual experience.
What's funny to me, is how the above premise - along with the premise of the ignorant Theist in the video - fallaciously assume that personal "experience", and mind-independent reality are somehow mutually inclusive...and further, they seemingly assume that the changing one's mind is an impossibility.
In fact, that dip-wad Ray Comfort, you know, from the tweedle dee/tweedle dum(b) apologetic team, "Cameron & Comfort", attempts a similar approach when confronting Atheists.
He inevitably asks: "Did you ever know God?", while of course, equivocating on the word "know", when the word "know" in this case simply means "believe".
This question, correctly and honestly stated, would be: "Did you ever believe in God?"....in which case, an honest and truthful answer might be, "Why yes, Ray, I used to 'believe' in God, just like I used to 'believe' in the Easter Bunny....BUT I CHANGED MY MIND."
As if you can "trap" someone into believing in something. F%cking dolts.
Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" delves deeply into the type of phenomena that you just described - cases of religious experience as well as claimed UFO abductions, both of which Sagan debunks adroitly. Sagan talks at length about evolutionary processes that have given humans such a fertile imagination and how that imagination can fool us - highly recommended reading.
I do not doubt their spriritual experience. I doubt that it was with God is all. I am sure they had a significant spriritual experience like many people do. These experiences are common and only the christians think it is a religious event because that is what they are told.
http://cheapgasforamerica.com/
NO, I am not a christian, nor am I an atheist.
For those who were not aware there are: Deists and Agnostics.
Unlike close minded christians and atheists, I keep an open mind about other possibilities of a divine creator.
Hell, maybe we were created by aliens like the Ancients off of Stargate SG-1.
Perhaps Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis is based on reality. Who knows?
Maybe that was the Asgard who crashed at Rodwell, and they are our protectors. Maybe that is why the program Stargate TV Series was created in the first place. It is based on the truth.
You never know people.
Thanks for you helpful input. Apparently you missed the name of the site. It's called ex-Christian, not ex-Theist. Many here are no longer Christian, but still believe in God. We are not all atheists. The one common bond is that we all did at one time believe in the god of Christianity and his son Jesus Christ. It is precisely because we became open minded that we left Christianity and most of us deny anything that calls it's self the one true religion.
Thanks, and have a great day!
I have reproduced it below:
"SamiB said:
"Troll alert! common sense (or not as the case may be) is trying to rile people up on a couple of other threads!"
Maybe CS is trying to make a point to you people like yourself. Ever thought about opening your mind up to other possibilities besides the atheist's position?
Of course I realize that anyone who does not agree with the atheist's position is shunned and is called a troll on this site.
Now tell me who is close minded SamiB. *Blows Kiss* "
You posts reveal that you are extremely immature and emotionally undeveloped. When you pass your 18th birthday, feel free to come back.
Until then, g'bye.
Sorry if I reposted something you meant to delete. My response to Phant didn't make much sense without it. ;)
On another note: I just noticed we are fellow Ohioans. Not sure how I missed that before. I guess I'm not always the most observant person. ;)
It's fairly easy to figure out if a person is sincere or an immature troll. There is never any information of any kind on the troll's profile page. Some of these idiots set up numerous accounts and post as different people with different perspectives. The motive is always to derail a discussion, become the focal point for the discussion, and get everyone emotionally stirred up.
It's really quite retarded.
Message me sometime regarding being fellow Ohioans.
How can someone believe in Santa Clause and no longer say they believe.
Easy, I figured out my mental acceptance & imagination is not evidence for the existence of a physical being.
Regarding Phant, it doesn't matter what that individual labels themselves as... they refuse to stay on topic or abide by the site's rules of conduct.
Thanks WM :-)
Thanks for that astonishing disclosure. Who would've ever known?
Phant: Unlike close minded christians and atheists, I keep an open mind about other possibilities of a divine creator.
Hey, stupendous!...and so do I! Yup, and if/when I see evidence of such, I'll believe it! Until then, I simply don't believe any such personal "creator" exists. And quite frankly, I don't see how that is so offensive to people, whether they are Deist, agnostic, or whatever-the-hell label they adopt for themsleves. After all, everybody draws their line somewhere. If we were to poll all of the world's "Deists" and "agnostics", and not one of them believed, oh... say, that "Ajtzak" created humanity from maize...so? are those individuals automatically labeled as "close-minded"?
Phant: Hell, maybe we were created by aliens like the Ancients off of Stargate SG-1.
Maybe! And "maybe" our creator is riding on a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet!... and "maybe" we should all kill ourselves, so our "souls" can join him on his heavenly, Divine voyage. 'Sound like a rational game-plan? Or do you think it would be a better idea to wait for evidence of such? In other words, "faith", or evidence, in this case? Be honest.
Phant: Perhaps Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis is based on reality. Who knows?
Who knows, you ask? Isn't it true that you implicitly mean to ask, who knows for certain? If so, the answer is no body knows for certain. However, there is a vast difference between possible, and plausible..and this is where "evidence" comes into play. You can sit around and say "perhaps" this, and "maybe" that, until "perhaps" donkeys fly---but until "evidence" substantiates the infinite list of "possibilities", don't expect people to do cartwheels in agreement with your hypotheses.
Fair enough?..or is there some other beef that you have with "all" atheists? Do tell.
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