Dear atheists...?

Question

Christians talk all the time about having a personal relationship with god, or having religious experiences. Have you as an atheist ever had a religious experience or something that couldnt be otherwise explained? If so what happened? If you havent had one, do you think if you did you would rationalize it and chalk it up to something else?

Answer 1

That's just it, isn't it...?

What they, the believers-in-gods, talk about all the time does have other reasonable explanations and those explanation don't support their beliefs at all. ( I swear, they must be thick.)

Yes... non-believers have all had peek emotional experiences, deja vous, and other odd feelings but they are more likely to seek a higher explanation for their momentary oddnesses of the mind or body than to settle on "gods" or some other mysticism as a cause before deciding to say they know exactly what really did cause the phenomenon.

God believers have all been too quick to commit themselves to the nonsense of belief... They've either been brainwashed since early childhood or their character has at some point been so extra needy that they've surrendered into the comfort of having all the easy answers to everytning.

Having all the answers when all are wrong or faulty isn't worth a rats-arce, is it?

I truly wish they'd wake up from their long naps and see how important it is that they change their attitudes on the value of belief vs knowledge... and that they'll do it knowingly without falling back on the easy answers of belief as they always seem to do.

My own "odd experience" caused me to wake from a deep sleep and feel as though I was flying out my own bedroom window and heading off to a destination thousands of miles away... One might have dreamed up any old nonsense explanation for the phenomena but the most probable one was that I had experienced a few hypoxic seconds as a result of transient sleep apna, i.e., I was to low on air because I didn't breath well enough while I slept - it turned out to be that exactly... a simple and a very, very likely true explanation provided by a specialist in the field of medicine. Had I relied on someone of "faith" or "spiritual belief" to help me explain this event, "God only knows... what ?" might have mistakenly ruled over reason.

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[][][] r u randy? [][][]
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Answer 2

Most of the time, people who said they had experiences and saw something, is because they are fanatics, they don"t know exactly WHY?
Atheist may see and feel something, but they said nothing because they know WHY that"s the big difference
Everything on this planet, is natural, is normal, there is no outside experience or something else, when you call it "super natural powers, or supernatural experience" is the same as nonsense, because there is no "super" nowhere
in the universe, everything is inside here, depend on your belief, education and intelligence, that you will judge something evil or divine, if you are a fanatic in some religion , then you said I saw God, I know God, I talk to God, God will punish you because you don"t believe, you go to hell
Do you think is OK if I tell you Go to hell if you don"t believe what I think? Of course not. SO you be the judge now

Answer 3

Amusing question. the whole question is out of context.
firstly someone without religion cannot have a religious experience.
maybe you can have an experience that you cannot explain, but to be honest there are many beliefs or ideas that deal with this AND GUESS WHAT??? they dont all revolve around God.
Also if something remains unexplained, Then its unexplained. if you choose to explain it by God or Gods Will. then it is explained.

secondly if you have an experience and as you say "chalk it up to something else", well then its not a unexplained experience. Something else, in relation to what? GOD? again there are other beliefs and ideas out there...

BTW i believe in God, not the christian idealology but i belief in a Creator God. maybe even Gods.
Afterall even in the bible God recognises there are other gods. (have no other gods before me for I am a jealous God).

Answer 4

How can I have a religious experience when I don't believe in religion? I am a secularist without any supernatural beliefs. The definition of supernatural is:

1.of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.

I don't believe in the paranormal, in religion, god/gods, magic, mythological figures, fairy tales, folklore, legends, tall tales, etc.

I have never had an "unexplainable" experience. I don't claim to know the answers to everything, but I won't believe in something just because others tell me that it exists.

Answer 5

no... I'm not religious... however, spiritual experiences I thought i have had. I always seemed to be able to explain it except for one time.

I was about 10 years old and a friend said he could make his nose bleed by concentrating. he became very tense and his face turned red like he had been upside-down for a few hours. after maybe 30 seconds or so his nose started bleeding... but he was still straining and he was breathing heavy and grumbling... then he starting making sounds with his mouth then said 14-21-34. that was my locker combination that no one else knew (as far as I know). that's the only one I couldn't never figure out.

Answer 6

I've never had a religious experience and I've always been able to come up with logical explanations for the religious experiences of others. I think some people just prefer the religious explanation because it agrees with what they want to believe.

Answer 7

I have had numerous episodes in my life happen, and I have no explanation whatsoever for them. I try to rationalize them as "coincidence", and that works for the most part, and as time goes by, seems to push back the emotional "spiritual" feelings that I had at the time. I don't know. I think that is one reason most atheists don't trust me very much. I have had some freaky , "ask and thee shall be given moments" that defy my logic. But, I guess you can flip a quarter a thousand times in a row and have them all come up heads.

Answer 8

to be honest, i am not sure. i wonder sometimes if i have what other people call "religious experiences" but interpret them in naturalistic terms, or whether i have never had such experiences. from others descriptions the latter seems more likely but language only conveys so much so i can't really be sure. i don't think much of the idea that because i don't understand something, it must be supernatural, so i expect i would tend to rationalise.

Answer 9

Many Germans within the 1930's joined the Nazi social gathering. Many nineteenth century Americans participated within the genocide of the American Indian. Many 1840's southerners owned slaves. Many low revenue females within the town of Detroit smoke crack. Many lemmings will comply with a unmarried lemming off a cliff. Just considering everbody's doing it, doesn't suggest it is a well proposal.

Answer 10

Religious experiences/NDEs can indeed be fully physiologically explained as a brain going into shock/needing more oxygen. This can be spurred by countless events, even extreme stress, and reproduced with certain chemical compounds.