I think not because I've experienced spiritual reality and it took only three days of it to wipe out 35 years of atheist disbelief.

A subjective experience changed your beliefs? There are many atheists who have had spiritual experiences and become theists. The trend is that none are former freethinkers, or critical thinkers. Awareness of bias and the minefield of false reasoning is something to brag about, mere atheism is not worth mentioning. Otherwise, a person could be an "atheist" for false reasons or based on false conclusions. It's actually very common, and almost as frustrating to see as the void of thought it takes to accept religious ideas.

Going out on a limb about your experiences, I'll let you know how a critical thinker would process strange events. For example, if a girlfriend I had in North Dakota 10 years ago suddenly fell from the sky on my way to work(I live in California) and hit my vehicle while I was flying down the freeway, I wouldn't search for "meaning". The meaning is right there, embedded in the physics of our universe. It's just that most people don't have the capacity to understand how things work well enough to know that such events are inevitable. This is true even if my ex were to survive the fall/crash. It is true even if I hear that her husband up in North Dakota was kicked in the head by a cow and killed around the same time on that same day. It holds true even if I were to arrive home that same day and find my mother's wedding ring in the mail, send to me on a whim by my sister. There is nothing mystical here, only your inability to understand the universe you live in. The "meaning", the ascription of meaning to disparate events that form a pattern, is a survival function that we'd die without. The enormously improbable odds turn out to be probable when you understand how things work.

Science couldn't explain what had happened to me as science doesn't even recognize synchronicity events happen.

Epistemology can explain it. Your experiences were entirely subjective and internal, most likely a misunderstanding of bias and probability.

If it's real, other people pick it up and it spreads. If it's not, then it just sits in your head or you write it down, say publish it in a book, but nothing happens outside your mind about whatever you've experienced, whatever you've said about it no matter how profound you think it is.

So if it inspires action in others, it is not fiction. Is this what you're saying? That because L. Ron Hubbard's Thetans have inspired others, the Thetans are thus real? Or does this rubric only apply to the spirits you believe in? Or do you rule out Thetans because the inspiration must be over longer periods of time. Such as the influence of Roman myths? Or Norse myths? This material, or parts of it, were the revelations of some certain ancestors of ours. What of Buddhist ideas that have inspired millions, have been around a long time, and was likely personal revelation(piecemeal). Is there truth in the idea that we will be reborn into a cow? Or is it not possible that this religiously themed idea was a product of some man's revelation?

Your rubric legitimizes all sorts of nonsensical ideas. Of course, you will have other criteria that you've fabricated which you "use" to sort the true from the false so that it accords to what you already believe. How do you harmonize Buddhism, for example?

Wow. The delusion meter just went off the scale.

But having experienced God

i have no doubt you experienced something, and you refer to this something as God

but isn't that the trouble with words, especially the G word, it is simply a reference, but one mans god is another mans devil so it needs plenty of explaining to pin it down as exactly what the reference is to.

ok you've experienced something you call god

is it more of a person type god or the transcendant mystery behind existence that cannot be quantified type of god.

is it the "i see you wanking" kind of god or the "i and the father are one" kinda thing

is it both and yet neither one nor t'other (see you reach a point where words need explaining)

you see the sort of trouble words entail, it takes a lot of hard work on the part of speaker and listener to gain clarity and focus and an accurate transference of concept.

for example if a resplendant vision appears to a person in the west he might say "i've seen jesus" but in the east he might say "i've seen krishna" or "i saw buddha"

then someone else might reply "all three the same, three references to same thing" and a fistfight might break out (metaphorically)

the trouble maker is the brain, it thinks it is running the show but it is just a secondary organ of consciousness. it is trying to interpret what is very tricky to interpret.

i have my interpretation but the experience i am trying to interpret IS NOT my interpretation

it's the other way around (lol)

(BTW: does this deity of yours endorse nickelback? that would be a black mark against him in my book, indeed grounds for instant dismissal)

PS: see, all this just from "but having experienced god". Only 4 words from one post.

i'm a lot like you in that i have had profound spontaneous mystical visions but interpreting them more adequately took a hell of a lot of hard yards, the experience hasn't changed but the interpretation is constantly being refined.

Evolution ha. Yes humans have evolved to cope with our natural fear of death and the great unknown. It's led to all sorts of "visions" and "revelations" if you will. The mind seeking a comfort zone. I agree that many really believe they've experienced something profound, however, 'all of the gods and demons, heavens, purgatory, hell, are within you and identical to aspects of your own consciousness on the dream level.' And this comes from Joseph Campbell who studied mythology and psychology and surpassed Feud and Jung in the process of comparative mythology. I'm arguing on behalf of atheism fella's but I'm quite privy to middle ground. Campbell was a proponent of not getting caught up in radical right wing theism nor radical left wing atheism. When it comes to God:

"Is he or is he not? Neither is nor is not!"

The God concept is not ultimately addressed to a being of any type. That's not the mystery. In sanskrit they say "Neti Neti" - "not that, not that". Not anything that can be named or conceived of with the mind. Why? Because these myths are addressed to the mystery of existence itself. It isn't a thing, or a being, or even a mind, it's just the mystery of it all. And the mystical (mystery) experience when stripped down bare is nothing more than the experience and recognition of deep mystery concerning your own life, being, and existence with respect to the whole. That's true revelation. And I've experienced that.

Having experienced that, I understand that all those who are speaking of God as something falling short of the question of absolute ultimates is still on the road to getting there, and may never get there. What is ultimate? Is a being ultimate? No, there's the mystery as to very existence of this proposed being underlying the very existence of the proposed being itself. What about an eternal mind? A mind is a concept, a thought, and it's this side of the great mystery. It's knowable and speak able. We can imagine the universe and more as an eternal mind. "Neti, Neti" - not that, not that. Even if that were the case, there is still a lingering mystery as to the very existence of such a thing as an eternal mind which we are all an interconnected part. These are the depths mystical exploration folks, and who, pray tell, is comfortable swimming in these depths? They are beyond theism, they are beyond atheism, they are beyond everything.

I've chosen pantheism as the best description for my personal feelings, because belief is an inadequate way of describing it. I feel that we exist in an interconnected realm where nothing is really separate, despite the perception of space and distance between objects. It's all existence - the fabric and structure thereof. And "tat tvam asi" / you are that. So what if there are realms or dimensions not yet understood by science? What does that change here? If they exist, then they are necessarily one more interconnect aspect of existence itself. And the mystery underlying these proposed realms or dimensions titled "spiritual realms" fall on this side of the great mystery of existence itself. You have to transcend even that, in other words. If not, then your "spiritual realm" beliefs are blocking the way to the transcendent mystery which is simply the question of absolute ultimates. You can have the experience of deep mystery intellectually or otherwise. It's just an experience that can be provoked by any number of things.

Let's let this "dinner for schmucks" episode on mysticism and spirituality continue and see what happens...

biomystic wrote:It's always a wonder to me how atheists can just dismiss spiritual consciousness so easily when they should be wondering why they don't have it seeing how Nature evolved our human brains to process spiritual phenomena. It really is like color blind people telling those who can see colors that colors do not exist, it's a black and white and shades of grey world. Until atheists have had religious experiences, have had their brain's inherent spiritual capacity switched on, they just do not know what they're talking about. I was that way for many years but I got my spiritual processor turned on and once on, you just never can go backwards to a lesser consciousness, to a black and white and grey world when you've seen glorious colors.

Religious consciousness is a sense of human relation to the cosmos. The idea that colorful religious visions relate to an actual entity known as God is purely hallucinatory. Pleasant visions, but no more real than dreams.

As for accepting the Abrahamic stories as myths, yes, I do that, and do it for the Gospel stories as well. But having experienced God and the Spirit of Christ for myself I do recognize spiritual reality as something very real even while the way we have come to learn about it is from old spiritual experiences turned into mythic tales much redacted for politically based religious reasons. The Spirit of Christ is very real to me as it has motivated me time and again and provided me with visions of a new spiritual awakening. Can't get that stuff by book learnin'. You can get an understanding of how these ancient spiritual experiences were transmitted through time and cultures with research but the actual spiritual experience cannot be attained or understood without having gone through it. And that experience I can almost guarantee is something that will change the mind of the most adamant atheist.

I agree with you that spiritual reality is real. However, the language you have used to describe spiritual reality is not accurate. Saint Paul similarly had visions of the Spirit of Christ and used language which people subsequently misinterpreted into the claim that Jesus was a real person, when there is no such claim in Paul. The universe consists of matter in motion. This process produces natural spiritual vision in humanity. It does not mean that this vision has an objective referent.

tat tvam asi, you've chosen the Hindu-Buddhist mindset re spiritual consciousness and it's not relevant to the "Western" way of spirituality or more specifically the Abrahamic way wherein humanity and human communities receive spiritual guidance from the Creator via spiritual visionary leadership. It's assumed in this system that following the Creator's will benefits the whole as well as the individual. This is opposed to the "Eastern" way of seeking personal enlightenment via meditative techniques meant to shut down the brain's sense of self center while enhancing frontal lobe processing triggering in some meditators pleasurable bliss consciousness and oceanic feelings of the Oneness of everything.

Yes, and Judaism is in several ways a degraded version of Hinduism, which is where the Brahma - Saraswati / Abram - Sarai parallel leads. And the Gnostic Christian era ushers in Greco-Egypto Hellenizing Jewish efforts to bring back the God as all symbolism which had been greatly degraded in Judaism. It was forbidden to identify oneself with the God, a blasphemy. And the Jewish mystics sought to reverse that through this jumping from hoop to hoop process. Jesus was considered a man, but God, and Christians as the body of Christ once the squabbling settled. There's a line drawn from you the individual back to the God concept and this is obviously a way of trying to fix what had become a degraded form of enlightened thinking through the folly Judaism. That's just it, western spirituality and mysticism is a degraded from of the former. The Alexandrian's were privy to this problem and sought to reverse it.

But now Abrahamic religious warfare inherent in each Abrahamic religion, Pauline Christianity being one, has proven itself a menace to world peace and must go the way of the dinosaurs, i.e. lose the tyrant lizards and stick with the soaring birds. So God sends in a new template for change, one fit for the new millennium. And one of things necessary is establishment of authentic proof of divine intervention in our times, i.e, something that shows an historic movement of people driven by the same spiritual idea. This is how the Spirit must work as It has no hands but ours to do the actual work necessary to carry out the spiritually received instructions it gives to humanity via the prophesy bearers.

And so you enter the scene with all of the blatant expectations fundamentals have for a world "anti-christ". lol

Good luck with that oh ye of little sense. That's the very crack pot type of theology that most Christians have been trained to stone wall as a "sign of the end times." The world will cry out for peace, then all out war will ensue as it goes. You enter the scene as a fulfillment of the self fulfilling prophecy trend...

This is how you tell spiritual energy is happening because it unites peoples emotional life and overcomes traditional social barriers to peace, love and harmony.

That's superfluous. It's like saying that flea medicine doesn't work on dogs unless the dogs love their owners, because the energy of love is what activates the flea medicine. It's utterly unnecessary for an understanding of how our world works. It's your own beliefs overlaid on reality. Do you think some divine energy is 'activated' when certain social conditions are met, or when the constituent people have certain emotions, or are inspired in a certain way?

But the social consciousness never arises first without the seed activator, himself inspired by divine guidance.

Can you give an example of social consciousness arising, and explain why it could not possibly have a naturalistic explanation?

No, the other way around. And it isn't my own belief overlaid on reality when reality confirms my belief that preceded actual events.

Reality doesn't 'confirm' things. You do, inside your head. The possible correlations between all environmental conditions is nearly infinite. Those correlations mean nothing objectively, but are instead our understanding of the world. Categorical abstractions such as Plato's Forms are heuristic mental conceptions to help understand reality. While the 'category' of a thing such as a 'tiger' may seem to be real, it is not. The category is a heuristic used to associate similar things. You can associate anything, due to the near infinite number of potentially coinciding characteristics of said thing.

There are billions of coincidences 'happening' all around you. The only ones you notice are the ones you have the information within your head to notice. Sometimes coincidence can involve more than two components, which is inevitable considering the pool of potential coincidences. It's even possible that you may become aware of some things coinciding, then have an additional component coincide after you recognize the pattern. Not that you could ever have predicted such a thing, but reality is complex enough to sometimes coincide with what we think will happen. If you live long enough and have enough knowledge and experience(association fodder), you will notice impossibly rare and incredibly meaningful coincidences. At least, the chances are extremely good that you will.

biomystic wrote: I've been sent. To reestablish spiritual authority with authenticated spiritual work.

Look biomystic, people are bound to regard you as a crank when you make comments like that. The concept of being "sent" by God implies a conscious purpose governing the world. That is the sort of teleological thinking that has been made obsolete by modern science, and especially by the theory of evolution. You are importing a bunch of archaic myths into your spiritual vision. People probably think I am similar, and that is why I want to distinguish my views from yours. You have an interesting vision of how to harmonize human life with the cosmos, but imagining God as an entity driving the process leaves you wide open to the charge of irrationality.

it would all be just my own personal gnosis, my own revelations produced by my own mind, unless these visions and revelations somehow go beyond my mind and spread to other people inspiring them to become participants in a kind of spiritual wave that spreads out ever wider as more and more become involved, i.e. a mass movement that reaches historic proportions.

You are missing a key logical step here. Ability to inspire a mass movement does not guarantee that thoughts have an objective basis. Look at Paul and Hitler. What guarantees an objective basis is scientific analysis. This is where your approach differs fundamentally from Murdock's. She analyses ancient religion to understand how it evolved, seeking explanation within a scientific framework. If you claim a reality for the imaginary myth then you displace fact with fantasy.

This is how you tell spiritual energy is happening because it unites peoples emotional life and overcomes traditional social barriers to peace, love and harmony. At least that's the leading edge of spiritual direction in our times which are at the beginning of the new age.

'Spiritual energy' is no guarantee of love. The Nazis had plenty of spiritual energy but it was grounded in hatred. Again, an energy that can produce a real new age has to be based in scientific evidence. You are side-stepping this crucial factor with your claims that your imaginary revelations are objectively true.

Before Abrahamic spiritual energy broke up tribalism to form nations and advance social protections of individuals. But now Abrahamic religious warfare inherent in each Abrahamic religion, Pauline Christianity being one, has proven itself a menace to world peace and must go the way of the dinosaurs, i.e. lose the tyrant lizards and stick with the soaring birds.

At the moment I am reading Earl Doherty's analysis of Paul. It is clear that orthodox Christianity bears little similarity to the vision of Paul, as the church read back the fictional story of Jesus of Nazareth from the gospels into Paul's earlier work, which contains no historical Jesus. It is the 'churchianity' with its fictional Jesus story that is failing to contribute to world peace. My view is that Paul's vision of a cosmic Christ can largely be rehabilitated in scientific terms, if we understand that his talk of Christ crucified is allegory.

So God sends in a new template for change, one fit for the new millennium.

"God" does nothing of the sort. Any template will arise from human understanding.

And one of things necessary is establishment of authentic proof of divine intervention in our times, i.e, something that shows an historic movement of people driven by the same spiritual idea. This is how the Spirit must work as It has no hands but ours to do the actual work necessary to carry out the spiritually received instructions it gives to humanity via the prophesy bearers.

If you are waiting for authentic proof of divine intervention you will wait for ever. It will not happen. But that does not mean we cannot re-base the concept of divinity into a scientific framework, as human relation to the cosmos.

biomystic wrote:Atheism is now shown by brain science to be the foolish hubris of the mentally disabled who aren't aware of their infirmity.

yeah right. Love to see the published "brain science" papers on that one. Real brain science is all atheist.