http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5PsfgVN7LA

how often do you religious discussions go like this?

Every time?

At least it is honest. A religious person quite genuinely does feel a very strong sense that God exists. And they cannot explain it. So saying "it is something I feel, not something I can explain" makes perfect sense.

Yeah I watched the scene last night and it made me laugh. I can relate though because I'm not sure what I believe.

unfortunately, many end there. And it kind of ends many discussions from going anywhere.

Its funny to me how anyone who relies on faith as powerful proof don't seem bothered by others having similar faith in a different god/religion.

You would think it would show just how unreliable faith is but it rarely makes the faithful even blink.

I think a lot of it is being unable to fathom death which leads to belief of an afterlife.

Anyone who has ever undergone surgery, and been "put out", should understand death. It is nothingness, period.

This type of experience makes one HOPE for an afterlife. I mean, come on, who wants to believe that in the end, there is nothing? We can all hope, but all that does is distract us from what is, quite likely, reality.

Most people at least go to sleep from time to time.

There is NO comparison to sleep. You don't dream, or wake up occasionaly, during surgery. For all intents and purposes, you are dead.

I've had surgery done to me once. I have sometimes experienced a sleep that feels the same.

C'mon, gan. You know better. When you wake up from sleep, you know, instinctively, that you've slept. You know that time has passed. When you wake up from surgery, you wake up at the same moment (in your mind) that you left. It could have been an hour, or ten hours.

It's not even close to equivalent.

I stand by my statement in this pointless side-discussion. It normally happens after I stay up for a really long time.

and btw:

It's a subjective experience. How can you tell me what I've experienced?

In a surgery experience, the remarkable thing is that it seems to happen instantaneously. However, all that you consciously experience is that time before and after the deep sleep. The in-between time is as though it doesn't exist, which is what your point revolves around. However, the remarkable experience of a surgery INCLUDES and essentially is composed of the contextual experience just before being knocked out (dozing off quickly), but also the astonishing initial moments of being awake again wherein you reflect on how it all happened in "no time."

However, in your concept of death there is not any awake time afterwards. But again it is the initial awake time that essentially is the essence of what makes the surgery experience remarkable. So, it is clearly different.

I'm gonna have to say your surgery analogy is rather more like a concept of what reincarnation would be like as there is clearly consciousness sprouting up again. And personally, my rational mind really thinks that the more probable outcome of death. The resprouting of consciousness. Besides, were not you dead before you were born? You must have been by your definition of death.

I can concede that it might be a one time affair, but I think we can establish that we were dead before birth, and I don't see any reason it can't happen again unless you can explain why you were born in the first place.

On another note I have to agree with gansta about certain deep sleeps as being at least pretty similar. Like a certain time I drank a lot and smoked weed AND for some or other reason decided to force my body to stay awake for considerably longer than it was telling me it should.

It was well worth it though because I was totally stoked about how massively tired I was and that I could actually will myself to sleep on my own choosing perhaps with even more instant results than the general anesthesia I was given during a hernia repair surgery. No joke, when I finally decided to let go it was, well it was faster than the anasthesia. Totally revelled that experience. And as with surgery, bam! Wakey wakey.

If I say you won 10 million you "feel" happy, why? because you "think" that you won 10 million... So thinking there is a god creates in feeling there is a god, and feeling there is a god creates thinking there is a god... why do some people have this feeling/thinking... just because someone told them or they have the ability to create a god needed for themselfs. The real fun ofcourse is in the fact that I just pulled a joke with you and made up that you won 10 million... but you feel it right... you feel you are happy because of thinking that you have 10 million. Point is...feeling things doesn't make it true... same for god...you can feel just because you think it's true... doesn't have to be...

Good thing is these feeling are something to hang on too...your believes or what you stand for is guiding you through life and probably you will be satisfied following them...in the end everything we think is made up, there is no truth...

He can't tell you what you've experienced by your experience certainly contradicts almost every detailed experience in medical journals. I just had a 4 hour surgery last month, and the instant I was put to sleep was the exact same instant that I was woken up. Pretty trippy stuff.

Anaesthetic was exactly like dreamless sleep for me. I remember counting down and drifting off, then struggling to consciousness in recovery. I was aware time had passed though. Do you really remember the instant you were put to sleep?

That's the same experience I've had with some of my sleeps, as I've been saying this whole time. Please point me to any medical journal that contradicts that experience.

On a slight tangent to the sleep/anesthesia distinction, I learned about this recently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_protocol

Pretty much this. I can't tell you how many times I've had discussions with Charismatic Fundies who testify to the absolute truth of their particular sect, based primarily on the 'presence of the Holy Spirit' during worship. I know this feeling very well. I know what they are experiencing and why they believe it to be God. I've personally been laid to the floor during periods of long worship. Barely able to move, encompassed in a powerful euphoria. It's not easily analysed....and certainly cannot be explained by someone who hasn't made any real effort to understand what's happening. It's 'God dunnit', only applied to the spiritual.

On my part, it was learning that other religions experiences similar rapture during worship and/or rituals which lead me to begin questioning what was actually happening. I can to the conclusion that although my experience was 'real' (I did indeed experience these feelings), it gave no convincing testimony to the unique and absolute truth of my particular beliefs.

One of my favorite retorts to this type of argument is 'What about the Mormons' (everyone knows a Mormon...). They claim the truth of the Book of Mormon as revealed to them by the Holy Spirit by the 'burning in the bosom' experience....and they are quite convinced of what they have experienced. Most Christians will give a hand-wavy dismissal emphatically claiming the Mormon experience isn't real, or that it's Demonic. They aren't even willing to consider that it may be a similar experience, because that would force them to question their precious beliefs.

They go like that all the time because most people don't seek to know things deeply enough or they seek on the wrong paths.

I don't see a problem with people feeling that there is a God and having faith that God exists, and then interpreting this through their culturally sanctioned religions. I agree that many take it too far (clearly fundamentalists or those who war over religion have a more specific faith), but the general concept doesn't seem so bad to me.

What option would the believer have other than doing that?

Why don't you try comparing doctrinal tenets instead of "experiences"?

Hollen on how the Mormons replace the core teaching of the Book of Hebrews with something else:
http://www.metrovoice.net/www.metrov...riesthood.html

Any of you guys seen Dexter Season 6?

Dexter is a show about a serial killer who kills serial killers; he's aware of his "dark passenger" that craves murder. His father taught him to channel it for good.

Anyways, this season's motif is religion. I highly recommend everyone in this forum to watch it; it has pretty valuable commentary and couples it well with human nature.

Dexter is an atheist btw; but many of the characters aren't.

Stay on track, Splenda. The tread is specifically dealing with experience, not doctrine.