How Would You Respond If a Friend Confided In You That He/She...

...had an experience with Christ?

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Context. :P

When chemicals in the brain are out of whack it can make a person imagine strange things.

.....I would listen to them and respect their statements if they are a TRUE friend because you can not in anyway prove to them that what they experience was not Christ since you did not experience it.... just respect them as you should. I have several experienced with Christ a week so to me it is TRUTH so you will have the burden to prove what they have experienced is not TRUTH.....The BURDEN IS ON YOU BUDDY...


Just leave the spiritual stuff to those who understand it and if you dont just walk away....we will all know the truth one day...

"You can't prove it's wrong" is a terrible standard of evidence. If the most you can say about some claim is that no one can prove it wrong, that's an incredibly weak claim. The remote possibility that someday later it could be proven true doesn't count for much.

The numbers game of how many people make a claim doesn't count for much either when such a claim revolves around a very commonly known narrative.

Of course, how burden of proof works doesn't necessarily have anything with how you handle a possibly delicate situation with a friend either. The way people approach a debate in a public forum like DU doesn't necessarily reflect how they handle personal situations.

or scientific practices that connect with the material world. You cannot use the material world to disprove the existence of an immaterial world. By definition, the existence of an immaterial world lies outside of what can be known through the material one.

Agnostics understand this; atheists do not.

Arguing against someone's religious experience is like trying to talk someone out of being in love.

You may not like someone else's significant other, but all the logic in the world will not make that person fall out of love. This is true even if the significant other is abusive. The experience of a particular person being with a particular significant other is something that outsiders cannot know. If you try to deny or criticize their experience, you'll just piss them off.

If the relationship is truly harmful, there's nothing you can do but wait for the person to come to their senses. After that, the person may do one of three things: 1) Find another harmful relationship, 2) Swear off relationships altogether, or 3) Do some critical self-analysis and learn to find a healthy relationship.

I know people who had genuine experiences in fundamentalist settings but gradually drifted over to more liberal religious settings.

I have no doubt that people's religious experiences are real experiences. I just doubt they have anything to do with god, to say nothing of a specific mythical personification of that god as mentioned in the OP.

The overwhelming majority of religious claims pertain to the material world--virgin births, resurrections, miracles, etc.

Saying that these claims aren't subject to standards of evidence is trying to have it both ways. You can't say "X happened" then retreat to "it's my religion" when asked to prove it. If you're going to claim that something happened, you should be able to prove it, or at least back it up.

...is beyond our reach, either currently (soft agnosticism) or completely (hard agnosticism).

Agnosticism has nothing to do with privileging religious belief with being exempt from standards of evidence.

Since all we have is the material world, we have absolutely no reason to think the immaterial world is real. In fact, calling it immaterial concedes that it is not. Whatever properties this increasingly hypothetical immaterial world has, it is clear that it can have no bearing on material reality. So whatever else an immaterial being is, it is not god. Any being or process that can effect the natural world would have to interact with it. As soon as it does, it would be susceptible to scientific testing.

Atheists understand that immateriality is just a semantic device to avoid an uncomfortable reality, agnostics do not.

If it that was truly their experience, then getting snarky will not convince them otherwise.

The kind of "encounter with Christ" that a religious person might experience has nothing to do with hearing voices or seeing visions.

"...leave the spiritual stuff to those who understand it..."

I understand it fully, I just don't believe it. Just because someone disagrees with you does not make him or her ignorant. What an arrogant presumption to assume that anyone who thinks you are wrong must be uninformed, as though it is not possible to have reasonable grounds to disagree with you.

The burden of proof is always on those who assert the existence of something. Granted, a person can refuse to believe something for whatever subjective reasons he or she has, but that person cannot reasonably expect anyone else to simply take him at his word. Truth exists objectively. Either Jesus Christ caused the individual to feel or think the way he does, or else he did not. One of those propositions must be wrong. Things are not true simply because people believe them. Really, this is a lesson you should have learned in kindergarten. Since we know that feelings are subjective and that many, many things can cause them (including some well known propensities of the human brain to be fooled) the natural position is to doubt such a statement.

Thanks for the post.

He had fell far away from it by the time he hit college, but after some depressive episodes and struggling with psychotropic drugs which didn't do much good, he retreated back to his child-hood religion and found comfort there.

Even though I was partially responsible for him leaving his faith in the first place (about the same time I left mine around age 15), I haven't challenged his faith since he re-found it. I figure if he was so miserable without faith as a crutch to lean on and keep him going, I shouldn't be the one to take that crutch away. We still keep in touch but simply don't discuss religion any more.

I figure some people really do need some sort of spiritual component to make life meaningful to them. Of course, I think life is quite interesting even without a spiritual component, but some people are just hard-wired to need something greater than themselves to get them through each day.

The longer I live the more I realize biology (nature) drives us and makes us who we are, more so than environment (nurture). That's why I don't think we'll ever truly get rid of religion, but if we make it more scarce, we can at least limit its influence on politics and what not.

:shrug:

PB

"experience"? Are you experienced?

connections aren't that different from people who talk to their hands or the air. Where's the cutoff point between religion and mental illness?

As a person of faith who works with mentally ill, here's my two cents:

Ask them about the nature of the experience. Did they have a period of soul searching that brought them to their faith? Was the positive experience through a social group? Did they have a fortuitous event that made them wonder if a higher power was operating in their lives? (but admit such experiences are RARE) Was it a feeling of deep peace after a religious service or prayer? Read a book? Have a great conversation about it? All of these are okay.

On the other hand: Did they hear the voice of God audibly talking to them? Did they hear the voice of the angel talking to them, or the devil? Do they claim to have psychic powers given to them by God? Do they claim to be unique on earth in that they are chosen by God for a special purpose? Are they being persecuted by a secret evil group for their faith/powers? Are they more or equally functional since their "conversion" or deteriorating? Are they looking dirtier, socially isolated? Are they abusing drugs and alcohol while professing the faith? All of these, NOT okay. Schizo land.

It's NOT OK if HE talks to YOU.

I would suggest therapy if someone told
me that they were hearing voices, regardless
of where he/she thought they were coming from.

I was thinking about that after I posted, another simple metric is: are they suffering? People with mental illness really do, somebody who's having fun with a new church's BBQ/volleyball group really isn't.

Having a religious faith doesn't make you mentally ill.

In Ayn Rand, her atheism was a function of her malignant narcissism, that put the personal ego above all else; and made her admire serial killers like William Hickman.

But, IMHO, mental illness and religious beliefs (or lack thereof) are separate issues.

But if it makes you happy to think so....




OTOH, holding a belief in an invisible being without any proof whatsoever, and in direct opposition to other perfectly plausible explanations is cognitive dissonance, which is a mental disorder....

You do the math.

So did Ayn Rand's atheism.

But, unlike some here, I don't lump together all atheists or all people with religious faith.

Religious faith -- to a non-fundamentalist -- is about faith, belief, hope -- not proof. There is no cognitive dissonance because the existence of a reality BEYOND the known material world cannot be proven or disproven from within it.

There is no cognitive dissonance because the existence of a reality BEYOND the known material world cannot be proven or disproven from within it.


Uhm, yeah.

As for "no cognitive dissonance", avoiding cognitive dissonance is easy when you engage in special pleading and deliberately create a walled-off little world explicitly designed to be off limits from criticism or questioning.

Of course it works. In much the same way solipsism "works" and childish fantasies "work" and paranoid nightmares "work".

I'd ask if they wanted to tell me more.

they would probably already know that.

and the experience. Some of my friends might say that metaphorically.

Normally, if it was in the context of their feeling that Christ comforted them, answered a prayer, etc., I would just listen and accept that this is how *they* perceive life. My religious friends know I'm an atheist; I know they're religious; and neither of us try to convert the others.

However, if they literally thought they'd heard Jesus talk to them, been seeing visions, etc, I would be more worried, especially if this was very untypical of the person, and would consider the possibility of mental illness or drug use.

maybe they just want an attentive, nonjudgemental ear.

even though I do not believe in them. A friend would "confide" such an experience with me because they trust that I would not judge them. Overwhelmingly, most people do not have a religious experience unless they are seeking it so in such a case I would believe that my friend was seeking it and I would be happy for them if they were happy with their experience.

My beliefs as an agnostic or an atheist do not depend upon my crushing or dismissing the religious beliefs or experiences of a friend. There are likely thousands of DUers who are practicing Christians to one degree or another and it's likely that many of them have had fan experience with Christ and I do not think they are delusional, mentally ill, or in need of being medicated.

Actual concern for a friend instead of an exercise in ego.

What is this forum coming to?

I consider religious belief a form of delusion. A commonplace form of delusion, one that doesn't necessarily indicate mental illness, but a delusion nonetheless.

Why should I be happy that someone is taking refuge in a delusion? If I were convinced that the particular delusion was the only possible source of comfort or purpose in a friend's life, I suppose I'd be happy to a limited degree that they'd found something, but only happy in the sense that one can be "happy" that a friend lost "only" one leg, not both legs, in a car accident.

But since no one, by definition, can use the material world to disprove the existence of an immaterial one, that's all you're doing: guessing.

You say that there IS "the existence of an immaterial" world. Prove it.


Unless you think that because you cannot disprove my claim that unicorns exist means we will just never really know for sure? Is that what you think about unicorns?

My philosophic position is agnostic, though I do have hope in the existence of what people call God.

Certainly it was not you, but I infer from your posts that you give the idea merit as a plausible hypothesis, no?


So I am now making the claim that unicorn DO exist. Do you agree, disagree, or are you "agnostic" on that subject too? And why?

that the burden on you would be to produce one. Or, at least, a reliable record of one.

But we're not talking about entities like unicorns that either exist or don't exist in the material world -- but the possibility of entities that could outside and beyond it. If there is an immaterial reality beyond the known physical world (the world that is knowable through our senses and through scientific study), there's no way to know or even guess what might be in it -- except through faith.

Our body gets turned into a tetris piece that goes onto be placed on an in progress castle. The more you lie, cheat, and steal in this world, the higher up you become placed in this castle. So all the "good" people in this world become the dirty foundations of the castle.

I have no proof since this is an idea and thing that exists beyond the realm of the material world. I assure you its real though and the truth.

Will you be giving as much weight to my theory as you do to your current idea of god?

Why or why not?

My own is personal, to me, based on my lifetime of thought, feeling, and experience. I'm not trying to convince anyone else about it. And it doesn't happen to be anything remotely particular or concrete, such as the idea you've just described.

...you appear to think your guesses are the best, with, of course, a diplomatic "for me" attached, and the rest is diplomatic hand-waving too.

You may have "innovated" upon it (made him/her more forgiving, fair, etc.) but the original idea was someone else's. Clearly over time you've run into what you consider to be evidence for their idea of god (at the very least, an edited version).

What kind of evidence would you need to at least consider what I'm saying is true?

If you cannot see that, we have nothing further to discuss.

They are very, very special invisible pink unicorns. One of their magical powers it to automatically move beyond the reach of any argument you can make against them, by whatever word games necessary.

They have something even more powerful than faith. They have slippery, ever-changing, contextually-dependent definitions, with no need for consistency when different definitions are invoked in their defense.

Some "guesses" are logically inconsistent and simply can't be true.

Some "guesses" run contrary to real-world evidence, while others are solidly based on evidence.

Some "guesses" make more explicit or implicit claims than other guesses, therefore, have more things to be wrong about.

Some of what you might be calling "guessing" is actually refraining from guessing, saying "I don't know" rather than filling in the void of knowledge with wild imaginings.

And even if I were to accept the preposterous premise of equal-valued guessing, where's the supposed joy in "I'm guessing, you're guessing too!"?

If that friend was not asking for opinions, I would not offer any.

to ever attribute any sort of "supernatural" experience they have to Jesus or religion.

If they did though, I would do my best to talk sense into them. After all, if I were delusional, I would expect my friends to snap me out of it.

Sorry. That was cold. Actually, I do know several people who tell me that they actually have had an experience with Christ---that they have actually seen him there with them or felt him hugging them. That only happened to me when I was doing acid. Phewey.

:evilgrin:

The last time I heard someone say that it was from my sister-in-law who just came back from some kind of Catholic spiritual long weekend at her church. I doubt she meant that Jesus came out of the sky and gave her a personal message. I assumed she just meant that she felt the trip was worthwhile and made her feel good about all that Catholic stuff.