Religion Fact or Fancy

[Prime]

im a serious christian and i dont mind having the odd joke about my beliefs hurled at me. but if you people started jumping on the band wagon of which belief is better or slamiming others beliefs then its going to cause upset.

blessed are those who are persecuted...

[Ark]

Sorry for resurrecting a really ancient thread, but stumbling on something like this and not giving my two cents is hard to resist.

Here's the way I see it:

People who are atheist are that way usually because they have seen a trend of biblical/religious information being either invalid or incorrect. I personally have not seen any physical proof of God, only testimonies from people who claim they have 'truely' seen this God. At this point, as I'm sitting in the car writing this crap out of sheer boredom, I will only believe something if you can physically show me. Science is the pudding. The latter I leave in the speculation box.

I have had a personal experience which have left me believing in angels and demons. When I was a teenager, almost every night I would wake up unable to move. My entire body was pinned down and I could feel some kind of evil presence in the room. This went on for about 4 years roughly. One night I decided to open my eyes and almost ***** myself when I saw this THING standing next to my bed. I was convinced it was a demon. The next day I started pondering. I thought to myself, there was a demon in my bedroom the night before. If demons are real, then angels must be real. And if angels are real, then God must be real. Lo and behold, I became a believer that day. But time went by, it stopped occurring. My mind matured, I became a thinker as I got older, always pondering. I started looking for logical, scientific explanations for everything that happens. I then discovered a sleeping disorder that people suffer under anxiety and depression. Hypnopompic hallucinations. In a nutshell, hypnopompic hallucinations are when one wakes up at night and sees things from his worst nightmare running around in front of his very eyes. I was unlucky enough to have this in conjunction with sleep paralysis. Explained in short, when asleep, the mind disconnects from the body to prevent your body from acting out your dreams. This is basically to ensure you don't punch your wife in the face while you're dreaming about beating up that snotty cashier for giving you the wrong change. Sometimes people wake up before the body and mind re-connects, leaving them paralyzed. Sooooo.. what I thought was diabolic, was simply a sleeping disorder. See? There is a perfect scientific explanation for everything.

Science is the process of obtaining information from observations we can make about things that are in front of us. Religion is the process of putting an easy solution to unknown things. ( What happens when you die? ) ( Why do bad things happen to good people? ) ( How come I feel guilty when I do something bad? ) These three questions are answered in totally different ways between religious people and atheists.

When you die?:
Atheist - Your body breaks down and deteriorates, and provides materials for other organisms to thrive.
Religious - You leave your body and depending on how you are judged, you will either end up eternally happy or eternally sad.

Bad things to good people:
Atheist - We cannot control the actions of other people, and sometimes other people's motives are harmful to us, also we cannot control acts of nature.
Religious - God has a plan.

Guilt :
Atheist - We have, programmed in our subconscious, a conscience. This conscience is a morality compass that guides our actions based on morals that our parents taught.
Religious - God knows when you do bad things, and makes you feel bad until you repent.

So, claims that there is no God is based on a lack of proof. Religious claims are based on faith which derives from what some people get told when they are small.

If you want me to believe something, show me. Plain and simple.

I say believe in what you want. I have a solid grasp in what I want in life, you may or may not. I want to work, earn an honest living, MAYBE have kids and if I do, raise them to think and decide for themselves.

If you're atheist, good for you, whatever makes you happy. If you're religious, same goes to you. I'm not one to judge and discriminate people based on their beliefs. Just don't preach to me. All I ask.



"An atheist is someone who feels about God the same way any decent christian feels about Thor". -- Richard Dawkins

[ryanrich]

im a serious christian and i dont mind having the odd joke about my beliefs hurled at me. but if you people started jumping on the band wagon of which belief is better or slamiming others beliefs then its going to cause upset.

blessed are those who are persecuted...

WTF, Prime was a Christian?!

Interesting read Ark. You musta crapped yourself during those 4 years! I know I would've if I opened my eyes and saw a Demon figure next to my bed whilst I was unable to move...

[Ark]

Dude, I had no idea what fear was until then

[hamin_aus]

I have had a personal experience which have left me believing in angels and demons. When I was a teenager, almost every night I would wake up unable to move. My entire body was pinned down and I could feel some kind of evil presence in the room. This went on for about 4 years roughly. One night I decided to open my eyes and almost **** myself when I saw this THING standing next to my bed. I was convinced it was a demon. The next day I started pondering. I thought to myself, there was a demon in my bedroom the night before. If demons are real, then angels must be real. And if angels are real, then God must be real. Lo and behold, I became a believer that day. But time went by, it stopped occurring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

I suffer from it too, started in my teens and still happens on rare occasions.

Used to scare the **** out of me, but now that I know what it is when it's happening it's more of a thrill

Nothing supernatural about it!

[Stuart]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

That's actually rather interesting. My dad often tells me about a similar episode he had when he was a kid. It's never happened to me. I've never heard of sleep paralysis until now.

[KALSTER]

Nice post Ark!

My grandmother used to complain about something similar. She would wake up unable to move and would feel as if something was holding her down. She consulted our reverend, who, after visiting her home, told her that two portraits that have been in the family for quite some time were possessed by demons. There was one each of a sad boy and girl with big, sad eyes. They were removed.

It is all a bunch of nonsense of course, but it is kind of frighting to think how rampant these kinds of superstitious beliefs are. My brother went out with a girl whose father claimed to be able to read tea leaves, something her family simply accepted as truth. Claims of seeing ghosts, feeling presences and hearing chains dragged across a roof by baboons are also to be found among some older and even young members of my extended family. I never believed any of it, even while still being Christian though.

[hamin_aus]

Oh, it's scary as shirt!
You lie there unable to do anything except breathe shallow breaths - thats why it feels like something is pressing down on you.
Your eyes are also only half awake so they arent registering things clearly and in a dark room shadows jump and dance all around you - easy for your imagination to conjure up all sorts of nasties from that.
When it happens to me it lasts for about 30 seconds or so befor I snap out of it.

[Ark]

With me it was weird. Sometimes it happened when waking up from a bad dream, but mostly I would start dreaming lucidly and wake up paralyzed. Scary as hell, specially when seeing demonic looking crap that aren't there.

[Hman]

I wake up to a demonic face staring at me quite regularly....

I think my cat has intentions of killing me in my sleep.

[hamin_aus]

My brother went out with a girl whose father claimed to be able to read tea leaves, something her family simply accepted as truth.

Ya, my great granny also claimed to be able to read tea-leaves.
She had lots of people who belived her as well.
She was humoured by most of the family - very few actually believed her - but she did have a lot of other people who came for regular readings.

Quite farcical, really.

[Sojourn]

bad necro is bad

/join
I like rooibos.

[Stuart]

I wake up to a demonic face staring at me quite regularly....

I think my cat has intentions of killing me in my sleep.

Well, if it happened to my dad after he was married I would've stumbled across an explanation before now.

[JollyJamma]

Wait, what?

:-/

[Tribble]

Very interesting - that must be very scary. I had the opposite problem - my brain didn't always disconnect and would often find myself outside in the garden in the middle of the night. My parents tried hiding the keys but I would only use a different door.

Sadly I nave never seen anything scary standing at the foot of my bed. I have seen things - but they weren't' scary, though my cats didn't like them. But I am sure it was just my brother trying to frighten me.