Religious experience anyone?

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I have heard many different claims about religious experiences in my life. It seams like religious experiences can all be explained by science. Posession could be explained by multiple personality or schizophrenia. Experiencing god's love could be self induced euphoria to name a few examples. But has anyone had a profoundly religious/spiritual experience that science can't explain? Was the experience specific to a particular religion? Or has your God(s) given you the forever silent treatment? I am in college right now, and religion is treated as irrational and not grounded in any evidence. but I refuse to just believe what I am told without hearing both sides. I know this a bit controversial but I am just so curious. Any input would be greatly appreciated. I do not wish to offend anyone.

I think it's wonderful that you're willing to listen to both sides, and imagine that there will be people here who have had experiences they believe to be unexplainable by science as it currently exists. Good luck with your research.

It could simply be a spasm in the brain. The right neurons fire, and you suddenly "feel" God's presence...
http://rationalargumentator.com/issue19 ... drive.html

Having been raised in a mainline church (Lutheran to be exact), I was always brought up to hold religious experiences with suspicion, and that faith (regardless of how intense or lackluster) was a gift from God, and so didn't need any bells and whistles, or fireworks.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

you forgot temporal lobe epilepsy.

But there are also far more mundane explanations, like peer pressure and magical thinking.

The problem with trying to explain specific events witnesses by only a few is that science simply isn't interested in them. If they can't be repeated, and leave no real traces, they don't actually matter. It's not just a matter of burden of proof, it's burden of making them give a darn.

I would like to be clear that I am not asking for proof of the experience being real. I am only asking for descriptions of experiences. And by the way, the fact that I started this thread is proof that I at least give a darn.

Ive had very many experiences.

Heres one.

My parents split up when I was 18 months old, given to my Grandparents but they died when I was 3, put in Childrens homes when I was not at home with mother and her sadist husband who would kick me in the stomach if I opened my mouth.

I really turned to God when I was 28, I also got a job with an insurance company.
Now, after a year at this company, one day I had seen how well the Christian Children were treated by their parents and it made me sad about not having seen my own real Father since 18 months old so I said to God, "wheres my Father?, why cant I have a Father like everybody else?, where are my Brothers and Sisters"?

The very next morning as I sat down at my desk the girl opposite had no work in yet so was playing on a computer system I was unaware of, so before she even says "good morning" she says, "whose name do you want me to look up", so I said my Fathers name which is quite uncommon as he is Prussian.
And even though I had previously searched via telephone directories for him unsuccessfully, the very next morning after praying to God, I found him for he had an Insurance policy with the company I worked for and so was on this girls database.

I hadn't known of this database, I hadn't asked her, she had asked me, when I told her what I had prayed for she said, "Ive been used by God!"

On the 22nd of this month I will be flying to Sweden to attend one of my Sisters wedding, part of the family God found for me.

I hope you folks know that it is all a delusion and an hallucination.

ruveyn

Yes. But don't expect an explanation in a simple forum post to help you understand it.

My personal experiences (and I stress the plural there), are too numerous to list. It's not any one "Aha!" moment, angels singing, or "Come into the light" kind of thing. For me, it's been a great number of very small, almost seemingly insignifiant occurrences that if considered separately would appear to be nothing more than coincidences. Taken all together though, in the context of a lifetime there emerged a decades long pattern, a preponderance of evidence that eventually became far too numerous and significant to deny any longer.

The problem with this though, is that within the context of this thread there is no possible way to convince you or anyone else that it is very real, no illusion, and far beyond scientific explanation. It is something one has to learn and experience for oneself.

Whether anyone else believes me is irrelevant. I know. I lived through it. I experienced it all. Why others have not, isn't for me to determine. I have, and have met many others who also have, exactly the way I did. They know what I mean.

I have no need to convince anyone else of it. It is the kind of thing one has to experience and conclude on their own. No amount of debate or persuasive argument will ever convince anyone that hasn't experienced it for themselves.

And that's about all that's worth telling in this context.

memory bias can make us think anything, i dont even trusty my own brain without external verification.

Probably when I was in a car wreck and not injured except for a small cut on my head. Went to the ER in an ambulance and everything. Just got my head stitched up. People who saw the condition of the car were amazed. They even said it must have been a guardian angel that kept me from getting hurt but I am not so sure about it. Might have just been the car had a very high safety rating. You can take it either way.

Also, people are amazed by my intellect. Don't know if that's spiritual, exactly. My life is somewhat of a miracle.

Neither do I, which is why it took many years to even begin believing there was more going on than mere coincidence. It also took comparing my own experiences with those of many other people's as well, over a very long period of time. A clear pattern emerged that took decades and verification through nearly identical experiences of many others to really appreciate it.

So the countless hours put in by research scientists, the massive expenditure by car companies and the legislation introduced and enforced by government had nothing to do with it? It was just God? I would not put store by the opinions of onlookers. Modern cars look complete wrecks after an accident because they are designed to crumple on impact - that way they absorb most of the force and you don't end up dead.

I would consider it a far more practical miracle for God to prevent the car accident in the first place.

Just to confuse everyone: I've have what may be loosely described as spiritual experiences sometimes when in deep meditation. I don't attribute them to a god or anything like that... I'm an atheist... but also a Zen Buddhist. They are really a shift in the functioning of various aspects of brain / mind activity. Certain noisy aspects of normal brain function slow down and virtually stop and this allows a deeper penetration into other aspects of brain function that often remain buried at the edge of the subconscious.

As a rough analogy, the normal brain state is like a busy highway in rush hour with lots of noise and chaos and that is all you can see and hear with interruptions every second - flashing lights, sirens, car horns etc. The meditative brain is like a quite road... individual vehicles are seen to indicate and emerge from a side street, travel past revealing the driver and passengers then pass into the distance and gone. Far more details are noticed in this meditative state and aspects of the brain / mind functioning become much clearer. One becomes a "fly on the wall" of one's own mind. I won't attempt to describe the depth and finer details of deep meditative states; unless someone has experienced these states themselves then these words are meaningless... they convey nothing.

I admit to not having all the answers and that perception is flawed. Everything that happens happens in the mind, anyway. It's perception. So, who's to know what's what? You might be deceived right now just by thinking you have all the answers and that science can explain away everything.