[lbo-talk] A time of doubt for atheists

Mycos mycos at shaw.ca
Sat Jul 30 17:22:12 PDT 2005


But this only highlights the nature of the conversion experience. Is it based on rational thought or merely a sense of profound realization about the "rightness and truth" of their thoughts?

I myself have had such an experience. But like the deja vu experience, the mere feeling does not make it true *in fact*. The mind that can invoke the certainty of deja vu can also invoke an overwhelming sense of profundity. Many people who have experimented with powerful hallucinogens can tell you of how certain they were that they KNEW THE TRUTH, only to have this effect vanish and the realization dawn on them that the feeling of profundity was itself the hallucination.

So be it for the religious or born again experience. Without a drug to account for it, I am certain that it would be near impossible for many individuals to pass it off as merely a curious effect of a stressed mind.

gary

Chris Doss wrote:
>
> --- Mycos <mycos at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Quite frankly, in my opinion anybody who says they
> were a former
> atheist was, in truth, at best an agnostic. You simply
> don't go from
> reading a book, say...Rousseau's "Encyclopedia of
> Mythology" one day
> to suddenly picking one out of the pack and deciding
> this or that
> one is in fact the truth. It's simply not done.
> --
>
> William James made up all those examples in Varieties
> of Religious Experience? People never have conversion
> experiences?
>
> Actually my dad is such a person.
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
>
>
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--

Gary Williams

Prohibition Funds Terrorism ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://mycos.blogspot.com

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