talking to god

I've read quite a few posts on here from Christians referencing a turning point in their lives... an 'encounter' for want of a better word, with God that has changed their world view.Phrases like 'God Spoke to me' or 'I met god' are seemingly common place.I consider myself a reasonably open minded person, although I do take some convincing on a lot of things. Hence this proposed topic.Would any of the christians on here who have had an encounter/meeting/conversation with God like to share the details of this experience, and explain why it made you reconsider your world view?I appreciate this may be a deeply personal thing so do not expect a flurry of responses. But as a non believer I am facinated to see/hear the various ways in which god has manifested him/herself.I guess this is not so much a discussion rather a 'shareing'. If this topic is promoted I would expect there to be no ridiculing or questionning of the various experiences. but equally I would hope the contributors would be open to reasonable questionning.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I have often wondered about this moment.I was under the impression that at some point all things would change after I decided to go to Church etc. Well that was already wrong.I DO suspect that in the past (say 50yrs ago) one could easily reach the same experiences I am about to describe and call this the religious moment that all things changed.It seems instead that it is the secular world that turns around what little faith, belief, and religious tradition retains desptie THOSE changes. No one individual is exempt.When I was a teenager I decided to go to Chruch when my parents were trying to make it a "choice". I just decided that if one was going to decide to get up Sunday and go then one should go ever Sunday. I started going but my friends were largely skeptical and the majority did not go. I suspect I went in part to solve in my own mind the disagreement of my parents. But I was even more confused about my friends. Once I got to going to Church a lot, I was ordained an elder, in high school, I got to see "faith" as something I never experienced anywhere else. So if I had not gone I would not be in the presence of people professing faith. What that different expereince created was that I had to give up my "doubting" mind, no matter where I got that "skepticism" from. Thus, I did not all of a sudden exclaim in the presense of faith people that all of a sudden God talked"" to me and now I was a believer. I simply went to Church and tried to learn how to worship and the rest of the world (my parents mostly at that time) turned around me.When I got to college at Cornell University. I found college life very demanding of my time. But despite these non-religous pressures, there was a Chapel ("made" by someone from Harvard) on the top of the hill I had to pass by ever day that I did my school work. It turned out that the BUILDING itself held up its presence in my less doubting mind as a reminder of my decision to go to church that I started making it a practice to go to Sage Chapel on Sundays whether or not I had school work. I found the experience always for a better state of my mind plus I got to hear some very good sermons. Cornell it self has now "turned" itself around this location as well. The only thing I ever really learned at Cornell was how to do determinants in math. Now I see how to apply them but to do so requires that I intellectually DENY everything one is taught about natural selection, which is one of the least religious things one can ever learn or try to learn. In other words for me to "go" around this Church today , physically, I have to "doubt" all or most secularisms, especially Mayr's insistence that he understands adapation without there being any evidence for cosmic teleology not doubt faith, religion or God. I find that Kant's application of relativity still works but thatfor secular reasons only his logical content is substituted for the contextul organon of any apriority where Mayr named a posterority selectively to explain only his change from Lamarkism to Darwinism. He refused to find macrothermodyanmics in the literature of his time. It is for that reason that Rockefellar Hall is not Sage, architecturally speaking.Now I had had my thoughts on God personally and perhaps when that occurred (I was a teenager doubting) God spoke to me"" and all else turned around THAT, that was so personal I cant figure it being of any use to explain to anyone but me( God told me "not" to play the role of God. Perhaps I just said I was a bigger God than my social circle, who knows? I dont really but that is not the "faith" I witnessed. It is clear that VonWeisaker circle was bigger as he understood when I spoke of actual infinity with him while no one who worked on the Cornell Campus did (Stu Kaufmann did but he was not here)).

For those that are interested, there has been a thread with a similar theme that you might want to read, Message 1

Ahhhh...
sorry... didn't see that..

Cornell just completed its response to Seantor Byrd's requirement that Cornell and others hold a "constitution day" and a hour ago President Rawlings revealed some of the sentiment behind a letter that was burried at the cornerstone of Sage Hall. There is a Sage Hall and Sage Chapel and they both made out the point that only one president was not Protestant. The women's college where I learned Lingala is now the Business School. I sat on these steps listening to godless snoop dog on slope day this year. Rawlings III said today instead,

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And so let me just conclude by quoting from the letter that Ezra Cornell placed in Sage Hall and its cornerstone when Sage Hall was dedicated in the year 1873. Now we knew that Ezra Cornell had placed a letter in that cornerstone in Sage Hall. No one knew what it said. The prediction was that it was a warning about how important it was to have co-education at this university. When we opened up the corner stone a few years ago during the renovation of Sage we came in for a surprise. This is what Ezra Cornell's letter said, "To the coming man and women, on the occasion of laying the corner stone at the Sage College for Women of Cornell University, I desire to say, that the principal danger, and I say almost the only danger, I see in the future encountered by the friends of education and by all lovers of tru???ah/???(I can not make out the tape here) is that which may arise from sectarian strife. From these halls, sectarianism must be forever excluded. All students must be left to worship God as their conscience shall dictate and all persons of any creed or all creeds must find free and easy access and a hearty and equal welcome to the educational facilites possesed by the Cornell University."

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I did not find free and esay access to Snoops concert. I had to sit on halls of the woman quite literally I could add hyperbolically and around CU's science turned, no contest. Gingerich had already said that White (and Rawlings spoke in stronger terms of him than Ezra who he said had THE SAME view point(means freedom of inquiry to Rawlings) as Madison (not Jefferson)))was "an unreliable guide to the religous reception of Copernicus's book"(page 146 The Book Nobody Read) distruted ECornell's nonsectarian criticism and use of students to conduct it

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But the former Cornell president was not about to stop withLuther..."While Lutheranism was thus condemning the theory of the earth's movement, other branches of the Protestant Church did not remain behind. John Calvin took the lead, in his Commentary of Genesis, by condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. He clinched the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the ninety-third Psalm,("Thou hast fixed the Earth immovable and firm, thy throne firm from of old; for all enternity thou art God."), and asked "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?

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p138opcitI should also say that THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY IS rather a monster compared to indivdual schools or colleges on its campus. I know indeed by experience to which Cornell letterd. Snoop did not. Rawlings said that the religious 'will always encroach' thus it is better to "err" on the side of seperation. There is no wall around various buldings that indeed held and hold them up, but an invisible fence that gets erected on special occasions and by the Cornell Police sometimes with assitance of the city of Ithaca.

I grew up in the near suburbs to Denver. My Father, a home builder, was never aopenly religious except when we went to the United Methodist Church, which he said he did because it made him feel good...no references to god or Jesus, however. He DID listen to Tennessee Ernie Ford Gospel records, however...and his favorite quiet times of contemplation with these songs was my only memory of his spirituality.I grew apart from church, (Thank God!) I partied, did acid, mushrooms, experienced some vivid and somewhat damaging drug trips, and all that jive...went to Grateful Dead concerts, felt a "spirit" of sorts...but still felt the same as ever. When I "got saved", I know that I became aware of God. At the time, the perception was of a dynamic undefineable Spirit..Personality..Divine Love...that was greater than I. Later on, I made what I consider to be a common mistake among Christians:I became convinced that I and God were the same thing. I began to preach to my friends. I began to judge others. I began to back up my actions by declaring that I was a servent of God who was carrying out His will. What I really ended up doing was deifying my own will. The experience was real, however...as much as I can determine. I really don't want to doubt His reality, but I will honestly talk about it.There have been many confirmations that settled the issue in my own mind. Without going into great details yet, I will list some as I remember them:
1) Salvation day
2) Evidence of supernatural
3)More than coincidences?
4) The $50,000 prayer and lessons on gambling.

Sorry brad McFall... You've completely lost me now..What exactly has that got to do with my post?

Tell us your story, creavolution! If you have never had many mystical experiences with God, surely you may have had at least a few mystical experiences with the supernatural in one form or another, NO?

It is about the continuing saga in my personal relationship with God where I remain steadfast in my belief and the rest of the secular world spins around that. Conversion is not the same thing as being "born again" of having a salient momement when all things relgious become as clear as day.I tried to interpret the current direction of Cornell which is to claim that Ezra Cornell's feeling to keep sectarianism OUT of Cornell (Rawlings also related that ADWHITE had some scrawled notes about how the Governor of NY refused on the last minute to speak at Cornell's first graudation because he did not want to be associated with being anti-religious)(the whole lie came out when Rawlings said something like "we might find it odd that Babtists were the outliers in Virgina back then")is a lie because they have substituted an "invisible wall"(my words) for the use of fences and signs to not figuratively but acutally SEPERATE Church and State. I had run ins with the CUPolice in this regard as well. They accomplish this in good conscience because there was a Sage Chapel AND a girls' school Sage and this is submerged in the evolutionary interpretation of sex instead of dealing with the fact that Madison was only concerned about one state Virginia's Anglican affiliations even though in another state, say Rhode Island, Roger Williams made no such need. The point that the Cornell President was trying to make is that Madison's 1st ammendment to the consitution is not the one that we have. He seems to think that if we had Madison's and Ezra Cornell's and further ADWhite's positions we would not be having the problems with "church and state" and the national debate would not have focused mostly on "religious test" for national office. I tried to show that in matters of science( Copernicus), CU was unreliable, and hence by extension (where I guess they are wont to go with Nanotech) I was trying to make a case, that, current cornell is just as unreliable about sectarian differences. You can listen to rap music and that has nothing to do with denominational differences. There were questions from the audience about if religious people were involved in "stealth politics" and Rawlings' response and talk inter alia was that religous people will always "encroach" so we need to "err" on the side of seperation. They have the wrong attidue from the get go. That is the same one Will Provine had with me. I just ignored it as the feeling of just one proffessor. It is the schools general ethical compass now. They confused the desire for religious duty with the difference of practical and pure reason. When Cornell submerged in stone that the student should "be left to themselves" Cornell actually regardless of not knowing what he wrote actually did do this. I was left "to psychiatry" and they clearly to me leave people "behind". This does not square with their claims that any student can find instruction in any study. They can only find if it does not refuse to seperate church and state. Funny thing is that the university is not the state and one can be a college that is not a state university. The thing is that Rawlings believes Cornell has always "erred" on this side of maximum seperation and I can confirm it. They have ALWAYS been seperating Church and State. The univeristy is part private and part State University. The only thing is that when I was a student it was clearly only walls that seperated everything, now it is interpreation of the word "DUTY"civially (they assume criminalization will not substitute but that is all that religous people really have left with such conservative and reactionary liberalisms) and I read intellectually that if Cornell really was to follow Madison's position rather than Jefferson (who was drinking wine in France when Madison was doing this work in Virginia) then they would notice that they have only used ARGUMENTS to seperate Church and State rather than REASON which is what Rawlings admittedly quoted.Because it is only collusion to agree with arguments such (strong I admit but scientifically invaldated by Harvard's Gingerich in one instance of teaching(whether boys or girls) that THAT is why the secular world can turn around anyone personal conversations with God. God cares not an iota for debate or arguing but if smart people at Cornell were truely seperating Church and State based on REASON, they would probably be in deep Kantian do not do("doodoo"), from which not even making a joke about Roberts would extricate themselves from the fomer charge of "Godless Cornell".If Cornell's position was to go to court and thus rely in legal theory on the case of Madison, Roger Williams' STATE, not any other legislation nor the seperation of powers needs be referred to TO ARGUE AGAINST IT. Cornell has taken the need to keep the state out of religion (not religion out of the state (as is often thought) to the policy to keep religion out of science. I can go on and on how we need students sensitive to this problem not reactionary to the utmost legality if the population problem is going to be solved without resort to military conflict. I hope I dont live to see some day that that turns around my own conversation with God that one day long ago when I realized that no matter how big an evil genius I might become if I was so big and bad God could just change the laws on me when I come to use the big science itself. This conversation with God has in science been obscured by the attempts during this period of reflection on my part that many scientists determined that natural selection is aposteriori in this sense. Thus by adding a step, secularists, removed the need to address any such personal conversation with any gods as far as teaching students go. Unfortunately the government has a right to require the schools not look out only for their best interests but the Solomon paperwork has obscured even this instutionally as Cornell signed on with other Ivys to wend the argument in such a way that no student who even now knows otherwise short of being God, we are not, can change.I probably should have opened up a new topic on Constitution day first and they referred back here again.

my Story...Not much to it really, brought up catholic, although my father is protestant. as I grew older I began to question if god really was concerned whether or not I went to mass every sunday (given that I only went cos I was made to anyway) Christianity was devalued by the hypocracy of the practisers (as far as I could see).I then began to question alot of the bible stories (mainly OT, genesis, leviticus, the Flood etc etc.) and found them lacking any ability to convince me of their truth. I studied Maths and science through school and began to accept more scientific explanations as they could (for the most part) be verified. I went on to study engineering in University (which included a lot of Physics etc).I know many Good people, who, according to the laws given to us in the bible are infact evil and are doomed to hell. simply because of a lifestyle choice they make. choices which do not have any adverse effect on anyone else, much less themselves. I Found myself reaching the conclusion that if God exists as the god of the bible I want nothing to do with him.I firmly believe that the main reason many people believe in God is simply through fear, fear of hell, fear of the unknown. It's kind of a backup plan. and most of these same people do not realise that if God is as all knowing as he is meant to be, he will of course see through this.
I have had no real spiritual/supernatural experiences to speak of.
I have had endless dicussions with christians on this subject and have never once began to "believe" in the same way they do. I would like to Believe, after all it must be very comforting to have all the big questions wrapped up so easily, without any real explanation. unfortunately my mind does not work like that. If I hold a position or opinion, I generally like to be able to back it up or at least explain why it holds true.As far as ToE I'm no scholar on the subject, but I give it full respect as it at least attempts to explain itself as a theory rater than just saying "It's true because it says so in this book"

Thanks for sharing. Keep up the good work!

I was brought up CofE, but through a bizarre twist my first school was a Gospel School. After leaving that I went to a junior school, and I don't think they do it anymore, but I would be told to say the Lord's prayer, which totally melted my head (I always imagined God with an easel (I swear this is true), 'Our Father, who art in heaven' and I was confused as to what a doughy decathelete had to do with God (Daley Thompson was a national hero at the time), 'give us our Daley [sic] bread'), we also learned about the nativity, baby jesus and donkeys and palms. I went to Church many Sundays.One day someone asked me what religion I was. I looked at the oddly, I was a white English boy, I was christian. 'What denomination?' *blank stare* 'There are different versions?'. Shortly afterwards I picked up a Good News Bible and actually read what it was that I was supposed to believe. I was about 11 at this time and didn't think about it again for some time.I read a KJV when I was about 13, and by the time I was about 14 I had mentally abandoned Christianity since I considered it a hollow belief. I hadn't really believed since I was very young, it was my religion, but I didn't actually believe any of it, any more than I believed Santa even though I would still wake up a 5am on a cold December morning.Basically, it didn't really gel with me.After a brief period of agnostisim/athiesm, I started to explore modern spirituality (crystals, healing, people with surnames like Shine or Moon and so on). It suddenly felt very silly and I wandered over to Buddhism. Buddhism seemed arbitrarily strict and I started looking into the philosophy of Zen, stumbling into Osho link to an article I wrote about him a few years ago.Osho's ideas inspired me and his theories on Christ amused me, one day, whilst practicing with meditation I was suddenly struck with what must have been Satori. Time vanished, but the meditation in total must have been 45 minutes or so, most of which was in this state. I cannot describe it, but it was a little like the Total Perspective Vortex but instead of torture it was bliss. As Blake once said I was in an 'immense world of delight, closed by [my] senses five'. I tried to bring that experience into some kind of context, and experienced the same state many times in the following years.AbE: I totally forget something. After I found out about Osho's indescretions/drug habits and cult, I got a little scared and stopped. I also noticed a shift in my personality which terrified me. Some of Osho's meditations are very powerful (Some of you won't believe that but to help you understand a little the meditations can involve hours of cathartic exercises and themes that people use in actual therapy), but it was totally unbalancing my reactions to emotional events (maybe I did them wrong, but I have another theory I'll come to in a minute).Anyway I was in a spiritual vacuum. And it was a few years ago now that I came so very close to converting to Islam. I was on the precipice, about to say those words, when I realized that it wasn't me, it wasn't right, and I backed away.I started looking back to Osho (and this was when I wrote the article above) and I realised that what could have messed my head up wasn't incorrectly doing the exercises (though it might have been), but instead I wasn't sure which exercises were developed after Osho lost the plot. I suspected most of them. I came to the understanding that Osho said many wise things, but it would be impossible to really trust anything he said. I started remembering Osho discussing monism, and the dualism that man does with the universe (I am a man, everything else seperate from me) and came to my current position:So here I am, with a pantheistic outlook. My satori experience was the dualism of my mind vanishing for a short while and my truly realizing that I am part of the divine whole of cosmology.This sat well with all the beliefs I had held to (the Christian concept of omnipresence springs to mind), but explained everything so much better. Ever since I realized that (after many years of soul searching, I arrived less than a year ago), I've found myself spiritually complete and happy.This message has been edited by Modulous, Sat, 01-October-2005 11:42 PM

Modulous, thanks for sharing

Thanks, I make it a point to generally not discuss my beliefs, I still very much take Jesus' words with a kind of reverence: I take Matthew 6 to mean don't make a big deal out of your righteousness, since that is done to get a feeling of superiority, which is its own reward, but not a holy one.Incidentally, if you are genuinely interested (As opposed to politely interested, which I'm cool with), I just added a bit more to it whilst you were replying to me.