Your eternal destination: you decide.

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I could literally write a book about all the evidences, and shared feelings that I have experienced concerning God. You could then proceed to nit-pick apart every single experience, and give possible other explanations for them.

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Yes.And if you were as honest and skeptical as you claim you are about your own experiences; if you really don't "just accept things because they make you feel good", then you would have already nit-picked apart every experience yourself.You would do this readily and not looked at such an activity as a negative.(Be sure to read my sig quote, as it is extremely relevant.)

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No, that fact that 100% of the people there felt something, means that there is indeed a football game going on.

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That doesn't hold up, rat.Even observers who don't feel anything at all can observe and agree that there is a football game going on.

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Some people even feel convicted, and run from the church, because they do not want to face the truth.

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Oh, so you have The Truth now, do you?

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Sometimes a person can just walk in off the street, who wasn't even a participant of the service, and as soon as they enter the door, they get overwelmed with the feeling of peace.

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Someone who walks in to a quiet library off the street is likely to lower their voice and behave in a quiet, subdued manner.We are social creatures, rat, trained since birth to respond to social cues from individuals and groups we encounter.Anyway, do you understand that nobody can know EXACTLY the feelings of anybody else? You can compare notes, as it were, and realize that you felt similar things, but unless you have some amazing PSI ability, you cannot know EXACTLY what they feel.You can only know your own EXACT feelings.

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"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."- Richard Feynman"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders

There you go again trying to sum up a novel full of experiences with one word like "feel good".
Some of my experiences didn't "feel good", but lead to the conclusions that I draw, and test daily.You can nit-pick apart (for your own conviences) or you can accept that God exists. I have reached a point where I cannot deny God anymore in my life. The most I could do at this point is just not follow Him. When did I say that?God is the truth, that is what they are running from. You constanly blur the lines between rivverrat, religion, and God, when they are three very distinctly different things. If you and I jumped in the lake together for a swim, and then looked at each other and said I feel wet, then you would say, I feel wetter than you. LOLHow we handle that feeling of being wet may be different, but that's another story. You can safely say we both feel wet, and it would be the same exact feeling of being wet.

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You can nit-pick apart (for your own conviences) or you can accept that God exists. I have reached a point where I cannot deny God anymore in my life. The most I could do at this point is just not follow Him.

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I'm not saying that you should stop believing in God.I am saying that if you avoid critical examination of your own experiences, then you have ceased even trying to determine if you are deluding yourself, are biased, or mistaken.You said that people who run away from church are running from the truth.I assumeed that you meant that you understood what The Truth was, si8nce you said that it was to be found in the church.

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If you and I jumped in the lake together for a swim, and then looked at each other and said I feel wet, then you would say, I feel wetter than you. LOL

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So, you know EXACTLY how another wet person feels to themselves?How do you know this, since you aren't them?And, being "wet" is an entirely mundane sensation that almost everyone can relate to. I can assume that we both feel the same thing called "wet" (even though we don't actually know) because that we know that the cause (jumping into the lake) is the same.You can't do the same with an experience that you, personally, attribute to God, since the cause can never be known. We can't know if the peacefulness you and others say you experience are due to God or due to a group-influenced, purely-human, emotional experience.And besides, the physical sensation of being "wet" is much simpler than an emotional feeling like "peaceful".

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How we handle that feeling of being wet may be different, but that's another story.

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You can safely say we both feel wet, and it would be the same exact feeling of being wet.

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How do you know EXACTLY how I feel when another is wet, or peaceful?By what means do you know this?Can you know EXACTLY how a person is feeling if they are in the next room? Wearing a mask? Behind a curtain? If you can't talk to them?Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

I have no clue how you can come up with that conclusion. It is pretty obvious throughout our conversations that I demonstrate the charachteristics of a critical thinker. I examine the facts and evidences all the time to make sure I am not deluding myself. If my current self could meet my old self from just a few years ago, I would call myself a wacko for sure. I don't know how else to explain it to you. I try to clear it up, I am not going to back and review what I said, but I will explain what I meant.
Some people go to church and feel nothing, if they didn't return, then they would not be running from anything.
But some people do feel something, and then rationalize it away, because they don't want to face God, and once they owe up to His existance, they know in their hearts they will have to try and start following Him, and make a big change in their comfy cozy lifes.I am not making that up either, those are exact thoughts from people who feel that. Then there are those that won't even admit it. Yea, wet.

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I have no clue how you can come up with that conclusion.

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Well, you're the one who pretty much said that you can't critically examine your beliefs anymore.

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It is pretty obvious throughout our conversations that I demonstrate the charachteristics of a critical thinker.

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Uh, obvious to whom, exactly?

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I examine the facts and evidences all the time to make sure I am not deluding myself.

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I don't think so.

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If my current self could meet my old self from just a few years ago, I would call myself a wacko for sure. I don't know how else to explain it to you.

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What does this have to do with if you examine your experienced critically?

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But some people do feel something, and then rationalize it away, because they don't want to face God,

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So, when someone feels something in church, that means that it is god that they feel?How do you know this? [quote]Yea, wet.[quote] How do you know this, since you aren't them?

I thought you said you were a logical thinker? You can't deduce from this how it would lead me to self-check myself?
Maybe you aren't a logical thinker, or a critical one. Like I told you, it was explain to me. I did say I cannot speak for everyone. circle jerk, here we go......because they told me they felt wet.
Was it not the water that made them feel wet?How we react to feeling wet may be different, but the feeling of being wet can be considered exactly the same.

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How we react to feeling wet may be different, but the feeling of being wet can be considered exactly the same.

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How do you know it is exactly the same?

Because water IS wet.

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Because water IS wet.

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So what?By what means are you able to feel exactly the same sensations as anyone else? How do you know if "wet" feels the same to you as it does to anybody else?But more to the point, rat, by exactly what means are you able to feel the exact same emotions as someone else?I mean, physically, how does it happen? Because as far as I know, you have your nervous system that is sending information to your brain which emrges into your consciousness.How are you able to know EXACTLY what a wholly unconnected nervous system, brain, and consciousness to yours, feels?What mechanism or means do you use?Or, are you just assuming that the sensation is EXACTLY the same, but have no actual way of knowing that is is EXACTLY the same?Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

How many senses are there of the body? 5 or 64million true colors?You seemed to have totally missed it.If we both fall in the water, we are both wet, we both feel exactly wet. How we handle or react to those feelings of being wet, may be different. Are you going to look at me and say, "I feel more wet than you", or would say "I don't like being wet"? There is a difference.So if I am in a room where everyone feels peace, it is very safe to say that something is causing us to feel that peace(whether it is God or our overly active imaginations). The person next to me, might be enjoying it a bit more, or less than me, because of their personal circumstances, but the cause of the exact feeling of peace is the same amoung us. I know you'll never agree to this, maybe because in some small way you feel like your conceeding to the existance of God or something.

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How many senses are there of the body? 5 or 64million true colors?
You seemed to have totally missed it.

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Huh?

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If we both fall in the water, we are both wet, we both feel exactly wet. How we handle or react to those feelings of being wet, may be different.

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And how each of us feels wet may be different.Or, it may be exactly the same.How can you know if it is different or exactly the same?

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Are you going to look at me and say, "I feel more wet than you", or would say "I don't like being wet"? There is a difference.

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Yes, but that is irrelevant to my point.What I couldn't say is "I know EXACTLY what YOU feel when you are wet.The only feelings I can know EXACTLY are my own, since my brain, nervous system and consciousness are hooked up to my body alone, and not yours.We may compare our own descriptions of our own sensations, but that is a comparison only.Since our brains, nervous systems, and consciousnesses are wholly independent of each others', we cannot know EXACTLY what another person is sensing or feeling.

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So if I am in a room where everyone feels peace, it is very safe to say that something is causing us to feel that peace(whether it is God or our overly active imaginations).

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Sure.

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The person next to me, might be enjoying it a bit more, or less than me, because of their personal circumstances, but the cause of the exact feeling of peace is the same amoung us. I know you'll never agree to this, maybe because in some small way you feel like your conceeding to the existance of God or something.

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All of that has nothing to do with my point.The point is, you cannot know the EXACT feelings of anybody else.You can only compare your own personal descriptions of those personal sensations that you and you alone, know.

Aright Schraf, I will give you partial credit for what you are saying, but no credit since you did not pick up on how I using the word "feel".I suppose it would have more correct to say, "we all sense the same exact thing and feel very similiar about it."But when someone falls in the water, they usually don't say "I sense water," they say "I feel wet."Feelings are made up of what you sense, and how you interpret that sense. While two people may sense the same exact thing, they may feel differently about it.Is that better?

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I suppose it would have more correct to say, "we all sense the same exact thing and feel very similiar about it."

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Better.

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Feelings are made up of what you sense, and how you interpret that sense.

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Yes.

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While two people may sense the same exact thing, they may feel differently about it.

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Yes.But the point I have been arguing all along is that you cannot know EXACTLY what another person feels.The stimulus might be the same, but we have no way of knowing EXACTLY how another experiences that stimuli.We can compare and those descriptions may be remarkably similar, but those are comparisons only.But we can't know EXACTLY.We can only EXACTLY know our own sensations and feelings. Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

Coincidentally I attended a lecture by Paul Churchland the other week where he somewhat disproved that notion.He defends a position known as eliminative materialism where all feeling states are thought to be nothing but physical processes and so describable (and predictable) from that angle.He had the audience help out with some experiments, showing that he could predict the exact color sensations we would claim to sense, including "impossible" colors (ones which are not available to human vision but are from neural processes) that he could generate. It was pretty wild.Further he went on to show how he could predict what gender we would describe seeing, and that he could artificially induce us to "feel" a specific gender by tiring certain perceptual neurons. Specifically he could get the audience to flip our feeling for what gender a single face was.It was almost like a magic act in that you knew just moments ago the face was certainly male, but now you could only see it as female... it didn't even look the same... with no change in the actual image or its surroundings.If you truly like EvoPsych, then eventually it may be that your claim above is refuted. All of our feelings are the same because they are the same physically. That's exactly what these guys are driving at.This isn't to debate the point, just thought it would be interesting.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

sounds like Neurolinguistic programming to me, or at least a result that could be achieved by using NLP techniques.Ever heard of a guy called Derren Brown? worth a google, if you find that type of thing interesting.