Does Peer Pressure stifle the acceptance of the obvious?

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Suppose you were a member of an atheistic group and one night you had what seemed to you a religious experience. What there not be equal peer pressure in such a situation?

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Doubtful.Since most athiests were once believers, I think they would generally be rather sympathetic.They certainly wouldn't kill someone for becoming a believer.

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In my experience, it's less about peer pressure and more just open hostility.

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Interesting.In my experience, when a group of scientist friends and I (who all happened to be non-believers) found out (at his wedding) that another one of our group actually was a pretty devout Christian, we didn't do anything at all. Well, we all were kind of surprised that he had kept this from us.In fact, we are all still really close and see each other as much as we can when they come into town.On the other hand, when I tell people who ask that I am a non-believer, I run a pretty good chance of getting a lecture. I got repeatedly insulted to my face about my beliefs and morals by my own sister, and spent an agonizing 5 hours alone in a car with someone who tried to browbeat me into believing.There is a great deal of ignorance about and patronizing condescention from Christians and othr religious people towards non-believers. I mean, look at how you Mormons treat the people who leave your religion, let alone stop believing in the supernatural altogether. Huge rejection from the entire community, right?I don't think this happens to religious people from non-believers anywhere near as much. How could it; it's "normal" to believe in this country, most non-believers grow us indoctrinated into some faith or another.Mostly, I keep my mouth shut about being a non-believer except in really specific circumstances because letting certain sorts of people know carries a great deal of risk.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 11-02-2005 05:06 PM

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I just dislike phsychology intensely and tend to think the whole field is a little ridiculous.

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Physchologist: Shows PY an ink blot and says "What does this remind you of?"
PY: "An ink blott! DUH! You should be more careful with your ink!"

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That's not Psychology.That's Psychiatry.Psychology is science.

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I happen to think Freudian phsychology is laghable though,

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So does everybody else in Psychology except the Freudians.FYI.

Most clinical Psychologists I know ar MD/PhD's, but maybe that's not the case with clinical Psychologists in general.

The funny thing, neither of these people believed in hell, really.They just couldn't stand that I didn't believe as they did.

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There should be no fear in your life when you come to know Jesus, not just imagine him in your mind.

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How do you tell the difference between "knowing" and "imagining him in your mind"?

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Ask yourself how you got into that sheltered world, then after asking yourself that read the next statement.

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Then take a moment and ask God, even if you don't believe in him
and the first thought that pops into your mind, will probably be his answer.

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You knoiw, I did what you suggested, and do you k now what the next thought that popped into my head was?"Damn, this chicken salad I'm eating right now is really good!"

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I already knew that I would recieve an untruthful answer from someone like you.

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Huh?My answer was a completely honest one.

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It's ok, you can kid youself all you want. You can either be happy for yourself because you feel free and void of any religious pressure in your life, or you can feel upset because your mind is so full of athiestic pressure, that you can not hear from God.

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Are you saying that God is incapable of making Himself known to me?He must not really want me to believe in him. Or maybe He just can't.

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Obviously if you are eating chicken salad, then you are not concentrating on any answer from God.

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Are you saying that God isn't capable of superceding my lunch?

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Funny, I just got a vision of schraf standing at the pearly gates, and there is Jesus, with the biggest bowl of most delicious tasting chicken salad in his hands, and he is saying, you'll have to go through me, so start eating this, but only the bowl doesn't ever get empty. At first Schraf is like, hey this is great, but then after a few measly hours of eating the best chicken salad in her life, she gets tired of it, and realizes she no longer wants it. Suddenly there is a feeling of emptyness. Then she has to face Jesus, but Jesus says, its ok, come on in, laughing.

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My my, you have quite the vivid imagination, don't you?.

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I think that if you are mocking this thought of Schraf's, then you really truly don't know what fine chicken salad is.

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I feel sorry for you, and your empty culinary life.

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Awesome.

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There is so much to learn about life, the universe and everything, that no one could know it all, myself included.

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...and that's one reason I don't presume to know for sure if the supernatural exists or not.Nobody really knows. It's not possible to know.

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We can only make decsions based on what we know and experience. We are the sum of our experiences. If schraf was mostly surrounded by atheistic people, and taught that in school, then she is programed to think there is no God.

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But I wasn't, and I'm not.I was a believer until my mid twenties.I have been a believer longer than I have not believed.

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When in actuality there is whole bunch of things that she doesn't know about God, that keeps her from knowing God.

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...or, there's a whole lot of lies you have been telling yourself about what you think is God but is really your own mind and imagination.

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To be honest, what I felt the instant I read that was that, before she even started praying she was going to pay no mind to God, because she was convinced that there is no God.

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But I am not convinced that there is no God.I am not convinced that there is a God.But I really can't say either way, because nobody knows for sure.So, I'm agnostic when it comes to the supernatural.AbE: FYI, I was mocking you, a little, not God.How can I mock an entity I don't know exists?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 11-04-2005 04:29 PM

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Was this change a traumatic event? I'm just curious.

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Not at all. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact.My drifting away from belief happened gradually for many years. I can't say that my faith was ever terribly strong past the age of 10 or so.I had grown up in, let's say, a "difficult" household, and as I went off to college and became more independent, and began to heal myself from my past, the nominal faith just went away. I had only continued with it out of habit and rote, I think.

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I disagree. I think it is possible for an individual to know. It may not be possible for one to prove to another that God does exist. The only way is through love.

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That's the same as it not being possible to know if God exists or not.Look, we do know that1) humans are social animalsand2) that we fear, above all else, the unknown (especially what happens after death)and3) that large groups of them, self-perpetuated over many generations can be convinced of the truth of something despite a lack of verifiable evidenceand4) many of us are quite willing to believe a comforting falsehood or fabricated story about that which frightens us than remain unsure or fearful about it.All of this we KNOW, riverrat. It isn't something that only I know and cannot convince others to believe out of love. It is simply a list of facts that anyone can observe for themselves. Nobody has to take anybody else's word for it, nor do they have to just believe.Now, you would like me to abandon this knowledge; to turn my back on it as though it doesn't exist.

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Then do you relate to the fictitious story I posted earlier?
I do in some way. So do many people I know.

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No, I can't say that I do.

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What was it that made you an unbeliever?

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That, I am afraid, is a much longer post than I should write here.But, let's say that the process by which I stopped believing in God was extremely similar to the process by which I stopped believing in Santa Claus.Really.

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Did you only believe by faith?

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Of course. What other reason would there be to believe?And as for the "laughing story"...I really wish you had a much more skeptical mind and understood how much you indulge in Confirmation Bias and Post-Hoc Reasoning. I also wish you could take a step back and gain some knowledge about human group dynamics and the power of the human mind to deceive itself.I think you greatly underestimate our vulnerability to all of these things.Now I have a question for you.If you could somehow find out, with certainty, if it were true that God exists and everything you believe about how God has intervened in your personal affairs, OR that all of your belief in God and all of your experiences that you think prove His existence and actions in your life were actually just you, working extra hard all this time to convince yourself of the truth because you so desperately want it to be true, would you?Would you want to know if you were deceiving yourself all this time, or not?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 11-06-2005 02:52 PM

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No actually your the only one who pulled me up on it, and schraf knows that I kid around with stories like that. She didn't get offended, it was a fictional story, like I said before I wrote the story. I like schraf, thats why I pick on her, and she loves me not in that way, but she also picks on me, its all good. I only wish good things for her in her life.

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It's true, I'm not easily offended, and I do know that the Rat likes to kid. He's not very good at it, mind you, but hey, it's fun to watch him try.We only tease the ones we love, rat.