On Monday, January 7, 2019 at 10:28:54 AM UTC-5, -------------- Atheist --------------- wrote:
Lurkers are welcome too.
No one has ever presented verifiable evidence of a god in
alt.atheism (started over two decades ago).
Got evidence?, other than "faith"*, please present in alt.atheism.
You ask a simple question. I was raised agnostic/atheist, although my mother was a Greek language scholar, and so we had a fair amount of Greek mythology tales growing up. My older siblings did the rock and roll, sex and drug thing, so, like many kids
in my school we were interested in "new" religions, like Transcendental Meditation, and Hinduism, which at the time seemed very trendy indeed.>
I met a girl over the summer break who said she was a Christian, and I went to a bible study with her. I found it awkward to sit in a circle as they prayed while I looked at their shoes. After that silent bit, one of the members asked me what I
thought. I was just about to start a long speech about how Eastern Religions worked much better when an odd thing happened to me. I felt as if someone had come up behind me with a 5 gallon pail of warm honey and poured it over my head and shoulders. I
sat there with my mouth opened, and after a full minute said that I had just experienced more love in the last minute than the entity of my life. I did not believe in God. I did not believe in their prayers. It was just something that happened to me
experimentally.
Later that spring I was on the way to college classes on my bike one sunny morning and I looked right to make sure I would miss a big truck coming about half a block away. When I looked back left I saw the screaming face of some lady on her way to work
in her station wagon one quarter second before she hit me going 45 miles an hour. Luckily, I flipped up and hit her windshield with my whole body which bounced me up into the spring day. I recall looking up at the blue sky as I sailed upward and had
one thought: "There is a God". I woke up in the hospital. I had no idea what or who a God was, but I did somehow know that fact.
That summer I stopped going to college and followed the girl down to Mexico. I came down with a bad throat infection, with a high fever and lost my speech with the swelling. I had hundreds of white bumps inside my throat and felt pretty bad. I
followed my lover to a Full Gospel prayer meeting and got upset that they could pray for help, but my throat was so sore that I could not utter. I managed a whisper of a prayer something like: "If you can hear me God, I want to be able to pray to you,
but I can't because I am sick." Ten seconds later my fever left and I could talk. Satisfied, I did not bother to pray, recall that I did not believe in God, mind you. I went into the bathroom and looked and all the white spots were gone.
At that point I believed in God, and began a process of conversion.
Although I studied for many years, and had any number of religious experiences, those first few were the most important, and without them, I would not have been a person that said I believe in God.
Despite all my study, I will be the first to admit that we know very little about God, and that most things that people tell you about God they cannot prove, but are mostly a collection of made up stories that while inspirational, cannot add up to a
proof.
My study of the Bible can be summarized by saying that the Jewish Bible was written down in Babylon about 1000 years after the events that were supposed to have occurred. Great stories, with much to be learned about the folly of mankind and the real
nature of God. Read about how the Old prophet Samuel sought to choose the new King in Israel, going to all the handsome tall sons first, and finally ending up with the smallest son as the King who was not even at the house to greet the prophet, but was
out playing his flute to the sheep.
The Gospels were all written down two generations after Christ, and while interesting stories, don't lend themselves to reliability.
Not so with Paul's letters. These appear to be historical, but do not include any of the details outlined in the Gospels. No one has been able to trace back from Paul's letters to an understanding of a historical Jesus, who may not have ever existed.
But in this writer's opinion, God exists based on person experiences with other worldly power.
Sorry, I cannot give you more than that, but what I give you is unvarnished and raw fact.
Thank you.
*(faith can be used equally to "prove" or "disprove" anything)
--
There is no verifiable evidence of any god(s). None whatsoever.
Atheist: anyone who says "I don't buy the claim 'a god exists'".
Extortion (Believe or Burn) is _THE_ foundation of Christianity.
Sycophant: a compulsive ass-kisser of un-evidenced dictator god.
Christian: a person afraid of a hiding apparently imaginary god.
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