re: #459 Aceofwhat?

good. me too. so on that note, call me out if i make it less fun - such is not my intention.

i agree…faith A and faith B are not exactly the same. at least, not at first.

so then i tell you, as rationally as possible, that i have a relationship with God that began with faith but has become more akin to trust over time. i say that not because it’s proof of anything to you or anyone else (nor should it be), but because i’m quite curious as to what that sounds like to atheists. does it sound crazy? a little like religion or practice X? a lot like X? and if so, what is X?

I have a father and 2 brothers who say the same thing as you so I’m not unfamiliar with it. I don’t assume insanity, but I do suspect modified brain chemistry, something I’ve lived with most of my life, although mine is somewhat different.

All of the feelings you have can be artificially induced by either drugs or electrical impulse. Biofeedback has also been successful in inducing similar feelings. Atheists tend to not trust, at first blush, what goes on in the brain, which is one reason we demand external replication and validation.

Most atheists I know are highly self reflective and spend a fair bit of time trying to understand what goes on in our own heads and how those processes affect our view of the external world. We also spend a great deal of time considering and deciding on our own set of values, morals and sense of purpose. This makes the idea of faith, in the religious sense, strange to us.