Revelations?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

I must first admit that my post on a “real” atheistic argument was fine-tuned against the christians and left the possibility to escape it by simply…not being a christian in the sense that christians have been. It can be broken by neo-heretics and other theists.
That is fine. The result is equally pleasing, for it shows that the precepts of religion are ever evolving so that our reason can wrap around it…just as Feuerbach predicted.

Now, here is another argument for theists.
Suppose you say: God exist. Or: I believe in the existence of God.
I then wonder what kinda of observation exist to give validity to the belief. This, I have found, consist in exceptional occasions in which we experience something that we interpret as God’s magnificence or “revelation”. Judaism, Christianity and Islam operate from this base. Yet, my argument would be that such revelation does not narrow down all possibilities or even probabilities to just one God. It could as well be an angel, and in the Old Testament this is true that on occasions angels are referred to as “God”…we can explain this in the sense that they are as gods to men, as Moses was like a god to Pharaoh, but deeper than this is the seed of my argument that if they had in fact simply being wrong, nothing in their experience would disprove their contention.
If I saw an angel, but not knowingly so, and I believed I was seeing God, I would, should be, excused and even justified in that belief, based on the limits of my knowledge.
For all I know even a powerful alien race could pass as Gods.
And if the angel told me that he was not God but an agent of God etc, then I would still be no better than at the start, for no experience exists of God Himself, but of his angel, who might as well had been a person, a prophet, and the angel’s own experience of God comes into question: What did he see? Did he see just another figure in a hiearchy of figures, of which he formed a lower rank and took as God another of God’s functionaries. And so it can go infinetly.
So how does one resolve this?

2

For me it’s the obvious presence of Purpose and Absolute that points to an intelligent creator of some kind. The evidence to this in my observation is overwhelming and the idea of something from nothing is impossible to fathom in my mind (what fueled the Big Bang). So something must have always been here before any event that would cause creation of the entire known physical world. I actually believe that the energy of life and electromagnetism and all other waves that have no physical properties reside in another dimension and this dimension is where God resides which would make God a form of pure creative energy that is intelligent.

I get some of this from the idea that an atom is made almost entirely of a non-physical element that holds the electrons in flight around the nucleus, so nearly everything we see and feel is made of something beyond the physical, this would be the Spirit dimension in my mind.

3

.

How can a finite mind comprehend that which is infinite and limitless? We are just a part of the whole. Can a part know the whole of which it consist? Can we count all the grass in our lawn? Can a cup hold the vastness of the sea? Can we count all the stars in the sky?

Why do we have to give God a form in order for Him to have an existence? An experience with God gives validity to my belief, but not just an ordinary experience. I elevate my consciousness to that which transcend all other levels of consciousness. How do you know when you have experienced God? It is very clear in your mind, without doubts. It is a feeling of bliss, ecstasy, euphoria (without the use of drugs). it is a personal experience. Nobody else can experience it for you. It is not the same for everyone. We all have access to this experience but different for each of us. Once you really experience God, you will have illumination which will srve as your guidance.

4

Hello Justly:

— Why do we have to give God a form in order for Him to have an existence?
O- I am not saying that we should have to give God a form in order for Him to exists. Things that have no form might be harder to believe in though. My point is simply that given the limits of our experience…how can I put it?..How do we go from the finite to the infinite? How do you look at the stars, the sea etc, all limited apprehensions, and from these come to believe in one single God instead of all other possible and probable alternatives, such as more than one god, aliens etc. I already know that faith requires an exceptional experience, yet no matter how exceptional it cannot divulge to the individual the inner workings of reality. He, the individual, can infer, but can infer infinity- nothing can arrest the speculations. Yet people do.
Here is why:
People give an interpretation to their experience and this interpretation has their own interests integrated. People add to the actual experience, exceptional as it had been, hopes and more importantly, illusions and fulfillment of wishes.
The atheist argument here is that no experience, as extraordinary as it may be, for the person experiencing it, can give the basis of their belief. Their belief then comes from hopes and wishes for which they needed the exceptional experience, so that the authenticity of the experience, or the objectivity of their interpretation is doubtful.
That said:

— An experience with God gives validity to my belief, but not just an ordinary experience.
O- Exactly. How often it comes to pass that a person is predisposed for the exceptional experience. You say an experience with God gives validity to your belief. Yet the experience is just that: an experience. How do you know that the experience is an experience of God? Of that an experience of God is like your experience? Or that there is a God? Or that, if there was, experiences of It could be possible?

— I elevate my consciousness to that which transcend all other levels of consciousness.
O- You hope that this is the case, as do all other believers, but you have no reason to doubt that no such thing is the case and the elevation is simply an abstraction of your own desires and hopes. Perhaps, perhaps (and this is a possibility that is almost universaly ommitted) you elevate your consciousness to the only consciousness you, in fact, have access to: Your own.

— How do you know when you have experienced God? It is very clear in your mind, without doubts.
O- First sign that it is an idea of the mind alone, with no public causation.

— It is a feeling of bliss, ecstasy, euphoria (without the use of drugs).
O- The happiness of one that finds confirmation of all he/she dreams of and hopes for. These drive the feeling to a pitch rather than the experience’s exceptionality in itself and this is why it is possible to assume that it is mere illusion.

— it is a personal experience. Nobody else can experience it for you. It is not the same for everyone. We all have access to this experience but different for each of us. Once you really experience God, you will have illumination which will srve as your guidance.
O- Some might argue that all experiences are personal and subjective. However, subjectivity aside, some impressions are of an external and public origin while others are of a personal and internal nature. My experience of a table is subjective, but because of the fact that the table is public, it causes similar, rather than dissimilar experience in another person who also “sees” the “same” table. When on the contrary we experience private emotions that are very different from other people’s the object of our experience is internal and not external, though we might wish it was. For example, we might be in front of an art object and you may think it was exceptional, extraordinary, while I could consider it the very definition of vulgar and mundane. Why? Because as it is said, the beauty of it is in the eye of the beholder.
To make my point simple:
The experience of God is the experience of beauty. God exists in as much as we can say that beauty exists.