Atheist or Agnostic?

[Amethyst]

I became an atheist after going to my school's lab for an assignment. We had to compare/contrast the brain of a sheep, horse, and human.

 

Yeah, three pickled brains did it for me

 

 

I'm not surprised a science class did it, though. I wonder if most fundies were forced to view those brains and compare them, would they eventually deconvert too?

[Dianka]

Well I don't know if any of my fellow classmates were fundies *wait, we did have a few Muslims in the class.

 

I don't know how people retain conventional religion after all the Developmental Psychology and Biology classes we have to take as science majors. But then most L.A. majors have to take Philosophy or a Comparitive Religion class.

[Penny1]

I do not automatically equate the Christian Bible with belief in a deity. I understand, from an ex-christian's perspective, that can be easy to do, but the world is much broader and larger than one who has not traveled extensively may imagine. If that is all you have been taught, it is natural to equate that with the idea of a deity.

 

There's no way I can believe that the Universe was created. It is simply too vast and complex. To me, the Universe is an environment. However, that does not preclude the existence of deities.

 

There is also no way I can think of myself as a creation. A child of the divine, perhaps, but not a creation. However, I do believe in life after death. I have had the benefit of witnessing a small miracle. It went like this:

 

After my grandmother died, (a few days after), my mom and I were sitting in the living room. As we were sitting there, we suddenly heard keys jingling. We both froze.

 

My mom said, "Did you hear what I hear?" I said, "Yes."

 

I looked at the end table. The keys rose several inches off the end table and jingled in midair. They did this a couple of times.

 

When the keys stopped moving, I immediately went over to the table. I ran my hands above the keys, picked up the keys and examined them, and looked under the table. There were no strings attached, no magnets, nothing suspended from the ceiling, and the keys were perfectly normal.

 

Now, I know for a fact that my mom was not involved in this. She is not capable of plotting any sort of tricks, and she is a skeptic herself. I know her too well.

 

She did not move a muscle while all of this was happening. We both agreed that we had heard the keys jingle.

 

Now, the odds of the keys on the table "hopping" or jumping into the air by themselves is astronomical. The odds of the keys jingling up and down in midair are null. That is, this would be impossible according to the laws of physics.

 

Now, I know my grandmother well, and there was nothing she liked better than driving. I find the idea of keys jingling in the air by chance impossible, but I know grandma liked to go out for a drive. It seems far more probable to me.

 

This, of course, refutes the church doctrine of "spiritual death", which a few of you may be familiar with. According to "spiritual death", ghosts do not exist. I never believed in Christianity, anyway. I've been an unbeliever since I was 8 and read the bible for myself.

 

I don't know whether to believe in any deities or not. I cannot believe in the god of the bible in any way. I wonder if there are other gods and goddesses I do not know about. But, I do believe in life after death. I've never doubted the evidence of my physical senses in any way, and I have a witness to back me up and corroborate

my story. I am in my right mind, and do not hallucinate. I was 14 years old at the time.

 

I consider myself a pagan, questioning the existence of deities.

[MQTA]

fascinating. any other strange things happen after that?

 

I had an experience back in 1981 that is just one of those unexplained things. I was driving with my future intended and we were talking about our families. We were talking about my grandfather who passed on in 1976. I was telling her that I often can feel his presence, or maybe it's just my memory of his sayings and voice... imagination, or not, I don't know.

 

In the middle of the sentence all of a sudden the Fasten Seat Belts lamp came on. It stayed on for a few blocks and went off. Spooked the heck out of me. I wasn't seeing things, she also saw the lamp was on, I asked her to make sure I WASN'T seeing things.

 

That lamp NEVER worked since I bought the car a year and a half earlier. This was before the law and the seatbelts were clasped together under me. Didn't matter if they were unclasped, the lamp never worked, ever.

 

After the lamp went out, it NEVER came on again. Only had the car another year, but I sure kept checking it. NEVER worked before, never worked after. Still remember that night clearly.

 

My grandfather told me he was nearly killed in his work truck shortly before I was born. I just started driving the year that he died, but I some how feel his presense when having car problems, accidents, mechanical failures. Could be my imagination, but it's just strange.

[Amethyst]

Penny, google low frequency sound waves. I've read about them. They have a lot of effects that could be attributed to ghosts or psychic phenomena, including levitating objects briefly.

[Penny1]

Penny, google low frequency sound waves.  I've read about them.  They have a lot of effects that could be attributed to ghosts or psychic phenomena, including levitating objects briefly.

106735[/snapback]

 

Never saw anything like that before or since.

 

What timing.

[Amethyst]

I saw an aura once. It was weird because I didn't recognize the person I was looking at. They looked like someone else entirely. It freaked me out at first and caused me to delve into paganism for a while. But I'm now convinced that it was either a neuron or two misfiring, or one of those low-frequency sound wave things, because I haven't seen anything like that since then. Some things are also not meant to be explained.

[Mike D]

Now on top of this, it doesn't make sense to me how a creator could have supernaturally created the universe but then ceases to exist.

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Although I consider myself an atheist, this is one alternative that did actually make sense to me at one time. If there is a creator, why couldn't it have a lifecycle just like everything else? Why must a creator be infinite and eternal? Anyway at one time I could concieve of a creator who created, then ceased to exist, just like any other form of life does eventually. It would certainly explain why it seems to be MIA now.

[Sokudo Ningyou]

I've been an athiest for as long as I can remember, simply because God (or gods) were to me the simple explanation for the world being Here. Kind of like telling your kids that babies come from storks instead of taking out the charts and diagrams for the long lengthy (and boring) scientific discussion. And rather like Neil said: supposing the existence of God just adds another step to the equation. Why can't the universe be simply infinite? Why do we, as finite beings, have to assume everything is like us?

 

But spirits and the spiritual and magic I've always seen as a possibility. I've seen ideas about quantum physics making such phenomenon possible; and, like lightning, maybe someday science can explain such things. It's not entirely impossible.