Before you comment on this post, please read ALL of the OP.
"I challenge any and all to actually prove they have a relationship with a god. I hear it all the time: "God speaks to me", " I walk with god", so on and so forth. There isn't ANY evidence of this being true.
Just like all the nutcases at insane asylums that thought that they were Napoleon, they truly believe that they are Napoleon but it sin't true.
The thing is that people want to believe something and outside factors influence that belief.
If Napoleon had never existed would these people claim to be Napoleon? I state that if no one have heard of god or had any outside brainwashing, they would never claim to have a relationship with said god. Thus we can infer that the relationship is purely imaginary and not real.
this is related to a condition called:
Grandiose Delusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiose_delusions
"exceptional relationship to a divinity or famous person.[6]" #6 of typical symptoms includes exceptional relationship with the divine.
I contend that all that profess a god and also contend that they have a relationship with said god suffer from this condition."
Credits to mykcob4 for the quoted OP
(1) Prove that you have a relationship with God.
(2) Prove that you are not suffering from a Grandiose Delusion.
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Grandiose Delusion is not only it.
I have a wave of psychotic episodes that include the god stuff.
I am an atheist afraid of hell.
How stupid isnt that?
I smell a troll. Disengaging from contact.
This is a common complaint I hear from atheists sometimes. They must have got you good with that ultimate carrot and stick.
It was not a troll i meant it.
I am genuinly having such experiences.
Its painfull.
EDIT: How can i prove i am not a troll?
I believe the saying is "Time tells all"
@ Jophar_Vorin
At one point in my life, I was the "cliché atheist" who hated god. I was sure that I was an atheist, because the idea of the Christian god was just too ridiculous to be believed. Then one day it just hit me: "I hate god. How can that be? I can't hate something I don't believe in."
Even though I viewed myself as an atheist, I had to be honest with myself. The the feeling of hate was there, I couldn't deny it. So I realized that on some level I actually still believed in a god and that I had fooled myself that I was an atheist, because rationally I understood that the the Christian god didn't exist.
That triggered me to do a lot of self-analysis and contemplation.
Just like people who can't shake some superstitious nonsense they have been taught as a child, like thinking that you get bad luck from a black cat crossing your path or breaking a mirror, the religious concept of a watching god had burned into my brain.
You are afraid of hell, to me that seems a lot like a symptom of the same situation: On some level you have beliefs burned into your brain that are hard to shake, even though you rationally understand that it's not true. My recommendation is to do some honest introspection and studying.
Personally, I recommend reading/watching people like Sam Harris, Peter Boghossian, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Christopher Hitchens.
I agree completely with how hard it can be to shake the remnants of a person's religious beliefs. I know it took almost a year to completely shake the small fear that would occasionally arise in the back of my mind that I was wrong and going to hell. Heck, there was even a few months where when I noticed the clock displaying 11:34 and I thought it was a message from above that I was going to hell! It's amazing how deep that brainwashing goes.
"It's amazing how deep that brainwashing goes." "11:34"
It's amazing how deep the human fascination with patterns goes. We see designs and faces and messages everywhere. I think it's a survival mechanism that helped our ancestors to find water and recognize edible or toxic plants. Religion simply exploits that.
...and not only religion, superstition in general.
There's a difference?
In practice, no.
Superstition just includes more than religion, for example: bad luck omens, good luck omens, belief in supernatural enteties (ghosts, fairies, etc), astrology, psychic powers, etc.
How much of religion is based on a persons desire to believe that they will always exist? Sometimes I think the entire concept was started to explain the unexplainable/ keep others enslaved/ that refusal to believe we have a finite lifespan then it's over. I am a newly minted atheist and I find my wife clings to religion for the last reason above.