Do you ever feel the presence of God or someone else who isn

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I don't believe in God. I do believe in demons though.

Yeah, demons are so much cooler than god and stuff, I'd rather believe they are real too.

I smell LaVeyist

I've never felt alone. That's the problem. Well, it was the problem. Now I just think it's an essential part of my coolness. I'm presently attempting to learn conscious control over my brain chemistry, so I can use it to get myself essentially stoned out of my mind anytime I want to. One of my more recent experiments didn't work out so well, though. Although it was like an intense "spiritual high" on call, it led to some internal collapse and a deep, profound depression that lasted for months. I will have to exercise more care in the future.

Kamex, my philosophy is more trippy than yours on a bad day with the wind against me. I will punish you with my mighty axe of logic when I feel like it.

As I was saying, though, I consider these experiences a relatively normal part of my life. Often, I will feel that I am being drawn skyward, on some mathematical arc, toward a golden glow high in the mists of my consciousness, and I will have this feeling of being speared through the chest by a shaft of light. I learned a few months ago how to get myself into a similar state voluntarily, but I found out the hard way that it's not a good thing to overindulge in. In fact, it's pretty dangerous to fool around with your brain chemistry, whether from the inside or outside, if you really want to get down to it, but I do it anyway. I have other little things too. They keep my life interesting, whatever I choose to read into them.

I have constant internal dialogue. You see, there is more of me than one. I am composed of several parts, and we can hardly be one if we never communicate with one another. I always refer to my internal advisory council before making any major decision, and I value them each individually. We are at our best when we are all working together and acting as one. We are me, after all, and I function best as a team. Conversations with God? I've had that and better: I've been plugged into Jung's Collective Unconscious. I've held little, black dragons in my lap and pet them, almost real enough to see. I have to constantly demand that my mind stop trying to read meaning into random or repetitive noises, so I can get to sleep at night.

Take your scarce few religious experiences, and imagine being zapped with them several times per day. If you lack the imagination to do that, try shoving your finger into an electrical socket. You know that feeling of electricity trying to fry your insides? That's been my life! It doesn't end!

It's no big deal, though.

I thought all aspies were like that, you supposed to be different or something?

Dude, I don't trust people who aren't like that. I find it very lol that most people need drugs or some life-changing event to get this stuff.

Yes, I do.

I tend to attribute it to our lower cortisol and gamma-aminobutyric acid levels, but if you say so. I tend to follow in the footsteps of our forefathers in seeking the presence and beauty of God in the workings of our universe, our body, and our minds. To do so is to take communion with Spinoza's God, who is everything and everywhere yet nothing and nowhere. It is my mission in life to pound a stake into the heart of Cartesian dogma, which acts as a philosophical vampire through its seperatist tyranny and sucks the lifeblood from the soul of the thinking mind. To deny the unity of mind with universe is a cruel apartheid, and it acts as nothing more than an obstruction in the path of reason. The basis of his solipsism is an irrational and philosophically unjustifiable insistence upon seperating our senses from our experience of our selves. Spinozism, on the other hand, is at once nihilistic and anti-nihilistic, therefore it demands perpetual agnosticism toward existence. To truly experience Truth is to maintain a disciplined tension between belief and disbelief, never once fully embracing either certainty or uncertainty. To follow this creed is to embrace Thought as both one's teacher and student, to obey it and guide it, to serve and be served by it.

In the traditional sense, I am an atheist, but this is only because I dare suggest that the traditional God is a heresy and a falsehood. It is a lie told to child-like minds to either terrify or tempt them into blind obedience. This type of god bears the trappings of both tyranny and vanity, neither of which is consistent with what I believe is right or just. I consider traditional religion immoral. I consider it evil. It goes against everything that I believe and hold dear. It is an enemy that my conscience compels me to fight against by word and by deed.

Just to be clear, yes, I have had intense spiritual experiences. As should be clear now, I attribute to them neither reality nor unreality. They are my experiences, and they are as meaningful to me as any other experience. Not being consistent with my broader experience of things doesn't make them irrelevant. They have a shine of their own. A poverty of imagination is a sign of stupidity, and I cannot think of a single behavior more unimaginative than assuming that one's experiences are limited to objective reality. It makes no more sense than assuming that objective reality is limited completely to one's experiences.

But objective reality is what we all share to a limited degree with each other. Your personal experiences not related to objective reality are not possible to share so they have to be discounted by others as illusion or non-transferable and therefore of small utility if any.

Hey! I knew I liked you!

Poorly defined. Objective reality is a purely theoretical object reasoned from various relatively consistent observations. Although we shun true certainty, it is generally considered strongly supported that most of that which we understand through the facet of our thought processes which we classify as "our senses" does suggest that we exist in the context of a larger universe. In short, it is all theoretical. I'd like to abolish the misconception, however, that to deem something "mere theory" is to deny that it is true. A theory is merely a truth that is rigorously tested and retested, and, as such, it is the highest of all truths. To a Christian, I would use Christ, himself as a parallel: would he have been considered beyond corruption if he could not be subject to temptation? To you, I will merely say that it is all theory to me. This only sounds weird to someone who has no idea what a theory really is.

But then theory merely means a formulated thought. What makes the thought useful is that it is tested and the tests confirm some resonance with what we assume to be reality. As Popper noted a theory is useful if it has the possibility to be disproved.

the·o·ry

NOUN:
pl. the·o·ries
1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory.

3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics.

4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather than theory.

5. A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.

6. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

My faith used to be that God exists, but with no idea what kind of person He may be. After several close encounters, I know beyond question He exists and my faith is now that He loves us and breaks His back every day to help us in ways most of us are unaware of until well after the fact, if ever. It is not always obvious, but neither are the most subtle aspects of the cosmos He gave us to live in.

A reverend from a local church came by once and asked me if I have a church home. I replied that God is my home and that ended the discussion. I never met a church I wanted to join.

And the most exact translation of the term, based on its roots, is "thinking about what we see." Essentially, what I mean by "theory" is exactly that: rationalizing and interpreting what I view through the narrow window of my senses into a system of principles against which I can test new information.

I think people shouldn't say someones beliefs are wrong just because they believe they are. I have a friend who is the worst kind of atheist, she goes out of her way to try and convince other people God doesn't exist, she wont accept it when other people believe saying its preposterous and pathetic. he also says agnostics are pathetic wimps, I really dislike this closed-minded attitude some people seem to have.