lukeprog—I’m curious about when you ‘felt the presence of God’. I’ll often have a discussion with someone and they tell me that they can ‘feel God’ (usually followed by accusing me of being an atheist because I don’t want to feel Him.)
While you were a believer, what did it feel like to feel God’s presence? What did the tingling feel like (followed by sweating) with the Holy Spirit? Now that you are not a believer, how do you explain what you were feeling back then?
It’s an area I would like to comment on when speaking with theists, but I have no frame of reference. I grew up religion-neutral, and became an atheist to find out ‘what this whole God thing was about’.
Have you ever heard of musical frission? Sometimes you hear a piece of music resolve, and it feels right, and that rightness makes you feel pleasure, sometimes described as a chill running down your spine. You can get the same emotion from learning a new idea that overturns a lot of what you knew and inspires a manic rush of ideas.
Or if you’ve been in a room full of people listening to a speaker seriously talk about a deeply personal experience, the room gets totally quiet and you realize that everyone in the room is feeling the same things as you at the same time.
These are the kinds of experiences people describe as feeling the spirit. It’s an intense feeling that something is true, and good, and important.
lukeprog—I’m curious about when you ‘felt the presence of God’. I’ll often have a discussion with someone and they tell me that they can ‘feel God’ (usually followed by accusing me of being an atheist because I don’t want to feel Him.)
While you were a believer, what did it feel like to feel God’s presence? What did the tingling feel like (followed by sweating) with the Holy Spirit? Now that you are not a believer, how do you explain what you were feeling back then?
It’s an area I would like to comment on when speaking with theists, but I have no frame of reference. I grew up religion-neutral, and became an atheist to find out ‘what this whole God thing was about’.
Have you ever heard of musical frission? Sometimes you hear a piece of music resolve, and it feels right, and that rightness makes you feel pleasure, sometimes described as a chill running down your spine. You can get the same emotion from learning a new idea that overturns a lot of what you knew and inspires a manic rush of ideas. Or if you’ve been in a room full of people listening to a speaker seriously talk about a deeply personal experience, the room gets totally quiet and you realize that everyone in the room is feeling the same things as you at the same time. These are the kinds of experiences people describe as feeling the spirit. It’s an intense feeling that something is true, and good, and important.