Mercury
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2024
- Messages
- 100
- Gender
- Male
- Religious Affiliation
- Seeker
- Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
- No
I honestly think something 'happened' to me 30 yrs ago, when I, just to test what Jesus said ("you don't have, because you don't ask; ask, and you will receive), actually asked him to reveal to me the reality of himself and this gospel thing. I felt like an ass, driving down interstate 81 on my way from Canada to Florida, but I did it anyway. Gotta keep an open mind, right?
So what you did there was open yourself up to psychological influence of the kind when people read horoscopes just to see if they work.
The first question is why did you decide to ask "Jesus" rather than say Vishnu, or Budha or Allah and so on. The answer is . . . . cos of OTHER HUMANS who have steered you down this route.
Why do you even know about the concepts of God and Jesus? . . . . Answer is cos of OTHER HUMANS who have indoctrinated you with the concepts from childhood and/or given you a Bible.
If you'd been born in a different country you'd have been programmed with completely different concepts. So how can they all be true?
The reality is they are ALL just clever human designed systems of human control to make people think and behave in specific ways, ostensibly to make them compliant and passive and unlikely then to rebel and revolt against the worlds real leaders/rulers.
But let's go back to the psychology aspect. When you open your mind to vague concepts and have a yearning for some kind of validation then you will very naturally start to associate future events with your yearnings. It's called the Barnum Effect:

Barnum Effect: Why we tend to believe our own horoscopes
Barnum Effect explains why people believe in generalized personality descriptions as if they are accurate descriptions of their unique self

As the article sadly states:
“One of the studies showed that over 90% of Americans know their star signs. More than 50% of them read their horoscopes and also believe in the advice given in the descriptions.”
This is quite damning but eloquently highlights the fallacy and inherent danger of abandoning your innate ability to think rationally and critically.
Your approach was 180 degrees the wrong way around. Instead of saying, "I don't know if Jesus exists so I'll ask him to show me" which invites the Barnum Effect, you should have rationally said "There's no evidence for the existence of the Christian God or the divinity of Jesus that it claims and unless such evidence becomes forthcoming it is entirely rational to disbelieve in either".
You obviously had gaps in your life you needed to fill and so allowed yourself to become open to psychological influence as so many other millions of people have done before you. Lest you think me over-critical, know that I too fell into that trap for many years. It's very difficult to back out of it, takes a lot of humility and self-honesty.
I gave God the benefit of my considerable doubt, so to speak.
No, you set aside critical thinking and went for a easy comfortable way to appease your yearnings instead of facing the harshness of real life around you.
After that, things began to change and, I'm telling you, I was not the impetus of those changes.
Barnum Effect and Logical fallacy. You focus on the events and things that support your wished result and discard/ignore those that don't.
We all do it at times.
Seemingly pointless suffering of any kind, in a world created by a perfect God, makes no sense whatsoever... to the human mind at its current capacity.
So here we see your innate intelligence and critical mind fighting for supremacy against the totally irrational psychological trap. You inherently know that the awful suffering and mindless atrocities happening daily around you mean there can not be an all-powerful all-loving god but your psychological indoctrination now means you need to invent a way to apologise for itself. You've come up with the rather lame excuse of "well it's all beyond my capability to understand so I'll just accept it as the truth regardless"
Other Christians often come up with the excuse of "well it's all just part of Gods grand master plan"
It's really sad to see that one. It's actually ridiculous and an incredibly divisive religious lie. It means your religion is essentially asking you to absolve your entity of all atrocious acts and that you have to somehow compartmentalise them and ignore them and sweep them under the carpet. That's just so so wrong.
Imagine if we all chose to worship Hitler. Then if people said "but what about his appalling acts and the Holocaust and so on" then you'd have to say "Oh well, I'm just too simple to understand everything" or "well I know it was bad but it must have all been part of some grand master plan so it's all ok".
Can you see how dangerous and wrong this kind of reasoning is?
If we refuse to apply humanly morals to our world experience then where does that leave us. Your chosen god could once again decide to murder every living thing on the planet including you and your partner and any children and any pets. Would you still think that's a benevolent act?
These things just don't add up when you go back to critical thinking and be honest with yourself. The suffering and abuse and atrocities we see around us every day are NOT the works of any kind of all-loving all-powerful god. It's delusion to pretend such exists and to then make all manner of excuses for his inactions. It's easy to do if you're not personally on the brunt end of the atrocities.
What I am now convinced I HAVE received from God, is that He is infinitely benevolent towards us - that is His main motivational driver.
You've chosen the delusion :-(
All the suffering in this world? I can't figure that one out either.
Correct. It doesn't make sense. That's your innate thinking brain screaming to be let out of the box you've put it into. Listen to it.
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