Spiritual experiences od the raw "nature/power of god" Thread - Atheists, Agnostics, and Anti-theists of ModDB

Hi there,

Well, here goes the first topic on the forum and one I've encountered often. First, a little background on my religious life: I grew up in South Africa, a very religious place and is coming to the place the US is now. I was never fully indoctrinated as to prohibit certain investigations into the true answers of things. But I as not exactly given a list of all religions available including the option to not accept one. For example I cannot for the life of me remember a time when I did not accept evolution. We went to many churches, mostly after my parents' divorce due to my mother's own spiritual searching. We visited Orthodox, Catholic, Charismatic, Dutch Reformed and Anglican. Every year however I would diminish my view of what god was and how it interacted and to what extent it interacted with the real world. But I refused to accept, eventually, that I did not believe in it. To the extent that for a while while I KNEW I didn't believe in it I refused to accept it and forced myself to pray and go to church and praise it etc. This ended very abruptly after watching a debate by Stephen Fry/Christopher Hitchens about "Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world". That was the pinnacle from which I accepted and proclaimed my atheism.

It was in the last 2 or so years in a Charismatic/New age christian demented lunatic asylum time when I to started having those spiritual experiences where you start shaking and all that. Extreme release of emotion. And I remember very clearly telling my mother after the first of these: "I can never again doubt the existence of God!". In my native language of course. What intrigues me is the fact that I had those experiences, the deepest sort of Christian lunacy one can have and I still became an atheist shortly after. More surprising even is that I discovered that I can have such experiences from other sources as well: music, pictures, gaining of knowledge or even certain parts of speeches/lectures. Through that it instantly lost its magical property and became a very real physical and emotional reaction to the REAL world.

Thoughts?

You have already said every thing I could have added, so all I can say is I'm glad you broke your bonds of indoctrination, and saw the lunacy in what you had taken part in.