I am an Atheist and always have been.

Status
Not open for further replies.
IrishEyes said:
This forum and it's members are also in my daily gratitude prayer. Whether you like it or not,;)
the differences we all share in so many things helps me to understand people better. To know
each of us are seeking answers in our very own way.

Only time will tell and who of us we be able to say "I was right!" In the end, does it really matter?
If we all end up in a different place or the same, or no place at all, we all got to live and believe as
we wanted.
Click to expand...
Yes it really does matter.
I just demand from God that everyone gets saved here. Last minute or whatever. If you call on Jesus just before you die you will be saved. I say it, so people know and for the rest I only have to pray and God will show them. Just call on Jesus. Everyone who calls upon the Name of the Lord will be saved.

 
Messy said:
Yes it really does matter.
I just demand from God that everyone gets saved here. Last minute or whatever. If you call on Jesus just before you die you will be saved. I say it, so people know and for the rest I only have to pray and God will show them. Just call on Jesus. Everyone who calls upon the Name of the Lord will be saved.

Click to expand...
For some of us it really does matter for some it never will, it doesn't need to be something to divide us or for some to try and trick
others into or out of what they believe.
Learning about the Bible is something each has to do on their own as verses can mean different
things to each of us and sometimes even changes as we change. To learn about it, a person needs to put their own effort into it.
God can attempt to show a person who doesn't believe, just because you pray for it doesn't mean it will happen, they have free will
just as you do. It has to be their choice.
Everyone who calls upon the Name of the Lord will be saved. As you stated here - Everyone- has to do their own calling upon
the Name of the Lord. We can not do it for them. We can pray they do it, they still have to do it.
 
JustDave said:
You know. I don't think it does. Not one bit, but here we are on page 33.
Click to expand...
It can be a great discussion to be able to be part of here, in the world around us, it's a very touchy subject with many
and can't be discussed. I am not a preacher or not even remember Bible verses off the top of my head.
I just know my heart and how I feel. I know how I have changed and keep working hard at it. Mine is my own personal
feelings and experience. My words are more a testimony than Biblical Facts.
 
JustDave said:
"The practice of gratitude" It's one of those things where the benefit becomes clear when you do it. I've never come across the psychological dynamics of why it works, although I'm sure there is something out there. I understand it from experience, but I've never sat down and figured out the cause/effect connection. As you say, it doesn't make any difference why or how you do it. It's still the same cat, just skinned in different ways.
Click to expand...
It's a form of positive thinking. Almost any kind of positive thinking is good because it results in positive emotions and promotes more positive thinking due to the brain's neuroplasticity. The parts of our brains we use grow larger like a muscle and the parts we don't use, atrophy. Positive thinking becomes habitual when we do it enough.

Martin Seligman's formula for happiness is Positive Emotions + Engagement + Relationships + Meaning + Accomplishments or PERMA. So "positive emotions" is one element that leads to happiness.

It seems like the positive psychology movement has kind of waned in popularity, but it's still useful. There have been entire books written about the practice of gratitude by researchers and Buddhists, too, from what I remember.
 
My question remains the same as it was in post 798, where I used a hedonist as an example. To whom (or what) do they express their gratitude to? Or can they be completely without gratitude and still be a positive thinker?

". . . they saw little value in directing thanks (gratitude) especially toward abstract concepts, including evolution or the cosmos." [from post 798]


hedonist.jpg
"
 
Last edited:
RambleTamble said:
It's a form of positive thinking. Almost any kind of positive thinking is good because it results in positive emotions and promotes more positive thinking due to the brain's neuroplasticity. The parts of our brains we use grow larger like a muscle and the parts we don't use, atrophy. Positive thinking becomes habitual when we do it enough.

Martin Seligman's formula for happiness is Positive Emotions + Engagement + Relationships + Meaning + Accomplishments or PERMA. So "positive emotions" is one element that leads to happiness.

It seems like the positive psychology movement has kind of waned in popularity, but it's still useful. There have been entire books written about the practice of gratitude by researchers and Buddhists, too, from what I remember.
Click to expand...
2:28

He saw on an RSI scan that a woman first thought about something and then her brain responded. He had been taught for 20 years as a neurosurgeon that your brain creates who you are and what you can do.
 
IrishEyes said:
I should add here too, I don't just pray when I am in need. I give a prayer every morning
of gratitude for another day, for the beauty of the world around me, for the simple things that
give me peace, happiness for His glory that is in each day. My health and those that love me.

I have more prayers of gratitude than of needing help over the last few decades and I think
that is a big help in being heard and shown the way and it's a commitment I made when I was
baptized right after I gave him my guilts, sins and bad feelings toward certain people in my life
and left them in that water never to look back.
Click to expand...
You, I believe, agree with what I am trying to convey. He is there to talk to. He hears us. He doesn't agree with us most times but he makes that clear. I do not look for for him to supply the answers I want. I suspect you are the same.
I hear him and then I have to think about the answers he provides. His answers never deviate from his word so I often cross check what am hearing. Then the revelations come. I try to fit his responses into my life. What did I miss, what did I overlook. What did I not consider.
Then I find myself trying to consider his view as opposed to mine. That never fails to take me out of myself snd try to see the creation from a little above my own self.
I know that sounds crazy but when I do manage to let go, the view is amazing and confirms that God is beyond my understanding, but HE is here for me. How?? He is the God almighty. I am his creation. What do I know.
I know he watches over me. I know he loves me, Why? haven't got a clue. But he is there. I know in my worst times I can call to him and he hears me. Makes me feel safe.
 
RambleTamble said:
It's a form of positive thinking. Almost any kind of positive thinking is good because it results in positive emotions and promotes more positive thinking due to the brain's neuroplasticity. The parts of our brains we use grow larger like a muscle and the parts we don't use, atrophy. Positive thinking becomes habitual when we do it enough
Click to expand...
I've noticed that forced practice develops it, just like forced practice develops skills. And then it becomes habitual. A refresher course once in a while would probably be useful too. Although, I don't refresh very often.
RambleTamble said:
It seems like the positive psychology movement has kind of waned in popularity, but it's still useful. There have been entire books written about the practice of gratitude by researchers and Buddhists, too, from what I remember.
Click to expand...
I didn't realize a movement had been underway, but I do remember reading books that included directions for positive thinking, usually never using the term, "positive thinking." Consequently, I didn't know a movement had faltered.

By the way, as for negative thinking, I often see it not as a reaction to life's woes, or strings of bad luck. I usually see it as simply a bad habit. A default mindset that seeks out negatives. Habits can be changed, usually without deep psychological intervention too.
 
Trade said:
In the Christian religion God is the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Therefore shouldn't God's pronound be "They"?
Click to expand...
No but He does say: Let Us make man in Our Image.

Jesus was 3 in one. The Father and Holy Spirit were in Him. He only spoke out loud what the Father told Him to and the Holy Spirit performed the miracles.
 
Last edited:
Trade said:
That's one of the reasons why I don't trust it.
Click to expand...
It is hard to understand. I had a very hard time for a long time sitting and understanding it. I still don't understand it all and probably
never will totally. But I do understand the underlying meaning in regards to my life. It is riddled with complex thinking and words maybe
for a reason because if your desire to seek knowledge from it is truly from the heart in love, then you will keep returning to it to learn
and then apply what you have read. Then one day that "AhHa!" moment arrives and the flood gates open.
 
IrishEyes said:
It is hard to understand. I had a very hard time for a long time sitting and understanding it. I still don't understand it all and probably
never will totally. But I do understand the underlying meaning in regards to my life. It is riddled with complex thinking and words maybe
for a reason because if your desire to seek knowledge from it is truly from the heart in love, then you will keep returning to it to learn
and then apply what you have read. Then one day that "AhHa!" moment arrives and the flood gates open.
Click to expand...

It's hard to understand because it makes no sense. It didn't take me long at all to figure that out.
 
JustDave said:
On a purely physical level, the merging of cosmic forces and the Earth are interwoven, although not happening everywhere at the same time. But the Earth, let alone life on Earth, would not be possible without the cosmic forces to begin with. I equate "Heaven" with "The Heavens," or cosmos, but I don't give it a spiritual spin. It doesn't seem necessary.
Click to expand...

I want to begin with a dictionary definition of spirituality.

Transcendent Connection:
Click to expand...
A feeling of awe, reverence, and alignment with the universe, nature, or a higher power. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Click to expand...

I think it is wrong to hold physics and psychology apart. That makes me a mystic. I think the West is excessively materialistic and blind to energy reality. To think in terms of pulsation-Rays opens a very different way to understand reality.

Then there are Carl Jung, Edgar Cayce, and Jean Bolen, who picked up on Jung's archetypes and wrote the books Gods in Every Man and Goddesses in Every Woman. This train of thought is not questioning if there is a god but what does it mean to be human? Is how we identify ourselves the only way to identify who we are? What happens when a person becomes a born-again Christian and becomes a totally different person?

We describe similarities in the ontology of quantum physics and of Carl Gustav Jung’s psychology. In spite of the fact that physics and psychology are usually considered as unrelated, in the last century, both of these disciplines have led at the same time to revolutionary changes in the Western understanding of the cosmic order, discovering a non-empirical realm of the universe that doesn’t consist of material things but of forms.

These forms are real, even though they are invisible, because they have the potential to appear in the empirical world and act in it. We present arguments that force us to believe, that the empirical world is an emanation out of a cosmic realm of potentiality, whose forms can appear as physical structures in the external world and as archetypal concepts in our mind. Accordingly, the evolution of life now appears no longer as a process of the adaptation of species to their environment, but as the adaptation of minds to increasingly complex forms that exist in the cosmic potentiality. The cosmic connection means that the human mind is a mystical mind.

Keywords: Archetypes, Cosmic Consciousness, Mysticism, Non-empirical reality, Potentiality, Quantum physics, Spirituality, Unus Mundus, Virtual states Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century - PMC
Click to expand...
 
RambleTamble said:
It's a form of positive thinking. Almost any kind of positive thinking is good because it results in positive emotions and promotes more positive thinking due to the brain's neuroplasticity. The parts of our brains we use grow larger like a muscle and the parts we don't use, atrophy. Positive thinking becomes habitual when we do it enough.

Martin Seligman's formula for happiness is Positive Emotions + Engagement + Relationships + Meaning + Accomplishments or PERMA. So "positive emotions" is one element that leads to happiness.

It seems like the positive psychology movement has kind of waned in popularity, but it's still useful. There have been entire books written about the practice of gratitude by researchers and Buddhists, too, from what I remember.
Click to expand...
I am totally good with what you said. I like eastern philosophy and understanding how we become better people by intentionally thinking or behaving as we want to think and behave until it becomes a habit.

However, I have also walked through Hades. That is where we determine our meanings and purpose, and people who don't go to Hades remain frivolous. However, we should never go there without the help of the gods because it is easy to get lost in Hades. That means suffering depression and may be even psychosis.

Getting better by teaching ourselves better habits can be found in Buddhism and Hinduism. I like that way of thinking much better than thinking we are cursed by God and must be saved by God. To me that is unacceptable superstition.
 

Vida May​


We describe similarities in the ontology of quantum physics and of Carl Gustav Jung’s psychology. In spite of the fact that physics and psychology are usually considered as unrelated, in the last century, both of these disciplines have led at the same time to revolutionary changes in the Western understanding of the cosmic order, discovering a non-empirical realm of the universe that doesn’t consist of material things but of forms.

These forms are real, even though they are invisible, because they have the potential to appear in the empirical world and act in it. We present arguments that force us to believe, that the empirical world is an emanation out of a cosmic realm of potentiality, whose forms can appear as physical structures in the external world and as archetypal concepts in our mind. Accordingly, the evolution of life now appears no longer as a process of the adaptation of species to their environment, but as the adaptation of minds to increasingly complex forms that exist in the cosmic potentiality. The cosmic connection means that the human mind is a mystical mind.

Keywords: Archetypes, Cosmic Consciousness, Mysticism, Non-empirical reality, Potentiality, Quantum physics, Spirituality, Unus Mundus, Virtual states Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century - PMC
Click to expand...

Quantum Mechanics is far enough over my head that I remain in a "wait and see" mode. The same for Jungian spirituality. I just don't see an overlap. But I have noticed that when a new area of science is not understood, it is a time when men of the spirit world most often try to reconcile religion and science. Therein lies a necessary commonality, a lack of understanding of both realms, where imagination runs free with little intellectual restraint.

Twenty or thirty years ago, Deepak Chopra jumped upon Quantum Mechanics and blended it with the mysteries of the spiritual world, and authoritatively explained QM with new age doublespeak that mimicked a deeper understanding of the theory than what was actually known. But sounding authoritative is not a substitute for knowledge.
 
Last edited:
Vida May said:
However, I have also walked through Hades. That is where we determine our meanings and purpose, and people who don't go to Hades remain frivolous. However, we should never go there without the help of the gods because it is easy to get lost in Hades. That means suffering depression and may be even psychosis.
Click to expand...
I don't think I've ever heard that expression before. Did you get it from Nietzsche's writings? (AI told me that's the most common source of the expression.)
 
IrishEyes said:
Nothing is Bible made simple, if there is I wouldn't trust it.
Click to expand...

MACKTEXAS said:
Gratitude. To one's self, or to whom? Is that truly gratitude, or just appreciating the good things happening to you right now?

Ancient self-reliant philospohers like Aristippus (founder of the Cyrenaics) argued that hedonistic, immediate, sensory pleasures are all that really matter in life.

Since the Cyrenaics were skeptics who doubted they could truly know the ultimate cause of their sensations, they saw little value in directing thanks (gratitude) especially toward abstract concepts, including evolution or the cosmos.

View attachment 503761
Click to expand...
not sure what that all means. ?????????????
 
MACKTEXAS said:
Gratitude. To one's self, or to whom? Is that truly gratitude, or just appreciating the good things happening to you right now?
Click to expand...
"Gratitude is the memory of the heart" - Sr Mary MacKillop RSJ, Australian's first and only Saint

She founded an order of apostolic nuns and Her advice to her young sisters was "There where you are you will find God".

Mary MacKillop - Sisters of Saint Joseph
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top