The Validity of Christian Religious Experiences

[Michelle (Michelle Ols)]

I found these additional links/posts from here on Peaceful Science describing other similar experiences that others have had leading them to become born again:

Why I Believe in the Resurrection

Faith, Belief, and Reason

Pure idle curiosity, as I said. Mostly, I wonder whether it has anything to do with Exodus. Also, I do wonder what “faith in atheism” means. I quite like William Lane Craig’s definition of faith: “Faith is trusting in that which you have reason to believe is true. Once you have come to believe that something is true, using reliable epistemological means, you can then place your faith or trust in those things.” I had come to believe that atheism was true, and that it was the best explanation of my world and experiences. I trusted that it would continue to be so. However when I had an experience that my atheism could not easily explain I lost my trust in it. When I was growing up one of my favourite authors was Carl Sagan, a strong advocate of the conflict thesis that faith and reason are mutually exclusive. I viewed religion and spiritually as the way that pre-scientific people explained away natural phenomena that they didn’t understand, excusable for them perhaps but in a mode…

Faith, Belief, and Reason

Perhaps it would help if I elaborated further. I don’t know if you are familiar with the story, but it states that Pharaoh was willing to let them go, so God “hardened his heart”, he refused to let them go, God punishes him with another plague, repeat. This seemed to me completely unfair and unjust, and I was feeling quite indignant about it. Why would this God character do this? Then I got to the start of chapter 10. Its really hard to find words for what happened next. A voice said sadly “but you forgot”. Not angry or condeming, just incredible sadness. I don’t know if I heard it or it was just in my head, but it kept reverberating around in my mind, worse than an annoying catchy radio jingle. I have a fear of heights, and I felt a feeling of vertigo, similar but far more then when I crawled as close to the edge of Castle Point Hill as I could. I also felt a feeling of wonder and awe, similar but far more than the first time I saw Saturn and its rings through the Thomas Cooke Tele…