//I personally am a disciple of the goddess Freyja.//

Good for you, thinkabit. Unlike our flat-Earther friend Mr. Obese and his ilk, I'm not personally bothered by which God(s) you place your faith in. Unless it's Loki or Set, those guys are just dicks.

Just don't present me with a hypothesis with no predictive power, offer up only undetailed anecdote as supporting evidence for your empty hypothesis, claim that your hypothesis is not only unfalsified but conclusively proven and then proudly announce 'Look, I just done proved something with Science!', or I might have to be sarcastic at you.

Frankly, it's a mystery to me why some people feel that God is a concept that requires proof. I reckon Lord Vader would find their lack of faith disturbing.

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Dear Josephus,

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You wrote :

« People are praying all the time and getting answers and insights and directions. God is both transcendent, beyond our comprehension, and imminent, is close to our desires and thoughts »
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There’s no doubt about it, Josephus, religion captures the imagination of billions of people around the world. As you say, many of them are “praying all the time and getting answers and insights and directions”.

But that does not mean that there really is a god in the sense of some sort of transcendental being, as you suggest.

The state of calm and serenity that prayer produces in many of those who practise it regularly, is conducive, like yoga, to peaceful meditation and rational thought. It helps put things in perspective and see them differently. It opens the mind to unexplored possibilities and solutions.

Faith in God can be a saving grace as proved to be the case in the tragic earthquake that struck Haiti without warning in 2010.

People were trapped under tons of concrete and rubble. No one ever heard them. Nobody came to their rescue.

A few rare victims were saved, in extremis, long after the rescue operations were officially abandoned, and all hope was lost. Most of them attributed their remarkable survival and ultimate rescue to their unwavering faith in god.

It was their faith that helped them to wait patiently in the assurance that somehow, they would be saved. It protected them from panic, stress, fear, anguish, despair, and depression. It gave them strength to resist pain, discomfort, heat, cold, claustrophobia, isolation, thirst, and hunger. It helped them support their dirty, suffocating prisons, for nearly two weeks, never knowing if it was day or night.

It was their faith that helped them to survive, not god. It was a team of trained and experienced rescue operators, not religion, that extracted them from under those tons of concrete and rubble.

Finally, as James indicated in the bible, they were saved not by faith alone, but also by actions – those of the specialist rescue operators !

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To Banjo Paterson.

What I‘ve found is no uncommon thing. Josephus points this out that people all over the world have found God through prayer. There are other ways to either find Him or hint at Him being there. Outside of prayer I mean.

Consider that for a moment or two before replying. There are a lot of stories and testimonies about God. Some are impressive and awe inspiring, others not as impressive except to add to an already high statistic of observations of God helping, intervening, or otherwise giving an answer to a prayer.

There are two types theories I've come across to dismiss those kinds of observations. Both fail in considering the number of people making the observations. The first is that the people are crazy, or had a moment of craziness. The mind was playing tricks on them, or they were under the influence of some kind of delusion for whatever reason. This theory dismisses that the large number of people are all unable to think clearly and assess the situation as well as the person dismissing their account can. It's faulty logic because it assumes superiority to the situation and to reasoning that they were not there for to thousands of people throughout the world and throughout history. The second theory is a conspiracy of lies. People made it up. To gain fame, recognition, or to fool the masses into believing their religion. The problem with this theory again goes to the number of accounts, but also to the position those people are in. They occur in any walks of life, not just higher ups in the church.

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Your example of those surviver's in Haiti, fits under the first category of mass dismissing. The surviver's lasted because they had unwavering faith that kept them calm for two weeks. But all of this is a side effect of the faith's calming effect. A trick of the mind under stress or something. I somehow believe that God's presence was there with them helping them be calm, more then I believe they survived with unwavering faith, after everyone above ground, gave up hope of finding anyone else alive.

As for me. I've given a few testimonies on OLO before. The conversations went as well as you could have guessed I suppose. The responses were either mock and ridicule "oh really, yeah I prayed to Thor." Or they gave an explanation to say why things happened the way they did. Including the idea that I willed myself to have more energy while tired on the road, and just credited it to the awesomeness of the brain, instead of a quick answer to a just as quick prayer. Or I was accused as lying, and was demanded to have an answer why I was so special to get an answer, while millions of others die everyday without an answer. (The answer is that I'm not that special. It's fairly common occurrence that someone has an experience with God at some point in their lives).

Nonetheless, if you are interested, since I haven't relayed that much info in this discussion on God being confirmed on more then one occasion. I'll give you a few occasions that He was there for me. Once again, I maintain what I've found when I say I've found God is not that uncommon. In fact the way I see it, if I can find Him. Then so can you. So can anyone else here. I'm not special.

To Banjo Paterson

The first experience I'll share occurred when I was a kid. At that time I was not Christian. I grew up in a family where my mom is Christian, and my dad is Baha'i. Both religions believe in God, and believe it to be the he same God, (not Thor, or some other random name out there), but the same way that Jewish, Christian and Islamic all believe they believe in the same God, that is also the same way with Baha'i as well. I say this because I had a foundation that God was real from both parents, but not from a specific religion. That search came later.

Either way, at this time I was depressed and wanted to be done. So I prayed for God to end my life. His response was not a "yes," but it was a response. That moment (almost before I ended my prayer) there was a peace and love felt. The best description I can give it is like a mom or a dad hugging their child and making them feel better. Except that this was a stronger sense of peace.

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Please don't give an explanation to say how meditative prayers are, or that I wasn't that depressed, and this wasn't an observable change. I've heard the rationales here on OLO. And all I want to say on this is don't waste your time and mine to insult me that way. I am of sound mind, observant, and aware of my surroundings. The explanations people give to actual claims when people give their testimony don't fit the situation. I'm not here to debate this or any other event and watch as people insult my ability to be aware and reasonable by saying what's wrong with me. I'm give
I got you this example because you wanted more information.

I have since then prayed and noticed an emotional response, that I wonder and think "is that from God?" Some of those I question because I know myself, and I don't want to assume what God is saying, when it could be that it's something I am hoping, something I am worrying about, or it's something that I've though about and using God as an excuse to do what I'd already decided to do beforehand. Yes those are things I worry about andI think they keep me at a distance from being closer to God because I'm not sure what is from Him and what isn't unless it's a shown in a dramatic way, or unless it's in the bible. Nonetheless, this event was not like those, and was an intense feeling of peace and comfort. This is one of the times there is no question that it came from God. Other emotional responses I've had no question that they were from God though as well.