@the OP - I guess I never really commented on this before; but I actually found many similarities to my own path to awakening to yours.
My early life differed greatly:My mother was an outright atheist and my father did not share his beliefs at all growing up. I remember the exact moment I became an atheist. I was around 6 years old and decided to force myself to stay awake so I could catch the tooth fairy leaving a dollar under my pillow. I was laying there for what felt like an eternity barely keeping my eyes open. Finally, I saw the bedroom door open and the unmistakable outline of my mother coming into the room. Instantly, I made the conclusion "oh, the easter bunny, tooth fairly, santa claus, and... god are all made-up."
After the point you became an atheist, your thought processes / reasoning were nearly identical to my own. You even had the same general demeanor as me (what you describe as an "argumentative atheist"). I was SO sure there no god because there were just so many contradictions in religious texts. Incidentally, I also hated and still rarely will say I am 100% sure of something (or think that internally). I believe there are very few things that are 100% emphatically provable, although I've slackened up on that in the area of metaphysics/philosophy (since that's where science leaves off at some point).
I always saw things in terms of how large systems work. In the big picture, atheism was the only thing that made sense to me. The things that were inconsistent with that world view (such as telepathy, etc) I wrote off as nonsense or some undiscovered physical effect. When I had read (and reread) the material several times over, I had an equally impactful moment when I realized I believed it. The way you describe your own moment is nearly identical to how I felt verbatim:
Thank you so much for putting your whole process of awakening out there. As mentioned in the previous post, it's very difficult for me to describe to an atheist how I went from being an atheist to believing what I believe now. You were able to articulate it much more clearly.
PS: Have you ever taken the MBTI personality test? I suspect you may have the same personality as me. (Discussion / poll here: http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=3990)
My early life differed greatly:My mother was an outright atheist and my father did not share his beliefs at all growing up. I remember the exact moment I became an atheist. I was around 6 years old and decided to force myself to stay awake so I could catch the tooth fairy leaving a dollar under my pillow. I was laying there for what felt like an eternity barely keeping my eyes open. Finally, I saw the bedroom door open and the unmistakable outline of my mother coming into the room. Instantly, I made the conclusion "oh, the easter bunny, tooth fairly, santa claus, and... god are all made-up."
After the point you became an atheist, your thought processes / reasoning were nearly identical to my own. You even had the same general demeanor as me (what you describe as an "argumentative atheist"). I was SO sure there no god because there were just so many contradictions in religious texts. Incidentally, I also hated and still rarely will say I am 100% sure of something (or think that internally). I believe there are very few things that are 100% emphatically provable, although I've slackened up on that in the area of metaphysics/philosophy (since that's where science leaves off at some point).
I always saw things in terms of how large systems work. In the big picture, atheism was the only thing that made sense to me. The things that were inconsistent with that world view (such as telepathy, etc) I wrote off as nonsense or some undiscovered physical effect. When I had read (and reread) the material several times over, I had an equally impactful moment when I realized I believed it. The way you describe your own moment is nearly identical to how I felt verbatim:
we.are-1.net Wrote:“Once you know, you know.” I now believed the core tenets of The Law of One to be true with 99.9% certainty -- my 1% doubt in atheism had been replaced with a new doubt a tenth the size in something that I could have easily written off as too ridiculous to be true only a year earlier. And yet, once I knew, I knew.
But even more than all of this was the most important phrase of all: “we are one.” My brain was in overdrive mode focusing on those three words alone. That was the thread through everything that held our entire reality together. It’s a phrase I had heard so many times throughout my life, and I never stopped to think about what it really meant. But I knew it was true. It was just so obviously true now. Of course we were all one. Nothing else made any sense.
Thank you so much for putting your whole process of awakening out there. As mentioned in the previous post, it's very difficult for me to describe to an atheist how I went from being an atheist to believing what I believe now. You were able to articulate it much more clearly.
PS: Have you ever taken the MBTI personality test? I suspect you may have the same personality as me. (Discussion / poll here: http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=3990)