Feeling god

[Peter]

Can you "feel God" without serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine?

 :think:

No that's also why depressive and autistic people don't feel god. See eg Psalm 22

Anyone here 'feel' god?  It's not something I've ever experienced.

Some description of 'god feel' from self-identifying 'god feelers' for reference:

Hi yes I experience God's presence very often or I think I do anyway!

I've been struggling to come up with a good definition for an atheist. Unless ones an artist Im not sure its possible to describe internal feelings except by analogy to common emotions. It's a cliche but the closest common experience to knowing God is experiencing the love of another human being. It probably doesn't matter if you think of parental love, sexual love, or the love that can spring up between friends, divine love isn't exactly like any of them but all are similar. Just like in mundane life where sometimes we hardly notice feeling this love, but sometimes feel it intensely even from apparently trivial triggers like a few moments of eye contact, experience of Gods love varies considerably. Knowing God's presence is to know a vast Love, a love that can seem distant when one is vaguely aware of His presence in private prayers but is sometimes wonderfully intense especially in Church and most especially when one takes communion.

I can avoid preaching but I don't know that it can be conveyed. I'll go along with Feyd as far as the feelings vary. And it can also be as you said, the feeling of being cared for and or comforted. But it isn't because of wanting it. It is because it happens. By that I mean the realization that it is greater than the usual fuzzies thus can fit in with the divine, is that it can and does come out of the blue at times. No thoughts are necessarily focused on "god".

It's the locations that these feelings are felt that taught me how to differentiate. The warm fuzzies are centered in the heart abdomen area which of course can and is also sometimes used by "god". The most magnificent energy I felt rushed through me was like taking all of the love I had ever experienced in my life for anybody and anything and multiply it times a thousand If I can duplicate that with simply wanting it, I haven't figured it out yet

Other times this energy runs along areas that I don't usually feel the energy like a spot in my thigh or knee or foot etc. Feelings that are there as a message so to speak. It isn't just feeling love as in self, but the feeling is so expansive that the whole world is loved, everybody, no matter who is thought of.

When i used to go casual camping with my friends in the fields on the hills out skirting my town i would become overpowered by the feeling what i can only describe as God.
We would play the acoustic guitar and all sing depressing,peaceful and social songs.We would drink mass amounts of beer and end up getting off with all the girls(sometimes boys)which were there.We would start a campfire and spend all evening gathering up random crap to burn and end up laying around it while gazing at the stars.
It was all very much a rave :lol:


It was beautiful.
It's all well me typing this but i can't fully explain it.
God is the only answer and perhaps you might or already have experienced the same thing.

And when i say God i don't mean a personal God but one of spirit of the event as it were.

When you feel God you forget who you are...

Every dream or hope or aspiration you once had disappears.. it is replaced.

You quite literally lose yourself to God.. but you are convinced it is exactly how it is supposed to be.

It's not until you step outside of the Iron Cage do you see how far you strayed.

I want to be an educator, but god commanded I be a preacher.

Now have those or greater wonderful feelings during a time when you aren't in nature, a time that you would consider the worst time of your life, your greatest fear has happened. Now in one instant go from that horror to a place of calm, of great love. That is god.

[thepeaguy]

Another "Peter is smart, theists are stupid" topic.

[Alex179]

Look at Chi for an example.   I believe that feeling a god and the aura surrounding the Chi of someone is essentially the same thing.

[Peter]

Look at Chi for an example.   I believe that feeling a god and the aura surrounding the Chi of someone is essentially the same thing.

Would you like to describe your experiences of this?

[Dexter Morgan]

[Phlexor]

Meh, 'feeling god' is just another way to make up shit nobody can prove to support your imaginary friend for adults.

"Ooh! I can feel God, so therefore he must exist."

Yeah whatever, no one really cares or is paying attention.

[Parts]

Feeling god sounds like your molesting him

[renaeden]

^

"Feeling god" can sometimes be a symptom of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.

[Peter]

My contribution to the thread over there:

Can you "feel God" without serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine?

 :think:

No that's also why depressive and autistic people don't feel god. See eg Psalm 22

As an autistic person with certain depressive aspects and other neurological idiosyncrasies, I can attest that I've never felt anything that I'd describe as god or had any other mystical or paranormal experience, though I fail to see the relevance of Psalm 22.  The neurology of religious experience is an interesting subject, and an area of active research which I keep tabs on along with other neurological topics, and as it happens, I'm currently taking part in an MRI study of motion perception in autistic individuals. 

The temporal lobe seems to be heavily implicated in religious experiences; people with temporal lobe epilepsy often have intense religious experiences during seizures, and exhibit a heightened emotional response to religious stimuli between seizures.  Religious experiences can also be generated in some individuals by the stimulation of the temporal and parietal lobes with magnetic fields, and by the administration of hallucinogenic drugs.  Interestingly, magnetic stimulation only seems to produce religious or paranormal experiences in those who already have a predisposition to such experiences, providing evidence for a neurological difference between those who 'feel god' and those who do not.

Additionally, brain imaging studies of individuals during prayer and meditation have revealed the neurological basis for the spatial distortions and feelings of 'oneness with god/the universe' that are sometimes experienced during these activities, as activity in the parietal lobe, which is responsible for providing a person's sense of orientation in space and time, is reduced, causing the perceived boundary between the individual and their environment to blur.

[Taimaat]

Yes, I have felt “god” the thing is its defiantly not the Christian god.  In fact, I have actively prayed against the Christian god in church and felt the feelings just described above. I guess that makes me a Theistic Satanist.
   Also, interestingly enough, certain religious ceremonies can bring me closer to  “depression” rather than love.  It is sort of this very “thick” feeling in the air.

If you are not “feeling god” you may simply be doing the wrong prayer or ceremony, in the case of feeling worse afterward, you are probably “doing it wrong” (not that certain groups and individuals don't purposely do them wrong for initiation purposes)

[vodz]

If I have a good dose of LSD, yes.

I see buddha. I feel the love of the earth-mother. The Coke can looks unusual.

[Pyraxis]

I used to think I felt God, and then I learned that the experience can just as easily be had while removing God from the equation and telling yourself it just comes from yourself.

I used to think God answered my most important prayers within 24 hours, after having it happen in a life-changing way twice. So for time number 3, I experimented by wanting a thing as badly as I had the first couple times, but not praying or invoking God, and seeing what happened. I still got it, through my own power.

[Phlexor]

I used to think I felt God, and then I learned that the experience can just as easily be had while removing God from the equation and telling yourself it just comes from yourself.

I used to think God answered my most important prayers within 24 hours, after having it happen in a life-changing way twice. So for time number 3, I experimented by wanting a thing as badly as I had the first couple times, but not praying or invoking God, and seeing what happened. I still got it, through my own power.

Do you use your power for good or evil?

[vodz]

I used to think I felt God, and then I learned that the experience can just as easily be had while removing God from the equation and telling yourself it just comes from yourself.

I used to think God answered my most important prayers within 24 hours, after having it happen in a life-changing way twice. So for time number 3, I experimented by wanting a thing as badly as I had the first couple times, but not praying or invoking God, and seeing what happened. I still got it, through my own power.

Wanting - that is, considered thought - is the same thing as prayer; as masturbation is to sex, still gets the job done.

[Al Swearegen]

I used to think I felt God, and then I learned that the experience can just as easily be had while removing God from the equation and telling yourself it just comes from yourself.

I used to think God answered my most important prayers within 24 hours, after having it happen in a life-changing way twice. So for time number 3, I experimented by wanting a thing as badly as I had the first couple times, but not praying or invoking God, and seeing what happened. I still got it, through my own power.

I agree. The thought of attributing your every success to God and your every failing as you being flawed (as many Christians do) seems kinda sad.
I say make your own breaks and take ownership of your every action. Good or bad you own it and ought to enjoy your wins and grieve your losses. That is life. I am an adult now and the last thing I need is an omnipotent parent-figure watching my every move waiting for me to stuff up.