1. People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists

Comment #177346 by Chato on May 9, 2008 at 12:42 am

My experience certainly could not be be proof of anything. In fact I cannot say it answered all my questions - it left me with far more unanswered questions. Ofcourse it means to me there is more to the world than science generally accepts but that only has personal value. However, after having such an experience you cannot then accept the view of the world accepted by the majority of the scientific community. Maybe it is just part of the human condition to struggle to find answers to questions that we are incapable of answering.

2. People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists

Comment #176613 by Chato on May 7, 2008 at 7:13 pm

I was an atheist before i discovered Reiki. I have had many profound experiences - the most powerful was when what felt like two chords of pain around my heart snapped and I then vommitted what felt like static electricity (that is the best description I can give). At the moment before I vommitted, both times, I heard my own voice in my head speak to me. It was very strange - it sounded like the voice that normally thinks my own thoughts but it called me "You". What the voice told me directly pertained to an emotional crisis I was having and was not so profound to anyone else that it is worth repeating - the message was for me and was personal. The voice that spoke inside my head was extremely wise and compassionate. From the way it spoke I could tell that it knew everything and would forgive anyone for anything. you could call this God, spirit, collective unconscious - whatever you like - the Buddha called it mind because he wanted to get away from the false concepts the word "God" engenders. This force is real but it would never punish anyone - most if not all religions have seriously failed to understand thsi phenomena. I think the Buddha did understand it but modern Buddhism has been corrupted by earlier forms of ancestor worship and other such ancient religions. But in the recorded words of the Buddha himself you will find the truth - if you can understand it!

3. Flea of the week

Comment #176607 by Chato on May 7, 2008 at 7:00 pm

Calling people 'fleas' is dehumanising them which allows us to behave badly towards them. Bad behaviour of Christians and other religious groups do not excuse this behaviour. Shame on you Richard!

4. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176602 by Chato on May 7, 2008 at 6:39 pm

I have to say that I basically agree with Richard despite the fact that I know spirit is real. As a former atheist my views were in line with Richard's until I discovered irrefutably that spirit (not God) does exist. I still have a problem with religion as it seeks to protect its own power and dogma rather than searching for the truth. Maybe the truth cannot be found - who knows? Either way - I am only interested in those who are willing to seek the truth. As a former atheist I can understand that point of view and it has a certain comfort in its logic and sensibility but ultimately it fails to answer the big questions. Ultimately atheist have to admit that there is a possibility that spirit, in some form, exists. Clearly the many religions cannot all be right and in fact probably none of them are. But that does not mean spirit does not exist. The big bang had always existed long before scientists conceived the possibility. Did the lack of knowledge regarding the big bang make it any less real? - Quite clearly the answer is no. The big bang was just as valid before science recognised it - but it took science to make the phenomenon useful to us. I believe the same thing applies to spirit although I am not sure if it can be detected or not - although I belive it may be possible to do so.

5. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #176600 by Chato on May 7, 2008 at 6:23 pm

I agree partly with what Sam says - but I think it does show the lack of rationality by fundamental atheists such as Sam and Richard - that they would defend this piece of rubbish just because it suits their own political views (propaganda). The Danish cartoons are a classic example - imagine the outcry there would have been if he had depicted Jesus as a peadophile raping altar boys! This sort of pathetic anti-religious propaganda is no better than pro-religious propaganda - they both fail to offer humanity anything useful. I'm sad to say it but Spirit is real - the atheists are wrong - but no religion adequately describes it and all modern religions have been corrupted. This makes them easy to pick on - but it does not mean that spirit does not exist.

6. Science and Religion BOTH make faith claims

Comment #176173 by Chato on May 6, 2008 at 7:15 pm

Science does make faith claims and at the core of modern science is one of the biggest faith claims ever made. As a former applied chemistry student I discovered in the course of my studies that at the core of all matter science can find nothing but pure energy. A Hydrogen atom has nothing that we would call "matter" at its core. So then how does pure energy 'become' matter? The theory is that there is an invisible stream running through the universe and when energy comes into contact with this stream it somehow transforms into the solid matter that makes up the universe. Funnily enough - this stream has never been found. Why? Because it is as ludicrous an idea as the idea that the world is a few thousand years old and that Adam and Eve were sharing the garden of Eden with dinosaurs. The missing ingredient is spirit and actually matter is nothing more than an illusion. Buddha said the physical world was both an illusion and real (some of his disciples felt this meant life was pointless and committed suicide when he first explained this concept). I cannot claim to fully understand what this means but maybe only someone who has achieved enlightenment can truly understand? I don't know. Science should keep trying to understand, but the missing ingredient is spirit. Until science learns how to measure spirit it will not be able to overcome this fundamental hurdle to understanding the true nature of the universe which is what most of us actually hope to achieve.

7. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #175642 by Chato on May 5, 2008 at 6:55 pm

Defining religion is problematic - most people would say Buddhism is a religion but it does not fit any of the standard western definitions as it teaches there is no soul and no god, only a universal mind - something like the collective unconscious that scientists working in the field of psychology have observed. If Buddhism is a religion than atheism is too. Whether atheism is a religion or not it is definitely possible to be a fundamentalist atheist. I say this becuase I was one until a series of experiences I cannot scientifically reproduce lead me to Buddhism. I practice Reiki everyday and it is a very physical experience and generally very painful. It is nothing left to faith - you can feel it very physically although you cannot see it or smell it. When I learned Reiki I was extremely sceptical and definitely no true believer but I was just open enough to experience it. Since then I have learned Reiki to the master level and taught somewhere between 100 and 200 people. Of these most were highly sceptical - less than five of these people were convinced Reiki was real before they felt it themselves. Of the approximately 200 people i taught only about half a dozen were unable to experience the phenomenon. I believe these people are fundamentally opposed to the possibility and they block the experience. As a former atheist I found this extremely disappointing. I had always been fairly closed minded and I thought if someone as closed as me could experience Reiki than anyone could. I no longer teach Reiki and I only practice on myself - I'm sick of being looked at as a whacko! And as a former disbeliever I am accutely aware of how whacko it sounds. The problem with Reiki is that not everyone has the same experience - I for example cannot give distance readings or diagnose people's illness as some people claim to be able to do. The truth is that even the most experienced practitioners' of Reiki do not really understand it or know how it works. We need science to help us here but the fundamentalllist atheists that dominate the scientific community make this possibility difficult to achieve. Reiki can be scientifically measured - a friend of mine learned Reiki as part of a martial arts course (the potential applications for Reiki do include fighting - not just healing - exactly what it can and can't do are unknown), he went to Seaworld where there was a device for measuring the electromagnetic current that sharks detect. The device explained that the higher a person's body mass the higher they would be on the scale. The largest member of their group barely registered a quarter of the way up the scale. My friend and a couple of others in the group that were part of the same martial arts class that had learned Reiki, all went off the scale. Therefore there is a device right now that can measure Reiki scientifically - perhaps this should be the starting point for a real scientific study into Reiki and other similar phenomenons (which are probably the same but given different names by different cultures).

8. Hinduism and Buddhism offer much more sophisticated worldviews (or philosophies) and I see nothing wrong with these religions.

Comment #175012 by Chato on May 4, 2008 at 5:51 am

I was an atheist until I discovered Reiki which led me to Buddhism. I still have enough of my atheist origins that I do not belong to any groups - my practise is completely personal, but I know Reiki is real. I have to say when reading what has been recorded of the Buddha's words I could never find anything he said that science has disproved and in fact science has since proved many things he said were true. For example he was once asked if the world had and would last forever? He categorically answered that the world had not always existed and that it would not exist forever. Ofcourse modern science has since proven him to be correct, but two and a half thousand years ago that was quite a statement. Actually I have found many insights in the Buddha's teachings that could only be backed up by science as late as the 20th century. We have proven some of the Buddha's ideas are true - in time science will no doubt prove more of them are true.