Atheist reconsidering stance on religion.

[Rishab]

Hey guys, my name is Rishab. I was born in Bangalore, India but as a child i grew up in Dubai and now I'm studying in States. As a kid , all my religious experiences involved visiting various temples and the various rituals I used to witness there. Perhaps the most profound of my religious experiences were the several pilgrimages I made to Tirupathi as a child and few when I was a little over ten. I still visit temples to this very day everytime I go to India to visit my grandparents there but perhaps the only reason I do go there is because I don't want to offend my family. When I turned ten, I radically changed my views on religion in few years I went from religious, to questioning god, to agnostic to atheist to strictly anti-religious. I'm 18 right now and I'm starting to reconsider my views on religion because I feel like I've lost my way in life or a better way to put it would be I'm trying to find my way in life. I just have a few questions I would like to be answered. I have little knowledge compared to most of you on Hinduism but is it true that god isn't a supernatural being watching us from the skies but our consciousness within us?
Perhaps the biggest reason why I stopped believing in God is because I couldn't get around the idea that they're were supernatural beings in the sky watching over us. It just seemed pretty stupid to me. I believed atheists were so much smarter than everyone else but I also had a doubt in my head how some of the most intelligent people in history were religious and surely the thought must have crossed their mind too yet they still believed in God. What I want to know is, what is God? How do I connect with God? and is the Bhagvad Gita is abstract and symbolic and not true historical representation of an actual event?
and I have also been experimenting with psychedelics like lsd and shrooms in order in have a deeper connection with my consciousness but so far no luck also I have been taking only small doses. Are psychedelics okay to use in order to achieve consciousness?

[srivijaya]

Hi Rishab,
I'm not the best person to answer but since nobody else has, I thought I'd comment. Like you I rejected god outright after a religious search. I was about 18 at the time and in hindsight what I rejected was the "angry deity in the sky" of Christianity (I'm European background but from an un-religious family). But I was still aware that this rejection did not answer the fundamental questions which were still within me. I guess it was the start of a very honest quest.
In my opinion the Gita is an amazing spiritual teaching of great profundity (it's historical accuracy is, for me at least, irrelevant). If you meditate, then the truth will manifest. If you take drugs, then any experiences you gain will be delusions and not something you can repeat or control. You will also gain no true insight via drugs. Do not pollute your temple - insight is your birthright. Seek it out.
namaste

[Viraja]

Rishab,

You are young... please, please, please stay away from drugs... Who said drugs give you experience of inner bliss? If so, all those drug abusers and addicts must be another Ramakrishna or Ramana! Please stay away from all those drugs which have all those negative consequences including shortening of life span and a myriad of other problems. I chose to answer only to stress this point.

BTW: It is not hard, if you want, to have spiritual experiences. Just stay focused on your chosen devata and do routine spiritual practice and prayers. In a short time, you will see your deity in your dreams! And this is the one and only way to know god. Just follow all those guidelines for being a good person and do enough prayers, in due course, your sadhana will bear fruit and take you closer to god.

Wish you good luck!

[Rishab]

My experience this past year has taught me a very important lesson. TO STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS, like you said. Everything you have stated above is true and now I'm trying to spread the message to people around me who do use drugs.

Does a chosen deity have a special significance?

Pranam.

[SuryaVedanta754]

Science And Faith - Not A Conflict




Some Links


Summary - Some of the greatest scientists in the history of the world believed in God. The percentage of belief among the professional scientific community is just about the same as the rest of the population. It is pure myth that most scientists do not believe in God. One link for a professional study that proved that prayer works. Another link to the Vatican council on science
which includes a huge list of Noble Prize winning scientists who believe in God.

Benjamin Franklin and Isaac Newton, two of the founders of all modern math and science, both believed in God.


Nikolai Tesla believed in God and was a fan of the Hindu saint Swami Vivekananda.





This article concludes that about 50% of scientists are religious, and, additionally, many more, while not religious, believe in God.


blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/...


from this book:


https://www.amazon.com/Science-vs-Re.../dp/0199975000


Quoting from the article: "In the course of her research, Ecklund surveyed nearly 1,700 scientists and interviewed 275 of them. She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious. Many others are what she calls “spiritual entrepreneurs,” seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion…..only a small minority are actively hostile to religion."




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And here's A professional scientific study proving that prayer works:


http://www.1stholistic.com/Prayer/hol_prayer_proof.htm


"There is ample proof that prayer works. Many scientific studies have been conducted that validate this observation.


A 1993 Israeli survey following 10,000 civil servants for 26 years found that Orthodox Jews were less likely to die of cardiovascular problems than "nonbelievers." And a 1995 study from Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., monitoring 250 people after open-heart surgery concluded that those who had religious connections and social support were 12 times less likely to die than those who had none."


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the Pontifical Academy of Sciences has a long list of Noble Prize winning scientists who believe in God...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifi...my_of_Sciences


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[Rishab]

I'm reading the Gita for the first time as we speak.
It is truly marvelous.

Pranam.

[deafAncient]

Hi Rishab,
I'm not the best person to answer but since nobody else has, I thought I'd comment. Like you I rejected god outright after a religious search. I was about 18 at the time and in hindsight what I rejected was the "angry deity in the sky" of Christianity (I'm European background but from an un-religious family). But I was still aware that this rejection did not answer the fundamental questions which were still within me. I guess it was the start of a very honest quest.
In my opinion the Gita is an amazing spiritual teaching of great profundity (it's historical accuracy is, for me at least, irrelevant). If you meditate, then the truth will manifest. If you take drugs, then any experiences you gain will be delusions and not something you can repeat or control. You will also gain no true insight via drugs. Do not pollute your temple - insight is your birthright. Seek it out.
namaste

This was more or less my stance, except that my worldview formed as an undiagnosed deaf child, and upon introduction to religion by my nanny (my parents didn't do it), I rejected Christianity outright upon hearing "Jesus died on the cross for our sins," or something like that. I knew somehow that it wasn't true (at least for me), IMMEDIATELY. I had only learned to speak, read, and write a year before (I was already eight and a half years old at this point). I had no religion, because I couldn't accept Christianity. I also came from a non-religious European-stock family). I had known that there was something to my worldview that makes SD accessible to me. I looked at a lot of different things, like Cherokee beliefs (by the way, I found some similarities between Cherokee and SD beliefs - Cherokee council houses, where the sacred fire is kept, always has the main door/entrance facing the east, AND Cherokees traditionally sleep with the head pointing east, or south if that orientation is not available, but NEVER west - west is considered darkness or death), Paganism, and witchcraft.

I have NEVER done drugs, only alcohol, and recently decided to completely stop drinking it from a social basis (I never got in trouble with it like BOTH of my parents did). I have to second the comment on the delusional aspects of drugs. I, with my Natural Hygiene background, have always considered the sensations from drugs merely a bodily reaction against the effects of the drugs and not of significant events happening on the spiritual level. That is just the brain/mind malfunctioning while under the influence of these drugs.

I'll give you an insight, some of which you already know. I'm a member of the Counter Crusade to Unbuckle the Bible Belt, a facebook group of believers of separation of church and state, anti-dominionist, humanists, atheists, etc. They have no understanding of religion outside the Abrahamic mindset. Just yesterday, I posted a post about science within religion, and how this relationship within SD differs radically from the western perspective of religion versus science. Not one comment was posted on the post. On previous posts offering SD perspective on various issues, people either gloss over it or make the comment, "So? And...?" They clearly do not get it. What is dangerous is that this group shows no signs of acceptance of different paths and in fact denigrate religions of ALL kinds with no understanding of the difference between them, especially between Abrahamic and Indic religions.

I don't know what to do yet to help people go from Abrahamic religions to Indic religions or at least an Indic thought of civilization. Remember, Dharma is not the same as religion (mata, sampradāya, and paṇtha is).

I have not been an atheist for a long time, since I realized that I have something spiritually happening that can't be explained. Let me correct myself here. I was an atheist in a western perspective in that I reject an Abrahamic gOd, but not in the sense that scientist believe that inert matter came to together, and eventually formed consciousness. I feel that it's the other way around.

[Eastern Mind]

but is it true that god isn't a supernatural being watching us from the skies but our consciousness within us?

Vannakkam Rishab: Welcome to these forums, and yes God is inside us. We Hindus are on a different operating system than westerners.

Welcome to the forums.

Aum Namasivaya

[Believer]

Namaste,

Welcome to the forum Rishab.

We are to be blamed for the disconnect in your life to God. We are not educated enough in the philosophical aspects of our religion to be able to guide our children. So, your rebellion is understandable. It was/is a manifestation of the frustration due to lack of any valid explanations provided to you. Hope you can forgive us and do your own search for the supreme.

At an abstract level, God runs the universe, which consists of many planetary systems. He is not a supernatural force whose only job is to hide up in the sky and be a watchman and observe your every activity. You or I are not that important for Him to spend a major portion of the day watching us go through the motions of life. At least I don't flatter myself by entertaining such thoughts. And getting high is not a way to achieve anything at all. It is a downward spiral more than anything else. So, the sooner you quit drugs, the better off you will be in the long run and also in the short run.

The Hindu holy book Bhagwad Gita is the pinnacle of Hindu wisdom. To the devout, Bhagwan Krishanji came down to earth to enlighten us about the philosophy of life through His narration of it to Arjun. You may take it any whichever way you want - just as a historical record or as an account of the actual visit by the Divine to our home, mother earth.

Go ahead and read some of the threads that interest you, ask questions, start a regular regimen of some chanting and reading of scriptures. Before you know it, you will become the biggest expert in the forum. You owe it your children in the future to be more educated than we are/were and guide them properly in spiritual matters; else you would be a failure just the way we have been to you and to countless other offsprings of born Hindus. The choice is yours. You want to be better than us to your future family, or repeat the pattern and be stupid like us and be ill prepared to guide your future family?

Pranam.

[Rishab]

I'm afraid neither my parents or anyone else in my family for that matter understand the true meaning of our religion. I believe they blindly go to temples and perform rituals believing it will make them have a better life but they don't really understand why they're doing it and what it truly gives. Only recently after lots of research have I changed my views on Hinduism. I now understand that its truly the best guide on how to live your life with a complex and detailed understanding of the mind and the body that I never knew existed. But I still have a lot of questions which when answered will possibly turn me into a complete believer.

Namaste.