As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
I’m LDS some people might call us Mormon.
The short of it is I asked God and I felt his presence. Not like any earthly feeling, more like the burning the bible / new testament describes.
But even without any of that I’d still have believed / known. I just, always have if that makes sense? I might’ve gone a different direction in my beliefs but I’d still have known he’s there.
I have always wanted to ask someone who has this opinion how they confront the knowledge that people from every religion have felt the same thing? Some people have felt this way multiple times about mutually exclusive faiths.
That’s one of the largest things that led me to be an agnostic atheist (meaning I don’t claim to have knowledge, and I hold no belief in a god; I don’t disbelieve, it’s the ascence of belief). I was raised non-denomination Christian, but I had a good Buddhist friend in high school. It made me curious about other faiths, and they’re almost all mutually exclusive, yet every one has people certain they’re correct. What are the odds I was born to a family that believed the correct one?
I’m not self-centered enough to believe I’m special and all the other people are just unlucky, so the result is that it’s most likely I wasn’t born lucky, and neither was anyone else. So many religions have faded out of existence, so the odds are if any are correct they don’t exist anymore. Why would I think I happen to find the right one?
I know this is unlikely, but I’d be interested to hear an actual opinion about how that feels, not hearing about what you’re supposed to believe (which I’ve heard before). I think it’s interesting to know if it makes others feel the same way I once did or not.
This is why a “feeling” should not be the reason you convert to a religion. You should be skeptical of Christians that argue their conversion on feelings alone. I certainly had feelings that I attribute to the Holy Spirit when I was an inquiring Christian but I frankly tried to ignore or diminish them to stay sober minded. Relying entirely on emotionalism or charism is historically discouraged as you could just as easily be swayed by demonic forces (e.g. prelest). It’s one of many critiques of charismatic Protestantism and the LDS church.
Everyone on earth that has adopted or converted to any religion has done so with a feeling as their reason. Nobody has ever converted due to cold hard facts or some research on the afterlife. Proof is unexisting by definition of faith.
Does it feel correct that there are levels of heaven, better and worse heavens on other planets? I always felt this is disturbing to me, but it makes sense what you are saying
Not so much “levels of heaven” in that anyone’s values lesser than others. It’s that God understands his children, he understands we’re all different. I like a plain pepperoni pizza. Some people like supreme pizza, some people God forbid like pineapple on their pizza.
He’s not going to force one person or another into this route definition of “heaven” because supreme pizza may not be heaven, nor plain pepperoni or pineapple.
Sorry if that analogy doesn’t make sense.