Ask me anything: back into a relationship with God

Off-topic talk on music, art, literature, games and forum games.
Post Reply
AlexanderVeganTheist
Full Member
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2015 1:31 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: Nijmegen, Netherlands

Ask me anything: back into a relationship with God

Post by AlexanderVeganTheist »

Hey,

some older members may remember me. I posted here about 2 to 3 years ago. During that time I left theism (and this forum) and became an atheist nihilist again. During the 1,5 years after that my life degraded quite markedly, leading to a crisis in December 2017. This crisis confronted me again with the existence of a spiritual world. Since then I've returned to pursue a relationship with the personal source of existence: God. This time around it has been much more sincere and personal. Whereas before I would sometimes present my faith as being stronger than it actually was, this time around it has been much more personal, real and experiential, rather than pretending to know things I didn't, parroting others, and presenting a facade. Anyway :D I felt inspired to come back and talk to you lovely vegan people :D

Love and peace,
Johan Alexander
User avatar
Jebus
Master of the Forum
Posts: 2379
Joined: Fri Oct 03, 2014 2:08 pm
Diet: Vegan

Re: Ask me anything: back into a relationship with God

Post by Jebus »

Welcome back.

It seems to be people who find God always do so after going through some type of crisis. It rarely happens through simple reasoning.
How to become vegan in 4.5 hours:
1.Watch Forks over Knives (Health)
2.Watch Cowspiracy (Environment)
3. Watch Earthlings (Ethics)
Congratulations, unless you are a complete idiot you are now a vegan.
User avatar
brimstoneSalad
neither stone nor salad
Posts: 10273
Joined: Wed May 28, 2014 9:20 am
Diet: Vegan

Re: Ask me anything: back into a relationship with God

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Welcome back!

I'm glad you're doing well again. I was worried when you disappeared.

Sorry for de-converting you before. I had my reservations but you thought you'd be fine and I took your word for it. Though the Jesus second coming thing was always probably a bubble that would have burst in time?

I don't see the point in falling into nihilism just because you lose god.
That's a misunderstanding of morality (or a straw-man of it):
wiki/index.php/Objective-subjective_dis ... y_Strawman

Maybe I can convince you that morality does exist, with or without god, in case you lose faith so you still have something to believe in?
Pretty much all of us here believe deeply in morality and are atheists.
AlexanderVeganTheist
Full Member
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2015 1:31 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: Nijmegen, Netherlands

Re: Ask me anything: back into a relationship with God

Post by AlexanderVeganTheist »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:37 am Welcome back!

I'm glad you're doing well again. I was worried when you disappeared.

Sorry for de-converting you before. I had my reservations but you thought you'd be fine and I took your word for it. Though the Jesus second coming thing was always probably a bubble that would have burst in time?
I'm doing well indeed :). Sorry about disappearing, I needed time to take everything in, and actually had a strong rage about a lot of things, which drove me down the path I went on.

Don't worry about de-converting me. I wanted it myself. I had stagnated in my growth and was frustrated with the whole belief system. Right now it's not so much a belief system but a system of experience. Because of my renewed sincerity, I have had stronger experiences, solidifying my trust in the truth of what is taught by AJ. So far everything seems to be true again, at least the parts I have experienced myself, in particular the transformative power of Gods Love entering the soul and gradually transforming it. This results in experiences such as becoming more sensitive to morality, becoming more sensitive to my own pain, finding it easier to occasionally see the (various colors in the) spirit body of myself and others, remembering parts of my life I had forgotten and/or distanced myself from by going through blocking emotions and so on; basically desiring truth and love in my life, and seeing both factors grow in my life. It's a gradual process fortunately, one that had really stagnated before which had made me frustrated, which, in combination with the fact that many people think it's strange to be involved with these things, made me want to get out of the beliefs and de-convert. So I was also afraid of judgment and had a desire for approval from others and wanted people to think highly of me.

The way AJ and Mary live their life makes it obvious it isn't some kind of malevolently concocted psychological trick-box. Here it is important to know that all 1500 hours of material are freely available on youtube, there are no 'levels' within an organisation nor paid material. He also doesn't really have any advantages to claiming he is Jesus, rather on the contrary. I think it is true. If it's not, I'm just a primate getting bamboozled into being happy, so who gives :p.



I don't see the point in falling into nihilism just because you lose god.
That's a misunderstanding of morality (or a straw-man of it):
http://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/inde ... y_Strawman

Maybe I can convince you that morality does exist, with or without god, in case you lose faith so you still have something to believe in?
Pretty much all of us here believe deeply in morality and are atheists.
I'm finding it hard to read that particular paragraph, mostly because of the layout and lack of apparent structure/context.

In terms of moral philosophy, I was in particular influenced by Wittgenstein, in that every ethical system needs to have an assumption of value. Any axiology needs to place an axiomatic value on a particular thing in the universe, such as happiness or 'doing the right thing'. Such a system cannot provide it's own foundation. There needs to be assumptions, which would - I think - have to be arbitrary, to an extent. Like say the axioms in Euclidean geometry, they are arbitrary, but based on our experiences in our immanent environment. We can (and have) developed geometries with other axioms, that do not have any applicability in the real universe around us. So how would we go about establishing foundational assumptions in morality?

The way I see morality now (as a theist) is that understanding how the universe actually works will tie together both consequentionalism, deontology and virtue-ethics. Through how emotions drive our behavior, growing our character in love will lead to the best outcomes for everyone and will allow us to say 'never' or 'always' when it comes to certain things.
User avatar
calmcow
Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:53 am
Diet: Vegan

Re: Ask me anything: back into a relationship with God

Post by calmcow »

I've been through almost the same several years ago. It was terrible, I'm happy I'm here now.
AlexanderVeganTheist
Full Member
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2015 1:31 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: Nijmegen, Netherlands

Re: Ask me anything: back into a relationship with God

Post by AlexanderVeganTheist »

calmcow wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:04 am I've been through almost the same several years ago. It was terrible, I'm happy I'm here now.
The same as what?
Post Reply