Raf

You're welcome

That's because it sucks.

Rambo?

The Legend of Billie Jean Christian Slater Untamed Heart

Yabba Dabba Doo Hi Fred.

You're presupposing your conclusion in your premise. "Beliefs are found in the unconscious." Respectfully, that is not true of all beliefs, and it's absurd on its face. Beliefs can be dependent on the information you have, and greater information can and should change beliefs. A child believes in the tooth fairy because parents fed that story. Greater information leads to a change in the belief. It's not because their subconscious never believed it. It's because they received or considered more information.

Sounds like the thread's run its course and is now officially about anything.

Although I have been more active than usual, I still hesitate to answer for fear that I will just let the thread wither while you wait for me to post a new clue. Hence my hints.

Well THAT was a giveaway

Good idea. Not that I don't love the topic, but yeah, it is different

Correct

Either that or Endgame

I really love the direction this thread went in. I remember talking about how non-Trinitarians could learn from Trinitarians about the reverence that is Biblically due to Jesus Christ, while Trinitarians could learn from non-Trinitarians about Christ's obedience, commitment and sacrifice. Each side holds a position that can enhance the other side's appreciation for the truth! I thought about that reading T-Bone's post, and I am so glad that my perspective (not taking credit for it, just that I agree with it) can help you appreciate the quality and value of life in the now, or as you called it, the urgency to appreciate life right now. I guess on the flip side of that, while I can't say to my kid "in heaven you won't have autism," I can "think big" in terms of finding something, some hope beyond hope that there's a solution that we can have here and now. The analogy doesn't quite hold up, but the heart does. Believers see a future free of heartache and pain. I see the urgency of bringing it to pass sooner rather than later. Love it. And sometimes that desire to see things from a perspective you do not share is the first step to changing your mind, your mindset, your worldview... your thought.

"It goes on forever! Six bloody minutes!" "I pity your wife if you think six minutes is forever." *** "I want you to shake the freak tree and invite anyone who plops to the ground! Dwarfs and giants, magicians, Zulu tribesmen. contortionists, fire eaters, and priests. We're going to need to confess."

It is not. The main characters are all British. It is not a comedy.

It is not

"Please tell your father [in sign language] it's nice to meet him." "I have." "Well then, thank him for the lovely birthday cake." "I have." "Then tell him his daughter's an EPIC shag." "He can read lips."

Thank you for the input, all. Let me add something from a more positive approach: You know all those people who believe they could never have improved their lives, conquered their demons, achieved their goals and ambitions, quit drugs, quit being violent, quit drinking, reformed, renounced a life of crime, ALL those people who say they could NEVER have fixed their lives without God? Atheists believe you fixed your life without God. And we're f-ing proud of you in a way that we cannot express without picking a fight. But when you give God the glory for the change YOU made happen, we might nod politely, but in our hearts we're thinking: You Rock! P.S. You found your own damn keys and parking spot.

Yes, Bolshevik. That is correct. But there's a subtlety to it. There are those who believe a conversion experience is only possible in one direction. "Oh sure, you can go from atheist to Christian, because that's how it's supposed to work. But to go from Christian to atheist? No way! I have no choice but to question the genuineness of your Christian faith. No true Christian could ever turn away." That's nonsense. More accurately, it's a defense mechanism to protect people of faith from even having to consider whether the departing Christian might have a point. Easier to shrug off the loss of a not-true-believer than it is to weigh the argument he presents and put your own faith to the test. Why, "the test" itself is anathema! And yes, it goes the same in reverse: Some atheists can't stand the idea that a real atheist might be persuaded that there is a God, that His name is Yahweh, and that He was incarnated/represented/expressed/whatevered as the man Christ Jesus. Not a real atheist. Except, of COURSE a real atheist could come to that conclusion. The question in each case is HOW? And let me add, there are WAY too many Christians who like to say "I was an atheist too" when, in fact, they were not. You can hear it in their testimonies. They'll say things like "I hated God because He allowed such and such to happen." That's not how atheists would talk about it. We don't hate God anymore than Christians hate Odin. But "I was an atheist" makes a much better testimony than "I always believed in God because my parents told me He was real but they didn't teach me how to worship Him the way THIS COOL CHURCH GROUP did!" I can tell you that my earliest memories relate to the Kingdom Hall and the conviction that there is a God, Jesus is His Son and that the Bible is His Word. To me, until who knows when, the ONLY question about God was not whether He existed, but who got the Bible right! Had I started my quest with the mental ability to even consider whether this God story was fundamentally true, it might have changed my life. I thought critical thinking meant comparing what people said about God to what God said about Himself. It never even occurred to me that "what God said about Himself" was the mother of all presuppositions resulting in reasoning that circled and circled and circled until the tank refilled. But none of that means an atheist can't convert to Christianity, or vice versa. Of course they can. It happens all the time. Sometimes the change is precipitated by a "significant emotional event." Sometimes the change precipitates significant emotional events. I humbly submit that significant emotional events are too ubiquitous to identify as either a cause or effect of such a change, and it's probably more accurate to say the relationships between changes and events is symbiotic. Then again, Rocky may be completely, 100 percent right without equivocation. After all, he did allow for exceptions, and our only disagreement is over how prevalent those exceptions are.

I think my main point was that beliefs, worldviews, etc. can all fall under the general category of "thought" without damaging the point I was trying to make. T-Bone, thank you. Rocky, in the Law of Believing thread there was an implication that "truth be known" people who walk away from Christianity probably were never really believers to begin with. This thread was supposed to explore what it takes to change your mind. Your contribution has been priceless.

Rocky, I chose not to quibble with this summary of my position. The idea is what was important here, not the word choice. If you would like to be more precise in recognizing that changing a worldview is far more complex than a "thought," I would certainly agree with you. But I don't need to parse that in order to make my overall point: changing your [word we're arguing about here] can BE the significant emotional event rather than BEING CAUSED/PRECIPITATED BY such an event.

You're correct. I think you said ME specifically and I thought it was safe to extrapolate. You might not even have meant me, come to think of it. But my observation is off what you said, not who it was directed at.

Read the law of believing thread. Then come back here.

We're quibbling over words. Let's not.

Bolshevik mentioned something about how atheists value life. I try not to quantify such things, but economics 101 tells you scarcity increases value. No atheist ever flew a plane into a building with the expectation of a reward in paradise. But that works both ways. The flip side is, unless an atheist has an independent reason to believe a "sin" is wrong, there's nothing to stop him from committing it. Good news, in most cases there are plenty of independent reasons to believe a sin is wrong. Like murder. Rape. Stealing. Slavery. Executing people for shtupping the wrong person with consent. You know, things we can all agree is wrong. You know what sins are stupid? Sabbath breaking. TF? Shellfish. Bacon. Turning around because the city you've called home is being consumed by literal fire and brimstone and, I don't know, you're maybe worried about your house or your pets or an actual friend. Cooking a baby goat in its mother's milk. Not saying Yahweh unless you mean it. Those are stupid sins. My point? I'm sure it's around here somewhere. Oh, yeah: I think "who values life more?" would be an interesting thread. But even if I have made statements to the contrary, I can honestly say they are presumptuous. I do not believe there is a simple answer to that question. Mourning is different when you're an atheist. Goodbye really is goodbye. I think I mourn the deaths of children more painfully than believers do. You believe they'll get the fulness of life they deserved. I don't. You think they'll awaken in perfect bodies that will never know pain. I don't. Does that mean I place a greater value on their lives? No. But I put a greater price tag on their deaths.