How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?

[Systematic]

I believe that the Christian God does exist, but I opted out of following Him because I could not prove--beyond the shadow of a doubt--that the very act of following the Christian God would not make me go to Hell. So I follow the Wiccan Goddess, because I cannot prove that following Her will not send me straight to Heaven. Or perhaps I just like wise advice, so I follow the Goddess.

[Walker]

But what facts are recorded? It will be recorded that teens are dying at a rapid rate. Then some fool psychologists will rationalize it in some nonsensical way and people will believe it. It is just dreamland. What else can be expected of the young having been deprived through a declining society of any inner connection to higher meaning? But still you'll read the normal rationalizations and people will call it factual

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-de ... -the-rise/

Any more thoughts on, "higher meaning"?

Is a sense of purpose necessary for any inner connection to higher meaning?

[Nick_A]

But what facts are recorded? It will be recorded that teens are dying at a rapid rate. Then some fool psychologists will rationalize it in some nonsensical way and people will believe it. It is just dreamland. What else can be expected of the young having been deprived through a declining society of any inner connection to higher meaning? But still you'll read the normal rationalizations and people will call it factual

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-de ... -the-rise/

Any more thoughts on, "higher meaning"?

Is a sense of purpose necessary for any inner connection to higher meaning?

Until a person experiences the attraction to a higher quality of reality that is greater than they are, a person cannot feel objective purpose. Without this sense of wonder the easiest thing to do is to slip into a meaningless quality of existence.

I'd like to introduce the concept of metaxu Plato used and Simone Weil elborated on.

Metaxy can be described as "every separation is a

link... (e.g.) two prisoners whose cells adjoin

communicate with each other by knocking on the

wall. The wall is the thing which separates them

but it is also their means of communication"-- Simone Weil



"Metaxu: the existence of things that act as

mediators, or bridges, between earth and heaven."

-- Christine Howe (Cultivating Hope: Simone Weil,

metaxu, and a Literature of the Divine.)

Objective human meaning and purpose is actualizing the conscious connection between above an below or levels of reality. Subjective human meaning and purpose is confined to what happens below.

A healthy society which encourages opening to objective human meaning and purpose will have a metaxu which invites contemplation of our connection with the above. Of course secular society struggles against it insisting human meaning can only be an expression of below.

Higher meaning and the experience of objective conscience it invites can only appear in a society when its metaxu, its culture, invites this quality of contemplation. But it isn't wanted. In fact ideas relating to the concept are hated. So what else is possible than the descent into inner chaos encouraged by the loss of the quality of metaxu in which we currently live?