Rather recently, John Loftus shared with us a blog post titled: The Power of the Delusion is Maddening. Experience Reigns Even Over Former Skeptics. The post is about an Atheist (herien refered to as A) who converted to Christianity after having an experience I refer to as a "God Dream". To put it bluntly, God Dreams are dreams in which the dreamer suddenly feels as though they are "experiencing God". The dreamer will see a white that is "brighter than white" and will feel a sense of powerfulness and pleasure beyond anything they have ever felt before.
I first started taking interest in the phenomena of God dreams about six months ago, on one dark and stormy night. If you haven't guessed it already, the reason why I'm into them is because I myself had one of these dreams. My God dream was very similiar to A's- except that I had no feeling of physical pain afterwards. I did, however, have a lingering feeling of awe for several minutes after the dream. Hell, I think it took me about week to finally forget about it entirely. Much like the aformentioned case, I considered converting to Christianity during that week. Unlike A, however, I did not convert.
I did, however, grow interested in why it may of happened. So I sent out emails to a few Psychologists and laymen alike, and was surprised by how little I got back. Finally, I decided to start from the ground up and use google. Anyways, after a short and lousy set of results, I found another guy who, like me, was an atheist who experienced a "God dream" here (although I haven't been able to find the article since).
Anyways, since I couldn't find much of value on the web in terms of "God dreams", I instead decided to look into regular dreams. My brother (which I mention far too many times on this blog), has done some research into dreaming, and I intend to check it out. I wish I could give you a comprehensive debunking of the phenomena- but at this current point in time I simply do not know enough to. I hope to be able to provide a follow up on this post in a few days/weeks.
Hey Andy, this is an interesting topic.
ReplyDeleteI've had some pretty vivid dreams that sometimes "blend" into the conscious realm after awaking. I had one recently where I died in a storm at sea. Upon dying, everything went black, and then, despite being "dead," I started to feel these intense vibrations. All of a sudden, I awoke (in my dream) and found myself viewing an entire galaxy. At that point I woke up for real, and I could still feel the vibrations! It felt like I was experiencing a mild earthquake, but nothing else around me was shaking. My heart was pounding and my chest felt very heavy, similar to what the guy at DC described.
Strangely enough, no thoughts about God or religion ever crossed my mind in the dream. The galaxy thing kind of caught me by surprise, but there was no sense of divine presence associated with it. As I observed the galaxy though, the vibrations did seem to grow in intensity, as if anticipating some greater event. Unfortunately, I woke up before anything else happened.
My immediate reaction to all this was that perhaps I had been given a glimpse of what happens to us when we die: we become Gods of our own galaxies! lol
Realistically though, I think the experience was probably just the result of an active imagination, mixed in with some possible sleep paralysis and high blood pressure. :p
Interesting dream. I guess it means Mormonism is correct, doesn't it ;)
ReplyDeleteActually, a few days ago I had a dream that also felt very real. In the dream, I was sleeping in my bed when suddenly, I got sleep paralysis! I was laying in my bed, unable to see, hear or move. After several minutes, I started being able to see a little- and than I was able to get up. So I was limping around, barely able to sense anything when all of a sudden, this apparition of a little girl appeared to me. I was terrified and tried to yell for my family, but I couldn't yell, no matter how hard I tried.
When I actually woke up, I felt terrible. Shortly afterwards, however, I started laughing. I realised that I probably read too much about sleep paralysis ;)