h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello all - great thread - couldn't resist joining in - so here I am.

Clive - I thought it might help (but happy to accept that I might be horribly wrong) to hear from someone who didn't grow up in the whole Christian thing. I'll try and give you the fast abridged version ... there will be a point eventually honest...

I was an absolutely certain atheist - no doubts at all. My brother, one of the most logical people there is became a Christian and a person I worked with really closely was also a Christian.

I was worried about them and so set out to convince them that they were putting their life in the hands of something fictional and all in their mind.

Well as you can probably guess as I uncovered more and more stuff many doubts about atheism started to emerge and I guess I moved much more to where you seem to be and the agnostic approach and still continued to ask loads of questions and started to look through the Bible as a reference book.

At this point I did start to think "oh oh" some of this stuff might actually be true. I guess I reacted a bit like you when someone suggested that the Noah flood was true. Except I was really, quite freaked out by the possibility - I sort of saw God as this guy raising us as his pets - in a sort of worm farm scenario - not a good feeling I can assure you.

Anyway I talked to my friend ay work about it and she said a lot of stuff that others have already said here but also...

"Well, if you think that God might possibly exist and that some of the stuff in the Bible might be true - why don't you ask Him (as in God) to help you?"

I of course replied -"What are you talking about??????" in a kind of "you really are mad, sort of tone"

She told me to just start chatting to God as I would a normal person who I wanted to get to know and ask him to reveal himself to me.

So - feeling more than a little foolish but thinking that I've got nothing to lose - I tried it. Anyway things started to happen around me, which just kept saying to me that there must be a God. All things that could be explained by co-incidence but lots and lots of them and all really specific. (I'm not going to ramble about them in this post)

I kind of got to the point where it was much more logical to believe than not and decided to commit to doing what God wanted in my life and see what happened. What happened was that at the moment I handed my life to God I became absolutely certain - i.e. I "knew" it was all true. I don't think this is how it works for most people but it did for me.

What I'm trying to say is that for me, it was lots of shuffling around finding stuff out and then a final leap from to follow God's plan.

Anyway this is now truly the ramble of all rambles - with no pictures either because it's so long since I've been in here that I can't remember where to get them from.

Mel

*awaits Clive's reaction silently*

Hey Melissa, good to meet you

Ditto ... and ditto ...

Hurrah I figured out the smileys. I was beginning to feel left out!

Hi Melissa,

Write something in your Personal Space, even if it's just "hi", so people can leave messages for you! I was going to give you some h2g2 tips, but can't! There's more than just Smileys to be had hereabouts!

- Shea

Um, hello again all. Not a lot to say except that the testimonies are interesting. Also, re Noah's Ark, do you believe that the flood covered the planet? Just wondering, since I find it hard to believe that Noah was rounding up kangaroos and bison.

Mmmm. Nice to meet you Mellissa I think what emerging most clearly from this forum recently (and I want to thank all of you guys again for indulging me on this one - you've been great ) is that I've probably gone as far as I can go with the whole "gee, I'm not really sure what I believe in tract" and that as Amy, Ddombrow, Bagpuss Mellissa and others have mentioned is that the next step is really go and look in the Bible and seek out my own feelings from what I find there. I haven't lloked at a bible since I was taken to Sunday school (lets see...I would have been 11 - 's at self! )

This guy Gideon left his copy in my rooom at uni so if I need it I know where to find it.

Clive

Good Luck - Clive - hope you sort it out - I'll be mentioning you in my next chat with "The big guy"

I agree Noah's Ark is a tricky one to understand in logical terms (as are some of the others - most of the miracles for example!!). There has been some archeological research recently which points to there having been a very large flood near Galilee (I think!) at about the right time. There's also been some research to say that the first humans did emerge from this area and slightly further South. So, if there had been a flood that covered just that area it would have still wiped out all mankind!!

I must admit I don't spend much time dwelling on these sort of questions. I do believe that the whole of the Bible is true but I think we haven't got the full picture to understand exactly what it all means. I get this feeling that when I finally get to Heaven - It's either not going to matter or I'm going to say (Aha - so that's what it was all about

Mel, you don't seem muddled at all to me. In fact, you've managed to unmuddle some things running through my own mind lately.
Perhaps you should call yourself "Melissa the Unmuddler"?

...you wouldn't be saying that if you could see the chaos I'm currently living and working in !!

Yes, but I'm sure it's an ordered chaos, where everything is where it's supposed to be, except when you can't find something, in which case someone else must have moved it.

If you saw what my bedroom looks like, you'd have every disease control and environmental agency on the planet converging on me.
As for my life... work from 10pm-6am, telly for three hours, sleep, back to work. The only people I meet are rejected proctologists trying to take my money

*Looks frantically for dictionary

I subscibe to the method of just piling everything onto my desk. The less frequently used (and therefore unimportnat stuff) should move out to the edges and eventually fall on the floor so that I can chuck it away and the important (and often used) stuff should stay in the middle

Now ... where did I put that important letter from the taxman?

Found the dictionary - yuk !!!

I am about as disorganized and chaotic as they come... except for when it comes to my books and my writing. My bookshelves are all in alphabetical order, if a bit dusty. And my writing notebooks are incredibly clean even without notes in the margins for the most part. My .zip disk with my writing is all categorized... These are really the only things I care to organize.

Everything else is just details.

I toss things into drawers every now and then, only to pull them out an hour or so later usually. Still, I'm neater than my roommate, but really that ain't sayin' much.

Hmmm... *wonders what her roommate for next year will be like... a mess or a neat freak*

Off to uni?

Dunno about anyone else but my halls of residence has a preponderence of single rooms (shared rooms are always a hassle - at the end of nearly two years both times, people I have known who have shared have moved out (not 'cos it was bad - DON'T PANIC AMY!) just that they both wanted more Privacy. Is it standard to have roomates at uni anywhere else? Another friend from America on h2g2 had a roomate at college. Is this the norm over there? (and I realsise I'm working from a a very limited poll...erm...2! ) but anyway...