Unknowns comments on Questions on Theism - Less Wrong
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I am an atheist. However I have personally had an experience that surely seemed like my prayers being directly answered. When I was young, from about 6 to 9, I would see these weird bright lights in my field of vision. Very often when I closed my eyes and frequently in normal daylight. Think greenish orbs superimposed over my field of vision (I could still see fine).
I was very freaked out about these lights. At 9 I prayed to god something similar to "I am not sure if you are real or not. But if you are real please makes these lights go away. If you answer my prayers I will know you are real and no longer doubt. Please help me."
Soon thereafter the lights went away. And until I was much older I considered this very convincing proof for the existence of God. However I have since been convinced the prior of God existing is so low that I should not believe despite my personal experiences. Seeing does not always justify belief. Maybe I was hallucinating the lights or a medical condition improved by itself. But to this day I am still not sure what to make of my experience and whether I should believe in God.
Despite feeling belief in God is reasonable (even if I do not believe) I am very confused by people who are confident in a specific theory of God (say Catholicism).
Something like this happened to me a long time ago too. I can't give the exact details because the incident would be recognizable and I need to preserve my anonymity. However, basically I wanted person X to do Y, and X absolutely did not want to do Y. So I prayed something like "God, unless you tell X explicitly to do Y, they're not going to do it, please tell them to do it."
The next day a total stranger (to both of us) came up to X and told them they had a message from God for them and that they should do Y.