I don't make a lot of personal posts so please bear with me. #Rufus hasn't been doing well for the past week or so. I mean, he's 13 (at least), and has slowed down due to age, but the past week or two he's been acting like every movement is a Herculean effort. A few times in the past couple of weeks his rear legs have given out on him completely to where I've had to pick him up and carry him which is, in itself, telling. Rufus has always hated being carried and struggled continuously when I did so. Yesterday while petting him I noticed two golf-ball sized things up under his chin. Now, they may be benign lipomas as Rufus is covered with them (one one each thigh, one on each shoulder, one on his chest and a few smaller bumps here and there) or they may be indicative of something else. I'm no vet and aside from emergency medic battlefield training I have no medical experience whatsoever, but these new things seem to be where your or mine lymph nodes are located....
Comments
The brain is a tricky computer because it is so influenced by bio-chemical reactions, often beneath our own consciousnesses.
I've had some amazing experiences with "Jesus" and "The Holy Spirit" and unless you've been there, you cannot imagine the power of these experiences, they are sometimes over whelming.
Add to that the desire to be unconditionally loved and accepted, it's a powerful draw, used successfully by so many cults.
I don't doubt the story or her sincerity, I've witnessed it before and talked to people out of many different lifestyles that came into belief in the Jesus and the mythology surrounding him.
Mike Doygun Or perhaps for frontal lobe epilepsy ;)
Dave Blair If she now believes that a true understanding (orthodox view) of scripture means that a person cannot be both gay and Christian, must she not also believe that the earth is 6000 old. A perfect example of destructive degenerative power of a religion.
As a mere hypothesis, and beside mental illness that could explain some cases, I think it is related with the foundations of their atheism:
People that are first skeptical, and thus atheist, will rarely become believers because the inner reasons they have for being non-believers won't change easily. On the other hand, those that are atheist just because they parents were, or because they hate some religion, or something that way that are mostly founded on external influences, could be attracted by a sect more easily than the firsts.
http://www.loudounprogress.org/?p=4569