Jun 20 2011: Sorry to answer your question, I think that stress is correlated to one's belief in God. However, it is not a simple linear relationship. If you believe in God through words, it will probably be difficult to reconcile your experience of the world with the words of God. I think many people experience this when they cannot relate their personal experience with the word. I have personally had experience with this, where I felt that my reality and the bible's reality could not be compatible. This can lead to a lot of stress because there is an struggle within you between what you believe in words and what you can feel. On the other hand, I know there are people who see God through their experiences. Rather than strictly following the words of a religion, they choose to focus on their experiences with God to strengthen their faith. In this way, I still think they experience stress when people question them about their faith, but they can also find comfort by reliving their memories of spiritual experiences
Jun 20 2011: Hey, I think that what is so hard for a religious belief to provide complete comfort for humans is that religion is centered around words. Even those of us who think we have strong faith may be unconsciously uncertain because we cannot observe God intuitively, that is through sight, hearing and the other senses, which are our primary tools to observe the world around us. Experience is the ultimate way in which we interact with our environment. Most of us know intuitively that we can learn much more about a person by meeting them face to face than simply reading about them in a book. By meeting them, even if they do not say a word, we can gather much information about their personalities. I believe that the authority people place on words of the bible and other holy books to tell them about their world, over their own experience, is what makes religion so hard to have faith in. Language is an abstract construct which we humans have created. Although words can take on more meaning than their definition by relating to personal experiences, they are still an incomplete representation of reality. The world is so complex and so interconnected, that words are simply not comprehensive enough for us to understand the world through. I know most of us have probably have had experiences that makes us speechless, unable to describe the event through words. In fact, the most meaningful communication I have had with some friends were times when we rarely spoke, but when we felt an almost telepathic connection between us. I hope this was good for you =)
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A comment on Conversation: is Stress correlated to to the level of believing and loving God?
A comment on Conversation: is Stress correlated to to the level of believing and loving God?