My blanket lay at the edge of the edge of the beach, right where the sand turns to sparse grass—and the clouds, a high and milky white mess on a hazy blue background.
The forecast called 40% chance of rain today, but nothing looked imminent. I closed my eyes and the world around me started to dissolve. My senses heightened in their fading and hearing beyond the crowd to the surf, the waves blended into a monologue of eternal, blissful siesta.
A distant dog-bark echoed my direction long away through a gentle breeze. A pre-dreamy, drowsy calm invaded my physical being and time seemed a stand still—then it happened—I heard it. Like a bullet parsing through time-frozen air molecules, a shwooshing sound with the grace of a high-speed zipper in slow motion. Then, it hit me—a single rain drop on the inside of my forearm.
Wetting my stratum corneum, somatic receptors fire a signal through a thousand miles of road-map nerves at light speed, landing in my well mapped sensory cortex, eliciting a preconditioned response from an altogether, other part of my brain, the frontal cortex (which is unique to humans) Aah, god is good (from the memory banks of indoctrination—our belief)
“Beliefs originate from what we hear – and keep on hearing from others, ever since we were children“—Indian Journal of Medicine
I have no evidence it rained that day, but I felt it, I know it. The news said there was no precipitation, but I know—I even heard it gently censure me from near slumber.
This is exactly the evidence for god—because it was trained and ingrained. Did it rain and did I hear the drop coming, or in my hypnogogic, near-sleep state, did I dream it? My first response is proof something is off—I don’t even believe what still lingers from all those years, but like habits are—in the neurons like a ping-back from a children’s blog you quit enabling many years ago.
Springtime Oregon Grape. Mahonia aquifolium in juvenile yellow.
TheCommonAtheist 
This is a lovely post! And … re “fire a signal through a thousand miles of road-map nerves at light speed” nerve impulses top out somewhere near 200 mph, not exactly light speed. This is slow enough that if you touch the tip of your nose with your fingertip, the distance traveled between touch points and the brain are different enough to create a lag. So, why do we feel that the touches are simultaneous? because we have trained our brains to tell us what we know to be true, rather than what is actually true. This is also another religion supporting function of human brains.
Thanks for a lovely thought picture (newspaper headline will be “Drop Hits Drip” or some such, so don’t listen to them).
LikeLiked by 5 people
Haha. Yes you’re correct on all accountants. “Like” light speed is the feeling I get. When I was a kid I learned about light-speed and at the time I had an old, warm-up fluorescent light in my room. I could turn it on and make it to the bed before it would light up. I though I was fast—really fast!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Jim… not sure the analogy holds for me. Rain is a physical manifestation, so either it rained, or it didn’t. A drop of water from a passing cloud does not a rain make, IMO. If I get soaked, that being the evidence, then it rained. Faith is something else. It cannot by definition rely on any kind of external, physical, material evidence. A personal example: I know that “God” exists as a personal fact. I don’t need faith for that, I have all the personal evidence needed. But it isn’t like rain. If two people lie side by side on a beach and it begins to rain, they will both get wet. However, if one has a vision of whatever, there’s a very good chance the other will not observe anything. That takes nothing from the vision – if that were the case I would have to vociferously deny most of my existence. Visions are real, they don’t need faith, they are not a matter of belief unless imposed on others. Religions require faith because there is no evidence, either material or visionary in religions. Rain requires no faith, it is or it isn’t and it leaves a mark. Visions require no faith because they leave their marks within the visionary. I think that covers what I wanted to say.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Are you familiar with hypnagogia? You feel a slap or your name called in near sleep. Most common is a loud clash, a metal to metal cymbal sound. My wife made me get up the other night for this loud noise that nobody heard but her. Supernatural, or auditory hallucination?
LikeLike
Yes, I was just expounding on the analogy. But please note that even one drop of rain is a material manifestation, not based on faith. It may be that the biggest problem with believers is, they do not understand the fundamentals of faith, that being “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” When a Christian or other believer points to some physical manifestation as proof of her/his faith, they are actually calling their God a liar for to need some form of physical manifestation to prove the validity of one’s faith is denial of such faith.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Nice. Thank you
LikeLike
Thanks Jim. I didn’t know what it was called but I am thoroughly aware of such manifestation – it happens to me on a daily basis, sleeping or even awake. Something falls and breaks; someone calls my name loudly, or gives me a different name, for example, walking through a thick clump of willows by the river bank one spring day, a female voice called out to me, “You are Erin Willowitch”. I had never heard that name before so I wrote it down and tried it on for size. She’s actually one of my “partials” as one of those people/entities who share a substantial part of your mind with you.
Supernatural or auditory hallucination? For me it doesn’t matter, just what I can “get” from the experience, one of which is, I’m not alone, never alone. If something falls and breaks, that’s a warning to be more than usual careful that day. One could also claim such directives are conscience talk. The thing is to not casually dismiss such communications as disruptions or useless. Nothing can ever be useless.
LikeLiked by 2 people
And I am not discounting the idea that others may have intuition I do not. But I struggle to see the connections when everyone is falling for the same calculated ideas.
LikeLike
OK, let me try again. Dreams, lucid dreaming, visions, hallucinations, astral travel, past lives remembrances, visions (visual, auditory, tactile) have nothing at all to do with faith. All of the above are part of our reality, some experiencing “that world” more than others, some simply blocking it because they fear it. I live in it and for it. I had real faith once. I believed as much as anyone could ever believe, but my faith stood diametrically opposite my vision realm. I had to choose, so I chose the one that had the power to change me. Faith has no power to change anyone; people of faith will do what their nature drives them to do, and either they will credit their faith if it is a good thing, or blame their lack of faith if/when they fail at the nebulous “God’s law” tribunal. In the end they will continue to do what they have the propensity to do and their faith will be useless. If they are prone to steal, or to kill, they will use some biblical subterfuge to justify themselves in the doing of it. They rely on cheap grace for their salvation: just believe in Jesus and all your sins are instantly forgiven. It says so on the CG can label. That is why religious people can easily be the very worst of sinners and not give a damn.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Correction-add on: “Dreams, lucid dreaming, visions, hallucinations, astral travel, past lives remembrances, visions (visual, auditory, tactile) have nothing at all to do with faith.
I should have added imagination and intuition. We are made of such things, like it or not. Art is imagination, is it not? Does it take faith to be an artist?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe we “interpreted” his post differently, but I got the sense that he was saying, in his mind, he felt the drop and thus, it was a “sure sign” there was “rain” in the air. But there really wasn’t. Which is exactly what believers to.
LikeLiked by 2 people
… what believers DO. Sheesh, I must start reading before I post!
LikeLiked by 1 person
If anyone came to a belief in any god due to real physical evidence, we all need to know. I have been suffering through an episode of The Atheist Experience, with Tracy Harris trying to get a caller to say what god is (much less why she believes it). Guess what? God is love. Well, there ya go folks. All metaphysical mysteries of the universe solved in three little words.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Well love is all individually defined and everyone settles on what works for them. Talk about ambiguity. I guess god is whatever you want or interpret, because he’s everything?
LikeLiked by 2 people
FWIW, Godgle offers *About 20,300,000 results (0.54 seconds)* for “God is Love”
https://www.wordnik.com/words/Godgle
Douglas Adams’ 42 still works for me though. 🙂
LikeLiked by 3 people
It’s as good as any. Especially on the degree of refractory for a rainbow to form, which is a symbol of gods covenant to never flood the earth again. It’s allgodallthetime.
LikeLike
The more abstract a believer makes god to be the more worthless the whole concept becomes
LikeLiked by 2 people
But was your arm wet, or not? Maybe you just spit on yourself in hypnagogic reflex? Inquiring minds want to know!
Nice Berberis photo. Sounds like you’re having an idyllic time in Panama. Gonna get out of there before heat and humidity get to you?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m in Washington right now. No on the wet arm, but I don’t remember checking. Heat and humidity is very fine with me and all the breezy pacific air. It’s over halfway through the dry season now anyhow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And maybe i did do the sleep apnea snort! I didn’t think of that.
LikeLiked by 1 person