What Sparked Your Interest?

[TravisMontgomery]

By this, I mean, your initial interest that started you down the road that eventually led here to Skeptiko.

Not to burden anyone but lately I haven't had that much interest in the forum discussion or podcast here and I feel some others would agree. If anyone wishes to contribute at all I am just hoping to get some interesting conversation and insight in to our forum users. I don't necessarily want to center anybody out because they had an experience, intuition or epiphany so please do not make fun if anybody reveals a story containing something you thoroughly disbelieve in. But if anybody does than it is more than welcome. I am just hoping to start a harmless discussion about what might have started all of this for us.

A fascinating question to me, and one that may have drove my initial interest in some topics discussed on Skeptiko, started from my interest in what is reality. Which I know is now such a broad question to most but when I first started it was the jumping off point of ignorance lol When I started to explore our current understanding of cosmology I was blown away. It was the most fascinating thing for me to come from home school and just read any of my brother's books on cosmology, physics or just search online for articles. (Before the days of Google lol) That was just the start but probably is what sparked my interest in to philosophical thought more than anything else. An interest in the universe, its structure, creation, and inhabitants.

Eventually, I branched off from our "concrete" understanding of the universe to more abstract ideas, eventually landing in fringe areas of interest and coming 'round back to reading about these subjects as scarcely as I could using academic literature. It wasn't until philosophy of mind was an interest that I started exploring paranormal subjects but it's always been from an academic point of view and never experiential. I have never had much more than a sight of light out of the corner of my eye to draw my attention to anything weird. And that wasn't weird.

Part of me wishes I could have an experience like some on this forum claim to have but I'm not really sure where I'd stand on it if I did. I might just brush it off or I might run with it, too far. But I think that gives me an okay position: the chance to observe others and listen to their stories honestly. I have no interest in debunking, unless the person is spouting pure b.s. that I can smell through my monitor screen. I merely just want to learn and explore at this moment. I do have a "crazy line" but it moves on a daily basis. For now I feel sitting on the fence and observing, until I know or experience a bit more, is an appropriate place to be.

But I will chime in from time to time so you know I still exist :P

 

[Elessar]

In my case it began 23 years ago when, after deciding to go out my back door and discover whatever animals (but especially birds) I could find, I had a peregrine falcon land on a lamppost in my back yard, 20 feet away from me. Up to that point I had been a rather lost soul-nominally in the skeptic/atheist camp, but dissatisfied with their answers. That bird sparked something in me, got me completely turned around and radically transformed my consciousness.

Such numinous animal encounters have continued, off and on, until the present day-had another one yesterday in point of fact.

So I have searched for a community like this one for awhile now-glad to have found it, even if have some quibbles here and there with what other posters say.

 

[Typoz]

It's hard to put my finger on a particular 'spark'. But one comes to mind. After finishing university, I kept in touch with several very good friends from that time. Unlike today's connected world, in those days the simplest means of communication was the letter, written on paper and sent by post. Such communication was sporadic, we'd go for weeks without contact. Then I'd decide to write a letter. The very next day I'd receive a letter written/posted simultaneously with my own. This crossing of letters in the post was something which aroused my curiosity. It happened too often to be ignored. Sometimes we'd even refer to the same subjects, even though these might be trivial and not linked to the news or current events for example.

The outcome of such experiences wasn't to turn me in to some sort of committed believer. Rather it just raised many questions and opened my thoughts to whole realms of ideas I'd previously not explored.