I would never have guessed this issue would be so complicated to explain.
It's so difficult because...
But though you don't say so, you probably mention crop circles because of the possibility of an unearthly origin.
No. Like I said, one step at a time for me. I don't believe crop circles have an unearthly origin. I'm not arguing three steps in advance, trying to establish that because some event happened, that therefore God exists, aliens exist, or any other such thing.
That's a strictly anecdotal conclusion. It has no evidence at all.
Of course it is. The reason that this is so difficult is because you think I'm saying things I'm not. I'm not asking you to draw anecdotal conclusions on anything.
I've never gotten past trying to argue that multiple anecdotes--of the right type, looked at and considered--can establish there's something to look at.
I believe that God answered our prayers concerning my nephew,
but I have never argued that at any point in this thread. We never got that far. I have only argued for what I've argued for. Yes, I want to argue that there's at least some cause to believe that God at least may answered that prayer, but we've never gotten that far.
First, I wanted to argue that anecdotes, enough of them and of the right quality--and the quality of anecdotes can be examined, and y'all have said that several times in your posts in so many words--can establish that there is something unusual, or at least something that reasonably appears to be unusual, is going on.
If that can be established, then we can talk about why or why not a person might allow the possibility that it was divine intervention.
But we've never gotten far enough to discuss that. Y'all have jumped ahead and taken my arguments as arguments that there was divine intervention, but I've really always been at step one--anecdotes can establish there's something to look at and discuss.
Even if we get past that and get to the discussion about causation, I have no intentions of claiming I can prove causation. I'll I intend to argue is that there's enough evidence to cause a reasonable, unbiased person to say, "Wow, I wouldn't just dismiss something like that."
I'm not arguing that God can be proven or that divine intervention can be proven in my nephew's case, or in the truck driving through the wall in that guy's office, or in my friend's house selling after "God" told him it would. If we ever get there, which we haven't, my intention was only to argue against the common claim made here on EVC that the possibility of divine intervention is about the same as the possibility that pink unicorns created the universe.
However, we're not there. I'm arguing, and have always been arguing that enough anecdotes, of the right quality, can establish that there's enough likelihood of something unusual going on that it ought to be seriously looked at.
If that could ever be admitted, then I would argue that in the absence of good, double-blind, scientific studies, an ongoing watch to see if these unusual experiences happen regularly--more regularly than ought to be accounted for by chance--and in connection with prayer or with circumstances closely associated with events of religious significance, would give a reasonable person cause to say, "You know, it looks like there might be something to all this."
That's as far as I even want to go, but we've never gotten that far, because I can't get y'all to straight out admit that enough anecdotes, of the right quality, can be compelling, or at least decent, evidence that there's something worth asking about and investigating.
Well, you do admit it, then you deny it. But I think it's because you think I'm taking that one admission as proof of a lot more than you're admitting.
I'm not.
Perhaps you're saying that even in the absence of scientific study it is obvious that they were created by a civilization, and that anecdotal data is sufficient to reach this conclusion. I agree.
This is all I've asked for to this point. Nothing more.
think your point is that many anecdotal observations are very useful, and you're correct. We all live our lives this way. We don't require scientific studies of the approaching dark clouds before we start closing the car windows and putting away the lawn tools.
Thank you, but now we're at post 271, and there's no time left to discuss the rest.
With this admission, my next point would be to ask/argue/discuss the importance/reliability of ongoing observation. But maybe that can wait for another thread. There are things I'd love to talk about concerning stories like omnivorous's in
the synchronicity thread. I suspect y'all would say just chance, but I'd like to talk about how reasonable it is to draw a conclusion that it's chance vs. no conclusion at all vs. concluding it's fate's intervention, and whether such stories make it more reasonable to conclude there's some unknown influence guiding or at least occasionally intervening in things than to simply venture an assertion that pink unicorns created the universe.
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