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Author Topic:   Evidence for the Supernatural
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 19 of 107 (44955)
07-03-2003 10:18 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by truthlover
07-02-2003 12:27 AM


Re: Natural/Supernatural
quote:
I think supernatural things occur looking quite natural pretty regularly. I think thunder can be sent at the exact time to get a message across to a person, and then it's natural and supernatural both.
So, basically, everything that happens might be supernatural, and it's up to the individual to decide if it was or not?
So, considering that people can convince themselves of just about anything if they want to, there's no real way to tell the difference.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by truthlover, posted 07-02-2003 12:27 AM truthlover has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by Peter, posted 07-04-2003 4:45 AM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 20 of 107 (44958)
07-03-2003 10:33 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by truthlover
07-02-2003 12:39 AM


quote:
Again, I don't think any one incident proves anything, but when people turn to God, ask for help, and experience "coincidences" like this repeatedly, then maybe you don't have repeatable, testable, scientific theory, but you do begin to have something that would carry weight in a courtroom.
You are right, but the issue here is, are these events actually happening repeatedly at a rate which is greater than chance would predict or do people just remember the "hits" and disregard the "misses"?
It has long been understood that the latter is much more likely the case.
This and other normal tendencies for humans to recognize patterns and cause and effect relationships can lead us down the garden path into thinking that "something is going on" when there really isn't.
That's why the scientific method is such a powerful tool. It is specifically designed to compensate for and eliminate many of these natural human tendencies to make connections when there really aren't any.
On the other hand, maybe God is punishing your mom by giving her a lot of back pain. Maybe the closeness and bonding she would have experienced with the rest of the office staff had her back gone out and they had had to take her to the hospital would have been a truly great experience, but God denied all of them that by making the files easily accessable.
See how easy it is to pick what situations you would like God to be responsible for and which ones you don't?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by truthlover, posted 07-02-2003 12:39 AM truthlover has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by nator, posted 07-09-2003 11:44 PM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 24 of 107 (45058)
07-04-2003 8:57 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by Peter
07-04-2003 4:45 AM


Re: Natural/Supernatural
quote:
We just don't know. Anything else is a matter of belief.
So, are you saying that nobody knows anything and all perceptions and versions of reality are to be considered equal?
So, the 10 who say they are Elvis really might all be Elvis, and that this is equally likely as all ten of them being crazy?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Peter, posted 07-04-2003 4:45 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by Peter, posted 07-04-2003 9:09 AM nator has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 27 of 107 (45572)
07-09-2003 11:44 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by nator
07-03-2003 10:33 AM


bump.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 20 by nator, posted 07-03-2003 10:33 AM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by nator, posted 07-11-2003 10:33 AM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 28 of 107 (45747)
07-11-2003 10:33 AM
Reply to: Message 27 by nator
07-09-2003 11:44 PM


bump.
Truthlover?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by nator, posted 07-09-2003 11:44 PM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 29 by nator, posted 07-12-2003 4:47 PM nator has replied
 Message 31 by truthlover, posted 07-16-2003 12:26 PM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 29 of 107 (45844)
07-12-2003 4:47 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by nator
07-11-2003 10:33 AM


bump

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by nator, posted 07-11-2003 10:33 AM nator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by nator, posted 07-13-2003 12:03 AM nator has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 30 of 107 (45872)
07-13-2003 12:03 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by nator
07-12-2003 4:47 PM


bump

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by nator, posted 07-12-2003 4:47 PM nator has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 35 of 107 (46274)
07-16-2003 7:13 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by truthlover
07-16-2003 12:26 PM


Hi TL,
Yep, you were right about what I was interested in you responding to, and to be frank, I like reading what you write a great deal, so I was interested in what YOU had to say.
quote:
If, however, the things I feel inside, the directions I feel I'm given, are not just imagination or subjective, then it's not just picking and choosing; it just might be the guidance of God's Spirit.
Very true. However, this is not really how you began the thread. You began by ststing what happened to your Mom that day in the office, and saying that a lot of such occurrences add up to something significant, even so significant that it may start to be admissable in court.
That's making a claim that you believe you can demonstrate the actions of God in reality.
Belief and subjective feelings inside I have no qualms with. It's the former claim of yours and the like that must be rigorously examined.
quote:
I could list a thousand circumstances that I thought were the hand of God. You could work at explaining them. Some of them would be easily explainable (50-50 chance).
Oh, I think I would have better odds than that.
quote:
Others would be far more unlikely, and you could say that unlikely things happen to people, just by odds.
Exactly true.
quote:
I can't calculate the odds of things happening to me.
It's not so much about the odds as it is about your selective memory. You remember the "hits" and disregard the "misses". Or, you attribute the good things or powerful things that happen to you to God's intervention and the mundane urge you had to scratch your backside you attribute to nothing at all. Or maybe you attribute it to forgetting to put the fabric softener in the wash.
quote:
I can't judge my psychological stability when I had such an intense experience back in 1982 that I promised myself to God. Maybe I was just having an LSD flashback or something. (Actually, I didn't do anything like that often enough to be risking flashbacks, I don't think--just a statement in my own defense.)
You don't have to be unstable to be vulnerable to fallacies. In fact, the smarter you are, the easier you can convince yourself, because smarter people are better at recognizing and making connections.
Look, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm just making the point that the experiences that you have had are meaningful to you because of the connections you made to your emotions, with your very natural and human selective memory, etc. We ALL do this, all the time.
It's just that when you start claiming that you have something that would hold up in a court of law, well, I'm just going to grill you on it, you know?
In closing, I'd like to say that I think that doubt, in particular, self-doubt about what one knows is the best path to truth and true knowledge.
------------------
"Evolution is a 'theory', just like gravity. If you don't like it, go jump off a bridge."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by truthlover, posted 07-16-2003 12:26 PM truthlover has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 36 by truthlover, posted 07-16-2003 10:24 PM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 37 of 107 (46294)
07-16-2003 11:34 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by truthlover
07-16-2003 10:24 PM


Wow, a journal? That's really cool, TL.
Please, though, you don't actually have to prove anything to me at all. I don't want to, in a sense, "make" you do more work or take up more of your time than you really want to donate here.
I'd be interested in reading it, although I do have to say that when you say that you are "good at noticing the misses", you are kind of missing my point.
How are you going to attend to the misses if a "miss" is something, in many cases, a non-event?
What does a non-coincidence look like?
That's why you need to pick a very specific prediction or thing to happen or not happen by a certain time and see what happens, preferably judged and recorded by a third party.
I know this probably sounds nitpicky and tedious to you, but it's how we figure out if things are happening in reality or not.
And hey, don't worry about taking a while to answer. I was "bumping" the thread as much to remind myself to not forget about it.
Thanks.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by truthlover, posted 07-16-2003 10:24 PM truthlover has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 43 by truthlover, posted 07-17-2003 11:05 AM nator has not replied

  
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