Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
He's only skeptical about modern day personal experiences. People thousands of years ago recorded their personal experiences and THAT is proof of the supernatural for BF.
OK, I get what you are saying. To take it further, perhaps to one person burning their tongue might mean something to them while to another person, it just means the coffee is too hot.
I choose to eat eggs and you can't stop me, dammit. Smoking was definitely bad for me, there is scientific evidence for it, but I quit because it got too expensive, and what helped me quit was a bit voodooish, even though it is supposed to be scientific.
I don't care, because it worked, and maybe that's what a lot of this comes down to.
Don't take it personally. It isn't a way of debunking the supernatural claim totally, but positing a rational alternative explanation which deprives the supernatural of the 'there is no possible alternative explanation' which is how that ploy works.
There is an element of cart before horse or rather what you may choose to regard as inexplicable and what you may not. What works may indeed work. It may work because you think it works. If we (or at least you) don't know how it works, then the supernatural becomes a perfectly valid alternative that can be taught in the science class as an alternative theory.
I won't go into the effective sameness of someone maintaining belief in crop circles or flat earth and someone maintaining belief NDE's or cancer -remission, because one is dismissing the known natural explanation and the other is dismissing the possible existence of an unknown natural explanation. The former looks nutty but the latter looks perfectly reasonable. But it isn't - when you stop regarding it as unexplained and start investing belief in it as 'aliens, the supernatural or God.
I remember my first panic attack, when I felt detached from reality itself. I actually thought that maybe I had died and that “this is what life after death is like.” I also entertained the possibility of demon possession (I hadn’t completely shaken the fundamentalist Christianity I was raised in).
In other words, I automatically thought that the experience was something supernatural. And there I was, living in a scientific age and in the process of earning a scientific degree. Imagine if I had been a deeply religious person living in the Middle Ages. I can understand why people believed in “demon possession” back then.
As you know, it’s not just me. Plenty of people, when faced with seemingly inexplicable phenomena, automatically assume that the phenomena are supernatural.
Don't take it personally. It isn't a way of debunking the supernatural claim totally, but positing a rational alternative explanation which deprives the supernatural of the 'there is no possible alternative explanation' which is how that ploy works.
There is an element of cart before horse or rather what you may choose to regard as inexplicable and what you may not. What works may indeed work. It may work because you think it works. If we (or at least you) don't know how it works, then the supernatural becomes a perfectly valid alternative that can be taught in the science class as an alternative theory.
I won't go into the effective sameness of someone maintaining belief in crop circles or flat earth and someone maintaining belief NDE's or cancer -remission, because one is dismissing the known natural explanation and the other is dismissing the possible existence of an unknown natural explanation. The former looks nutty but the latter looks perfectly reasonable. But it isn't - when you stop regarding it as unexplained and start investing belief in it as 'aliens, the supernatural or God.
I wasn't taking anything personally. I suspect that sometimes my sense of humor is missed by others. Sorry about that.
I look first and foremost for the rational, scientific explanation, and even if I can't explain something, I am not sure that what those of us who think we've had "supernatural" experiences aren't simply another part of the natural.
Even an atheist can have moments of paying heed to seemingly inexplicable direction by their intuition to do something that doesn't seem logical and cannot identify where the information came from, but it turns out to be accurate. Is that "supernatural"? Whispers in the ear from another realm? Or is something going on in our brains, a way of picking up information that we have not yet identified?
Don't know if you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's books, but I recommend Blink, which addresses how/why people know things but don't know how they know them.
I have read Gladwells highly reasoned (of course) books, but no I don't think when my fourth great grandfather appears in my dream raving on to me about the kingdom of Wessex, that at that age I had never heard of that its something coming from storage.I had never heard of Wessex at all,I see spirits why couldn't I also get communication from them.In my tribe everyone understands your ancestors communicate with you regularly in dreams but here we have to reduce everything to the mechanics of the brain,everything has to be reasoned and reduced to brain malfunctions,errors,processing it's just so mechanical and materialist,and is turning us into spiritless machines ourselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
Whispers in the ear from another realm? Or is something going on in our brains, a way of picking up information that we have not yet identified?
Don't know if you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's books, but I recommend Blink, which addresses how/why people know things but don't know how they know them.
I wasn't taking anything personally. I suspect that sometimes my sense of humor is missed by others. Sorry about that.
I look first and foremost for the rational, scientific explanation, and even if I can't explain something, I am not sure that what those of us who think we've had "supernatural" experiences aren't simply another part of the natural.
Even an atheist can have moments of paying heed to seemingly inexplicable direction by their intuition to do something that doesn't seem logical and cannot identify where the information came from, but it turns out to be accurate. Is that "supernatural"? Whispers in the ear from another realm? Or is something going on in our brains, a way of picking up information that we have not yet identified?
Don't know if you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's books, but I recommend Blink, which addresses how/why people know things but don't know how they know them.
That's ok. I was sticking a Rukh there in case you made a move, not because I thought you would.
I can quite undertand the process of thought you set out, but it isn't rationally sound.
And the choice between rationally sound and not is better - so we ratiobnalists aregue that not.
And the reason is that it is better in the long run to believe what is as verified or rational as possible and not believe (just keep it in the "Unknown" pending tray).
We saw above how Mystic made the usual appeal to unknowns as evidence of his beliefs. This is why his arguments are screwed from the start. And it is why all appeals to the supernatural are, if you will forgive the expression - screwed from the start.
I noted Kathie's impressive list of evidence, but where is the verification or validation?
We get these claims - always have - and we either get no validation or , when we do, it turns out Not to be quite as amazing as presented.
In the early days here there was a debate about miracles, and while Fatima was going very nicely the Catholic priests who survived Hiroshima was tougher to find possible alternative explanations for. There was a much heftier building and it wasn't in the centre, and all the facts weren't given. So it wasn't ....Quite....as miraculous as it looked when presented by the advocate.
So we do have to regard anecdotes - never mind bald Claims - as no evidence, even though it can annoy the believer very much indeed. And I assure you that isn't half the fun of it at all.
I had a personal, though not subjective experience once. Many years ago, my brother and I visited our mother in the hospital. As we approached an elevator a man got on just before we reached it. As the door began to close we reached it and stopped the door from closing and got on and went to the next floor.
When we got off the elevator I asked my brother if we hadn't seen a man get on the elevator just before we did. He said that he had thought so too. The man we had both seen get on the elevator just a moment before we did was not on that elevator when we got on. He had just vanished.
The explanation? Beats me.
I believe the supernatural certainly exists. Why should this realm. . . this plane of existence be the only one?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.