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An article I read today got me to wondering about this. First off, Im not trying to convince anyone that a god exists. A quick perusal of my posting history will show that Ive spent my time here mostly in the "dont know" middle but leaning towards the atheistic arguments. Im simply asking out of curiosity what non believers do with new information that suggests a god exists, even if it is circumstantial and anecdotal.
The article I stumbled across today was about a kid who was severely injured in a car wreck at about 8 yrs old that killed his dad instantly and landed him in a coma with life threatening injuries. According to medical records he had to be revived 2-3 times. The pics of him on the hospital bed are horrific. He still has bad facial scars as an adult.
To the point, during some of his NDEs, he claims to have met his dead dad in heaven, along with 2 "siblings" who both died in miscarriages before birth ( hence the quotation marks around siblings). He had apparently never been told about the miscarriages that occurred before his birth. And he told his mom he knew his dad was dead because he met him in heaven.
So, as a nonbeliever, how do you process this sort of claim? There have been others where kids who have had NDEs report meeting relatives who died before they were born and they had no way of knowing of them. In this case it seems there are maybe 3 ways to view this.
1) He is accurately relating his experience.
2) He is lying about it, or his mother has convinced him to lie about it for some reason
3) He gained knowledge of these supposedly unknown relatives somehow that no one was aware of and created this as a part of a medical hallucination.
If you think #1 might just be true, what then do you do with the info?
If you wish to believe that either 2 or 3 is the answer, on what basis do you dismiss his story and leap to the conclusion he must either be lying or had some sort of unknown prior knowledge of the dead relatives and created the event in his mind from memories? Is automatically dismissing the idea as either a lie or a hallucination truly wanting to know the truth?
Many,if not almost all NDEs simply relate the experience of the individual without any apparent outside corroboration of the legitimacy of the event, which can easily be dismissed as some form of hallucination. Those that involve seeing dead relatives that the person evidently had no way of knowing of their existence pushes these beyond that easy dismissal of it "being all in the mind". So even if you are convinced these stories dont reflect reality, on what basis do you decide that these cant be true and are unworthy of consideration? And if you cant dismiss them as not worth looking into, what then do you do?
Again, not trying to alter anyones opinion. Im just curious if there is anything that would get a non believer to seriously consider the possibilty of a God.
We of course have to take his word he didn't know about his two dead siblings. I have seen Christians with the best of intentions lie through their teeth in the belief that the end--of converting someone to Jesus--justifies the means. What would convince me is something inexplicable such as a person who was known to not speak a word of Farsi come back from the dead speaking fluent Farsi, or someone who couldn't find middle C on a piano suddenly playing like Lang Lang. That would definitely convince me there was something out there. But these kinds of fantastic things never happen. It's ALWAYS "I found out about a dead sibling I never knew I had."
What would convince me is something inexplicable such as a person who was known to not speak a word of Farsi come back from the dead speaking fluent Farsi, or someone who couldn't find middle C on a piano suddenly playing like Lang Lang. That would definitely convince me there was something out there.
It wouldn’t convince me because there isn’t a way in which one could verify such as fact. How would you know for certain said person didn’t learn a little Farsi and simply deny having known it previously i.e. a hoax. It could also be a matter of losing/recalling a part of one’s memory.
There’s simply no way one could reasonably infer from such a statement the existence of a god yet alone establish with certainty it is a fact in and of itself.
But these kinds of fantastic things never happen. It's ALWAYS "I found out about a dead sibling I never knew I had."
It's always either some third-hand campfire story or something that's conveniently unverifiable.
Much hinges on the intense need most people have for certain things to be true. Their default stance is basically to assume these things to be true, ignore any contrary or lacking evidence or credibility, and enthusiastically embrace even the smallest observation that suggests it (could maybe be) true. In other words, super low evidential standards. Just the opposite of what is demanded by extraordinary and consequential truth-claims.
Actually, I would. But it would have to be REAL evidence, and not just, for example, YOUR personal experience.
I wonder why you think anyone would take your representation of atheists seriously, because anyone who reads this forum knows you are a theist.
Be honest, you wouldn't even consider YOUR OWN personal experience of God sufficient, right???? I don't know where this distrust of our own perceptions comes from. I have the psychological training to know about all of them. But learning about the ways our perceptions can be tricked or hearing about people who were confused or misled or faked their experiences should NOT alter YOUR confidence in your perceptions of reality.
We usually know when we are in a reliable state of mind, sober, and not under the influence of anything that might distort our perceptions. The absence of the types of things we have discovered about how our perception can be fooled or misled should be sufficient to eliminate any concerns. It takes very low self-esteem and a stupid skepticism to distrust the validity of your own perceptions, IMO. What I personally experience is what I am the most certain about.
Be honest, you wouldn't even consider YOUR OWN personal experience of God sufficient, right???? I don't know where this distrust of our own perceptions comes from. I have the psychological training to know about all of them. But learning about the ways our perceptions can be tricked or hearing about people who were confused or misled or faked their experiences should NOT alter YOUR confidence in your perceptions of reality.
We usually know when we are in a reliable state of mind, sober, and not under the influence of anything that might distort our perceptions. The absence of the types of things we have discovered about how our perception can be fooled or misled should be sufficient to eliminate any concerns. It takes very low self-esteem and a stupid skepticism to distrust the validity of your own perceptions, IMO. What I personally experience is what I am the most certain about.
???? If that's the case, then I think the difference between me and you is that I don't believe that I am an exception to the rule. We KNOW that human perception, while close enough to reality to get us around in our daily lives, is very imperfect. It is hampered by our limited range - we don't perceive many phenomena that manifestly exist - and by our biases, both those that are common to humans because of our evolution and those that we develop due to culture and experience.
My own experiences, like yours, are by definition subjective. I want something that has some objective reality outside my own head. Not because I have low self esteem, but because I've been around plenty of folks who were so wound up by what was going on in their own heads that they had lost touch with ordinary reality. You've never lived unless you have tried to convince someone that their thermostat was not spying on them.
???? If that's the case, then I think the difference between me and you is that I don't believe that I am an exception to the rule. We KNOW that human perception, while close enough to reality to get us around in our daily lives, is very imperfect. It is hampered by our limited range - we don't perceive many phenomena that manifestly exist - and by our biases, both those that are common to humans because of our evolution and those that we develop due to culture and experience.
My own experiences, like yours, are by definition subjective. I want something that has some objective reality outside my own head. Not because I have low self esteem, but because I've been around plenty of folks who were so wound up by what was going on in their own heads that they had lost touch with ordinary reality. You've never lived unless you have tried to convince someone that their thermostat was not spying on them.
(I once worked in a mental hospital.)
It is sad that your experience among the mentally ill biases you to think you are equally susceptible to such dysfunction! . I would expect you would know you are not mentally ill given the many examples of those who were! The psychological anomalies in human perception are just that, anomalies, and should NOT be believed to be our normal state.
???? If that's the case, then I think the difference between me and you is that I don't believe that I am an exception to the rule. We KNOW that human perception, while close enough to reality to get us around in our daily lives, is very imperfect. It is hampered by our limited range - we don't perceive many phenomena that manifestly exist - and by our biases, both those that are common to humans because of our evolution and those that we develop due to culture and experience.
My own experiences, like yours, are by definition subjective. I want something that has some objective reality outside my own head. Not because I have low self esteem, but because I've been around plenty of folks who were so wound up by what was going on in their own heads that they had lost touch with ordinary reality. You've never lived unless you have tried to convince someone that their thermostat was not spying on them.
(I once worked in a mental hospital.)
So Have I.
It was a few observations during an internship at a state hospital that led me to think about religion, religious experiences, and Deities, especially around the delusional patients and being in Texas, many of those delusions were Devine in nature. A lecturer pointed out early on that in Texas, because religion was so prevalent in culture there, many of the delusions we would encounter would seem to be religious in nature. As he pointed out, if we were in , say Washington DC, we would be encountering the same number of patients with delusions, but those would be political in nature.
But here is a point I have not seen anyone mention yet. We as humans Love fiction. We buy Novels to the point that they become Million sellers, we take time to read the daily cartoons in the papers, we watch TV of sitcoms, crime shows, like they are going out of style, according to Neilson ratings, and we love our movies, Horror, Sci-Fi (Star Wars, Star Trek...) and any other fictional presentation that makes our lives entertaining and allows an escape from the mundane day to day reality of life.
Why not then create a God to fulfill that imaginary part of our lives, the Supernatural?
It would seem that Alien, Bigfoot, Ghost shows are proliferating on what used to be documentary channels . I guess A documentary of English Cheesemaking just is not that interesting compared to when ghosts attack bigfoot....
Humans love Fiction. And many of us can tell the difference between the two. I am 99.9% certain that the Sasquatch does not exist. Same with Deities, God, Ghosts, Aliens on earth.......NOW, IF someone captures a Bigfoot and parades it on the News and delivers it to the National Zoo for observation then OK that 0.01% was there...but until then, I am fascinated and entertained by fictional Bigfoot stories. BUT 13% of all Americans Believe Bigfoot is REAL ! And while I personally find the Bigfoot genre to be entertaining, I do not believe it to be any more real than any other monster or god.
In regards to a belief in God, well, proof would not be belief, it would be knowledge. If we had experiments that Demonstrated a god, then that would be Data. o far, we have none, Zero. Zilch. SO Circumstantial evidence, a "God of the gaps" so to speak, is really nothing more than fiction at this point. SO what Evidence is there? none at all, circumstantial or otherwise that I have ever seen or been presented.
It is sad that your experience among the mentally ill biases you to think you are equally susceptible to such dysfunction! . I would expect you would know you are not mentally ill given the many examples of those who were! The psychological anomalies in human perception are just that, anomalies, and should NOT be believed to be our normal state.
And it's delusional for you to think that you are immune. After all, the truly insane have no clue that they ARE insane. They think they know what is really going on here.
And it's delusional for you to think that you are immune. After all, the truly insane have no clue that they ARE insane. They think they know what is really going on here.
It is sad that normal people have been convinced that they are not normal or can't trust themselves to know whether or not they are insane just because the insane can't. You are seriously misguided about mental health and psychological functioning, in my professional psychological opinion!.
It is sad that normal people have been convinced that they are not normal or can't trust themselves to know whether or not they are insane just because the insane can't. You are seriously misguided about mental health and psychological functioning, in my professional psychological opinion!.
Are you a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist?
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. I would expect you would know you are not mentally ill given the many examples of those who were! The psychological anomalies in human perception are just that, anomalies, and should NOT be believed to be our normal state.
