Religious Experiences - Evidence of God(s)?

Hi Straggler,Just passing through so make of them what you will. I'll stick to examples that might last longer than a snowball in hell -1) The Case of the Missing Gloves.I was a new believer at the time, without much of a clue of God. It was high summer in Ireland and I was leaving work. I decided to slip the bike gloves under the bungee cord strapped to the pillion - enjoying the coolness of 70mph air over my hands at risk of road-rashed hands. I headed down to my mams for a visit - 50 miles ride say. I stayed for dinner and headed home in the dark - 20 miles from her place. After I locked up the bike, I reached for the gloves - GONE!Shit!!. Not only were they very expensive, but they also fitted like ...Being impulsive, I was on the bike and back out on the road before I had given it a moments thought, riding along scanning the other side of the road for two dark blobs. A few miles in and I was in the countryside - riding along unlit roads. I could barely see the road in front of me - never mind looking for two black leather gloves on black tarmac on the unlit side of the road opposite. I tried scanning the kerb in the light given off by oncoming cars.5 miles in and doubts began to creep in abou my ability to spot them at all. 8 miles in and it occurred to me that I could have lost them on the way DOWN to my mams. Indeed, it was more likely to be so. As I approached the village of Kilcoole, your best friend, HRH Rational Evaluation had set firmly in. I slowed up, checked the mirrors and prepared to swing around."Don't stop, go on"No exclamation marks, no bolds. no raised voices. Just a voice in my head I recognised to be other than my own. I should know.So I continued on, into the village and out the other side. And there, in the middle of the road and under one of the last of a short string of streetlights spanning the village were my gloves, their small reflective labels shining like a beacon in the dark, lest I should miss them.-2) The Mysterious Case of the Ever Convenient Petrol StationPaulK worked this out for me one time and came in with some astronomical figures re: "chances of". Same motorcycle, same broken low fuel warning light. I'd a 30-60 mile round trip to work depending on whether I took the interesting or boring route. I'd also no car - so the bike got used for all transport outside the 5 day a week commute. Much varied use in other words.Because of the broken warning light I used to lose track of the amount of petrol in the tank. And so I ran out of petrol quite a few times. 6-7 if memory serves me correctly. On that bike, you'd get a warning cough when dry after which you'd get a 1/2 mile or so before she died completely. Each of those 7 or so times I ran out of petrol however, I either rolled spluttering .. or freewheeling into a petrol station forecourt - I never had to push here so much as a metre.At least once, this occurred on the M50 motorway around Dublin - which has no services on it of any description. I ran out close to an exit which happened to have a petrol station close by. The vast majority of exits haven't petrol stations nearby.Either God is indeed interested in the finest detail of our lives (even the hairs on your head or numbered) or I won the equivilent of the lotto a few times over.-3) The Case of the Red Balloon.Not a personal one this time but recounted by my mother of someone she assisted in leading to the Lord (as they say).As is frequently the case, the path to God gets fuzzy at the final few hurdles. This woman had gone through a period of confusion surrounding God: did he exist, was it the case you could have a relationship, what was all this "giving your life the Lord" stuff. Anyhow, she made her committment and that was that - nothing much happened.One day, not so long after, she's in the supermarket down the town. She buys her young daughter a red ballon. A helium-filled one - you know, one of those foil-type things. It's red and has a picture of a bear on it. Whilst at the car, filling the boot with shopping, the daughter loses her grip on the balloon and away it goes. Up and up and away!A morning or so later, the woman opens her back door to go out to the garden and there, caught in a bush by the door by it's string, is a red, helium filled foil balloon. With a bear on it. You'll take it as chance - however outlandish. She took it as her answer having been heard by God.-4) The Case of d'Unbelievers Encounter with GodDuring the period when my dad was dying a few years ago, we headed up to his cottage and took up residence for the trips back and forth to the hospital. And we stayed there after he died to spend some time together and pack up all his stuff - figuring to do it all whilst he was still "alive" in our memories.My dad was an artist amongst other things. And a hoarding one at that. There were rolls upon rolls of art paper containing prelim sketches for paintings going way back. In fact, my dad appears to have had a pathological hatred of throwing away paper altogether. Of all his possessions, paper accounted for about 50%. Anyways...My older sister is the uber-responsible one and not a believer. Indeed, she'd be medium antagonistic to the faith of her brother and mum (having been Bible-bashed by both of us in our post-converison enthusiasm probably didn't help). But even she had been semi-consciously taken aback at how all the aspects/chances around dads dying seemed to be flowing so smoothly. She was, for the period that the Lord shone on us (so could my believing mam and me plainly see), in a kind of semi-believing state. Kind of acknowledging unspokenly - but plain unbelieving had you asked her outright about it. Anyways..Dad's will was troubling my sister. We were going through stuff and throwning out stuff and her being a perfectionist/controller was very uncomfortable with all this activity-of-others without the will being found. It wasn't a money-grabbing thing - just something she knew was important for all kinds of reasons - but wasn't "neatly sorted out yet". And that was like a thorn in her side.So she's sitting at my dads desk one evening, looking through old photos, crying her eyes out when suddenly, in her own words (more or less) "I just got this 'sense' to turn around. So I did. There behind me on the shelves were stacks and stacks of rolled up papers. My hand went to one roll in the bunch and I picked it out. I unrolled it and there, in the very middle .. was dad's will"The 'presence of God' left a week or so after that. I remember both my unbelieving sisters actually complaining about this in that same semi-conscious way. They knew there had been an "air of grace", of benevolence around - even with the pain of dads last days and death. And they didn't want it to go. It was nice to have around. I'd have to agree with them.-So there you have it Straggler. You might want to employ the services of PaulK in helping you crunch the numbers unto dismissal.

The task at hand isn't to rewrite what was written but to address the story as received. In the story as received, a voice that is considered distinctly different to my own voice is heard prior to my finding my gloves. That's the sequence.Now, if I'd not found my gloves I might have a puzzlement about why this other voice occurred - it in itself would be an unusual thing to experience.I'm not suggesting you believe - just that you deal with the story as described.- Again, you seem to have missed the thrust of the story. Let's forget about what PaulK would or wouldn't do and deal with the story to hand. 7 times (lets' say) running out of petrol yet each time rolling onto a forecourt. It's a simply matter of calculating odds. And those odds are stacked against such a thing happening.But it could of course be chance. Anything can happen once the odds aren't infinitely against it happening.- A fair enough application of skeptism.- Again, you seem to be adjusting the story to suit your position (in a flowerly embellished sort of way). You need to deal with what she says occured as if it occurred as she says it. The house hadn't by any means been turned upside down in the search for a will at that point. There were simply stacks of rolls of unexamined paper one of which she felt her hand guided to.- The aim wasn't to demonstrate supernatural origin, the aim was that these stories lasted longer than a snowball in hell. Given your reliance on re-writing them to suit your position, it seems I've had some success.Edited by iano, : No reason given.