Religious Experiences - Evidence of God(s)?

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1) What form do these experiences take? I am not asking anyone to reveal the intimate dealings that they have with their chosen deity. I am simply asking what the broad nature of these experiences consists of. Visions? Voices? Feelings of euphoria? Feelings of enlightenment? What?

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First I can't speak for others, speaking for others itself is faith-based. Second, you shouldn't explain what others have experienced, at least you should bear in mind that any attempt on explaining others experience is faith-based (not necessarily baseless though).Third, men explanation power (could be statistic based) in the end is also faith-based, as everyone knows well that, say, pychological explanation cannot be applied with 100% accuracy. Actually, their accuracy itself can hardly be measured. It by no means says that pychology is useless, yet you should use with care and cautions, and bear in mind that it doesn't work 100%.Now if it doesn't work 100%, say, it works only with 90% accuracy, then what the rest 10% will be?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Is there any truth happened within that 10%?! It's not about God of gap, it's about how humans dealing with the reality and how humans are to approach truth. We can't simply say under the condition that when we are only accurate in 90% then rule out other possiblities.To simply put, even when psychology works right generally, still anything is possible. If you fail to admit this, you are religious in believing the opposite.2) What causes these experiences? Are these experiences best explained by the existence and interaction with the supernatural? Or are there better evidenced explanations for this phenomenon?[/quote]Again, either a 'for' or a 'against' is religious in nature. So to be more specific, your question is, "In your faith/belief (or even religion), what caused these experiences?

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And my third question requires the following comparison:

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Do I need to disprove the notion that the heat and light emitted by the light-bulb in my desk lamp is caused by a miniature ethereal salamander living inside the bulb before I can legitimately conclude that electrical resistance in a tungsten filament is a more likely cause? No. (let me know if this is too much of an assumption on my part)

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Do I need to disprove the existence of god before I can legitimately conclude that aspects of human psychology and culture are more likely to be the cause of religious experiences than the existence of (and human interaction with) supernatural immaterial entities? Apparently so (based on numerous conversations in numerous other threads).

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Whatever, as long as you realise that your attempts to explain is, more or less, a reflection of your own faith/belief. And sometimes, provided that the experiencers are also analytical enough, you won't be more accurate then they themselves who actually experienced. Say, I can't conclude that you are talking to void/ghost in forums because you will fail to submit any evidence that there is actually a person behind each post. You can't conclude that you are delusional. You should be more accurate in estimating the case.

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My third and final question is - Why?

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3) Why must I disprove the existence of god before I can conclude that other explanations for religious expereinces are better evidenced, superior and more likely to be correct?

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That's similar to your previous questions. Your explanation will inevitably contains something as a reflection of your faith. When you have a tool of 90% accuracy, and you've drawn a conclusion, you faith is to neglect the 10% possiblity. Of course unless you admit that your conclusion is just a possiblity upto an accuracy of 90%.That said. I tell you a little secret here, in order to know whether something is from God, there is a little trick or a pattern. It is summarized here as a sentence, which is, Truth is somehow related to the future.Your experience will be up to something if you understand what I mean here.Humans are creatures of the present, they are futile of the future and they futile about the past. While God is used to make good use of the future to 'communicate' with men, in way which I speculate that it will cause much less effect onto human faith. Such that humans will need faith (but not evidence) to approach Him.

It is abit abstract here. So I will further illustrate this with 2 examples.Anyway, humans' way of think is very plain and limited. Even when fabricate stories they can only be limited to the presence. They can hardly walk out of this limited mind of thinking. They can hardly grow their way of thinking into to future.So all they can think of is somehow, visions, voices...things all related to the presence but not future.Ok, I bragged too much, here comes the examples.

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First truth is evidence independent. In stone age, there's no evidence for the presence of black holes, it's far from saying that black holes did not exist in stone age.

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Evidence is just for a human brain to recognise a truth (or rather for a belief system to believe that it is the truth). Something is evident to one may not be evident enough to someone else, because they possess a diffferent belief systems (brains).

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Science is abit special. Science is the discovery of natural rules which predicts precisely for our brain/belief system to reckon them as the truth. Say, water decomposes into hydrogen and oxygen, this chemical rule allows you to predict precisely that water everywhere behaves so. You can predict this result before every single experiment, and every single experience when set up correctly can hardly falsify your prediction by using the rule. The rule is thus reckoned by human brains/belief systems as the truth.

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See that? The truth of science is somehow related to the future. It is regarded as the predicability of science.

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You know people cast lots to help to make a decision. Some people can also cast lots then to say the it's God who decides through lot casting. But to the outsiders, they may be confused and clueless. How can a lot casting outcome be declared as God's decision?! Here the outsiders are applying the human common sense about what probability is. If it's lot casting then the outcome is by the rule of probability, how can you declare it's God's decision?!

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Now to the lot-casters, they are quite sure that the outcome is from God. Assume that we have 2 log-casters here, A is a prophet, B is a witness. God can tell A that please cast lot with B to decide whether to go east or west, you will see the same lot outcome 10 times in a row (through visions or voice or any means, God just needs to make sure that A believes).

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Next morning, A told B that God gave him a vision to cast lot to decide whether to go east or west, and God also said that we will see that the same lot outcome will appear in a 10 successive cast, which indicates that we should go east. So they cast lots and both are certain that God asks them to go east.

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Now the witness B is writting to the journal/diary, "We cast lot and God told us to go east". 2000 years later, the atheist readers read the journal and will said, "It's BS! How come they cast lot and said that God asked them to go east".

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Hope that you see now how God made use of the FUTURE in this example, to communicate with the prophet directly and the witness indirectly.

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Moreover, if the prophet doubts if the vision, voice and such are truly from God. God will ask prophet A, "Please point your staff to the sea". Now guess what, the Red Sea departs!

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Acts 14:3
So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders.

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I should have made a better example, this is not good enough to explain the 'pattern' I mentioned in the last post. Yet I think at the moment it should be good enough to illustrate what I mean to say here.

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3) Why must I disprove the existence of god before I can conclude that other explanations for religious expereinces are better evidenced, superior and more likely to be correct?

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Now get back to the question. No you don't need to disprove God to draw your own conclusion. But you can't (unable to ) evaluate what is better evidenced, superior. While 'the more likely to be correct' can turn out to be a false.A truth stands a truth all the times. In the case one with a 90% chance to hit the truth while another with a 10%. The one with 90% is no where more legitimate as long as the truth is possibly belong to the one with a 10% chance. Similarly in table of betting, the one with a 90% chance of winning can't be considered as a winner, he's no where more legitimate than the one with the 10% chance. Only the one who wins out (hits the truth) will be the winner.

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Sure, but we don't have all the information. It is almost certain that we will never have universal knowledge. In these cases, we are guessing which is the correct answer, or the one that will be the most often correct even if imperfect. Do you go with the 90% right one, or the 10% right one?

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That depends on what matters are you handling. For earthly matters, the Tree of Knowledge is ok. But for the Heavenly things, you may need the Tree of Life.That is, you can use whatever you think is efficient to handle matters around us inside this reality. It makes sense, but to extend such a way into a realm which you don't know and have no past experience, you need to re-evaluate whether it is still 90% in accuracy.Your 90% is subject to a scope for applying.

To go abit further, our approach of reasoning is usually like this,1) Truth with evidence
2) Truth without evidence
3) falsehoodThe most efficient way to handle earthly matters is to give up further distinguishing between 2) and 3). Humans' way of thinking/reasoning will refuse to further distinguish 2) from 3). That's why they often ask for evidence. Such a way of reasoning is efficient, practical and good for survival on earth.But by the application of such a reasoning mind set, they can never find out the truth in 2). Such an approach is the climbing up of the Tree of Knowledge (by human skills of survival, by pass experience, by accumulated knowledge and etc.). Humans use this approach to judge true and false, right and wrong, good and evil.This approach is however inefficient in digging up the truth in 2). And thus the old prophecy,The day you eat of it, the same day you shall surely die (the second death).You thus need faith (not evidence) and rely on God to try to discover what's going on in the spiritual realm (after life). That's the Tree of Life (about life after physical death).Moreover, you need faith anyway, by fate or by design of this earth,-----------------
As long as the following question is without an answer, religions will continue to exist. The only thing actually changes is that people start to lose their self-awareness to recognise what kind of faith they possess. And the question is,Does afterlife exist, does soul exist?If your answer is Yes, that represents your religion as your answer is religious. If on the other hand your answer is No, that also represents your religion as your answer is also a religious one.The more scientific answer is "I don't know". Yet unfortunately, it's not an answer you can keep till you die. If you don't make a consent choice, your sub-consciousness will pick a "no" for you.As for those whose answer is a 'yes', they have the self-awareness about what their own faith and religion is. As for those whose answer is a 'no', they don't even have that awareness to realise that they are religious.Religions only change forms. People jump from one side of the fence to join another bandwagon of faith. That's it.There will be less and less people believe in God as predicted. Only those who endure shall be saved.
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Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."

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Gee, if we need the Tree of Life to accurately evaluate heavenly matters it sure is a shame God kicked us out of Eden. It seems like God purposely denied us the tools or ability to make informed decisions about spirituality.

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So why is he being such a hard ass about us getting it wrong?

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Gee, you discuss Christianity on a daily basis without even knowing that the Christianity God wants your faith, instead of some tools you can rely on?So yes, he kicked humans (basically Adam) out of Eden (His Kingdom) such that you need faith in order to make a return.Is it harsh for someone who did wrong to say "God please forgive me"? If that's what harsh is, can't help that much.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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Past experience and accumulated knowledge are forms of evidence. As for skill of survival, someone can survive due to getting lucky; it doesn't give them special knowledge.

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So try again.

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Because someone can survive by sheer luck such that humans don't need any survival skills?! Gee, I can't imagine one can draw such a conclusion which even school kids won't.So try again.

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So basically you are saying that people will subconsciously make an unwarranted decision when lacking evidence, but you provide no evidence of this claim. Perhaps an example can show you the error in this way of thinking:

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Like I said, not every truth is evidence based all the times. Evidence is for a human skull to 'smell' truth. So don't always apply your 'the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence' fallacy. Moreover, since when you acquired the evidence that I even exist to make a reply to my post, I am surprised that you won't treat them as randomly appeared images before you prove my existence.

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I am making the claim now that the Christian god you worship is actually evil. Both Satan and God are equally immoral, and there is no supernatural advocate for humanity. Heaven is still available however, and the only requirement to get in is that you try to make moral decisions based on your own capacity rather than being a slave to either God or Satan.

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I have no evidence to support this claim, therefore you cannot tell this from truth without evidence or falsehood. If you don't believe me, you are subconsciously making a "no" decision that is unwarranted.

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So your logic here is truth cannot exist without evidence. Again, it's a fallacy, whether you have evidence or not, if God exists then He exists. You may have a problem to approach Him though. Moreover, you can believe whatever you believe.

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So the problem is you are now left with two possible faith-based positions which are contradictory. Since neither has good evidence to support them you cannot objectively determine which is the more appropriate choice. Therefore choosing over the other has a 50% chance of causing eternal damnation for your soul. Well, that stinks, huh?

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Furthermore, I can come up with more unevidenced claims that contradict your faith-based belief. This lowers the odds even more, so belief in your particular idea is unlikely to be true. Open-minded people easily realize that there are an infinite number of possible unevidenced proposals, each indistinguishable in truth from each other. This means that believing any completely unevidenced claim is not 90% likely to be true, or 50% likely, or even 10% likely; it is 0.000..(infinite zeros)..00001% likely.

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So why believe your version rather than mine?

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Like I said, first your lack of evidence can't be used as a proof that others' claims are not true. Second, you haven't acquired any evidence doesn't mean that others haven't. You contradiction here is you believe without evidence that others don't have evidence about God. Third, human belief system varies, what considered as evidence to you might not be evidence at all to others, and vice versa.At last, your concept of probability is truly lame. 1) According to what formulation you calculated the 0.00000x probability? 2) do you know that 0.000x probability doesn't simultaneously says that 'it can't be true'. Lower probability can still win out in a table of betting.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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They seem to find offensive even the suggestion that such experiences might just be due to the internal workings of the brain. Never mind the suggestion that this explanation is better evidenced and thus more deserving of consideration than the supernatural alternative. Cries of "pseudoskeptic" and demands for proof ensue. Even otherwise highly scientifically literate proponents will talk themselves into advocating the most ridiculous positions regarding blatantly made-up concepts in order to outright deny the idea that their own undisprovable beliefs can be better explained by something other than thel existence of their chosen deity.

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I don't find it "offensive". Rather, I speculate those giving out alternative explanations can't be aware of the that their explanations are somehow faith based. To a certain extent, it makes no different to say that "I know it's your experience, but please take my faith since that experience could be your faith."Could you see the odd?Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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To swing it back on topic,
Do you believe that your personal/private experiences provide you with evidence, appropriate to yourself only, that a deity exists?
If so, could you attempt to describe those experiences?

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It's complicated. First, it seems to me that people ususally fail to assume (or assume too fast) about 2 things.1) whenever you mention an event, they quickly think that you draw your religious conclusion purely on that event. So they will blar about something like "No, it is more reasonable to explain it this way or that way". Now to make you think deep, how about that it is a series of events experienced, closely co-related to each other, within a time frame around 3 years or more?! Will you still say that "Oh I have some more reasonable explanation for your chain after chain experience (hmm...well insanity could be an explanation but that's by your faith that he's insane).2) People will have to assume that things are plainly about present or past. They can never imagine that there can a closely related relationship between past, now and future. Say, if you can predict things during a period of time, will you still accept someone bragging about "Oh no, I have a better explanation...".

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Secondly - is 'a deity exists' the most parsimonious explanation for the experiences you have had? If it is not, why is it your preferred explanation?

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Hehe... think about the above. It's more about the "future" when you truly experience God.So if you think that I ever experienced something worthy of describing, you expect me to write down events in a 3 years period here in the forum?!Rather, my way would be that (i.e. if I truly experienced something) I wrote down everything I post in that 3 years then to speculate as a third person that "Gee, what this guy says. What intelligence he acquired after the experiences...". That sounds to be a better choice.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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Maybe so. But we are talking about people who, when asked why they believe say "I spoke with Jesus in a revelatory experience of love and transcendence , experienced 'the futureness of god', etc.

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Sure, there are tons of NDE which are not unquestionable, yet you can't simply judge all situation using what you've already know, especially to judge something totally outside of human technology to reach.Can technology reach afterlife, the answer is NO. Yet your argument could still be because it is not true because our technolgy can't reach it. It's a kind of circular logic.

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I have already explained my experiences, closely co-related within a time frame of about 15 years

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We don't need to postulate 'insane' when 'has a human brain' will suffice.

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I suppose some would argue that your having a brain is something I am taking on unsubstantiated faith - but that's not quite the same thing you mean.

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Experience about what? Absence of evidence, you may experience though 100000000000000000000000 years of absence of evidence, yet 1 encounter can disprove your stance.

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Why is 'truly experienced God' your preferred explanation over the multitude of neural effects that can cause similar things? Do you think something being about 'the future' or any confusion of space and time doesn't happen to people having strokes, epileptic fits etc?

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Only the other hand, why can't true exist outside of your human knowledge and experience acquired? Do you mean that because you think that the neural explanation is efficient to you such that no other truth can exist outside of neural scope?If your answer is NO, that is, other truth can exist outside of the neural explanation, then if you always adapt the neural explanation no matter how odd the situation is against it, then how will you be able to find out those other truth.If on other hand your answer is YES, that is, there is no other possible truth outside the neural explanation, that remains your faith and not necessarily true.

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If you hold that your 'future' experiences are reason for you to believe that you 'truly experienced God', why not describe some of these 'future' experiences?

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What for, to filfull your curiosity? Or to allow others jump on me like crazy. I talk only when I feel comfortable to talk. I actually tried on several occassions (here as well) to go deeper into the situation but I was quickly rejected.To tell you the truth, I was even rejected by spiritual person like Phat (the admin here I believe). Since then I am not keen on telling my story at all. Plus that I speculate two things, 1) God's will is important (if it's truly God in behind) 2) you need faith either to accept or to reject, to go deeper helps nothing.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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If one explanation is evidenced and the other not they are not both faith based are they?

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So you agree with that both are faith based, right? It is a matter of which one you believe by your faith to be more legitimate, in the end.

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Rather, I speculate those giving out alternative explanations can't be aware of the that their explanations are somehow faith based.

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How come you can draw your conclusion even before I present my case?!It is your faith that functions in the judgment of this case.Moreover, you are clueless about what evidence is. Truth itself has nothing to do with evidence, evidence is for a human brian/believe system to try to identify a truth.Moreover, you can't determine whether my case is evidence or not, it is only inside your faith that things are not evident.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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I have already explained my experiences, closely co-related within a time frame of about 15 years.

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Why is 'truly experienced God' your preferred explanation over the multitude of neural effects that can cause similar things? Do you think something being about 'the future' or any confusion of space and time doesn't happen to people having strokes, epileptic fits etc?

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I think that you might have fallen for a fallacy.There are 10 people going into a dark room, 9 of them come out bare handed while 1 of them with a gold coin. Now is there a gold coin in the dark room? The 9 say 'no', while the 1 say 'yes'.When you go into a dark room and find nothing inside, you can't actually prove that there's nothing inside. While the one coming out with anything can prove that the dark room isn't empty at all.The point is, even when it is true that he found the coin. How can this truth be conveyed. There's not an efficient way for the truth of this kind to be conveyed. To simply put, you need faith, either to believe that he found the coin, or to believed that he lied (or delusional).Moreover, when I said "future" you are totally clueless about what I was talking about, as a result of lack in experience. Anyway, whenever prophets are concerned, you will hear the stories of their prophecies. While prophecies can be used as a part of a protocol for reliable communication. Prophecies are human brain independent, you can't be delutional about a prophecy.That's the "FUTURE" I am talking about. Anyway, the judgment of my case involves something much more complicated than you can imagine or ever know of.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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When I say 'they are not both faith based', I am not agreeing that they are both faith based. I even provided the definition of faith that I was using by implication: a type of trust in an explanation that is not based upon independently accessible empirical support.

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So let's not equivocate, OK?

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The point is, you consider that the neural effect as an empirical support while we don't. Reliable experimentation can't even be accurately carried out. That's rather faith based.So who's equivocating? Moreover, with your attitude like this, we can't carrying on with our discussion long enough. While you already assume tha I am equivocating, what's the point for a further discussion?!Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.Edited by Hawkins, : No reason given.

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It would be if I had said any of that. But you have assumed that technology cannot reach 'the afterlife' presumably as an explanation for why, despite looking, we haven't found any support for the idea, not me.

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So by following your logic, if something is not supported by human technology must not true, right? So why not just keep your discussion onto the topics which already supported by human technology? But no, you keep discussing things like Chritianity which apparently is not well supported by human technology. Why?You seem to be loop yourself into your own circular logic.

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However, the brain can be studied with technology. And it appears some of the most powerful experiences we've been able to study turn out to be explainable in terms of neural function. So if we know that a clogged up air filter can cause your car certain problems with certain symptoms when starting - and your car is displaying those symptoms...why would we bother hypothesizing Gremlins?

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Again, you sound if there shouldn't be any truth outside of human technology. While consently realise that your technology such as neural explanation can't cover 100% yet you extend your 90% tool as if it should work for 100%. That's your faith, even by own definition.Experience about what? Absence of evidence, you may experience though 100000000000000000000000 years of absence of evidence, yet 1 encounter can disprove your stance.

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Religious experiences. Experiences of speaking with God/Allah, a celestial chorus of spirits, leszi etc etc. The kinds of experiences I was asking you about, the kinds of experiences this thread is about. I have detailed some of my religious experiences in this thread. Why not explain yours?

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You here you mean that all experiences should be looked and viewed the same, there shouldn't be anything unique and different. It seems to be your style to try extend something which can't be with 100% coverage to an extent which requires faith to support.On the other hand, I already hinted you the 2 most crucial parts have been overlooked and don't seem to be included in your "all the same" conclusion about religious experience. 1) It is series of event with a consistent co-relationship. 2) It involves the future which your neural explanation isn't applicable.

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I have said before: I am for cancer research. I am not an oncologist. I have never seen cancerous tissue. Doesn't that completely answer your question?

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No, I can't relate what could that mean to our current discussion.

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By not blindly believing myself or other's impressions of what we experience. That's a great way to end up believing in lies or errors.

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That's just another fallacy. Gee. So you mean because something is a "great way to end up with lies and errors" such that there is no truth behind all and every case?!

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Personally - I'd rather NOT believe something is true when it was, than to believe something IS true when it is false. It seems a great defence against conmen, and any intrinsic biases I might possess.

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So what's your personal preference has anything to do with what truth is?I think I've already illustrated how your this kind of relying on a reliable tool for survival blinds you from further identify the truth of Christianity.

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Well - to stay on topic. I understand the reticence, I explained my own reticence when I was a believer starting in Message 21. But I'm interested in learning the truth - you are the one that ran your 'superior' religious experiences up the flagpole, you brought them up. I was asking about them because either

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No, you don't seem to get the point. While when someone is denying the simple truth (at least which appears to be a simple truth to me) like neural effect can't extend its application into future related phenominon like prophecies. What's the point of continue with my story. That could only lead to more unpleasent attack rather than a healthy discussion.

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If you are confident that your experiences were divine - why not tell the world? Does reading counter-views upset you? But you know they are false. Why should false words matter? Have you asked yourself why you are so bothered when 'others jump on {you} like crazy'? They aren't really jumping on you, just offering alternative ideas which you may consider or reject at will - right? As you challenged- maybe the truth of your experiences lies outside your knowledge? Are you worried you might be wrong and prefer to remain 'comfortable' in your current views in which you have invested a great deal of time?

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It seems that I already told you that I respect God's will more than humans' will. Whenever a discussion can't work to my expectation, I won't continue with my stories. That's the deal I made up my mind with, after experiences. Which says, it isn't me that refuse to talk, it's more about how I was stopped from talking. Still I will apply this same method to decide if I shall continue to talk about it. I may show you how I was stopped though...but not now, not under the circumstance.I ever made my progress to almost 2/3 to my story. That is, a guy sensed that I might have something to say, so he (a Christian but not that spiritual enough) invited me to a special website where I managed to talk to 2/3 of my story (2/3 at that moment as things continue to happen afterward). Yet I was disturbed before I made it to a finish.