Faith does not equal logic.
If “supernatural” is another way of saying “unexplained,” what is “the supernatural” that you can’t rule out? Does that sentence make sense if you substitute “unexplained” for “supernatural”? Aren’t you, at least in that sentence, using supernatural in the way Der Trihs was getting at, to mean something like “outside nature”; that the event not only can’t be explained by current scientific understanding, but it does not fit within that current understanding at all.
I do not rule out the supernatural (by which I intend to mean “outside nature; impossible to explain with natural science”) to explain the story, but I put it at the bottom of my list, since part of the definition of “supernatural” to me requires that everything else be eliminated.
I can think of several possible natural explanations (errors in memory of either you, your aunt, or both; daydreaming, which I’ve experienced and can believe is possible, combined with the random chance of thinking of her father the day he died; and, of course, it’s possible that you or she has made the story up, and I can’t rule out that possibility without some sort of evidence). However, my explanation of this story remains where my explanation of any story begins: I don’t know. Until I’m given evidence for or against any possible explanation, I’ll have to stay in that starting position.
I don’t mean to be a smartass, but what has moved forward in the spiritual arena? What facts have been discovered by spiritual exploration? Do you mean “spiritual” here as a synonym for “social”?
Although we are coming at this question from diametrically different perspectives, I cannot help but agree with the premise that there is no objective answer available to this question. Bible Man would cite specific examples from Scripture that he would claim as validating his particular stance on the issues. But many people of other faith traditions would do likewise.
One point, however, that is throwing people off, and Red Fury’s last paragraph furnishes a good point to spin it off, is that “spiritual” does not necessarily entail “supernatural.” Spirituality makes reference to the internal composition of the person, including emotions, will, intellect, etc., and is the preferred term of many, both theists and people of no supernatural commitment, for that aspect of self which is at the core of one’s interior person. In a very real sense, the attitude of the material rationalist that all matters are either delusion or explicable by physical law is a part of their spirituality … it is the core of their personal beliefs (since obviously the premise that all matters can be explained by physical law is not itself provable by physical law).
Now, I am a theist, and in fact a Christian. But I accept the idea that people who are not have spiritual experiences and core commitments. And to draw a line between “deluded theists” and “rational people” is an invalid dichotomy.
This is part of what I’ve been trying to say, but apparently not very well. It’s the people who claim to have some sort of “spiritual” insight into the world. some sort of “link to God” that lets them perceive things the less “enlightened” can’t; those are the people I dislike so much. I find it arrogant, obnoxious and dangerous. If somebody claims to have some sort of unverifiable insight - and relies on it - they are unlikely to respond to reason.
The internal, subjective version of spirituality is just fine; it’s a basic part of what makes us human. The ability of look at people and see them as people and not objects or tools; that’s the good, useful version of spirituality I’m talking about. The ability to look at the Grand Canyon and see something besides a big hole in the ground, or to appreciate a sunset are other examples.
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. To the millions that have experienced, seen, and know, faith is not necessary.
There is enlightenment, or some link to God, held by many people. They generally do not make claims, or act arrogant, Jesus was one of them. It is true they don’t always respond to reason. If Jesus had responded to reason we would never have heard of Him. Nor Ghandi, Lincoln, King, Jr., and numerous others. This world moves ahead spiritually upon the insights of great spiritual leaders. Enlightenment is real, and it’s for anyone willing to seek it.
I had what one could call a near death experiance once, but the doctor told me I was not near death and it was just the result of my mind on the anesthetics. I went into a light etc. just as I have since heard others have done. It could be the mind altering drugs, etc. cause a person to have a dream like situation,according to what they believe at the time.
Monavis
If you had a real near death experience it would be the focus of your life. No doctor would ever be able to tell you different. If you were not near death then you didn’t have a near death experience. But there are many experiences involving light and other elements that are not near death experiences. One of the ways you know the difference is, in real near death experiences there is an exchange of dialogue between you and a “spiritual being” about returning to life, usually the experiencer is returned to life over their objections. It is something you will never forget.
Sure. I clearly said " outside the bounds of natural law as we understand it at this time" My objection to what Der Trihs posted was the implication that those who believe in the supernatural stop looking for new information and are not open to new input. That charecterization is untrue.
I’m not sure what you mean. Was my aunt’s experience a vist from the departing spirit of my Grandfather? Perhaps. Is there some psychic connection between people? Maybe.
Did she just make it up? That’s also possible. Those who have known her for years don’t think so. I use the word supernatural simply because of the nature of the story. I draw no conclusions because there isn’t enough information to do so.
Individual personalities may lean one way or the other. Some eagerly embrace any mystical experince. Others tend to want more scientific explanations. Either approach is okay. In the end this incident remains unexplained. Hopefully people with both tendencies remain open to new information.
I didn’t say any* facts* had been discovered that could be established as valid by any scientific means. The spiritual journey is very personnal and happens within the individual. The advances are personal as well. I do believe that people can lift the spiritual level of the people around them. In that sense, spreading love, compassion, unslefishness, can certainly be a social benifit.
Great point. Nice post. It’s nice to hear that you accept others spiritual experiences as valid. I find it very unfortuante that many Christians do not.
I can understand being irratated by a certain sense of smug spiritual superiority that some people exhibit. I experience the same thing. It’s similar to the feeling I get when those who choose not to believe seem to consider anyone with spiritual beliefs intellectually or emotionally inferior. Those with spiritual beliefs and those without have their little idiosyncrasies. I don’t find one more annoying than the other. Humanity can be so dam imperfect at times. Whacha gonna do? 
Are you claiming that no one, anywhere has had a near death experience and shrugged it off as a hallucination ? There’s no evidence it’s anything else, after all. And before you tell me about all the people who have had impressive or life changing NDE’s, don’t forget self selection. People who are changed by an experience tend to talk about it; those who aren’t probably won’t bother to mention it unless you ask ( “Near death experience ? Yeah, I had one once; no big deal” ). Also, you won’t hear about NDE’s that are obvious hallucinations, like flying through a tunnel of TV sets and meeting Groucho Marx.
No, it’s not untrue. Superstition has always been a method of cutting off inquiry; why look further if you “know” the truth ? Even if the superstitious do try to investigate something, they will fail. Crystal balls, divine inspiration and psychic powers won’t tell you anything useful.
Spiritual in the sense that they improve oneself: yes.
Spiritual in the sense that Big Juju In The Sky caused them: no.
These arguments always get bogged down in details of ontology, and language. What is real? What is proof? Is the universe entirely and exclusively physical? Are sensory perceptions real? Is imagination not real? Is there a way to use the discipline of science to consider God? Would that be polite?
Astrology seems to me to be bunk, pure and simple. The attending physician at the moment of your birth had a greater gravitational affect on you than the Moon. It seems to me that it could never be useful knowledge, even supposing that there is an actual body of knowledge at all. But among the people I know that believe in astrology there are some very perspicacious and insightful folks who know and understand people very well. They have an incredible facility in the range of human interactions. Those people attribute that facility to Astrology. I attribute it to paying attention to people a lot more than other folks do.
The thing is that once I got over wanting them to be wrong about Astrology, I found that it was far easier to depend on their insights into people. They were usually right about people. Compared to the science of psychology, these particular people have shown a far more reliable ability to assess personality. They don’t get paid for it, though.
Just an aside, you understand, but it leads me to what is more or less my point. I don’t have an obligation to provide proof of my spiritual experiences, unless I am trying to argue some importance to them. If invited to, I share my experiences, but only as a testimony of what happened to me. It is the desire to proselytize that creates the obligation to provide proof. It also drags the spiritual experience into the realm of science, where it cannot be experienced, only measured. Since it has at that point only scientific importance, and precious little of that, it has been made secular and worthless.
When you have a spiritual experience, the reality of the world is unaffected, but your perception is changed. Since your perception is inherently at least one step removed from reality, it seems pointless to try to judge the spiritual by the measure that prejudges spirit itself as unreal. Don’t worry about if you are correct, or accurate. Trust yourself. Right and wrong, good and evil are not easily defined outside the heart. So, judge them in your heart, where the difference is more apparent.
So, in answer to the OP, Spiritual experiences have spiritual value, and spiritual reality. Everything else is advertising. Proof is just a different flavor of advertising. God already knows, He doesn’t need advertising.
Tris
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi ~
I’m afraid it is. Many people like myself who have spritual beliefs are open to scientific evidence as part of the whole picture. I don’t claim to know the truth. I know lots of folks with various spiritual beliefs and none of them do either. I believe there is a path to the truth and that path does not exclude science and other new information, it includes them.
Here again you state as fact something you can’t prove is indeed a fact. It’s only your opinion. That seems to be the thing you find obnoxious in others. I don’t claim to “know” I am merely choosing what I believe in areas where the evidence and our scientific ability to disprove is very limited. If I believe that divine inspiration or psychic powers told me something useful then you are free to disregard it and choose not to believe. What you can’t do, is “know” that it didn’t happen. You can only have an opinion, which is no better than anyone elses.
The answer is no, those that have life changing experiences sometimes don’t talk about them for fear of being called names. No one ever calls a NDE an hallucination except those who haven’t had the experience. I can see you don’t know about the experience from your writings. Maybe if you read some real near death experiences from real NDE web sites you would understand better.
I have an experience posted that was not written by the experiencer, but by the registered nurse who treated him. In a small way this will illustrate the difference between real NDEs and other experiences. If you really want to know why the differences read a lot of them and the research being done on them. Read the whole FAQ section of my site. I have been researching NDEs for over 18 years. Don’t think you know what they are, because you don’t. Actually NDEs will reveal the rest of life that they don’t teach in science classes.
Well, you do have a point in that there are dark ages when knowledge is lost or retarded. Certainly, had the Nazis won WWII, we would have entered into another such age, and who knows when we would have emerged. On the other hand, we always do emerge from those dark ages, and when we do, we manage to move further and further beyond the understandings of our ancestors.
As to the idea that the Nazis were right because they were modern, that’s not at all what I’m arguing. At the time the Nazi ideology about race was being formulated, genetics was a very poorly understood science. The concept of race had not yet been entirely discredited, and from a scientific point of view, it was not at all clear that there was no rational basis to racism. Now, thanks to a more complete undestanding of the science involved, we know it’s bullshit. Knowledge accumulates, and advances. In the course of that advance, we might learn tomorrow something that upsets everything we thought we knew today, just as the discovery of DNA finally put to rest the idea that there are different races of man with distinct, racially-based moral or mental characteristics. Indeed, we might learn tomorrow that there is a scientific basis to what we today call the supernatural. But the point is, we don’t have that knowledge today, and it is irrational to act today on knowledge we expect to learn tomorrow.
Not necessarily. Most people engaged in scientific pursuits are able to look past their own preconceptions. For those that are not able to do, we have peer review.
Not at all. People everywhere around the world are still people. If religious experiences are, indeed, biological in origin, than it makes sense that all creatures of the same biological nature would “malfunction” in similar ways. lekatt’s beloved near death experiences, for example, could be the result of a genuine spiritual encounter… or it could just be the mechanics of what happens to the material of a human brain as it dies. I tend to favor the latter explanation, but there’s not enough data available to conclusively prove it either way, at this point.
Which Church are you talking about? Even before the Reformation, there were several to choose from. And what is the distinction you are trying to create between experience and religion?
Now, having been reasonable for five paragraphs, permit me a small snigger at the idea that no one anywhere has ever had an NDE and dismissed it as hallucination.
Near death experiences are real spiritual experiences. Dying brain theories have been looked at and dismissed for two reasons. First the information brought back from a near death experience is often information unknown to the experiencer before they died. Second, on several NDEs the brain had been measured dead for a long time before the reported information occurred. From a few minutes to three days. The well documented surgery of Pam Reynolds shows her brain dead for almost two hours.
I ofter wonder why such sold evidence is not met with enthusiam at the knowledge we will live on after our bodies die.
You might want to consider what that says about the quality of your evidence.
The Epiphany Hat
There’s a good band name