Yes, they are. To clarify, I refer to those who pray amd meditate and who have felt God’s presence, influence and direction in their lives, personally. To be clear, I’m not asking you to concede they’ve been “touched by God,” only that people who would assert so exist. Lots of them.
If that’s what the witnesses reported, I suppose that’s what we’d have to work with. This is the simplest of inarguable points, really. Conceding it is not conclusive, I’ll ask are you really saying that the set of indicators that an alien spaceship may have ventured close by does NOT include, “a bunch of people think they saw an alien spaceship.” Assign whatever weight to it you’'d like, depending upon your degree of skepticism.
It remains impossible to prove. There are those who say the experience on a personal level was easy enough to obtain.
Stratocaster, I’m afraid I haven’t been following your whole discussion, so I apologize if I’m off point, but I want to ask: are you positing that just because a bunch of people think that they’re seeing aliens, or talking to God, that that is some kind of inevitable arrow pointing to the fact that they’re right? Because my opinion of the subject is that people are pretty good at being wrong about the causes of things, particularly when they find themselves positing the existence of an otherwise-elusive advanced sentient agent to explain the phenomena in question.
In the case of people talking to God, that seems to me like a subset of the larger phenomena of mystical experiences in general, which are by no means localized to christians or even the formally religious. So to me, while I’d agree that there is very likely some actual and perhaps common cause or set of causes for all these claimes of spiritual interaction, it seems very likely that the main thing this cause or causes share is that they are easily misinterpretable. Like, say, some chemical or psychological quirk of the brain resulting in feelings of oneness or whatever, and/or ordinary old dreams and fantasies, and/or the human habit of attempting to pattern-match and categorize things perhaps a little hastily.
I guess what I’m saying is, where there’s smoke, there’s not necessarily a white-robed bearded man puffing on a peace pipe. Sometimes there’s just fire.
Could be worse, certainly. Not very instructive, though. ETA: more to the point, it’s exactly the sort of message that any stoned hippie could come up with. I would expect a bit more from advanced aliens or gods.
No, in fact I’ve conceded the opposite several times. I was just responding to Bryan’s comment that if there were a creator God, we’d have seen some indication of such a being in the billions of years since the act of creation, and that we have not. I offered that we have at least some indication–the millions of people (who could be dead wrong, but assert otherwise) who say they’ve personally experienced God’s influence, some in a profound, life-altering way.
I did not at any point in this thread suggest that no other explanation for this experience was possible, or that it was conclusive evidence for God. Again, I offered as a given just the opposite. But I did say it was overstatement to say that there is no indication that God exerts ony kind of ongoing influence. I’d include in the set of indicators for the possibility of a creator-God who continues to influence the world, the millions of unrelated and apparently sane people who would assert that they’ve felt that influence. (Feel free to exclude the insane ones ;))
Hey, don’t be too hasty - I may think fewer people are sane than you do.
Bryan may be just be being picky about what constitutes evidence for a creator god. Like, I think that there’s easily as much evidence for Santa Claus as for Christian diety variant #242 - but most people would say that there’s not evidence for an actual Santa Claus, but rather that there’s evidence that there is a pervading myth about the fictional character 'Santa Claus", and that the myth itself is the cause for a lot of the evidence about the character. If Bryan was not inclined to accept this sort of evidence as being indicitave of Santa Claus’s existence, then he could quite honestly disinclude it from the set of indicators, and say that there are no such indicators.
Perhaps. But I think most people would include as some level of evidence all sorts of inconclusive things. An eyewitness may be certain that he saw something, and could testify as much. And we’d consider that evidence and assign whatever weight we deem appropriate given the credibility and context. But most of us would also concede he could be flat-out wrong, even if he believed otherwise. But it’s still considered evidence, however inconclusive.
But it stops being considered evidence if you decide that it’s been reasonably-well shown that he’s mistaken about what he’s talking about. For example, if you find that the witness had at the time wandered into a movie shoot depicting a similar act to what he’s described, you’d probably decide to remove him from the evidence roster.
Many of us silly non-religious people have noticed that there are lots of religions and spiritualists, all with wildly different messages but suspiciously similar-sounding mediums by which those messages supposedly arrived. Given that, a likely explanation would be that the experiences and the messages they supposedly deliver actually come from completely different sources and have nothing to do with one another - which completely eliminates such experiences as a credible source of information about any actual creator diety.
I’ve never even suggested that people who feel this way don’t exist. Of course they do. If you’re suggesting that I’m suggesting they don’t, then I’ll have to ask you to stop accusing others of creating strawmen, because that’s quite a large one.
The next step, however, demonstrating that what they believe is real is indeed real, remains.
And why is that, do you think? The Bible describes numerous intervention in human affairs by God, as do the mythologies of numerous other faiths regarding their deities. What has changed that such occurrences stop just when we have the ability to study them in greater detail, or if not stop, become subtler in proportion to our ability to study them, thus remaining elusive?
You seem hellbent on missing the point. You didn’t suggest, you stated flatly, that there has been no indication of a creator-God since the universe began. I let you know where you were wrong. If you concede what I stated, then you are likewise conceding that there is at least an indication of an “influencing” God, or you are disputing my definition of “indication,” one or the other, ISTM. And you continue to prove my point that it is reflexive to the point of inevitability that you must close with a point that does not at all contradict what was posited.
I dunno. Maybe the Bible’s accounts are wrong? Would that logically confirm for you that there is no creator-God possible influencing the world on an ongoing basis? Could it be that this entity’s influence was always subtle and the Biblical accounts are wrong? Is that possible?
ISTM that all that indicates is that people tend to have wild imaginations and a long history of leaping to wild (and surprisingly detailed) unsubstantiated conclusions and beliefs.
The scientific method was invented specifically to counter and correct for these well-known human tendencies. Not to reverse or override the truth, but to uncover it.
We haven’t even detected subtle influences.
And if the bible is full of fiction then that would be documented evidence that people will claim all kinds of wild and crazy stuff and attribute it to thier preferred gods. This would logically confirm a theory, but not the theory that the people who think they’re talking to gods are right.
You guys have convinced me. I hereby retract my prior statements that there are logically indisputable arguments about God’s ongoing influence on the world. It was foolish of me to try to get this notion past you.
Actually, I’m earthbent on only accepting points that have some solidity to them. A lot of people believe in a creator, therefore a creator might exist… that’s not evidence in any meaningful sense. Possibly there are concepts that nobody believes in, yet this has no bearing on whather or not they might be true. Does anyone (or did anyone ever) believe that a green five-legged unicorn named Gary Morgan has a vacation home on Charon? Would evidence of this be strengthed, weakened, or unaffected if a thousand people read the previous sentence and immediately believed Gary Morgan’s vacation home existed?
I don’t care how popular a belief is. It’s irrelevant to its validity.
I concede that you stated it, but I don’t see the relevance. If human belief constitutes possible evidence, then we also have possible evidence for every historical creator-myth. The monothesitic “God” just happens to be a currently popular variant, without any objective evidence greater than that for the Greek, Egyptian, Chinese or Aztec pantheons.
What you’re saying is so vague and elusive that I don’t think it can be contradicted. There might be possible evidence of God, because people believe in it? There’s nothing solid enough to either prove or dispute.
I wouldn’t make a definitive statement about the universe just because JudeoChristianity was challenged, because JudeoChristianity is not universal. A complete refutation of the Old and New Testaments is no more significant than a complete refutation of Dianetics, or somebody demonstrating that Gary Morgan the five-legged unicorn can’t possibly afford a vacation home on his salary.
I simply have no reason to assume the Testaments are an accurate description of the origins of the universe or the diety that allegedly runs the place. In fact, I have evidence that it is quite inaccurate. If it’s any consolation, I’m not aware of any competing mythologies that do a better job.
Actually, Stratocaster, I see your point and as things stand I cannot think of a refuting argument. Your point was simply that the many people who claim to have personally experienced god is some support (ok, weak on analysis) in support of of god’s existence.
Therefore we cannot state that there has been no indication of god’s existence.
Nevertheless, it feels like a logical trick. After all, if I were to say that there isn’t a shred of evidence to support perpetual motion, would that statement be falsified by the thousands who’ve claimed / believed that they have made a perpetual motion machine?
Even though we can see the same psychological trick and experimental error at work, every time?
Like I pointed out, by this standard there is gobs of evidence for the existence of Santa Claus. (Including tangible evidence! Presents from him appearing under christmas trees and cookies and milk being consumed and everything!) Also dragons, elves, Klingons, telepathy - evidence is everywhere, for everything you can imagine.
Actually I’ve thought of why this doesn’t work now.
The “weak on analysis” clause is key. In my opinion the evidence isn’t merely weak, it’s non-existent.
I think the argument implies that if you multiply nothing, you can get some evidence. One person hallucinating is nothing, but billions doing the same is something.
Except, there has to be reasonable grounds for connecting such “observations”, and there isn’t in the case of personal revelation. The accounts contradict one another, are much easier to explain psychologically and so on.
I’m going to provide an analogy which I hope will help you get out of this rut:
Persons A and B are in a dispute regarding 19th century U.S. politics.
Person A, attempting to call attention to a perceived error in Person B’s presentation adds a final remark, intending to call attention to a mutually agreed upon perspective that will cause Person B to reconsider the argument: “Remember, the Civil War was primarily fought over slavery, not States Rights.”.
Person B, however, responds, “But the war WAS fought over States Rights, not slavery.” thus indicating to Person A that the two share too little common understanding to continue to pursue that line of reasoning.
At that point, it is a waste of time for Person A to engage in a long and fruitless battle with Person B, interrupting the original discussion, to persuade B to change views. There is clearly no common ground for the discussion and the prudent action for both participants is to simply drop the subject. Had A’s point been to argue for the “slavery as cause” issue, there would be a point in continuing. However, since the matter was raised in an effort to find common ground, only to discover that there is no common ground, arguing will be a waste of time.
I wasn’t in a rut, but if I were inclined to be in one this post would get me there.
I was in the middle of a conversation that you joined. I trust that your analogy isn’t a revelation; that your observations were known before this post.
If it was a waste of time to answer my question, than it was likely as much a waste of time to make the initial post.
You’ve been around long enough to know that drive by posts in GD are not popular. I’ve learned to ignore, or refrain from engaging, people who I believe I have no common ground with.
You engaged me. And I’m prepared to answer your points. I’d be less inclined in the future to engage you if you can’/won’t defend your own positions.
I’m far from a scholar on this, but just from memory I believe the one of the themes of Job was something like ‘bad things happen to good people, because gods workings are beyond man’s understanding’.
Simplistic, but generally in line with what tomndebb posted.
Whether or not it’s a good interpretation, I guess is up for debate, just preferably not in this thread since it’s off topic. I do think it is a common interpretation however, and not something tomndebb came up with to just to mess with you.