Ah, so your belief is based upon greed, which god can give you the most. So it appears your god is making a better offer than the other gods, to you at least.
That makes sense.
But you still didn’t answer the original question which is how do you know your god is the correct god? What if your god doesn’t exist and the other gods do?
Slee
Well, if your claim is that Lorbers writings are based on “already established knowledge” of the galaxy and that I’m loosely re-interpreting them after the fact, my only response is that I, of course, believe the exact opposite. Concerning the idea that Lorber was only repeating what was known at the time, it’s not true. He said that the atom is made up of smaller components; that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon and a particle; that there exist particles with a lifetime of only a tiny fraction of a second; that there exist stars thousands and millions of times brighter and larger than the sun; and so forth. All of this contradicts the science of his time. As for the idea that I’m re-interpreting his writing to meet the facts, it’s hardly useful to complain that Lorber didn’t use the exact same words that we have today which didn’t exist a century and a half ago. If he said that there’s a solar region with the stars orbiting around the center and that a massive and very bright object at the center, that clearly matches up with a galaxy and it was like nothing described by the astronomers of his day. Or again when he says clearly that the groups of solar universes are moving, astronomers at that time did not believe the Milky Way was moving, or even necessarily that the sun was moving. Likewise the idea of an electron having a “airy or cloudy form” flies in the face of what any chemist or physicist would have said at the time. They all pictured particles as indestructible and unchangeable solid spheres.
In any case like this skeptics will try to hone in on any mistake they can find, yet Lorber’s correct predictions are not at all limited to just particle physics and astronomy. For example, in discussing human origins, he said, “prehistoric man inhabited the earth for millions of years”. This, again, was against the science of his time. Those few researchers digging around for evidence of human origins were still thinking on a time scale of tens of thousands of years, not millions. What makes Lorber’s writings stand out from typical mystical predictions is specificity. Many people have made predictions about a great and destructive war during the past, and anyone can look back after the fact and insist they were really talking about World War II. Lorber talked about a great war and gave the time (less than 2,000 years after Jesus), the place (worldwide, but with particular focus on Europe and Asia), made specific references to Germany and Russia being involved, predicted incendiary bombing (“a great many cities shall be destroyed by fire”), tells that theories of racial superiority will play a role in the war and that those theories will be defeated at the end of the war, mentions much of what occurred in the Nazi Empire (“When this massive war is fought, a rule will be established and everything measured, critically and mathematically, to determine what people may have and eat, what they may know, say and write”, etc…
But the bottom line is that at the start we were debating probabilities. If the explanation is that Lorber had both temporal lobe epilepsy and eidetic memory, we can say that the probability of such a thing is low. (Especially since the link for “eidetic memory” goes to a Wikipedia page which freely acknowledges that such a thing may not even exist.) The evidence for psychological explanations is that the EZW said so. (Exactly why you’d consider them a credible organization I’m not sure; it can’t be merely because they’re the only anti-Lorber source listed on Wikipedia, can it?) The question I ask myself is not ‘What’s the only explanation?’ or ‘What’s the best explanation?’, but rather ‘What’s the best explanation?’ I want an explanation that actually explains.
[quote]
In da Costa’s case, we have claims of [ul]levitation[li]regular emergence from a state of quadriplegia[]survival for 12 years on apparently less than 100 calories per day[]cogent writing as an illiterate[/ul]Yes, of course these would be Nobel prizeworthy Gaps for God if they are really true. But, her paralysis was only gradual – it wasn’t a case of severing the spinal column when she jumped out of the window. One would expect some ability to move even after her condition had worsened such that she was bed-ridden. The claims of actual, clear-space-beneath-her levitation are not even explicitly made in your quote: “as if levitating” to me indicates her raising her pelvis – surprising in a bed-ridden woman, but not a literal Gap to be filled divinely. And this 3-hour Friday afternoon matinee performance of the stages of the Cross was apparently excruciating for her, as one would expect of someone whose spinal column was still intact and able to ferry pain messages. Nor was she illiterate, according to her official biography. So we are left with the miraculous survival on starvation rations, which reduced her to a mere 33 kilos – if God was sustaining her divinely, He was being careful to make sure she still clearly looked like someone starving to death. Again, we simply have no way of reliably establishing her precise daily calorie count, and can only look instead at similar cases today.[/li][/quote]
Your analysis of da Costa’s paralysis does not match up with the analysis of the doctors who actually inspected her. I go by the information of firsthand witness and medical reports (also, according to Sullivan’s book, the ecstasies were photographed and videotaped). On the issue of the her fast, the link to Skeptic’s Dictionary would appear to confirm rather than deny that da Costa’s case was unique. They mention that when Ellen Greve was put to the scientific test, by the fourth day of her fast vital signs such as blood pressure were already going crazy. In the case of da Costa, the doctors who monitored her recorded blood pressure and other data and confirmed that they remained normal as she fasted. To me it looks like a supernatural event precisely because it’s so far outside the range of any case today. (Though the lengthy fast while taking only the Eucharist was also reported and carefully tested in the case of Therese Neumann.)
As I’ve mentioned, my absolute trust in the peer-reviewed rigor of today’s scientific journals dissolved when I learned that there was no such rigor. My approach to all learning is to read or listen to what anybody presents and see whether they build a logical case for their beliefs or not. Peer review articles rarely do. I’ve laid out logical reasons why peer reviewed articles would misfire so frequently, but that’s beside the point.
That said, if you want modern-day, scientifically tested cases of miraculous occurrences, you can have them, as in the example of Dr. Benson’s research on the Buddhist monks that I referenced in the previous thread.
ITR, given the credence you ascribe to Lorber’s hits, what do you make of Nostradamus?
So you went for the one that gave you what you wanted.
Totally understandable.
Once. For three days. In Hell.
Yes, the Love that my heart desires and that I’ve been looking for all my live.
They are all correct and they all exist, in the sense that they are all gods, with power of creating realities, life, and having worshipers. It’s then a personal choice. I chose Jesus.
Are there any gods that do not exist? The Invisible Pink Unicorn? The Flying Spaghetti monster? Biffy the Giant Flying Squirrel who I just now invented and nobody anywhere believes in?
Hey, I routinely sacrifice* teenagers to Biffy the Giant Flying Squirrel.
Slee
*And by sacrifice I mean heckle from the comfort of my car while I am driving down the street.
No, that’s a different Biffy the Giant Flying Squirrel than the one I was talking about, that happens to have the same name despite having many differences between them. For example, one of them has a giant purple corkscrew horn sticking out of its left nostril, and the other doesn’t.
But don’t feel bad, this sort of error is common among god believers that lack an objectively observable external referent to base a shared understanding of their diety on. The character called “God” is particularly known for being described as having significantly different attributes, depending on who you ask. Sometimes even when the people you’re asking are in the same church congregation.
It depends upon the devotion of their adherents.
Please, for the love of Biffy, tell me you’re not serious.
“I really, really strongly believe in Samson, the Eternally Pregnant Male Hedgehog!” (Poof!) “Holy crap, it worked, he appeared! Who knew! Hmm, with that in mind, now I really really really strongly believe in a large-breasted personal concubine who wants to have sex all the time and shits hundred dollar bills!”
Or you convinced yourself that you saw him anyway. Does it really matter if you’re convinced?
It will when I try to spend those hundreds.
ETA: And it’s kinda relevent to the question of whether he exists or not too, which was after all precisely the detail under discussion.
Remember what I said about religions being a community thing? If you want the hundreds then your devotion must have some incidental mechanism by which you get the money, and you’d better be able to justify the lack of receipt of funds due to your favored deity being overdrawn, or else you might suffer some kind of nervous breakdown. 
Right; additionally if I am able to convince other people to accept that my concubine’s money is good, despite there being no evidence of it existing (maybe it’s a credit account), then that will work fine too.
Unless there are some saps who don’t accept the existence of Samson and my concubine, who harsh my vibe by revejecting my divine credit. But then, if I have enough people who do accept my dieties, we can band together and legislate our beliefs on others. Clearly, this is a good thing.
But it still doesn’t imply that the dieties actually exist, though.
Sounds great now, but do you really want to have to explain to the emergency room nurse how you got all those paper cuts on your penis?
The Samson/Concubine religion bans anal sex - and for good reason!
Works for the Federal Reserve. Why not you?
Well their belief works against yours if they actively disbelieve. Therefore your divine credit is voted off the island. Harsh dude I know, but that’s how credit works. If people don’t believe you have it, then you don’t have it. Kinda sucks how other people can believe you into poverty huh?
Harsh man. I’m sorry.
But there was no established ‘atom’ at the time – ‘a-tom’ just means ‘indivisible’ (ie. todays atoms aren’t really a-toms either). The ‘atom’ we now call a molecule was considered by Dalton to be made of smaller constituents in 1808, and so simply proposing a further subdivision below this is hardly imaginative. Faraday had already demonstrated the effect of magnetism on light in 1845, and the apparent magnitude of stars much brighter than the sun had already been measured. As for the particle decay, I’m having trouble finding the exact quote – all I can find is reference to “soul particles” and “not one particle exists that does not have the ability to secure the picture of the eternal sun”, which is meaningless gibberish (and even if he did say something like your interpretation, saying that some particles might change quickly is hardly impressive). None of what you said he said contradicts the mid 19th Century science he might easily have known about as a schoolteacher.
No, it only “clearly” matches up in hindsight, and you can find such “clear” matches in the writings of any old crackpot.
What? In the 1850’s??
But he never said “electrons” have a cloudy form – again, you’re matching him up in hindsight.
But the old age of the Earth had already been established by the fossil record for decades if not centuries – it is again no great feat of imagination to propose that humans have been around for a long time as well, especially with strangely shaped human skulls being dug up in Belgium, Gibraltar and the Neander Valley not far from him in Austria from 1829 onwards.
Funny, that doesn’t sound very specific at all to me. It sounds vague and mystical, just like Nostradamus.
No, I said that Eidetic memory might be an explanation if he was, say, completely illiterate. But he was a schoolteacher! We don’t need to propose Eidetic memory at all for his knowledge of contemporary science.
No, the evidence for psychological explanations is that Alien Voice Syndrome is common. Please, please read that paper and tell me if you think it’s irrelevant here.
Actually, they’re a pro-Lorber organization. If I wanted to cite an anti-Lorber example I would have chosen the Catholic Church who banned all his books because he wrote as Jesus! Please, please read some of the Great Gospel of John. Are you seriously saying that this was divinely inspired? It is just laughable, as the passages that sleestak and I are directing you to obviously demonstrate.
Err, what?
She was not quadriplegic, and her official biography states that she could move with excruciating agony, showing that her spinal column was intact.
But she was reduced to 33 kilos! She looked like she was starving to death. We cannot know her precise daily calorific intake – bread and wine might have been enough to keep her from actual death while still bringing her damned close.
Well, I wasn’t around when you started that thread - your entire hypothesis is utterly contrary to reality, but that’s by the by. What I really want to ask here is, are you questioning the veracity of the experimental evidence I’ve provided in this thread? Are you saying that people don’t do what the papers say they do in these experiments?
You’ll note that I also referenced research on Buddhist monks in my OP. What evidence can you provide for an external divine entity? (My citation explains the Buddhists’ EEG readings without an external entity.)