Theism and Explanation

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No. I am merely asking how or where it fits in relation to "explainable in terms of emotion and other naturalistic processes".

leejosepho: I think the problem with that is that it is moving your goalpost.

Consider: you are trying to argue for the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent personal being.

And you are now reduced to proffering an anecdote and asking for people to possibly, maybe, allow that said anecdote cannot be explained by science. You're going from the standard of proof necessary to explain the existence and actions of an omnipresent, omnipotent, omnibenevolent personal being, to the standard of proof necessary to explain an anecdote. I do not think this helps your argument.

This tactic is not commensurate with overall goal.

I have in my garage an invisible dragon. This would be very cool. In trying to prove its existence to you, you would become quite annoyed if at some point I said "my brother's friend's sister's dog once barked at the dragon. Can you explain what he barked at, if not an invisible dragon?"

You would point out that I am making an extraordinary claim, which ought to require an extraordinary proof, yet have been reduced to completely unpersuasive and rather mediocre attempts at evidence. Would you begin to wonder why, rather than offering firm and solid proof of the dragon, I am now offering such a pathetically unpersuasive form of proof?

If I have a dragon in my garage, you want me to prove there is a dragon in my garage. You would and should be annoyed if all I ended up doing was trying to prove that sometimes dogs bark at thin air for reasons we do not know.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I know what I know and I know what I believe, but no "God" would automatically be required in relation to the anecdote I have mentioned.

Honest answer: BS!.

Ok, it can be rendered as impossible, why? because it contradicts laws of physics and it contradicts biology. You cannot possibly watch yourself from above, because you need your body in the proper conditions for that and in the proper place for that aiming at the proper direction, so you will be able to see things from above. That's the only reasonable explanation that goes according to reality.

Fortunate delusion.

ruveyn

So then, you completely dismiss all thought of any dimension beyond the physical?

Of course. What's the alternative to constraining one's beliefs to that which actually exists?

Your rhetorical question there requires being constrained by ignorance, not by reality. I have never had an out-of-body experience, but I have had the experience of "hearing from the beyond", so to speak ... and now there is no chance of your ever helping me figure that out, and that is sad.

leejosepho: Many people have had profound experiences which changed their lives for the better. Many great things were accomplished because of these profound experiences. These experiences are almost always interpreted by the person who experienced them, to be spiritual or otherwise supernatural.

I'm not denying that you and others have had profound, life-changing experiences. I'm not denying that these experiences have had an enormous influence on you and others.

What I am denying is that these experiences are supernatural. Life-affirming, inspiring, yes. But I don't think that even the most inspiring of these experiences is in any way supernatural.

I may completely disagree with you about the explanation for your experiences, but I won't deny their result, or try to minimize how important they were to you.

I think the explanation for the experience itself, should be isolated strictly from the consequences of that experience. It's the explanation that usually ends up causing all the fights, while no one really disagrees about the consequences.

That is not what we are talking about at the moment. In the National Geographic documentary, a man whose heart had been stopped during surgery later reported some unique and unusual arm movements made by the doctor during that surgery, and I once had a "presence of thought" (my term) experience where a different kind of information came from somewhere outside myself.

I don't dismiss thoughts, but I tend to dismiss claims that are ad hoc explanations and dont' have any science (real science) to back those up, my objection is that everything we have learn about reality is contradicted by such claims, so, unless the claim can actually be empirically verified, then it is reasonable to dismiss them as real or satisfactory explanations.

In the case of the National Geographic documentary telling of a man who had post-operatively reported some unique and unusual arm movements made by the doctor during that man's surgery while he (that man) had been completely "out" (sedated) and his eyes had even been taped shut (common OR practice), "science" (the investigators, doctors, etc.) had no explanation to offer at all ... and neither did National Geographic suggest any (as I recall). So then, shall we now just conclude the incident either never really happened or was just some kind of hoax?


What would be required to "empirically verify" my report of once having had a series of "presence of thought" (my term) experiences where some certain information had been somehow conveyed to me from somewhere outside myself? And please note: My only claim here is simply that I had been given some information that could not have possibly come from me. So then, how shall we investigate something like that?

lol. If the soul can see then why there are blind people?

I think what you're stating is that supernatural vs. natural is a poorly thought-out intuitive ontology. Lets say hypothetically REGs work, that people trying to effect random event generators with their minds actually are. Then, we find out that its a case of proton entanglement, we then find out that, just as consciousness is of and manipulated by matter, as matter, that its structured in such a way that it can selectively work proton entanglement. We then figure out not that physics as we always knew it is wrong, we just find a few support beams under the floor that we didn't realize were there.

If that hypothetical situation were true it would be supernatural in the way of Chinese pandas. People for a while might shreak and grown because they're terrified of the intelligent design community going wild, saying "Aha!!", and ushering in a new stone age in education. Hence there would be a big brawl that has nothing to do with the science and everything about people's fear of each other. Then, once someone figured out that this sort of proton entanglement was a sealed circuit and offered no possibility of God, everyone could breath a big sigh of relief, no star chamber court in the foreseeable future as a result, and they could further investigate this. Jumping up and down calling it impossible prior to this point or saying that such an assumption had absolutely no mooring in what we know of the universe had no effect on the outcome - aside from perhaps flipping 3/10,000 heads or tails computations somewhere.

I guess that's why I feel like the "But it doesn't fit" argument is a big yawn, its really a thing of "*I* can't see where it fits" and fit. Like natural vs. supernatural, is an intuitive ontological call - it may mean something, it may just as easily mean nothing.

Do you consciously mean to limiting non-physical "sight" to mere "soul sight"?

No explanation != Imaginary tales that contradict laws of physics


well, psychology and I believe neurology seem to explain what is behind religious experiences, and given that religious experience are subjective experiences, I hold the justifications as unreliable. Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach pretty much seems to gets into the subject.

Last edited by blunnet on 12 Apr 2011, 2:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.