I wasn't commenting on any causal webs, I was commenting on "all that is". If the "universal causal chain" has a beginning, then there is no cause to the beginning (otherwise it isn't a beginning, its cause was). If it doesn't have a beginning, then it stretches backward infiniely. Take your pick. I can't see how a third alternative could make any sense at all.

There are many rumours of "scientific proof" of ESP, but I have yet to see any. I have seen reports from the US Government after they closed down a multi billion dollar project that was commisioned to study and look for just such things, and never found any. That means I am skeptical. Could you cite the study?

You never answered easyjaksn's question though. Do you think that a fairytale father figure that lives in the clouds is a plausible explanation for them? Do you think a wrathfull war God is explanation for them? Do you think that the Jesus of the german medival paintings is explanation for them? Or have you simply learned through your life that it is not only okay, but even encouraged, to slap the label "God" (even if we don't know what the label is suposed to mean) on something that on it's face looks inexplicable. Two big problems with that. It makes us stop looking for explanations and willfully embrace ignorance, and it is just another hook for the political aspect of religion.

Why even adopt the word "God", which is so full of clearly ludicrous implications? I still have never had a satisfactory answer when someone proposes a philosophical "God". Why not call it something else? Something less contentious, less open to equivocation and less weighed down with culotural and historical baggage. Invariably, I get the response that "the word doesn't matter", followed by a refusal in practice to stop using the word. Don't you think that is a littlle telling?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that people are consciously and intentionally protecting the word or "concept" of God, but rather that it is so deeply ingrained into our current consiousness that it is done without a care. Like Dawkins says, it really isn't that different than how people blatantly used terms like "mankind" and "the history of man" without having any clue that they were both buying into and promoting a male-centered view of society with such phrases, but now we actually understand that because feminists came alonmg and pointed it out to us. So I'm just pointing out the word is chocked full of implications that you wouldn't normally want associated with a rational argument, yet you choose it. Why?

Benkei wrote:
Mostly Dean Radin's studies of which I find most convincing the presentiment research.

http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/10/presentimen...

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?con...

Some of these experiments have been performed at the University of Utrecht as well but these results I only received in Dutch but confirm the same, statistically. Of course, there is a danger that the assumption of supernatural abilities being possible leads to wrong questions, therefore wrong testing methods and therefore wrong conclusions. But still, because of a personal spiritual experience (which leads me to emphatise with people seeking "God" as an explanation) and an experience with my mom I am inclined to accept the existence of supernatural phenomena so do not believe that the assumption leads to wrong questions and testing methods per se.

Although my spiritual experience is not anything viable for explanation I can describe the situation with my mother. It concerned my first business trip to Germany, Dusseldorf. My boss stepped into my office on monday morning enquiring about the status of my work load and then asked me whether I was available to perform due dilligence on tuesday and wednesday in Germany. I had an appointment with my girlfriend which I cancelled and she therefore knew. Besides my boss, my two other colleagues knew.

Monday evening my mom calls and says "I heard you are going on a business trip to Germany". I was surprised and asked how she knew. She claimed my father had told her but I hadn't spoken with him that day. So maybe I forgot so we asked my dad, he was positive he had not spoken with me either. Maybe my mom was confused and my gf had told her. I asked her. I asked my boss and my colleagues, just to make sure, because they would not have had any reason to speak to her. Nobody that could know I was going had spoken to her.

Now, this could simply be a weird coincidence but years before when I was about 4 years old my parents and one of my brothers were living in Curacao. My second brother, Ton, was living in a boarding school in the Netherlands. My mom and dad insist that my mom was awake (so not a coincidence with a dream) and had the sensation that something bad had happened to Ton. When we called we could not reach him at the boarding school, because he was in the hospital after having an accident with a self-made fireworks bomb.

I never believed that story and insisted that they missed some logical explanation until the phone call I had regarding the business trip. Perhaps it helps you to understand my appreciation of the possibility of more or at least of my belief that science in its current form is wholly inadequate to explain such phenomena. As such I have to reject materialism.

I had missed it but I think that I had also made it clear that I do not believe apodeictic statements are possible with regard to these experiences - at least, I find it impossible with regard to my experiences - even if people feel comfortable to couch their experience in traditional explanations. Perhaps it is because I am comfortable enough leaving it unexplained that I feel no need to think of it as the presence of God.

Nevertheless, as far as I am aware people who have had religious, spiritual or mystical experiences do consider it positive. So if this thing that is experienced is a real experience and it is of the same thing, than this "God" is considered Good.

But the negative and positive of religion is not what I see as a reflection of such experiences and I admit that I cannot place where such an experience can lead to the idea of a wrathful, war God. It seems not to be grounded in such experiences.

But then the whole interrelation between such experiences and practised religion, practised by thousands who I doubt know anything else beyond the Word, is for me personally inexplicable as well.

Where at the basis the three monotheistic religions agree that God is inexplicable, they still manage to convincingly (for themselves) derive rules from what God tells them. Religious claims, as such, can be dismissed outright as far as I am concerned, although if we look closely at the writings of Christian scholars on virtue ethics, we find that in the end they do not know what the virtuous life is and they let go of the previously assumed apodeictic statements and therefore God as the basis of an absolute. It's not all as bad as it seems.

(BTW, it is of course nice to notice how theists are all about "God is love, forgiveness, wonderful" etc. and atheists keep bringing up "war Gods and the evils of religion". Of course, I think it's both nonsense.)

As I stated before, I can understand why people choose this word and not another.

The ludicrous implications are probably not what draws them to it.

The Jehova witness glorifies God's love for you not all the internal inconsistencies in the Bible nor his omni-this and omni-that. And all encompassing love, I can certainly relate to that as some description of what I experienced personally but even that fails to capture it. So yes, why not have other people find comfort in sharing their inexplicable experience with others in such a way?

And use a different word. That would work for some time but that too would soon be synonymous to old man with a beard, kind of friendly as long as you rub him the right way and therefore adhere to this, that and that.

I do not choose it but find the choice by other people to do so defensible and I found the overall stance in this thread somewhat harsh.

My intention is more to create an understanding of such experiences and why they move people to faith instead of putting all their eggs in the basket of materialism, which I simply hope might at least allow you to say: There are real people out there with real experiences of things that they in fact consider to be more real than everyday life.

Whether they experienced a part of objective reality, or indeed a thing beyond accepted 4-dimensional reality or a thing qualitatively so different from our scientific assumptions that science fails to pick up on it or just a figment of their imagination, is an entirely different issue.

The intuition of personal experience cannot be ignored by the person having it and as neither theist or atheist can offer proof we must at least accept the experience at face value.

The garden-variety atheist, when confronting the theist who claims to have had a religious experience about God, is in a fact telling the theist he is a liar.

And if the atheist is learned, he will tell him "you cannot trust your senses" instead but that is an unsatisfactory explanation because the experience was there.

Well, I tell the tale poorly, which is why I would really suggest to read William James "The varieties of religious experiences". He simply documented the experiences and classifies them in some sense but without any sense of judgment. It's a wonderfully interesting read and might give more insight in the emotional state and types of experiences of these people.

loveofsophia wrote:
...Oh um...I still do have a problem with calling myself an atheist. I guess, technically, I very well might be one. Sheesh...that is not comfortable for me.

...


I addressed some concerns with regards the question above. However, I do have a problem (potentially socially internalized) with calling myself an atheist. Also, my modification of a form (religion) into something hybrid like disposes me toward a less fixed description of nonbeliever. But...I don't believe in God but I also don't really understand what the hell that word means.

Here is a last ditch effort. I am part theist in that I believe the figurative aspects of the God/gods/transcendent concepts are appealing in their representation of my question (with an imaginative answer). I am part atheist in that I don't believe in any God a religion claims faith in (and inherently there seems to be a knowledge claim). I am part agnostic in that I find the figurative part real to me and beautiful and the literal part disagreeable but interesting.

Reformed Nihilist wrote:
@ Marakismos,

When I refer to God beliefs as lunatic, I am using the standard garden variety meanings of the words, not any specialised terms. For the most part, lunatic beliefs that are not acted on, and are recognized for what they are are relatively harmless. Surely though, the indoctrination of children with lunatic beliefs, the formation of cults that gain political power and influence, shaping the laws and foriegn policies of entire nations is dangerous, don't you think?