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Comfort?
Well, my friend..if and when God comes to you up-close and personal - then tell me if you
saw any judgment or punishment in Him.We'll talk seriously then.
I assume you've also had an experience of the spiritual realm. Was yours during intense meditation as well?
There are plenty of NDE accounts of the spiritual realm that include feelings of indescribable happiness, peace acceptance, etc. Do you believe God was the source of those feelings in all those NDEs?
I assume you've also had an experience of the spiritual realm. Was yours during intense meditation as well?
There are plenty of NDE accounts of the spiritual realm that include feelings of indescribable happiness, peace acceptance, etc. Do you believe God was the source of those feelings in all those NDEs?
I do not know what NDE's actually are but as altered states they would seem to be tapping into the part of Reality that I do in deep meditation. The positive experiences would seem to be consistent with my experience of God.
Last edited by MysticPhD; 05-01-2020 at 11:39 PM..
Comfort?
Well, my friend..if and when God comes to you up-close and personal - then tell me if you
saw any judgment or punishment in Him. We'll talk seriously then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iwasmadenew
I assume you've also had an experience of the spiritual realm. Was yours during intense meditation as well?
There are plenty of NDE accounts of the spiritual realm that include feelings of indescribable happiness, peace acceptance, etc. Do you believe God was the source of those feelings in all those NDEs?
The bolded that I said earlier, I thought, was clear. We can talk when the above happens.
It would be my pleasure.
Why are you so confident that the consciousness you encountered "matched perfectly the God as revealed and demonstrated unambiguously by Jesus, period." How would one verify if the experience you had was "of God"? Could it have been a trickster entity that inhabits the lower frequencies of the spiritual realm? It would be important to know for sure.
What conceivable reason would there be for a trickster to convince me to love God, Jesus, and everyone by pretending to be the God revealed by Jesus? It seems to me that love of God and each other is a superior reason to believe Jesus than a fear of God and Hell.
I've had conversations with several people who've experienced the spiritual realm (usually during intense meditation) and they can no longer deny its existence (materialism is false), but they refuse to believe in the God of the Bible.
The fact that people have different and contradictory spiritual experiences should lead a rational person to conclude most, if no all, spiritual experiences are false. That is why we can not use experience as reliable evidence.
This would have no bearing on whether materialism is true or not, so your claim it is false would be a non sequitur.
The fact that people have different and contradictory spiritual experiences should lead a rational person to conclude most, if no all, spiritual experiences are false. That is why we can not use experience as reliable evidence.
.
“We” may not feel obliged to use an experience as reliable evidence (although the more people who claim to have experienced something similar the less easy it is to dismiss). But “we” can be rational and reach a different conclusion than you have. After all, even a physical event is often experienced and perceived differently by different people. Each person may focus on a different aspect of an event or ascribe a different meaning to it. Two people could be having a conversation and walk away with very different, even conflicting, understandings of the conversation. In other words, the fact that subjective experience of the same physical event (or the same type of event) may be even vastly different does not mean that/those physical event(s) never occurred. Same thing with spiritual experiences.
“We” may not feel obliged to use an experience as reliable evidence (although the more people who claim to have experienced something similar the less easy it is to dismiss).
But the similar experiences could be based on a similar cultural background, not because what you experienced is true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pleroo
But “we” can be rational and reach a different conclusion than you have.
But it is not rational to look at the common ideas while ignoring the very different experiences. That is a cognitive bias.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pleroo
After all, even a physical event is often experienced and perceived differently by different people. Each person may focus on a different aspect of an event or ascribe a different meaning to it. Two people could be having a conversation and walk away with very different, even conflicting, understandings of the conversation. In other words, the fact that subjective experience of the same physical event (or the same type of event) may be even vastly different does not mean that/those physical event(s) never occurred. Same thing with spiritual experiences.
Physical is the important word, as a physical event can be independently verified, whereas your internal experience can not. Your experience may be evidence for you, but I have no more reason to believe your experience I can not verify than that of any other mystical experience.
“We” may not feel obliged to use an experience as reliable evidence (although the more people who claim to have experienced something similar the less easy it is to dismiss). But “we” can be rational and reach a different conclusion than you have. After all, even a physical event is often experienced and perceived differently by different people. Each person may focus on a different aspect of an event or ascribe a different meaning to it. Two people could be having a conversation and walk away with very different, even conflicting, understandings of the conversation. In other words, the fact that subjective experience of the same physical event (or the same type of event) may be even vastly different does not mean that/those physical event(s) never occurred. Same thing with spiritual experiences.
That right, what most atheist do is compare what spiritual people say said to what we know. Are there "physical" events that are testable and we can easily demonstrate to other people that supports what they say. we openly compare claims side by side and form a relative reliability scale. Thats why most atheist understand that we, we are in a larger more complex system.
then we proceed to processes that can lesson personal bias and human error to the best of our ability.
The bolded that I said earlier, I thought, was clear. We can talk when the above happens.
It would be my pleasure.
If it ever happens to me, then we can compare notes. Until then, I still say it's all in the mind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pleroo
“We” may not feel obliged to use an experience as reliable evidence (although the more people who claim to have experienced something similar the less easy it is to dismiss). But “we” can be rational and reach a different conclusion than you have. After all, even a physical event is often experienced and perceived differently by different people. Each person may focus on a different aspect of an event or ascribe a different meaning to it. Two people could be having a conversation and walk away with very different, even conflicting, understandings of the conversation. In other words, the fact that subjective experience of the same physical event (or the same type of event) may be even vastly different does not mean that/those physical event(s) never occurred. Same thing with spiritual experiences.
Yes, but this is the familiar reliance on what Jonesey referred to as human understanding that the Bible warned against and Mystic dismisses as limited and flawed human perception.
They are right in that humans are hardwired to think in a way that enables survival, but not in a way that reveals truth. Something More is required than unreliable human conclusions ('common sense' as it is often called) that led to the snowdome -cosmos, medical cures based on humors, leeches and flys' wings; and Creation -myths.
It comes down to Inspired Revelation or scientific discovery; reason and evidence or irrationality; Logic or blind faith.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 05-02-2020 at 06:46 AM..
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