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The Supernatural

jet57 said:
Love is unseen, but it's real. Anger is unseen, but it's real. Very natural, very worldly.

(God) too is very natural; accessible.
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Love and Anger are very visible. God's creation is apparent to anyone who wants to see but, I Am is unseen.
 
WCH said:
Love and Anger are very visible. God's creation is apparent to anyone who wants to see but, I Am is unseen.
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:roll:
 
ashurbanipal said:
I might wish to convince some others--those who have the capability for genuine aspiration. I have no wish to convince all and sundry. That's just not how we work.

That said, I contend that my results are reproducible, at least as well as other complex human-involved phenomena are reproducible. I can tell you exactly how to have experiences similar to mine, which is not to say that you'll be able to have them. But out of, say, a hundred spiritually-inclined people, about five of them will be able to succeed.

That doesn't sound like much, but let me offer an analogy.

Of a hundred people who are in excellent shape and inclined to climb Everest, perhaps five of them will ever succeed. Those five testify to the possibility of making it to the top of Everest and can tell the rest of us what it's like. Now, if conditions were more ideal, more of those hundred would be able to reach the top. If, for example, all of them had sufficient money and time, and none of them ever quit when the weather got bad, perhaps 80 of them would make it to the top. If none fell victim to accidents, probably 90-95 of them would make it. A few would be knocked out due to some previously unrecognized cardiovascular or nervous or skeletal problems. All of these obstacles have their counterparts on the Path of initiation.
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Still all we have is the word of people, better known a anecdotal evidence, which is the poorest, least reliable form of evidence. I must take your word for it. You have no more basis for your claim then do so called victims of alien abduction, or those who have claimed to see the Loch Ness Monster. Even near death experiences are interpreted to be a window into the supernatural, but there is no evidence that's what they are.

It matters little how strongly one may feel about an experience if they have no evidence in support of their interpretation.
 
Russell797 said:
Still all we have is the word of people, better known a anecdotal evidence, which is the poorest, least reliable form of evidence.
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I'm not sure about that. There's only one other kind of evidence, and it comes with its own set of problems.

Russell797 said:
I must take your word for it.
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As I mentioned, I'm not interested in convincing most people of anything to do with the content or import of my experiences.

Russell797 said:
You have no more basis for your claim then do so called victims of alien abduction, or those who have claimed to see the Loch Ness Monster.
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This point seems incorrect, for a few reasons. First, I certainly do have a basis for my claim, and it wouldn't be reasonable for me to say otherwise--whether or not another person thinks so.

Generally speaking, I've heard this line before, and while it starts out seeming to be quite potent, on analysis, it seems to break down to be rather less powerful.

Russell797 said:
Even near death experiences are interpreted to be a window into the supernatural, but there is no evidence that's what they are.
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Depends on what you mean. Under certain assumption, this is obviously correct. But those assumptions come with a higher cost than most people would be willing to accept.

Russell797 said:
It matters little how strongly one may feel about an experience if they have no evidence in support of their interpretation.
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I'm not sure what your claim is, here. Can you elaborate?
 
ashurbanipal said:
I'm not sure about that. There's only one other kind of evidence, and it comes with its own set of problems.



As I mentioned, I'm not interested in convincing most people of anything to do with the content or import of my experiences.



This point seems incorrect, for a few reasons. First, I certainly do have a basis for my claim, and it wouldn't be reasonable for me to say otherwise--whether or not another person thinks so.

Generally speaking, I've heard this line before, and while it starts out seeming to be quite potent, on analysis, it seems to break down to be rather less powerful.



Depends on what you mean. Under certain assumption, this is obviously correct. But those assumptions come with a higher cost than most people would be willing to accept.



I'm not sure what your claim is, here. Can you elaborate?
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No matter how certain someone may be, unless they can demonstrate the case with repeatability by independent analysis their claim can not be regarded as true.

If we detect just once a signal from outer space that seems to be coming from an alien intelligence, can we assume that in fact we have been contacted by aliens? No we can not. We must continue to listen for a repeat of the signal. Lacking such repeatability we must regard what was detected as a statistical anomaly. This actually happened with 2 teams of scientists receiving a signal simultaneously, but no one has ever detected such a signal since. We require not only evidence, but the opportunity to study the evidence. Believing near death experiences represent a window into the after life is nothing more than jumping to a conclusion without evidence.
 
ashurbanipal said:
I know supernatural beings exists. I've seen a few, face to face, as clearly and as physically as I see anything in the day-to-day world. It takes a great deal of work to develop the means to do so, but yeah, I've directly experienced the supernatural, so I know it exists.
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Or these were hallucinations and you haven't experienced what you believe you experienced.
 
Russell797 said:
So you feel you have some sort of intuitive "sense"? I wonder why I don't have that same sense.
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We all have different abilities and skills.

Many we share of course, but some have abilities that others do not, especially in the spiritual realm.
 
Thoreau72 said:
We all have different abilities and skills.

Many we share of course, but some have abilities that others do not, especially in the spiritual realm.
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I don't believe that. I think we all have the same abilities, just most can't tune in.
 
Thoreau72 said:
We all have different abilities and skills.

Many we share of course, but some have abilities that others do not, especially in the spiritual realm.
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Anyone can claim to have abilities in the spiritual realm because no evidence is needed to demonstrate it. There is also no evidence of a spiritual realm.
 
I don't believe in the supernatural. Yes, I have experienced things I can't explain but my ignorance is no excuse to blame it on magic.
 
devildavid said:
Anyone can claim to have abilities in the spiritual realm because no evidence is needed to demonstrate it. There is also no evidence of a spiritual realm.
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There is no evidence for anything other than matter and energy. Even the nothingness of vacant space is filled with energy...it is energy. There is and can not be anything else which we can interact with. We can interact with the same stuff we ourselves are made of. Matter and energy. If it's not one or the other we can't possibly be aware of it.

Even if there is a realm we envision as the supernatural how are we to interact with it? If we can't interact with it we can't know it? We know things by interchanging information with them. Something must carry the information. When people claim to see a ghost, by what force or energy is that information being transferred? If it's something spooky like instantaneous action at a distance on entangled particles we have no clue how that happens. Whatever it turns out to be will have a physical explanation, not some non-physical supernatural and thus meaningless explanation.

How does a spirit take on a physical form without being made of matter? What holds a ghost together. It can't be energy, because energy constantly is moving from high density to low density. A ghost or spirit thus defies the second law of thermodynamics.

These are the questions I ask myself. No can answer them, but until they do I simply will not believe anyone who claims to have seen such "things".
 
jet57 said:
I don't believe that. I think we all have the same abilities, just most can't tune in.
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Autistic people are capable of what seem to us as magical capabilities. A nephew of mine can give you the day of the week for an date in the past or future in less than 3 or 4 seconds. Ask him what day of the week Jan. 24, 1850 was and he will tell you and he is right every time. I just saw a news feature on TV where an autistic adult can speak and read in eleven languages and can play 26 different musical instrument like an expert.

Something about autism allows some of these people to tap into abilities far beyond the normal. I suspect it's part of all of us, if only the proper "switch" is turn on.
 
Fundamentally, discussing X, where X is claimed to be both real "unobservable", is a contradiction.
 
Russell797 said:
Autistic people are capable of what seem to us as magical capabilities. A nephew of mine can give you the day of the week for an date in the past or future in less than 3 or 4 seconds. Ask him what day of the week Jan. 24, 1850 was and he will tell you and he is right every time. I just saw a news feature on TV where an autistic adult can speak and read in eleven languages and can play 26 different musical instrument like an expert.

Something about autism allows some of these people to tap into abilities far beyond the normal. I suspect it's part of all of us, if only the proper "switch" is turn on.
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There is a working theory on Autism that states that - Autistics do not have the noise filter that the rest of us do, so the din of sound and visions comes at them all at once and I think there's something to that, 60 Minutes did a story, or two years ago I guess, wherein they took an Autistic man up in a helicopter to get a panoramic view of London, and then they took him to a studio where, on a very large board, he took a pilot point pen, and from memory drew the city of London in exacting detail. He was known for doing such things, so they tried it on a larger scale and it worked.

Here's another version of that story:



Both he and the ones you mention who know exact dates etc are highlighting Eidetic Memory. So that stuff comes out in other ways as well.

Yeah, if we could figure out how to untangle our brains, it'd be a different world all together.
 
the_recruit said:
Or these were hallucinations and you haven't experienced what you believe you experienced.
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Hmmm...why not think everything I experience is an hallucination?
 
Russell797 said:
No matter how certain someone may be, unless they can demonstrate the case with repeatability by independent analysis their claim can not be regarded as true.
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Obviously false. Look: I brushed my teeth this morning. That's my claim. Are you saying I should be regarded as telling a falsehood unless I can demonstrate that I brushed my teeth this morning? I obviously cannot do that (I didn't take any selfies in the process or anything, and my wife was downstairs so there were no witnesses). But in fact, my claim is true, and any number of other true claims are in the same situation. For example, I also rinsed with mouthwash. The problem with your standard is that if we adopt it, we will end up regarding as untrue a great many claims that are, in fact, true.

Russell797 said:
If we detect just once a signal from outer space that seems to be coming from an alien intelligence, can we assume that in fact we have been contacted by aliens? No we can not. We must continue to listen for a repeat of the signal. Lacking such repeatability we must regard what was detected as a statistical anomaly.
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Again, clearly false. Suppose someone makes a profile on this site and makes exactly one post, and then never posts again. Should we think their post is mere statistical fluke? Seems to me we should assume someone-some human being-made exactly one post.

Now, let me offer a diagnosis: it depends on what makes us think it's a signal from outer space. If the signal lasts, say, eight hours, and is formatted so as to transmit images of math worked out in arabic numerals, giving us solutions to problems no human being could offer, that wouldn't be a statistical fluke. The lesson is that the content of the signal matters. Similarly, by analogy, the content of an experience matters.

Russell797 said:
We require not only evidence, but the opportunity to study the evidence.
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Again, false. I take it everyone knows that breaking a finger is a painful experience. But if I break my finger, you cannot examine my pain. By your principle, since no one else can examine my pain, no one should believe I'm actually in pain. And so for all experiences that every person has, day-in, day-out.

Russell797 said:
Believing near death experiences represent a window into the after life is nothing more than jumping to a conclusion without evidence.
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I'm not sure what you mean.
 
ashurbanipal said:
Hmmm...why not think everything I experience is an hallucination?
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It's perfectly reasonable to doubt certain perceptions more than others. Have you never doubted a perception? Have you ever tried an Oculus? When I put on my Oculus rift it gives me the perception that I have suddenly been teleported onto a roller coaster, or that some monster is lunging at my face. Hopefully you'll agree we shouldn't trust these perceptions as veridical. Clearly I am not on a roller coaster. Clearly there is no monster before me.

Situated in the context of all of my other experiences and inferences I have made about the world it is easier to explain these perceptions as illusions produced by the goggles on my face rather than supposing them to be veridical.

Non-veridical perceptions are hardly rare at all. Dreams. Optical illusions. Mirages. Drug-induced hallucinations. Phantom limb pain etc etc.

Similarly, it's clear to me that people who claim to 'experience the presence of God' or the supernatural or what-have-you are most likely just misattributing in this way a very real and powerful conscious experience to something that is not there.
 
Mach said:
Fundamentally, discussing X, where X is claimed to be both real "unobservable", is a contradiction.
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No it's not. Take the 'observable universe' for instance. There are parts of the universe that are not observable to us. Physicists speculate about what may exist there. Nothing incoherent about it.
 
jet57 said:
There is a working theory on Autism that states that - Autistics do not have the noise filter that the rest of us do, so the din of sound and visions comes at them all at once and I think there's something to that, 60 Minutes did a story, or two years ago I guess, wherein they took an Autistic man up in a helicopter to get a panoramic view of London, and then they took him to a studio where, on a very large board, he took a pilot point pen, and from memory drew the city of London in exacting detail. He was known for doing such things, so they tried it on a larger scale and it worked.

Here's another version of that story:



Both he and the ones you mention who know exact dates etc are highlighting Eidetic Memory. So that stuff comes out in other ways as well.

Yeah, if we could figure out how to untangle our brains, it'd be a different world all together.
Click to expand...


Wow, makes one wonder what people who claim to be able to experience what to us normal folk seems like the supernatural are actually tapping into. One thing is for certain I have no such ability whatsoever, so their claims seem preposterous...then I look at a video like that. It's like magic, except that it's not an illusion or a trick.
 
the_recruit said:
No it's not. Take the 'observable universe' for instance. There are parts of the universe that are not observable to us. Physicists speculate about what may exist there. Nothing incoherent about it.
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More than likely what exists beyond our light horizon is more of the same universe becoming visible to us. However, that is still an assumption, a very, very sound assumption, but still an assumption. We won't know it until we can detect and measure it.
 
ashurbanipal said:
Obviously false. Look: I brushed my teeth this morning. That's my claim. Are you saying I should be regarded as telling a falsehood unless I can demonstrate that I brushed my teeth this morning? I obviously cannot do that (I didn't take any selfies in the process or anything, and my wife was downstairs so there were no witnesses). But in fact, my claim is true, and any number of other true claims are in the same situation. For example, I also rinsed with mouthwash. The problem with your standard is that if we adopt it, we will end up regarding as untrue a great many claims that are, in fact, true.



Again, clearly false. Suppose someone makes a profile on this site and makes exactly one post, and then never posts again. Should we think their post is mere statistical fluke? Seems to me we should assume someone-some human being-made exactly one post.

Now, let me offer a diagnosis: it depends on what makes us think it's a signal from outer space. If the signal lasts, say, eight hours, and is formatted so as to transmit images of math worked out in arabic numerals, giving us solutions to problems no human being could offer, that wouldn't be a statistical fluke. The lesson is that the content of the signal matters. Similarly, by analogy, the content of an experience matters.



Again, false. I take it everyone knows that breaking a finger is a painful experience. But if I break my finger, you cannot examine my pain. By your principle, since no one else can examine my pain, no one should believe I'm actually in pain. And so for all experiences that every person has, day-in, day-out.



I'm not sure what you mean.
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I am relating to you the standards of scientific inquiry. If you brushed your teeth this morning then if we studied your mouth we would find evidence of such an event. Same if you used mouthwash. I don't just take your word for it. I must prove it.

A signal from space is not a statistical anomaly. Space is full of signals. The signal received was in fact exactly where it is expected such a signal to reside on the electromagnetic spectrum if it were coming from an alien intelligence. A human posting on this site is what you expect, an alien signal is not...Extra ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence.

If you break your finger we expect you to feel pain. What would require evidence is that if you claimed not to feel pain. Then we would be compelled to find out why, and if we found you to have nerve damage then we would accept that you do not feel pain.

We don't require evidence for things we already know to be true. We require evidence to make the case that something is true. Lacking that evidence to work with the claim must be regarded as unconfirmed.
 
Russell797 said:
More than likely what exists beyond our light horizon is more of the same universe becoming visible to us. However, that is still an assumption, a very, very sound assumption, but still an assumption. We won't know it until we can detect and measure it.
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But my point here is simply that 'being observable' isn't implied by 'existent'.
 
the_recruit said:
But my point here is simply that 'being observable' isn't implied by 'existent'.
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But without being detectible we can't confirm existence. We can reasonably extrapolate that what lies beyond our light horizon to be more of the same. What we can't do is assume the laws of physics are different there, or that God(s) resides there. We require evidence.

If there are realms which "exist" which we can not interact with then we can not know them. It's a meaningless exercise in the imagination which can not lead to a conclusion. You are free to believe such things but they can not be proven by rational inquiry.
 
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