Out of body religious experiences

[TomOfSweden]

How is it possible to learn more about anyone? You do so by studying His works and listening to the people who know Him. Of course, this takes the leap of faith of believing in Him first, but He is not as ellusive as all that if you search diligently.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this circular argumentation?

The major problem is that logic still falls short. A lot of people look at logic as more than it is. What it actually does is provide a struicture for argumanets, but I cannot prove anything using logic alone. I could mak a logical argument for the existence of God, and assuming all my premises were true then the conclusion that God exist would be true. The problem would lie in proving the premises. Using logic alone I would have a hard time proving that the universe exists because someone could always make the argument that we live in a Matrix generated inside a computer somewhere.

Nah, you're making simple things complicated again. Making a case for gods existence isn't so hard. Whenever you witness, measure, feel or what ever Christians do, the presence of God, you can if you judge it so, use it as proof of gods existence. Like my Cambridge friend points out. Logic is just a tool. If you put garbage in you get garbage out. But if you have taken the leap of faith that your evidence you put into the logical formula is irrefutable then it isn't garbage and your logical conclusion for the existence of god is solid.

Here's an example of perfectly valid science using solid logic. In today's scientific climate it doesn't have the critical stance required to be called "good science", but it is real science none the less.

1. Observe some aspect of the universe. (Water Boils when heated to 100 degrees C)
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed. (Water boils when heated because God wished it so.)
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions. (Water will Boil when I heat it, God will cause it to Boil.)
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results. (I heated water, God Willed it to Boil)
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation. (God made my water Boil Every time except for once, the devil put out my flame)

The big question is: have you witnessed God or a manifestation of god? When you witnessed this god force: how did you go about identifying it as a god? How did you tie that manifestation to the deity as explained in the Vulgate Bible? How did you tie that deity to the moral values explained in the Vulgate Bible? As you no doubt realise, we can go a lot further than this in our scepticism and question if and how the various parts of the Bible is connected to the God you witnessed.

So even if you have enough proof to convince yourself of the existence of, not only the supernatural but also a "God", you still have a long road to travel before you end up at Christianity. And you made such a strong case for agnosticism that I'm wondering how it is possible for a person as open minded as you to pigeon-hole yourself as holding such a spe******ed form of theism? It's not only the Christian god but a very specific form of Christianity.

As my Cambridge friend pointed out. Without the required support, any faith is a massive leap of faith right out into the dark. Others can attack your faith, but as long as you've taken the necessary steps to support your religion rationally you've got no reason to waver in your faith. Me personally, I'm very sceptical if that is even possible to support theism in this way and I'd love it if you'd show me the steps you took to support your faith.

edit: You could admittedly take what figures of authority say as evidence to, (like a friend you trust for example). But that makes you a sucker. Especially considering the case for the existence of anything supernatural isn't particularly solid yet. And you can't take incomplete or unconvincing evidence and judge it by sheer numbers. That is probably the most common error in logic. Each case of evidence has to be separately judged.

[Rhabbi]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this circular argumentation?

Actually, I believe it is an accepted field of study. There are those who specialize in learning about authors and artists by studying their published works and personal papers and propounding theories about why they said things in a certain way, or why they used a certain technique in their art. Not my field of study, but in essence this is what theology is.

Nah, you're making simple things complicated again. Making a case for gods existence isn't so hard. Whenever you witness, measure, feel or what ever Christians do, the presence of God, you can if you judge it so, use it as proof of gods existence. Like my Cambridge friend points out. Logic is just a tool. If you put garbage in you get garbage out. But if you have taken the leap of faith that your evidence you put into the logical formula is irrefutable then it isn't garbage and your logical conclusion for the existence of god is solid.

Here's an example of perfectly valid science using solid logic. In today's scientific climate it doesn't have the critical stance required to be called "good science", but it is real science none the less.

1. Observe some aspect of the universe. (Water Boils when heated to 100 degrees C)
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed. (Water boils when heated because God wished it so.)
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions. (Water will Boil when I heat it, God will cause it to Boil.)
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results. (I heated water, God Willed it to Boil)
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation. (God made my water Boil Every time except for once, the devil put out my flame)

The big question is: have you witnessed God or a manifestation of god? When you witnessed this god force: how did you go about identifying it as a god? How did you tie that manifestation to the deity as explained in the Vulgate Bible? How did you tie that deity to the moral values explained in the Vulgate Bible? As you no doubt realise, we can go a lot further than this in our scepticism and question if and how the various parts of the Bible is connected to the God you witnessed.

So even if you have enough proof to convince yourself of the existence of, not only the supernatural but also a "God", you still have a long road to travel before you end up at Christianity. And you made such a strong case for agnosticism that I'm wondering how it is possible for a person as open minded as you to pigeon-hole yourself as holding such a spe******ed form of theism? It's not only the Christian god but a very specific form of Christianity.

As my Cambridge friend pointed out. Without the required support, any faith is a massive leap of faith right out into the dark. Others can attack your faith, but as long as you've taken the necessary steps to support your religion rationally you've got no reason to waver in your faith. Me personally, I'm very sceptical if that is even possible to support theism in this way and I'd love it if you'd show me the steps you took to support your faith.

edit: You could admittedly take what figures of authority say as evidence to, (like a friend you trust for example). But that makes you a sucker. Especially considering the case for the existence of anything supernatural isn't particularly solid yet. And you can't take incomplete or unconvincing evidence and judge it by sheer numbers. That is probably the most common error in logic. Each case of evidence has to be separately judged.

I could make a logical argument for God's existence. Doing so would leave me with a two part question, is it valid and is it true?

To be valid would be rather simple, if the premises are true then the conclusion is true. Let us use your example of boiling water.

1. God designed the universe so that water would boil at 100 C at sea level.
2. God controls every aspect of the universe continually
3. Water will not boil if God does not actively watch and make sure it happens.
4. Every time water is heated it boils at 100 C at sea level.
   
   Conclusion: God exists.

Tis is a perfectly valid argument. If the 4 premises are true then the conclusion is true. But does that make the argument true? No, it is fallacious.

As I stated earlier, it would be impossible to use logic to prove anything in the real world because we have to use inductive logic, and all inductive arguments are fallacies. Here is an example of a inductive argument that is valid, that everyone would agree with, yet is still a fallacy using the definitions of logic.

1. Every day to date the law of gravity has held.
   Therefore
2. The law of gravity will hold tomorrow.

Every person I know believes this line of logic, in fact I would go so far as to say that every person alive has total faith in this logic. Nonetheless it is still not true, it is a fallacy. this is why logic has the terms strong and weak to also define arguments. the argument above is a strong one, mostly because it has a premise that everyone agrees is true, even though there is no proof of it. How do we know that the Law of Gravity and the Gravitational Constant has always held steady?

To make an argument for the existence of God using logic the best case I could make would be a weak inductive argument. this is because I cannot offer premises that are facts, or even that are generally accepted. You talk about a leap of faith being necessary at the end of the argument, but the truth is it would be necessary throughout the argument. If we cannot agree on observable phenomena that indicates the presence of god, then how can I make an argument for his existence?

Let us engage in a thought experiment.

We are both in a little town of Bethany approximately 2000 years ago. We are in a quantum bubble to research the account of the resurecction of a certain man called Lazurus.

He died approximately four days ago and was buried according to the customs of the time and culture. We witnessed the preparation of his body for burial with special herbs and as it was wrapped in linen. We were unable to use advanced methods to test whether he was dead, or simply in a coma so deep that the people were unable to detect signs of life. this has something to do with the limitations of time travel and the universe protecting itself from paradoxes.

Tis day the man that would one day be known as Jesus Christ arrives, and after a bit of conversation with the family and friends he asks that the stone that closes off the tomb where Lazarus was buried is rolled aside by a few bystanders.

Jesus then offers up a short prayer and calls Lazarus out of the grave. We then watch as Lazarus does indeed walk out of the tomb, and when his friends finish unwrapping the linen that bound him for burial he appears healthy to us.

We both having witnessed this event still have to draw conclusions from it. I look it as an affirmation of my faith and proof of God's existence. You point out that there is no real evidence to support my conclusion.

How do we know he was dead? There are many stories from history that tell of people who were thought to be dead who later awoke. They used to sell coffins based on the fear that people were often mistakenly buried alive.

Even today there are occasional cases of people being so deep in a coma that trained professionals occasionally think they are dead when they are not. This might be unlikely, but it is not impossible.

I hope you can see now why I say it is impossible to make a logical argument to prove that God exists. There have been a few that have tried to do this, but I recognize the limitations of logic to make this argument, as does your Cambridge friend. the difference between him and I is that I do not take the limitations of logic to be proof against the existence of God. If he was being consistent in his beliefs he would also have to deny the existence of everything that logic cannot prove.

[TomOfSweden]

Actually, I believe it is an accepted field of study. There are those who specialize in learning about authors and artists by studying their published works and personal papers and propounding theories about why they said things in a certain way, or why they used a certain technique in their art. Not my field of study, but in essence this is what theology is.

Staying on the art comparison; how do you know which is original work by the artist and which are fakes?

We both having witnessed this event still have to draw conclusions from it. I look it as an affirmation of my faith and proof of God's existence. You point out that there is no real evidence to support my conclusion.

How do we know he was dead? There are many stories from history that tell of people who were thought to be dead who later awoke. They used to sell coffins based on the fear that people were often mistakenly buried alive.

Even today there are occasional cases of people being so deep in a coma that trained professionals occasionally think they are dead when they are not. This might be unlikely, but it is not impossible.

I hope you can see now why I say it is impossible to make a logical argument to prove that God exists. There have been a few that have tried to do this, but I recognize the limitations of logic to make this argument, as does your Cambridge friend. the difference between him and I is that I do not take the limitations of logic to be proof against the existence of God. If he was being consistent in his beliefs he would also have to deny the existence of everything that logic cannot prove.

What you're basically saying is that the number of dots you need to connect between you witnessing anything supernatural and the following the morality as taught by the Bible is so staggering that there's no point to even bother? At every leap of faith the nodes that connect the reasoning have an almost infinite number of connections both to and from it? or what? How does that strengthen any case for the supernatural? You're basically saying that because we can't use logic we shouldn't, and just take the leap of faith anyway, right?

What I don't understand is why this seemingly compulsive need to connect the belief in an omnipotent god with the moral rules of the Bible. Why not treat them as two different entities? Why not judge the moral system as one unit on it's own merits and the supernatural claims as a separate unit? Are they in any way connected? Is the only reason to follow the commandments of the Bible really only the fear of punishment in the after-life?

edit: hmm....after some pondering I'll have another go. I think that the logical error you are doing is that you seem to assume that you have to have a faith. It's not like there's insulated areas of faithlessness between theories. There isn't. It's possible to use your approach if Christianity is a cohesive logical system that is connected, and if you remove parts of it the whole theoretical structure collapses. In instances like that finding enough evidence to support part of it can be used to support all of it. But there's nothing cohesive about Christianity. Each and every part is a separate statement only supported by itself. An example is the creation. The Bible said that god created the universe. Ok fine. This can be correct and the rest of the Bible wrong. Or the rest of the Bible can be correct and that could be wrong. Rejecting part of the Bible doesn't mean you have to reject all of it. In the same way. Just because you accept a part of the Bible doesn't mean you have to accept the rest of it. We all know that the Bible is quite a compilation and has been heavily edited through the ages. It's not like the Koran which origins we know.

Why not keep Christianity as one of your favourite theories? You where the one putting all that effort into agnosticism. As you so vigorously defended, picking one specific faith is not only a huge leap of faith but defies logic. Why not have a few favourites? Why not pick the parts that you think make the most sense to you and drop the parts that you find are ify?

[Rhabbi]

Staying on the art comparison; how do you know which is original work by the artist and which are fakes?

Again. not my field, but there is apparently some debate about that. I know there are paintings that were thought to have been done by Rembrandt that are now classed as 'school of' Rembrandt. I would imagine it has something to do with technique and brush strokes, but I would be guessing.

What you're basically saying is that the number of dots you need to connect between you witnessing anything supernatural and the following the morality as taught by the Bible is so staggering that there's no point to even bother? At every leap of faith the nodes that connect the reasoning have an almost infinite number of connections both to and from it? or what? How does that strengthen any case for the supernatural? You're basically saying that because we can't use logic we shouldn't, and just take the leap of faith anyway, right?

What I don't understand is why this seemingly compulsive need to connect the belief in an omnipotent god with the moral rules of the Bible. Why not treat them as two different entities? Why not judge the moral system as one unit on it's own merits and the supernatural claims as a separate unit? Are they in any way connected? Is the only reason to follow the commandments of the Bible really only the fear of punishment in the after-life?

edit: hmm....after some pondering I'll have another go. I think that the logical error you are doing is that you seem to assume that you have to have a faith. It's not like there's insulated areas of faithlessness between theories. There isn't. It's possible to use your approach if Christianity is a cohesive logical system that is connected, and if you remove parts of it the whole theoretical structure collapses. In instances like that finding enough evidence to support part of it can be used to support all of it. But there's nothing cohesive about Christianity. Each and every part is a separate statement only supported by itself. An example is the creation. The Bible said that god created the universe. Ok fine. This can be correct and the rest of the Bible wrong. Or the rest of the Bible can be correct and that could be wrong. Rejecting part of the Bible doesn't mean you have to reject all of it. In the same way. Just because you accept a part of the Bible doesn't mean you have to accept the rest of it. We all know that the Bible is quite a compilation and has been heavily edited through the ages. It's not like the Koran which origins we know.

Why not keep Christianity as one of your favourite theories? You where the one putting all that effort into agnosticism. As you so vigorously defended, picking one specific faith is not only a huge leap of faith but defies logic. Why not have a few favourites? Why not pick the parts that you think make the most sense to you and drop the parts that you find are ify?

I studied many religions, comparative religion has always been a hobby of mine, one I still indulge in.

The basic choices come down to two types of religion, monotheistic and polytheism. (I am including pantheism under polytheism here though there are significant differences.)

Polytheism has numerous Gods, none of whom seem to claim responsibility for creation. Quite often the Earth was a byproduct of something they did, or even waste product. This did not appeal to me for obvious reasons, if I was going to actually believe in a God I wanted one that at least cared about people.

This leaves monotheism. There are three basic monotheistic religions in the world, listed in the order of appearance they are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Doing a comparison of these three we see that they all claim the same roots, Judaism. I studied Judaism and found it quite interesting, perhaps the most intellectual of the three. The average rabbi knows more about the history of religion and the various debates surrounding it than all but the most scholarly of Christian preachers.

Then I looked at Christianity, which center around the claims of Jesus to be the Son of God.

Looking at Islam, it focuses mostly on Mohammad as being the last of the prophets, and trying to bring the teachings back inline with what the earlier prophets taught before the Bible was corrupted by man. According to Islamic scholars, the Bible was rewritten by Christians to support the claims that Jesus was God, and even the Old Testament was rewritten to support this. Interestingly enough, Islam still revers Jesus as a prophet.

Studying the words of Jesus leads you to one of four inescapable conclusions. Either this man was a liar, insane, a demon from the pits of Hell, or he was who he claimed to be, the Son of God. Looking further at his life, a reasonable man would rule out that he was insane or a demon because the impact of his life was spectacularly on the side of good. I suppose he could have been a demon, but that seems unlikely also.

Also, a thorough study of the texts of the Bible that survive, some dating to before Jesus, show that the changes that Islam claim as necessary to their faith are impossible to support. This leads a thinking man to reject Islam as based on a falsehood. It also leads a thinking man to look more closely at Christianity.

In a lot of ways Judaism is more of a set of rules to live by then anything else. You could look at it as the first rules that a parent gives a child. don't touch this, don't go there, etc. These rules do not change when that child reach adulthood, they just become unnecessary. The adult sees that the rules were there to protect the child from unknown dangers.

Christianity is about living those rules as an adult. It does not replace the rules, it fulfills them because we, as adults, now know enough not to do those things. This is why I settled on Christianity as what I believed. It was not a blind leap from going to not believing, then choosing Christianity at random after I had an epiphany and realized God existed. Before I believed in God I knew that Christianity made more sense than any other religion out there.

This does not mean the Christianity that you find today, it means the Christianity of the early church. I guess this does mean that I pick and choose, because I have to try and figure out what that is for myself.

[TomOfSweden]

I studied many religions, comparative religion has always been a hobby of mine, one I still indulge in.

The basic choices come down to two types of religion, monotheistic and polytheism. (I am including pantheism under polytheism here though there are significant differences.)

Polytheism has numerous Gods, none of whom seem to claim responsibility for creation. Quite often the Earth was a byproduct of something they did, or even waste product. This did not appeal to me for obvious reasons, if I was going to actually believe in a God I wanted one that at least cared about people.

This leaves monotheism. There are three basic monotheistic religions in the world, listed in the order of appearance they are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Doing a comparison of these three we see that they all claim the same roots, Judaism. I studied Judaism and found it quite interesting, perhaps the most intellectual of the three. The average rabbi knows more about the history of religion and the various debates surrounding it than all but the most scholarly of Christian preachers.

Then I looked at Christianity, which center around the claims of Jesus to be the Son of God.

Looking at Islam, it focuses mostly on Mohammad as being the last of the prophets, and trying to bring the teachings back inline with what the earlier prophets taught before the Bible was corrupted by man. According to Islamic scholars, the Bible was rewritten by Christians to support the claims that Jesus was God, and even the Old Testament was rewritten to support this. Interestingly enough, Islam still revers Jesus as a prophet.

Studying the words of Jesus leads you to one of four inescapable conclusions. Either this man was a liar, insane, a demon from the pits of Hell, or he was who he claimed to be, the Son of God. Looking further at his life, a reasonable man would rule out that he was insane or a demon because the impact of his life was spectacularly on the side of good. I suppose he could have been a demon, but that seems unlikely also.

Also, a thorough study of the texts of the Bible that survive, some dating to before Jesus, show that the changes that Islam claim as necessary to their faith are impossible to support. This leads a thinking man to reject Islam as based on a falsehood. It also leads a thinking man to look more closely at Christianity.

In a lot of ways Judaism is more of a set of rules to live by then anything else. You could look at it as the first rules that a parent gives a child. don't touch this, don't go there, etc. These rules do not change when that child reach adulthood, they just become unnecessary. The adult sees that the rules were there to protect the child from unknown dangers.

Christianity is about living those rules as an adult. It does not replace the rules, it fulfills them because we, as adults, now know enough not to do those things. This is why I settled on Christianity as what I believed. It was not a blind leap from going to not believing, then choosing Christianity at random after I had an epiphany and realized God existed. Before I believed in God I knew that Christianity made more sense than any other religion out there.

This does not mean the Christianity that you find today, it means the Christianity of the early church. I guess this does mean that I pick and choose, because I have to try and figure out what that is for myself.

I'd say you've done all the cardinal sins of religious contemplation.

Your first mistake is in your groupings. The error is in assuming we have covered all possible versions of deities already. Even if we have reached the conclusion that there exists a lone intelligent omnipotent being, all today's religions could still all be wrong. You can't line up Islam and Christianity and compare them and from this draw the conclusion that because one doesn't seem to work for you the other does by default.

Second fault is that you assume that if god is good then....well...erm... How could you possibly reason about how a being more intelligent judges and values on moral issues? Let alone a omnipotent. You didn't think that an omnipotent being might have thought of stuff you haven't, did you? It's as if humans is god's pet project and he can empathise with us. Can you empathise with a spider? It's too dumb for us even to try. You don't think that an omnipotents concept of good and evil might be different from ours?

...and then this compulsion to connect this all powerful omnipotent god with the Bible or any religious text! Why even try? What possible evidence could you or anybody come up with to make it even meaningful? What makes you think that anybody in any way have got it even almost right. Let's say for sake of argument that there really exists an all powerful and good omnipotent god, and it speaks to people. Let's also for sake of argument assume that some of those people that know the truth of god have put pen to paper to write about it. They're humans!!!! Humans fuck up and interpret things in ways that aren't true just to fit their world view. Not out of spite or evil, but just out of being human. You also missed the option that Jesus might have been only partly right.

I'd say that the Bible itself proves how people misinterpret. As we all know Jesus didn't write the Bible. The Aryan Bible, Ebionite Bible, Koptic Bible, Donatist Bible and Tawahedo Bible are all major Christian Bibles that all pre-date the Vulgate Bible and all have more in common with each other than with the Versio Vulgata. The Vulgate Bible was quite a radical edit. They're all Christian Bibles, all are the word of god but they're also all different. The Aryan one kept all the angel wars parts which creates a radically different world than the vulgate.

We have the problem of context. In the time around the birth of Christ it was common practice to create myths about kings and emperors which were identical to that of the birth of Jesus. When Julius Caesar was born it was said that a star appeared above his villa and foreign astronomers visited. There's accounts of all the old kings and emperors performing miracles. Witnesses of it was extremely common. This practice even included famous athletes. Nobody believes today that the Mediterranean was any more full of miracle healers than any other period in history. As far as I know all historians agree on that Julius Caesar was just a normal person, even though he was considered a god during his lifetime.

The context tells me that the point of writing in the Bible that Jesus did all the miracles and how he was born, wasn't to say that he had supernatural powers, but simply to emphasize that he really was the new king of the Jews and that he had a normal birth as expected of a king. Which one of the two theories is in your opinion requires the smallest leap of faith? It's also quite possible that Jesus was only a narrative trick. A mythical figure in order to frame a story around. A story with profound implications which may very well have conveyed the truth in an effective way, but none the less a story.

It's quite possible to argue that all the various religions of today are all the result of this omnipotent being talking to people but because of humans doing what humans do best, misinterpret, we've got a plethora of religions of which all are utterly and completely wrong.

Also you must never forget that any action of any beings more powerful than us will always be interpreted by us as actions of an omnipotent being. We don't know better. But just because we can't see that beings limits doesn't mean they aren't there.

Even if your epiphany was genuine and you really did see the real and existing god you made it perfectly clear that alternatives you allowed yourself to chose between were pretty far from a complete list of possible variations on monotheism.

You really don't think that you chose Christianity because of social or emotional reasons? It was all detached logical reasoning?