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Unbelievers:How do you explain all this?

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Sweetleaf
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16 Aug 2011, 2:22 pm

Fnord wrote:
JohnyJohn wrote:
Look,i know these things happened to me.But say to yourselves ''Let's take it as a fact''.

No, let's not take anything you say concerning your alleged experience as "fact". Let us instead withhold judgment of your alleged experiences until such time as their "factuality" can be verified.
JohnyJohn wrote:
I don't know if i explained it correctly but i am sure you got what i mean.

I know what you mean; you want blind faith, without question or reason, from us regarding your accounts of alleged experiences.

We have only your word that you experienced what you claim - only this, and nothing more.


I belive JohhnyJohn is describing something he experianced...it does not really matter if you think it is factual or not, how is someone supposed to prove to you a spiritual experiance they had was real over a forum? it cannot be proven over this forum anymore than it can be disproven over this forum.



Fnord
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16 Aug 2011, 2:28 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
Fnord wrote:
JohnyJohn wrote:
Look,i know these things happened to me.But say to yourselves ''Let's take it as a fact''.

No, let's not take anything you say concerning your alleged experience as "fact". Let us instead withhold judgment of your alleged experiences until such time as their "factuality" can be verified.
JohnyJohn wrote:
I don't know if i explained it correctly but i am sure you got what i mean.

I know what you mean; you want blind faith, without question or reason, from us regarding your accounts of alleged experiences. We have only your word that you experienced what you claim - only this, and nothing more.

I belive JohhnyJohn is describing something he experianced...it does not really matter if you think it is factual or not, how is someone supposed to prove to you a spiritual experiance they had was real over a forum? it cannot be proven over this forum anymore than it can be disproven over this forum.

Then it may be appropriate to explicitly state such accounts as experiential - stating them as factual imposes the responsibility for proof on the claimant, and if something can not be proven, it can not be stated as fact.


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Sweetleaf
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16 Aug 2011, 2:48 pm

Fnord wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
Fnord wrote:
JohnyJohn wrote:
Look,i know these things happened to me.But say to yourselves ''Let's take it as a fact''.

No, let's not take anything you say concerning your alleged experience as "fact". Let us instead withhold judgment of your alleged experiences until such time as their "factuality" can be verified.
JohnyJohn wrote:
I don't know if i explained it correctly but i am sure you got what i mean.

I know what you mean; you want blind faith, without question or reason, from us regarding your accounts of alleged experiences. We have only your word that you experienced what you claim - only this, and nothing more.

I belive JohhnyJohn is describing something he experianced...it does not really matter if you think it is factual or not, how is someone supposed to prove to you a spiritual experiance they had was real over a forum? it cannot be proven over this forum anymore than it can be disproven over this forum.

Then it may be appropriate to explicitly state such accounts as experiential - stating them as factual imposes the responsibility for proof on the claimant, and if something can not be proven, it can not be stated as fact.


Yes I suppose but I don't see why it cannot simply be discussed as if it is an actual experiance.....I mean when people post I do not think they are looking to have someone demand absolute truth of personal experiances as if they are a liar to begin with.



ruveyn
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16 Aug 2011, 2:55 pm

JohnyJohn wrote:
I, myself,don't need an explanation,i know the truth.But these experiences are facts for God.One day i had a sleep paralysis(didn't even know what it was back then).A red guy(demon)came into my room from inside the door and tried to kill my with the sheets while i was laying in my bed.I know the scientific 'explanation'.Yeah,they may say how the mechanism in brain works but that does not disprove anything.Humans are creatures with flesh and souls.So when this thing happens in the brain,human's spiritual eyes open and see the spirit world,mostly of demons.You know that eastern religions have techniques to do things liek this,right?.Another proof.Also you know when Apostle Paul when transcended to heaven and he did not even knew back then if it was with his body or spirit only.But he went to the land of the Righteous,not of the demons.Anyway,if it was just a dream that i was seeing in the physical world because of what happened then how can a person from a dream knew where the door was,me,the exact position of the bed and wanted to kill me??It seemed like a logical being with reason to me.It was.How can a dream do all that?

Second fact.I saw satan,lucifer himself in a dream.When i was an unbeliever.Ok,i know you are going to say excuses like 'subconscious','you wanted to see it','you had it long time in your mind',but these things are false.I did not wanted any of these things nor i had it in my subconscious.I saw him,he was black colored,a tail,eyes in the shape of triangle,white.He was laughing.A voice said to me ''Go over there he is satan''.I said ''Why?''.He was seeing me and laughing.He(satan) then asked ''Is he an atheist?''.A voice answered ''Yeah,<my name>is an atheist''.He laughed again,you know with this evil laugh.I went near him and he punched me in the face and i woke up in the physical world and my head got back.


I will explain it. You were hallucinating.

ruveyn



Fnord
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16 Aug 2011, 3:03 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
Fnord wrote:
JohnyJohn wrote:
Look,i know these things happened to me.But say to yourselves ''Let's take it as a fact''.

No, let's not take anything you say concerning your alleged experience as "fact". Let us instead withhold judgment of your alleged experiences until such time as their "factuality" can be verified.
JohnyJohn wrote:
I don't know if i explained it correctly but i am sure you got what i mean.

I know what you mean; you want blind faith, without question or reason, from us regarding your accounts of alleged experiences. We have only your word that you experienced what you claim - only this, and nothing more.

I belive JohhnyJohn is describing something he experianced...it does not really matter if you think it is factual or not, how is someone supposed to prove to you a spiritual experiance they had was real over a forum? it cannot be proven over this forum anymore than it can be disproven over this forum.

Then it may be appropriate to explicitly state such accounts as experiential - stating them as factual imposes the responsibility for proof on the claimant, and if something can not be proven, it can not be stated as fact.

Yes I suppose but I don't see why it cannot simply be discussed as if it is an actual experiance.....I mean when people post I do not think they are looking to have someone demand absolute truth of personal experiances as if they are a liar to begin with.

Discussing something as fact "for the sake of argument" eventually leads people to believing that it's true. In my line of work, it is possible to get so caught up in anecdotes, conjectures, assumptions, and opinions as to lose sight of the real facts of the issue. Then decisions are made without a factual basis. Eventually, time, money, and effort are wasted by acting on a belief that has never been verified.

So if I start treating the OP's alleged accounts as fact "for the sake of argument", then eventually someone may accept those alleged accounts as fact, and then act on them accordingly. I mean, have you ever read the Book of the Revelation and wondered who would ever believe such an account? The answer involves people like the Jesuits, the Spanish Inquisition, the People's Temple, and the Branch Davidians.

:roll:


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Sweetleaf
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16 Aug 2011, 4:07 pm

Fnord wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
Fnord wrote:
JohnyJohn wrote:
Look,i know these things happened to me.But say to yourselves ''Let's take it as a fact''.

No, let's not take anything you say concerning your alleged experience as "fact". Let us instead withhold judgment of your alleged experiences until such time as their "factuality" can be verified.
JohnyJohn wrote:
I don't know if i explained it correctly but i am sure you got what i mean.

I know what you mean; you want blind faith, without question or reason, from us regarding your accounts of alleged experiences. We have only your word that you experienced what you claim - only this, and nothing more.

I belive JohhnyJohn is describing something he experianced...it does not really matter if you think it is factual or not, how is someone supposed to prove to you a spiritual experiance they had was real over a forum? it cannot be proven over this forum anymore than it can be disproven over this forum.

Then it may be appropriate to explicitly state such accounts as experiential - stating them as factual imposes the responsibility for proof on the claimant, and if something can not be proven, it can not be stated as fact.

Yes I suppose but I don't see why it cannot simply be discussed as if it is an actual experiance.....I mean when people post I do not think they are looking to have someone demand absolute truth of personal experiances as if they are a liar to begin with.

Discussing something as fact "for the sake of argument" eventually leads people to believing that it's true. In my line of work, it is possible to get so caught up in anecdotes, conjectures, assumptions, and opinions as to lose sight of the real facts of the issue. Then decisions are made without a factual basis. Eventually, time, money, and effort are wasted by acting on a belief that has never been verified.

So if I start treating the OP's alleged accounts as fact "for the sake of argument", then eventually someone may accept those alleged accounts as fact, and then act on them accordingly. I mean, have you ever read the Book of the Revelation and wondered who would ever believe such an account? The answer involves people like the Jesuits, the Spanish Inquisition, the People's Temple, and the Branch Davidians.

:roll:


But it's just someones personal experiance......its not like some super important political platform that needs evidence suggesting its validity. I am not religious at all so I don't belive in God and the Devil the way the OP seems to but I am not going to go as far as accusing him of not having those experiances and lying about it......I may not attribute such experiances to god and the devil but someone who follows that religion would. As long as its not being pushed on me I don't really care.

The book of revelations sounds like a guys acid trip to me.



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16 Aug 2011, 4:12 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
The book of revelations sounds like a guys acid trip to me.
As does the first post to me.


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Sweetleaf
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16 Aug 2011, 4:19 pm

Cornflake wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
The book of revelations sounds like a guys acid trip to me.
As does the first post to me.


Psychedelics have been used for spiritual reasons.....maybe it is because an experiance on acid is a lot like what someone might experiance spiritually. It opens your mind to all kinds of things I have had some odd experiances simular to what the OP described without any drugs......I cannot rule out that my mind can create hallucinations though so I don't know which I should attribute my experiances to.



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16 Aug 2011, 6:41 pm

Look, Johnny asked how an "unbeliever" would "explain" these experiences. It's quite simple - since everything he described was completely subjective (not to mention anecdotal), the simplest possible explanation would be that the experiences were in fact dreams and/or hallucinations.

I cannot "accept for the sake of argument" that any given subjective experience is "fact" without some externally-verifiable data. We were presented with, basically, a series of dream-visions and emotional states, asked to explain them scientifically, then told that the ground rules of science don't apply. Huh?


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16 Aug 2011, 6:45 pm

I'm serious. Talk to your GP.



JohnyJohn
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16 Aug 2011, 6:54 pm

Look,many times when i tell them my experiences to someone i tell them that i am talking seriously.It's like when someone gets the blame for a crime he didn't make but everyone thinks he did it and the guy goes to jail.He won't like it but at least he knows that he did not made it and told the truth.



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16 Aug 2011, 7:04 pm

JohnyJohn wrote:
Look,many times when i tell them my experiences to someone i tell them that i am talking seriously.It's like when someone gets the blame for a crime he didn't make but everyone thinks he did it and the guy goes to jail.He won't like it but at least he knows that he did not made it and told the truth.


I don't think you understand.

I'm certain - or at least as certain as one can be, taking a stranger at their word on the internet, that you feel deeply that the experiences you related are real.

They are as real to you as the chair I'm sitting on is real to me.

Those memories feel real because they come from the part of your brain that experiences reality.

This does not make them real.



blunnet
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16 Aug 2011, 7:06 pm

JohnyJohn wrote:
Look,many times when i tell them my experiences to someone i tell them that i am talking seriously.It's like when someone gets the blame for a crime he didn't make but everyone thinks he did it and the guy goes to jail.He won't like it but at least he knows that he did not made it and told the truth.

You asked "Unbelievers:How do you explain all this?" Fnord has already explained it to you. And I repeat and add:
- We have your word and nothing else.
- Let's assume you are honest:
- Lack of empirical evidence to support an extraordinary interpretation of a subjective experience.
- Anecdotal experiences are unreliable.
- Confirmation bias.



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16 Aug 2011, 7:19 pm

In the absence of other inputs, we have two options:

A. there were instances of spiritual visitation

B. there were not.

In the first case, given the content described, our friend should be very careful and should probably seek input from an experienced spiritual director of a background compatible with his beliefs and an acceptable interactive style.

In the second case,our friend should be very careful and should probably seek input from an experienced medical or psychiatric practitioner of a background compatible with his beliefs and an acceptable interactive style.

Real or not, visiting demons need to be taken seriously and handled with care.



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16 Aug 2011, 7:19 pm

Assuming that the OP did not make up his experience, AND that his experience was as he reported it, all that remains to validate the experience as a physical event is valid material evidence. Otherwise, it is most likely that the experience was indeed all in his head.

Of course, those whose belief in such things does not require any proof whatsoever may conclude that the OP had experienced a supernatural event. In other words, they don't know what happened, so they conclude that the cause must be a supernatural one.

Ex Ignarus ut Divinus / From Ignorance to the Divine


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blunnet
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16 Aug 2011, 7:42 pm

Philologos wrote:
Real or not, visiting demons need to be taken seriously and handled with care.

Wether they are real or not?