Gotcha. That notwithstanding, I am curious how Axe would explain the other story I told, short of saying I lied. Axe?
Nice poisoning the well fallacy Shoe The fact is.... im a very easy person to convince. You simply have to provide reputable evidence. Sorry.... but unlike many people, I dont blindly accept supernatural claims without sufficient evidence. Obviously, this frustrates you, but its the rational thing to do. Further... I am not absolutely convinced there is NO supernatural phenomenon. I am only convinced that I have yet to see ANY evidence for it. Big difference. I also know that many supernatural claims directly go against known knowledge of our universe. I also know, many supernatural claims have been debunked and that there is a track record of this. I also know the amazing randi still has the 1 MILLION dollars available to anyone who can prove anything supernatural exists. I know that billions of people believing in something is not what determines truth. Band wagon fallacy on your part. There are numerous rational reasons why we should NOT believe in the supernatural, but I have yet to see any really good reasons why we should. Given this scenario..... as a rational person, I must choose a position of non-belief. Then there are people who choose to believe FIRST, and then scramble trying to find supporting evidence. This however, is the opposite of science. peace axeman
axe, everything you say would be true IF I didn't know that damned chandelier was going to fall, said out loud that it was going to fall, and then had it fall a split-second after I said it would. And what about the chain being cut smooth, like a knife through butter? IT DID HAPPEN. It happened as surely as the sun rises, as surely as I pay taxes, etc., etc. I didn't revise those chain of events to fit my mindstate. Years later it's as clear as day. FYI, about seven years after that incident, I was visiting my parents in Kuala Lumpur. They were upstairs sleeping and I was downstairs on the couch, alone, reading a novel. It wasn't a horror novel this time. In fact, I remember with extreme clarity that it was Wilbur Smith's "The Sunbird." Awesome book. But I digress... Anyway, as I had seven years earlier, I felt a presence that made the hairs on the back of my neck go up. But this was different. The presence was not malevolent. There was no wind. I didn't get cold. I just felt a presence. Then I heard a sound, like the sound you hear when you tap a spoon against a glass, once. Not scary at all, but distinct. After several seconds this feeling of a presence dissipated. I stayed up for another hour or so and then went upstairs to bed. The next morning I came downstairs and my mother asked if I had used their glass ashtray the night before, because something very odd had happened. They had this beautiful glass ashtray, a thick one, about two inches from base to rim, that they had for several years. She was holding it in her hands. Well, she was holding the two pieces of it. You see, sometime during the night, that ashtray had been sliced in two perfect halves. That cut, like that chandelier chain, was perfectly smooth. Like a knife through butter. It hadn't been dropped. My mother found it on the small end table in the living room where it always sat, split in two. There were no shards at all, just those two perfect halves. I think that was the noise I heard the previous night when I felt that presence. --------------------- Coincidence? Perhaps. I'm not a glass expert. Maybe glass objects split in half all the time, without being dropped, with perfectly smooth edges. But it happened the night I distinctly felt that presence, and I hadn't felt a presence as strongly since the chandelier incident seven years earlier. Axe, I don't claim these occurrences to be works of the Devil, or God. They are simply occurrences that, to me, have no natural explanation. I don't expect everyone to believe them. As rowenwood said, I expected skepticism. peace, H
You know I respect your general reasoning and I can sympathize with the materialist position in many ways. But listen to what MktRabbi is saying. You're essentially calling both of us liars or self-decieved. Now what is the point in that? Look - let's take the case of my friend's wife whose tumor suddenly disappeared. Yes, maybe the doctor got the xrays mixed up and was looking at the wrong patient. But that's extremely unlikely. What is your point in continually trying to come up with a materialist explanation for every supernatural even? I truly don't get it. Why not just let the thread go on and see if maybe, just maybe, there is some evidence that is outside your paradigm? If you're truly agnostic as you claim, why not just sit back and see if any decent evidence comes forward. If it doesn't, fine - none of us are any the worse for it...
Ya know... its a blatant LIE to say that all this stuff is immediately "thrown out" by me as Shoe claims. The truth is, its thrown out AFTER Shoe FAILS to provide sufficient evidence for extraordinary claims. As it should be. As for your other stories... nothing but hearsay. They would not hold up in court, and do not hold up with me. We cannot draw conclusions about our universe based on mere stories told by people with no supporting evidence. Otherwise we would all believe in big foot, unicorns and gremlins If you claim there was supernatural stuff involved, then the burden of proof is on you. I am not required to explain every weird little story you can come up with. Look at it this way.... In the dark ages there were frequent reports of all kinds of supernatural things, including witch craft, etc... I think we would all agree that the RATE of such incredible reports has drastically diminished as society has become more and more advanced over the years. Now my question to you is.... do you actually think that the RATE of supernatural occurrences has drastically dropped, or that the change actually has more to do with SOCIETIES perceptions and belief systems? Since no supernatural phenomenon has ever been proven, even with scientists all over the world searching for it, I can only rationally conclude that there is a societal natural explanation for this reduction of supernatural events. In other words.... its probably all in peoples heads. peace axeman
Here's another example: I have a female relative who was a jr. high teacher and chaparoned a group of jr. high girls to another city on an educational trip. They had been talking too much and so she went into their hotel room to make sure they were actually not talking and trying to sleep. One girl was asleep but one girl was awake with her eyes glazed open. The relative felt a "chill" and the girl growled at my wife, "I know who you are. You are the church lady." Yes, it sounds like an old SNL skit. And, yes, it's possible the girl was dreaming. But this girl was heavily involved with the New Age and so the alternative is possible as well...
Im not calling anyone a liar or self deceived. All im saying is that you cannot expect anyone to believe such stories on their word alone. This is not the proper way to accept new information into your belief systems unless you are ok with a belief system chock full of untruths. The fact is.... people all over the world believe in all kinds of crazy shit. It is not rational to accept such amazing stories without some very solid evidence. These experiences are very real to the people who experience them but they still dont make them true. Even happaboys story is not verifiable in any way. Are we to believe that ghosts follow him around and cut through things very cleanly just for the hell of it? That some of them are nice and some not so nice and you can tell the difference by wether or not you get cold? (Sorry happa...just making a point). We know how very flawed human memories can be, and more importantly they can revise what they remember with incredibly clarity without even knowing it. People being interviewed by psychologists report all kinds of histories with amazing detail, they swear by, that they claim they can see as if it just happened yesterday. Only problem is.... it can be proven that none of it ever happened. There are all kinds of psychology case studies like these involving false memories. So are these peoples liars? Nope. But their memories are not true. So given the choice between things we know happen, like false memories, and incredible supernatural events with no supporting evidence, what is the proper choice? Isnt it funny that you immediately choose the supernatural explanation of a tumor disappearing, instead of the natural explanation of a doctor screwing up and misplacing or switching X-rays when we KNOW this happens all the time??? People get the wrong legs amputated because of doctor fuckups. 50,000 people a year DIE because of BLATANT doctor errors in hospitals every year. BUT THIS ONE TIME WHEN SHOE IS INVOLVED, there wasnt an X-ray error, that tumor supernaturally disappeared I tell ya!! Dude.... doesnt even come close to being a believable explanation. Apply occams razor and the majority of this stuff just goes out the window. peace axeman
axeman and rowenwood: glad to see you in this thread! p. s. i had a grandmother that claimed to see ghosts. lol maybe i will, too, when i'm like 92.
Actually... it happened to your great grand fathers sister as you said earlier. So that is hearsay. As for the sick child.... you spoke to some other rabbi, he asked for the mothers name...blah blah... and the kid got better. Your seriously gonna make that huge leap and credit him with that? Are you fricken kidding me? Non-sequitur. But again.... this fits into my general scenario of confirmation bias. Have you ever taken statistics on people that visited that Rabbi for health reasons, and then calculated what percentage of them got better and if that EXCEEDED the average rate which people get better WITHOUT visiting that rabbi? Didnt think so. So you have Absolutely ZERO EVIDENCE that the rabbi is responsible for any of the effect. peace axeman