Octokun

First of all, I'm not sure if this fits into this forum, so would a modd correct me if it doesn't.


Now, I want to start from the beginning...

Last Sunday, the pastor of the church I go to noticed that I seem to be "wavering", since I've openly disagreed with almost everything they stand against such as abortion, homosexuality, cloning and other things.

So he instructs my life-long best friend, who usually goes to my house often on Sundays to hang out, to "help me out".

Help me out indeed, I ended up in a discussion with him in my room and I admitted that I don't believe any god(s), which sparked off a debate.

Not that I had a problem with debating with him, but he kept stressing his and other's "experiences" such as healings, seeing the devil, scratches on his arm that he claims the devil gave him, and other "un-explainable" things that he thinks would convince me his god exists.

The problem here though is that that's pretty much all he could do...for everything else I gave fairly good answers, but when I did he would run away back to his "un-explainable experiences" stories. (which for being "unexplainable" he sure didn't have a hard time explaining them to be evidence for his god; ironic :banghead: )

Since that seems to be his and the other fundies I know only real defense, that's the focus of this topic: what do you think of these experiences?
Are they delusional?...made up?...easily explanable?...if so, how?...if not, why?...

I already have my answer, be they good or not is another story, but I'm interested in hearing other's opinions on this and how you would respond to something like this.

Family Man

This type of thing is useless as a evidence for anything. Basically, there are two major problems with it.

First is the matter of interpretation. Are these Christians simply reading what they want to see into things? For example, how does this person know the scratches come from a demon?

The second is a matter of trustworthiness. How are we, as skeptics, supposed to know if what that person is telling us is true, or if he is exaggerating, if not outright lying, for the greater good of converting someone.

Viti

How can you know it's unexplainable? You aren't aware of every facet of the situation so there very well may be a good explanation, but it was simply overlooked or ignored in favor of the miraculous.

Octokun

Interesting point.
I don't want to generalize that all theists are this way, but I did catch some of my fundy fellows at church contradicting themselves on their experiences, which makes me doubt alot of what they say.

But let's not focus this discussion on just the things the fundies from my church say, this is about "experiences" in general.

Feel free to add stories you might have heard of and you're point of view or explanation if you wish.

Heathen Dawn

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of most of those who claim an "unexplained experience"; it is their attribution of these experiences that should be approached with a few extra grains of salt. The brain, when certain of its areas are stimulated, is capable of playing no end of tricks (hallucinations, voices, visions and "otherworldly" communications). The neurologist VS Ramachandran has found that all it takes for mystical visions to form is a stimulation of the temporal lobe of the brain.

So given what we know from neurology, arguments from experience are simply useless.

Gamer4Fire

Demon marks? I've gotten hurt in dreams before and woken up with the respective wounds, I've always attributed it to, "Oh, I must have hurt myself for real when I had the dream." I don't apply anything mystical to it, things like that happen. I don't know whether I accidentally hurt myself while dreaming and the dream incorporated it or whether I dreamed the incident and it caused me to hurt myself, but I don't translate it to mean that my dream is real like I really got attacked by demons.

Barcode

Can you tell us about some of these " healings " he is claiming to be from God?

When people make these (rather dubious) claims, it's best to try and ascertain if they are well .... psychologically stable ... and somebody claiming to have marks from a demon honestly doesn't strike me as being of sound mind.

The problem for us, is that the believer is often resolutely convinced they *are* being rational ... and the slightest thing that appears to correlate with their beliefs is automatically assumed to be evidence from God ... rather than something of their own making.

fried beef sandwich

Funny... wouldn't the devil scratches prove that the devil exists? Why would it be proof that God exists? God doesn't seem to do anything about it.

Maybe he should start worshipping the Devil, and just ask him to stop scratching him up in his sleep. Sacrifice a goat or something.

Biff the unclean

Wait a cotton picking minute. If all of these "experiences" are "unexplainable" then how is it that your friend has an explaination for all of them? He really can't have it both ways, either he doesn't know what is causing these things or he can prove what is causing these things.
"I don't know" does not infer God as a cause any more than it infers leprechauns as the source.
If he can prove that God exists and is the cause of these things then you should listen to him. But if he can't, as Atheist Minister par excellence, I'm giving you the job of talking with him and leading him to the light. Try to get to poor guy to start thinking for himself.

EGGO

Ever heard of the statement: God of the Gaps?

Here's something that is a must-read (it won't take long to read at all either) http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/gaps.html .

Basically, you're telling him how faith has always had an answer for everything, until someone had enough common sense to answer these things with logic. Those 'experiences' are things that we can't answer right now.

If he replies

Quote:

Aha! So science DOESN'T know everything!

You can tell him, "Damn straight". Because we're not ignorant enough to just say everything else is the doing of God.

THEN, after doing that, ask him how does he know this is his god's doing? He has just as much proof as it being Allah's doing. And heck, those people have just as much unexplainable experiences as we do.

If he says that he just knows because of some feeling (or anything parallel to that), point out how that's known as anectdotal evidence, and a biased confirmation, holding no water whatsoever.