Ted Hoffman

I hope Rainbow Walking (hereafter referred to as RW) does not take offense at me baring his childhood experience here, if he holds his experience dear or deeply personal, I apologise.
Because of lack of any conclusive evidence for the existence of God, "we" often have to rely on subjective experiences to base our faith upon. As has beed said before these subjective experiences are not proof, but can be treated as evidence for the existence of God, or a divine being. How conclusive the evidence is is one question I will be seeking to establish, secondly I would like to address the question whether it is Rational to believe that God exists, or whether God indeed intervened, based on the subjective experience in question. I will use RWs experience because I have an impression he believes it offers a compelling if not powerful evidence for the existence, indeed intervention of a God. Because its his experience, I will hope he comes out to debunk whatever arguments I will put forth to discredit his interpretation of the event that took place in his life many years ago.

Below is RW's story give or take a phrase:

"...As I said, I was seven at the time and we had just moved from the suburbs of a small city to the country. Now when I say country I mean country. I'm talking no indoor plumbing country and no neighbors for miles around...nothing but pines and pastures.

At seven I was very short and could easily run under the lowest limbs on the pines that grew in the area of the south east where I grew up. All I had to do was duck my head a little and could run through the woods with my dog Lad with ease, which is what I did every afternoon after school. I would grab up my toy M-1 and go to war against every imaginable enemy concieved by cartoons and comic books, running through the pines, head slightly ducked to avoid the lowest branches and shooting at will. My best friend usually acting as my scout running before me to warn me of any approaching alien or enemy.

It was during one of these missions to save the world that I came face to face with a situation that could have jeapordized my life immediately.

In the south we have these black hornets that build gray paper nests on limbs of trees. The nests are usually about the size of a basketball and house literally thousands of these viscious little critters.

Running through the pine forest with my head down to clear the lowest limbs meant I wasn't able to look strait ahead but was only able to look comfortably about two feet off the ground in front of me without straining my eyes to look any higher. I had no idea this could place me in danger. So here I was running as hard as I could shooting at the enemy and oblivious to the gray hornets nest hanging from the lowest limb of just another pine in a forest of them, but one that I was running fast towards a head-on collision with. A collision that would have certainly taken out the nest, angered the hornets and placed me in danger of my life. I was at least a couple hundred yards from my house.

Now my dog Lad was no stupid dog, being an English Shepherd and having been trained by a professional, he was very alert and responsive to all the basic commands. Being an only child he filled that hole in my life at that time and we were inseperable. But to say he had the comprehension to recognize my danger and act as he did without divine intervention is to ask a bit more than I can grant to any dog regardless of his training.

One of the reasons my dad brought Lad home was the assurance of his gentleness with children, an assurance that was not wasted as Lad proved to be one of the most patient and gentle dogs a boy could hope for. Except for this particular incident.

As I was buzzing along, head tilted downward, oblivious to my collision course with the hornet's nest, suddenly my gentle loving best friend was standing in front of me, legs spread and set as if ready to spring, teeth bared and snarling very convincingly at me. The effect this had on me was immediate. I stopped in my tracks and looked at him incredulously. Only, the moment I stopped he started wagging his tail, dropped his head and approached me submisively so I tentavely began to pet him and he just sat down beside me wagging his tail as if nothing had happened. For another moment or two I just stood there petting him and looking around to see if there was a reason for his strange behavior. I didn't even notice the nest just a few feet in front of me at first until I began noticing this buzzing sound on the tip of my hearing. Then I looked strait up and was shocked to find myself staring into the hole of a huge hornets nest right at chin level and in the very path that I was traveling in my pursuit of the enemy. Three more steps would have been disastrous if not fatal. In fact, I was so close to the nest that I realized the buzzing I was hearing was the sound of a half dozen hornets hovering menacingly around my head as I was almost blocking their path to the opening in the nest. I beat a hasty retreat.

I knew something special had occurred that day. I knew I had narrowly escaped great injury and that my dog had been the instrument of my escape. But it wasn't until years later that I began to realize just how unlikely it was that a dog would have, independently, been able to recognize the danger and react the way he did in such a brief instant of time. I don't even think a human could have done this.

I can see a dog being aware of the danger of water or fire or an assailant or predator...but of bees? How could a dog make such a connection between a hive of bees and the harm that could ensue to a human were the hive disturbed? Is that possible? I think not.

But this incident didn't lead to any religious conversion since no one was there claiming divine intervention. It's just that I never shall forget it and later, as I began to seriously consider the paths of my life, I realized that God had intervened that day through a dog to spare my life. The events were just too deliberate to have been coincidence and too extraordinary to have been natural. I have always felt a divine protection and have personally witnessed it on several occasions since then. That is why I have more than just belief...I have faith. And God has proven Himself faithful time and again. Of course, a skeptic will always seek an alternative explanation and usually find one.

For me, there is no alternative and one isn't necessary. This doesn't make me crazy, stupid, ignorant or foolish...just convinced.

Quite a moving story I agree.

First of all, I will ask RW, for more information:
he says "..Now my dog Lad was no stupid dog, being an English Shepherd and having been trained by a professional".

Rainbow walking Please try to answer my questions even if you find them offensive. I will really appreciate it. My purpose is to establish your way of thinking - ie how you came to your conclusion. Thats all.

1. RW, how old was the dog at the time your dad "brought" it? How sure are you that it had never had an experience with hornets before?

If you came to know that your dog had an experience with hornets, would you dismiss the idea of divine intervention in that event?

2. Have you ever figured how a hen knows that an eagle is dangerous for its chicks? Hens always flee with their chicks to safety when they spot an eagle hovering in the sky (at least they do this where I come from).

3. If your dog had bit your trousers/ shirt and pulled you away from the impending "disaster" - would you have considered that more "natural" compared to your dog snarling at you while blocking your path?

4. Are you sure that your dog had no habit of burying bones/ food? Isn't it possible that you were stepping on some ground where the dog had buried its "food"?

5. Are you of the opinion, that even if your dog was "stupid" and poorly trained, he/she would still have reacted the same way? Or do you believe that the dogs training/background was significant to the way it reacted? ie, do you believe that God would have intervened (in the same fashion) even if it was any other dog you were running with that day?

6. You are assuming that that event that occured was unique to you and you alone. How would you feel if it happened to be the case (or even hypothetically) that there were 200 other kids who had similar experiences, 190 of them got bitten to death by hornets and ten of them got saved by their dogs. Would you still feel God personally intervened?
Or would you feel that you were just one of the lucky survivors?

7. Why would God intervene for you while millions of others die of Starvation, floods, earthquakes all over the world? Are you of the opinion that for some reason, God feels your life is more important that that of the rest?

8. Do you believe that God has a special purpose for some people(you included) and none for others?

9. Wouldnt the idea of free will be negated if God intervened in your case? Do you believe God would still have intervened even if you knew there was a hornets nest at that location and merely wanted to hurt yourself (as in the case of suicide)? Or did he intervene because you were oblivious of the impending danger?

10. Would you still believe even if there was no similar evidence/ experience occuring in your life? If not, what would be your reasons/ evidence for believing?

Thats all for now.

beachbum

Is it co-ink-i-dink (as per Kelly Bundy) that Lil recently posted a similar story where she learned there was a true god in heben when she was saved from bees (I think some unnatural spirit caused the bees to bee-gone) and now this battle of the wasps?

[ January 03, 2002: Message edited by: beachbum ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

Hornets, like many stinging or venomous critters, have warning colors to advertise the fact that they are dangerous. This directly implies that many species CAN recognize the danger, or the warning would be useless.

Mageth

Dog's hearing and sense of smell are, of course, much more keen than ours. I would imagine that the noise and scent of the hornets' nest would have been enough to alert the dog of something unusual, and to a dog, anything unusual is potentially dangerous. As an adult dog will often treat a human child much as its own puppy, it's not beyond reason that a dog would stop a child from running head on into something that has alerted the dog to potential danger.

One of our dogs thought our weedeater was Satan himself, and would go apeshit whenever I used it.

We have another dog that instinctively, without any training, often herded our other dog, our son, and ourselves away from the edge of our pool in our backyard (or other things the dog thought potentially dangerous).

rainbow walking

Rainbow walking Please try to answer my questions even if you find them offensive. I will really appreciate it. My purpose is to establish your way of thinking - ie how you came to your conclusion. Thats all.

Rw: Cool…

1. RW, how old was the dog at the time your dad "brought" it? How sure are you that it had never had an experience with hornets before?

Rw: About two years old. He had been raised from a pup by a military man who was being transferred out of country and couldn’t take him along. I can’t verify the truth of his training but have no reason to doubt my dad’s word and Lad was indeed very intelligent and obedient. I also can’t say with certainty that he had never had any previous experience with bees. Oh…and dad didn’t buy him, he was given to me.

If you came to know that your dog had an experience with hornets, would you dismiss the idea of divine intervention in that event?

Rw: Not at all. It’s one thing to recognize a danger, and another to recognize that danger is also applicable to another dominant species, and quite another to do so in such a small time frame and devise a means of prevention all in one moments notice. Those woods were very thick and Lad was only ten or so feet out front of me when the experience occurred. Even if he had previous recollection of the location of that hive he could have turned me from a collision course with it much sooner than to wait until I was within a few feet of it.

2. Have you ever figured how a hen knows that an eagle is dangerous for its chicks? Hens always flee with their chicks to safety when they spot an eagle hovering in the sky (at least they do this where I come from).

Rw: I am well aware that animals have complicated survival instincts, especially for their young, but I wasn’t a pup and Lad was a male dog.

3. If your dog had bit your trousers/ shirt and pulled you away from the impending "disaster" - would you have considered that more "natural" compared to your dog snarling at you while blocking your path?

Rw: I suppose he could have knocked me down or somehow used his body to deflect my trajectory and he was, in fact, standing in a position to do so, such that I would have had to run over him to have collided with the hive.

4. Are you sure that your dog had no habit of burying bones/ food? Isn't it possible that you were stepping on some ground where the dog had buried its "food"?

rw: I’m fairly certain that he wouldn’t have buried anything that far from the house. He wasn’t in the habit of wandering off and I really can’t recall an instance of him burying anything although this is a common canine trait.

5. Are you of the opinion, that even if your dog was "stupid" and poorly trained, he/she would still have reacted the same way? Or do you believe that the dogs training/background was significant to the way it reacted? ie, do you believe that God would have intervened (in the same fashion) even if it was any other dog you were running with that day?

Rw: I only describe these attributes to demonstrate that he was a normal, healthy animal that wasn’t given to chasing cars or roaming off for days or digging in trash cans or attacking the chickens. He was a perfect farm dog. I don’t think or see where this had any bearing on my interpretation of the experience. God could have used one of the hornets to accomplish the same end by sending it as an advance attack to warn me of their presence. The point is, I was prevented, by an animal, from a potentially fatal collision with a hive of bees. The time frame in which all of this occurred is critical. I wasn’t walking or jogging but running furiously in my imagined battle with aliens. I was weaving and bobbing in and out and between trees and constantly shifting directions oblivious to any danger. I was fond of diving to the ground and rolling while firing my weapon in my best G.I.Joe rendition.

6. You are assuming that that event that occured was unique to you and you alone. How would you feel if it happened to be the case (or even hypothetically) that there were 200 other kids who had similar experiences, 190 of them got bitten to death by hornets and ten of them got saved by their dogs. Would you still feel God personally intervened?
Or would you feel that you were just one of the lucky survivors?

Rw: If they all had similar experiences and reacted similarly to me no one would have been hurt. There would have to be something different about their experience in order to make this analogy fly. If you are asking me why I don’t just interpret the experience as a case of good fortune, I haven’t ruled that out entirely but I happen to have been there and know there were two many consequential factors whose ramifications make chance or luck seem untenable as an explanation. Had my dog simply cut across in front of me tripping me up you might have a better case for luck, but his actions were deliberate and forceful and successful.

7. Why would God intervene for you while millions of others die of Starvation, floods, earthquakes all over the world? Are you of the opinion that for some reason, God feels your life is more important that that of the rest?

Rw: I don’t know the answer to that. Why would He not? Perhaps so that I could grow up and be actively involved in leading men to Him as I have done many times or perhaps so that I could father a son who would do something great or perhaps for no other reason than because He wanted to. How can I answer such a question?

8. Do you believe that God has a special purpose for some people(you included) and none for others?

Rw: Yes I do believe that God has chosen specific people in times past to perform special tasks. Men like Abram or Moses and women like the mother of Jesus. Does this bother you?

9. Wouldnt the idea of free will be negated if God intervened in your case? Do you believe God would still have intervened even if you knew there was a hornets nest at that location and merely wanted to hurt yourself (as in the case of suicide)? Or did he intervene because you were oblivious of the impending danger?

Rw: How so? I wouldn’t have willfully chosen to collide with that hive and I certainly wouldn’t berate anyone who hindered me from such an accident…would you? As I said, I don’t know why He intervened…only that I believe He did. If I intended to commit suicide being stung to death wouldn’t be at the top of my list of ways to do so.

10. Would you still believe even if there was no similar evidence/ experience occuring in your life? If not, what would be your reasons/ evidence for believing?

Rw: Yes I would. As I said at the outset of submitting this testimony, this was just one of many experiences I’ve had that convince me of a divine and personal God in my life.

Have I had moments of doubt? Of course, some very intense moments.

Will I always hold to this degree of faith? I can’t say…I certainly hope my faith doesn’t diminish. I would prefer an increase.

I notice your continual reference to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Is this your sectarian group of choice?

Are you a believer and if so how do you express your faith?

rainbow walking

rw: I've seen dogs and cats go out of their way to catch bees, so this warning device must not work consistantly.

Jack the Bodiless

Well, a dog is basically a retarded wolf...

rainbow walking

rw: In the course of the six years I had with my dog we came across many unusual things but he never again displayed any tendency to protect me from them in this manner.

Years later when both my sons were tots we had another dog, (can't remember his breed), who we kept in the backyard who barked all night one night. We ignored it thinking he was barking at a neighbors dog only to discover the next morning that the grass in our back yard had caught on fire and burned all the way up to the house. Fortunately the house was built on block and the wood didn't start for several feet up so the fire went out without catching the house on fire. But we realized our dog was trying to warn us of this danger.

madmax2976

This appears to another one of those: "I just don't see any other answer so it must have been that a God did it" type scenarios.

Rainbow walking is no different that those ancient people's who worshipped the sun, offered sacrifices to volcano gods, believed various gods controlled the weather or had an impact on their yearly harvests. They too invoked gods whenever they couldn't explain something.

A slightly modified saying I like that puts things like this into perspective: “Putting it bluntly, theists have sought “God” in darkness. What we have not yet found and do not yet understand becomes their best - indeed their only – “evidence” for the divine.”

rainbow walking

rw: I have a better way to put it: "What men HAVE found and do think they UNDERSTAND is the best evidence yet to the question, "How did God do that?"

Oh, that's how He dunnit!"