Pyrrho

Your definition of a "subjective religious experience" presupposes that a god exists, so it cannot be used as evidence for the existence of any god. You are committing the fallacy known as "circulus in demonstrando", or circular reasoning.

What I am interested in reading is a brief description of the experience itself, not what supposedly caused it. We can talk about its causes after we have a clear expression of what the experience is in itself.

Calzaer

Sorry, I was out of town Friday and almost all of today, and will be again tomorrow.

Helen:
I apologise for the confusion... the explanation for why this event falls under section 9, manipulation of energy, is relatively complex and would probably grate on peoples' ears. I'll go into it if you like, but I'd prefer if you'd take my word for it. The answer to your question has to do with (A) what faries are (usually) and (B) why they showed up in this particular instance.

I appreciate that sentiment. I've actually accumulated another example over the weekend that more closely relates to section 9, and was verified by other people (although these are by no means "impartial" people).

The internal experiences I prefer not to discuss much, being that most of them are rather personal (and make me sound more like a flake than I do already, I'm sure).

That's a tough question. There are several "layers" of answer to it (and no, I'm not deliberately trying to be evasive). WHY did I have it? Well, to put it simply, I sort of asked for it. How did it change me? Well, it certainly assauged some of my insanity fears, once we went through all probable explanations we could think of and came up empty. It was witnessed, and my witness (who has a B.S. in wildlife biology) couldn't explain it any better than I could in the end (Note: since the time I wrote the original post about it, I talked to her and she conceeded that she doesn't actually think they were fireflies... she just doesn't know what else they could be, and refuses to see my "fairies" suggestion as anything more than argumentum ad ignoratum, which I suppose it probably is).

Does that answer your question adaquately? If not, feel free to let me know.

***

Pyrrho:

It's actually a conglomeration of several logical fallacies, but I hadn't considered that one. Good catch. I'll add it to the list... but I'd like to mention that I've been trying to make it a point to present the 3rd-person non-evidentiary nature of SREs since the beinging.

Although I'm not sure it's circular the way you describe.. it's more argumentum ad ignoratum. I have the experiences, I can't explain the experiences any other way, therefore goddidit. I'm not saying "A god exists, which causes me to have SREs, which prove a god exists," at least not as far as I'm aware. If that's what I've been projecting, I apologize; it was not my intent.

Ok, we can work from there, sure. But can I have a day or two? Like I mentioned above, I'm going out of town, and I'm pretty exhausted from being out of town for the last 48 hours or so. I'm not sure I could give an adaquately detailed discription for analysis while I'm running on fumes. I do appreciate your patience... I'm not trying to be evasive, my brain is just fried at the moment.

Jobar

Very interesting.

My brother, and three close friends of mine, were camping at an old reservoir lake here in Georgia, way back in 1977. They all testify to an experience that seems quite mysterious- a steady white light in the sky, which they observed for several minutes. It moved about in ways impossible for a plane or helicopter, made no noise, and appeared to be between them and the treeline (about 200 yards.) They all still swear it's not just a joke they cooked up amongst them. In fact it scared them enough that they packed up and left!

Thing is- one insists that it was a UFO, one thinks it was a ghost, and the other two just say they don't know what the hell it was. I really wish I had been there, anyway, as I have never seen any phenomenon which I could not make a fair guess as to what it was. Calzaer's 'fairies' sound like they might be similar.

There are plenty of natural phenomena which are so seldom seen that most people never get to observe them. Ball and bead lightning, swamp lights, St. Elmo's fire, rare atmospheric refraction effects- all well documented, and at least approximately understood. I have a book in my library, Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena by William R. Corliss, which contains lots of extremely puzzling reports. I make no claim that I can precisely state the cause of Calzaer's lights, but they are of a class well enough known to have a name- will o' the wisps.

Calzaer, I presume you had recited some incantation which was supposed to call up something- and the synchronicity is admittedly quite astonishing. Still I feel that if you had had the proper instruments to observe and record your 'faeries' they would have proved completely natural.