emotional

I really don't see it that way. I don't see this scenario as "supernatural life support". Simply, the ancients were wrong to think to attribute everything to supernatural causes, and the findings of science are to correct this view. But to make a sweeping conclusion that the supernatural doesn't exist? That's throwing the baby with the bathwater!

To say that the supernatural doesn't exist is like saying that only the wavelengths from red to violet exist, because that's all our eyes can detect. We know the existence of infrared and ultraviolet from the use of instruments. Similarly, based on our senses alone, we cannot detect the supernatural, non-material planes. We have to use such instruments and viewing-glasses as hypnosis, NDEs and trances in order to detect them. But they definitely are there, they are real.

Ex Anima Magna, radice animarum, nascimur et ad eam redimus

Darkblade

To say that blervins, qhozjops, and arbokimtorlithohyphs don't exist is like saying that only the wavelengths from red to violet exist, because that's all our eyes can detect. We know the existence of infrared and ultraviolet from the use of instruments. Similarly, based on our senses alone, we cannot detect blervins, qhozjops, or arbokimtorlithohyphs. We have to use such instruments and viewing-glasses as garbanzo therapy, rhomboid distastics, and microvibration glorification in order to detect them. But they definitely are there, they are real.

Darth Dane

It's not about what I want or don't want. We talking about what we can deduce. I deduce that an omnipotent God would be able to convince me of his existence. Since I remain unconvinced, I deduce he doesn't want or care to convince me, or he can't convince me.

yes a omnipotent would be able to convince you.
If you ask, and you don't feel you are getting and answer.
We must either ask in a different way, or tell God how we want God to prove Godself to you.

Imagine God is asking you, through me, how you want God to reveal Godself to you?
I am now God's tool. And if you don't answer, then how is God to convince you, when God doesn't know how God should do it?
Imagine that you need to actually say it, before God can or will act on it?




DD - Love Spliff

emotional

Close-mindedness at its finest! It's really nice to know I've made an argument that cannot be intelligently refuted, so the only recourse one has is to lampoon it.

Jinto

Not at all. The non-sarcastic refutation is simply that the wavelengths other than red-violet can and do have perdictable, detectable effects on the world which can be observed. On the other hand, the supernatural does not have detectable effects, cannot have predictable effects, and has never been observed. Also, the instruments we use to observe other wavelengths were constructed to observe those wavelengths, so we know that is what they are actually observing. On the other hand, hypnosis, NDE's and trances were NOT designed for viewing the supernatural, and in fact our best analysis of all of them is that they are actually observing an internal malfunction of the brain. With trance/hypnosis, the brain's mechanism for analyzing the validity of input is short-circuited, leaving the person vulnerable ot suggestion. With NDE's, the person is feeling the effects of oxygen deprivation. Nothing in our science suggests that any of these are observing the supernatural. That is the difference, and your comparison made no more sense than Darkblade's mockery of it.

emotional

Trances (people entering trances) are for the express purpose of viewing the supernatural.



I wouldn't call it best analysis. I'd call it shoehorning to fit the preconceived worldview of materialism.



Shows how much you know about trance or hypnosis.



Ditto. NDEs happen at brain flatline -- death. Oxygen deprivation produces incoherent experiences, whereas NDEs are structured experiences (see also here). But of course, you've just got to make the facts fit a materialistic scenario, otherwise it's not "scientific".

You've already decided that matter is all there is, nature is all there is, so no amount or type of evidence given will convince you otherwise. As far as I'm concerned the supernatural is real, and can be perceived using such instruments as I have mentioned. The experiences of mystics, hypnotised people and NDEers point to an objective reality. I'm not a denier of the perspicuity of natural law, and I don't believe in miracles, but I don't go so far as to reject the supernatural altogether. It's NOT all in the head!

Jinto

Did you engineer the human brain? I don't think so. So then, how is it that you can tell me that the human brain's ability to enter a trance was designed for viewing the supernatural? Or, is it that is produces experiences that humans have ascribed to the supernatural in the absence of knowledge of what is really going on? This distinction makes a world of difference, especially when you consider that thunderstorms were once considered to be the manifestations of an angry God.

And a creationist would say exactly the same thing about evolution. What you call it has nothing to do with what it actually is.

You would perhaps like to demonstrate that hypnosis doesn't leave people open to suggestion?

No, all you have to do to make something scientific is postulate an explanation that makes verifiable, testable predictions. The supernatural explanation says that there ought to be some aspect of a person's personality that are NOT directly dependent on brain state. None have been found. Further, it seems unlikely that NDE's are not naturally caused, given that the administration of ketamine also produces NDE's (see here). An excerpt:

Near-death experiences (NDE's) can be reproduced by ketamine via blockade of receptors in the brain (the N-methyl-D-aspartate, NMDA receptors) for the neurotransmitter glutamate. Conditions which precipitate NDE's (hypoxia, ischaemia, hypoglycaemia, temporal lobe epilepsy etc.) have been shown to release a flood of glutamate, overactivating NMDA receptors resulting in neuro ('excito') toxicity. Ketamine prevents this neurotoxicity. There are substances in the brain which bind to the same receptor site as ketamine. Conditions which trigger a glutamate flood may also trigger a flood of neuroprotective agents which bind to NMDA receptors to protect cells, leading to an altered state of consciousness like that produced by ketamine. This article extends and updates the theory proposed in 1990 (Jansen, 1990b).

Please. Pull yourself together and stop acting like your namesake.

emotional

There's no arguing with you, eh, Jinto?

Since I can't seem to sway anyone here to my side, and since I risk losing my belief in life after death, I'm pulling out of this discussion. Bye.

Jamie_L

Ah. Then we may be arguing past each other instead of with each other. I interpretted the OP to mean that all we knew was "a god" existed, but that we did not now anything else about him other than that he created the universe. Given that, I do not believe we can necessarily infer omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

Jamie

Jamie_L

And omniscient would know how. I God needs me to tell him, then God's pretty far short of omniscient.

As far as my non-belief goes, it's not something that I came to because God did not meet some specific set of criteria I had set. It was a long, gradual conclusion based on a life of observation.

In effect, maybe I don't really know what it would take for God to convince me. All I know is that, if God is real, it seems to take something different to convince me than most people. I don't really understand how other people can believe based on what they claim are their reasons for believing.

But again, I can still infer that either God doesn't want me to believe, God isn't concerned whether or not I believe, or God isn't really omnipotent and/or omniscient. By playing other "What If" games, I can infer other things from that would accompany specific assumptions.

For instance, if I were to assume omnibenevolence, I would infer that God would not be particularly upset by my lack of belief so long as I was a moral person. After all, (assuming God's existence) my non-belief is merely an honest mistake I've made using the tools he gave me to observe the universe he created.

Jamie