Hans

Ojuice5001

I am most curious what these experiences are and how you are able to attribute them to Postverta.

I have been involved in another topic where the discussion revolved around whether one's experiences were justification for belief. It was my position that, at a minimum, in order to justify the belief one would need to demonstrate how the experience infered the belief.

Question: What were these experiences and how do you atrribute them to Postverta?

I thank you in advance for any response you would offer.

Ojuice5001

Okay, here goes. The first experience was in 1999. I was walking away from the bus stop. I suddenly had a feeling that there was a spirit of the past who was present at the time, and in my life history generally. This experience seemed real, and I gave it further thought. Did it match with empirical reality?

Yes. My life, luck and personality have been dominated by a love of the past and present, and a fear of the future. My life has been ruled by minor events rather than major ones, resistance to change rather than an embracing of it, basic impulses rather than sophisticated ones, immediate concerns rather than remote ones, myself and my family rather than the larger society, conservation of resources rather than careless expendture of them. These are features of older realities, like childhood, monkey life, and premodern societies. They describe me and the older realities much better than they describe the society I live in. That's why it made sense that I was ruled by a deity of the past.

That's the first test: Would the same being be likely to produce both the experience, and a lot of the other phenomena you see? If I had experienced Mars, or tree sprites, they would fail the test. The character of my life in general does not suggest that trees, or Mars's kind of highly masculine pursuits, are important parts of that which lies nearest to me. (Not that Mars doesn't exist--I would just be wrong to infer that he directly contacted me.)

The second test is recurrence. Does an experience recur, or is it a one-time event? I have had experiences of this kind with other spirits, which I now regard as probably non-existent. The reason is that these experiences had a set lifetime. For two months or so the goddess Paula (a sort of personification of my hometown, Gainesville) seemed real. But after two or three months, there was no sign of Paula ever coming back. Contrast this with Postverta. I twice abandoned my belief in her (the first time in favor of Paula), and both times, I ended up returning to a belief in her, both times without ever realy trying. Obviously the case is stronger with Paula, and weaker with Postverta, that the experience was purely dependent on natural causes.

That's my test for determining whether spiritual experiences are real.I encourage anyone to think about what kind of god would probably be their patron god--judging as much as possible by the actual facts of their life. Then keep your mind open to experiences of such a god.

Hans

Ojuice5001

How exactly does one come to distinguish between:

a: Their attributes and experiences are the result of their biology and the world around them.

And

b: Their attributes and experiences are the result of their biology and the world around them, and/or the result of the entity "X".

Respectfully, I contend that if we remove entity "X" from the equasion we would have the same result. I also contend that removing entity "X" from the equasion would survive both tests 1 & 2 that you offered.

Ojuice5001

That's a hard question. I just think the universe seems more complete if there are supernatural entities. To put it in Christian terminology, the kinds of temptation are the world, the flesh, and the devil, not just the world and the flesh. (Of course, "the devil" here doesn't have to be evil, any more than the world and the flesh do.) When people make decisions, they do seem to be influenced by not only biology and environment, but also something else, which the Book of Common Prayer chooses to call the devil. (Let me say once again that someone less eager to call things sinful would have used a different phrase.) You probably think the devil can be reduced to the flesh; here I will just say that not everyone sees it that way.

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, I'm glad you weren't influenced by the christian cult, OJ

Pomp

Ojuice5001,

When people make decisions, they do seem to be influenced by not only biology and environment, but also something else...

You lose me here. Given that we have only recently begun to untangle the complex web of human motivation and divide it into "biology" and "socialization," and given that most of of our current knowledge is sketchy, at best, I don't see how you can proclaim with any degree of confidence that there seems to be "something else" caught up in the web. If nothing else, Occam's Razor ought to dictate that we don't look for "something else" until we've discovered some facet of human behavior that we can confidently say defies explanation by biology, socialization, or a mix of the two.

Daydreamer

It always has seemed to me that spiritual occurances such as OJs are true events in the sense of personal epiphanies about one's self or one's worldview, while the personal deity aspect is some how grafted on.

Protestant xtianity, for example, has always struck me as a bunch of people who realized that they can't own up to all they do wrong in this world - they can only try. They then graft salvation by faith onto Jesus to justify their existence.

For both epiphanies I partially agree with the message, which mirrors my personal musings to a small extent, but disgaree that they are divinely inspired.

Ojuice5001

Pompous Bastard,

I'm thinking of everyday experience. Physical needs are experienced one way. The needs created by the social environment are experienced in another. And the needs that theists call "spiritual" are experienced in a third way. Since nothing compels us to consider this an illusion, I think it's legitimate to think that these three kinds of need do in fact come from different sources.

Hans

Ojuice5001

More complete in what way? What is missing in a universe that has no supernatural entities? Is it your mortality that holds you to these myths?

How can you say that any decision, or some decisions, that one may make are the result of superatural influence? What form of perception or method of deduction can we use to determine that there is infact supernatural influence in our decisions?

I realize that these are tough questions but I think they are important. If you or I have an experience that we believe is the result of an supernatural entity then we should have a tangable reason for this belief.

Pomp

Ojuice5001,

Physical needs are experienced one way. The needs created by the social environment are experienced in another. And the needs that theists call "spiritual" are experienced in a third way.

I'm not sure what you mean. How is the way in which we experience physical needs any different from the way in which we experience social or "spiritual" needs? As far as I know, they're all neurons firing in different configurations. How do you distinguish a physical need from a social or "spiritual" one? By cause, or by the way they feel, or what? Is the need for acceptance social or physical? Obviously, it is a "social" need, but we seem to be largely hardwired for it, which implies physical. I'm curious.