thebeave

IIRC, this ability has also been observed with people who have certain types of autism (i.e. the so-called "idiot savant"). Don't know if scientists yet have an explanation for how they do it. Just some funny quirk of the brain, I guess. Don't assume its paranormal, though. That kind of reasoning falls under the, "I can't explain it, so therefore its God/paranormal/supernatural".

Ronin

Exactly.

From the Rev. Jim Huber website ~

Our Mission, take II

We seek to bring about a world of peace, love and understanding by freeing spirituality from the constraints of superstition. Our goal is not to destroy religion, or even weaken it, but to strengthen it by driving superstition from it. We use mockery because:

Humor gets redistributed far more widely than thoughtful discussion.
It's self-calibrating: The more anal-retentive the target, the harder mockery hits.
Our main targets are pretty much immune to rational discourse.
It helps keep us from taking ourselves too seriously.
We're fairly good at it.

Hrmmmm...I don't think I could ever take part in something like that...

HelenM

Thanks, Ronin. I guess I should have looked at the site more carefully. I thought he was 'logic-challenged' based on what he said about God telling him not to believe in God but in fact he was making a joke - sort of.

I now see that he's rewritten that page - there's an expanded 'take II' version linked to at the bottom of the page. Seems like I wasn't the only one who didn't get it...

Helen

Pyrrho

What is the difference between hallucinating and having a subjective religious experience?

HelenM

An SRE doesn't have to involve seeing things that other people can't see.

Helen

Calzaer

thebeave:
Bingo! That's why I don't expect anyone to take me seriously on the subject. Obvious logical fallacies + board founded on skeptiscm = no credibility.

Helen:
It usually does, tho.

On the other hand, I have had ONE SRE (Occult SRE, discussed in section #9b)ii) of my outline in "The AntiReligion Pill?") that was verified by a witness (who's unarguably more scientific than I am, and who is not at all Wiccan). We saw forest fairies.

Ok, *I* call them forest fairies, she calls them "really strange lights that disturb me because I can't explain them. That they showed up right after you were talking to yourself as if there were faries around has to be a complete coincidence." And boy, we combed that forest up and down the next morning. Nothing to cause reflections (and not much light to reflect at the time, in any case), no evidence of other people being around (my big concern), the road is opposite the direction we were facing... although the "firefly hypothesis" is still inconclusive. She points out they looked like fireflies. I point out that (A) it was cold (we were in jackets), (B) they were white, not green, (C) there were occasionally red ones, (D) they never stayed "on" long enough to leave a "trail" (watch fireflies, you'll see), (E) they never appeared in clusters, (F) they appeared both near ground level and high in the trees, (G) they never actually moved while "on", (H) they vanished completely after about 20 minutes, and (I) some were close enough that we clearly should have been able to detect the presence of a buzzing insect. She admits to points (A) through (I), but isn't totally convinced they weren't fireflies.

I'd also like to note that since then I made it a point to go on firefly-observation-fieldtrips to various regions of the South Carolina upstate, and have yet to see any group of fireflies behaving like the alleged faries we saw that night. Although I'll admit to being unable to find fireflies to observe when it's cold enough to wear a jacket.. they might behave differently.

***

*re-reads the above*

...I am such a flake. But they weren't fireflies.

ANYWAY. I only mention that one because it's the only one I've had that could be confirmed by an outside observer (the actual event is confirmed, the explanations of the event differ). The others were less ambiguous, but happened primarily during meditative states and are therefore completely unverifiable.

..which is why I don't actually expect anyone to believe me. See above.

Calzaer

.........

*sigh* Why do I get the sudden feeling that this is going to go down as my version of Bender's "demons Riverdancing on my rooftop" debacle?

Pyrrho

So what does it involve, then? Is it just feeling an emotion, like an extreme feeling of peace and tranquility?

Calzaer

I describe two of the biggest components of an SRE in sections 5 and 9 (specifically b)ii) ) of the outline presented in "The AntiReligion Pill?"

HelenM

I suppose it might, but I for one never teased him about that.

Ok, let's see...

5) This deity can and does communicate with humans, through the manifestations described in #2. These may appear in meditative vision, dreams, or other alpha-state activities. Could also be the source of "intuition" and "instinct", but no hard conclusions have been made on this topic.
a) These communications are entirely subjective and generally unverifiable to anyone outside the subject's head. They are proof of this deity?s existence to the person who experiences the communication, but should not be expected to count as evidence to anyone else.
b) These communications make up a significant part of the entire body of Subjective Religious Experiences (SREs).
c) Claiming to have received a communication of this sort does not negate any personal culpability for actions which are inconsistent with cultural/societal normality or which are inconsistent with the ethical system (see #6) attributed to this deity.

[...]

9) There is a force, hereby called "energy" (in spite of the scientific inaccuracy of that label), that exists outside our perceptional range.
a) This force can be manipulated to serve a specific purpose. The process of manipulating this force is hereby referred to as "magic".
b) This force is perfectly natural and detectable by impartial observers (most likely by some mechanism not yet developed/discovered, with regard to impartial observers who do not deign to participate in a ritual manipulating this energy).
i) This is the weakest link of the entire belief system: it requires that impartial people not affiliated with this belief system should be able to experience magic under the right conditions (which probably shouldn't involve hallucinogens).
ii) A person's individual magical experience should also be considered subjective, and as a result makes up another large segment of SREs (see #5b). These SREs are constrained by the same rules with regard to evidence as perceived by a third party that Communication SREs are constrained by. IOW: Nobody will believe you. It's not evidence.


So, 5 refers to being communicated with by God and 9 is about magic? But the example you gave of seeing the fairies doesn't have to do with manipulating the energy you talk about in 9 as magic, does it? You just saw them, right?

Thanks for giving me the specific example of seeing the fairies. It's interesting to me that you chose to share the one that someone else perceived with you. But really, all that shows is that it probably was not an 'internal' phenomenon. Yet, I don't discount 'internal' phenomenon as less likely to be supernatural, per se, than external ones - as it were.

What do you see the 'point' or 'message' of the fairies experience being? I mean, why do you think you had it? Why were the fairies shown to you? What did you learn from it? How did it change you? I'm just curious.

Helen