Ask the.... agnostic pantheist?

razeontherock said:

What I said:

I've encountered many things that aren't natural, and can't be explained away by known laws of nature that are usually pretty dependable, including gravity. Your belief system fails to account for that.

Parsing not necessary. Taking it at face value is. Discussing individual instances really wouldn't accomplish anything since you weren't there, and it would only result in you saying "did not," in response to my
"did too." So take the suspension of gravity to save a life as an example. IF you were ever to encounter a supernatural phenomenon, what would that do to your belief system and how would you process the event?

Right now it seems you've got no way of doing that.

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Care to explain your experience? Keep in mind that if it can't be dismissed as delusion, hallucination, or an outright fabrication, you'll get no further attention from me.

Now, if you're claiming that you witnessed gravity ignore it's effect on an individual falling from a fatal height, did you even bother to ask yourself any of the following questions:

1 - Did I really see what I think I saw or was there another mechanism that could have been in place that I didn't notice.
2 - If I didn't see any reasonable explanation for the violation of physics, would it necessarily be the influence of a God, and if so, how would this one life contribute to a holy 'plan'?
3 - Am I sure I am not recollecting the events incorrectly, or even a dream I once had
4 - Am I sure I am not fabricating a story that is simply not empirically provable to make my point on a web forum using logical fallacy (burden of proof).

Something you dream about, think you see, or even possibly lie about doesn't validate the supernatural.

Also keep in mind, that the burden of proof lies on the positive claim. You assert that you've witnessed supernatural events. Let's assume that you are 100% convinced that you have witnessed supernatural events. The burden of proof would be on you to prove they happened, not on me to prove they didn't happen. I can claim there is a robot space toaster that rules a kingdom of plaid monkeys on the moon -- the burden of proof would be on me to prove it. The robot space toaster doesn't simply exist because you can't prove it doesn't.

So, basically, my 'belief' system doesn't NEED to account for something that some dude on a Christian web forum claims happened because he said it did. In order me to even begin to consider your experience as really have happened, you will need to provide some evidence to back your claim. Otherwise, it was the space toaster robot king who turned off the gravity that day.

Anyway, the purpose of this thread was for me to answer any questions regarding my 'beliefs', not to have my 'beliefs' challenged. If you would like to continue to make attempts at challenging my 'beliefs', then please start a new thread or send me an instant message. Just keep in mind, that you aren't challenging my belifs so much as you're trying to challenge the subject of science as a whole. The extent of what you can accurately call my beliefs are merely that if there is a god, I would consider it to be a sentient, self-conscious universe.

IF you were ever to encounter a supernatural phenomenon, what would that do to your belief system and how would you process the event?

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First, I would surely not default to the supernatural for an explanation -- that is foolish.
I would first come up with one or more hypotheses based on my current knowledge of reality.
I would then find a way to test my hypothesis, if possible, to see if any of them were right... If not, I'd either give up and say "i don't know what that was", or try to come up with another hypothesis.

For example, while on vacation one year on the east coast of MD, I saw strange lights over the ocean. They looked kind of like flares, but the behaved very strangely. Rather than jumping to the conclusion that it was some extraterrestrial acrobatics, I called my friend who was in the Coast Guard to see if he know of any exercises they do in the area -- nothing. I looked on the internet at various kinds of flares and ships -- nothing fit the description to what I saw. I did find ONE video on youtube, taken off the coast of SC of lights behaving nearly identical. They didn't know what they were either. I still have never arrived at a conclusion as to what they were, but nor do I say "[wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth] aliens!" or "[wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth] Jesus lights!".

From pretty much every characteristic, except for their behavior, they resembled some sort of flare -- So instead of making an absolute conclusion, I posit a very high probability that they were flares.... This leaves an explanation for the phenomena open to the scientific method. After all, it's arrogant to claim knowledge of everything, especially for what you have no evidence for.

I guess I called your bluff. Sorry!

Sad Trombone