Totally open to it.
I was just looking for ways people tell the difference between what is real and not real (without special pleading).
I really like this thread, and think an example to tear into would be nice, so what is real, not real, the special pleading, can all be pointed out perhaps. Hopefully it's not tl/dr, and is relevant. I'll give the subjective aspect as well as just the "facts":
When I first started really exploring Christianity, I had a default position of believing in a "God" that was the unprovable "kind". In other words, you had to believe "God" was there, as en entity with will, but there was no way to communicate, interact, or even prove the existence of such a God outside of your own imagination and feelings. However, I didn't want to go to hell, and all of that ... so I joined an organization to both serve society at large, "Golden Rule" type of stuff, and also to learn about Christianity as well. Again, my default position was of the "outside of reality" God, so to speak. Irrational.
To make a long story very short, I was in Hawaii with my wife at the time, and I was in a prayer meeting. Everyone in this meeting had a friend whom they were praying for, to heal his cancer. I didn't know the man, had never heard of him outside of those people ... and those people were likewise all strangers to me prior to joining the organization. But they were praying for him to be healed, all speaking in tongues, this and that.
Once again lol ... my default position was that I didn't believe in anything of that kind. Healing. Tongues. Etc. I had no reason to. I believed it was man's job to help man, and that God was again, "outside" not doing anything. I accepted that God didn't heal the amputees, and was sending everyone to "hell". I was also extremely uncomfortable, and even angry at the people there ... because it seemed to me they were completely deluded and had no respect for others in the room who might not want to jump up and down and babble word salad. In fact, the whole time they were doing these things, I just sat there feeling as though I were in a psych ward.
One of these people, stopped during the prayer, and looked at me and said, "God wants you to ask him something, he's daring you." At that moment, I began to feel extremely hot .... and warm, and a voice in my mind began to say to me, "Go ahead, ask me. Ask me something." I fought that for a couple of minutes, but the heat wouldn't stop, and for some reason, I started to cry heavily ... from being overwhelmed. It would not stop, nor go away, and the voice just kept saying this. It wasn't confrontational, rather it was like a casual dare.
Everyone could see what was happening to me, and oddly enough, they left me alone ... crying, and no doubt turning beet red. I knew the voice wasn't audible, it was internal. I finally gave in, and started talking to it.
"Okay, if this is God, part the ocean outside." From where we were, we were sitting high up enough to see the ocean. The voice said something along the lines of, "I'm not going to do that, ask something else ..." and almost gave a sort of laugh.
At that, I assumed that I was simply talking to myself, and that the conversation was utterly ridiculous and I was merely allowing myself to be manipulated for some reason from the people around me ... persuaded to believe in something that wasn't really happening. But the sensations wouldn't go away, and the voice asked again ... so I said, "I need money. I am almost broke, and we'll need money once we're done here." Again the laugh, and "don't worry about that".
At that, I was even more assured I was perhaps just letting myself be persuaded to see something that wasn't there. But still, the feeling wouldn't go away, nor the voice. So I thought for a moment, "if I wanted to do something for someone else, perhaps ..." and I asked the voice: "okay, heal that man of his cancer."
At that, the voice was gone, and I had a "vision" ... all in my mind, and it was clear as any sort of dream or day dream might be. I saw in my head, a room, with a man lying in a bed, and the comforter on the bed had pastel colors, blues and pinks. There was a dresser to the left of the bed, and the room also had a long sliding glass door type of window/door, with a long pink curtain going down to the ground, with the setting sun behind it, illuminating it softly and warmly. The room was very bare, basic, except for those few elements, which were clearly defined.
I was there, also, kneeling by the bed, and praying over this man.
I *assumed* this man was the guy with cancer that everyone was praying for.
I told *many* people what I saw, what had happened. I couldn't describe my feelings very well, or why I was crying ... but the vision, seemed clear. I told several people the details, and explained in detail what happened from moment one to seeing the man in the room. One of the reasons I was asking and telling these people about what had happened, was because I wanted to know if they had experienced anything like it ... since they did all these other things. No one said they had, nor would anyone "confirm" for me whether or not I was imagining things or if it was "a vision from God". This surprised me, since so many people claimed to be authorities on this and that ... yet couldn't tell me something simple about whether or not I was deluding myself or not. What was interesting to me, is that I didn't understand why I would even experience anything like that ... given I believed the OPPOSITE about those things happening, and I am not the kind of person who easily caved into peer pressure. I was very much a "against the system" type of person.
For the next three months, I did nothing about the vision, but I consistently kept having certain this one scripture reference come up. A reference I didn't even know, but had to look up. I kept seeing "Hebrews 11:1" in my mind, similar to how I saw that "vision". It is a scripture dealing with "faith", and what it's claiming "Faith" is. At that time, I also knew nothing of the bible. In fact, I had to take one from a library in order to have one to read. So that scripture was unbeknownst to my conscious memory.
Eventually, all the feelings faded that came with that "Vision", and no one around me brought it up or mentioned it. I actually got to the point of where I had almost forgotten about it, and finally decided I had just allowed myself to be influenced somehow by that meeting, and played along with an idea of talking to myself and it was nothing more than that. My time in Hawaii was coming to a close, and shortly before it was time to leave ... I remembered the "Vision", and wondered if I should actually try to see if there was any validity to it. Would I regret not searching it out and seeing for myself ? I decided to see what it would take to meet this man, if he was even still alive, and where he lived. It turned out, he lived in Michigan ... and I was in Hawaii. So not only was it not a simple drive away, but I couldn't even afford to fly there. We were supposed to go to Germany after Hawaii, and our tickets were paid in that respect ... but we had almost nothing left over.
With about two days to spare, a letter in the bottom of a pile of our mail was found that had a check in it to us ... a check that would actually cover the costs for us to get a layover in Michigan so that if I wanted to ... I could perhaps see this man. So I did what I thought was rather ballsy lol ... I got the number to this man's house, called talked to his wife, told her a little about how I knew some of their friends there in Hawaii, and although she didn't know me, I would really like to come visit her husband and pray. She said he wasn't doing very well, but that she didn't mind friends of her friends coming to pay their respects and pray over him ....
I was rather shocked that she would let me, and I didn't mention the "dream" or vision that I recall .. I kept it simple. In other words, I had no expectations of anything other than trying to see if the vision was legitimately seeing this man.
To make a longer story shorter .... we got the layover scheduled, along with a car rental. Our plane coming in was late, and I feared we wouldn't be able to make it there before nightfall. In my vision, one aspect was the location of the setting sun. If we made it there at night, that would destroy that part of the vision and render the whole thing moot.
After driving several hours to their house, we arrived and I nervously went up, with my wife, to ring the doorbell and introduce ourselves. The wife was very pleasant and nice, and after a bit of small talk, she showed me where her husbands rooms was, and left me to myself. Upon opening the door, I saw my "vision" fulfilled in every possible detail ... the dresser, the bed, the comforter, the sliding glass door, the pink curtain, the setting sun illuminating it, everything in the room, her husband asleep in the bed. I felt a sort of otherwordly shock come over me ... as though I just became "one of those people" that was going to have a story about something supernatural. I realized that I hadn't actually expected my vision to come true, and that when it did .... I was amazed. Even though I had gone through the motions of getting myself there, I hadn't actually expected it to come true lol. When it did .... it felt as though I was seeing something I never imagined was possible. What I had assumed was only in imagination and TV and story and "theory" ... I was there experiencing *something*. The fulfillment of a moment in time I had forseen months earlier, down to the placement of the setting sun, even taking into account our plane being delayed by hours.
I simply knelt down by the bed, and said a simple prayer. "God please heal this man of his cancer."
And I left, in utter awe. I felt I had "proof".
That man died months later. And also, I would eventually put the idea that it was "proof" into perspective.
So having said all of that: when I told believers that account, it was "proof of God !!!". When I told atheists that account, it was "a series of coincidence" or "an elaborate attempt to recreate for you your vision, unbeknownst to you, by your friends". When I those who don't believe in gods, but believe in the supernatural or other aspects of the paranormal hear it, they tell me it's psychic ability, or precognitive on some level. And I've also heard demons, frontal lobe epilepsy, auto suggestion, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I was merely deluded and even my own facts are being misrepresented, etc and so forth.
But I prefer to let the experience speak for itself ... removing all the aspects surrounding it and all that background, a lot of it can easily be explained away to coincidence and imagination. However the one aspect that sticks out to me as being hard to explain without some kind of "theory" ... is the vision itself. Even the voice ... could be explained away. But the vision itself involved a moment in time, with specifics in every detail ... which would come to pass months later, based on a decision at the last moment, and seemingly outside circumstances that were not under my control (the flight delay for example). Having not know those people whatsoever, further distances the "vision" from being influenced by others. Even if I had seen a photograph of his room, unbeknownst to me somehow in passing, and it was coming up somehow in my mind .... the moment in time was unique. The placement of the sun. And the fact I told many people the details would give room to think it was an elaborate attempt to "do something nice for me" and make his room to be something so that it would fit .... but that's fairly elaborate for a woman to do with her dying husband, all for me, a stranger, and all at the last moment. So having told others the vision and putting it to paper so to speak, was showing that I didn't change my "account" to fit the room ... the room fit the vision which I described in detail.
That aspect is hard for me to explain away in an Occam's Razor format. However I don't mind that perspective, or leaving it at "I don't know". I don't know, is a fine answer.
But that Deus Ex Machina I pointed out earlier lol .... and perhaps this is the special pleading ..... if you take into account a lot of the background, setting, surrounding events, it fits a certain type of profile that takes shape in it's pattern. Does it prove God ? Tongues ? The Bible ? Being non denomational ? Does it say this or that about "God" ? Voices ? No .......... BUT ............ if you let things speak for themselves, and compare all aspects to various theories, perhaps a certain theory will begin to be closer to the pattern it formed. If you have "faith" that the pattern might apply, then you do. If not, then you don't. The Occam's Razor explanation explains away almost all of it rather simply. But compare it to "patterns" and theories that already exist, and it might align itself with one of them more closely. It doesn't PROVE that pattern or theory, but it gives evidence that either goes towards it or not, rather than having nothing whatsoever.
Now, if that experience stood alone ... it might be one thing. But you have enough of them, in a variety of settings and backgrounds ... the bare bones might say one thing, but the totality of it all might compare to even more patterns and theories ... or perhaps one in particular, and then it's easier to see why someone might side with one theory or idea over another. However, still ... confusing "faith" and "maybe" with "I know because _______" ... are different things. When people with opposing views and experience simply examine things "from the ground up" ... perhaps a more unified and all encompassing idea will emerge that *might* explain, without the need to treat certain assumptions or conclusions as *fact*.
Thoughts ?