What is suffering?

[juvenissun]

Memories, senses, musical ability...it's all inherently a cellular process. If you destroy connections in neurons, you destroy memories. There is no evidence that this process is anything but a physical capacity of our cells.

Evidence? How naive. It is a useless idea.

People's experience is the evidence. It is called "witness".

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Evidence? How naive. It is a useless idea.

People's experience is the evidence. It is called "witness".

That's not good enough in this context, because we know that experience can be both quantitatively and qualitatively modified by the use of medications and with electrical stimulation. An individual's experience does not necessarily correlate with reality.

What is it with people's fixation with anecdotal evidence being 'strong', in any sense of the word? It isn't. It's just about the weakest form of evidence that anyone can bring to bear.

I don't know.

But if you believe the existence of ghost, then it must be made of something. The best I can say is energy (?).

That's not really important. The important thing is, why do you believe in ghosts?

It is the same way to study science. Once you hit a dead end in the process, don't just stop there. Find a way to go around it. If we can not find out what a ghost is made of, why don't we start to think about what a ghost can do?

It is interesting that you talk about science. Because that is not what a scientist would ask in this situation. A scientist would want to prove that ghosts exist first, before trying to prove what they can or cannot do.

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

Evidence? How naive. It is a useless idea.

People's experience is the evidence. It is called "witness".

Like Mr Pedantic said, anecdotal evidence is the weakest there is. Eye witness is the weakest form of evidence in the court, whereas scientific evidence is the strongest.

The problem is this: using "personal experience" as the supreme evidence does offer a route to reality. People can have experiences that conflict with each other, so how can one tell which is correct? Science is the only game in town when it comes to uncovering reality. It's the same for everyone, whereas personal experience is not.

Personal experience has led to the creation of thousands of conflicting religions. A Muslim arguing the same position as you (that personal experience is a high form of evidence) would disagree that your personal experience is evidence of anything.

 

[juvenissun]

Like Mr Pedantic said, anecdotal evidence is the weakest there is. Eye witness is the weakest form of evidence in the court, whereas scientific evidence is the strongest.

The problem is this: using "personal experience" as the supreme evidence does offer a route to reality. People can have experiences that conflict with each other, so how can one tell which is correct? Science is the only game in town when it comes to uncovering reality. It's the same for everyone, whereas personal experience is not.

Personal experience has led to the creation of thousands of conflicting religions. A Muslim arguing the same position as you (that personal experience is a high form of evidence) would disagree that your personal experience is evidence of anything.

Sorry to disappoint you. If you want an evidence of ghost, that is only kind you would get. Take it or not.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Sorry to disappoint you. If you want an evidence of ghost, that is only kind you would get. Take it or not.

If you can't prove the existence of a ghost, then how can you prove the characteristics it has? It's like saying that the tooth fairy definitely wears a green felt cap and gets completely wasted every Saturday night.

 

[roach]

Sorry to disappoint you. If you want an evidence of ghost, that is only kind you would get. Take it or not.

(sigh...)

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

Sorry to disappoint you. If you want an evidence of ghost, that is only kind you would get. Take it or not.

If a ghost interacts with the physical world and there are physical manifestations, and there can be evidence.

If you have nothing to go on, then you have no reason to believe in ghosts. That which is believed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

 

[juvenissun]

If a ghost interacts with the physical world and there are physical manifestations, and there can be evidence.

If you have nothing to go on, then you have no reason to believe in ghosts. That which is believed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Again, you simply don't understand what an evidence is.

A person "miraculously" survived a plane crash could be an evidence of the feature you referred to. There is no better "evidence" than that.

Of course, if you are blind, then you don't see any evidence, even one exists right in front of you.

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

Again, you simply don't understand what an evidence is.

A person "miraculously" survived a plane crash could be an evidence of the feature you referred to. There is no better "evidence" than that.

Of course, if you are blind, then you don't see any evidence, even one exists right in front of you.

You don't understand what evidence is. Miracles are, by definition, not evidence, because they are supernatural. Evidence is natural and testable. What you're espousing is that magic occurs and that's evidence, which it is of course not.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Again, you simply don't understand what an evidence is.

A person "miraculously" survived a plane crash could be an evidence of the feature you referred to. There is no better "evidence" than that.

Of course, if you are blind, then you don't see any evidence, even one exists right in front of you.

Your survivor could just be evidence of luck. Or he could have awesome survival skills. Or he could be superman in disguise. Or he got help from aliens. Or maybe he caused the plane crash and set it up to make himself the only survivor. You have to rule out all those other possibilities before you can say that is incontrovertible proof of a god's existence.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Suffering is an existential phenomena. It is experienced as intrinsically bad (bad "in-itself"), but biologically speaking it has instrumental value (it is a "means to an end" or it has an evolutionary function, causing us to avoid harmful situations like putting one's hand in fire). This is hard enough to actually explain from the scientific perspective, never mind the theology if it all.

 

[roach]

Suffering is an existential phenomena. It is experienced as intrinsically bad (bad "in-itself"), but biologically speaking it has instrumental value (it is a "means to an end" or it has an evolutionary function, causing us to avoid harmful situations like putting one's hand in fire). This is hard enough to actually explain from the scientific perspective, never mind the theology if it all.

I have a hard time seeing how anything is "intrinsically" good or bad, much less what it means to experience these things. Biologically speaking, I think science has already explained quite a bit about suffering. There seems to be little reason to think theology would have anything relevant to add (or even could add) to this discussion since it assumes people have some non-physical element that experiences and affects the physical world (a ghost in the machine). I've basically got the picture that christians must (almost by definition) accept principles that are antithetical to scientific knowledge.