How I should I know? I'm not a doctor.
But you excluded the possibility that that voice you say you heared, was a hallucination....
You concluded that it was a real voice and that it came from god.
How did you conclude that? Now you're saying that you don't know? So you are just assuming it?
All I know is I was sittin there surfing the internet and our Lord came and told me to pray for a guy. Based on all the armchair psychiatry being tossed around this thread, the indicators seem to be, it a re-curring thing hearing voices with those who are sick.
Not necessarily.
It being a one time thing indeed likely exludes things like full blown psychosis, which doesn't go away without meds and which usually only gets worse.
But as it should be clear by know, there's a whole myriad of things that can cause hallucinations. Including temporary ones that, in the big picture, are rather harmless (health wise).
It gets to be more and more I take it, from what's being said. The "voices" typically are telling people to go and hurt someone or kill someone, or even themselves
I've already told you that that is a misconception.
People tend to think that psychiatric patients are all psychotic psychopaths that go on killing sprees. This is very wrong.
and you guys seem to be trying hard to keep inserting the phrase...but only I can hear...that must be symptomatic and important to a psychosis diagnosis? So ya'll's trying to attach it, lol! No one knows if someone else could have heard it also had anyone been there besides me.
Since the voice did not come from another person, radio, tv, ... it seems a safe assumption that even if other people would have been present, only you would have heared it.
I guess that's a reasonable question. Well, I would have to conclude that, Since the Lord decided to speak to me, literally, that in effect proves and removes any doubt of if there is a real spiritual realm or not. So there is, and that (to me), by implication means, whoa, ok so the Bible is true, spirits are real, so that there is a spiritual war going on which we're caught in the middle of.
Your claim of hearing voices proves nothing at all unless you can demonstrate that these voices were real and that they came from the source you say it came from.
I asked you how I, as a third party, can tell the difference between your claim (assuming it is real) and one that actually is suffering from auditory hallucination?
And your answer seems to be "well, i'm claiming it - that settles it".
Makes no sense.
That said, maybe those sick people are not lying, but rather maybe they do really hear voices telling them to hurt people too.
And the voices go away when taking medication, because they are afraid of anti-psychotic medicine?
(If God can talk to me, then evil spirits can also talk to people.) No one can really prove that those people did not hear voices.
So are you saying that hallucinations might not exist?
There may be more interference from dark spirits than we typically realize on this planet? I don't even know for sure. Maybe some of them do imagine it, while some others may be speaking the truth. It seems to me, that one of the keys to this is...just what are the voices telling the people to do? Good? or evil?
Why would it matter?
Can hallucinations only be "evil" or something?
I note that when attempting to answer my question of how I could distinguish your claims from the claims of a psychotic person, instead of actually trying to make a case for your claims, you are instead trying to argue that hallucination might not exist.
This should tell you something about the strength (or rather lack thereof), of your position.
We do have to be careful when spirits speak to us. The Bible even says to test the spirits, to see if they are from God. Quite a few people here are trying wishing hoping that the voice that I heard did or will tell me to harm someone, and that just didn't happen in my case. So now what?
So now nothing.
It's still an open question: how to tell the difference between you hearing actual voices (from god or whatever other undetectable source you want to claim) and those voices being just hallucinations?
Textbook Psychiatry says, if anyone hears a voice that isn't there, then they are psychotic or whatever. There's their standard. All based on what we can see and touch only and based on there is no God.
You think all psychiatrists are atheists?
So when some guy tells you that there is a dude sitting on the couch and you look at the couch and there is nobody there.... What do you conclude? That there's an actual person there that you simply can't detect? Or would you rather conclude that the guy who's claiming it must be mistaken or hallucinating?
What about if the dude claims that there are midget pink elephants dancing on the table?
Now I do like books. I always have and love to read. But not everything is in textbooks. We have our own senses too. Our own eyes, our own ears. Personal experiences teach people things too.
Sure. Albeit that it is well known our senses can seriously fail and that people can be seriously misled by their own brain.
It's not like this is unknown or something... it is well known. And it has been for a very long time. I'm sure you are aware of this.
So again, it's kind of curious that your "defense" here, seems to consist of suggesting that hallucinations might not exist after all.
But what is to be done when a man's experience disagrees with man's textbooks? Will you believe your own sensory input or believe the textbook and let it set the standard for your beliefs?
Well, that's the thing, now isn't it?
As I said, there's a reason why it's so hard to treat psychiatric conditions.... Hallucinations can be extremely convincing, no matter how bizar they might be.
A wise man once said "
the easiest person to fool, is yourself".
