Your anecdotes in support of God or gods or paranormal

[2PhiloVoid]

You must be defining "anecdotal evidence" differently than me. For me, an anecdote is an account of a personal event where credibility of the account depends entirely on the credibility of the person. Therefore anecdotal evidence is far more valuable to the original person than others who are told by that person.

Where are these threads you have been creating with accounts of your personal experiences that make you more confident of Christianity? I have seen a few allusions to some personal experiences from you, but they are rare.

Philosophical thoughts and conclusions are one form of 'experience' Cloudy. Also, praying for and finding a suitable wife is often a very subjective anecdote, one that doesn't tend to make others "feel better" when I share it. So, I don't.

 

[cloudyday2]

Philosophical thoughts and conclusions are one form of 'experience' Cloudy. Also, praying for and finding a suitable wife is often a very subjective anecdote, one that doesn't tend to make others "feel better" when I share it. So, I don't.

The essence of an anecdote in my understanding is that the credibility depends entirely on the credibility of the storyteller. Philosophical thoughts are either going to be inspirations (the set-up of the question and the assumptions and so forth) or deductions. There is nothing in a philosophical thought that can be doubted - it is either an idea "I think I will philosophize about an infinitely tall ice cream cone today..." or it is a step in a proof that is either right or wrong. Of course that is the ideal. It seems that most philosophical proofs lack the rigor of mathematical proofs.

Praying for a suitable wife qualifies as anecdotal evidence for Christianity. Of course you can't rule-out the possibility that some other God answered your prayer rather than the Christian God. Also you can't rule out that your faith in the prayer created a "power of positive thinking" or "law of attraction" that magically connected you to your wife without any help from any gods. And of course as @Freodin mentioned we humans often make too much out of dumb luck.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The essence of an anecdote in my understanding is that the credibility depends entirely on the credibility of the storyteller. Philosophical thoughts are either going to be inspirations (the set-up of the question and the assumptions and so forth) or deductions. There is nothing in a philosophical thought that can be doubted - it is either an idea "I think I will philosophize about an infinitely tall ice cream cone today..." or it is a step in a proof that is either right or wrong. Of course that is the ideal. It seems that most philosophical proofs lack the rigor of mathematical proofs.

Praying for a suitable wife qualifies as anecdotal evidence for Christianity. Of course you can't rule-out the possibility that some other God answered your prayer rather than the Christian God. Also you can't rule out that your faith in the prayer created a "power of positive thinking" or "law of attraction" that magically connected you to your wife without any help from any gods. And of course as @Freodin mentioned we humans often make too much out of dumb luck.

I'm glad you apparently know so much more about philosophy than I do, Cloudy. I don't know how that happened. Maybe I need to drink whatever you're drinking, but I find that to be amazing. I didn't have to study for 10 long years to get my degrees and make straight A's; I could have just said to myself, "Self, spare yourself the hassle of the university and just wait to talk to all those various atheists you can probably find online. They'll surely know better than anyone else."

 

[cloudyday2]

I'm glad you apparently know so much more about philosophy than I do, Cloudy. I don't know how that happened. Maybe I need to drink whatever you're drinking, but I find that to be amazing. I didn't have to study for 10 long years to get my degrees and make straight A's; I could have just said to myself, "Self, spare yourself the hassle of the university and just wait to talk to all those various atheists you can probably find online. They'll surely know better than anyone else."

I drink mostly Maxwell House instant when I can get it, but surprisingly a lot of stores don't carry it. It's "good to the last drop".

Seriously though, did I mis-characterize philosophical thoughts. It seems to me that a philosophical thought can be evaluated by anybody without knowing who who had that thought. It doesn't matter if the originator of the thought is Pascal or Charles Manson. But an anecdote depends greatly on the person of origin. Honest Abe's anecdote is more credible than Slippery Sam's anecdote.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I drink mostly Maxwell House instant when I can get it, but surprisingly a lot of stores don't carry it. It's "good to the last drop".

Seriously though, did I mis-characterize philosophical thoughts. It seems to me that a philosophical thought can be evaluated by anybody without knowing who who had that thought. It doesn't matter if the originator of the thought is Pascal or Charles Manson. But an anecdote depends greatly on the person of origin. Honest Abe's anecdote is more credible than Slippery Sam's anecdote.

You kind of make it sound like philosophy is just a small past-time activity by which some old geezer writes up a brief truism everyone already knows and then publishes it to a less than spectacular crowd.

 

[Silmarien]

Whenever I start a discussion like this, I am dismayed and disgusted by the lack of Christian participation. Can't they see that they have nothing unless they have some personal experiences? Why not be a Muslim instead of a Christian - they have a religious text too and the same philosophical arguments for an "unmoved moved" and so forth. If they have no personal experiences validating the existence of a Christian God, then they ought to find the courage to be atheists IMO. If they do have some personal experiences, they why are they ashamed to admit it? Do they prefer the approval of skeptics to the approval of God?

It might be that the Apologetics section is a bad place to ask for anecdotal testimony. I was completely open with my own experiences because I mistakenly thought we were in the World Religions section, where it's more normal to causally talk about experiences with possible religious significance. I would have definitely put a lot of exclaimers on my reply if I'd realized where I was posting it, since I don't think that my experiences constitute conclusive evidence. They were interesting, and that dream in particular is more than a little bit uncomfortable, but I have no way of knowing if this stuff is veridical or not.

They're really not why I'm Christian rather than something else, though. I've explored a handful of other traditions, and none of the others got out the fishing nets and then rewrote my worldview as soon as I got too close. It chose me rather than the reverse. I suppose that is experiential as well, though much less tangible than concrete events are. (There are also any number of historical, theological, and even ethical reasons why this is the only revelation I really take seriously, but they're more the result of trying to make sense of what happened than causal in and of themselves. Religion is messy like that.)

 

[GrowingSmaller]

With "random events" interpreted as supernatural...

Well, once I was passenger in a car, looked from the left back window, and saw a very realistic "grim reaper" figure formed from the mist. Then a split second later, we were nearly run off the road by a truck hurtling irresponsibly at high speed in such bad weather conditions. I'm not, and wasn't in the habit of having such "visions"...

So, to gauge it as random:

Is that "scientific" or "more epistemologically responsible"?

I mean... that claim seems to presume one knows the odds of this kind of occurrence, and the workings of the subconsicous or whatever. Not only that, but know the odds that these events are in fact random, rather than supernatural. And if you know that odds of the supernatural, how is that defined in a falsifiable manner?

Im fairly sure that no parapsychologist, never mind armchair skeptic, actually has much of a clue.

Importantly (Epistemic closure - Wikipedia):

The principle of epistemic closure in logic and epistemology says if you know A you know whats deductively entailed by A.

So, if you know for sure it was a random or other natural occurrence, you know for sure it wasn't supernatural. But you cant rule it out, IMO, as the supernatural claim is not falsifiable.

Hence, by a skeptics own probable standards, he doesn't know it was random or whatever. This, precisely because his naturalised, randomised version of the events would falsify a supernatural claim, something s/he regards as a priori impossible....

 

[cloudyday2]

With "random events" interpreted as supernatural...

Well, once I was passenger in a car, looked from the left back window, and saw a very realistic "grim reaper" figure formed from the mist. Then a split second later, we were nearly run off the road by a truck hurtling irresponsibly at high speed in such bad weather conditions. I'm not, and wasn't in the habit of having such "visions"...

Thanks, that is a good example. Another skeptical explanation is the possibility that your brain processed the visual data of the random mist seen through your car window AFTER the truck experience even though it happened beforehand. The fact that only split seconds or seconds separated the events makes this possible. The data from the retina pass through some visual processing nerves but then they might float for a while before the higher parts of the brain assign meaning to the data. The truck may have paused that process, and when it resumed there was the truck experience too lend it the grim reaper context. I am not a skeptic, but I can think myself into a knot on about anything LOL

 

[cloudyday2]

It might be that the Apologetics section is a bad place to ask for anecdotal testimony. I was completely open with my own experiences because I mistakenly thought we were in the World Religions section, where it's more normal to causally talk about experiences with possible religious significance. I would have definitely put a lot of exclaimers on my reply if I'd realized where I was posting it, since I don't think that my experiences constitute conclusive evidence. They were interesting, and that dream in particular is more than a little bit uncomfortable, but I have no way of knowing if this stuff is veridical or not.

They're really not why I'm Christian rather than something else, though. I've explored a handful of other traditions, and none of the others got out the fishing nets and then rewrote my worldview as soon as I got too close. It chose me rather than the reverse. I suppose that is experiential as well, though much less tangible than concrete events are. (There are also any number of historical, theological, and even ethical reasons why this is the only revelation I really take seriously, but they're more the result of trying to make sense of what happened than causal in and of themselves. Religion is messy like that.)

One analogy I like when considering experiences of paranormal is the Cold War intelligence analyst. The CIA analysts didn't often have data that they could publish in a scientific journal, but they didn't have the luxury of dismissing the nebulous data that they did have. The consequences were too important, and timely action was important. Sometimes the timely action might have been to redirect intelligence gathering resources towards the goal of better data. That is how I look at paranormal and supernatural and God - the consequences are too important for me to be passively skeptical. I need to make an effort to search.

I do have a question I was meaning to ask you. Do you think philosophy alone can carry a person from atheism to Christianity? All the philosophical arguments for God that I have seen only carry a person from atheism to deism. I don't understand why Christians focus so much on philosophy as though it helps their case.

 

[FireDragon76]

Given the variety of human experiences in terms of religion, I don't see how any of them could be all that particularly and personally persuasive, other than perhaps persuading a hardcore skeptic to be more open-minded.

There are plenty of Christians with testimonials about their religious experience, American religion is full of this sort of thing.

 

[FireDragon76]

Praying for a suitable wife qualifies as anecdotal evidence for Christianity.

Not necessarily. I know from certain Buddhist perspectives, it wouldn't be problematic for a Christian's prayer to be "answered".

Of course you can't rule-out the possibility that some other God answered your prayer rather than the Christian God.

Or a third possibility, prayer has nothing to do with a wholely transcendent being at all.

 

[Silmarien]

One analogy I like when considering experiences of paranormal is the Cold War intelligence analyst. The CIA analysts didn't often have data that they could publish in a scientific journal, but they didn't have the luxury of dismissing the nebulous data that they did have. The consequences were too important, and timely action was important. Sometimes the timely action might have been to redirect intelligence gathering resources towards the goal of better data. That is how I look at paranormal and supernatural and God - the consequences are too important for me to be passively skeptical. I need to make an effort to search.

Yes, this is my feeling as well, at least in part.

I do have a question I was meaning to ask you. Do you think philosophy alone can carry a person from atheism to Christianity? All the philosophical arguments for God that I have seen only carry a person from atheism to deism. I don't understand why Christians focus so much on philosophy as though it helps their case.

That's a difficult question. I would say both yes and no, in that while there are good philosophical grounds to accept any number of Christian doctrines, they are all predicated to some extent upon the revelation itself. For example, if you accept as axiomatic that God is love, then I would say that you actually can use philosophical argumentation to arrive at several doctrines associated with Christianity. The only problem is that your axiom itself is derived from Christianity.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, though. People may want to be able to build a bridge of reason all the way to revelation, but at a certain point you have to accept revelation qua revelation.

 

[zippy2006]

That is how I look at paranormal and supernatural and God - the consequences are too important for me to be passively skeptical. I need to make an effort to search.

There is an Italian-founded Catholic group called Communion and Liberation. A staple practice of the group is to read a text each week and then gather to read it. There are very interested in experience, and the text they are working on right now is introductory in a certain way. It can be found here if you are interested.

I also like your Cold War analogy. You might like Luigi Giussani--the founder of Communion and Liberation--but the Italian style is somewhat strange to Americans.

Do you think philosophy alone can carry a person from atheism to Christianity?

It is also worth remembering that there are a number of different varieties of atheism, and even more philosophical responses and avenues, many of which are Christian.

 

[BigV]

Please share any personal anecdotes that seem to challenge metaphysical naturalism.

I have one for you from yesterday's news.
Air Europa's Bizarre Hijacking Scare | One Mile at a Time

What makes this even stranger is that there were reports of three people with knives on the plane, who were allegedly the hijackers.​

A strange thing, right? As soon as there is a suggestion of something going on, voila, "witnesses" start corroborating the account.

Derren Brown has shown what a power of suggestion can do. Even self-proclaimed atheists began to experience paranormal after the suggestion of haunting! See around 4:48 and 5:25 mark.