I'm surprised that some of you don't seem to understand that Colin's testimony was never meant to be an argument for the existence of God. I don't think Colin would expect you to be convinced on account of his experience. His testimony was to the effect that the nature of the experience was such that he could not but be convinced by it. I understood it as a kind of exhortation to others for them to invite that kind of transformative experience into their own lives. If you haven't enjoyed that kind of experience yourself, then it would seem to be unjustified to reject it, or the beliefs that proceed from it, out of hand.

If your opinion was changed by an experience doesn't it mean a new kind of experience can change you back to where you were? — Benjamin Dovano

It might be possible to experience the presence of God, and it might be possible not to experience the presence of God; but it would not seem to be possible to experience the absence of God.

Necessary conditions for my notion of personhood include consciousness, self-consciousness, non-predictable response to stimuli, possession of emotions, preferences and making plans for the future — andrewk

The consciousness, self-consciousness and non-predictable responses I can understand. Are you saying, though, that if someone possessed no emotions or preferences and or did not plan for the future, that they would not be a person?

Gautama recommends non-attachment to (which amounts to non-possession of) emotions and preferences.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Would you say Christ and Buddha are exhorting us to become non-persons?

it would not seem to be possible to experience the absence of God. — John

It doesn't seem that way to me. Experiencing absence is part of one of the most powerful human emotions there is, as it is what makes the premature death of a loved one so terrible. I can't remember where but I seem to remember at least one very moving passage in literature where a deeply faithful person has 'realised' that there is nobody there listening to their prayers.

One can of course say 'but they might be mistaken about the absence' or 'God is hiding', but one can say exactly the same thing about the experience of the presence of God. It might be Descartes' evil demon tormenting us by creating an illusion of the presence of a God.

It seems to me that the absence of God is experienced frequently, and traumatically, by people in desperate circumstances.

For someone who has palpably experienced the absence of God, there is no God. For someone who has palbably experienced the existence of God, there is one. And sometimes people have both experiences (but not at the same time).

I'm surprised that some of you don't seem to understand that Colin's testimony was never meant to be an argument for the existence of God. I don't think Colin would expect you to be convinced on account of his experience. His testimony was to the effect that the nature of the experience was such that he could not but be convinced by it. I understood it as a kind of exhortation to others for them to invite that kind of transformative experience into their own lives. — John

No, I think that it is you who has misunderstood. I agree that he didn't present it in the form of an argument, but in it he revealed his process of reasoning, which is what we have been criticising. How exactly does he expect us to invite that kind of experience into our lives? He hasn't even described it, so it could have been virtually anything. And even if I did have such an experience, it seems I'd have to have poor critical thinking skills like Colin, the former self-styled master philosopher, in order to jump to his conclusion. Are we supposed to guess? Maybe if I go to church on drugs, my senses will be heightened, and I'll have a similar experience, and I'll be sufficiently stupefied to think that it is God, but that isn't at the top of my to do list.

Perhaps the word 'absence' creates confusion here. We may experience the existence of God, as palpably as we experience the existence of a tree. But we cannot experience the non-existence of God just as we cannot experience the nonexistence of a tree. We can posit that a tree of some very precise description does not exists anywhere in the universe, but we cannot experience its non-existence.

I cannot see anywhere in the OP where he gives a process of reasoning for his belief in God. He specifically says his belief is simply on account of experience.

I cannot see anywhere in the OP where he gives a process of reasoning for his belief in God. He specifically says his belief is simply on account of experience. — John

Your second sentence describes at least a minimal process of reasoning, and we can infer other things about his process of reasoning from that and other comments of his, like that he has probably considered - however briefly - alternative explanations, and has ultimately ruled them out.

And now no amount of well-conceived and consistent argument would detract from that. I now know God exists. It's a certainty in my eyes. And there can be no alternate understanding for me any more.

These experiences have rendered the arguments of atheists quite laughable, and almost desperate to me. Where I used to find them somewhat compelling and impressive. Extremely impressive, but never convincing. Very well constructed bullshit basically. — colin

How can you not see what his comments indicate about his process of reasoning? Are we seeing the same thing? He is clearly stating conclusions that he has reached through a process of reasoning after having had these experiences, assessed them, and compared his explanation with others ("there can be no alternate understanding for me any more").

No, I don't read it that way. I would say that, if the honesty of his account be granted, he became utterly convinced at the moment of experience, and that his testimony is merely a retrospective account of that. Other possibilities are ruled out simply because the utter conviction that had its inception with the experience remains, and the other possibilities pale into insignificance for Colin, on account of the strength of that conviction.

His account is still not a good reason for others to believe in God; but it is a good reason to be open to the possibility of transformative experiences as foundations of the deepest kinds of conviction.

No, I don't read it that way. I would say that, if the honesty of his account be granted, he became utterly convinced at the moment of experience, and that his testimony is merely a retrospective account of that. Other possibilities are ruled out simply because the utter conviction that had its inception with the experience remains, and the other possibilities pale into insignificance for Colin, on account of the strength of that conviction. — John

But even your interpretation implies a minimal process of reasoning, and whether we address his process of reasoning or the standard that he has used in order to have ruled out every single alternative explanation, the point is, there is something there to criticise, and much of this criticism is warranted.

His account is still not a good reason for others to believe in God... — John

It's not a good reason for him to believe in God either, for a number of reasons, and especially given that, by his own admission, he has a history of mental illness, and he has not given any further details. He says that he has recovered, but you seem to just be taking that for granted, despite the fact that, whether you like it or not, the claim that one has experienced God is commonly made by people with one or more of a range of mental illnesses, and despite the fact that someone with a history of mental illness is more likely to relapse or mistakenly believe that they are well/recovered than others without such a history.

...but it is a good reason to be open to the possibility of transformative experiences as foundations of the deepest kinds of conviction. — John

I find your rather flowery way of putting it quite amusing. As others have pointed out, no one has denied that there can be powerful experiences that can affect and alter one's world view - drastically in some cases. But this is merely the testimony of one stranger on the internet, and he hasn't given me any good reason to change my views. I'm about as open to experiences of God as experiences of other extraordinary nonsense and fantasy and myths and magic. Are you similarly encouraging of openness to the possibility of encountering Big Foot or the Lock Ness monster? No? What if some random online stranger was to claim that he has encountered them? Perhaps then? But what if he told you he has just recovered from Schizophrenia? Ah, but that's alright, because he says he was formerly a master philosopher, so he must be pretty credible. Troll you say? No, surely not. He came here to spread positive feeling.

I'm surprised that some of you don't seem to understand that Colin's testimony was never meant to be an argument for the existence of God. I don't think Colin would expect you to be convinced on account of his experience. His testimony was to the effect that the nature of the experience was such that he could not but be convinced by it. I understood it as a kind of exhortation to others for them to invite that kind of transformative experience into their own lives. If you haven't enjoyed that kind of experience yourself, then it would seem to be unjustified to reject it, or the beliefs that proceed from it, out of hand. — John

I was just interested in what the experience was. And a lot of my curiosity simply has to do with the fact that I can't even imagine what sort of experience I would require to change my mind about this issue.

You've said both (1) that unless there's internal inconsistency or blatant contradiction in what a person claims, the experience can be assumed to be no other than the description of it, and we have no grounds for saying it's false, AND (2) that we can reject a person's claim if we think we have "sufficient reason" to reject it.

So which is it? — Brainglitch

With respect to (1), what I said is that the experience must be identified. We have only the person's words to go by in identifying the experience. So we cannot simply reject the experience per se, as unidentifiable, or unintelligible unless the identifying words are inconsistent or contradictory. And, we cannot proceed to reject on the basis of sufficient reason unless a particular experience has been identified.

In the example you gave, a particular experience of a particular cat has been identified. We can reject based on (2), sufficient reason, but sufficient reason requires that the claimed experience be identified. Without identifying what has been claimed to have been experienced, how can you have sufficient reason to reject the claim?

Here's the difficulty. We have only the person's words to refer to in order to make that identification. The person said "I had an experience which makes me know that God exists". The experience has been identified as the experience which has resulted in me knowing that God exists. The person has only given us, as a description, or identifying features, that the said experience makes him know that God exists. All we have is the outcome of the experience, the result, the effect, we have absolutely no description of the experience itself. It is impossible that we have sufficient reason to reject the description of the experience, because we have no description of the experience. What we have is a description of the effects of the experience.

The effects of the experience are described as "I know that God exists". The only way that we have sufficient reason to reject the claim that an experience could cause one to know that God exists, is if we know that God does not exist, or if God's existence is something which cannot be known from experience. Then we could say that no possible experience could cause one to know that God exists. Therefore we could reject the identified experience, the one which results in the individual knowing that God exists, as impossible.

We can posit that a tree of some very precise description does not exists anywhere in the universe, but we cannot experience its non-existence — John

I agree, in the case of a tree, provided we have not witnessed the destruction of the tree*. And I agree in the case of an uninterested God, like the one that is associated with some varieties of Deism.

But when it comes to a God that loves us, listens to our prayers and grants what they request, is all-powerful and all-knowing, one can experience the non-existence of such a God because, by dint of those particular properties, it would make itself known to the individual in a situation where it was so desperately needed and wanted. One can experience the non-existence of such a God as palpably as one can experience the existence of a tree.

* We had a large, old, greatly beloved gum tree in our garden that we had to have removed because it had an incurable fungus and was becoming dangerous. I experienced the non-existence of that tree very powerfully for a long time after it was gone, as I went through the mourning process.

Yes, unless you have had such an experience, you understandably would not be able to imagine it. It would be like a man deaf from birth trying to imagine music.

Your examples and attitude seems so typical of what I call the 'intellectual mediocracy' as to be somewhat laughable. Although I have to say I find mediocrity more tragic than laughable especially when it comes to good intellects.

If Colin's own experience is not the best foundation for his beliefs then what is? The opinions of others who don't even know the nature of his experience? The opinions of the majority or "common sense"? There's mediocrity and its intellectual mediocracy in operation right there!
:-} :-d

Your examples and attitude seems so typical of what I call the 'intellectual mediocracy' as to be somewhat laughable. Although I have to say I find mediocrity more tragic than laughable especially when it comes to good intellects. — John

:-d

If Colin's own experience is not the best foundation for his beliefs then what is? — John

It's not about his experience, it's about his judgement. The sooner you understand that, the better. And I've already explained to you why his own judgement in this case is questionable and unreliable. His experience could be explained by any number of alternative explanations. Before reasonably concluding that it was an experience of God, one must rule out all of these alternative explanations, and the basis on which this has been done by Colin is remarkably weak. Moreover, if he (or you, if you're going to attempt to defend his stance) do not want to be reasonable, as he has suggested more than once, then this discussion seems pretty pointless. Colin has merely emphasised the intensity of the experience, but that does nothing, since that fails to rule out the numerous alternative explanations.

The opinions of others who don't even know the nature of his experience? The opinions of the majority or "common sense"? — John

Reason and evidence. It shouldn't come as a shock. This is fairly basic stuff, but Colin clearly doesn't even care about applying an iota of such a standard before lurching towards his precious God conclusion, and that you would defend this exceptional lack of any critical thinking doesn't do much for your credibility.

Yes, unless you have had such an experience, you understandably would not be able to imagine it. It would be like a man deaf from birth trying to imagine music. — John

One can imagine what he might have experienced, and one can reasonably assess what he could and could not have experienced, and one can reasonably assess the range of possible explanations, and compare them, and determine that some are more credible than others.

One can also relate to his experience insofar as one has also had experiences which can be described using some of the same adjectives that he has used. He might say that his experience is somehow greater or more profound, but I don't see why I should necessarily take that for granted. He equally hasn't experienced my experiences, and if I made the same claim of one or more of my experiences, it would just be his word against mine.

Furthermore, it is possible - perhaps likely - that we have even had the same kind of experience, but have reached different conclusions. It shouldn't just be taken for granted that Colin's experience was supernatural. Again, his testomy is woefully insufficient grounds, and this is an academic philosophy forum, so it isn't always appropriate to be polite and give him the benefit of the doubt, as we might do in other contexts. Especially since he has not given others that same courtesy: "laughable", "desperate", "bull shit", and "waste of talent" were the some of the terms he picked, apparently to "spread positive feeling".

Perhaps we're all deaf, so to speak, but some of us convince ourselves that we can hear music.

If Colin's own experience is not the best foundation for his beliefs then what is? The opinions of others who don't even know the nature of his experience? The opinions of the majority or "common sense"? There's mediocrity and its intellectual mediocracy in operation right there! — John

Little, if anything is more compelling than first-hand personal experience. Tenacious conviction of the truth of our own experiences (and memories) is universal, whether the experience is routine and uncontroversial, or radically divergent from normalcy and highly controversial--we are intractably convinced that we KNOW what we saw, heard, felt, etc.

But, though automatically and non-reflectively trusting our own experiences clearly works sufficiently well in everyday life, we also have much reason to be highly skeptical about certain experiences--our own or others'--that are outside the normal. And we know fully-well that brains sometimes radically misinterpret interactions with the world, can be tricked (for example by animals' protective coloration, as well as by stage magic and perception experiments), generate false memories, generate realistic dreams, and generate outlandish delusional beliefs (including, but not limited to those of paranoid psychotics). Additionally, we know that the tendency for the brain to generate abnormal experiences correlates with emotional stress, as well as with certain other contextual conditions, such as religious rituals, mucic, dance, and trance-inducing contexts.

We also know, as I've noted, that the content of such religious experiences correlates almost perfectly with the particular culture the person is embedded in. So, either the beings who populate all such experiences just happen to contact people who already believe in them, or people's brains are producing the experience and casting it with beings they already believe in.

Again, the point is that, irrespective of how compelling they are, we have much reason to be skeptical of claims and beliefs in certain kinds of experiences, whether they're our own or others'.

Brain, I think the mistake you are making lies in thinking of the 'entities' encountered in mystical experiences in terms such that they must be either determinate quasi-empirical beings or else merely imaginary. I can tell you that for the person who experiences such presences, this either/ or question completely misses the mark. It is simply irrelevant to the question of their belief for the person who has first hand experiences of this kind. You are attempting to project your own kinds of worries and concerns onto another for whom such worries and concerns have no significance or importance at all.

You are in effect, saying, "you should be worried about, consumed by, these kinds of epistemic issues like I am". The question is: why should they be concerned with such issues, when such issues no longer matter to them at all? What do you actually think these people are losing? Not everyone is obsessed with the idea of avoiding being 'hoodwinked'; if you are like that then you will likely never have such an experience to be in the position to feel and assess firsthand its power to convince you. You will remain forever on the outside looking in, so to speak.
:’(

It's not about his experience, it's about his judgement. — Sapientia

So, his judgement is not a matter for him, but rather

a matter for... who?,,,You?

Reason and evidence. — Sapientia

Whose reason? What kind of evidence? This is hilarious! :s >:O :D X-) >:) ;) :-} :-d

So, his judgement is not a matter for him, but rather

a matter for... who?,,,You? — John

That isn't what I said. What does that even mean? He has made his judgement, and his judgement is a matter up for discussion. We are all entitled to assess it, question it, criticise it, and so on. This is a public philosophy forum after all. And he himself created this discussion knowing that.

Whose reason? What kind of evidence? This is hilarious! :s >:O :D X-) >:) ;) :-} :-d — John

Your first question doesn't make sense. Reason. As in, what is reasonable. And it isn't reasonable to jump to a conclusion.

What kind of evidence? Well, I could go into details, but one thing is for sure: if all he has is his own testimony, and it is testimony of an extraordinary or supernatural event, then obviously that is very weak evidence, and insufficient evidence, since, as I said, it fails to rule out alternative explanations. Given that this is obvious, why are you questioning me? I would genuinely be surprised if you thought otherwise, because, with the exception of your last post, and in other discussions, you seemed quite intelligent.

I don't know why you find this hilarious. You've come across as quite shallow and immature in your last short and ill-considered reply. And if you're going to ignore large parts of my posts, then don't expect me to do any different when it comes to your posts.

No, he posted here to let would-be philosophers know that he has come to a belief which is precisely not up for discussion because it has not been arrived at by a process of deduction, induction or abduction but rather by a leap of faith based directly on experiences he has had. If he presents a deductive, inductive or abductive argument then for sure he would be open to critique. But as it stands, with the information he has given, any attempted critique will necessarily be 'talking out of an arse'.

What is reasonable? Reason, thought as logic, must be valid. But arguments are always based on premises, which cannot themselves be demonstrated.

People may believe for reasons; that is a different matter. Instead of taking an unsupported premise, and assuming that, constructing a valid argument from it, one can simply take an experience, an intuitive feeling and count that as a reason for belief; in fact one can be so certain of a belief on this kind of basis that they cannot be touched by the doubts of others, Others simply don't know the experience and the intuition on which the certainty is based.

But, you probably won't experience this kind of certainty, because you seem to be desperately worried about the possibility that if you veer form the dictates of mediocratic 'reason' a terrible tragedy might occur; you might actually turn out to have been wrong! ;)

I'm rather pleased to think that you consider me "immature"; I have no aspirations towards embodying the type of 'maturity' that you seem to represent.

No, he posted here to let would-be philosophers know that he has come to a belief which is precisely not up for discussion because it has not been arrived by a process of deduction, induction or abduction but rather by a leap of faith based directly on experiences he has had. If he presents a deductive, inductive or abductive argument then for sure he would be open to critique. But as it stands, with the information he has given, any attempted critique will necessarily be 'talking out of an arse'. — John

>:O

Of course his belief is up for discussion. If he didn't want it discussed, then he shouldn't have created this discussion.

You may notice that much of my criticism has been conditional upon being reasonable. I made sure to qualify, but perhaps you overlooked that in your haste to criticise. As I said, if he doesn't want to be reasonable, as in 'a leap of faith', then this discussion seems pretty pointless. But that is just the interpretation that you favour. It isn't necessarily the correct one. Some of his other comments seem to conflict with such an interpretation, and there are other reasons to think that it might be something other than- or more than- that. But I put in my two pennies worth earlier, and I don't want to go round in circles.

So, that doesn't mean that I've been 'talking out of my arse', it might just mean that you haven't been paying close enough attention to what I've been saying before diving in head first.

What is reasonable? Reason, thought as logic, must be valid. But arguments are always based on premises, which cannot themselves be demonstrated. — John

Look, can we cut to the chase? Are you, or are you not, going to claim that jumping to a conclusion is reasonable?

People may believe for reasons; that is a different matter. Instead of taking an unsupported premise, and assuming that, constructing a valid argument from it, one can simply take an experience, an intuitive feeling and count that as a reason for belief; in fact one can be so certain of a belief on this kind of basis that they cannot be touched by the doubts of others. Others simply don't know the experience and the intuition on which the certainty is based. — John

Yes, people believe things for reasons, and yes, that certainly is a different matter, and clearly not what I was talking about when I brought up reason.

As I've tried to explain to you, my issue isn't with the experience itself, but with his certainty that this was an experience of God. I challenge either you or Colin to come up with any possible experience of which one can reasonably be certain that it was an experience of God, and which cannot be explained just as good, if not better, without God. And either you or Colin are free to decline to be reasonable, but that would likely bring our discussion to an end.

As for intuition, that does not make the position that you're defending any stronger when compared with alternatives, since intuition is well known to be unreliable, and has frequently lead to mistakes in numerous cases. Furthermore, as with testimony, intuition is effectively made redundant when countered by contrary intuition. That is one reason why these are weak forms of evidence. Hardly a smoking gun; far from it.

But, you probably won't experience this kind of certainty, because you seem to be desperately worried about the possibility that if you veer form the dictates of mediocratic 'reason' a terrible tragedy might occur; you might actually turn out to have been wrong! ;) — John

No, I am not desperately worried about veering from the dictates of reason. I just have a natural disinclination from jumping to extraordinary conclusions when there are ordinary explanations which can better explain something. Hence, if I'm in a forest, and I see what appears to be a deer track, I'm not inclined to jump to the conclusion that it was certainly left by a fairy or some other magical being that I can conjure up in my imagination - so certain, in fact, that any other suggestion, such as that it was actually left by a deer, is rendered laughable, desperate, and bull shit.

But wait, Sapientia, what if you had a deeply profound and highly flowery, transformative, powerful, intuitive experience that blew your mind? Well, maybe I have a brain tumour or maybe I simply endured what was hopefully just a momentary uncharacteristic state of stupefaction. People have been known to 'come to their senses' and retract past claims of supernatural experiences as mistaken or even fabricated. And there are many psychological explanations as to why some people make these claims and interpret certain experiences in these ways. Like I said in my first reply, I think that one big reason why many people end up attributing certain experiences to (or of) God is due more to wishful thinking than plausibility - and I get that impression to some extent from Colin, too, although his case is made more complicated by factors such as a history of some unspecified mental illness.

Without identifying what has been claimed to have been experienced, how can you have sufficient reason to reject the claim?

Here's the difficulty. We have only the person's words to refer to in order to make that identification. The person said "I had an experience which makes me know that God exists". The experience has been identified as the experience which has resulted in me knowing that God exists. The person has only given us, as a description, or identifying features, that the said experience makes him know that God exists. All we have is the outcome of the experience, the result, the effect, we have absolutely no description of the experience itself. It is impossible that we have sufficient reason to reject the description of the experience, because we have no description of the experience. What we have is a description of the effects of the experience.

The effects of the experience are described as "I know that God exists". The only way that we have sufficient reason to reject the claim that an experience could cause one to know that God exists, is if we know that God does not exist, or if God's existence is something which cannot be known from experience. Then we could say that no possible experience could cause one to know that God exists. Therefore we could reject the identified experience, the one which results in the individual knowing that God exists, as impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I haven't said that "we have sufficient reason to reject the claim that an experience could cause one to know that God exists." Clearly there have been innumerable cases of people having experiences that caused them to believe that God exists. As well as Jesus, Mary, Satan, witches, demons, angels, Krishna, their deceased spouse, aliens who perform anal probes, or a cat named Mr. Paws

Rather, I have offered an alternative explanation for the experience, in which people's brains are producing the experience and casting it with beings they already believe in.

We have, as I argued in some detail a post or two ago, much reason to be highly skeptical of such claims.

Brain, I think the mistake you are making lies in thinking of the 'entities' encountered in mystical experiences in terms such that they must be either determinate quasi-empirical beings or else merely imaginary. I can tell you that for the person who experiences such presences, this either/ or question completely misses the mark. It is simply irrelevant to the question of their belief for the person who has first hand experiences of this kind. You are attempting to project your own kinds of worries and concerns onto another for whom such worries and concerns have no significance or importance at all.

You are in effect, saying, "you should be worried about, consumed by, these kinds of epistemic issues like I am". The question is: why should they be concerned with such issues, when such issues no longer matter to them at all? What do you actually think these people are losing? Not everyone is obsessed with the idea of avoiding being 'hoodwinked'; if you are like that then you will likely never have such an experience to be in the position to feel and assess firsthand its power to convince you. You will remain forever on the outside looking in, so to speak. — John

I have repeatedly acknowledged the fact that such experiences are compelling, and intractably convincing to the person who's had one. As far as they are concerned it's: "I KNOW what I experienced, case closed."

And I have explained why we have much reason to be highly skeptical of such experiences, whether our own or others'.

Surely you are skeptical of uncountable reports of such experiences--those, for instance that don't feature your own favorite supernatural characters?

Surely you are skeptical of uncountable reports of such experiences--those, for instance that don't feature your own favorite supernatural characters? — Brainglitch

I brought this up as well, but it didn't get addressed. I first brought it up in my reply to Hanover on page 6:

And I think that consistency, which includes avoiding special pleading, is important, and seems to favour atheism, since questionable exceptions to a more sceptical position often seem to be made by non-atheists with regards to the existence of God. — Sapientia

And then I brought it up again in the form of a direct question in reply to John on the last page:

Are you similarly encouraging of openness to the possibility of encountering Big Foot or the Lock Ness monster? — Sapientia

One of the most common ways to deal with cognitive dissonance is to ignore questions that cause it.

ignore questions — Brainglitch

That sounds like a brain glitch for a supposed "master philosopher" ;)

But who's really doing the ignoring here? I already explained, against this very kind of point, that the mistake you guys are making lies in thinking that spiritual realities must be either the same as empirical realities or else not realities at all, but instead the same kind of thing as you would conceive dreams and fantasies to be, as the Lochness and Bigfoot examples attest.

What precludes that there might be a plurality of spiritual beings, or that the reality of those beings might be linked to the different spirits of different cultures? Your thinking is still of the "it must be either this or that" variety. This means you are not open to spiritual experience at all, and so could have no grounds for any opinion about its power to convince and even radically transform lives in ways that merely empirical experiences never can.

What precludes that there might be a plurality of spiritual beings, or that the reality of those beings might be linked to the different spirits of different cultures? — John

Even space aliens who do anal probes?

Well, Colin apparently has issues. I, for one, am willing to cut him a lot of slack.