• Hallucinogen
    303
    When I look outside my house I experience seeing my car for "biological reasons," but this doesn't undermine my claim that my car is "really there."Count Timothy von Icarus

    The inference is meant to be about prayer specifically, it's not meant to hold under generalization. It's intended to clarify where prayer-induced experiences might come from. A critic of prayer-induced experiences isn't going to think I'm disputing that cars have a non-hallucinatory reality.
  • I like sushi
    4.7k
    It is your job to say what you are talking about.

    There is no argument. Just some mundane statements.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.5k


    That's certainly not an uncommon view in history. Consider I Peter 4:6

    "For to this end it was announced-as-good-news even to the dead: that they might be judged according-to people in the flesh, but be living according to God in the spirit."

    This has variously been interpreted as its straightforward meaning—"the Gospel is preached after death"— as being consistent with Ephesians 4:9 where St. Paul refers to Christ's descent into the Earth. It is also interpreted as referring to those who heard the Gospel and later died, which is a bit of a tortured reading, or as "dead" here being metaphorical (i.e."dead in sin), which seems at least more plausible.

    Since every knee will bow, it is generally accepted that all of the dead will know the truth at some point anyhow.

    But IMO, it is the highly individualistic and legalistic combination of readings that really transform the "Good News," into something quite the opposite, a desperate race for man to save man fromGod via a "loophole" of sorts. And this is also what transforms finite bad fortune into infinite bad fortune.
  • Hallucinogen
    303
    It is your job to say what you are talking about.I like sushi

    And the OP does this. I can't answer your question unless I know how broadly you're using the term phenomena -- are you using it the same way I did in some of my replies later in the thread? Those should answer your question.
    What I claim to have presented is an argument for Christianity.

    There is no argument.I like sushi

    The OP fits the definition of an argument.
  • I like sushi
    4.7k
    What I claim to have presented is an argument for Christianity.Hallucinogen

    For? For the existence of some supernatural realm? It is really unclear.

    Obviously many different forms of altered states of consciousness exist. Many of the biological mechanisms needed to induce them are present in religious traditions. Prayer is one of them.

    People have experiences of aliens abducting them, yet prior to ideas of UFOs there were no reports of alien abductions but plenty of instances of demons and angels. What this seems to point to is something is going on in the human psyche and people represent this in different ways based on mythos they are familiar with.

    Note: Instances of people taking DMT show this more vividly too.
  • Hallucinogen
    303
    Scientific evidence depends entirely on repetition in controlled environments where particular experiences composed of beliefs, desires, motivations and various subjective phenomena are neutralized.JuanZu

    When science is used to study something other than those subjective phenomena, but not when it is studying the subjective phenomena themselves. And by “neutralized” I assume you mean “controlled”. Science cannot remove such confounding factors from the picture entirely.

    Subjective experiences and scientific evidence are not the same thing.JuanZu

    Of course they aren't, but the two are intertwined.

    In subjective experience that which validates a belief does not escape the particular subjective experience.JuanZu

    It does, validation is a part of logic and logic is the very system that provides any invariant relationship between subjective experience and an external referent.

    In scientific evidence that which validates theory necessarily escapes particular subjective experience.JuanZu

    The method of validation does, but scientific evidence itself doesn't, because scientific evidence always consists of subjectively experienced data. All observations involve subjective experience.

    When we compare both types of validation we realize how poor is the validation of beliefs on the religious planeJuanZu

    There's only one means of validation. The difference between validating religious and scientific claims is the rarity and predictability of the data types.
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    If self-transcendence can happen in the afterlife, why bother keeping us down on Earth to live horrors?
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.5k


    I don't know how historical progression would work if people never died. Death seems as important to the development of the race as the death of individual cells is to the development of a single person. If Man, as a corporate entity, is the focus of salvation history, then death seems to play a crucial role.

    Is the assumption here that suffering only exists "down here?" This is generally not an assumption for universalists or for the early Church in general. There is still Hell and purgation (purgation for all, even the saints on some accounts). Presumably what is required on Earth may be required in some form after death.

    Purgation is not the final destination though, but rather the requisite precondition for deification.
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    About the earthly body and God, section 2.1 of this article by Doctor of Systematic Theology from PUG Roma: https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/culturateo/article/view/63415/44228
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