People who have never had any supernatural experience shouldn't be religious or spiritual. It's just a LARP at that point, you're literally electing to believe something just because you read about it in a book and found it cool. From your point of view it's not any different than believing Spiderman exists.
ive had supernatural experiences that i cannot explain though
My thread is obviously not about you then.
How do we know that it's supernatural and not schizophrenia
if multiple people experience it simultaneously
And how do we know that these multiple people aren't just under the influence of drugs, or bread/water contaminated with ergot
There are things like foreknowledge/prophetic gift that cannot be explained by drugs or schizophrenia. The closest thing to a scientific explanation is J.W. Dunne's serialism.
>foreknowledge/prophetic
Can you name some accounts of this that are highly reliable?
No-one has ever had a supernatural experience. Some people are just mental or moronic.
....is what i would say if i was a fat, seething brainlet
Read this OP. Whether or not you have a supernatural experience is largely shaped by your own perception
People who have never had any ancient Roman experience shouldn't be Roman historians or romaboos. It's just a LARP at that point you're literally electing to believe something just because you read about it in a book and found it cool. From your point of view it's not any different than believing Spiderman exists.
Good job outing yourself. Always suspected it too.
I hope you're just funposting and not actually moronic
You can find evidences of that in museums and texts, you cant find evidences of spirituality without experience. Its a different topic
Don't tell me you've never had a religious experience before.
>the foremost /rel/ namegay has never had a single supernatural experience in his entire pathetic life
Lmao this is too good.
>religion is literally a romaboo vgh larp
Besides everything else, being a roman historian isn't equivalent to literally worshipping a israelite.
This is moronic. People don't invoke their love of Roman history as some teleological/metaphysical necessity.
Well you're right, no one should be a romaboo.
>historians
historians of rome don't need ancient roman experience (though many try somehow), historians of religion don't need spiritual experiences either.
Having an academic interest in religion is totally different from being religious.
I sincerely hope you aren't the real dork
>you're literally electing to believe something just because you read about it in a book and found it cool.
You mean like atheistisraelites believing in and forcing evolutionism on kids in schools?
They've never experienced it, never observed it, it contradicts all science and history.
I'm not sure how to feel about this. I have had supernatural experiences and they are the basis for my religious beliefs. So, if that's what it took for me, how could I expect anyone else to believe without their own similar experiences? But then does that mean I should just abandon everyone else even if it's to their own detriment? Obviously the ideal solution would be to help other people to have their own supernatural experiences. But I have no clue how or why mine happened, so I'm not sure where to go from there.
If you appeal to a personal experience that's not externally verifiable, the person receiving your testimony is just receiving a testimony. It has persuasive power but can't really be compelling evidence.
I see no reason to deny the possibility that an unbeliever could ask God for a supernatural sign, as if he can't hear them. The new testament points to a born again experience and accompanying signs of a new life as proof one may know he possesses eternal life, which I think is the normative supernatural experience for Christians, simultaneous with conversion.
>radical naturalism
Hey grandpa, did you just get a box set of cosmos for Christmas or something?
>radical naturalism
Tell me when you have an actual argument against it
Kalam
>kalam
Lol; lmao
Tell me when you have an actual argument against it
Well you don't; I accept your concession
Not him, but Kalam cannot prove its conclusion until you prove that the A theory of time is true and both infinite regresses and causal loops are impossible.
The impossibility of paradoxes is generally assumed as intuitive, as is A theory.
You are right formally but your point functions as a defense, not a refutation of Kalam. He asked for an actual argument and I brought one up.
Infinite regresses and causal loops are not paradoxes. The A theory is assumed to be wrong by the majority of philosophers and physicists.
Infinite regress is itself a paradox, yes. It's an actual infinite. Hilbert's hotel demonstrates the absurdity.
>Majority
Citation?
Hilbert's hotel sounds absurd because the parameters are set in a context where Infinity seems absurd. You got got by the oldest trick in the book.
My source regarding the majority is the philpapers survey and the fact that special relativity is a mainstream scientific theory.
It seems absurd because it is. The analogy demonstrates the point.
Show me an actual infinite
>Show me an actual infinite
god?
The analogy relies on your instincts regarding particular things which are not relevant to the temporal regress. How could you build an infinite hotel? Where would you put all the rooms? What about the material? etc.
Can you show me an immaterial mind?
The questions all lend support to the absurdity
Yeah to the absurdity of a brick and mortar hotel that accommodates an infinite number of guests. However, you may notice that time isn't situated within a designated block of land and made up of bricks and mortar.
You still haven't shown me an immaterial mind btw.
You're just being more descriptive of an actual infinite as opposed to a potential infinite. Do you get that?
We can both conceive of a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, the concept is not absurd. It's absurd to say an infinite is or could be actual. You cannot create a brick and mortar Hilbert's hotel on a designated block of land to accommodate an actually infinite number of guests. Its not possible for an infinite amount of bricks, mortar, or guests to exist, and the accomodation of the guests further demonstrates the absurdity which is why you get paradoxes where the hotel is simultaneously full and has vacancies.
An eternal past is likewise impossible, with certain traditional assumptions about time, because it requires an actually infinite number of past units of time. Infinite regress is impossible because it requires an actually infinite sequence of causes and effects.
>You're just being more descriptive of an actual infinite as opposed to a potential infinite. Do you get that?
Wrong. I am simply telling you that the intuitions which make Hilbert's hotel seem ridiculous do not apply to time. Time is not made of bricks, it doesn't sit on a plot of land etc.
>An eternal past is likewise impossible, with certain traditional assumptions about time, because it requires an actually infinite number of past units of time. Infinite regress is impossible because it requires an actually infinite sequence of causes and effects.
This is just an assertion. You haven't explained why there can't be an infinite number of "units of time" or causes and effects - you just got upset, threw your hands up and said that there just can't be, ok????
Numbers
>and the fact that special relativity is a mainstream scientific theory
Time dilation and light not being transmitted instantaneously don't preclude the existence of past, present, and future and it's kind of weird that anyone would think that they do.
Neither does the B theory of time.
Yes it does. The entire idea is rejecting the existence of a forward flowing passage of time, which means no present at all and no general past or future. And people seem only to accept it because they consider a ripple reaching the bank of a pond to be the same event as the stone striking the water.
You are confused. The claim of the B theory isn't that the past, present and future don't exist. It's the literal opposite - the past, present and future all exist.
No, the events that occur at those points in time exist, but the states of present and general past and future do not. The present is the current point in the forward flowing passage of time. If such a passage of time is merely a human illusion, then the present as a state does not exist. And if the present as a state does not exist then the past and future, as general states applying simultaneously to the entire universe, do not exist. All because the observation of an event is equated with the event itself.
I'm afraid that's the consequence of special relativity. When two observers cannot agree on whether A happened before B or the other way around, you'll have a hard time salvaging the idea of a universal present.
Only if you're moronic. If I see some homosexual on Mars mooning me in my super telescope and hop in my wormhole teleporter to kick his ass do you think he's still going to be there or did he zip up his pants and walk off several minutes ago?
Your example is not relevant to the point, which tells me that you don't know how special relativity relates to the topic. This also explains why you're so confused and angry.
>"When two observers cannot agree on whether A happened before B or the other way around"
>example of observers not agreeing when something happened
>"n-no. not like that"
It's the exact same shit if me and the guy passing me in a spaceship going half the speed of light disagree on when we think we flipped each other off. Our observations of the events aren't the actual events so our observations disagreeing isn't evidence that we did not both pass through a simultaneous present.
And you know I'm right or you would have tried responding with something more than "you're wrong" by now.
>example of observers not agreeing when something happened
You did not post that. You also seem to be under the impression that the phenomenon in question doesn't take into account the time it takes for light to travel to the observer. Very low IQ tbh.
>special relativity is when light travels a long time
lmao
>Hilbert's hotel demonstrates the absurdity.
Hilbert's hotel doesn't demonstrate the absurdity of an infinite; it showcases it's propertiee.
Cause and effect only exist up until a certain point; causality is superimposed onto the pattern of reality by the human mind to create a sense of temporal order. The beginning of time is the beginning of cause and effect (which only exist up to a certain granularity even now), thus to demand cause for the beginning of causation is like demanding to know what came before time.
The problem is that one might not be able to imagine what "before time" means: even our language does not permit talking about such a state accurately, since "before" is a temporal term. What "before time" means is that time itself (and also causation) is not fundamental, but merely a local phenomenon.
The supernatural can't even exist as a thing
Semantically true, but not what people mean.
People don't know what they mean with "supernatural"
Most people use it to refer to phenomena for which there is no explanation that is consistent with the current understanding of the material universe.
>that is consistent with the current understanding of the material universe.
Surely you see that it doesn't point to an actual thing but just to the lack of knowledge of humans
Obviously I see that. I'm the one that included that in my definition. I'm also the one that said that your statement was semantically true. You're right something can't actually be supernatural. But that doesn't mean that the word conveys no meaning. Most everyone understands the kind of phenomena it refers to.
For me it's more a matter of logic. Everything coming from nothing in the form of a "big bang" where the universal sense puts all the bits and pieces to mold in a way that our world is born just resonates to my understanding in a way that there must have been an extremely intelligent conscious creator.
Also infinity is something that is hard for me to understand without adding something divine to the equation.
Also the fact that all cultures and civilizations have believed in the divine and formed religions throughout history, even when they have been in zero contact with each other comes to me as almost proof.
>Also the fact that all cultures and civilizations have believed in the divine and formed religions throughout history, even when they have been in zero contact with each other comes to me as almost proof.
There are always two explanations for why some belief might exist in two distinct places: historicism and structuralism (jargon-terms, nothing to do with structuralism vs. post-structuralism): either people believe in a story because they are historically connected, with that link being now lost, like some population of settlers inheriting the beliefs of their ancestor population, or because they're both humans who have human brains, and the human brain just likes making up a certain kind of explanation. The human brain has the neurology to make up "persons", which is why humans also used to think in animist terms, thinking that the "tree-spirit" made the tree grow, and the lightning-man made the lightning shoot.
Really, historicism and structuralism are the same thing, just on different levels: memetic vs. genetic common descent.
However, neither proves that whatever people happen to believe is factually true.
If we don't count the memetic part then that still doesn't explain the need for worship in all cultures. And it hasn't all been memetic for all cultures across the globe
>the need for worship in all cultures
Let us be careful with our terms here: our words contain cultural assumptions. For instance, the term "worship" already evokes a feeling of essentially church-service. Humans like ritualistic behavior, which is likely an artifact of our neurology: mammals can learn and repeat patterns of behavior, and humans can learn particularly abstract rituals with no obvious connection to any immediate benefit, which would explain the variety of "worship"-traditions across the globe: burning incense, dancing, reading aloud, yelling, etc. That's an outward form; as to the motivation: there might be no motivation beyond this being some social activity that happens to be what people do, with maybe some mythology as to why this is being done that gets attached as a justification. Humans also like coming up with explanations for why things are the way they are; they also would serve an evolutionary purpose.
Humans furthermore also like to control their environment, the sense of control also evoking a desired sense of safety. Since they cannot really control their environment beyond a certain, fairly limited point, we could think that they would nonetheless try. The way of doing this would be more or less random, or ritualistic, since, in the more concrete case, humans cannot control e.g. lightning and floods, thus they'd, if they tried, would resort to various rituals. In the more abstract case: they cannot control mortality and the destiny of their consciousness.
That's precisely my talking point, what I believe is because of spiritual experience (union with God), triggered by meditation, yet not only do people choose random religion but also put themselves at the same level.
All religion is a larp dude. But it's a larp that cements group cohesion and identity. Ritual is "costly signalling" in the parlance of evolutionary psychology.
I didn't know Oyish was such an empiricist board
>historian
>not empiricist
????