Validation through Experience

[JM]

One of the comments you will hear from people when they are stuck answering questions about the validity of the views of God which have been formed from the bible and church teaching is

My experiences show me God is real

I.e I was sitting praying and felt goosebumps
or.. I was sitting praying and i saw a picture
or I was prayed for something and it happened ( not the usual of course as many times people pray and the results they are hoping for dont happen )

Now.. sure people can argue the toss with people about whether those expriences were true or not

But personally, I would rather go at it from a different angle and say that

Experiences May Validate for each of us our Connection to God and Gods connection to us enough for Us to believe in God

But our Experiences dont 100% validate what we have been taught about God or learned about God from the bible.

Meaning a person could and can have an experience and feel 100% in their heart that it was God

And really no one can argue with that...

But that Experience alone would not Validate a reason to say that Everything the bible says is correct about Who God is and What God wants.


So....

In a discussion of Faith in God

The way I personally see it and you might differ from this iss

If a person says they have had many experiences that validates for them their reasons to Believe in God. That is fine

Yet if a person says they have had many experiences and that Validates for them their reason to believe in God and to believe the bible is True in its portrait of God. The second part of that I would have to disagree with...

What do you think?

[Commodore Angryy]

I think you pretty much summed it up. Personal experience is in no way convincing to others, and others can rightfully attack you with different explanations for 'prayer goosebumps'.

Also, JM, i hate to inform you but i think there's something wrong with your shift key. capital letters are only used at the beginning of sentences, and for names.

[Someday]

There are somethings that cannot be easily taken away from a person. Knowledge and experience. Another can belittle that experience, explain it away, or disagree with it, but that does little to convince the person that their experience is not real. I should think a militant atheist would have to find a way to take away a person's experience of God in order to convince that person there is no God. It' not as simple as a case of goosebumps. Goosebumps are a side effect, a symptom, not the experience itself.
Unfortunately, experience is something you cannot give to another. Just about anything we experience can be explained to another, but unless they had a similar experience, they can only imagine how it felt, how it effected them, and how profound it may be.
Instead, all we have is poor attempts to explain them away. It's not gonna work. The fact that it can't be allowed to prove the existence of a higher being is irrelevant. It's proved to the person that really matters, the one that had it. I can't help you if you never had it. That's not my problem, it's yours.

Blessings

[friendly hardline atheist]

Hello Commodore, Someday,

You are talking of two different things.

Commodore speaks out against personal experience as a basis for convincing others. I agree with him, since the situation the person with experience claims to have witnessed, is always exactly the same as if nothing supernatural had happened and the person is just prone to buying into superstition.

Someday doesn't speak of personal experience as a basis for convincing others. So far, so good imo. Instead he says atheists should produce something to convince the believer his/her experience is unreal. That's not so good imo. That seems like a slightly different variety of asking the 100% certain proof that god isn't real. And it turns on its head the burden of proof. Before suggesting that atheists should produce counter-proof, the onus is on the believer to show there is anything to disprove at all. Otherwise it's a bit like me saying that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (may noodles be forever upon him) is real because I have experienced the embrace of His noodly appendages. Sure, a believer is free to take that position, just as he/she is free to believe in the invisible pink unicorn, the ancient Egyptian gods etc. But without any other indication of them being real, he/she does give up the right to complain about not being taken serious and being ridiculed for it.

Peter

[JM]

Originally Posted by Commodore Angryy

I think you pretty much summed it up. Personal experience is in no way convincing to others, and others can rightfully attack you with different explanations for 'prayer goosebumps'.

Also, JM, i hate to inform you but i think there's something wrong with your shift key. capital letters are only used at the beginning of sentences, and for names.

Lol... come on I love using CAPITALS its so Much fun!

[Someday]

Someday doesn't speak of personal experience as a basis for convincing others. So far, so good imo. Instead he says atheists should produce something to convince the believer his/her experience is unreal. That's not so good imo.

Please understand. I do not say you must always prove the experience wrong.
I say I don't care if you believe me. We can live and let live, leave it at that right?
But hypothetically, if you choose to pursue further, insist that the believer is wrong, then the burden of proof shifts. You must now prove to me that I am wrong. I personally don't care if you believe me, but you would be trying to dissuade me from believing it. That requires proof.
There are rules of evidence. It always lays with the prosecution, not the defendant. That's all I'm saying. I don't require any proof from you either way. But in order to convince a believer they are wrong requires very strong proof that is more powerful than their own personal experience.

Blessings

[JM]

Commodore, Someday and Friendly Noodle Draws

The point I was saying was NOT to take away from a person believing in God

It was more of saying that I feel that Expriences can validate for a person their belief in God

But Experiences usually dont validate common bible interpretations about Jesus, Salvation, Hell

Sure some might say they saw hell but being as there have been lots of After Death Expriences where people say they saw what lies on the other side and each one has differed quite a lot

It would hard to use Experiences as a means to defend a believe in the bible being accurate.. yet I would see it as an acceptable means for someone saying they believe in God

[Commodore Angryy]

Personal validation in spirituality takes WAY too many forms though. there are those that say God talks to them, like Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake.

Whilst others claim to have PROOF that God exists because they felt a shover run up their spine whilst praying. I get shivers in particularly good scenes of movies, but that doesn;t mean the movie is based on a true story.

[Hawkins]

Your argument is that it's possible for a human brain to manifest anything it wishes.......saves 2 things.

Miracles and prophecies


And try this,

O Lord, I am your faithful servant. It's you our Almighty God who commanded here for your will to be fulfilled. Please show us that it's your will that I am here as commanded.


Well, you shall see how the Red Sea depart. Hehe...

When you question how others' brain work. You forget that your own brain is also limited. It's very easy that our thoughts are limited to our own concept of time and space, limited enough that we fail to speculate that a communication channel between God and man can be established through prophecies and miracles.

So please try to speculate more about why the topic "prophets" are always closely connected to prophecies and miracles. That's probably the way how they "talk" beyond the "brain delusions" as you suggested.


After that, you may start to speculate why miracles and prophecies but not your mobile phone are used as a media/platform for the communication.

[Someday]

Whilst others claim to have PROOF that God exists because they felt a shover run up their spine whilst praying. I get shivers in particularly good scenes of movies, but that doesn;t mean the movie is based on a true story.
Reply With Quote

You are still stuck with the same problem. While you have not personally experienced that which you are trying to describe, you are trying to explain it away with offhand comments. I know this works for you because either you have never experienced the same thing or you were not personally convicted by it.
The point I am trying to make is that in oversimplifying your explanation, you are not convincing anyone that was moved by the experiential occurrence. The explanation you offer works for you, but you are not walking in their shoes. You will have to come up with better proof than that in order to convince people that this is definitely not of God.
The fact that experiences are different doesn't matter. This is like saying a large volume of trees are not a forest because all of the fauna is of different species. Each tree is unique, singular and individual. But the forest itself is the sum of this variety of individuals. I look at experiential testimony the same way. A certain amount of it may be colored by what we already believe or disbelieve.