I have weak and very wavering faith (not sure could even use that term) in the idea of a Christian God. But whenever I become so conflicted as to decry it to myself I consider all the supernatural stories I have heard from people. And this once again reaffirms my knowlage in there being powers higher than humans and thus I default back to a limited faith in Christian God. I almost wish I had unwavering faith in anything even if it was wrong because uncertainty in this sort of thing is quite tiresome.

I'm aware that the presence of supernatural actions doesn't validity the Christian base but as it is most familiar to me it does tent to draw me back towards it.

Anyway back to what I really wanted to talk about. 'supernatural' occurances. While I understand many can be taken away as lies, unexplained lapses in the brain, chance etc some I feel can't. When people you know who have no history of lying earnestly tell you personal experiences it is hard to discredit it. There is one particular unsettling account but honestly makes me uncomftable talking about as if it it could some how invoke its wickedness

Even though I know in crime witness statements aren't worth much and writing it down makes me sound like a paranoid fool. And it's so far away from the rationalistic world of now.

Anyway what are your thoughts on this and the supernatural?

For Me Supernatural is Supernatural
We Arent meant to experience it so I Cant Say It Doesnt Exist Or Not

Hi,

I believe that at its root, Christian faith is an active decision to obey God's commandment to believe in Jesus. I wouldn't worry too much about how strong your faith is.

If I had based my faith on others I would have stopped being a Christian long ago.

Edited 7/30/2020 00:24:31

Hey Rikku!
Firstly can I just say I agree with Norman; Christianity is about making a choice based on faith, however little that is, and don't stress if you feel you're doubting! Everyone does, myself included!

As for my opinion on the supernatural, I very much agree with you; there are some things in this world that simply cannot be explained by anything else. Some people like to ignore it, others simply don't hear about it and don't want to, but there are some things in this world that just could not have happened if this world is purely material.
Anyway, if you ever want to discuss this stuff, hit me up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXtLL1asy_Q
I don't have time to write much now, but watch this. It's basically an extended version of his original autobiography.

The world right now definitely isn't rational, just look at what's going on.

*phone ringing*

Hello, inquisition? Yes, we've got a heretic. Cure him with what? Molten iron, ok, noted. Are you sure that will cure him though? All right, all right, I will try my best.

My understanding is that as humans our cognitive abilities are deeply insufficient to perceive the world around us. Humans are simply not omniscient. Therefore, the various ways we perceive the world would create different sets of "realities", each set unique to a person. I'd say the concept of rationality and reality is born out of group consensus. When things beyond what we could perceive with our rationality happens, we would label them as "supernatural".

Take this as an example:
Imagine a romote island isolated for millenias. Its native popultion have always been red-green colorblind since their ancestors' arrival. These people cannot tell a ripe fruit apart from a green one, so they always take a bite to determine ripeness. Now, a group of travelers arrive at the island and demonstrate their divine ability to see beyond the mortal world by determining ripeness without even touching the fruits.

Put yourselves in their position. Now, would you call the travelers' ability "supernatural"? Many would, and doing that isn't lying since you are telling the truth, albeit it's your version of the truth. Since all of you and your ancestors are colorblind, there is no such things as red and green, and colorblindness is never heard of. Earth itself is like an island in the vast ocean and we are its inhabitants. The rather unpleasant fact is that we will never be able to know the world as it is, so I'd consider "supernatural" as a moot concept. They are just unexplained things that cause fear and worship.

This applies to religion as well. A believer of G(g)od(s) sees a world full of divine creations and interventions, while an atheist sees the world as a natural one. We just have to accept that there will never be a "true" truth-- there will be truths, always.

Man I love me some postmodernism...

Can I just point out: Stating that different opinions exist does not prove that different realities exist; i.e. just because "A believer of G(g)od(s) sees a world full of divine creations and interventions, while an atheist sees the world as a natural one" does not at all imply that both of them are correct.

Also, (I'm sure someone has said this to you before, and you probably have an argument against it) but the statement "there is no objective truth" contradicts itself, because then the claim "there is no objective truth" is not an objective truth and therefore cannot be applied to everything.
Or to put it another way, you are effectively claiming that there is no meta-narrative, but by claiming this you are imposing your own meta-narrative that there is no meta-narrative.
Your statement appears to me to be a paradox.

Edited 7/30/2020 13:12:05

I'm pretty sure what he meant is that what we consider to be true and what we consider supernatural is 100% dependent on our perspective--what we do and don't know, out experiences in life, what we can and can't detect (like in his example, colour), and such. On top of that, due to our very limited cognitive abilities and even more limited sensual abilities, it is impossible for any or all of us to know everything that must be known in order to understand the universe and all in it. What we call supernatural is what we can't explain with our own knowledge and abilities.

Well, I don't REJECT the possibility that the world(the objective world, not the subjective one, if such a world exists) works in a single way, the "right" way. I did try to point out that the world we perceive needs to be PERCEIVED in order to be felt by us, and there will be different interpretations, resulting in different "realities". Note that "realities" as previously mentioned are only real in their respective individuals' system of thinking, which immediately suggests that they are not ABSOLUTE, contrary to the belief in an absolute truth, which is, as you have pointed out, a meta-narrative.

My counter argument is more like accepting the paradox rather than rufuting it, because I don't think that's possible.

By being part of the human species, I fully accept my limitations as a human. So my beliefs are as subjective as other people's, not more true nor more untrue. Of course, I believe in my beliefs, but I do not treat them as the universal truth, so that does not amount to meta-narratives.

On the other hand, that might result in something like this:
"I believe in my beliefs."
"But why do you belive in your beliefs?"
A. "Because of human subjectivity."
"But then why do you believe in anything? Isn't that illogical?"
B. " Because I think they are true."
"But why do you think they are true?"
C.....
"Alright I try to find intrinsic meaning when there's none"

Now that amounts to a paradox, but I may just embrace the paradox and count it as an intrinsic part of one's life. Someone who tries to seek the universal truth while acknowledging human subjectivity would probably realise the absurdity of it, so I'd consider it as an inevitable paradox. So yes I consider that I believe in absurdism, and the fun part is that I don't even need to worry about whether my interpretation of absurdism is correct.

What would you consider supernatural?

If it's something that cannot be explained by science it cannot be real. For example, disease is something that for most of human history, we believed to be supernatural with no reasonable explanation, until science was able to explain it that is.

In fact, something as simple as breathing is the origin of the soul in most cultures. Before the understanding that air was particulate matter and that the body used this as a key function to operate, it was understood that the breath was the soul. (Hence the breathe of life.) And one someone died and they breathed their last breathe they gave up their spirit.

Anything that can be seen as "higher powers" or supernatural is 3 things imo.

1. Something that science cannot yet explain.
2. Something that is false and is fueled by mythology.
3. Something that science has already explained, and the person believing it to be supernatural refuses to see the evidence for why it is not.

Edited 8/2/2020 21:37:29

Until (if it does) science explains them people are going to me mystified and perturbed by many 'supernatural' events. Expecially if the happen to oneself which thankful never has. And I do get that the brain is so little understood and many things could be complex malfunctions.

The main one that unsettled me was hearing that shortly before my aunt died (a day or possible two). She dreamed that she would die and the face of the local undertaker who she had never met on account of them moving recently. Anyway then she died in a household electrocution accident one day after her 20th birthday. And the undertaker was as she described. (BTW village rural England in the 1973~ for context)

Now of course it could be explained as a fictitious tale or an malicious succide but I don't believe those to be the case. Perhaps that is hard-headed foolishness, I wouldn't know

Eh, I'm certain, such tales have nothing to do with Christianity, @Rikku.

^ I also find it really odd that Rikku is lumping Christianity with unexplained premonitions and generic tales of the supernatural. Pretty sure at least some of that would fall under occult practices.

Rikku's reasoning seems to be an argument from ignorance, which doesn't do justice to either reason or Christianity. There are things that we can't explain, therefore the Christian God likely exists. I just don't see the connection.

---

Rikku, have you ever been on holiday and met someone from your hometown? E.g., you're in a foreign country and run into someone who lives just a few houses over from you back home. What are the odds of that, right? Running into that person, at that place, at that time, so far from home?

But what are the odds of running into someone you know somewhere far away? Over the course of a lifetime, pretty high. Flip a coin enough times and you'll have sequences where it lands on heads 100 times in a row even though the odds of 100 coin flips in a row all landing on heads are hardly distinguishable from zero. This is called the birthday paradox: the odds of you and a specific person having the same birthday are low, but the odds of you and someone else in your life (or in a medium-sized room with you) having the same birthday are pretty high, and the odds of 2 people in a room of 30 having the same birthday are actually about 70%.

Even in a metaphysically naturalistic world, chance still plays a role. Spooky coincidences will individually be unlikely, but the odds of something extremely unlikely happening during the course of your lifetime are rather high- as long as you're not specific about what that spooky coincidence is. The odds of something like your aunt describing some detail of her own death are pretty high. The reason we struggle with this is because we paint a bullseye around the spooky thing that happened and focus on that specific outcome, but that's like asking "what's the odds of these 6 coin flips landing on exactly HTTHHT?!" or "what're the odds that I was born on the 63rd anniversary of this one specific skirmish during the Korean War?!"

Is it just me, or is "paradox" an overused word?

Paradox paradox paradox, paradox paradox, paradox paradox. Paradox paradox paradox.

^ I also find it really odd that Rikku is lumping Christianity with unexplained premonitions and generic tales of the supernatural. Pretty sure at least some of that would fall under occult practices.

I just want to quickly say that I don't think Rikku is saying that all these supernatural experiences are from the Christian God; I think what he means is that he cannot reject the idea of a god, because supernatural things happen that would not occur if there was no god. Because he therefore concludes that God exists, he then chooses the Christian God.
So yes, I agree that some of the things Rikku described are likely of an occult nature (i.e. from Satan not God), but I don't think he was saying they weren't.

^ yah basically LND

Rikku's reasoning seems to be an argument from ignorance (+cognitive dissidence prolly)

I agree was thinking similar when making the OP. Interesting responses anyone has an recommended further reading material