I Need To Ask An Atheist A Question

[Papist]

Ask the atheist what he/she feels about this,

[Spinozist]

1 hour ago, Papist said:

Ask the atheist what he/she feels about this,

I think this is a bit premature.

[Spinozist]

11 hours ago, Josh said:

Interesting. When my experience happened there was 4 of us. My best friends older sister recruited myself and my best friend. His sisters friend also participated. I went into the experience making sure my hands barely touched the thing that points at the letters. I was 50/50 on whether I believed spirits were involved going into the session. Although I was 100 percent committed to making sure my hands didn't help point to the letters in anyway. I made as little contact as possible. I concentrated on making minimal finger contact throughout the whole session. 

I wouldn't want to discount your experience. This may even be sufficient to convince you that more is going on, but it's difficult to see how this will be convincing for people who weren't there.

Given xSilverPhinx's alternate explanation, it would be important to set up a test to see which explanation, idiomotor or spirits, is more likely. This could be done by, say, blindfolding the people participating, place glass between the board and the people, and have a third party orient the board at a random angle. Then one could test and see if the movements correlate with known words. This would be fairly convincing evidence for me that some intelligence was manipulating Ouija board outcomes.

Again, this is not to dismiss your experience. You are probably right to take it serously, and depending on the actual content of the experience, maybe it should be sufficient evidence to convince you that spirits exist. I don't know. All I know is that, by itself, it is not enough to convince me. More evidence is necessary. Predictions, like the one I suggest above, would probably be necessary for me as a first step. If the test fails to establish the existence of some manipulating intelligence, that doesn't mean that the manipulating intelligence does not exist, but merely that there's no good reason for me to believe that this intelligence exists. Absence of belief is not identical to belief in absence.

Finally, even if the test I suggest works, this would not be enough to convince me that something supernatural exists, since the intelligence involved could be alien or may involve something like telepathy or telekinesis (maybe mutants like the X-Men exist and like to communicate through Ouija boards). It is difficult for me to imagine what would convince me of something supernatural. My suspicion is that any phenomenon I could possibly witness would have a possible natural explanation, and the natural explanation would seem to me always more probable than the supernatural explanation. For purposes of full disclosure, my metaphysics entails that the supernatural is impossible, and this is a considerable bias, a bias so great that maybe no evidence would be sufficient to overcome it.

[4588686]

On 12/31/2015, 1:31:52, Josh said:

Any here who deny all things supernatural/paranormal?

sup

[stevil]

On 31/12/2015 7:31:52, Josh said:

Any here who deny all things supernatural/paranormal?

Hello Josh,

Yeah sure, I am highly skeptical of all supernatural/paranormal claims.

On 2/01/2016 10:34:45, Josh said:

I want to ask an atheist how they deal with the paranormal. I have a specific experience I want to tell them about and I'm curious what their response is dealing with it. I think if it's established the paranormal/supernatural exist that likely leads to the conclusion there is a Higher Power/God.

I deal with claims in the following way. The more precedent, the more mundane, and the less impact regarding acceptance of the claim then the less evidence I need.

For example,

If you told me you had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch, I probably would just accept what you tell me and I would not ask for evidence.

If you told me that you can read minds then I would be asking you to present evidence.

Regarding evidence, I would look for a way to gather compelling evidence both for and against your claim.

If you established that paranormal/supernatural powers, forces or entities exist that would not lead me to the conclusion that a god exists.

There seems to be a fundamental problem with establishing the existence of supernatural forces. I mean, at first magnetic forces may seem like magic (supernatural) when a kid sees metal objects moved without touching them. But once you explain the force behind it then that force becomes part of the natural realm. In order for a skeptic to accept something, it has to be explainable via positive evidence. It isn't sufficient to make a claim such as "We can't explain it therefore it must have been unseen, unobserved spirits or gods"

On 2/01/2016 11:06:19, Josh said:

I've have more than one experience but the particular one I want to present first is dealing with a ouija board. This was over 12 years ago and I would never touch one now because I believe it to be demonic. At the time I didn't view it that way although I was skeptical. I got talked into participating. Anyway I think my experience (and countless others) leads to the conclusion spirts/souls exist and therefore an atheist purely materialistic view on reality is wrong.

If I'm an atheist and come to the conclusion these experiences are authentic or may be that forces me to reevaluate everything. It's the first step. An atheist says nothing like this can exist or happen. My own personal experiences shows their wrong.

In order to evaluate any claim we must first have a sufficiently formulated claim. The claim needs to be testable and falsifiable and must be evidentiarily distinguishable from the mundane explanations.

Your must make an honest attempt at submitting a reasonably complete claim. For example your claim must include some of the mechanism for the supernatural entity. e.g. Does the supernatural entity need to use the participant's hands, eyes, ears, understanding of language? If so then we may have a problem because we wouldn't be able to devise an experiment which would distinguish between the supernatural intervention from the participant's actions.

Once you have an established claim we then devise some experiments to test it.

In order to accept that supernatural forces are in play when using a ouija board we must first eliminate natural causes.

The thing about ouija boards is that there are many hands on the ouija board and when looking at the hands we cannot see which hand is being used to control the board. Even with your own hand on the board, all you would feel is the board moving (seemingly out of control from your own hand) you would not be able to tell whose hand is controlling the board.

I guess we would need to try to understand what it is about the experiment that is supposed to allow supernatural forces to control the ouija board. Could the supernatural forces control the pointer even though no human hands are on the pointer? OR does the supernatural force manipulate the pointer by controlling the human hands somehow?

How many human hands are needed on the pointer? Could we do the experiment with just one person controlling the pointer?

Do the humans who are holding the pointer need to be able to see the board and pointer? Could we blindfold them? If so could we use various boards where the letters are in different places? We could select the board after the participants have been blindfolded. We would then need to use a video camera to record the letters selected by the pointer.

If it is the case that the supernatural entity needs to use the participant's hands and needs to use the participant's eyes could we ask the supernatural forces the questions in a way that the participants don't see or hear the questions?

If it is the case that the supernatural entity needs to use the participant's hands, eyes and ears, could we summon a supernatural entity that speaks a language that the participants don't know. Could we have the questions spoken in a language that the participants don't know. In this case we would expect the answers to come out in a language that the participants don't know. The person asking the questions will need to not be touching the board or the pointer and will need to be the person who decipher's the answer.

Do you see what I'm getting at here. We need to remove the ability for the participants to cheat.

We would also need to make an attempt to falsify the claim using the falsifiable criteria that you provided in your documented claim.

 

If your claim isn't fully formed then we run into the issue of Carl Sagan's dragon. Where the claimant continually embellishes the claim in such ways that invalidates the experiments that we have just undertaken. e.g.

Claimant - "There is a fire breathing dragon in my garage"

Skeptic - "I have looked but couldn't see this dragon in your garage"

Claimant - "Oh, that's because it is invisible"

Skeptic - "I used a heat sensor and didn't detect its hot fire breath"

Claimant - "Oh, that's because it breaths heatless fire"

 

On 4/01/2016 10:50:18, Josh said:

Interesting. When my experience happened there was 4 of us. My best friends older sister recruited myself and my best friend. His sisters friend also participated. I went into the experience making sure my hands barely touched the thing that points at the letters. I was 50/50 on whether I believed spirits were involved going into the session. Although I was 100 percent committed to making sure my hands didn't help point to the letters in anyway. I made as little contact as possible. I concentrated on making minimal finger contact throughout the whole session. 

Yeah, but what were the other people doing with their hands?

Were you watching the pointer and the board or were you watching what the other people were doing?

Would it have been possible to video the session and make sure that you and the others weren't able to see the board or the pointer?

Edited January 12, 2016 by stevil
Add the fully formed claim and Carl Sagan analogy

[Guest]

4 hours ago, stevil said:

Yeah, but what were the other people doing with their hands?

Were you watching the pointer and the board or were you watching what the other people were doing?

Would it have been possible to video the session and make sure that you and the others weren't able to see the board or the pointer?

That night I had around 4 questions answered that only I knew the answer to. It was impossible for the other three people to influence this at all. I made sure minimal hand contact was made by me. That night I had a tough time going to sleep. The experience left me uneasy. I never tried it again after that night. I have an uncle who I trust 100 percent and know would not lie have an experience with a spirit. This lady who was a friend of his performed a séance in the basement of his house with him and a few others. Stuff happened and continued to happen past that evening. They contacted who they believed to be an old friend who had passed. When he told me about this I told him how dangerous it was messing with that kind of stuff. My grandmothers aunt could levitate a table. Her dad would get upset and forbid her to do it because he believed it to be demonic. This is just a few examples of what has happened in my family. I have more examples to give. The point is this is just my family. A lot of other people have experiences as well. John Edwards is probably one of the most recognizable mediums out there. He claims to be Catholic and prays a Rosary before every session he performs. I've listened to interviews where he talks about the Church and his beliefs and obviously his Catholic faith deserves to be questioned. He's communicating with spirits for one which is forbidden and he also has false beliefs on certain dogmas. He has my prayers nonetheless. I know you will say fraud fraud he's cold reading he's scamming people ect  ect. I get that and I appreciate skepticism. But I can link some readings he did on Dr. Phil that you won't be able to just say it's a hoax and that's it. The details and things he describes goes way deeper than just being able to write him off as a fraud with no questions asked. I think there are a lot of frauds in the business but some people are legit. Now as a Catholic who agrees and accepts all Church teaching I'm against this practice. Even though Edwards and the Long Island Medium (who is also Catholic and goes to Mass every week) say they only communicate with spirits in the light and are only doing it to help people. I still am not convinced Satan doesn't have his hand in this. Rather I'm pretty sure he does. But here's the thing. Either Edwards is communicating with Spirits or something is happening that science hasn't proved yet. Perhaps it is possible to read someones mind to the extent Edwards is doing and this explains it. Maybe this will be scientifically explained one day. Or maybe a spiritual dimension to reality exist. If a spiritual reality exist then God exist. The cosmological constant which made it possible for the universe to expand and for life to be able to evolve is so specific it's impossible it's their by chance. I have a video where Dawkins admits this as do other atheist scientist. The multi verse is a solution to this but in this same video Steven Wienberg tells Dawkins how he doesn't believe it's a solution at all. It would take way to many universes to have it work out. Talking like trillions and trillions (according to the video I think it's more than that) He says we just have to accept we will never know why it was that extremely fine tuned. So you have spirits and the fine tuning of conditions that made it possible for life to evolve. You add consciousness to the mix and now I don't know how it's possible not to become agnostic. Then you approach God as if He's truly there and you tell Him you want a relationship with Him. In my experience when you go to Him this way with all of your heart and an 110 percent desire of actually coming in contact with Him something happens. It did for me.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Guest

[stevil]

4 hours ago, Josh said:

That night I had around 4 questions answered that only I knew the answer to.

OK, that's interesting.

So I guess there's a couple of questions here:

1. Perhaps it was you that was thinking about the answer and influencing the movement of the board (without consciously knowing it).

2. Perhaps unbeknown to you, someone else knew your answers.

3. If there is a "spirit" how did it know the answer? How did it move the pointer?

Another interesting test would have been to ask a question that no-one at the table knew the answer to, but could be researched later to verify its accuracy.

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This lady who was a friend of his performed a séance in the basement of his house with him and a few others. Stuff happened and continued to happen past that evening. They contacted who they believed to be an old friend who had passed. When he told me about this I told him how dangerous it was messing with that kind of stuff.

The problem with this "evidence" is that it is anecdotal and based on a great many assumptions.

Just out of academic interest (I'm a geek, I know), in the past I was considering the effort that would be needed by an incorporeal entity just to stand still on the surface of the Earth.

Light itself bends under the influence of gravity, so the object being caught in gravity doesn't need to have mass. It would be expected that even an incorporeal entity would be caught by gravity. Gravity, after all isn't a force. It is the curvature of SpaceTime. So an incorporeal entity will accelerate towards the centre of Earth as it doesn't have the ground pushing back at it, keeping it from plummetting down. It will accelerate at 9.8m/s^2 until it reaches the centre of the Earth then it will pass through and decelerate at 9.8m/s^2 until it reaches the Earth's surface at the other end of the Earth. Then it will fall back towards the centre again. It will oscillate like this forever, except for the fact that the Earth is also spinning on its axis so an object "stationary" on the Earth's surface is travelling at 460 meters per second. We don't feel this because we have momentum as well as the friction between us and the atmosphere and the ground's surface which is accelerating us. But also we are hurtling around the Sun at about 30 km/second. But we are also hurtling around the galaxy at hurtling through space around the Sun at 220 kms per second. Our galaxy is hurtling towards the Great Attractor at 1,000 km/second. So it would be extremely difficult for an incorporeal entity to appear as if it is standing still on the Earth's surface.

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My grandmothers aunt could levitate a table.

Now that would be something very special. If this were true, your grandmother's aunt would become very famous and very rich. She would appear on 60 minutes, she would appear on Oprah. Scientists would do tests, many skeptics would try to debunk her. We would learn the extent of her "power" could she levitate a car, a truck, a train, a building? How long could she levitate it for?

Could she levitate herself and perhaps fly like superman?

 

But alas, I very much doubt this story is true. It would have been very interesting to examine it. Much more interesting than Ouiji and séance

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If a spiritual reality exist then God exist.

No, not necessarily.

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The cosmological constant which made it possible for the universe to expand and for life to be able to evolve is so specific it's impossible it's their by chance.

No, not impossible.

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I have a video where Dawkins admits this as do other atheist scientist.

I doubt they admit it is impossible.

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The multi verse is a solution to this but in this same video Steven Wienberg tells Dawkins how he doesn't believe it's a solution at all. It would take way to many universes to have it work out. Talking like trillions and trillions (according to the video I think it's more than that) 

There are 10^22 stars in the observable universe. That is 100 times more stars than there are grains of sand on the Earth.

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

There are 10^78 fundamental particles in the observable universe.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 fundamental particles.

We have no idea how many universes there are in all of existence. We only know of one. We cannot say that there aren't more. We cannot say that there aren't a trillion trillion universes in existence. There might be a trillion trillion trillion of them. We just don't know.

But we do know of one. We know that it is possible to have a universe. It isn't that far of a stretch to conceive of two universes or even a trillion trillion of them.

However we do not know of even one supernatural entity. We do not know whether a supernatural entity is even possible.

At this stage I am of the opinion that a trillion trillion universes is much more feasible than a single supernatural entity. Just because there is no precedent for a supernatural entity. It is so different from any life or intelligence that we know of, it is so different from any particle or force that we know of. This isn't to say that it doesn't exist, it is just highlighting that we have no evidence to even suggest that such a thing exists. From where does this claim come if not the human imagination?

To claim that it is impossible for the universe to be fine tuned as it is by undirected natural causes is to claim personal knowledge way beyond what science currently claims to know. Making an argument for god out of necessity is a futile argument because you do not have the knowledge needed to say "It can't have been natural causes therefore it must have been god".

The vast amount of scientists are agnostic atheists. They know the science, they do not accept a god out of necessity. For you to appeal to science and make this claim you must consider that you know more science than the scientists know.

I really don't think that an appeal to scientific evidence is ever going to be fruitful when making a case for god. Especially the Christian god. Your religion appeals to faith and belief. Religious claims that are made are either anecdotal or indistinguishable from a more mundane natural explanation. You just make a personal choice to believe it if you want to go down that path.

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You add consciousness to the mix and now I don't know how it's possible not to become agnostic.

Consciousness isn't something special, it is merely an emergent property of some complex life forms. It gave them an evolutionary procreational advantage.

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Then you approach God as if He's truly there and you tell Him you want a relationship with Him. In my experience when you go to Him this way with all of your heart and an 110 percent desire of actually coming in contact with Him something happens. It did for me.

You could have a similar relationship with an inanimate object such as a diary, or a vollyball (castaway's Wilson). If you prayed to your pillow each night and imagined it as being a soul that understands you and listens to you but doesn't speak, but sometimes answers prayers, you could have this same relationship.You would feel the love, you would experience the spirit, you would be convinced that you have a very real relationship. No one would be able to convince you that you are only imagining it.

Edited January 12, 2016 by stevil

[Guest]