Premonitions - are they real?

[wheels5894]

With Wayne arguing for the validity of his 'premonitions' I thought it might be helpful to look are some of the evidence for premonitions and to see if the bible has anything to say about them. Wikipedia defines Premonition as (link Below)

In parapsychology, precognition (from the Latin præ-, “before,” + cognitio, “acquiring knowledge”), also called future sight,[1] and second sight,[2][3][4] is a type of extrasensory perception that would involve the acquisition or effect of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information or laws of physics and/or nature.[5][6] A premonition (from the Latin praemon?re) and a presentiment are information about future events that is perceived as emotion.

It needs to involve the person receiving the premonition acquiring future knowledge - i.e. not looking back and saying two things look the same. This is why I don't think what Wayne describes is a premonition but merely the association of things which are, in effect, coincidences. For one thing, it seems odd that god would give him information that he could not use (cinema story).

I found this Wikipedia Article which goes through a whole lot of stuff on the subject. Of course, no one has been able to show that this is even a possibility though there are some suggestions as to how this might work for individuals.

Finally, I found this Question and Answer on the subject of the bible and premonitions. The person who replied seems to think such things are in the past - in bible times - and that god doesn't work like that any more. Handy I thought.

Any thoughts on the above?

[ParkingPlaces]

I knew someone would start a thread on this subject. 


Bet you didn't see that coming...

As a skeptic, I need far more than after-the-fact reporting of such insights. I need someone to walk up to me today and tell me that there is going to be a shooting at a theatre in Aurora on such and such a date and that x number of people will die, etc. Someone yelling "I knew it!" after the fact carries no credibility.

Toss is a semi-disinterested 3rd party (in this case, an inept god that can't get his message out for love nor money), and the premonition becomes even less likely. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say that it is just as unlikely, times two.

Having never seen any evidence of accurate premonitions and having no reason, from a scientific point of view, to think that such things are possible, I dismiss them. If someone like Wayne can tell us today about his or her premonitions for the future, in enough detail to eliminate the generic, and said statement becomes true, then I might be willing to listen to the possibility. Having seen nothing like that in my 3+ decades on the planet, I shall, in the meantime, remain unconvinced.

Note: Loosely knit collections of commonplace words and numbers, like gas and 7, do not a premonition make. Coincidence? If you insist. But premonition? No.

Addendum: When the premonition carries no actual information, only the aforementioned coincidences, then it is not a premonition. It is merely a pattern, given artificial meaning after the fact. The one thing that all humans are good at.

[kaziglu bey]

Personally I don't think that premonitions are real. I think that it can all be reduced to coincidence, hindsight, counting the hits/ignoring the misses, credulity, and the built in nature of our species that pushes us to identify patterns and cause and effect, even in the absence of any real connection.

Wayne's story is hardly a premonition. It doesn't predict a mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora Co. by a white, orange haired psychopath calling himself the Joker, but whose real name is James Holmes. It doesn't describe the type of weapons used, the ammunition, the date, time, location, number killed, number injured, the number of rounds fired, the number of rounds that missed, recovered shell casings, in other words, it gives us absolutely no useful information at all to predict or describe a future event in any detail. It overlooks the fact that tear gas and a gas leak are not, at all, the same thing.

What Wayne has done is take a story, add his pre-concieved notions of self importance and specialness,add on some gullibility, multiplied by credulity, and added his willingness to believe that he has special powers which show that his God is real, and then divided all of that by crazy.

He is willing to believe that by telling us a story about his hesitantly taking his child to see the Batman movie, only to have the theater evacuated due to a gas leak, he has sufficiently demonstrated to us that he has special powers provided by his deity. He is also willing to believe that it is perfectly acceptable for God to put 100's of people at risk of a catastrophic gas explosion as long as it vindicates his own paranoia. Myself, I think that this is supercilious to the extreme, and also sadistic. This sort of self adulation, this "Me! Me! Me!" attitude that Wayne displays, is utterly sickening, and one might wonder if it even conforms to the humble servants most Christians fancy themselves to be.

If Wayne's story was really a "premonition", a person would read it on July 19th, 2012 and think "Oh my God! Tomorrow  there will be a huge shooting rampage at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie in an Aurora Colorado movie theater, 12 people will die, 58 will be injured, there will be tear gas and bullets and sorrow everywhere, quick someone do something!" If Wayne had a premonition, then he is claiming that he knew this horrible massacre would happen, and did nothing to prevent it. Wayne is just as impotent and incompetent and cruel in that case as his alleged God is, and he ought to consider himself as accomplice. If he does not consider himself that, then his story is not a premonition, because it did not predict the event.

Edit: fixed a screwed up sentence.

[keeta]

i don't know how i feel about premonitions exactly. and i don't know if what i've experienced would be considered premonitional or what. but i knew my best friends stalker ex boy friend was going to come for her. i tried giving her my gun 3 days before he killed her. i tried to get her to install a deadbolt at least 2 days before he killed her. i had drills with her children on what to do when he shows up, and we put a phone in their bedroom closet, which is where they were to go when he showed up. and they did, and it saved their lives. i knew he was coming for her. i didn't have an exact date. or time. my daughter was supposed to be with her that day though, and i kept her home instead.

i also have this weird ability to know when people are pregnant before they do...only family and friends thus far, and not ones i see all the time...told my sister in law all 3 times she was pregnant a week before she took a test, without even seeing her for months. i don't know why or how...i just get baby feelings for certain people lol is that a premonition of an upcoming baby..i don't know..

i'm weird. i know this. sometimes though, i just know stuff. i think sometimes that stuff just happens, and i don't think it's alwasy as descriptive as everyone would demand for proof that's what is really going on. i've called the superbowl for like the last 8 years, and i know nothing about football...i pick based off of team color and mascot..so far so good, premonition, or not

[wheels5894]

So your premonitions are more like something one might work out if one sat down and studied the facts carefully. The sub-conscious brain is actually very good at that! This is very different from what Wayne calls premonitions though - what you describe, Keeta, is the sort of thing I would associate with the word - predicting a future event to the extent that you could take action to try and avert it.

[Add Homonym]

i've called the superbowl for like the last 8 years, and i know nothing about football...i pick based off of team color and mascot..so far so good, premonition, or not

Try betting on it, and see if you still have powers.

[bertatberts]

i've called the superbowl for like the last 8 years, and i know nothing about football...i pick based off of team color and mascot..so far so good, premonition, or not

Try betting on it, and see if you still have powers.

I regularly picked the horses for a friend of mine just on using my finger He kept winning with those I had chosen, he even asked me my secret.
I once tried betting on it myself and won nothing.
It was just random luck[1] and coincidence nothing more.

1.	Though I don't believe in luck, we make our own luck. We use terms like unlucky, unfortunate, but these are just to things we can have no control over.

[Quesi]

i don't know how i feel about premonitions exactly. and i don't know if what i've experienced would be considered premonitional or what. but i knew my best friends stalker ex boy friend was going to come for her. i tried giving her my gun 3 days before he killed her. i tried to get her to install a deadbolt at least 2 days before he killed her. i had drills with her children on what to do when he shows up, and we put a phone in their bedroom closet, which is where they were to go when he showed up. and they did, and it saved their lives. i knew he was coming for her. i didn't have an exact date. or time. my daughter was supposed to be with her that day though, and i kept her home instead.

First of all, I am so sorry about the murder of your friend, and the terror that her poor, innocent children went through.  I cannot imagine what their lives will be like.  They will certainly be tortured forever. 

I can't say for sure, but I suspect that you did not have a supernatural premonition.  I suspect that you were very familiar with the situation.  You knew that their relationship had deteriorated, and that he was obsessed and possessive and controlling, and that he wanted to own and control her, and that as she moved out on her own and tried to gain her independence from him, that he would fight back.  That he had no intentions of "letting her go." 

You imagined the worse case scenario.  You had drills with the kids because you knew he was dangerous.  You knew, based on your observations of his behavior, and based on the information provided by your friend, that it was a possibility.  Sadly, your crazy fears were justified.  It was just as bad as you believed it was. 

i also have this weird ability to know when people are pregnant before they do...only family and friends thus far, and not ones i see all the time...told my sister in law all 3 times she was pregnant a week before she took a test, without even seeing her for months. i don't know why or how...i just get baby feelings for certain people lol is that a premonition of an upcoming baby..i don't know..

Cool.  There are a lot of subtle changes in a woman's body when she becomes pregnant.  Me?  I don't notice a thing.  But I know other women (it usually seems to be women) who look at a colleague or a woman across the room, and they know that she is pregnant.  I don't know enough about biology to know that the subtle signs are.  And it is possible that you are not even aware of the signs that you are observing on a conscious level.  A slight change in her complexion.  Perhaps you unconsciously smell, or otherwise perceive the changes in hormones.  Or maybe, when she frowns at her breakfast, and pushes it away, you suspect morning sickness, and make the leap. 

i'm weird. i know this. sometimes though, i just know stuff. i think sometimes that stuff just happens, and i don't think it's alwasy as descriptive as everyone would demand for proof that's what is really going on. i've called the superbowl for like the last 8 years, and i know nothing about football...i pick based off of team color and mascot..so far so good, premonition, or not

We remember when we get things right.  We tend to forget or dismiss our wrong guesses.  I wrongly predicted that the first day of the NYC bus strike (last Wednesday) would be warm and sunny, and that the picketing drivers and the stranded school kids, would enjoy the comfort of nice weather on a tough day.  If I had been right, I could have gloated about my correct prediction.  But I have not told anyone (but this entire forum) about my wrong prediction.  I have lots of correct predictions.  And I remember most of them.  I predicted, of the three charter schools that I applied for when my daughter was entering kindergarten, that we would get into the one that we got into.  I *felt* it.  Before we got the acceptance letter, I imagined her, years later, taking a specific mass transit route to 6th grade, when she would not longer be eligible for school bus services.  I remember riding that route, and imagining my then 4 year old, as a pre-teen, taking that route by herself.  And when we got accepted, I felt as if I had *always known* that she would get in.

But during that same time, I imagined the worse case scenarios.  What if she didn't get into any of them????  Would I pay for private school?  Enroll her in the overcrowded school she was districted for, and watch her dedicate her school hours to test prep rather the education that I believe she deserved?  If that scenario had happened, on a certain level, I think that I would also have felt as if I had *always known."*

[ParkingPlaces]

My father was about to turn 70. I remember getting a terrible feeling that he was going to die, and I wouldn't have him in my life any more.

And he did die Nineteen years later.

Was that a premonition or a recognition of fact?

Like Keeta and the murder, each of us had enough information to be able to conjure up worst-case scenarios. Tragically, and through no fault of her own, hers was more accurate than mine.

Guessing pregnancy? I'm a guy, and I learned ages ago never to ask a woman if she is pregnant. Whether or not she is a girlfriend. But we humans react to various subtle clues that we are not consciously aware of (eye dilation and fuller lips for when sexually attracted, for instance) and I'm assuming that pregnant women exhibit similar clues. They glow, right?

In any case, kcrady has it spot on when we're talking about Wayneonitions. If real, what good are they if there is no information involved. Accurate or otherwise.

[keeta]

i've called the superbowl for like the last 8 years, and i know nothing about football...i pick based off of team color and mascot..so far so good, premonition, or not

Try betting on it, and see if you still have powers.

lol oh my husband and i bet every year...we just never bet cash..heehee!!

[keeta]

as far as the baby predictions go...i don't always see the people in person that i believe to be pregnant...or talked to them in months in some cases, so i had no prior knowledge of any scents or glow or any morning sickness..i txt'd my sister in law that she should probably go buy a test, cause i knew someone was pregnant, and it felt like it was her. and it was. 3 times. didn't see her, as she doesn't live locally, any of the times, but she trusts me as much as a test at this point lol she knows if she get's a txt she's screwed lol
here's a kicker...my daughter also asked me, before i had said a word about my sister in laws pregnancy, came to me and said that she thought her aunt was pregnant...totally outta the blue...freaked me out honestly. i said, why do you think that, and she said she wasn't sure, she just felt like she was pregnant for some reason (my daughter was 13 at the time).
i have also 'called it' a few times in person as well, though i'm not aware of any scent change in pregnant people, or noticed any glow, though there could have been, and i just didn't pick up on it...i'm not one to notice details so much lol

with my bestie, she didn't want to believe anyone was bad, where i had known from a very early age, that bad people were real. i saw signs that i know she didn't. and i pointed them out to her time and time again. i tried to prevent what eventually happened anyway, and failed. i knew he snapped on valentines day, but didn't know when exactly he'd show up, which would be 10 days later. while they were dating, he was 100% the peaceful hippy granola organic type, wouldn't hurt a fly. he  had her duped, but i knew the first time i met him he was evil. i saw it in his eyes. i have an internal good/evil meter that hasn't been wrong ever. he didn't care for me much because i gave her a backbone to stick up to him when things went rocky with them, and reminded her that she deserved better. i explained that we never truly know what someone else is capable of. she just thought he was angry, or upset..and that would be the end of it. but he turned into one of those, if i can't have her, no one will, types.
her kids are with their father, not what she would have wanted, or the kids really, but it's what they got. smart, beautiful girls who got enough from their mommy in the short time they had her, to make them into the fantastic people they are and will one day become. i would have adopted them if i could have.

and i always preface by saying, there's a chance i could be totally wrong...but here's what i'm feelin...and with the pregnancy stuff, it's not like i see a belly and then say, hey, she's probably pregnant...i never ask people when they're due..i tell them to maybe go take a test..lemme know how it goes lol
like i said, i know i'm a weirdo, and i'm not saying i can tell the future or anything, if i'm feeling something, right or wrong, i'll usually tell someone, and say, remember i said this...and when i'm wrong, they remind me of that too lol it's a feeling i get. i can't explain it. i'm not saying i'm doing anything supernaturally or 'calling on spirits' to tell me stuff. i still don't know how i feel about premonitions..

[Karl]

I feel no need to tell nonsense. I do not believe in god or any other deity. Also I am not a member or influenced by any sect or a conspiracy theory follower. Premonitions however might exist, just maybe. Of course it might be coincidental but I have experienced it myself and I told my wife before the event happened. Not often but a few times and the look on her face was memorable as the timing was accurate on the spot. That has nothing to do with believe. It is merely pointing out a fact that my wife can confirm. I cannot see the future and any attempt to do so would be futile. I do not try anyway. It just happened without asking and with 3 events in nearly 50 years it is not frequent.

[bertatberts]

karl. What are those three events so we can critique them thanks.

[Graybeard]

Premonition is a member of the set of foreknowledge. For foreknowledge, of itself, to exist, the future would have to be fixed and time would have to have more dimensions that it presently has.

There would have to be a form of electromagnetic energy that had the ability to travel along this dimension accurately and enter our dimensions. If this happened, we would be able to use instruments to detect it – we do not detect it.

We would also have to have an organ or a dedicated part of an organ to receive the information passed from the future. The brain has been mapped and we don’t appear to have one. I say this as if we did have this organ, then all of us would be receiving premonitions all the time.

Premonitions only seem to be of terrible things, but terrible things are happening all the time. We can say that terrible things will happen all the time in the future.

Let us image the time from now until the year 3013: why aren’t all these terrible things bombarding us with information from the future?

The answer is that none of the biology or physics exist that would allow premonitions to be perceived. Therefore they aren’t, therefore there are no premonitions.

But we hear of people who say they have had premonitions; is what they have had entirely inexplicable? Or were they picking up clues, being worried, and, as we all do in a moment of quietness, have random thoughts that resulted in a scenario similar to the worry? And how many people are on earth? 7 billion – that’s quite a lot of thoughts.

When I worry that my son’s plane will crash or I could call that a ‘premonition’ but if it doesn’t crash – what was happening? I suggest that my worries took form in my mind, but even though they seemed so clear they were not a premonition… unless they came true, in which case, it was…

So ‘premonitions’ is the name for worries that come true; ‘worries’ is the name for those worries that don’t. All premonitions are worries, but not all worries are premonitions, and you only know if it is a premonition after the event – which is not much good.

“The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.”
Francis Bacon 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626

You will get woo-merchants and apologists for superstition and ignorance who explain that “high emotion” events create a “sort of energy.”

You will tell them that this is bullshit and unless they can fully explain, within 2 minutes, the maths and physics behind this, and how they know this, you will dismiss them and their ideas to the bin marked “tin-foil hats.” (Be prepared for, “There are many things we don’t understand!!!” to which your reply is, “Yes, I know but that doesn’t allow you to insert your own flavour of unresearched, out-of-your-arse, madness.”)

[ParkingPlaces]

Well stated, GB. As long as a person doesn't read this one sentence of yours out of context:

The brain has been mapped and we don’t appear to have one.

 

Edit: brainless english fixed

[Anfauglir]

For something to qualify as a genuine psychological premonition, it has to have certain characteristics, IMO.

1) It must be stated well before the fact.  With keeta's pregnancy stories (so far as I've understood them), they are NOT premonitions - she is NOT saying "you will get pregnant two months from now".  They are statements of the present, which don't count (also see 2 below).  And they need to be stated a sufficient time before the fact.  Looking at a teetering pile of crockery and saying "I feel they will fall over" is not a premonition, just an extrapolation of the immediate future that we all can do.  So for something to be a premonition, it needs to be made a signigicant time before the event, so that the immediate chain of logical conclusions would not apply.

2) It has to be well out of the bounds of possibility.  Again, keeta's story of the husband does NOT qualify.  If the guy had been a model father, displaying no signs of violence - but she had STILL felt so strongly he would do harm that she would implement survival plans, then that might be a premonition.  But where there is a high likelihood of something happening, that's not a premonition - that's just "reasonable conclusions".

3) It needs to beat probability.  Calling 8 binary results in a row is NOT prediction - its only a 1 in 256 chance.  If there are 10 million Americans calling Superbowls for 8 years, then forty thousand of them will be just as convinced they have mystical powers.  To be premonitions, it needs to beat significant odds over a long period of time.  Call the superbowl correctly 28 times in a row......and it is STILL statistically likely that at least one American would manage it (1 in 268 million).  All it would mean is that you are the statistically likely single person at one end of the bell curve.

4) It needs to be specific.  Like ParkingPlaces pointed out, it is NOT a prediction that you feel a 70-year old will die "one day".  It needs to give a date, a place, a result.....details.  This ties in with the other points - the more specific you are, the more the odds go up, and the more likely it is to be a prediction.  "Predicting" that there will be a violent incident in a school sometime is not a prediction.  Pointing to a particular school, on a particular date in the future, regarding a particular classroom and weapon....that might qualify.

5) It has to be one of the few guesses made.  The more "predictions" you make, the more will be likely to come true....and the more you can cover up the misses.  Before I will believe a mystical aspect to a prediction, I want to be sure I have FULL details of ALL the predictions that person ever made.  Which means that EVERYTHING needs to be written down, as it happens, in a format that can be checked.  Curiously, very few "psychics" are willing to do that.

So that's my list.  Well into the future, of unlikely nature, of low probability, with a lot of detail, and without a lot of incorrect predictions from the same person.  I've never heard a "prediction" that meets all of those criteria.

[wheels5894]

I couldn't agree more, Anfauglir, these are essential points you make. I have said something like this a time or two to Wayne with his 'premonitions' but he doesn't seem to move from the word even though they are clearly nothing of the kind as the initial stories don't predict anything.

I would point to lotteries where selecting a number of numbers is required. The UK Lottery has a 1 in 14 million chance of getting the correct numbers but most times someone manages it. Even a long shot sometimes happens by chance so predicting something quite unlikely won't necessarily shown any powers beyond chance.

Personally, I have yet to see anything that really counts as a premonition.

[dloubet]

I get the impression that premonitions are not the same as prophesy.

A premonition does not have to actually happen to be considered a hit. One can say they had a premonition that someone would die, convince them to go see a doctor, and find out they would have dropped dead if they hadn't been at the hospital. A premonition seems to include things you can do something about.

Not so with prophesy. It seems that if you have a real prophesy, then what is prophesied to happen, happens regardless of anyone's efforts.

[Anfauglir]

A premonition does not have to actually happen to be considered a hit. One can say they had a premonition that someone would die, convince them to go see a doctor, and find out they would have dropped dead if they hadn't been at the hospital. A premonition seems to include things you can do something about.

Now that doesn't bother me too much.....assuming that there is some way of establishing that the premonition definitely WOULD have come true had not intervention happened (in addition to my 5 points above).

So in the hospital example, I'd be happy to give that the premonition score......IF.....

1) It was documented in advance - "I'm sure I am going to die, so I will be going to the hospital tomorrow".
2) It was outside probablity - "...and I am not in any 'high risk' group for diet, age, whatever."
3) It needs to beat probability - "...and the doctor said that only 1 person in 120 million dies of that condition in the UK each year".
4) It needs to be specific - "...and I knew I would die from a problem with my spleen, and that was EXACTLY where the problem was!"
5) It needs to be one of few guesses made - "....and this was the ONLY time I ever thought I was going to die."

Put ALL of those things together, and I'll accept it as valid premonition even if the doctor then cures you and you don't die. 

[EV]

I'd like to offer a summary of the idea of premonitions coming from Religion. Some may find the following an interesting point regarding religious experience:

If God is interacting directly with Humans, then why have so many people of different faiths claimed to have different experiences of God? For instance, take the example of a Hindu who saw Krishna, and a Christian who saw Mary.

This would indicate that it is purely a cultural phenomenon, rather than a metaphysical one. If God was truly interacting with the world, he would do so in one form, as he is immutable and eternal. If you take a Religious Experience at face value, we have to accept that most people who had them had actually had them. Any arguments for God being Monotheistic go straight out of the window, and either 'God' is a polytheistic and multi-faceted being (disproving Christianity, Islam and Judaism) or there is a mass psychological cultural delusion occurring. People want to see a figure from their faith, so they see a figure from their faith.

Once, I saw a Hypnotist cause somebody to think there was a swarm of killer penguins with jetpacks flying around the room, strafing people with machine guns. He got so panicked that he managed to dive under a desk, start screaming, then eventually set off the buildings fire alarms causing a mass evacuation before the Hypnotist could subdue him and remove the suggestion from his mind.

A religious experience can feel as real as this, however the fact that usually it is only ever of the 'seers' own worldview is very telling indeed of the validity of a religious experience, and the fact that there is a religion involved soothes the seer and reassures them that they are not 'mad'.

Premonitions tend to fall under this category. We only need look at Harold Camping to show that apocalypse predictions that were supposedly 'inspired by God' are a load of bollocks. There have been countless people feeling 'warm and fuzzy' in a church, and fewer people that claim to have visions or converse directly with a being.

However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that people who make premonitions are generally bat-shit crazy. Of course there are a few cases where a religious person makes a premonition that comes true. This is usually either a lucky hit (or coincidence), the 'Shotgun' Technique (spewing out a ton of information, most contradicting, so some of it comes up as right) or was actually predicted directly after the event in question, and then claimed to be before.

[EV]

Oh, and also, I had a premonition this morning that I would be hungry in about 5 hours. So far, I'd be willing to bet my life savings on it.

[Anfauglir]

Once, I saw a Hypnotist cause somebody to think there was a swarm of killer penguins with jetpacks flying around the room, strafing people with machine guns. He got so panicked that he managed to dive under a desk, start screaming, then eventually set off the buildings fire alarms causing a mass evacuation before the Hypnotist could subdue him and remove the suggestion from his mind.

A religious experience can feel as real as this, however the fact that usually it is only ever of the 'seers' own worldview is very telling indeed of the validity of a religious experience, and the fact that there is a religion involved soothes the seer and reassures them that they are not 'mad'.

If you've not seen it, try to find Darren Brown's "Fear and Faith", 2nd episode.  He takes a lifelong staunch atheist working as a stem cell researcher, and in 15 minutes implants enough cues and mental images in her, that when she stood up, she experienced what would be termed a "religious experience" - overwhelming feelings of love and wonder and awe that left her crying and shaking and saying "where has this been all my life"?  She was absolutely, 100% convinced that she had experienced something genuinely supernatural - even despite having been talking for some time to a person she KNEW is a hypnotist and stage magician who has a record of getting things into people's subconsiousness.

Brown quite conclusively proved that it is eminently possible for genuinely and deeply felt experiences to be the result of particular - but entirely man-made - elements in a person's life.  If its possible for a person to be given feelings of that depth, so quickly, while quite aware there may be a "set-up" going on.....then at the very least it casts serious doubt over the "supernatural" element of any similar experiences. 

Like you say, it happens to people of all faiths, of all cultures - if there were indeed just ONE god, then we'd expect to see genuine experiences ONLY for people of that faith.  Since that does NOT happen - and since we KNOW that the experiences can be caused with NO supernatural elements, we are left with just two choices.

1) All (or some) experiences of god X are true, and ALL other experiences of every other faith are false.

or

2) ALL experiences of every faith are false.

Logic pushes us inexorably towards the latter - especially if the god X in question is portrayed as a benelovent god who wants us to reach him: no such god could allow a situation where so many people throughout history would be deluded to such an extent that they would never be able to come to him.

Seriously - watch the program.  Watch the woman's reaction.  There is no doubting at all the strength of the experience for her, or the depth of her reaction.  Have something like that happen to you, and you'd have to be a very particular person NOT to go away convinced that (your culturally conditioned and expected) god had just filled you with his spirit.

Entirely understandable.  But in no way proof that that god exists.

[wheels5894]

Excellent point - I watched that programme and was amazed how little Brown had to do to achieve this 'religious' experience. It should seriously make religious people question those who claim to have had a religious experience as it is, in all probability, something in their own heads.

[DumpsterFire]

Like you say, it happens to people of all faiths, of all cultures - if there were indeed just ONE god, then we'd expect to see genuine experiences ONLY for people of that faith.

Unless he either doesn't play favorites between the different faiths, or is just totally messin' with us! Maybe he has a D-n-D style, 38,000 faced die he rolls every morning to determine which group gets the miracles that day.

[WayneHarropson]

Have I been voted off the island?

[ParkingPlaces]

Wayne

No. A screwup delayed disapproval of your last post. It was just tossed because it was all about you again rather than a part of any discussion we are already having, or want to have with you.

We will watch our end and there should be no further long delays in your posting, but again, you were put in the deep freeze because all you were doing was talking about yourself and your ideas and ignoring our questions and reactions. So I repeat. We are here to have a discussions, not to be talked at. The unapproved post was more of you talking about you (and your view of atheists) and while it was probably worthy of discussion, your refusal to participate in one makes your POV irrelevant, because that is all you are interested in. Respond to some of the things others have said and asked about in this thread and perhaps you will get back in our good graces. At which point you can start a new discussion with the subject matter of the rejected post. Since most of it was from your blog, I know you still have a copy of its salient parts.

I apologize for the delay. It won't happen again. A few hours maybe, because there has to be a mod on board, but not days.

PP

Clarification: Your rejected post would have been fine if you had a track record of discussing your point of view rather than just talking at us. So the post itself wasn't terrible. It is your handling of posts that is the issue. You need to fix your approach to this site before you can get on our good side again.