2006-07-21 12:34:53 · 10 answers · asked by Joshua 1 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
colgate: faith is not knowing.
2006-07-21 12:39:47 · update #1
theo: direct revelation from who? How do you know?
2006-07-21 12:47:20 · update #2
I wouldn't want to reduce an experience to a scientific explanation...I've had meaningful spiritual experiences...I'm just not ready to conclude that they came from God.
2006-07-21 16:06:32 · update #3
Indeed. A conviction proves nothing regarding the truth of what one is convinced of. I wish you good luck trying to explain that to believers, however.
"Men of conviction are not worthy of the least consideration in fundamental questions of value and disvalue. Convictions are prisons. [...] Freedom from all kinds of convictions, to be able to see freely, is part of strength... [...] Conversely: the need for faith, for some kind of unconditional Yes and No, this Carlylism, if one will forgive me this word, is a need born of weakness. The man of faith, the "believer" of every kind, is necessarily a dependent man - one who cannot posit himself as an end, one who cannot posit any end at all by himself. The "believer" does not belong to himself, he can only be a means, he must be used up, he requires somebody to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honor to a morality of self-abnegation; everything persuades him in this direction: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every kind of faith is itself an expression of self-abnegation, of self-alienation... If one considers how necessary most people find something regulatory, which will bind them from without and tie them down; how compulsion, slavery in a higher sense, is the sole and ultimate condition under which the more weak-willed human being, woman in particular, can prosper—then one will also understand conviction, "faith." The man of conviction has his backbone in it. Not to see many things, to be impartial at no point, to be party through and through, to have a strict and necessary perspective in all questions of value - this alone makes it possible for this kind of human being to exist at all. But with this they are the opposite, the antagonists, of what is truthful - of truth... The believer is not free to have any conscience at all for questions of "true" and "untrue": to have integrity on this point would at once destroy him."
[Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist(ian), section 54.]
2006-07-21 13:12:12 · answer #1 · answered by sauwelios@yahoo.com 6 · 2⤊ 2⤋
Bc God gave you the brain, the explanation and the knowledge that one uses to explain away transcendental experiences by brain activity.
Remember, even if it is an out of body experience, the vessel (our body) still exhibits some physical xterisitics like recording the experince in the mind. For without the vessel, we do not exist in this dimension.
2006-07-21 19:50:04 · answer #2 · answered by emesco30 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Transcendantal experiences are now explainable with brain activity? Haven't heard of a study that measures the brain activity of a person who is receiving direct revelation from God. That would be a great study.
2006-07-21 19:40:27 · answer #3 · answered by theogodwyn 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are also brain and eye reactions when a guy looks at a beautiful girl and visa verse, but if that really is a loved one I wouldn't dismiss it as a brain spasm
2006-07-21 21:23:41 · answer #4 · answered by namazanyc 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You cannot, under any cicumstances, KNOW there is a God. It is simply, unknowable, that is, knowable in the same way we can know things we can touch, see or smell. The best anyone can say is that they strongly believe there is a God, and they are quite truly, willing to make that statement never having touched, seen or smelled Him.
2006-07-21 23:43:39 · answer #5 · answered by DC 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Explain to me... when in the name of Jesus Christ... deaf ears can hear... the blind can see.... and people with no father can be loved by Jesus Christ our heavenly father.
And explain how in the name of Jesus Christ.... a loaded gun cannot be shot... and in the presence of God, 1000's of people fall flat on their knees and faces.
How can a human being... come up with the very idea of some one so powerful... so aw-inspiring... if a real God did not exists.
2006-07-21 21:35:44 · answer #6 · answered by phitchic989 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Its called Faith
2006-07-21 19:37:48 · answer #7 · answered by Jessica 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
who is this scientist/reseacher who caught a person right smack in the middle of a spiritual ecstacy and conduct tests on him /her ?
i'd like to know before i give an answer.
2006-07-22 06:09:24 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You don't.
Remember that game "Telephone line"? That's what I think of when the bible is mentioned.
2006-07-21 19:45:48 · answer #9 · answered by cribbich2006 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yeah, when your brain is dead, what can you do, GOBLOK?
2006-07-21 19:38:51 · answer #10 · answered by Ch'é'étiin 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋