Do you feel your personal god experience is evidence? Trying to get a common ground for how to define evidence in this case.

Some philosophers make a distinction between Propositional Knowledge(PK) and Knowledge by Acquaintance(KA).

An example of PK would be, "Sacramento is the capitol of California."

An example of KA would be, "I enjoyed my last visit to Sacramento."

What makes the first example an instance of PK, is that its verification is based on evidence accessible to essentially anyone. The evidence is "public" (so to speak).

What makes the second example an instance of KA, is that its verification is based on evidence known only by the person making the claim. The evidence is "private".

Applying this distinction to Christian Apologetics, Dr. William Lane Craig distinguishes between "Showing that Christianity is true" and "Knowing that Christianity is true."

Knowing that Christianity is true is rooted (at least in part) in a personal experience in which the believer is indwelt by the Holy Ghost. This could be called the "Born Again" experience.

I'm not suggesting that this is where Aaron was planning to go here. Just sharing my personal thoughts on the matter.

The minimal aim of Christian Apologetics is to at show that Christian belief is at least reasonable, even if not proveable.

That's kind of the whole point.

You've not declared your concept of evidence and it's extremely likely that you're using some form of repeated measurability for your definition of evidence, which is exactly why you are unable to accept anything supernatural (given that you've defined supernatural to be something that defies the patterns established by repeated measurability).

That being said, I think my life experiences is evidence for me, but I don't think it qualifies as a shared evidentiary basis (it's not going to be evidence for you). I have life experiences and personal observations that I can't deny which I am also unable to convey to you in full because you weren't there and you're not me. I can acknowledge that my own understanding (ie, memories of experiences) is flawed, but that's also true of all of my experiences. I also don't think that repeated measurability accounts for all events. For example, see the card swap example.

All of you throwing out random numbers isn't going to be common ground. Because you're not grounding those numbers in anything in particular. You already know that you can't even identify your numbers to multiple orders of magnitude, but you want to insist that you have numbers. You really don't. Implicitly, the fact that you think you have numbers says that you're operating from your own personal perspective of evidence. It's not that you don't have one. It's like mine in that it's built on the collection of your life experiences and observations. You're just less in touch with yours than you think, and it's evident based on how you're trying to present yourself. That's a further reason why I don't think you're actually grounded in those numbers beyond the acknowledgement that you've got to use 10 orders of magnitude to convey your understanding. And when I say "not grounded" I'm talking about the disconnect between the numbers and your experiences. What real experiences do you have with 1 in a trillion events? 1 in a million events? Why do you think your intuition is trustworthy with rare events on that scale? Your numbers are simply being made up on the fly. (I will note that maybe you do have enough experiences with events on that scale to have solid intuition on it. I just seriously doubt it.)

So my point still stands, which is that you're chasing your own tail here. You can't even identify an evidentiary basis for intentional action in an extremely basic construct. How do you expect to be convinced about evidence of an intentional action within the complexity of the real universe?

One could say my personal experience (or lack thereof) cuts off my deism to say 0.1% or smaller. Then science hasn't found such "flaws" in the system that would warrant supernatural to exist. Say that is 0.1% too. Then we are at one in a million. Then is the question: why would there be? Which mechanism, what is missing? Put that at one in a million possibility. Then we are at one in a million million. Not to be taken literally, just how my best estimation is born.

I may be missing spirituality, and may be overly critic of my own experiences. Getting some "zen" and maybe "creating" something godlike could be an option? As long as I comfortably can switch back to the "publicly evidenced" world, which is the true rock for me. Stands scrutiny.

Of course, you're making all sorts of assumptions such as the independence of various claims and so forth. And the bolded is definitely highlighting where your concept of evidence is leading you right off the cliff into being meaningless in the conversation.

The plain fact is that you don't understand yourself as well as you think you do, and the longer you keep trying to justify that you're right, the longer it will take for you to do the honest assessment that's missing.

Your example of the card deck with switched cards still being random is interesting. In my world it's slightly going against the universal probability of things, but it could also be interpreted as something personal, not going against the system. Then there is a place for a personal god, for example.

If I'm begin honest right now, I think its 50/50.

If you think you will get me to argue my case, however, you are mistaken.

That's too big of an argument to give away in RGT, methinks.

edit: im not trolling or lying or being deceitful in any way, i promise you. I am being 100% honest.

The bolded is said by liars and non-liars alike.

Is that unusual for you?

60 posts and nobody has said "about 3.50%" yet? I'm disappoint.

OP - for a more serious answer, Planck length is about E-35, Planck volume is about E-105. There are more Planck volumes in a cubic meter than there are cubic meters in the universe. I would go with E-105 for that reason

I was going to answer, "bastard", but I thought it might be the wrong forum.

its very unusual in humans.

The true supernatural things do not exist; it is all fake. The only supernatural stuffs that exists in religion and physics are super-natural as not well enough known yet, but to a few perhaps.

About God, I consider it as the bases for all -- that is what is still usually missed, thinking God is something else; something that it can't be as it doesn't exist, and then it is denied, that their idea of God doesn't exist.

P(supernatural existing) = 1

My evidence is that I see spirit around almost always.

I don't see how their belief in God would be irrelevent. Christians are taught to give God (and Jesus) the glory (the credit) when they succeed in accomplishment. Christians put God first. Therefore, these feats not only should be motivated by and from a belief in God, but also, a belief in God was necessary for certain historical accomplishments made by Christians to be a success.

I don't see how their belief in God would be irrelevent. Christians are taught to give God (and Jesus) the glory (the credit) when they succeed in accomplishment. Christians put God first. Therefore, these feats not only should be motivated by and from a belief in God, but also, a belief in God was necessary for certain historical accomplishments made by Christians to ba success.

P(supernatural existing) = 0

Everything is part of nature, so a supernatural object is tautologically impossible.

I've never heard that before. What is the name of that philosophy?

From C.S. Lewis' book, Miracles

https://christianity.stackexchange.c...s-book-miracle

This is a good jumping off point.

One possibility:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/#NatuCosm
So without further qualification what Piers said would allow for something along the lines of: natural but possibly inconceivable. I don't think most naturalists actually believe that, though. Not that they rule out that possibility but if they believe such, they should at least attempt to justify their belief with an argument.

Nothing changes when credit is given somewhere else, so it is indeed irrelevant. What you are doing here is simply pointing out that religion is important to people, which is another issue entirely.

If we ignore the social aspects, religion is just a series of poor attempts to explain the unknown, organized into a system of beliefs.

In Christianity, taking the credit for doing things can lead to wavering your relationship with God which leads to bad behavior. My insight comes from a personal experience. I had a complete nervous and mental breakdown ten years ago, and have witnessed God, Jesus, Gaurdian Angels, and a Heavenly Mother put everything back to health.

The Bible speaks about taking credit for things and causes people to go astray from God.

8Also, I think that testing the supernatural doesnt make much sense. Measuring things (whether in probability or staistics) is for the natural world. I have heard of ghost hunting before, but I choose to remain neutral on the subject.

The main tenets of pretty much any successful religion is that it is wrong not to believe in said religion, that you need the religion to be moral and that it is sinful to abandon it.

That is again irrelevant, religion is not necessary. It doesn't explain how to to develop medicine, doesn't aid in construction of technology, and describes no way to understand natural phenomena that actually does something.

Religion's role is largely one that explains that it is a very important tool to understand the world, which a lot of religious believers will be very adamant about in discussions like these. Still, it clearly doesn't actually offer understanding.

With the defining of "supernatural" as inappropriate wording to start out of the way, I'll ramble on the question it seems the original post intended to ask:

Is it possible that consciousness may take a previously unidentified form which may or may not necessarily be seen nor directly sensed by humans, relying on observations through senses which humans may or may not have the intelligence to comprehend?

I think the universe is so vast, that the probability of every single combination of the above conditions being satisfied by consciousness existing at this moment is 1.0.

Whether or not such consciousness is local to humans? Certainly seems like it sometimes.