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[Fishersalwaysdie]

There is no God as a physical manifestation, those trying to prove there isn't are missing the point, those claiming there's no proof he doesn't are just being pricks.
The real question is whether the Christian morality is good for us, all else is just mental masturbation.

[Rilder]

There is no God as a physical manifestation

Unless he's coming down to shag some mortal wimminz.

[Sowelu]

Okay.  I like where this is going!  I like that list of known facts.  I'm assuming there's polls to back those up?

(On the internet, it's easy to assume that someone is snarky or sarcastic.  I'm actually none of those things.  I DO like this, and I am curious about that data and I'll probably trust it.)

I'd be careful with the "mostly" and "majority" stuff, but it sounds like you're already being somewhat careful with that.  It's very possible that there are multiple reasons for people to experience this stuff--it may very well all be different forms of escapism/hallucination/deception, all caused by different reasons, but it could also be caused by something more legit--in a small frequency, compared to all the other noise.

It's always going to be messy.  "God did it" is never a short and neat explanation once you pile in everyone else saying "Ooh me too me too!".  I do think the most interesting cases are people who don't fit the profile at all.  I think there was some high profile sci-fi author recently, who went from hardcore atheist to suddenly religious?  Of course, being a sci-fi author kinda helps, and so does the sudden illness he was also struck with...so, hardships, I guess.  I need to dig up more details.

Anyway, you've swung me over to your side, more or less.  I can accept that the only valid explanation for society, by and large, is the scientific and natural one.

But I wonder what reaction you would expect from a scientist who got hit by (got struck by, a smooth diety)...uh...I mean.  What reaction would you expect from a scientist who experienced one of these supposed-divine...things?  What advice would you give to them?  How should someone attempt to study an experience that happens to them personally, or do they become biased?

[MrWiggles]

Well, there are polls showing that religious person are more likly to have god talk to them. And there are polls showing that education level affect religious belief. And there are polls showing education level is attached to money being earned yearly. I admit, that I read these some years ago, the most recent was the religion to education one. It might take me a while to foster them.

But yea, I was being careful with the term majority. There are and always will be exceptions to the group. These are expected. The extreme can be ignored for an explanation of the majority. 

As for scientist, asking me. I would be deeply embarrassed. Ask him what his intellectual honest requires him to do. And depending on the severity, possible psychological help.

[Sordid]

This isn't even a semantics argument.  No, it isn't possible.  Quantum effects maybe tipping over a can of beer once in the entire lifetime of the universe...maybe.  Just, just maybe.

But transformation.  No.  That's not possible.  In all universes that may have existed with our laws of physics, no.  Gotta draw the line somewhere for the sake of your sanity.

Far, far below the realms of probability defined by 10^-300, there lies a place where you just don't even freaking bother.

Actually no, you don't have to draw the line and you do have to bother, otherwise the meaning of the words "possible" and "probable" is lost.

[MrWiggles]

How would you study a personal revelation claim?

Sociology and psychology are my weaker subjects. Anybody else have any thought? Psy. Undergrad?

Maybe in a similar vain on the group that studying why haunted houses appear to be haunted?

I honestly don't know.

[Yanlin]

You do realize that people see what they want to see?

You know who doesn't see UFOs? Astronomers and aviation experts.

You know who doesn't see magic? Rational people.

You know who doesn't see god? People who don't believe in him at all.

Remember, human testimony is NOT evidence. People lie. For different reasons.

[Sowelu]

You do realize that people see what they want to see?

You know who doesn't see UFOs? Astronomers and aviation experts.

You know who doesn't see magic? Rational people.

You know who doesn't see god? People who don't believe in him at all.

This isn't true in all cases, and it goes both ways.  There's people who don't see X that aren't in group Y, and there's people who are in group X that are also in group Y.  Plenty of people do see things that don't jive with their preconceived notions, and just calling them liars about their preconceived notions is kind of asinine.

I'm still interested in how you'd study a personal revelation claim myself.  I certainly don't have any idea how the heck you'd do it.

[Sordid]

I'm still interested in how you'd study a personal revelation claim myself.  I certainly don't have any idea how the heck you'd do it.

I can't answer for others, but I would probably start by seeing a psychiatrist, since hearing voices and having religious visions are known symptoms of mental illness.

[Yanlin]

You do realize that people see what they want to see?

You know who doesn't see UFOs? Astronomers and aviation experts.

You know who doesn't see magic? Rational people.

You know who doesn't see god? People who don't believe in him at all.

This isn't true in all cases, and it goes both ways.  There's people who don't see X that aren't in group Y, and there's people who are in group X that are also in group Y.  Plenty of people do see things that don't jive with their preconceived notions, and just calling them liars about their preconceived notions is kind of asinine.

I'm still interested in how you'd study a personal revelation claim myself.  I certainly don't have any idea how the heck you'd do it.

I meant the REALLY top tier ones. Like Stephan hawking as an example for rational people and the top ranking NASA scientists as the example of astronomers. Something along those lines. The lower tier ones can make spottings. But far less than ordinary people.

Think of it this way. If there's a UFO in the sky, how come only a few people saw it? Or hell, just one? You know what they say about how easy it is to score in college? It's like walking in a dark forest blind. Eventually you hit a tree.

As for studying revelation claims, you can do that by replicating them. Replicate the results. As we learn more about neurology, we can make the brain have a vision. Now imagine the impact this would have on the entertainment industry...

[Sowelu]

Eh, just as the poor and downtrodden lean towards overreporting religious incidents, I'd expect people with a lot of scientific rep to underreport them, at least just keep them to themselves.  The REALLY top tier ones have so much to lose that they are outliers anyway...They're kind of useless as test cases because they're such unique cases.  If they underreported, they're hiding something, if they overreported, they're attention whores, etc.  Too small a sample size.

I'm still tempted to think that a divine force, if it existed, would be capable of bypassing neurology and hitting the consciousness directly--if a distinct consciousness even existed...  Though you certainly can't go wrong by studying neurology a heck of a lot more, hooking up people to electrodes and trying to measure what happens during spontaneous incidents.  All I've ever heard of so far is that we can -create- religious experiences in people by mucking with electromagnetics, but I don't know if we've ever measured a spontaneous one.  We know that "A" happens in some people spontaneously, and that "B" causes "A", but we don't entirely know if all "A" are caused by "B", and we don't know for sure that it's not really "A-prime" instead.  More study!

I think I need to drop that whole 'separating consciousness from neurology' thing, I suppose.  Anything you experience is going to have neurologically-measurable effects, even if it somehow originated in some other weird place.  So you look for effects with a neurologically unfamiliar cause.

Possibly God would come out in pure statistics, along the lines of "You had a really weird neurochemical coincidence, and it seems to happen a lot more often than we have any explanation for, even when we drill down to the quantum level".  Would that be sufficient evidence?

[MrWiggles]

Well, just to hammer in, you can't affect the consciousness mind without affecting the physical mind. Duality is a dead concept. If God can affect conciseness, he will do so by affecting the physical mind.

As for god being proven with statical anomaly, possibly. Though Science could only say there is an unknown force causing these neurological event.

The issue with God, as it has been brought up before, is that it lacks definition. It also lacks a scientific one. There no operational definition of god. It make it hard and impossible to claim actions are of god.

Until a falsifyable model of God can be presented, then Occam Razor tells us a natural explanation is still preferable as it has the least assumptions.
Well, as Phil Plait has stated, much better then I could, is that UFO are real, then those which are in the sky most often, or watching the sky should see most of them. These group of persons, aviationist, and astronomers (professional and amateur alike), are knowledgeable of the artifacts in the sky. Therefore they would recognized unknown objects more readily then a lay person.

What we do see, are a small fraction of aviationist, and astronomers reporting unknowns as aliens. Which are contradicting themselves. (I don't know what this is, there I know what it is.) This is expected. You'll get extreme in any group. But the majority aren't seeing aliens. Who do see aliens are those who are undereducated in astronomy, optics and the atmosphere. The group who are talking out of their asses. You'll see them make claims about speed, size, and height when they have no sense of scale. (This is of course speaking to just spotters, those claiming encounters of the third kind, have a different list of explanations). And most of these group never really gave serious thought to the UFO claim, or already believed that UFO visiting us was probable. They're more incline to say Aliens! Instead of 'Atmospheric Optical Refraction caused by difference in mostiture and density!'

And something very similar can be said of those who say they have experience god. They are the one more incline to think that God will do this, and the one undereducated in paradolia, and how the brian play tricks on itself.  We do see supposed HARDCORE atheist (the one of celebrity, can't seem to demonstrate this fact) scientist becoming religious. Though honesty, most who claim a higher education are fucking liars. Such as Kent Hovid, so forth.

[Sowelu]

Well, just to hammer in, you can't affect the consciousness mind without affecting the physical mind. Duality is a dead concept. If God can affect conciseness, he will do so by affecting the physical mind.

As for god being proven with statical anomaly, possibly. Though Science could only say there is an unknown force causing these neurological event.

The issue with God, as it has been brought up before, is that it lacks definition. It also lacks a scientific one. There no operational definition of god. It make it hard and impossible to claim actions are of god.

Until a falsifyable model of God can be presented, then Occam Razor tells us a natural explanation is still preferable as it has the least assumptions.

I'm okay with this, with the caveat that "proving the existence of God" would be unnecessary to me if you could get "proving that there is an inordinate number of hallucinations of burning bushes, etc, that can be physically proven to only occur through random chance at one-in-a-hojillion odds" or etc.  If you could prove that SOMEthing is talking directly to people through a means we can't fathom, well, I'm sure science will have a blast continuing to figure out what it is, but at that point I'd be happy to say "Who cares if he's omnipotent or omniscient, someone is up there, precise definition unimportant".

[LegoLord]

Martin Luther King, Jr., was both quite intelligent and religious.  He hated the fundamentalist form of Christianity, though, which is what he was brought up with and what most of the atheists here have been using against religion.  He was himself very close to atheism until the concept of non-fundamentalist religion was introduced to him.

[Sordid]

Though honesty, most who claim a higher education are fucking liars. Such as Kent Hovid, so forth.

Oh yeah. I just recently downloaded a debate between Hitchens and Frank Turek, the latter being a doctor of apologetics. Say what?

Martin Luther King, Jr., was both quite intelligent and religious.  He hated the fundamentalist form of Christianity, though, which is what he was brought up with and what most of the atheists here have been using against religion. He was himself very close to atheism until the concept of non-fundamentalist religion was introduced to him.

You don't need fundamentalism to reject religion. The God of the moderately religious is supported by just as little evidence as the one of the fanatics.