Hope,
As you say, I missed that post. However, having read the first paragraph, I'm not sure that I missed much content.
Well, let’s see…
The reason I said what I said is because that's what I meant.
You meant to say that it was definitely, categorically, unquestionably “God at work” even though the claim could only be one attribution of cause? Really? Whence your cast iron confidence that you could not have been entirely mistaken about that?
For instance, when one has a stroke, 'a little man' doesn't pop up and say - 'you've had a stroke'. Rather, one is aware that something is wrong. In my case, for a number of reasons, 'stroke' was the third option on the list as I'd recently started on a new medication whose side-effects mirrored what I was experiencing.
But what you experienced there was a physiological response (which by your own admission you initially thought to be caused by something other than the actual cause), followed by the identification of the actual cause using the empirical tools of medicine. As anecdotes go, this one pretty much demonstrates the opposite of the point you thought you were making.
Similarly, when trekking through the Himalayas, one doesn't meet 'a little man' who asks you what you think of the views, etc. Its a deep-rooted response to what you are experiencing.
No doubt, but that “deep-rooted response” was an
aesthetic one. So far as I can tell you’re not claiming that the sense of beauty you experienced was an objective fact for everyone else too whether or not they felt the same way.
Now compare that with you claimed fact “God”. Do you see the qualitative difference here?
I realise that you want everything to be clear-cut…
Then you “realise” wrongly – I’m fine with doubt and uncertainty and ambiguity. Why though can’t you say the same when you attribute “God” as the supposedly certain cause of the phenomena you observe?
…provable…
Well, “demonstrable such that the claim can be distinguished from mistake, just guessing etc” yes. Isn’t that a good thing though? After all, don’t you ask for the same thing in response to the claims of Thor-ists, dragonists etc?
Why the double standard?
…would and physical in nature;
Nope.If someone who posits the non-physical could ever define and demonstrate such a thing that would be a fascinating discovery with huge implications. The problem so far at leas though is that all its proponents offer is wishful thinking, which may satisfy them but offers nothing to the rest of us.
I'm afraid that my experience is that life doesn't fit into a neat set of parameters like that. Instead, it is messier, more dynamic, and more fluid.
No doubt, but ignore the problem as you might when you seek to argue for the cause you attribute to those experiences by relying on fallacious reasoning then you leave the rest of us with no choice but to conclude that you’re probably mistaken.
So to re-cap, when you opened with, “I'm not sure that I missed much content” can I politely suggest that you actually missed the content entirely?
