No, it's what another lady said the lady said.
So then, I guess you can't really believe anything unless you hear it with your own ears and you cannot believe someone's experience, unless you experienced it yourself?
Warlock
DELILAH'S STRANGE EXPERIENCE......
by Mary 70 Replies latest jw experiences
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Warlock
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Finally-Free
Even if her description of the event was completely accurate, why would her explanation be better than mine? Any of the explanations I have suggested are of the sort that could actually happen in the world as we know it. People make mistakes and tell lies and hallucinate and get fooled, and stories change in the telling. In the absence of any evidence other than hearsay, why on earth would you simply believe the most preposterous explanation possible when there are so many mundane explanations to choose from?
In other words, why on earth would anyone entertain any possibilities that are not in step with FD's thinking? If something cannot be explained using today's scientific knowledge, it cannot possibly exist!
I occasionally have invisible (to me) beings inside me. They can cause fever, and can even cause me to shit many times a day. If I told someone this a thousand years ago they likely would have called me crazy. Just because something can't be explained using today's scientific knowledge and methods, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. To assume everything in the universe can be explained using our current knowledge is extremely closed minded.
W
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Hortensia
well, I'll take a stab at it. The eyeball is held in place by four optic muscles. They work together to move the eye as needed and also they help to control the shape of the eye. Some people can learn to control the muscles somewhat individually, or maybe it happens under a certain kind of stress. I think that some of the drama in these pentacostal type churches is a learned behavior. You can practice and learn to roll your eyes back in your head. You can see it better if you do a search for optic muscles in google images.
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Leolaia
I was just watching Avril Lavigne on Letterman, and she has black eyes too. No whites. Turns out that she's wearing so much goddamed eyeliner and mascara and her eyelids are painted black that when she just happens to look downward, all you see is black. Just thought that was interesting....
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funkyderek
Buttlight:
Yes, Ive heard that too.......but have also watched shows, "suppose to be true" I cant prove that....of people who were possessed and did speak a different language that was interpreted by a priest.
The fact that it was interpreted by a priest and not a speaker of whatever the language was supposed to be, should tell you something.
Is it true? I dont know, so I cant say its not either.
Just because you don't know for sure doesn't mean you should give equal weight to each possibility. With no evidence in it's favour, it's so unlikely that you can feel quite safe in assuming it's not true (pending, as always, further evidence).
You said there are a dozen other explanations.......I havent seen that.
OK, let's see.
1. Delilah was mistaken and saw something like eyeshadow when the woman blinked.
2. Delilah briefly hallucinated.
3. Delilah imagined the whole event or part of it.
4. Delilah made the whole thing up for $hits and giggles.
5. The woman was playing a practical joke on Delilah
6. The woman had a mutated set of inner eyelids.
7. Mary misunderstood Delilah's account of the events.
8. Mary imagined or hallucinated Delilah telling her the story.
9. Mary made the whole thing up.
10. Somebody hacked into Mary's account and made the story up.
Well, I'm stretching plausibility with some of those but to me they all seem more likely than the "explanation" that a demon did it.
If you think it could have been a demon, then don't forget it could also have been a ghost, a cyborg, an alien, an angel or a holographic projection. If we're not going to rule anything out, then all those have to be considered at least as likely.
Warlock:
Even if her description of the event was completely accurate, why would her explanation be better than mine?
Because she was there, and you were not.
You seem to have completely missed my point. If I saw someone fall to the ground and start shaking and foaming at the mouth, I might, if I was suitably ignorant, think the person was possessed by a demon. If I recounted the event to a doctor, he or she would have a different explanation - namely, that the person was having an epileptic seizure. The mere fact that I witnessed the event and the doctor did not would not automatically make my explanation better.
So then, I guess you can't really believe anything unless you hear it with your own ears and you cannot believe someone's experience, unless you experienced it yourself?
No, it's just that I don't automatically believe everything everybody says no matter how implausible without any evidence.
Finally-Free:
In other words, why on earth would anyone entertain any possibilities that are not in step with FD's thinking? If something cannot be explained using today's scientific knowledge, it cannot possibly exist!
Not at all what I said. But being unable to explain something is no excuse for accepting without question whatever superstitious explanation somebody happens to invent.
I occasionally have invisible (to me) beings inside me. They can cause fever, and can even cause me to shit many times a day. If I told someone this a thousand years ago they likely would have called me crazy. Just because something can't be explained using today's scientific knowledge and methods, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. To assume everything in the universe can be explained using our current knowledge is extremely closed minded.
A thousand years ago, demons would have been said to cause your fever. Supernatural beings are always used in place of an explanation, a practice that has only ever slowed the march of progress.
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kid-A
Every person has a unique position of the eyeballs within the orbits of the skull. Depending upon the natural non-dilated state of the pupil, some individuals naturally have very little "white" sclera showing, and when the pupils are dilated, it can appear as though the entire "visible" portion of the eye, has turned completely dark, depending upon the colour of the individuals pupillary pigmentation. Examine the following photo:
This individual shows very little "white" sclera and from a distance of about a meter, the entire sclera would likely not even be visible. Now, imagine this individual had dark brown, rather than blue pigmentation....the ENTIRE eyeball would appear black to the casual observer. I seriously doubt "Delilah" took a magnifying glass, asked the woman to lean back and then performed a thorough examination of this womans entire eyeball. Rather, it appears she simply observed some poor woman with a rather freakish looking pupillary problem, possibly combined with an infection of the surrounding sclera.
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UnConfused
Mary, Clearly the thing to do is have Delilah introduce you to her - and spring on her you are a JW and that you want to "save" her or something that will get her attention dramatically. Have Delilah record with a camera phone her eyes and hopefully the same thing will happen again.
(i haven't read the whole thread so if this has been suggested I apple-o-jize) -
Mary
UnConfused said: Mary, Clearly the thing to do is have Delilah introduce you to her - and spring on her you are a JW and that you want to "save" her or something that will get her attention dramatically. Have Delilah record with a camera phone her eyes and hopefully the same thing will happen again.
That's what I'm thinking of. I want to see this for myself. Thanks kid-A for your thoughts. What you said is certainly feasible and worth considering. FD, I knew it would only be a matter of time before you suggested that either Delilah and/or I are off our rockers, dillusional, pathological liars or just out to lunch. I think you're a very intelligent guy, but you don't have the answers to everything, anymore than I do. Yes I believe there are demons out there and I believe there are ghosts. However I am willing to look for a plausible explanation before I jump to that conclusion. You, on the other hand, are more fanatical in your believes than any Christian fundy I know, and would rather call people liars rather than admit there are things that happen that might have no scientific explanation. I know kid-A is a skeptic, but at least he doesn't automatically assume that me and someone I've known all my life is a liar or "hallucinating" and has posted something worth considering (thanks kid-A).
Rather than this degenerate any further as posts on the paranormal so often due on here, I say it's time to just put this one to bed. Thank you everyone for your input.
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Warlock
No, it's just that I don't automatically believe everything everybody says no matter how implausible without any evidence.
Derek,
So then, every experience that has ever, and will ever be posted here, or every experience posted here, that was related to the poster by someone else, you automatically don't believe, because you have no evidence that what they are saying is true?
Warlock
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funkyderek
FD, I knew it would only be a matter of time before you suggested that either Delilah and/or I are off our rockers, dillusional, pathological liars or just out to lunch.
Mary, I don't think you're a liar or insane or anything else, I was merely listing possible natural explanations, the same sort that would be considered in a court of law. Which ones are more likely depends on a number of factors that would have to be investigated further.
Someone doesn't need to be "off their rocker" to make a mistake, or even to hallucinate. However, I think the fact that Delilah may have already believed that certain evangelical Christians are possessed by demons caused her to interpret the incident in this way.
You, on the other hand, are more fanatical in your believes than any Christian fundy I know, and would rather call people liars rather than admit there are things that happen that might have no scientific explanation.
Everything has a scientific explanation. Even if it's actually true that the woman was possessed by a demon that caused her eyes to briefly turn black, that's a scientific issue. Science may indeed one day include demons just as it now includes subatomic particles. If we discover that demons actually exist, then they become part of science. However, in the absence of any evidence for their existence, I am off the opinion the most sensible thing to do is not to rush out and create a whole new branch of science, but to use the knowledge we do have of the world to postulate the most likely explanation.
My preferred explanation based on the (incomplete) evidence available to me is that the incident actually happened but Delilah simply mistook a mundane event such as dark eyeshadow or the condition Kid-A described as evidence of demonic possession, probably due to her religious indoctrination. That is of course a tentative hypothesis as there is insufficient evidence to be sure of what really happened.
Warlock:
So then, every experience that has ever, and will ever be posted here, or every experience posted here, that was related to the poster by someone else, you automatically don't believe, because you have no evidence that what they are saying is true?
The less likely a story is, and the less evidence there is for it, the less likely I am to believe it. In this case I have no problem believing that Delilah told Mary this story. That doesn't seem at all unlikely and is so mundane as to not require much evidence. I'll happily take Mary's word for it. I can even believe without any evidence at all that Delilah accurately described what she thought happened. I don't know her at all but very few people would invent such a story. However, the scenario that there was an invisible evil person hiding inside the woman with the apparent intent of getting Delilah to believe a slightly different version of Christianity, which person accidentally revealed its presence on hearing about some silly apocalyptic cult is so horrendously unlikely that before believing it, I would require at least a smidgen of evidence, and I have none. So I am compelled to assume - pending such evidence - that one of the more mundane explanations is more likely to be true, although I don't know which one.