Did you ever experience Holy Spirit? (page 5)

tetrapod.sapien

fair enough. it's been a ball (this poor thread!). ;)

LittleToe

??
So am I to understand that you don't have evidence to hand?

Upon what did you base your own conclusions, then??

You have stood your ground well, considering you are debating with one who is as mentally and spiritually together as James Thomas but with the debating ability of AlanF with a Christian spirit. I'm glad you didn't get him excited.

LittleToe,

Regarding my comment suggesting that religion was counter productive as to developing true spirituality you said:

It can be a stepping stone.

You are right. My remark was "black and white". I was speaking of my needs only. Most people still need the 'stepping stone' of religion, although I do not believe Jesus intended to establish a stepping stone. He gave us the "Way", the "faith", he was the "reality" and we shouldn't have fallen back into leaning on 'shadows' of that reality again. But most have. Perhaps that is why he himself wondered "when the son of man returns, well he find the faith?"

Keep the faith

Jst2laws

mrsjones5

the holy spirit to me feels like a giggle.

and at times i make myself still and i can feel it...a giggle bubbling up.

Josie

tetrapod.sapien

littletoe,

your assertion is implicit: the supernatural exists. any assertion made by you is under the assumtion that the supernatural exists. The word "supernatural" or "spiritual" hasn't even been defined and the nature of belief in the supernatural has not been described; these must take place before any substantial discussion about the nature of "supernatural" can begin. I have no reason to provide these descriptions - without any beliefs in the supernatural, i have no reason to do so. It must be presumed that this onus rests upon you. The mere mention of one's belief in supernatural serves as an assertion that supernatural exists.

i am rejecting your assertion of supernatural. that's really what this conversation is about. the person rejecting the assertion need not provide anything. so, given that i am in the default position, i do not have to post reams of sources for my lack of belief. however i can say that one should turn to science for answers, and not religion, since science is neutral in evaluating data. science is neutral in evaluating data. the implicit assertion in science is not for the positive or negative, but for the the neutral. therefore, it is not the believers tool, but rather the unbelievers tool. your assertions do not match with the premise of scientific inquiry, but also do not match with the lack of evidence in this case. so do i need to post "evidence" for my assertions of non-belief? for my assertion that science is on the side of neutrality? no i don't.

but since i know that even the above explanation (the second of its kind in this discussion) will not do it for you, here are some pieces of "evidence" that the supernatural does not exist, but is rather a biproduct of our evolved african ape brains. these can be extended to the thread at hand because the thread is about the "experience of holy spirit", which is a supernatural belief:

an intro to magical thinking -- since you sincerely seem to be concerned with "evidence" for the negative, please note the sources.

sources for brain/mind relationship and supernatural belief:

Austin, James. Zen and the Brain. MIT Press, 1998.

Baddeley, Alan. Human Memory: Theory and Practice. Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Carroll, Robert. "Multiple Personality Disorder." Accessed online at the Skeptic's Dictionary,
[http://www.skepdic.com/mpd.html], 22 November 2002, page last modified 22 July 2002.

Choi, Charles. "Brain tumour causes uncontrollable paedophilia." Accessed online at the New Scientist news service,
[http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992943], 2 January 2003, page last modified 21 October 2002.

Damasio, Antonio. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Grosset/Putnam, 1994.

Damasio, Antonio. "Remembering When." Scientific American, September 2002, p. 68-73.

"Facts About Unipolar Depression and Suicide." Accessed online at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention website,
[http://www.afsp.org/about/depresfc.htm], 21 December 2002.

Feinberg, Todd. Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Glausiusz, Josie. "Oh, Yuck! The Biology of Disgust." Discover, December 2002, p. 33-34.

Heilman, Kenneth. Matter of Mind: A Neurologist's View of Brain-Behavior Relationships. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Hock, Roger. Forty Studies That Changed Psychology. Prentice Hall: 2002.

Holmes, Bob. "In Search of God." New Scientist, 21 April 2001, p. 24-28.

Kher, Unmesh. "Ah, the Blue Smell of It!" Time, 21 May 2001, p. 64.

Merkle, Ralph. "Energy Limits to the Computational Power of the Human Brain." Accessed online at
[http://www.merkle.com/brainLimits.html], 16 November 2002.

Miller, Bruce et al. "Neuroanatomy of the self: Evidence from patients with frontotemporal dementia." Neurology 57 (2001): p. 817-821.

The Mystifying Mind. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1991.

Newberg, Andrew and D'Aquili, Eugene. Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. Ballantine, 2001.

Pearson, Helen. "Electrodes trigger out-of-body experience." Accessed online at Nature,
[http://www.nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-8.html], 26 December 2002, page last modified 19 September 2002.

Persinger, Michael. Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. Praeger, 1987.

Piper, August. "Multiple Personality Disorder: Witchcraft Survives in the Twentieth Century." Accessed online at CSICOP,
[http://www.csicop.org/si/9805/witch.html], 22 November 2002.

Ramachandran, Vilayanur and Blakeslee, Sandra. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind.
HarperCollins, 1998.

Sagan, Carl. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine, 1977.

"Schizophrenia." Accessed online at the National Institute of Mental Health website,
[http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/schizoph.htm], 21 December 2002, page last modified 1 June 1999.

Strock, Margaret. "Depression." Accessed online at the National Institute of Mental Health website,
[http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/depression.cfm], 21 December 2002, page last modified 22 May 2002.

"What is fronto-temporal dementia?" Accessed online at the Alzheimer's Society website,
[http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about/info_fronto.html], 30 December 2002, page last modified November 2000.

miscellaneous:

Alternative Realities: The Paranormal, The Mystic and the Transcendent in Human Experience, Leonard George

The Animal Mind, James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould

Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking, Leonard Zusne & Warren H. Jones

Believed-In Imaginings: The Narrative Construction of Reality, Joseph de Rivera and Theodore R. Sarbin, eds.

Believing In Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, Stuart A. Vyse

Body Magic, John Fisher

Controversies In Psychology, Andrew M. Colman, ed.

Creativity: Genius and Other Myths, Robert W. Weisberg

Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human, Paul Bloom

Eyewitness Testimony: Psychological Perspectives, Elizabeth F. Loftus and Gary L. Wells, eds.

Faces In The Clouds: A New Theory of Religion, Stewart Elliott Guthrie

False Memory Syndrome Foundation, (www)

Feet Of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus, Anthony Storr

Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within, Robert A. Baker

House Of Cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth, Robyn M. Dawes

How to Think Straight About Psychology, Keith E. Stanovich

How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, Thomas Gilovich

Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture, Elaine Showalter

I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions, Wendy Kaminer

Irrationality: The Enemy Within, S. Sutherland

Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky, eds.

Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, Tana Dineen

Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts, Ulric Neisser, ed.

The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute, Frederick Crews (and his critics)

Mesmerism And The End Of The Enlightenment, Robert Darnton

Multiple Identities And False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective, Nicholas P. Spanos

The Myth Of Irrationality: The Science of the Mind From Plato to Star Trek, John McCrone

The Myth Of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse, Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham

Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe: Political Extremism in America, John George and Laird Wilcox

No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times, Dorothy Rabinowitz

The Psychology of Anomalous Experience, Graham Reed

The Psychology of Transcendence, Andrew Neher

Religion Explained : The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Pascal Boyer

The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin, Keith E. Stanovich

Smiling Through Tears, Pamela Freyd and Eleanor Goldstein

Testimony: A Philosophical Study, C.A.J. Coady

They Call It Hypnosis, Robert A. Baker

Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science, P.N. Johnson-Laird and P.C. Wason, eds.

Victims Of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives, Mark Pendergrast

Wings Of Illusion: The Origin, Nature, and Future of Paranormal Belief, John F. Schumaker

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, Robert D. Hare

Witness For the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitnesses, and the Expert who Puts Memory on Trial, Elizabeth Loftus and
Katherine Ketcham

from the unbeliever, as illogical as that seems. and i will add that no convincing evidence for any supernatural occurance in the history of man has been forthcoming. you say that you have no desire to prove your subjective experiences. this sounds like solipsism, and this was shown to be absurdly intellectually bankrup centuries ago. so then, i presume that since you have no desire to prove your subjective experiences as true that you do not go around making positive assertions for the like? i hope that inquiring minds go with the natural explanations, no matter how uncomfortable, rather than to persist in delusion. -- tetrapod.sapien

jst2laws

Tetrapod,

I appreciate you impressive list of references and your reasoning. You and I must talk some day about science as it is my favorite subject lately. I too laugh inside when I observe creationist confusing their conviction by faith with knowledge derived by the scientific method.

However, this discussion is not about science or its well established way of knowing. The original question was

Did you ever experience the Holy Spirit

Science, by its well defined method, cannot experience its facts. Science should only observe, analyze, hypothesize, make prediction, experiment and revise it's theories, but it violates its own process by 'experiencing'. This is a different way of knowing, the intuitive way.

We did get off a bet from that thought. I'm with you when it comes to discussing facts, evidence and proves. But there is something besides this process that is called the "spiritual". No one has to believe it or prove it. You just EXPERIENCE it.

Jst2laws

OldSoul

jst2laws: You just EXPERIENCE it.

Very similar to free will. And love. And so many other presently unquantifiable, indescribable things that are so very real.

Respectfully,
OldSoul

jst2laws

Oldsoul,

What are you doing up so late. Go to bed.

Jst2laws

tetrapod.sapien

jst2laws,
yes, it is an intersting topic, and a bit off from the first post in the thread. and thanks for the clarification! i guess littletoe wanted discuss my "experience", which i chalked up to a certain explaination. when he would not leave it at that, but persisted in pigeon-holing me, i responded with the "science" bit. and then the following debate ensued, drifting away from "experience" into eveidence. though, i certainly don't mind debating with littletoe, i respect him. it's fun. my problem is not leaving the inital thread question at a simple "no". ;)

cheerio,
T.S

jst2laws

Tetrapod,

You seem to be a very fair guy. Look forward to more discussions with you, and LittleToe.

Going to bed now, good nite

Jst2laws

Did you ever experience Holy Spirit?

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