Human activity is driven by thought. As part of our
mental equipment we assess the outcome
of actions before we start, this is one way we evaluate the effectiveness of
what we chose to do. This faculty for foreseeing the future is a component of
all we do in life, work, sport, education, family and business. Any function of
the mind can be developed to a high degree and sometimes to an obsessive or
pathological extent.
Religion, in the absence of scientific evaluation
and the use of logic in the philosophical sense, has forever grasped the words
of visionaries to further their hold over the gullible. Look how the schizophrenic
Joan of Arc was used politically and then consider the Bible writer Paul who said with reference to
his works that he did not know how he wrote, “Whether in the body or not.”
Extreme mental phenomena were powerful exotic
experiences enough to convince the man on the Clapham omnibus that they came
from God.
Our minds are the faulty interpreters of not just
rational and irrational thought they also conflate memory and emotion as well...
and here is where the religious mind is found; drawing comfort from the mental possession
of brain patterns which have their own non-philosophical ‘logic’ which is not
dependant on evidential truth but simply coherent within its own terms of reference
i.e. the unsubstantiated premise that, “there must be a God.”
Therefore I suggest that if one has a highly developed
sense of outcome and future eventuation, occasionally if not frequently success
with ensue. Prophecy is a religious institutionalisation of this very faculty,
spoken of with elevated awe but in real terms normally a failure. But to
suggest that foretelling outcomes accurately originates with divine sponsorship;
ignores the profound workings, biases and the pathology of the human mind.
Not saying you are ‘pathological’ Andrekish!... but I was just having a stab at the subject you brought up. And thanks for your story.
