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Seeing God/Universe I imagine God/Universe in variosu ways at differrent times in my life; 1) a spherical, 2) cluster of toroidal tubes, likend to a 3D prestel, 3) a complex polyhedral with many cleavages/valleys etc The recent-- a year or so ago ---quasi-savant,in England, that can actually communicate what is going on in his head, sees numbers as likened to clouds and he drew pictures of them for scientists. He also molded 3D clay models of them. Then there are those people who have their wires crossed and have synesthesia wherein they smell sound and hear smell or other mixed brain signals. Then there exists those males--- for most part ---that felt they were in a female body all their lives. Well males to do have and X chromosome, but since women produc testerone do they not have an SRY gene somewhere in there two Xx's. Some people have ease of seeing/imaging or hearing music in their heads. Some like rain-man have curse of a photo-graphic memory. In general, I as we get older, younger people become more angelically beautiful looking to us. One of the most interesting side by side photos I ever saw, was of very new born baby that was very wrinkly, next to very old man, and he was as wrinkly as the new born baby so they looked very similar, or at least in the way the photos were presented. Then there is the case ingested substances that effect our perceptions in ways the vary from profound oneness of all/Universe to psychosis, perhaps depending on type or dosage of substance. Biological life is complex with human female being the most complex biological we know to exist in Universe. r6
Well if you start a sentence with "I believe" you really are allowing for other people to think what they want, even if you say, "I believe you don't know what you are talking about." If religious teachers would start every sentence with , "I think", anything they say can be accurate, rather than the mess it is now. But that makes for very uninspiring talks, I guess.
Indeed. But think about it: Do you really want to be inspired? By just anyone who wants to inspire you or just anyone whom they happen to come across? Do you really want your inner faculties to be hijacked like that? I think not. See - people often want to impress others. But barely anyone wants to be impressed, especially not just like that and especially not by strangers.
That's natural, I guess. If I were to tell people 'I just saw a police car pull up outside', hearers would doubtless assume that I was saying that a police car really is out there. It's unlikely that they would assume that I was just reporting a subjective experience, without meaning to imply anything more about the locations of real police cars. Oh, yeah. I will whole-heartedly agree that some of our atheists can be rude as all hell. I'm very interested in, and to a lesser extent respectful of, religious experience. That extends to the religious experiences of people whose religion is different than mine. (That might include everybody.) I'm willing to accept that subjective religious experiences can be very convincing to the person experiencing them. But I'm much more skeptical about their objective epistemological value for the rest of us. Even traditions that place great weight on personal religious experience, as the result of meditation or whatever, emphasize the need for each person to experience it for his/herself.
Typically a claim to have seen an angel is a conversation stopper because noone wants to enable a delusional mental state by even challenging it. Better to just roll your eyes and say, "Ok. Whatever you say."
It depends who you're talking to. The other 88% of the human race who believe in spiritual things will listen intently and then tell you about their own experiences. But be careful who you talk to; the atheists 2% will ridicule you. Then they will go on in some really boring speech about how wonderful and happy there life is.
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