Force theory

Hi Peter,

You raise a valid point also, how can the scientific method be used to explain individual and interpersonal occurrences? That is a question I have as well. We know spirituality is unique to every individual and presents itself to each individual in a unique way. How then can science be used to create a kind of global consensus in this instance?

Many others have written about the unique experiences they have had. The point I think is quite interesting is, in court we are happy to accept individual testimony, but when using the scientific method, the sheer number of experiences individuals have had hold next to no evidential value to many.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: If I may present a couple arguments here, how do we know that 2+2=4?

We know that 2+2=4 because that’s what we decided it means. 2 and 4 do not exist, meaning they are not real. We did not discover them, we invented them. They are simply symbols we made up to represent what we observe about reality.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: Why do we believe that the sky and water are blue? Are they both not black the deeper you go?

No they are not black. They are actually white. We are not observing the color of the object but of the photons in the visible light spectrum that the object reflects back to our eyes. The sky is blue because it absorbs all colors of that spectrum except one, the color blue, which it reflects back to us and we perceive with our eyes. We know this because of science – a process in which we can test and reliably reproduce consistent results about the nature of our reality.

And yes, while it is true that we can never know anything with absolute certainty, we must rely on this process to arrive at the best answer possible and reject all others until they are proven though this process.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: So true it is with faith, the fundamental part of discovery.

Faith is not a fundamental part of discovery. Observation and hypothesis proven though experimentation is. Faith is actually an irrational process to arrive at any form of knowledge. I could have faith that there is an automobile in my garage and I could also have faith that I have an invisible unicorn in my garage. Using this process it’s easy to see that either conclusion could be supported by faith but only one is provable to be true or not true.

I can prove that an automobile exists in my garage but I can’t prove the existence of an invisible unicorn. Therefore I must reject the claim that the unicorn exists until such time as I can prove its existence. This is also not to say it’s impossible for that unicorn to exist, only that it’s improbable (not proven) to exist and so the default position of skepticism must be taken in order to remain rational.

Same goes for your mention of psychics. No psychic has even been shown to possess any sort of supernatural power under laboratory conditions. Therefore we must conclude they are all fakes until such time as one is proven to be real. Something that has not happened yet in hundreds of experiments over many, many decades. This pattern begins to show that it’s more and more improbable that such a hypothesis as psychic ability exists. Not that it can’t exist, just that it’s highly unlikely.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: Can that experience [shadow people or the duckling] be scientifically explained? Was I acting in a way that is defined by science? I have plenty of similar stories of events similar to these that I just simply can not explain

Actually yes it can. It can be explained by imagination, hallucination or coincidence. These are much more plausible and simple explanations according to Occam’s Razor than the idea there is some undetectable, all encompassing, supernatural force at work that we can tune into that caused these incidents. It’s not the explanation we want to hear but it’s the explanation the evidence supports and therefore any rational person would be forced to accept it.

However I agree that subjective experience is also a factor and people experience things all the time they cannot readily explain. But instead of inventing an elaborate conclusion not in evidence why can’t we just say, “I don’t know”? Say you had this intuition that the baby ducky was drowning and you went and saved it. An amazing experience that you can’t explain right?

But why do you have to explain it? It’s a compulsion for humans to do this because we are pattern recognizing creatures and we are desperate to come up with elaborate explanations not in evidence to fill our gaps in knowledge. In ancient times it’s the reason Gods were invented. But we need to resist this urge. Instead remain curious about things we can’t explain and form a hypothesis about it and then test that hypothesis to see if it’s true or not. If you can prove its true you have found a truth but if you can’t then it remains a part of a simpler explanation or just a mystery until more evidence is found to support or disprove the hypothesis. This is the only true path to knowledge. It is a rigorous and slow moving process but it is the only effective one we have.



(Just for clarification, when I say irrational I am not intending to call anyone crazy or insane. I am using rational in a scientific context meaning using the rules of logic to come to a verifiable conclusion versus bypassing those rules to jump to illogical conclusions not in evidence.)

No offense but most of the most of the posts you submit when it comes to this topic are "I don't agree with you because I say so and won't bother to explain why"

Yabuturtle wrote: No offense but most of the most of the posts you submit when it comes to this topic are "I don't agree with you because I say so and won't bother to explain why"

What did you feel I didnt explain?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: If I may present a couple arguments here, how do we know that 2+2=4?

We know that 2+2=4 because that’s what we decided it means. 2 and 4 do not exist, meaning they are not real. We did not discover them, we invented them. They are simply symbols we made up to represent what we observe about reality.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: Why do we believe that the sky and water are blue? Are they both not black the deeper you go?

No they are not black. They are actually white. We are not observing the color of the object but of the photons in the visible light spectrum that the object reflects back to our eyes. The sky is blue because it absorbs all colors of that spectrum except one, the color blue, which it reflects back to us and we perceive with our eyes. We know this because of science – a process in which we can test and reliably reproduce consistent results about the nature of our reality.

And yes, while it is true that we can never know anything with absolute certainty, we must rely on this process to arrive at the best answer possible and reject all others until they are proven though this process.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: So true it is with faith, the fundamental part of discovery.

Faith is not a fundamental part of discovery. Observation and hypothesis proven though experimentation is. Faith is actually an irrational process to arrive at any form of knowledge. I could have faith that there is an automobile in my garage and I could also have faith that I have an invisible unicorn in my garage. Using this process it’s easy to see that either conclusion could be supported by faith but only one is provable to be true or not true.

I can prove that an automobile exists in my garage but I can’t prove the existence of an invisible unicorn. Therefore I must reject the claim that the unicorn exists until such time as I can prove its existence. This is also not to say it’s impossible for that unicorn to exist, only that it’s improbable (not proven) to exist and so the default position of skepticism must be taken in order to remain rational.

Same goes for your mention of psychics. No psychic has even been shown to possess any sort of supernatural power under laboratory conditions. Therefore we must conclude they are all fakes until such time as one is proven to be real. Something that has not happened yet in hundreds of experiments over many, many decades. This pattern begins to show that it’s more and more improbable that such a hypothesis as psychic ability exists. Not that it can’t exist, just that it’s highly unlikely.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: Can that experience [shadow people or the duckling] be scientifically explained? Was I acting in a way that is defined by science? I have plenty of similar stories of events similar to these that I just simply can not explain

Actually yes it can. It can be explained by imagination, hallucination or coincidence. These are much more plausible and simple explanations according to Occam’s Razor than the idea there is some undetectable, all encompassing, supernatural force at work that we can tune into that caused these incidents. It’s not the explanation we want to hear but it’s the explanation the evidence supports and therefore any rational person would be forced to accept it.

However I agree that subjective experience is also a factor and people experience things all the time they cannot readily explain. But instead of inventing an elaborate conclusion not in evidence why can’t we just say, “I don’t know”? Say you had this intuition that the baby ducky was drowning and you went and saved it. An amazing experience that you can’t explain right?

But why do you have to explain it? It’s a compulsion for humans to do this because we are pattern recognizing creatures and we are desperate to come up with elaborate explanations not in evidence to fill our gaps in knowledge. In ancient times it’s the reason Gods were invented. But we need to resist this urge. Instead remain curious about things we can’t explain and form a hypothesis about it and then test that hypothesis to see if it’s true or not. If you can prove its true you have found a truth but if you can’t then it remains a part of a simpler explanation or just a mystery until more evidence is found to support or disprove the hypothesis. This is the only true path to knowledge. It is a rigorous and slow moving process but it is the only effective one we have.



(Just for clarification, when I say irrational I am not intending to call anyone crazy or insane. I am using rational in a scientific context meaning using the rules of logic to come to a verifiable conclusion versus bypassing those rules to jump to illogical conclusions not in evidence.)

Yet you did just call me irrational since I believe these to be incidents of more than just mere coincidence, hallucination or my imagination running away with itself. Not that I believe that you mean to call me irrational but that is in fact what you are saying by trumping my knowledge of my experiences. I did not have any intuition that there was a baby duck drowning, I just know that I needed to go check and find out what I was being called to do.

Some more fuel to this fire, I am constantly plagued by occurrences of dejavu. I have had multiple dreams where I am an observer in a situation where later I actually find myself to be in. For instance, before I ever met my first girlfriend, I had a dream where I was at my cousins house shooting hoops with my best friend, my cousin and this girl. In my dream I was observing this interaction from the street as if I was just passing by. There is inevitably always something that sparks my memory of the dream I had and I am able to figure out that this is such an event. It was almost a year after I met my cousin's friend that we were out in front of her house shooting hoops with my best friend that I realized that I had seen that exact event occur before, though this was the first time, and only time we ever did this.

Is there some rational reason for this kind of event? I have many irrational unexplainable occurrences throughout my lifetime. I personally enjoy finding rational and scientific answers to things and I would never presume that I know the answer to the universe based on my experiences. What I do know is that my experiences have happened, and I will likely have more experiences to come in the future. I know myself to be a rational thinker and have no need to make up things to fill any gaps in my knowledge base.

I'm slightly confused at your last comment, "But why do you have to explain it?" when you state earlier, "we must rely on this process to arrive at the best answer possible and reject all others until they are proven though this process." Why do we have to explain something when we can't prove it, there fore we have to reject it? I cannot reject what I know has occurred, therefore I should have a need to explain it, which should lead me to scientifically test and research it and question with an open mind, which you also suggest, confusing me more.

Faith is a fundamental part of discovery, when you believe in something, it initiates our exploration to discover the cause of it. Without faith that something could be, there would be no reason to try and explain it, therefore no reason to explore, grow, and advance. We invent symbols, we see colors that we identify with, we can read and write, we have creativity all because we have a faith that we can do something, so we develop it until we know OUR truth of it. Science is simply the way of explaining that which we have faith is possible. Once we have explained something through science, it doesn't stop our faith that it is true. And just because we cannot explain something right now does not mean that we are not taking a scientific approach to it trying to prove or disprove what we currently believe.

Science has jumped leaps and bounds in the last 100 years alone, yet we still continue to come up with more hypothesizes and theories. We continue to attempt to disprove current known data as possibly flawed in some manner. Having faith that you have a car in your garage does not prove that you do, nor will you find one in your garage just because you have faith it is there. You most likely have faith that you have a car in your garage because you know that you own a car and that is where you put it, but that does not mean it IS there. Perhaps someone has stolen your car, but you have not yet discovered this so you still hold to your belief that your car is in your garage. Is this an irrational thought? Your experience tells you that your car is there because that is where you park it and the last place you saw it, but are you truly certain it is there? No you have to reprove this to yourself by checking your answers every day. You are ready to head to work so you check your faith and belief that your car is in your garage by actually going and checking. If you go out and find that your car is not there does that mean that you have to reject your faith that it once was? Maybe it is just invisible like the unicorn you keep there? What if, when you call the cops to report that your car was stolen that they rejected your account because you cannot prove to them that it was once there? You don't have the car to show them that it is in fact real so therefore they can simply dismiss your claim that it actually does exist, at least until you can prove to them that you do have it.

No the police have to believe your initial claim and look into the matter themselves to prove or disprove your claim. Now what if you truly had a unicorn in your garage and one day you go out and find that it is missing? How would your report to the police be perceived? Should they simply dismiss your claim on the basis that it has never been proven before, or should they conduct themselves in the same way they would with your car? What would it mean WHEN they find your unicorn eating apples from an orchard? Scientist believe there are many species of animals that have not yet been discovered here on the earth, just because you found a unicorn but never told anyone about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that it hasn't been proven to exist. I don't think we should ever just dismiss a claim based on any rationality we want to place on it. What we need to be is the police in the matter and find out for ourselves what the validity of the claim is, but recognize that that validity only applies to us, and only at that current moment.

Yabuturtle wrote: No offense but most of the most of the posts you submit when it comes to this topic are "I don't agree with you because I say so and won't bother to explain why"

No Kyrin does explain the point of view they are perceiving as correct. Just cause we don't agree with what is said doesn't mean its not explained.

Jp1887 wrote: Hi Peter,

You raise a valid point also, how can the scientific method be used to explain individual and interpersonal occurrences? That is a question I have as well. We know spirituality is unique to every individual and presents itself to each individual in a unique way. How then can science be used to create a kind of global consensus in this instance?

Many others have written about the unique experiences they have had. The point I think is quite interesting is, in court we are happy to accept individual testimony, but when using the scientific method, the sheer number of experiences individuals have had hold next to no evidential value to many.

One thing that I have to say is that I don't need to prove to you or anyone else that what I know to be truth is THE TRUTH. As a recruiter for the Army I had a young man and young woman come to me to inquire about the service. The young man had been discharged from the Army during basic training on a failure to adapt. He was attempting to talk his sister out of looking into the service based on his perception of it. What I did when I talked to this couple was address his concerns right away by stating, "I can sit here and tell you all the great experiences I have had in the Army and not expose you to any of the hard times I have dealt with just to convince you to join. But it doesn't matter what I experienced, or what your brother experienced, because you are a completely different individual and you will have your own unique experiences that will be either good or bad." That young lady is now having her own experiences and making her own decisions about the truth of the Army. Nothing I told her had to be the truth, what she really wanted to do was find out for herself.

I will argue the statement, "You are free to do what you want." I do believe we are free to make our own decisions but not free to do what ever we want. I believe that we are free to think however we want but cannot act on every thought we have. I believe that we are free to believe whatever we want, but that does not make it true to everyone. The point of a collective church such as this is to present the ideas we have, our experiences, and the truths that we have learned for ourselves, so that others can learn from these to be able to make their own choices as to what they do from there.

What I present in these forums, I will never expect another to take as gospel or truth, I would hope that they search for themselves based on what I have expressed here and develop their own truths. Not everything is certain, not everything is known. What we know to be real can easily be dismissed by another as total fabrication although they have no proof one way or the other. Acceptance of all our differences, including views, theories, or beliefs, is what makes us a community, and friends.

We've hit on a common occurrence in argument/debate. Not just here, but everywhere. Kyrin is operating under the very specific rules of the scientific method. It relies heavily on logic, proven facts and evidence in order to find truth. By definition, the scientific method rejects any hypothesis that cannot be tested in a controlled environment and have the results duplicated.

This doesn't mean Kyrin is saying anyone is wrong, but instead that the phenomenon described are not easily testable under controlled conditions and therefore cannot be proven by scientific method. Since this is the best method we have for verifying scientific truths, it is the one we use most often.

On the other side is the question of faith, belief, or experience. Someone who experiences a psychic vision or dejavu may absolutely believe it is real because they experienced it themselves. It may actually be real, but with no way to replicate it, we have to take the person's word. As we see in legal cases all the time, two different people can experience the exact same event in different ways and their testimony will be vastly different. Both believe their version is true. The best we can do is look for evidence that corroborates one story or the other.

What I find most fascinating is that some of the most brilliant scientists in history still have room left for faith in a greater power. Despite their reliance on the scientific method and mathematics to prove their theories, they also continue to question the universe around them. The more they question and the more they learn, the more amazing the universe becomes. Imagine being the first person to prove that everything is made from atoms. It is a scientific discovery, but it also makes us wonder at the complexity of the world and how it could possibly have come to be without a greater power having a hand in it. Or imagine being the first astronaut to view Earth from the surface of the moon. Scientifically, we understand the distance involved and the way light and shadow works, so we understand why the Earth would look the way it does, but emotionally, that astronaut could be overcome with the thought of how tiny we are in relation to the universe. It could cause them to rethink their entire life and possibly explore religion. The experience may actually cause them to feel closer to God.

This is why I happen to believe in the Force. For me, it serves both purposes. It may be something we can someday prove exists by using the scientific method and new technology, or it can act as the catch-all explanation for phenomenon that are just too amazing for me to wrap my head around.

EDIT: I should also add that the word "truth" can mean different things. We can be speaking of an objective truth such as "the Earth is a sphere", or a subjective truth such as "murder is wrong". The scientific method seeks objective truths. Ethics and theology seek subjective truths.

@ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ,
I apologize if you perceived me as calling you irrational. That was not my intent and the very reason I put the qualifier. I meant that jumping to conclusions without evidence is irrational. In my example, believing I have a unicorn in my garage based on faith but without evidence is an irrational conclusion.

You actually explain your own dream experience in your explanation - Dejavu. The sensation that you have experienced something before. This is a result of good memory recall of the individual and making associations where they would otherwise not be. Dreams in particular are notorious for being subject to revision after the fact.

I dont want to invalidate your experiences because I find value in those sorts of experiences just as much as anyone else. The mysteries of the universe are vast and I love to explore them just as much as anyone else. If I did not I would not be here. However I also just cant accept the existence of something if I am just not convinced it exists. So the rest of this post is my opinion and not meant to say anyone else is wrong in any conclusion they may have. Its just my attempt to maybe provide a different point of view on a subject. For me the pursuit of truth is my paramount goal and what I describe below is my process to achieve that.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: I'm slightly confused at your last comment, "But why do you have to explain it?" when you state earlier, "we must rely on this process to arrive at the best answer possible and reject all others until they are proven though this process." Why do we have to explain something when we can't prove it, there fore we have to reject it? I cannot reject what I know has occurred, therefore I should have a need to explain it, which should lead me to scientifically test and research it and question with an open mind, which you also suggest, confusing me more.

Sorry if I was not clear here. It’s not the experience that is rejected, it’s the conclusion as to the cause of the experience that is rejected. This means that not every experience will have a readymade explanation. For instance you see a “shadow person”. The experience is real, but what is its explanation? If we don’t know we must form a set of objective hypothesis to explain it.

Two possibilities may exist. That it was imagination or that it was a supernatural spirit. Well in testing these we have evidence that the brain does amazing things to play tricks on us. That has easily been reproducibly proven. But do we have any objective reproducible evidence of supernatural entities? In all the testing that has been done no reliable evidence has ever been found.

Therefore, only one rational conclusion can be reached. The idea that it was our imagination fooling is a viable one but the idea that is was supernatural event must be rejected as not viable. This is not to say the supernatural explanation is impossible, just that it’s not a currently rational conclusion to come to as an explanation because no evidence exists for its viability.

This is also were this process builds upon itself. It never rejects anything as impossible, instead it only accepts things that are proven possible. (This is the same innocent until proven guilty concept) As new things are proven possible they are accepted into the belief system.

And once again, faith does not come into this process. Instead it is observation that is a fundamental part of discovery. We observe something and we form ideas about its cause. We then test those ideas and accept those we can prove. We never have faith those ideas are viable though until they can be proven to be viable.

As for my unicorn and my car. You are right, I don’t absolutely ever know my car is in the garage until I prove it. However I also don’t have faith it is in the garage. Instead I have a reasonable expectation that it is in the garage based on evidence. When that evidence fails me because a bad guy stole it then I call the cops to come investigate. And guess what the first thing I have to do is? Prove to them I own a car!! I do that with pictures of my car, and sales receipts showing I bought it, and registrations and titles and insurance and testimony from my spouse that all prove I own a car.

I can’t do that with the unicorn because there are no skittle poops on the floor and no hoof prints in the mud and no clip clops of hooves and no whinnies from invisible sources. I have no proof an invisible unicorn exists so I cannot believe it does.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: Science has jumped leaps and bounds in the last 100 years alone, yet we still continue to come up with more hypothesizes and theories. We continue to attempt to disprove current known data as possibly flawed in some manner. Having faith that you have a car in your garage does not prove that you do, nor will you find one in your garage just because you have faith it is there. You most likely have faith that you have a car in your garage because you know that you own a car and that is where you put it, but that does not mean it IS there. Perhaps someone has stolen your car, but you have not yet discovered this so you still hold to your belief that your car is in your garage. Is this an irrational thought? Your experience tells you that your car is there because that is where you park it and the last place you saw it, but are you truly certain it is there? No you have to reprove this to yourself by checking your answers every day. You are ready to head to work so you check your faith and belief that your car is in your garage by actually going and checking. If you go out and find that your car is not there does that mean that you have to reject your faith that it once was? Maybe it is just invisible like the unicorn you keep there? What if, when you call the cops to report that your car was stolen that they rejected your account because you cannot prove to them that it was once there? You don't have the car to show them that it is in fact real so therefore they can simply dismiss your claim that it actually does exist, at least until you can prove to them that you do have it.

Your example here is similar to the question of Schrodinger's Cat. Shrodinger suggested that if you put a cat into a box and could no longer observe it in real time, you would have no way of knowing if the cat was alive or dead. Therefore, the cat must be alive AND dead at the same time until you could verify one or the other by opening the box. Until the box is opened, the cat exists in both states simultaneously. Once you leave the garage, your car both exists and does not exist simultaneously. The matter of faith comes into play based on experience. If you have parked your car in the garage five hundred times and it has always been there the next morning, you have evidence that supports your faith in the idea that it will be there tomorrow again. That still doesn't mean your faith in that idea will be correct this time, because someone may have stolen your car. No matter how many times your faith is rewarded, it can still be wrong the next time.

That is why the scientific method requires results to be replicated over and over using the same controls and variables before something is considered a fact. If you change the variables, the experiment changes and therefore answers a different question. If we move the garage from a low crime neighborhood to a high crime neighborhood, your faith in your car being there the next morning may change. Or you can add an alarm system to your garage that prevents car theft. Or you could drive a crappy car nobody wants to steal. We can see how faith and science can get pretty mucked up when we try to apply it to real life.

Senan wrote: We can see how faith and science can get pretty mucked up when we try to apply it to real life.

ah! yes! this is true. We get so mixed up in these sorts of debates that we forget to move the discussion to the things we agree on! I am as guilty of this as anyone. I have a lust for knowledge and truth in reality (as close as we can get to it anyway). In that I see so many people that try to apply science in improper ways and come to all sorts of erroneous conclusions. That is my real goal in these discussions. to try and introduce a bit of critical thinking. I think this is so important and one of my missions at this place, to introduce this into the training in some fashion eventually.

There is a show called the Carbonaro Effect. If your not familiar look it up on you tube. Its a magician that puts himself in real life places and then convinces people that impossible things happen right in front of them. I find this so fascinating that people just so readily will believe a person in a perceived position of authority even when the see something that defies all logic.

I believe the force is not some supernatural energy field, I believe it is the human condition itself and that can never be explained by science. Oh sure we can talk about the brain and the nervous system but no one really knows how it works, where emotions or consciousness comes from. Why we have it. Where we are going with it or what the end result of this universe will be or what will happen in between then and now. That's what fascinates me, to me that is The Force.

kyrin, i don't feel any insult to what you said so it's all good there. i can understand you pov here and do appreciate the scientific method for determining fact.

What if I am not trying to prove, or even discover anything, and this phenomenon occurs 2x for me. The first time I basically did write this off as my imagination but the second time made it a real occurrence that I could not explain. Scientific method almost defined here where an event occurred in the same environment and variables with the same outcome 2x. I wasn't trying to experience the event but it happened.

I mean I was watch Star Trek not a ghost story that would excite my mind into false perceptions. Random event at a random time repeated the same way twice.

I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other just revealing my experiences. I honestly don't know what that experience is telling me. I personally find it a fascinating experience that I wish I could allow others to experience in the same manner.

Yea I've had experiences which fall outside both reasonable coincidence or imagination and scientific explanation - and while they might have appeared in forms associated with imagination, dreaming or hallucination, what makes them stand out is the specificity in content, with accuracy in detail and timeliness. I do not 'have to' explain it, but the effort to do so tends to benefit from the tools and techniques attributed to things defined as metaphysical or spiritual but also perhaps more saliently - philosophy and science. I don't have a need to assert truth to questionable stuff to use it generally speaking and when I do its usually conditionally applied - but rather do it to further my experience which is then what I use to shape the use of belief to further refine or explore the experience..... and through this process I'd love to develop some objective results or reliable toolkit. One thing is for sure though, I cannot let my interest in finding metaphysical reasons for something cloud my judgement on the variety of reasons of things which might be outside my knowledge but still well within the realm of science - there is enough complexity and variety out there to shape all sorts of bizarre circumstance BUT certainly some of it sometimes seems to defy possibility.

I see a lot has been discussed since I was last online haha.

It is true indeed that scientific method does have limitations when it comes to this kind of debate. I've mentioned previously the difficulty in using such a method to explain something that is deeply unique and personal to each individual.

Personally, I think there may be a way of scientifically explaining matters of this kind. Einstein was on to something when he spoke about his theory on the Ether (in my opinion). However, even if we were to in some way use scientific method to explain A) the existence of the spiritual and how it interacts with the physical or how the human condition interacts with matter. I don't know if it will ever be possible to use the scientific method to explain said personal experiences.

The point is, we all believe in something greater, and this presents itself to us in many different ways. Despite the various ways it presents itself we are connected by this fact.

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: kyrin, i don't feel any insult to what you said so it's all good there. i can understand you pov here and do appreciate the scientific method for determining fact.

What if I am not trying to prove, or even discover anything, and this phenomenon occurs 2x for me. The first time I basically did write this off as my imagination but the second time made it a real occurrence that I could not explain. Scientific method almost defined here where an event occurred in the same environment and variables with the same outcome 2x. I wasn't trying to experience the event but it happened.

I mean I was watch Star Trek not a ghost story that would excite my mind into false perceptions. Random event at a random time repeated the same way twice.

I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other just revealing my experiences. I honestly don't know what that experience is telling me. I personally find it a fascinating experience that I wish I could allow others to experience in the same manner.

I understand your position and that is the nature of subjective experience. It’s one in which each of us have to decide for ourselves what we feel about it and what we believe about it.

I have had many strange experiences in my life as well. I’ve seen those same type of shadow figures. One walked down my hallway one night, one walked behind me in the living room. I’ve seen a shirt rise up and float from my laundry room across my kitchen one night. I have heard people screaming they were on fire when no one was there (picture visions of hell at a time I was searching for God). I was in Alaska one time and I was supposed to go with my friends to a movie but as we were walking into the theater for some reason (I could not tell you why to this day) I stopped and instead went next door to a pub. Inside that pub I encountered a celestial being that explained the universe and God to me so clearly I could not deny his existence. It changed my outlook on the world at the time.

All these things that have happened to me in my life I could take and make conclusions about them that they were all caused by supernatural events. Many times I even wanted this to be true, but the nature of my personality does not allow things to be that simple for me. LOL.. I experienced these things with my own senses and yet I still could not just believe them. So I studied these events in my life, really spent time looking at them and examining them and the circumstances that led up to them and potential corporeal causes behind them. In every case what I found was my own perceptions had fooled me.

What I did was try to become actively aware of my environment and when I found myself in similar situations I studied them acutely instead of just being a passive participant. I found that the shadow figure in my living room was actually a car passing through my neighborhood and causing strange shadows to move in weird ways as the car lights shined into my living room window through my bamboo blinds. The one in my hall was much rarer and yet still something I had experienced. But in that case I found it was my back neighbor leaving his house late at night and his car lights shining through my back fence into my window and causing weird hall shadows to move.

The shirt was an open window in the laundry room that blew it off a hanger and across the kitchen. At the time I was working 12 hours shifts and was exhausted and half asleep and just perceived something that was not as dramatic as I thought it was.

The screaming I realized was just Hypnagogia at a time that I was truly worried about going to hell. By becoming aware of my environment and truly studying the phenomena from a rational point of view I was able to find an explanation that did not involve the supernatural. I experience these from time to time to this day and I can now recognize them for what they are.

The celestial being I encountered was the result of my intense desire to reconcile my doubt in a God with my attempt to be a good Christian. I had surrounded myself with people that told me to just have faith and my doubt would go away but it never would. I thought something was wrong with me. Then I spoke to this “being” and he used a version of the Kalam cosmological argument in combination with Pascal’s wager and a bit of intelligent design to dispel my doubts at the time. I had never heard any of these before and I was susceptible to them and my immediate conclusion to all this was he was sent by God to tell me these things. That was the reason I had walked into the pub instead of going with my friends. It made sense at the time. However, also being who I am I did not just take his words at face value and I studied them from all angles and from many different contexts. Over time (it was actually years) I began to see the holes and inconsistencies in them and the doubt returned - causing me to study even deeper. And that resulted in me rejecting any belief in God altogether because I ended up completely debunking the truth I thought I knew. At that point I just could not bring myself to believe in something with no evidence to support that belief.

Of course, as I said before, this does not mean that I believe the supernatural and God cannot exist, just that I have never seen any consistent and reliable evidence to support the belief that they do. If something undeniable were presented I would be forced to believe it, but for me it has just never been presented.

So I could also conclude that my shadow figures where lights shining through my window in a way that caused my shadow to be cast that way, however I lived in a very remote area so for this to occur while not impossible would be very hard to come by. Though if I had seen a light come through my window that caused a similar reoccurrence of this event I could be influenced that that is what actually occurred. it is actually very practical to think this is what may have actually occurred, but I don't have evidence either way.

As to the duckling, and literally hundreds of other times where my gut has told me to go somewhere, do something, or whatever, I don't have any practical scientific explanation to attribute that to.

Another"shadow person" type occurrence happened shortly after I had gotten my license to drive. I was young and dumb, feeling invincible, driving down a canal road, doing at least 50-60 mph in a 25, when suddenly I see blue and red lights in my rearview. No one else was on this road, I was having fun speeding through the curves and must have just missed this cops great hiding spot.

Obviously he was after me and I pulled my car over. Once I stopped I reached for the identifying information I was going to need to present to the Officer. When I returned to an upright position and looked into my rearview mirror, there was nothing there. I looked around and did not see any lights in any direction around me. After a minute of trying to figure out what had occurred, I started to drive away again, this time obeying the speed limit and wouldn't you know it that around the next bend was a hairpin that I surely would have lost control on and ended up in the canal without any means to get help. Cell phones didn't exist at that time. I suppose I could assume this to be my imagination playing on the fact that I should have known I was speeding, but that would have been completely subconscious. And I assume that might be as easy a dismissal practice as any assumption that the event was a manifestation otherwise. However one thing that I have always believed is that there must be something after this life. I cannot accept that we live this short existence and that is all there ever will be.

I don't see it as an irrational thought to consider this a spiritual warning that I have more to accomplish in this life and therefore needed the warning. I can further assume this based on my many close encounters with death that I have been virtually unscathed in. Unscathed by the likes of accidents in vehicles, mortar attacks, mines, grenade attacks, a roadside bomb, falling from a great height, an avalanche, fireworks show that misfired directly into the crowd where I was. I'm sure I'm missing at least another incident. But somehow I have no real obvious signs that I've encountered any of this. I have no scientific proof as to why the results are as they were, I can interpolate reasonable information to comprehend in a scientific manner for some but not all. I believe that if you don't accept that there may in fact be some supernatural or spiritual reasons behind these events, you will likely never have a spiritual awakening. If you can prove something scientifically that doesn't rule out that the science is an evolution of something else. Can you totally rule out that science trumps spiritual? We can agree that spiritual can be trumped by science so why not the other way around?

Alethea Thompson wrote: For the record: I happen to believe the spiritual realm exists. Of course, I don't believe it's necessary to believe it exists to get the benefits of using it.

Picking up on this. I do not believe accept supernatural accounts of events, but that's almost beside the point. If there was a supernatural account of this event, what does that tell us about how to live? Similarly if there was a rational explanation for the same event, what does that tell us about how to live? What do we learn and how do we apply what we learn to leading a good life?

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: If I may present a couple arguments here, how do we know that 2+2=4? What is 2, what is 4? X and Y and Z are points of reference to solidify something. We only know the 2 and 4 exist because we learned that in school, by someone who also learned it from another, and on and on until someone made a hypothesis and a theory to develop a conclusion.

Why do we believe that the sky and water are blue? Are they both not black the deeper you go? Do we suggest that the atmosphere is a reflection of the water making it appear blue, or is the water a reflection of the sky which makes it appear blue?

There's a good TED Talk about perception and reality.