'"Everything has a cause." Presumab...

2011-12-27T06:08:29.995-06:00

'"Everything has a cause."

Presumably you would have to know about everything to know if that is true or not.

Do theists know about everything, or do they only pretend to know about everything?

I wrote a response to the Maverick Philosopher pos...

2011-12-23T09:36:30.081-06:00

I wrote a response to the Maverick Philosopher post mentioned above, but then found that he doesn't seem to allow comments. So I'll post it here instead.

If a person already had good reasons to think that such experiences as out-of-body are not veridical, does having such an experience himself give him significantly more reason to think them veridical than he had before? Does the personal experience give him significant new evidence? Probably not.

I haven't had an out-of-body experience, but I've had a sleep paralysis experience in which I "saw" a ghostly being in the room. I didn't feel the need to take seriously the possibility that I'd seen a real being. Given that I feel I have good reasons for my naturalist view of the world, and that this experience can be accommodated by that view, it would take far stronger evidence to make me seriously reconsider it.

I would love to have an out-of-body experience, but I doubt I would learn a lot from it given what I've already read about them. Of course, experiences can have effects on us which are not rationally appropriate to the evidence. I'm probably too hard-boiled a naturalist to be so affected, but then I won't know for sure unless it happens.

Comments on The Secular Outpost: Links and News -- 19-Dec-11

'"Everything has a cause." Presumab...

I wrote a response to the Maverick Philosopher pos...