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Aiyen comments on Questions on Theism - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: Aiyen 08 October 2014 09:02PM

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Comment author: Aiyen 15 October 2014 07:26:08PM 2 points [-]

Have I ever personally experienced a miracle?

I've seen people pray in tongues, felt an overwhelming sense of God's presence, had it reported that my face was glowing during prayer once (I held up a hand to see if I could see any reflected light; no dramatic effect, wasn't sure if I saw the light or the power of suggestion), that sort of thing.

I haven't seen anything super dramatic, but enough to be convinced that either God is real, or human beings are frighteningly good at self-deception.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 October 2014 11:37:39PM 1 point [-]

A third possibility is that there's some sort of non-theistic magic, or at lest gods rather than God. There's also the simulation hypothesis.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 20 October 2014 11:20:00AM 0 points [-]

I've seen people pray in tongues

I have seen people speaking nonsense syllables in altered mental states. (I am using the "rationalist taboo" technique here.) Was your observation any different from this?

Comment author: Aiyen 20 October 2014 11:33:07PM 0 points [-]

My observation was that people said syllables that I didn't understand. As for telling if it was another language or nonsense, finding that one of the phrases actually made sense in another language would be very strong evidence for the existance of God. Proving that it was nonsense would be harder-how do you know when you've checked all the languages?

Does something like "koriata mashita mashuta amon hala" mean anything in any language anyone here knows? It sounds somewhat Japanese to me.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 21 October 2014 02:40:31PM *  0 points [-]

finding that one of the phrases actually made sense in another language would be very strong evidence for the existance of God

Or maybe that they already heard the phrase (in a movie? at an airport?) and somehow it stuck in their memory, even if they don't speak the language.

Proving that it was nonsense would be harder-how do you know when you've checked all the languages?

And even if you did, someone could still claim it is some extinct language from thousand years ago, or a secret language of angels, or perhaps the text is spoken backwards, or...

Does something like "koriata mashita mashuta amon hala" mean anything in any language anyone here knows? It sounds somewhat Japanese to me.

Google Translate says it means: "Huh beneath Mashuta Amon was Korea". Definitely a revelation... or someone watching too much anime.

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