On 4 Feb 2007 15:58:35 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

<jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com> wrote:

On Feb 3, 6:18 am, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 2 Feb 2007 19:03:18 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

<jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com> wrote:

On Feb 2, 5:26 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 2 Feb 2007 08:08:24 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

I know what happened to me.

Yes, and to you it was very real, but to the rest of the world, your
experience is purely subjective.

Some people have believed it,

That does not make it real.

others like you haven't.

That does not make it false.

You have a God Given
right

That is an unsupported supposition

to your "purely subjective" view.

...And that is a grossly erroneous use, of the term, "subjective.

Since you weren't there your
view is subjective.

Again your use of "subjective", is incorrect.

It defies reason.

It defies your presuppositions,

Well yes, my presupposition being that inanimate objects larger than
quantum particles, do not just vanish and return without a practical
explanation.

Magic is not a practical explanation.

not reason.

Wrong, it defies reason.

You have supplied no evidence
to refute what happened to me.

I have no reason to.

True reason accepts facts.

Provided they have supportive, objective, evidence.

I am not trying to refute what you say, only make sense of it.

If you accept the God hypothesis, it makes sense,

But then again, you are offering an explanation, for which there is
not the slightest evidence.

if you don't, it doesn't.

Without evidence, I cannot.

Besides, wanting me to prove a negative, is a logical fallacy.

A witness is either believed
or not.

Agreed, but that does not automatically mean that the witness is
lying, which seems to be the assumption that you are making.

A witness can simply be mistaken.

I have no interest in what you should have done, only in WHY you acted
in that particular way.

I am not a trained therapist,

Irrelevant.

...And/or a very weak excuse for not answering.

so I can
only tell you what I did do.

But you don't know why?

Do you often act, without knowing why?

But Jesus was the one that got my attention.

Why Jesus. Why not Krishna? You were an atheist, what difference would
it make? What evidence were you offered?

I can only tell you what happened,
not why it happened.

You should be able to tell me why you made a particular
choice/decision, especially one which was to have so great an
influence on the rest of your life.

If I had known she was going to call,
my going with her would have been ordinary.

I fail to see how your going with her was extra-ordinary.

If I had found the beads, I would
have missed her call.

That does not make it extra ordinary, it only makes it different to
your original plan.

But you did use the statement in a way that suggested that, that
was your reason for not going for breakfast.

No, it was not finding the beads on the chair
that caused me not to go to get the oatmeal.

But you don't explain why.

I had the thought there is a reason for this.

Mmm.

You have described yourself as a "nerd", and I have been kind, assumed
that you meant in the way the term is used today, but I am beginning
to suspect that you meant, in the way it was used in the sixties.

Putting my self in that situation, when I was young, specifically,
mis-laying the fetish which I habitually wore, would have elicited
little more than a shrug, and the thought that it would turn up
eventually.
Especially if I remembered taking it off the previous evening.

I can only tell you what I did do,
not why.

That is a very large part of the problem of trying to figure out
exactly what happened in your head

Certainly, my desire to eat, would have taken a higher priority than
the fetish.

Newsflash - We are different people.

News Flash - Young males of the species H.sepiens.sepiens, have two
near permanent conditions, Hungry, and horny.

And I would definitely NOT have gone back to bed, until I had filled
my face.

I did what I did.

Another thought comes to mind: You say that you put your contacts in
when you first awoke.
Would I be right in assuming that you removed them again, when you
returned to bed?
In the sixties, your lens would have been hard, and not suitable to
sleep in.

I can only use hard contact lenses,
and I don't remember if I took it out.

But you remember putting them in.

snip
Why are you so defensive?

Because facts don't change, no matter
how many times you object.

And illusion does not become fact, no matter how many times you assert
it.

But it's the truth.

But not a truth relevant to the situation.

snip

I can see no logical connection, so I have offered alternative
possible explanations.

My subjective response is my conversion
is a threat to your world view.

Not at all. It is just that trying to understand why a self
confessed atheist, and one who considers himself an intellectual,
would find a missing set of beads, enough to set him on the road to
superstition.

Don't worry,
I am a wimp.

Irrelevant.

Everything which you describe, points to a dream.

Remembering that you put your Contact lens in, but not remembering if
you took them out, so presumably not remembering putting them back in
again when you finally got up.

Missing beads, and thinking that it meant something, is the sort thing
that makes sense in a dream, as is going back to bed, after having set
your alarm to get you up, because you thought the missing beads meant
something.

It is the sort of thing that could take on significance in a dream,
but which waking, would be dismissed as silly or meaningless.

It could also become sequential in your mind, if you had heard the
alarm, and switched it off, without actually waking, and then over
slept.

Now, add to that, your defensiveness, and I am strongly drawn to the
opinion that you, have also considered the possibility that it was a
dream, and the thought does not lie easy with you.

But that is by the by, and none of it answers my original question,
and I doubt very much if you can; So I will just thank you for your
efforts, and leave you in peace>

On Feb 1, 4:13 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 1 Feb 2007 09:13:23 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

<jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com> wrote:

On Jan 31, 6:12 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 31 Jan 2007 10:59:59 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

<jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com> wrote:

On Jan 30, 3:18 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 30 Jan 2007 11:14:27 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

At that point, from what you've said, I would say that what you
experienced was a very realistic dream.

I was able to put my contact lens in,
it was no dream.

There is no reason to assume that you could not sleepwalk, and put in
your contacts.

You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

Why didn't you go for your oatmeal?

" A thought then came through my head that there
was a reason for this."

So you went back to sleep?

After that thought.

Would not the more natural reaction be to sit down and try to work
out what the reason might be?

Maybe with you, not with me.

snip

You have not supplied any empirical evidence.

em=B7pir=B7i=B7cal /?m?p?r?k?l/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spel=

Pronunciation[em-pir-i-kuhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA
Pronunciation
-adjective 1. derived from or guided by experience or experiment.
2. depending upon experience or observation alone, without
using scientific method or theory, esp. as in medicine.
3. provable or verifiable by experience or experiment.

You missed definitions 2 & 3.

I used the definition that fit.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/empirical

I am telling you my experience, which
of course is empirical.

Mmm. We've seen this semantic trick before, but usually, the word it
is being played with is "theory".

No, I know what happened.

Now. All that you have offered us, is an unverified, and
unverifiable, account of what happened.
We cannot experience it, we cannot test it, we cannot observe it, and
we cannot verify it, it is therefore, NOT empirical evidence, it is
just your assertion.

No, it is my witness to what happened.
You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

All that you have supplied is an account of events, which may be rea=

or dream.

It was not a dream.

I have not said that it was, only that it looked that way.

Deal with it.

... But your rather abrasive attitude, suggest to me, that *you also
harbour some doubts, that you have wondered about it a few times.

You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

Empirical evidence is repeatably testable.

See above experience. No one can
repeat history.

True, but under normal circumstances, every event leaves traces.

It did, the beads, and if you go to St Paul's
Chapel you will see they have a glory cloud behind the
altar.

When those traces cannot be found, the default position is that the
events didn't happen.

Well, I know they did happen.
You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

You also need to deal with the fact
that if I had gone for the oatmeal, I would have missed
the call from the woman.

But you didn't know that she was coming: Did you?

That's the point, if I had put on
the beads I would have had the oatmeal.

Were they compulsory?

No.

So if you had gone for breakfast, you would probably have never known
that you missed her.

Correct.

So you cannot use "If I had gone for the oatmeal, I would have
missed the call from the woman" as an explanation for not going.

I only realized that after the fact
You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

I find it interesting, and more than slightly telling, that you, =

atheist, should know where all these places are.

As I said, I was looking for girls.

In xtian hang outs?

Maybe you should start atheist
hangouts to pick up girls?

Surely, at that time, a better hunting ground would have been ordina=

coffee bars, the sort with JukeBoxes, pin tables, and dancing?

I am a nerd.

Do you use that in the sense it is used today, or the sense it was
used in the sixties?

Whatever.

That is where my own kids, male and female, hunted.

That's why you should start places
where atheist nerds can pick up girls.

Why?

To be nice to atheist nerds.

Everybody else managed with coffee bars, the local hop, friends from
school, and/or work

I am me, not every body else.

With one exception, my kids are all atheist; They managed.

Thank God.

I managed, before them, and my situation was perhaps, a little more
difficult than yours.

Thank God you managed.

I still don't see why you attribute any of those things to the
supernatural.

Look at the odds and beads don't disappear and
return on their own.

They do in dreams.

Those weren't dreams.

So you say, and I'm not calling you a liar, I don't for one minute
doubt that you are as certain of that, in your own mind, as you are of
the screen that you are reading this off, now.

You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

The trouble is, reason tells us that no matter what you believe, there
has NEVER been any verifiable evidence of such events, and there is
none for this one.

You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

Deal with it.

Still abrasive.

You do have difficulty dealing with
data that doesn't fit your presuppositions?

Reason has no need for ad hominem.
You seem like a good person, I shall
pray for you.

On Jan 31, 6:12 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 31 Jan 2007 10:59:59 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

<jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com> wrote:

On Jan 30, 3:18 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 30 Jan 2007 11:14:27 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

snip

A thought then came through my head that there
was a reason for this. So I went back to sleep.

At that point, from what you've said, I would say that what you
experienced was a very realistic dream.

I was able to put my contact lens in,
it was no dream.

Why didn't you go for your oatmeal?

" A thought then came through my head that there
was a reason for this."

So you went back to sleep?

After that thought.

Later a woman called whom I hadn't seen for a while.
She asked me to go to a new church she found with
her boyfriend. It was called the Climate of Faith, and it met
at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn.

So you weren't actually an atheist.

I was, but I was also looking
for girls.

They talked
a lot about following the glory cloud. When I got
back to my room later, I looked on the chair and the beads were the=

Which really only confirms my assumption that your earlier experienc=

was a dream.

It was no dream, but it confirms my opinion
that you reject empirical data that doesn't support
your presuppositions.

You have not supplied any empirical evidence.

em=C2=B7pir=C2=B7i=C2=B7cal /=C9=9Bm=CB=88p=C9=AAr=C9=AAk=C9=99l=

Pronunciation[em-pir-i-kuhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA
Pronunciation
=E2=80=93adjective 1. derived from or guided by experience or experiment.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/empirical

I am telling you my experience, which
of course is empirical.

All that you have supplied is an account of events, which may be real,
or dream.

It was not a dream.
Deal with it.

Empirical evidence is repeatably testable.

See above experience. No one can
repeat history.

snip

I still don't see why you attribute any of those things to the
supernatural.

Look at the odds and beads don't disappear and
return on their own.

They do in dreams.

Those weren't dreams.
Deal with it.

On Jan 30, 3:18 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:> On 30 Jan 2007 11:14:27 -0800, "jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com"

<jwsheffi...@satx.rr.com> wrote:

My parents were ex-Catholics, and I was
raised on books that taught evolution
and why the Bible was wrong. My favorite
book was the Gob,

Gob?

Might be Glob. It was a book about
a one celled organism that went up
the food chain, finally becoming man.
It had nice pictures. I really enjoyed it.

it was illustrated, and
showed an ameba that went through the evolutionary
stages to become man.
After college, I got a job with the city of
New York. It was the winter of 1967, and I
was staying in the Broadway Central Hotel,
now demolished. One Saturday night, I thought
I would get breakfast Sunday morning at the
Harri Krisna group, then on Second ave, NYC.
I liked the dancing and chanting, and the bowl
of oatmeal contained raisens, and was vey sweet.
I put the beads they use on a hardwood chair.
When the alarm rang Sunday morning, I washed
up and put in my contact lense. When I went to pick up
the beads on the chair, I could not find them. I
looked on the floor, but still couldn't find them.
A thought then came through my head that there
was a reason for this. So I went back to sleep.

At that point, from what you've said, I would say that what you
experienced was a very realistic dream.

I was able to put my contact lens in,
it was no dream.

Why didn't you go for your oatmeal?

" A thought then came through my head that there
was a reason for this."

Later a woman called whom I hadn't seen for a while.
She asked me to go to a new church she found with
her boyfriend. It was called the Climate of Faith, and it met
at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn.

So you weren't actually an atheist.

I was, but I was also looking
for girls.

They talked
a lot about following the glory cloud. When I got
back to my room later, I looked on the chair and the beads were there.

Which really only confirms my assumption that your earlier experience,
was a dream.

It was no dream, but it confirms my opinion
that you reject empirical data that doesn't support
your presuppositions. You also need to deal with the fact
that if I had gone for the oatmeal, I would have missed
the call from the woman.

At lunch, I would sometimes go to St. Paul's Chapel
in NYC. Behind the alter at St. Paul's is a glory cloud.
At the time I didn't think to much about it.
I left the Climate of Faith after a while and told
myself, I didn't believe it.
In December, 1973, I was living on 6th st, near Ave B.
and the girl who sometimes stayed with me had left,
and I was lonely.

Yes I can see how that would figure.

So, I went to a Christian coffe shop
in the West Village, because I thought, you know Christians
by their love.

I find it interesting, and more than slightly telling, that you, an
atheist, should know where all these places are.

As I said, I was looking for girls.

I asked about a church, I could go to
and someone told me about a house church in the West Village.
I believe a Roger Fulton ran it. When I went to the
service, I didn't like it. After the service a man named *****,
who I had never met before, came over to me. He asked me, if I
wanted to go to a New Years service in the apartment of
an Episcopal priest. I thought the Episcopalians wouldn't
be as crazy as the West Village Church.
I went there New Years Eve and found the girls to be nice.
The priest's parish was St. Paul's Chapel. I went to
his Bible studies, since the girls were nice. In one
study, he spoke of Genesis as if it was true. I asked
to speak to him privately in the future.
When I spoke to him, I said, we both have been to college,
you know Genesis is not true. He said, to me, "Scripture
doesn't lie."I thought to myself that is a tautology.
That night before I went to bed I picked up "Good News
for Modern Man". I just opened it and began to read in
I Corinthians, I came to where Paul said, "We vhave the
mind of Christ". I thought to myself, I don't believe it.
When I lied down, I saw a white light(I think it was a vision),
I heard the words, I am the Way, the Life, and the Resurrection.
The light went completly through me, and I realized I
had eternal life. I thought, now I know what it means,
to be born again

I still don't see why you attribute any of those things to the
supernatural.

Look at the odds and beads don't disappear and
return on their own.

On Jan 29, 12:13 pm, "aversiveness" <aversiven...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Jan 29, 12:10 pm,

On Jan 28, 5:34 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On 28 Jan 2007 13:21:31 -0800, "

<

On Jan 25, 6:28 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:49:19 +0800, "Pastor Frank"

<P...@christfirst.edu> wrote:

<

Christopher A.Lee wrote:

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 08:16:28 -0600, Don Kresch
<ROT13.qxer...@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:

In alt.atheism On 21 Jan 2007 11:04:41 -0800,

We wouldn't give a flying ***** about Christianity if it weren't so
intrusive and if its followers weren't bigoted slandering psychotics
like jwsheffield.

Sorry, I was raised an atheist.

Mmm. So how does an atheist, get to be a xtian?

If you want I can post
my testimony.

I guess old habits die hard.

Same here!!! As atheists we worked hard to make religion invisible and
inaudible, but we succeeded to date only in our schools, ...thanks to the
help from our legal arm, the ACLU. Consequently our educational institutions
graduate millions of functional atheists,

Sounds good to me.

Guess you believe in censoring religion?

I believe in keeping it out of government, and out of anything
government funded.

But do religious people in Government
still have free speech?

Yes - when acting as private citizens. No - when acting as agents of
the state.

Fair enough if that also applies to atheists.

if not also functional
illiterates, who know nothing about God, nor even have any meaning for the
word.

Lack of superstition, does not equate with lack of literacy.

What about atheist superstition?

I don't know any superstitious atheists.
I ain't saying there are none, just that I have never met one.

Keep looking.

However, lack of literacy DOES equate with acceptance of superstition.

The presence of educated Christians disproves your assertion.

No, it doesn't.

rrelevant.

I guess facts that disprove your theory are rrelevant?

The existence of otherwise intelligent people, seduced by religion,
does not disprove what I said.

I guess God appointed you as their judge?

I'll answer for him: No, because of two reasons.
1) He doesn't believe in God - therefore there is no God to do this 'appointing'.
2) He is not judging in this statement. It simply stating that the
existence of anyone falling into the category he described (otherwise
intelligent but seduced by religion) does not disprove his original
statement (lack of literacy does equate with superstition). I'll
kibitz a bit and suggest that he should have used the word
'correllate' instead of 'equate'. In other words:

He is asserting what needs to be proven.

There are still more uneducated superstitious, than educated.

fallacy of asserting what needs to be proven.

Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, C.S. Lewis
and others show the God hypothesis is
still workable. 19th century materialists believed
matter was eternal but has been disproven, but atheists
never give up their superstitions.

Technically, these intellectuals _were_ uneducated, by todays
standards about many things we know today. They all were operating in
worlds of knowledge that were limited in scope.

Like the atheists that believed matter was eternal.

Aristotle in particular would have undoubtedly revised the language in his
principle of material causality if he had a modern understanding of
quantum fluctuations. In fact, it directly removes his premise of a
first cause requirement.

Which also shows that God could have created
the universe in time(i.e. big bang) without cause.
(i.e. His free will)

Farther; The higher your standard of education, the lower the
probability that you are superstitious.

Yeah! The millions of atheists who followed
Communism in the 20th century falsify
your assertion.

Many years ago I had a friend who was taking
graduate physics, and what he was learning
about quantum mechanics upset his faith in
atheism.

Oh woopy ding. That anecdotal tidbit could be imaginary for all we
know and even if true it could just show he was a poor student. Not
too mention the phrase 'faith in atheism' is so loaded with *****.

No he was doing very well. Your response shows
you dismiss empirical evidence that goes against
your presuppositions.

You should try to give a resons for why you don't
believe

I don't believe, because there is no empirical evidence to suggest
that there is anything too believe.

The God hypothesis is consistent
with the empirical evidence for the big
bang, entropy, and inertia.

Only if you define God very narrowly as a primal first-cause agent
that initiates the Big Bang but from then on is completely
uninvolved. But if you define him/her/it thusly, he/she/it does not
really meet most folk's definition of a god. He/she/it is reduced to
simply an impersonal phenomena, like gravity or a waterfall. We don't
worship gravity. We don't worship waterfalls. You are welcome to do
so, if you wish, of course. You will look silly.

God is an eternal intelligent being that has convinced
me empirically that He exists and he cares.

If you define God this way, and this way only, then he/she/it does
'fit' within the empirical evidence. However, that evidence in no way
provides evidence that God indeed was there because the same empirical
evidence fits the standard model without a 'god' involved.

No, it is consistent with the big bang, inertia, and
entopy. That nothing caused the big bang contradicts
the law of inertia.

This is just the God of the Gaps argument - there are still some
unknowns that we don't yet have scientific knowledge to fill with.
The superstitious always invoke the supernatural to fill those gaps.
Those gaps get smaller and smaller as we learn more.

- No, with disproving the eternity of matter, and the eternal
universe, the God hypothesis has been found to be
more probable.

On Jan 25, 6:28 pm, Dubh Ghall <p...@pooks.hill.fey> wrote:

You should try to give a resons for why you don't
believe and I can give reasons why I believe. Gentlemen
should be able to disagree in a civilized way.

Christopher A.Lee wrote:

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 08:16:28 -0600, Don Kresch
<ROT13.qxerfpu@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:

In alt.atheism On 21 Jan 2007 11:04:41 -0800,

May I ask why atheists are so
obseesed with arguing with Christians?

May I ask why xers are so obsessed with crossposting to
alt.atheism?

Are you saying two wrongs
make a right?

We wouldn't give a flying ***** about Christianity if it weren't so
intrusive and if its followers weren't bigoted slandering psychotics
like jwsheffield.

Sorry, I was raised an atheist.

Why can't its followers grasp this instead of lying about the reaction
to it? It's hardly rocket science.

So, I guess Stalin and Mao were

Christopher A.Lee wrote:

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 08:16:28 -0600, Don Kresch
<ROT13.qxerfpu@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:

In alt.atheism On 21 Jan 2007 11:04:41 -0800,

May I ask why atheists are so
obseesed with arguing with Christians?

May I ask why xers are so obsessed with crossposting to
alt.atheism?

Are you saying two wrongs
make a right?

We wouldn't give a flying ***** about Christianity if it weren't so
intrusive and if its followers weren't bigoted slandering psychotics
like jwsheffield.

Sorry, I was raised an atheist.
I guess old habits die hard.

Why can't its followers grasp this instead of lying about the reaction
to it? It's hardly rocket science.

So, I guess Stalin and Mao were
just reacting to it?
The North Korean leader apparently still is.

May I suggest a good gestalt therapy
for you. Put my name on a pillow, take
bat, and wack, pillow until you are
exausted. You will feel better.
Repeat whenever you think of me.

Jim

Joh 15:18 - If the world hate you,
ye know that it hated me before it hated you.