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WilliamWDelaney
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11 May 2011, 6:09 pm

leejosepho wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
There are no "supernatural experiences". All events and processes are physical effects of physical causes. To say something is supernatural is a mis-identification.

If that is so, then what explanation might there be for a series of "presence of thought" (my term, and actually a bit of a misnomer) experiences I once had (over the course of a week) that resulted in my "being given" (my claim) some specific information I had been consciously seeking and that absolutely could not have come from within my own mind?

Note: None of the above has anything to do with my recovery experience we are all tired of rehashing.
I dunno. I honestly wouldn't understand where you are coming from here because it is really very routine for me to recall things and not have an idea as to where I picked up the information. It's just there amidst all of the other clutter.

I know it's probably hard to grasp if you are used to the thoughts in your head lying in neat, orderly rows, that's not how some people's minds are geared. Some of us are just so scatterbrained that it is hard for us to wrap ourselves around one single idea.

I might try sometimes to grab onto one thought stream, but imagine holding a sapling in your hand that has all these limbs on it. Suddenly, as you're holding it, it explodes into a fit of growth, and you lose your grip on the original stem. You have such a tangle suddenly that you have lost track of where the original stem was. Instead, you have all of these shoots going off in totally different directions.

And then you do eventually find the origin of the thing, and you suddenly realize that the thing you started with has relatively little to do with the stuff that it's led to. Instead, you have found a whole lot of reasons to dismiss your original idea out-of-hand, and then you're set with the task of sorting through all of them.

But then assume that you are fickle. Very fickle. As you're sorting through all of the different shoots, you just never find one that says to you, "I am special."

Now, if you are most people, you want to eventually find one that is right and then hold onto it, but if you are me, you can't stop yourself from cross-analyzing and reevaluating and looking for new possibilities. The process keeps going and going and going.

And when you're in that state, imagine you have a glow coming from inside of you, and you get a sense that you can pick things up and throw them about telekinetically. You don't actually believe literally that you can do this, but you just get this sense after a while that is like the feelings that some people get out of some of the better classical-influenced music from the early Romantic Era.

If you can get yourself into this state, it's like you've popped out of the Matrix and been plopped down in the control center, and every thought, every fingertwitch decides the fate of planets. You feel both an incredible sense of power glowing in you but also an overwhelming weight of responsibility. It just feels very important to compose yourself and remain absolutely unemotional and impartial. Whether you are ready for it or want it or not, you are the judge, and there is a sense that the entire universe is screaming and ringing like a bell. At the same time, you know intellectually that you're really just within your own head, and it's not really that big of a deal.

But when this gets really intense, I might start panting for breath a bit, and I feel very queasy. It's like I'm being tickled, and I can't get away from it, only it's not as tactile and is on the inside. And instead of laughing, I might moan weirdly or something. Or I might pound my fist against whatever surface it's resting on.

I'll get very aggressive and irritable, and I invariably start pacing around, grumbling a lot. In some cases, I might take a sudden aimless walk somewhere, and I'll have no idea where I am by the time I've come out of it. This doesn't worry me because there is always someone I can ask for directions.

And then I find somebody later and give him/her a lengthy and detailed diatribe on whatever was on my mind and whatever conclusions I reached while I was in this state. And I won't really be able to help it. It'll just be a strong, overwhelming compulsion. I remember one time yammering to people for days about connections between the immune system and the CNS and the specific attributes of various endogenous opioids connected with both.

Anyway, because of the way that my mindset actually is, I cannot adequately grasp the idea of actually being surprised to find mysterious information in my mind that really shouldn't be there. I don't even go the step of saying to myself, "I'm sure I picked it up somewhere," but I just accept the fact that it's there because I have so completely given up on the idea of my thoughts being in those neat, little rows and stacks that most people seem to have theirs in.

Oh, but the state of consciousness that I was talking about is really cool and trippy. In fact, I was having a minor one when it really struck me like a lightening bolt that old Saul might have been going through epileptic fits. I still am not convinced that this is how it was, but I get enough scent of prey from it that I'm willing to take up the chase.



leejosepho
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11 May 2011, 6:47 pm

WilliamWDelaney wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
There are no "supernatural experiences". All events and processes are physical effects of physical causes. To say something is supernatural is a mis-identification.

If that is so, then what explanation might there be for a series of "presence of thought" (my term, and actually a bit of a misnomer) experiences I once had (over the course of a week) that resulted in my "being given" (my claim) some specific information I had been consciously seeking and that absolutely could not have come from within my own mind?

Note: None of the above has anything to do with my recovery experience we are all tired of rehashing.

I dunno. I honestly wouldn't understand where you are coming from here because it is really very routine for me to recall things and not have an idea as to where I picked up the information. It's just there amidst all of the other clutter.

This "presence of thought" thing I am talking about is/was nothing at all even close to anything like that. I had been doing some intensive studying and research, and I had spent many, many hours trying to "connect some dots" ... but with no success whatsoever (and I was not even getting close). All of this did have to do with some "God stuff", as such, but the study was purely academic and I was completely stumped.

I will spare you the details here since I do not want to interrupt the actual purpose of this thread, and I can easily accept the fact nobody here is going to tell me "Oh yeah, only God alone could have caused that!" And of course, I also understand nobody is going to want to even sit and talk for a bit about what I had experienced. Nevertheless, a speculative "flat statement" had been made about there being no such thing as "the supernatural" or supernatural experiences, and I would truly go completely mad thinking about what I had experienced if that were even close to being true.


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11 May 2011, 8:32 pm

"supernatural" is unfortunately flexible.

A. we move things of the list and back on as we think we do or think we do not understand them, as our theory includes or excludes them.

B. if a thing happens either it is "natural" - whether or not we currently understand it, or it is the result of divine action, whether it be predictable or nonce. If faith healing happens, that is as natural as gravity. If there is gravity, God set it up as much as the Red Sea Split. Not well defined.

C. Which of us knows all that is? If I [forget anyone else] heard a word that appeared to be from God - if I saw a vision of Number 1 Son before he was conceived and at a timewhen I believed myself to be sterile - and you are free to consider me a liar or insane - Is that impossible? Prove it impossible. If it is possible, is it natural? Is it God given? Is it both?



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11 May 2011, 10:18 pm

WilliamWDelaney wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
There are no "supernatural experiences". All events and processes are physical effects of physical causes. To say something is supernatural is a mis-identification.

If that is so, then what explanation might there be for a series of "presence of thought" (my term, and actually a bit of a misnomer) experiences I once had (over the course of a week) that resulted in my "being given" (my claim) some specific information I had been consciously seeking and that absolutely could not have come from within my own mind?

Note: None of the above has anything to do with my recovery experience we are all tired of rehashing.
I dunno. I honestly wouldn't understand where you are coming from here because it is really very routine for me to recall things and not have an idea as to where I picked up the information. It's just there amidst all of the other clutter.

I know it's probably hard to grasp if you are used to the thoughts in your head lying in neat, orderly rows, that's not how some people's minds are geared. Some of us are just so scatterbrained that it is hard for us to wrap ourselves around one single idea.

I might try sometimes to grab onto one thought stream, but imagine holding a sapling in your hand that has all these limbs on it. Suddenly, as you're holding it, it explodes into a fit of growth, and you lose your grip on the original stem. You have such a tangle suddenly that you have lost track of where the original stem was. Instead, you have all of these shoots going off in totally different directions.

And then you do eventually find the origin of the thing, and you suddenly realize that the thing you started with has relatively little to do with the stuff that it's led to. Instead, you have found a whole lot of reasons to dismiss your original idea out-of-hand, and then you're set with the task of sorting through all of them.

But then assume that you are fickle. Very fickle. As you're sorting through all of the different shoots, you just never find one that says to you, "I am special."

Now, if you are most people, you want to eventually find one that is right and then hold onto it, but if you are me, you can't stop yourself from cross-analyzing and reevaluating and looking for new possibilities. The process keeps going and going and going.

And when you're in that state, imagine you have a glow coming from inside of you, and you get a sense that you can pick things up and throw them about telekinetically. You don't actually believe literally that you can do this, but you just get this sense after a while that is like the feelings that some people get out of some of the better classical-influenced music from the early Romantic Era.

If you can get yourself into this state, it's like you've popped out of the Matrix and been plopped down in the control center, and every thought, every fingertwitch decides the fate of planets. You feel both an incredible sense of power glowing in you but also an overwhelming weight of responsibility. It just feels very important to compose yourself and remain absolutely unemotional and impartial. Whether you are ready for it or want it or not, you are the judge, and there is a sense that the entire universe is screaming and ringing like a bell. At the same time, you know intellectually that you're really just within your own head, and it's not really that big of a deal.

But when this gets really intense, I might start panting for breath a bit, and I feel very queasy. It's like I'm being tickled, and I can't get away from it, only it's not as tactile and is on the inside. And instead of laughing, I might moan weirdly or something. Or I might pound my fist against whatever surface it's resting on.

I'll get very aggressive and irritable, and I invariably start pacing around, grumbling a lot. In some cases, I might take a sudden aimless walk somewhere, and I'll have no idea where I am by the time I've come out of it. This doesn't worry me because there is always someone I can ask for directions.

And then I find somebody later and give him/her a lengthy and detailed diatribe on whatever was on my mind and whatever conclusions I reached while I was in this state. And I won't really be able to help it. It'll just be a strong, overwhelming compulsion. I remember one time yammering to people for days about connections between the immune system and the CNS and the specific attributes of various endogenous opioids connected with both.

Anyway, because of the way that my mindset actually is, I cannot adequately grasp the idea of actually being surprised to find mysterious information in my mind that really shouldn't be there. I don't even go the step of saying to myself, "I'm sure I picked it up somewhere," but I just accept the fact that it's there because I have so completely given up on the idea of my thoughts being in those neat, little rows and stacks that most people seem to have theirs in.

Oh, but the state of consciousness that I was talking about is really cool and trippy. In fact, I was having a minor one when it really struck me like a lightening bolt that old Saul might have been going through epileptic fits. I still am not convinced that this is how it was, but I get enough scent of prey from it that I'm willing to take up the chase.

To summarize (and yes, I'm WAY too wordy myself when I get wound up): You are prone to delusions of grandeur!

I'll admit I'm the same way, and I'll even admit that at times I've confused that with some kind of religious experience or special divine revelation. What I've had to learn to do is distinguish between "feeling hyper" and being "led by the Spirit." Anyone can learn to be self-aware when it comes to certain tendencies or brain farts. It all just comes down to a person's willingness to believe that certain experiences can be attributed to a personal spiritual encounter rather than, e.g. in my experience, a megalomaniacal episode.

See, I think God can show up at any time and introduce Himself to anyone He wants to, and I think that's what happened with Paul. Paul COULD have denied that the experience was real. But he had the kind of faith that he didn't need to deny it. I think Paul really did seek a relationship with YHWH and really believed what he was doing by killing Christians was the right thing to do in God's eyes. So when God actually shows up, Paul doesn't have a problem changing the direction of his career.

Now, as an apparently rising star among the Pharisees, converting to Christianity was the worst thing Paul could have done. Unless he had a serious axe to grind that we'll never know about, there's no reason to think Paul was insincere. Well, Paul DID have an axe to grind, but it doesn't seem personal. It has to do with Hellenistic Jews' failure to sympathize with the teachings of Christ and the receptivity of the Greeks to the gospel.

If you read carefully, you'll notice that after Paul's conversion, he disappears from the story for several years. It took some time for Christians to accept Paul, and he also needed time to actually learn the gospel himself. It makes more sense that Paul knew exactly what he was doing and that his actions were deliberate. He was more likely a fraud than he was crazy or mentally impaired. But it doesn't make sense for Paul to be a fraud because he didn't stand to gain anything by deception. Paul was more what we call a "bi-vocational" missionary who supported himself and funded his own work through his "day job." So it makes the most sense that Paul sincerely believed what he said, that he meant what he said, and his main goal was purely evangelism among Gentiles.



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11 May 2011, 10:52 pm

WilliamWDelaney wrote:
... Anyway ... I just accept the fact that it's there because I have so completely given up on the idea of my thoughts being in those neat, little rows and stacks that most people seem to have theirs in.

I can recall a time when I wondered whether I would ever be able to actually sort anything out, and even now I could only say I never really have ...

... and yet all things have since come to make sense. I still have many questions, of course, and I readily accept the thought of possibly never having answers for all questions ...

... but then even that makes complete sense now that I have come to understand every answer brings along more questions!


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12 May 2011, 2:52 am

AngelRho wrote:
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
There are no "supernatural experiences". All events and processes are physical effects of physical causes. To say something is supernatural is a mis-identification.

If that is so, then what explanation might there be for a series of "presence of thought" (my term, and actually a bit of a misnomer) experiences I once had (over the course of a week) that resulted in my "being given" (my claim) some specific information I had been consciously seeking and that absolutely could not have come from within my own mind?

Note: None of the above has anything to do with my recovery experience we are all tired of rehashing.
I dunno. I honestly wouldn't understand where you are coming from here because it is really very routine for me to recall things and not have an idea as to where I picked up the information. It's just there amidst all of the other clutter.

I know it's probably hard to grasp if you are used to the thoughts in your head lying in neat, orderly rows, that's not how some people's minds are geared. Some of us are just so scatterbrained that it is hard for us to wrap ourselves around one single idea.

I might try sometimes to grab onto one thought stream, but imagine holding a sapling in your hand that has all these limbs on it. Suddenly, as you're holding it, it explodes into a fit of growth, and you lose your grip on the original stem. You have such a tangle suddenly that you have lost track of where the original stem was. Instead, you have all of these shoots going off in totally different directions.

And then you do eventually find the origin of the thing, and you suddenly realize that the thing you started with has relatively little to do with the stuff that it's led to. Instead, you have found a whole lot of reasons to dismiss your original idea out-of-hand, and then you're set with the task of sorting through all of them.

But then assume that you are fickle. Very fickle. As you're sorting through all of the different shoots, you just never find one that says to you, "I am special."

Now, if you are most people, you want to eventually find one that is right and then hold onto it, but if you are me, you can't stop yourself from cross-analyzing and reevaluating and looking for new possibilities. The process keeps going and going and going.

And when you're in that state, imagine you have a glow coming from inside of you, and you get a sense that you can pick things up and throw them about telekinetically. You don't actually believe literally that you can do this, but you just get this sense after a while that is like the feelings that some people get out of some of the better classical-influenced music from the early Romantic Era.

If you can get yourself into this state, it's like you've popped out of the Matrix and been plopped down in the control center, and every thought, every fingertwitch decides the fate of planets. You feel both an incredible sense of power glowing in you but also an overwhelming weight of responsibility. It just feels very important to compose yourself and remain absolutely unemotional and impartial. Whether you are ready for it or want it or not, you are the judge, and there is a sense that the entire universe is screaming and ringing like a bell. At the same time, you know intellectually that you're really just within your own head, and it's not really that big of a deal.

But when this gets really intense, I might start panting for breath a bit, and I feel very queasy. It's like I'm being tickled, and I can't get away from it, only it's not as tactile and is on the inside. And instead of laughing, I might moan weirdly or something. Or I might pound my fist against whatever surface it's resting on.

I'll get very aggressive and irritable, and I invariably start pacing around, grumbling a lot. In some cases, I might take a sudden aimless walk somewhere, and I'll have no idea where I am by the time I've come out of it. This doesn't worry me because there is always someone I can ask for directions.

And then I find somebody later and give him/her a lengthy and detailed diatribe on whatever was on my mind and whatever conclusions I reached while I was in this state. And I won't really be able to help it. It'll just be a strong, overwhelming compulsion. I remember one time yammering to people for days about connections between the immune system and the CNS and the specific attributes of various endogenous opioids connected with both.

Anyway, because of the way that my mindset actually is, I cannot adequately grasp the idea of actually being surprised to find mysterious information in my mind that really shouldn't be there. I don't even go the step of saying to myself, "I'm sure I picked it up somewhere," but I just accept the fact that it's there because I have so completely given up on the idea of my thoughts being in those neat, little rows and stacks that most people seem to have theirs in.

Oh, but the state of consciousness that I was talking about is really cool and trippy. In fact, I was having a minor one when it really struck me like a lightening bolt that old Saul might have been going through epileptic fits. I still am not convinced that this is how it was, but I get enough scent of prey from it that I'm willing to take up the chase.

To summarize (and yes, I'm WAY too wordy myself when I get wound up): You are prone to delusions of grandeur!

I'll admit I'm the same way, and I'll even admit that at times I've confused that with some kind of religious experience or special divine revelation. What I've had to learn to do is distinguish between "feeling hyper" and being "led by the Spirit." Anyone can learn to be self-aware when it comes to certain tendencies or brain farts. It all just comes down to a person's willingness to believe that certain experiences can be attributed to a personal spiritual encounter rather than, e.g. in my experience, a megalomaniacal episode.

See, I think God can show up at any time and introduce Himself to anyone He wants to, and I think that's what happened with Paul. Paul COULD have denied that the experience was real. But he had the kind of faith that he didn't need to deny it. I think Paul really did seek a relationship with YHWH and really believed what he was doing by killing Christians was the right thing to do in God's eyes. So when God actually shows up, Paul doesn't have a problem changing the direction of his career.

Now, as an apparently rising star among the Pharisees, converting to Christianity was the worst thing Paul could have done. Unless he had a serious axe to grind that we'll never know about, there's no reason to think Paul was insincere. Well, Paul DID have an axe to grind, but it doesn't seem personal. It has to do with Hellenistic Jews' failure to sympathize with the teachings of Christ and the receptivity of the Greeks to the gospel.

If you read carefully, you'll notice that after Paul's conversion, he disappears from the story for several years. It took some time for Christians to accept Paul, and he also needed time to actually learn the gospel himself. It makes more sense that Paul knew exactly what he was doing and that his actions were deliberate. He was more likely a fraud than he was crazy or mentally impaired. But it doesn't make sense for Paul to be a fraud because he didn't stand to gain anything by deception. Paul was more what we call a "bi-vocational" missionary who supported himself and funded his own work through his "day job." So it makes the most sense that Paul sincerely believed what he said, that he meant what he said, and his main goal was purely evangelism among Gentiles.


So in short, Paul must not be fraud or crazy or else your faith means naught.

It's interesting how I have the complete opposite of your perspective on Paul's conversion. I think it was the "best" thing Paul ever did for himself. He knew it'd give him some popularity points in the eyes of those whom he saw were good targets for his desired ego boost.

A former "criminal" converting to one's own religion: that's something that psychologically makes one really proud.

It's also a good seduction tactic to get outsiders who feel familiar with Paul's former "crimes" to join the cult.

By the way, nowhere in the Bible is it clear how Paul was a criminal at any stage of his life.



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12 May 2011, 5:56 am

Of those who have seen fantastical things,
ALL the evidence is indicative of it being a hallucination,
and NONE toward it being a divine revelation.

The question is whether there is MORE evidence supporting the OP's specific (and very fitting) hypothesis about what, exactly, caused said hallucinations, versus another, neurological or psychological, cause.

Focus, theists.


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12 May 2011, 6:04 am

Bethie wrote:
Of those who have seen fantastical things,
ALL the evidence is indicative of it being a hallucination,
and NONE toward it being a divine revelation.

The question is whether there is MORE evidence supporting the OP's specific (and very fitting) hypothesis about what, exactly, caused said hallucinations, versus another, neurological or psychological, cause.

Focus, theists.


Could be epilepsy or it could be some other extreme psychological disorder. Hard to tell.

Either he was a fraud or a sincere but delusional person. I'd have to go with the fraud bit. But only because that's how I see most cult leaders to be.



WilliamWDelaney
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12 May 2011, 6:33 am

AngelRho wrote:
To summarize (and yes, I'm WAY too wordy myself when I get wound up): You are prone to delusions of grandeur!
Yes, as part of a hypomanic mental state. But the thing is, I deal with it in the same way that I deal with my rages and meltdowns, by realizing consciously that I'm not really going through anything truly abnormal, but I'm just having some noise in the neurons. If I can control it, it becomes a useful tool for putting together new ideas, which I like. It just has the side-effect of me getting very cranky and snarling and charging about. You know how a predator bird battling with a snake has its wings up and its body bent in an arc? That's my posture, hackles up and everything.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYpeC_YbqBw[/youtube]

The amantadine that I'm on sort of clears up the process. It doesn't deflate me or leave me tired like the clonidine did, but it clarifies my thought processes and reduces the sense that I'm in the middle of a tempest. I'm learning to play the keyboard, and I have become very artistic!

But, it's also because of the amantadine that you and I can have a respectful conversation about this rather than me becoming really absorbed in the topic and starting to snap and curse at everybody like I'm Steve Jobs or something. And I'm happy about that because I like you, and you're responding intelligently and respectfully.

Quote:
It all just comes down to a person's willingness to believe that certain experiences can be attributed to a personal spiritual encounter rather than, e.g. in my experience, a megalomaniacal episode.
That is the term I was looking for.

Quote:
See, I think God can show up at any time and introduce Himself to anyone He wants to, and I think that's what happened with Paul. Paul COULD have denied that the experience was real. But he had the kind of faith that he didn't need to deny it. I think Paul really did seek a relationship with YHWH and really believed what he was doing by killing Christians was the right thing to do in God's eyes. So when God actually shows up, Paul doesn't have a problem changing the direction of his career.
Whereas what I would have done, given my own experience, would have been to attribute the causality to noise in the neurons, but I would have taken the insight itself very seriously. Paul dealt with it one way. I deal with it in another.

Quote:
Now, as an apparently rising star among the Pharisees, converting to Christianity was the worst thing Paul could have done. Unless he had a serious axe to grind that we'll never know about, there's no reason to think Paul was insincere. Well, Paul DID have an axe to grind, but it doesn't seem personal. It has to do with Hellenistic Jews' failure to sympathize with the teachings of Christ and the receptivity of the Greeks to the gospel.

If you read carefully, you'll notice that after Paul's conversion, he disappears from the story for several years. It took some time for Christians to accept Paul, and he also needed time to actually learn the gospel himself. It makes more sense that Paul knew exactly what he was doing and that his actions were deliberate. He was more likely a fraud than he was crazy or mentally impaired. But it doesn't make sense for Paul to be a fraud because he didn't stand to gain anything by deception. Paul was more what we call a "bi-vocational" missionary who supported himself and funded his own work through his "day job." So it makes the most sense that Paul sincerely believed what he said, that he meant what he said, and his main goal was purely evangelism among Gentiles.
Oh, the worst thing I ever said about how Paul himself comes across is that, in Galations, he sounds very whiny and bitchy. He doesn't have the ring of either a huckster or a schizo.

Mainly, I think that, if people were to actually read the friggin' letters with a sense that they give a damn about the chap who wrote them, I think it's self-explanatory that he was actually an early leader in the Church, not someone under divine possession or anything like that. I think that the closest he came to being under "divine possession" was perhaps exhibiting a degree of hypergraphia.

But there are breaks in the text where his writing becomes very self-absorbed, and he stops addressing the audience directly. Rather than writing with a sense of speaking to you face-to-face, he's writing in a more lyrical format. Try reading through these leters with your hand acting as a sort of metronome for his speech, and you can see where it transitions from the irregular meanderings of everyday speech to a more "sing-song" meter of speech.

It doesn't take a whole lot of perception or reading skill to pick up on it: there are some ocassions where he you can hear the pauses and throat clearings of someone speaking in a soft, slightly asthmatic and nasal male voice. There are other times when the tone is deeper and more resonant, and there is a stronger meter. To me, the letters really "sound" like a mentally normal man who is going through the interictal symptoms of a mild epileptic condition, and he just doesn't have a context for understanding them other than divine inspiration.

I also think that he suffered from frequent migraine symptoms. This is probably a better explanation than epilepsy for the "thorn" that Paul spoke of in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.

Quote:
7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.


And there is a strong association between seizure disorders and migraines.



Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 12 May 2011, 6:54 am, edited 3 times in total.

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12 May 2011, 6:37 am

MCalavera wrote:

So in short, Paul must not be fraud or crazy or else your faith means naught.

.


Paul/Saul was neither crazy nor stupid. He set out to undo the message of Jesus and he succeeded. He substituted by faith not works bogusity. The result was Paulianity rather than Christianity.

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12 May 2011, 6:44 am

ruveyn wrote:
MCalavera wrote:

So in short, Paul must not be fraud or crazy or else your faith means naught.

.


Paul/Saul was neither crazy nor stupid. He set out to undo the message of Jesus and he succeeded. He substituted by faith not works bogusity. The result was Paulianity rather than Christianity.

ruveyn


So he's a fraud. That I agree with.



WilliamWDelaney
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12 May 2011, 8:04 am

Bethie wrote:
Of those who have seen fantastical things,
ALL the evidence is indicative of it being a hallucination,
and NONE toward it being a divine revelation.

The question is whether there is MORE evidence supporting the OP's specific (and very fitting) hypothesis about what, exactly, caused said hallucinations, versus another, neurological or psychological, cause.

Focus, theists.
Well, it's not just theists who can be a problem in these kinds of discussions. This type of discussion requires one to actually read the contents of Acts, The Corinthians, The Galations, the Timothys, etc., with a figurative "ear" to understanding and empathizing with the man who wrote them, and this is not an exercise that most atheists are up for.

Religious people dehumanize Paul in their own way by taking the asthmatic wheezings of well-meaning church leader to be "divine riddles" that can be interpreted in whatever manner happens to be convenient at the time. It annoys me that religious people can often insist on treating their religion like it's some kind of weird abstract art in practice, yet they claim loudly that they're taking it literally. All they really mean is, "I get to interpret this in any way I want, but you have to take my interpretation literally." Cheap.

And the most literal interpretation of the book is to take Paul to be both mortal and fallible. If one were to read the Epistles with this concrete concept in mind, it's like reading something that your own brother might have written. He has times when he gets emotional and weepy. He has fits of temper and says things he doesn't mean. He has moments of poetic inspiration. You see a very human man struggling to do the best that he can for people he legitimately cares about.

To me, that's a far more interesting story than either the "fraud" theory or the "madman" theory or the "prophet" theory. I just think that epilepsy is a somewhat feasible explanation for some of the symptoms reported by Paul himself.



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12 May 2011, 8:14 am

"And the most literal interpretation of the book is to take Paul to be both mortal and fallible."

Good GOD, man, what deluded brain dead EVER suggested Paul was NOT HUMAN?

And if human, then like all humans in the universe mortal. The whole UNIVERSE is mortal [loose language, the eared will know what I mean], dude!

AND if human , then like all humans in the universe fallible [Teachings on this may differ, but I will maintain and am willing to discuss that as human in the universe Jesus was fallible though regularly calling on assistance].

Why even bother to assert this?

---------------------------

But here is a quiet question for the diagnosticians:

If you tell me something that seems to me improbable, must I necessarily conclude you are lying, deluded, or afflicted with epilepsy?

And one more:

If an epileptic says something - no,. I will go further, if an epileptic says something out of the ordinary - must it necessarily be illusory?

-------------------------

Have we asked whether Einstein manifested temporal lobe epilepsy? In his pictures he ooks like SOMETHING is wrong.



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12 May 2011, 8:17 am

ruveyn wrote:
MCalavera wrote:
So in short, Paul must not be fraud or crazy or else your faith means naught.

Paul/Saul was neither crazy nor stupid. He set out to undo the message of Jesus and he succeeded.

Whew. We are so very close to being in agreement there, but I would say he actually "set out to" simply explain some things even further while standing at (speaking from) a different end of the elephant ...
Note: Yes, go right on ahead and have fun with that image!

ruveyn wrote:
He substituted by faith not works bogusity.

I believe there is where his words have been misinterpreted and/or twisted beyond all recognition (as mentioned in Scripture) ...

ruveyn wrote:
The result was Paulianity rather than Christianity.

Agreed.

Personally, I also happen to believe he displayed some spectrum symptoms.


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12 May 2011, 8:55 am

Philologos wrote:
Why even bother to assert this?
Because it's not really all that obvious to most people. The problem is that a lot of people have a difficulty with written words. What they have trouble wrapping their minds around is the fact that it someone was there writing it, often with ordinary thoughts going through his or her head, and wrestling to find the best way to put down a certain thought. There is so often a disconnect, in the minds of people who have never done any writing themselves, between the document and the person who ostensibly wrote it.

Quote:
But here is a quiet question for the diagnosticians:

If you tell me something that seems to me improbable, must I necessarily conclude you are lying, deluded, or afflicted with epilepsy?

And one more:

If an epileptic says something - no,. I will go further, if an epileptic says something out of the ordinary - must it necessarily be illusory?
Those are very good questions. What I am doing here is actually very simple. What I am doing is taking Paul himself at face value, and imagine him saying this to me:

"I had a flash of light and fell down feeling dizzy and a little nauseous, and something ocurred to me that hadn't ever ocurred to me before. I don't know what actually happened, but it's like God came and spoke to me."

And I then say, "Gee, that's interesting, Paul. Do you think it might have been a partial seizure? I've heard that some people come up with odd ideas, sometimes, after getting one of those." Notice that I am not saying that my explanation HAS to be the right explanation for what happened to Paul. I am giving Paul the liberty to have his own opinion of what happened to him. Because I happen to like Paul, and I don't really want to go to too much trouble trying to poke holes in beliefs that are important to him.

And imagine later that Paul says to me, "I have this ailment. I feel a sharp, stabbing pain like a thorn, and it's like waves of overwhelming pain lashing and lashing against me. I don't know what it is. Maybe God has had Satan send plagues on me, like he did to Job."

And I say, "I'm sorry to hear you're going through that, Paul. That sounds like a serious migraine problem. I understand that you can alleviate them sometimes by drinking a little bit of coffee." Notice that I'm not trying to refute Paul's explanation. I think that Paul has a right to explain his situation however he chooses to. But I hear what Paul has to say, and I empathizingly suggest my own plausible explanation for what he's going through.

Does that make any sense?



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12 May 2011, 8:58 am

The question of Paul's spectrality is on a different plane from most ancient person triage.

I should be interested to hear your take on indicators.

One reason for asking - Saul is in many respects quite similar in style to my paleontologist brother. Arguably a bit less fierce, but we are just working of letters and a few snips in Acts.

That is the brother who feels I claim Aspietude only as a ploy to "justify my [bad] behavior. You may judge for yourselvers whether that justifies my bad behavior here.

Now, I have concluded that in my family - while we are undeniably strange and challenged - I am the only one apparently fitting the spectrum.

But if you see AS traits in Paul, perhaps some of them my brother shares, and I need to revisde my estimate.