Question on religious expierences and miracles?

Question

How far are relgious expierences open to nonreligious interpretations? In other words, when are miracles not miraculous anymore and how convincing are these expierences ina secular age as a means or justifying religious beliefs

Answer 1

"Hume defines a miracle as: "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent."  In other words, a miracle is a specific act by God (or an angel, etc.) that breaks one of the laws of nature that God created.  [If you think that a miracle is any act of God, such as, perhaps, the daily operation of the laws of nature, then you have a different understanding of a miracle than Hume's.]"

http://academics.vmi.edu/psy_dr/Hume%20o...

As for the "laws of nature," that is the secular belief in naturalism which in short form states that existence is a self-sufficient primary and that "nothingness" could not, by definition, have once been the state of existence. "Nothingness" cannot exist.

The long form is this, and if you can understand it, it takes all religious experiences and converts them to "natural" events that were misunderstood:

"Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny."

http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html

Naturalism is the view taken by my own website with links to Purdue U and their naturalist site and their philosophy publication PHILO; there are also links to other naturalists sites.

Answer 2

Religious experiences are of course open to non-religious interpretations. There may be a neurological study into what brain processes occur during such an experience, or perhaps a socialogical study into what kind of democraphic most frequently experience such miracles, or maybe an anthrological catalogue of historical experiences across cultures, centuries and religions.

However, what none of these reductionist accounts can do (reductionalist in that they are "religious experiences are 'nothing but...'") is hope to answer if they are genuine or express spiritual truths. Just because a religious experience is a certain psychological dispositioning, or more common in certain social groups, or varied in certain cultures does not make it any less right or wrong.

Answer 3

well...almost everytime I pray for sotmhing....it happens

i can only remember when it didnt once...(but i think i wanted somthing in 5 min,lol) My dad even came back from iraq after i tihnk 5 nights of praying befor i slept I mean SOMEONES gotta be hear'in me!lol

i even asked for a ds like a few years ago and eventually got one,GODS AWSOME!!!!!

but i dont even really play it=/

oh!i set this papper Towel on fire when  i was younger(being hard-headed and playing with lighters) so it wouldnt blow out andi started panicking and ran up and down the hallway (just panicking,lol

and not to mention my 2 fingers where kinda burning) and im just running back and forth and it eventually goes out...and  my whole HAND didnt even get burned,just my poiner and thumb and it was only a light brown burn...think of what could of happened?clothes getting caught on fire,?hand getting caught on fire ??

Am I blessed or what!!!?

GO jesus !go jesus! and God you guys ROCK!

Answer 4

Hume used to argue at various points in his works that miracles are a pretty shaky ground upon which to build a religion because to believe in a miracle requires the complete suspension of not only natural laws of the universe, but also of reason and all your experience about the way things work.  As he put it:

"When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable, the this person should either deceive or be deceived, or the fact, which he relates, should really have happened."

Answer 5

I think if you believe in god or even if you don't you have to have faith.

People always think the term "faith" is something religious but it's not.

You can have faith in a freind, or a family member, etc.

I just think the difference between religious and non religious depends on what the person who exp. them believes in.

Answer 6

Science is still too primitive to explain what adepts have intuited and tried to teach throughout history and across cultures.  That their experiences have deteriorated into a religious hodgepodge doesn't discount their perceptions.

The field of reality in which we are embedded is responsive to our individual field of consciousness.  Reality mirrors the contents of consciousness whether we are aware of our subconscious beliefs or not.  Beliefs based on the experiences in our early environment subsequently control our perceptions, feelings, thoughts and reactions.

These adepts intuited the intersection of psychology and physics - that  quantum entanglements are real and that only 'purification' of mind (Self-knowledge and ego transcendence) can allow reality to synchronize with being (heaven).  Miracles are ordinary events in a multidimensional reality.

Answer 7

It is always the same thing we want proof so we need miracles. Our lives are a miracle, but we don't think so. A Caterpillar becoming a butterfly is a miracle.

The idea of 2 parts hydrogen and one part Oxygen becoming water is a miracle.

We of so little humility or Faith.