Hi,

Yes, maybe, I don't think so, but hey, the guy said, "We are done." No, I'm not. He tagged me to try and diminish my value.

The Supreme Being holding me in existence. "God."

My philosophy is from Angelus Silesius:

...embodying a strange mystical pantheism drawn mainly from the writings of Jakob Böhme and his followers. Silesius delighted specially in the subtle paradoxes of mysticism. The essence of God, for instance, he held to be love; God, he said, can love nothing inferior to himself; but he cannot be an object of love to himself without going out, so to speak, of himself, without manifesting his infinity in a finite form; in other words, by becoming man. God and man are therefore essentially one.

Hi, if it really means something to you then let's talk about it.

My position, what I know emphatically is I'm being held in existence by an "Entity" and that "Entity" is holding me in existence. The definition of words can't gain any traction on the experience.

"I don't believe in god." Perhaps that person should internalize that in the first-person, and in so doing would never proffer it in the second-person to someone they know rejects that projection?

I'm not in charge of another's education. Someone here who holds an opposing view, Tim Wood I think is his name, was challenging me over the part about being held in existence by God. Claimed something about that being my nomenclature and didn't map onto reality.

The space exploring teapot is an unnecessary platonic idea. I'm leaving shortly, after my e-bike is fully charged, to Mt. Rubidoux where I will be passing out flyers for my soap ministry. Flyers with pictures of my Dad putting the Holy Cross on Mt. Rubidoux April 4th, 1963 using Angel #7187. Is it an intrinsic necessity you are made aware of this fact? No. So it is with the teapot.

You can't get around the natural language you're using in order to ask a question where the answer is required in English.

A god can be an admired or adored person. I don't make the rules.

Again, I apologize to you. Somewhere along the way I failed to recognize your position.

I'm not claiming to be a Christian. Why would I when you're claiming "Christians run from moral discussions." Forfeiture by wrongdoing.

Hi,

"Shrinking religions." The truth of a worldview should never be measured by its popularity, it's simply irrelevant.

I'm being held in existence by God, God is holding me in existence. I don't see a gap. Can you point one out to me?

It's a proven fact in the natural language of English that gods exist.

hi Frank,

A god can be an admired or adored person. It's a part of the English language. A natural language.

Hi, I can make a case for God and life after death on this Holy Saturday.

*End of the Line of Explanation*

The question you need to consider is whether everything has an explanation, or only the things we choose to say are explained. If we can choose what has an explanation and what does not, all science becomes subjective. This also means that things can act before they become operational - a contradiction in terms. (see my #36). Peace, Dennis

Energy is conserved because the dynamics of the universe does not change over time (Noether's theorem tells us this). Science does not tell us why the dynamics does not change -- why the laws remain in operation -- that is the job of metaphysics and it leads us to the conclusion, not that "God did it" (which assumes that God exists), but that "God does exist" -- which is something we would not know if we did not investigate the question. So, try not to confuse the two statements -- they are very different.

No. I have made no hypothesis. There must be an explanation, or science will not work. The explanation cannot be an infinite regress. So the series of explanations comes to an end. The end of the line cannot be explained by anything but itself or it would not be the end of the line. Yet, our general principle says it has an explanation. So, it must be self-explaining. None of these are guesses, so there is no hypothesis and no god of gaps. Tear that page out of your copy of the Atheist's Playbook, it does not apply here.

If you want to say that the laws of nature are self explaining, then you are saying God controls the universe directly instead of via laws. Any self explaining being has to be infinite and so God. (Se the Appendix in my book). In my view, science works better if we do not assume that God is the proximate reason why things happen -- that is just saying "God does it" -- which I thought you did not like.

The principle is that everything has an explanation. God is included in everything. The problem you are having is assuming that everything is explained by something beyond itself. That is not implied by the principle. Since God is the end of the line of explanation, God is not explained by something else, but is self-explaining. There is no logical problem.

Things having explanations does not mean we know the explanations. Yet, we can know that a series of concurrent explanations (the laws act concurrently - #13) cannot be infinitely long, so there has to be a first term. To be first, it must be self-explaining (#15). To be self-explaining, a being's essence (what it can do - #35) must explain or entail its existence. Existence is simply the ability to act, so its essence can't cut down the power to act & is unlimited. Peace, Dennis

@Dfpolis A contributor here.

Thank you, but that doesn't make sense to a person like me, I'm bipolar.

Hello, I'm a firm believer in the 11th commandment, "Thou shalt not get away with it."

Some people are monstrous, psychic vampires, and vicious, violent physical attackers. Armed with technology they certainly are a force to be reckoned with and they are altogether damned. If this is the only world where judgment is meted out than those best at violence win.

I've been going to the same mental clinic for the last 11 years, Riverside - the largest in the state of California, and schizophrenia seems to be one of the hardest conditions to deal with. I'm always looking for friends too, it's easier for me, I'm diagnosed bipolar type 2. My only real episodes occur when my computer slows or I forget where I placed something. Trying to work on both.

Hi, read a little about time dilation. What are the implications for us here on earth?

Some deaths occur in conjunction with the neural net being knocked out: frozen to death; struck by lightning; & struck by electricity. With such afterlife experiences there is no winding down of consciousness.

I don't know how to look people up here, I'm new, but I'll talk to you. I didn't understand everything you wrote but I'll try. I'm here for company as much as learning and trying to share my ideas with others. Feel free to "look me up" (notice me). I still don't know how to do the quote thing.

Thought I replied to this comment yesterday, but apparently it did not take. So, I'll keep it short.

"God" and "being held in existence" have no referents in the world. - you.

That's what we're disputing. I know I'm being held in existence because it's happening.

Hi, how something appears is different depending on one's orientation to that thing. How things are is how they are.

What does it mean to be deceived? Most people cling to beliefs and assumptions rather than the truth. It's not that we're looking to be deceived but we cling to what makes us feel better about ourselves and there are not so considerate people who raise up on them.

People don't generally understand what it means to be subjective. David Chalmers established a baseline for the naturalist's view in his book, Consciousness Explained (1996).

How could a physical system such as a brain also be an _*experiencer?*_ Why should there be _something it is like_ to be such a system? Present-day scientific theories hardly touch the really difficult questions about consciousness. We do not just lack a detailed theory; we are entirely in the dark about how consciousness fits into the natural order. - David J. Chalmers, _The Conscious Mind,_ p. xi.

Apparently it's the naturalist's rationale which is formless. I'm not a naturalist, I'm a mystic & a philosophical theist.

A person who claims adherence to "atheism" will view the other side as lacking proof, but that doesn't instantiate "atheism" any more than God is proven true by claiming "atheism" lacks proof.

When did WE decide that? I'm on a mission, I help people with knowledge and science. I'm not done, you forfeited.

He hasn't won a Nobel prize. I haven't either, but I do have the most famous trophy in the history of the world.

Have you ever for one second considered it's a logical possibility you're mistaken across the board? One of us is.

When an author copies and pastes his work is that copying and pasting? While I was not the original author I am the scribe who copied it all out by hand and those were given the same authority as God, the ones who copied out the Bible.

If you ever took a couple of days and read the Bible you'd know the Scribes (in the New Testament) were the ones officially challenging Christ. No one had a greater knowledge.

You don't copy anything out by hand, do you? It's my preferred method for learning because simply reading stuff doesn't put you in the mind of the person who wrote it. I had to fact check every single detail based on the spelling alone, that was for the 63 of 67 of his videos I transcribed. Copying out the books was no cakewalk either.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) observes brain activity, but via blood flow, not neural activity. One might imagine a technology similar to FMRI to observe synaptic firing. What would be required for an MRI of complete brain state? Since synaptic gaps are about 0.25µm thick and current MRI scans have millimeter resolution, we must do 10,000 times better.

See that, 0.25µm ? That took a bit of research, to get that character the same as in the book, I had to research it online. In order to get the correct character I had to learn everything there is to know about it. I had to understand it, or one might say it got beat into me for the bargain. I don't know everything Dr. Polis knows, but I've got a lot of it underhand. I've purchased and given away 12 or 13 of his books.

One micron, .001 millimeter. .007, James, James Bond. You got a degree in physics, philosophy or some natural science? Universities issue degrees in parapsychology. Maybe you're just a bit behind the times?

Yeah, he's here, @Dfpolis

The Failure of Causal Closure

Since the vertical line of causation is atemporal, it is missed by a mechanical projection looking solely at time-ordered events for explanations. No prior event can explain a later, disjoint, event. It is simply _not there_ when the later event occurs. Physics reflects this insight in relativistic quantum field theory's _locality postulate,_ which rejects action at a distance (In modern physics "distance" combines space and time. The non-locality in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox does not contradict the locality postulate because it follows from quantum field theory, which is based on the locality postulate). Information from an earlier event is only present later because a logical propagator has brought it forward in time. Logical propagators operate on information, acting in the physical theater of operation via _intentionality._ Immaterial entities are not only causally effective, but are causes _par excellence._ Without them, events would be disjoint monads.

While essential and accidental causality are distinct, they are directly related. The regular sequence in Humean-Kantian causality is the integral effect of natural laws' essential causality. Thus, Humean-Kantian causality is dependent upon the intentional laws of nature. This is seen in the basic equation of quantum field theory, a paradigm of fundamental physics. - God, Science and Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism by Dennis F. Polis available from Lulu and Amazon, pp. 56-7.

This was an earlier attempt to copy out his book by hand. Added the authoritative case references into the body of the text. Pobody's Nerfect.

Oh Yeah, the show!! There is a Dr. Cox. I'm fresh off battling God haters from Google + to following same to MeWe. They try to make fun of my name in every second comment so I'm a bit on the defensive when I totally don't need to be here.

It is funny to me because COX means Christ. The Captain of our Salvation. Here's my dad putting the Holy Cross on Mt. Rubidoux. The God haters are shooting at the wrong target. https://riversandlands.org/mt-rubidoux-peak-campaign-2018/mt-rubidoux-history/
Less than 1/2 way down the page.

Everyone has been so nice to me here, the defensiveness will soon be a thing of the past, and you got some good jokes. Tina Fey's portrayal of Sarah Palin is super hilarious.

Hi, all of this data comes to me by way of a world class physicist who has taken back several Nobel prizes. He's proven that there is no such thing as particles. So, there can be no question of the scientific validity of each of his statements.

The supernatural has been tested for 150 years. It's tested in a myriad of ways notwithstanding each of us directs our awareness, discussing consciousness is behavior it causes, and so naturalism has been proven false.

It's Good News, the best. It may not comport with your take on things, but it's Good News nonetheless. We don't merely consist of our bodies. When our bodies give out, that's not the end of us.

It's a small but consistently significant effect. I gave you 34.1 sigma (z - score) but it's actually a lot more when you look at an aggregate of all the meta-analyses. A baseline is established, there are billions of tests/trials, there are meta-analyses, skeptical replications, peer review, and the statistically significant results are present with the file drawer effect taken into account.

Dfpolis #22 The Mind Body Problem

Hello, this is Dr. Dennis Polis, welcome to another in the series of Open Philosophy videos. In this video we will be considering the mind body problem which is, how can an immaterial mind control physical movement? (Skipping ahead).

All of these results are much higher than the standard set by Victor Stenger in his book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, there he arbitrarily sets odds of 10,000 to 1 for a result to qualify as scientific. One criticism of meta-analysis is that studies with no significant effect are more likely to be filed away than published. This is called the file drawer effect. We can estimate how likely this is to reduce a significant effect to insignificance by calculating how many additional unpublished studies showing no effect would be required to reduce the results to insignificance.

For dice throws almost 18,000 (17,974) unpublished studies with no results would be required. For Radin & Nelson's (2003) meta-analysis almost 11 million file drawer studies would be required. Thus, we can be confident that the mind can exert intentional control over the laws of nature with the effect being about 1 part in 10,000.

One part in 10,000 doesn't seem like a very large effect, however, the brain contains 10 to the 11th neurons. Thus, an effect of one part in 10,000 corresponds to controlling 10 million neurons. Given that the brain has evolved as a control system and that the nature of control systems is to use small inputs to control large outputs, this is more than adequate to control our body and behavior.

Great query for Good Friday!

1st was the Gift of Rapture. My will was still connected to me being outside of my body, my will still existed inside of my physical head. What was existing outside of my body was the accumulation of all my experiences lived in a single moment. So, not wanting it to be the end, I arched my body upward and sort of sucked me back into my body.

God doesn't exist in time the way we do, and so preplanned from before time that it would be allowed like that, God's Will (my best understanding).

2nd time, the excruciating pain of being electrocuted to death and then take out of existence, a million times worse than how hell is described ended when God brought me back to life, I popped up out of bed praying in the Holy Ghost. There really wasn't much else of me that existed in that moment, kind of like a do-over.

3rd time, it was an introvertive and extrovertive mystical experience. It sort of lingered.

This is some of the best testimony from one of the most revered cases, that of a doctor. From 2:50 on he gets into the part I think you want to know about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSeG8nchaNc

Well, that's my position.

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

WTF?! <= Is that o.k. here? Funny, that's Aristotle. Just read that on Wikipedia anyway.

The fact is that our experience presents us with truths serially in time. As far as the physical world is concerned, we have no absolute guarantee that the system state we observed in past, and to which our knowledge is adequate (=true) is relevant to the current system state. - Google (not Bing) Logical Propagators.

Long Version

The law of conservation is about conserving energy. The law of gravity is about how objects are drawn toward each other in virtue of their mass and so on. So, by the standard analysis of intentionality and aboutness the laws of nature are definitely intentional. There is another and more specific way in which the laws of nature may be said to be intentional. They and human committed intentions are both species of what we may call logical propagators. To understand what this means we need to consider what makes a syllogism valid.

For a syllogism to be valid both of its premises need to be true at the same time. It does no good for one premise to be true at one time, and the other to be true at a different time. Suppose that we are argue that:

All in the room now can hear Mary (time specific)

John will be in the room tomorrow (time mismatch)

John can hear Mary (invalid).

Obviously this is invalid because of the temporal mismatch. Being in the room tomorrow is not the same as being in the room today. So, unless both premises are true at the same time are conclusion is invalid. Still, we can make predictions. The reason for this is that some propositions have the special property of carrying information forward in time. Such propositions are what I'm calling logical propagators. Consider for example the following line of reasoning.

All in the room when Mary speaks can hear her (Timeless).

Mary now intends to speak in the room tomorrow (Logical Propagator).

John will be in the room tomorrow (Time Matched).

John can hear Mary tomorrow (Valid).

What allows this reasoning to be valid is the fact that Mary now intends to speak in the room tomorrow. This proposition carries information from today into tomorrow and is what I'm calling a logical propagator. There are only two examples of logical propagators that I can think of. The first is committed human intentions like Mary's intention to speak tomorrow, and the 2nd is the laws of nature which allow us to use information on the present state of a system to predict it's future state. Thus, human committed intentions and the laws of nature are generically similar being the only two species in the genus of logical propagators. - Dfpolis (contributor here) #22 The Mind Body Problem (YouTube video).

Hello Friend,

It is not as much an ontological mystery as you might think.

Definition of God/god/gods Merriam Webster

1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: such as a: the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe. b Christian Science : the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Min

2 : a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality Greek gods of love and war

3 : a person or thing of supreme value. "had photos of baseball's gods pinned to his bedroom wall."

4 : a powerful ruler. "Hollywood gods that control our movies' fates."

God Dictionary com

noun
1.
the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.
2.
the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular attribute:
the God of Islam.
3.
(lowercase) one of several deities, especially a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.
4.
(often lowercase) a supreme being according to some particular conception:
the god of mercy.
5.
Christian Science. the Supreme Being, understood as Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle.
6.
(lowercase) an image of a deity; an idol.
7.
(lowercase) any deified person or object.
verb (used with object), godded, godding. (lowercase)
8.
(often lowercase) Gods, Theater.
the upper balcony in a theater.
the spectators in this part of the balcony.
9.
to regard or treat as a god; deify; idolize.
interjection
10.
(used to express disappointment, disbelief, weariness, frustration, annoyance, or the like):
God, do we have to listen to this nonsense?

God is not a god or any god. These are different and incompatible terms.

Thank you for your welcoming me here. I really do/did appreciate that, and I'm sorry, I believe in one comment I misstated your philosophical stance. It is not my intention to alienate anyone, certainly not on Good Friday.

Until the internet (my getting on it), I never knew it was an option to believe mythology is real.

Hiya!

People who claim "atheism" are claiming it emphatically. Claim it do, claim it don't, but there can be no uncertainty about whether it is being claimed or not.

One of my favorite "atheological" posers is Jacklyn Glenn. I vividly remember a video she made on YouTube where she discusses, "Coming out as an atheist." If one claims "atheism" and you aren't experiencing them denying the deity claim then the closet for them to come out of can't exist.

"Dear mom & dad, little Timmy, I haven't ever denied the deity claim before, but now I'm going out as an atheist." ???

Hi, you asked me for the science, and I didn't provide any. There is actually 150 years of psychic testing and significant statistical results.

The Ganzfeld boasts a 7% difference between random and psychically driven power; a 32% hit rate over an average (random average) of 25%. When people with previous experience, people open to the experience, and siblings are tested it moves from 32% to 60% or about a 35% success rate over the mean.

In one meta-analysis the z score (sigma) is 16.1 with 1.4 billion random number generations studied (the tests/trials). There are three types of random number generators: radioactive decay; electronic tunneling; & light beam splitter. http://boundarylab.org/bi/articles/rngma.pdf

That article is about the RNG's but mentions this on page 2 on dice throws: "This set of dice experiments produced a small overall effect (an average of 1.2% over chance expectation), but statistically this was more than 18 standard errors from chance." 34.1 standard deviations from a normal distribution. 34.1 sigma. The Higgs Boson won with 6 sigma.

Yes, it contrasts Aristotelian intentional logic with modern analytic philosophy.

It's kind of like Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire

Funnier for who?

Where would this country be without this great nation of ours? Where would this country be without Cox?

When my grandad was hurt during battle and the commanding officer asked the platoon leader, "How many men do you have ready?" He responded "fourteen without Cox."

An earned title is far better than the title itself. One of the staff members when it was brought up said, "We call him Dr. Dan, it's an honorary title" but the tone of her voice suggested that what they were assigning me was somehow inferior to having gone through the appropriate channels, academia. I don't believe in academia. I believe in earned titles!

Here's funny:

"At the request of the Catholic Church, a three-day sex orgy to be held near Rio de Janeiro was cancelled last Friday. So instead I spent the weekend cleaning my apartment.

Two peanuts were walking down the street. One was assaulted." - Tina Fey

My mentor, Dfpolis - a contributor here, showed me this. Said he was the only one teaching from it on the internet. The book is out of print. Intentional Logic by Henry Veatch discusses the nature of logic from an Aristotelian perspective, contrasted with the analytic approach of Russell, Frege, Quine, and others. It argues that logical concepts are tools of knowledge that enable us to know the real world, independent of our consciousness …

I mentioned formal & instrumental signification in therapy group once and the clinical therapist said, "I haven't heard anything of that since college." And then he gave me an honorary degree, "Professor Dan."

At the clinic they call me "Dr. Dan; professor Dan; & Big Brother." The last was my favorite from one of the other patients.

Wow, I'm new here and missed this!! So much to share. I make soap, and my Padawan learner told me, "I like Tigger," and so I looked for a Tigger soap mold and bought him in the shape of an aluminum pan.

First time I tried to cast soap in a pan. It's really large 10 cups + 4.5 to 5 lbs. of soap, 20 full size bath bars, but my friend loves them. I make the blocks of Melt & Pour soap for her in Tiggers now.

I'm here looking to make meaningful connections with people. I ordered two more pans today, one of Pinocchio, and one of Jiminy Cricket. I'm going to make all three for the fair, it's in about a month, the mental health fair. Just having them on display will be sure to delight children and adults of all ages. And then we'll raffle them off!

It's late here, thank you so much for your kind words. You're the best I've found here so far. Everyone has really been great, even the people I'm not smart enough to know don't hold my same views seem very pleasant to me.

Hi, I copied and pasted Don Reddell's testimony into an email to myself. It's 500 lines. Can you tell me 1. Does the Forum allow for that kind of a post, and 2. Is there a way for me to notice you like @Despues Green (?).

I was thinking I could make a Google Doc of his testimony and try to use Drop Box for the first time.

After my rapture experience I had an experience with the main angel (thinking kind of like my main guardian angel) bathing a book at the library for me to read in dazzling light. The only reason I'm saying that now is because I found a lady (in the expanded version of What the Bleep Do We Know?!? Down the Rabbit Hole) who has a spirit guide she calls Ramtha who bathed an object for her in "dazzling light." Her name is JZ Knight. 1999 then JZ Knight in 2008 (?).

That was really fantastic, quite a revelation. You know how you can experience something, swear to God it's real, but no one else ever experienced anything like that? Cross that one off the list.

The book is Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. A marvelous read. In the book she testifies to her OBE experience, she says it better than most, "My IDENTITY was lifted out of my body." She suffered from smoke inhalation. Mine experience was a Gift from God at the behest of my godmother. And I'm guessing a guardian angel was involved too.

I found a video, can find it again, where a young lady says the same thing happened to her that happened to me. Just she and I have a unique perspective on the famous "life review" portion of an OBE. They also say, "Heightened Senses!" What she and I are saying is, "Experienced everything I've ever experienced up to that point in a timeless moment." That's where the word "review" and the words "heightened senses" don't comport to my experience. I only wish I had the experience after I learned physics.

The temptation is to say, "indescribable" but I know it's something I always wanted to know before it happened to me and so I want you to know too. Think of God's unconditional love, the way you feel when you ask someone for forgiveness and they say, "I love you, and never felt you harmed me in the first place." You might get a little tingle in your spine, or your aura, the operative lotus of your being. Their love you feel in your heart. So, imagine that is a drop of ocean water. When you leave your body it's God's Ocean of Love pouring all over you.

There's a song I think lends itself to the idea that we live forever, what eternity means. I found it very comforting, a glimpse back to the experience, David Garza - A Perfect Tear.

"Eye has not seen nor ear heard" that type of thing. It's unimaginable. It was so terribly awesome it really scared the crap out of me. Thought that was my last breath. Thought, "My son is going to grow up without his dad." He was 10 years old then.

Time and space are not what they are in the body.

Don's testimony is really something else and there is the NDERF.com (Near Death Experience Research Foundation). I've read a few accounts. And I've read the book by Dr. Jeffrey Long. One account that I found fascinating was a woman who died and saw omnidirectional. Vicki Noratuk was born blind and first saw when she left her body (after a car accident, while she was in the hospital).

Thank you for the interest. I'd love to share Don's testimony again. It's a real pleasure to read.

Hi again Tim,

So, it's the "God" part that we're disagreeing about, not the fact that we're being held in existence?

Hi Tim, thank you.

Most philosophers claim knowledge is a type of justified belief. I direct my awareness every waking moment and lots of time while sleeping. How do I know I'm aware? I couldn't know if I wasn't. If I wasn't being held in existence then I couldn't know that.

Some things are given, my friend. It feels ridiculous to me to claim "I don't know" when I do. It's logically impossible we are not being held in existence. The only possible discrepancy is by people's varying opinions as to the label we put on the reality it's happening, and I'm not really flustered by that.

When I left my body (fall of 1999) and met God in His Shekinah Glory, it wasn't a belief of mine by the nature of the experience.

Points well taken (yours), and so here is a little philosophy.

Dfpolis #45 Knowledge & Mysticism YouTube
There are shelves of books written on mystical experiences and so it would be foolish to think that I could even summarize mystical experience in a single short video. However, I'd like to make some comments. The first is about how seriously we should take the claims of objectivity. A good part of what we know comes to us from other people. It's the experiences of other people over the history of mankind that lead to our culture, our science and our philosophy. So, we can not just dismiss mystical experiences because we ourselves have not had one. Instead we need to take the testimony seriously and apply to it the same criteria that we apply to any other testimony.

Are the observers reliable? Yes, they score very well on tests of psychological well being. Are the experiences repeatable? Again, yes they are. Do the people who have these experiences believe that they are experiencing reality in the same way that they believe they are experiencing reality when they see sensible objects? And again, yes they do, and in some cases they say that what they experience is far more real than sensible reality. So, there is every reason to assume that mystical experiences are experiences of reality and have true cognitive value.

So, what are they experiences of? Well, if we take the word of mystics, they're experiences of God. They are experiences of something holy, divine, formless, indescribable, and paradoxical. For example, Saint John of the Cross says that his experience of God is the experience of Todo y Nada, of all and of nothing. Language like that is what is meant by the paradoxicality of mystics in explaining their experiences. They say things which seem to be contradictory, but if we look at Todo y Nada we see that the experience could be an experience which permeates all reality while at the same time being no particular thing, nada. This is just what we would expect from an experience of God.

His Channel - YouTube - is Open Philosophy. I've transcribed 63 of 67 videos (I think). It's my preferred method for learning.

When I left my body and met God, it was more real than any other experience I ever had. I knew everything I ever learned in a single act of awareness while I was out of my body.

Thank you, really, thank you. I'm putting off work for this.

"Perhaps human abilities to solve problems are being over-rated."

BELLY LAUGH!! That's really great!! About the best laugh I've had all year.

At the request of the Catholic Church, a three-day sex orgy to be held near Rio de Janeiro was cancelled last Friday. So instead I spent the weekend cleaning my apartment. - _Tina Fey_

Hi, by virtue of 3 life after death experiences I've engendered a lot of data on this subject. I have a friend, Don Reddell, who because of health problems (lungs) has been beyond and back four times.

One of my times I was killed in the electric chair in a lucid dream and then in real life I was taken out of existence by God. Something far worse than how the suffering of hell is described. One time was an introvertive and extrovertive mystical experience. The first one was the Gift of Rapture. So, Don Reddell is three up on me.

Both time and space drop away as we understand them. The grounds of existence for the natural are not the same grounds for the spiritual.

Sorry for not reading all the comments before replying.

You guys are bringing me to tears! I mean that in a good religious ecstasy type way.

For eleven years online I've faced myself with "Atheism is a denial of the deity claim. Atheism is not a claim, it's a description. Atheism is simple, it's the lack of belief."

O.k., but how do you improve?

I'm thrilled you're content, really, I am. I'm never thrilled about that for myself. The quality of the 600 soaps for this one fair I mentioned above improve with every fair event I do. If some funding comes through I'll be moving from 5 events/fairs to 10, moving out to the fairs in the surrounding area. They were about $4 in value (free to them) to closer to 7 now. Pardon the boasting, 600 X 7 = $4200 freely & happily given. Mental Wellness (mental health) fair (this May 23rd); Recover Fair (recovery from drug addiction and recovery from mental illness); Breast Cancer Awareness; Alzheimer's Awareness (PurpleBoatFloat put on by my friend, a Riverside city commissioner); & Hands Across America.

I'm improving spiritually. I'm improving my serve (Charles Swindoll); I'm out of the Salt Shaker and into the world (Rebecca Pippert). I'm taking US Navy pictures of my Dad (Captain - Admiral) putting the Cross on Mt. Rubidoux (Public property) to churches and to the people here in Riverside to ask for money for my ministry (Alyssa Michelle Soap).

There is work for me to do, there is an avenue for growth, for improvement. My God is not content with me being content. He has bestowed on me potential I must fulfill or I'd be failing my Dad in both senses.

One little girl at the last fair, a girl obviously suffering from Autism, was at my table. Her dad lovingly said, "Pick a soap, honey." She was frozen, I was new to her. I put out a little flower soap. She frozen as a board barely shook her head from side to side in essence saying "NO!" A snowflake soap, "NO!" An Alice in Wonderland soap, "NO!" At wits end I put a soap car before her, "YES, YES, YES!!!" She really likes cars. It's a routine for her. Let's say in exaggeration I have a $100,000 into the mission not counting my time. That one moment was worth it all.

Sorry for so long.

Hi Tim,

I know I'm being held in existence by an "Entity" (Supreme Being), and I know that the only way my existence would cease is if that "Entity" deemed it to be so.

Never really understood some people's adherence to potty gods.
And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself (taking a poop), or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

If you believe the continuing Source for your existence is the universe, or quantum loop gravity, or laws in a multiverse superseding the natural laws here holding us in existence, creatio continua, then one of those would be responsible for keeping me/you/us in existence and we owe reverence to that, right?

Hello Frank,

It's my position we can believe in what we have evidence for. We can believe in what we find worthy of that belief, and it be empirically true at the same time. I know God exists, I'm being held in existence by God, and at the same time I can choose to doubt God, and or, choose to know God exists.

The biggest problem I'm faced with as a minister is not convincing believers that God exists but that it is God's will to take away their pain, suffering and grief. For some reason people hold their own sin against themselves (?).

I'm new here and apologize if it's against the rules to provide a link: Dfpolis #37 Knowledge & Belief - YouTube.

Hi, found some more time.

Re: To ensure that decisions based on that information have the intended effect,

I'm new here, don't know how to do the quote thing (?). Anyway, I asked my psychiatrist a few years ago, "Why does the law hold me accountable for my willed acts and here at the mental clinic it's like the climatic scene of Good Will Hunting, it's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault"? He said, "It's a huge controversy."

I'm getting better at the intended effects of my words and acts, but most of the time I don't really know what motivates me, I suspect it's largely ego. I only tell others stuff about myself I think they won't judge me for.

Just made two lowball offers for Disney cake pans on eBay (moments ago). I included the language above about how I do this for mental health fairs and apologized for the lowball offers. I'm telling the truth, and I'm intending the begging for an effect. As I was writing I was thinking to myself, "Dude, you're way out of your league here in this community, you're barely following along, you're all over the place." and then notification came, one seller accepted my bid.

Sometimes being blessed is better than being the smartest person in the world. Really, really enjoyed your comment, for responding to the post. Thank you, thank you, thank you.