I hope it didn’t seem like I was hijacking your thread. My conversation felt like it dovetailed off the question of what can be considered objective evidence for God. Remarkable providences in relation to prayer or calling are certainly one type of evidence, and it seems that it can be put alongside miraculous healings.
You mentioned Jung and his view of synchronicity, I had an experience where I was passing out Christian tracts and met a person who told me that he was once a Christian, but had discovered this remarkable way of thinking where he would identify his intentionality with the place that the universe begins. And in doing so he could find parking spaces or love interests.
I’ve shared that story a couple times here already, so I hope I’m not repeating myself.
I forget the verse, but there is a frightful passage that talks about how God will give a person over to the delusion or disingenuousness of their heart.
Who was the person who found a Turkish translator in Houston? I forget the specifics, but it something close to that. I seem to remember he was also a geologist. That was a good story. It also struck me how it was such an odd occurrence and it seemed to haunt him in the later years of his life.
What are the odds of someone experiencing coincidences when they thought they could know God through philosophy apart from Jesus, to then discover that no one in the history of philosophy has taken the deductive arguments to mean that God can’t be proven apart from yourself? What are the odds?
It’s like what Glenn Morton says about having an astronomical chance of winning a lottery, and you were the only one who bought the ticket.
I remember the look of dismay when I told my agnostic philosophy of religion professor, whose other area of speciality was religious experience, my story.
This claim can easily be tested by submitting your arguments to outsiders – which you have done here. It is an objective fact that outsiders frequently do not discern the objective meaning you claim is present in your accounts.
Given the notorious unreliability of human memory, I really can’t judge how good the correspondence was. Is it subjective when people – including those seeking God – pray sincerely and specifically and get exactly what they didn’t ask for?
Thinking about it a little further… the one prayer that a person can count on, if asked for with sincerity, is the gift of the Holy Spirit. While that comes in different shapes and sizes, it is guaranteed to bear fruit and often remodels the entire house.
It is also an objective fact that objective meaning can be simply denied. That denialism abounds may not be quite so obvious or welcomed by some (definitely not by those who are in denial!), but the proliferation of conspiracism and political tribalism certainly supports the contention (and there are of course other kinds of denialism).
Yes, someone who presupposes that a certain kind of meaning cannot exist will not allow that meaning, even if it is true and evident to others. (That rather defines denialism, doesn’t it.) And some presuppositions are disingenuous and subjective.
I think your ‘intuit’ should be replaced by ‘deduce’ since we are talking about the presuppositions, the axioms, that deduction is based on. Call it cognitive bias, if you will – some biases are correct.
But intuition can also lead us badly astray – it’s subjective and eminently fallible, like feelings. Children can be rational, wonderfully so, without breaking a sweat. The ID crowd uses intuition extensively. (We have to use our minds to test our hearts.)