Someone here has said that.
Sometimes it is also a matter of interpretation. We know that both perception and memory are not independent of belief – that is a matter of demonstrable scientific fact. We are not video cameras. We understand, encode, and store information according to the significance we attach to things and that significance is highly subjective. This routinely becomes a big factor in how we evaluate the testimonies of personal experience – we know only too well that we may likely have understood the same events rather differently than the person telling their tale.
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Here’s the first Merriam-Webster definition for objective:
expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
Is this how you would categorize the testimonies that you cite?
That is how I would characterize the external facts, certainly. That is what this is about.
Given belief in a remarkable series of events, some have referred to it as religious solipsism. Hitchens did this.
To be like God and determine not only good and evil, but even reality itself.
It’s surprising how often you find it hidden beneath the use of plural pronouns. Did Hegel really say the goal of this life is for reason to become conscious of itself?
God is so remarkable in his power and judgement, he can fulfill the solipsists most wishful expectations for all eternity. It’s a real hall of mirrors that progresses to infinity.
Dr. George went into some of the specifics that made his case unique. I can find the link to the video if you are interested. I’m not a doctor, or a used car salesman, but can relate to his experience, and this makes his story more believable.
By the way, the individual from the story you referenced made a comment about how blessed he is, so his recovery may also be connected with believing prayer.
I’ve kind of fell of the thread and so I’m not 100% certain where it’s at. I just seen the tag.
For me the reason why my prayer being answered was important to me is that first it’s how I came to know the gospel. If that prayer was never answered, I may have never become a Christian. The second reason is that if that one prayer was never answered, and my life continued in he way it did, but I somehow became a Christian because I wondered into some church and studied the Bible and so on, by this point in my life I would have abandoned the faith because no prayer has really been answered except that one. That single prayer being answered is the sole reason I personally believe in Yahweh.
Additionally I’m not a deist and so I believe God interacts with us. I’m also a cessationist and so I don’t believe a lot of the really crazy supernaturally charged stuff like someone being instantly raised from the dead now dad sorely by prayer and I don’t believe in things like someone was feeling a darkness come over them and they saw a demon and they prayed and suddenly they seen the cuff of a white and gold sleeve and the hilt of a diamond sword and it lit up the room driving away the demonic and a pace came over them and the heard a voice say “ I am your creator and I love you” I just simply can’t believe it. Even if I trust the person and believe they 100% believe it , I simply won’t be able to accept that as fact.
I don’t think Yahweh is a genie, and I think she prayer is answered there is almost always some percentage of it randomly happening, but that many of us just know , whatever that and to you and however subjective it is, that it’s from Yahweh and it’s very important to us.
As in my story, I just won’t ever be able to put aside my faith in it being from Yahweh and replace it wth faith that it was just coincidence. If it’s coincidence then I’ll have to say everything else is and therefore for me that would mean a insignificant amount of reasons to leave a door open for God since I have no other reason to believe in Yahweh. Naturalism and the unknown can explain everything else.
Interesting discussion. I generally look at objective evidence as something you and anyone else can measure. Now, how you interpret that measurement becomes a subjective thing, as outside influences may influence how it is explained, but the number you get is objective. As an engineering friend once said, if you can’t put a number on it, it is just an opinion.
Even unlikely things have a possibility, however remote, of happening. Another friend is fond of saying that life is a series of probabilities. A heart starting spontaneously after 45 minutes is unlikely, but not impossible. More likely perhaps is either so low and slow a pulse that it was not detected, which kept things going enough for eventual recovery. And, of course, it is common to stop hearts, cut them out and sew them into another body and restart them.
And while I long for some objective evidence, even the 4 gospels are subjective and variable accounts written by little known or unknown witnesses. John probably has the best documentation as being an eye-witness account, and he is writing not as a historical chronology of events, but as a theological document.
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That sounds an awful lot like a platitude to me, Phil, sorry. If you were in Rich Stearns’ or Maggie’s shoes, I don’t think you would be dismissing the reality of the facts that way. It is tantamount to denying God’s sovereignty, and I won’t be doing that either.
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We are not talking about one measurement, but multiples, in order (the sequences mattered), and that have obvious implications, not just subjective feelings or inferences.
Dale, I am not dismissing the reality of what happened, and I agree that God’s hand was in both of their stories. But, there is still no objective evidence. If I were given a lottery ticket for my birthday, and won the lottery, I would no doubt feel God had a purpose in putting that in my hands, but just because it is highly unlikely does not mean someone somewhere is not going the win the lottery.
Rich Stern’s experience certainly involves a series of unlikely events, but so do many plane crashes. It does not mean God crashes planes. But,God can work through those unlikely events. I think the real work of God was in the Holy Spirit working on Stern’s heart. In like fashion, I think Pharoah may have been convinced by Moses to led the Israelites go, but his heart was not open and was harderned.
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Based on what evidence? Your subjective feelings? ; - ) Did you just intuit it?
I think you are dismissing the reality of the implications, the objective implications that both Maggie and Rich recognized and acknowledged (and as have I in some really cool providences, yes, some sets of them, too, in my own life), that our Father is indeed in control and that we have good reason not to fear anything.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
John 14:27
Maybe what the Holy Spirit does is give us hearts that are ingenuous so that we can recognize the facts for what they are, as children do, and ears to hear.
What kept me awake early in the morning is the objective evidence for the Christian God’s providential non-interventions into the lives of his children. A grain of wheat in a blizzard of chaff is objective evidence of time and chance.
As we’re talking plural, such meaningless horrors always lead to this. And then the Holocaust of course.
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Do you not see what you’re doing? You say you’re offering objective evidence, but the only standard you’ve provided for judging whether it is actually evidence for providence, as opposed to simply a series of random events, is subjective: how Stearns felt about it, or how you feel, or how I’m supposed to feel. No objective measure for determining what should be considered surprising. That means that as evidence, it’s subjective, however objective the events are. It also means you’re stuck with the fact that lots of other people are not finding it to be objective evidence for God’s providential actions.
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I like how Dale is pulling at this thread of objectivity from another side.
These remarkable events often do occur for people. As do miraculous healings.
Something is disingenuous in the soul that interprets it as there being no God. And there may well not be, but it ain’t atheism.
Not so. There is objective meaning infused between and among the otherwise separate and disconnected events in the series, easily discernible to the outsider. And each series also performs a function. Neither of those is characteristic of randomness!
Is it subjective that there is a one to one correspondence between the needs Maggie enumerated in her prayer and that they were each met? Is the fact that their sequences matched identically subjective too?
Used car salesman are good at making stories sound more believable.
That gets us to the religious solipsism you were talking about before. I could just claim that hitting a home run is impossible, so every home run ever was due to supernatural intervention. Where do you draw the line?
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Keener talks about the challenge of drawing lines like this. It’s like trying to draw a line between long and short hair. There’s a real fuzzy boundary in the middle. Similar maybe to what kind of person you’re willing to trust. Sad thing is that people are so untrustworthy. Imagine what it would be like for a person who is troubled by solipsism. Experiences remarkable coincidences and then people are so contradictory. Saying the oddest things and betraying your trust. Yeah. Then Jesus makes his presence known to you. Is it still your imagination or God making his love known to you?
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