[extropy-chat] Re: John Wright Finds God

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:10 PM 12/9/2004 -0600, John Wright asked:

>My question to my respected fellow atheists (if I may so call you, for I have
>only departed your company recently) is this: what does an honest and 
>rational
>man do when he has a supernatural experience?
>
>  Does he, like Scrooge, claim Marlowe's ghost is a bit of beef, a product 
> of bad
>  digestion? Does he accuse himself of hallucination rather than entertain 
> the
>opinion that his axioms might be mistaken? Occam's razor, plus a modicum of
>intellectual integrity, would seem to militate against this assumption.

I believe I was the one who started this thread. Thanks to Mr Wright for 
his interesting and quite moving response. I have to ask at once: what does 
an honest and rational man do when he has a UFO abduction experience, 
complete with rectal probing? (Let us suppose that Whitley Strieber can be 
believed when he makes this claim, that he has not simply concocted it.) 
What does an honest and rational man do when he has a psychic experience, 
complete with spoon bending? (Let us suppose that Michael Crichton can be 
believed when he makes this claim.) What does an honest and rational man do 
when he defends claims of fairies dancing in the garden, complete with 
photographs, as Conan Doyle did? One could go on almost indefinitely. Many 
of these kinds of experiences seem to have been overwhelming, apodictically 
persuasive, even life-changing, and utterly at odds with each other, piling 
L. Ron Hubbard atop Phil Dick atop Madam Blavatsky atop charismatic faith 
healers atop witnesses of N-rays atop...

Damien Broderick