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After making a comment about this on another thread a thought has been formulating in my mind, and me being the self appointed skeptic here I a wonder about something. That is are spiritual experiences or manifestations valid beyond the person who received them. Can me telling you about a spiritual experience of mine have any validity to you. I say this because I personally believe that all claims of any kind can not be considered valid unless they can be replicated or at a minimum have multiple witnesses, but even that can be misleading at times. Yes a true concept must be able to be replicated. Living in Utah I recall some years ago two individuals from The University of Utah came out with the concept of cold fusion. It created a stir all over the country. Soon there were scientist all over the country trying to replicate the experiment. Ultimately the experiment was invalidated because it could not be replicated to the degree that the original scientist Pons and Flieschmann claimed. I read recently that some people were still trying to make the process work and Fieschmann worked at it for many years. Did their process work. Maybe to some degree but it never satisfied others in their field to any degree because it was so difficult or impossible to replicate. Pons and Flieschmann were true believers and probably sincere but ultimately to this point produced nothing. They invested significant personal capital in something they believed in but had little validity to any other reputable scientists simply because it could not be duplicated effectively
It seems spiritual experiences are the the same in this regard at least to me. People claim them but how can I believe them when they can never be duplicated effectively. Many will say they are special and sacred, which again may have great meaning to the individual receiving them but little practical value to those hearing the story, unless it causes them to have the exact same experience. So why do people run around telling their spiritual stores? I use to do it because I was so certain that they were real and I figured me telling others they would see the reality of them. Now I understand how I looked to the more skeptical crowd.
For me I have concluded that a spiritual experience can have a great impact on the person receiving it but is of little real and verifiable use to others, unless they could somehow duplicate the exact experience.
Looking at this from a purely scientific, objective perspective, I agree with you Cadence. And I think there has been some replication here — you told me it’s happened to you when, during prayer, you are overcome with this deep spirituality. I have reported the same thing. Is that replication?
Absolutely – but not at will, at least for me. Maybe it would be more precise to say that I believe they can be repeated – but I’m not sure they have been “replicated” in my life (as in, I intentionally set up conditions to “test” them).
One of the reasons I accept them as spiritual is that they have been repeated – but not replicated.
Cadence wrote:I say this because I personally believe that all claims of any kind can not be considered valid unless they can be replicated or at a minimum have multiple witnesses,
Cadence wrote:I personally believe that all claims of any kind can not be considered valid unless they can be replicated or at a minimum have multiple witnesses, but even that can be misleading at times. Yes a true concept must be able to be replicated.
Hi Cadence, if we’re talking about physical truth I agree completely – it needs to be reliably duplicable or verifiable to be factual and true.
Cadence wrote:For me I have concluded that a spiritual experience can have a great impact on the person receiving it but is of little real and verifiable use to others, unless they could somehow duplicate the exact experience.
I remember thinking in a similar line of thought, and then realizing that it is fitting for “personal” revelation to have that name. There is something very personal about spiritual experiences. I can’t say that any revelation will be guaranteed to mean anything to people who did not directly experience it. Yes, obviously at times people feel a closeness to things they hear others express, but I don’t think it should be expected. This is why I love how we hear encouragement to “find out for yourself” or other encouragement to go have your own revelation. The downfall, obviously, is the expectation that my revelation will cause me to see things exactly the same way that you do. That part is unfortunate, but I believe in time it will be tempered – because we are all in different situations with unique and different needs.
Can subjective “truths” be meaningful? I’d say absolutely, some of the most meaningful things on earth. I don’t know that anyone can replicate or verify my claim that I love my children, but you better believe that it’s real. Personally, I don’t think that truths need to be universal to be profoundly meaningful and useful.
Heard something in class today. We can supposedly get revelations for ourselves, but not for other people, unless we’re church leaders. That sounds like damage control to me, rather than real doctrine. SilentDawning wrote:Looking at this from a purely scientific, objective perspective, I agree with you Cadence.
And I think there has been some replication here — you told me it’s happened to you when, during prayer, you are overcome with this deep spirituality. I have reported the same thing. Is that replication?
I wold not classify that as replication. To replicate something you need to be able to produce the exact same outcome using the same set of procedures, and be able to do it at any time. Not sure any person that has ever lived has been able to do that with a spiritual manifestation. That is why they are intrinsically personal.
Cadence, fwiw, I’m not certain ALL the aspects of my life that might influence a spiritual experience ever have been aligned perfectly on multiple occasions. My life isn’t a laboratory, in the sense that it isn’t a sterile, “replicable” environment. For example, one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I have had was when I blessed my second son as an infant. There is absolutely no way to replicate that experience – none, whatsoever. Another one was during a blessing of a friend at a particular moment in a particular situation with a particular concern of which I was unaware. There is absolutely no way to replicate that experience – none, whatsoever. Another one was while on my mission when we were teaching an investigator in a VERY unique situation. There is absolutely no way to replicate that experience – none, whatsoever.
As I said, I would say that I have had “repeated” spiritual experiences (a few that are very powerful and undeniable as “spiritual” in nature), but I just don’t believe they can be “replicated”.
Cadence wrote:…are spiritual experiences or manifestations valid beyond the person who received them. Can me telling you about a spiritual experience of mine have any validity to you. I say this because I personally believe that all claims of any kind can not be considered valid unless they can be replicated or at a minimum have multiple witnesses, but even that can be misleading at times. Yes a true concept must be able to be replicated…Many will say they are special and sacred, which again may have great meaning to the individual receiving them but little practical value to those hearing the story…
No, spiritual manifestations can’t be replicated on demand in a laboratory experiment (neither can abiogenesis) and even though similar experiences often happen repeatedly to different people without warning they don’t really prove anything in a definitive way. In fact, I would fully expect Ouija boards to stop working properly as soon as there are skeptics around similar to the “Pauli effect.” I agree if you mean that someone else’s warm fuzzy feeling about the LDS Church doesn’t really do me any good and even my own warm fuzzy feelings about it didn’t help much once a lot of other things about it just didn’t make sense anymore.
However, I don’t think it’s really fair to claim that all spiritual manifestations should be considered completely worthless to anyone other than the person experiencing them. For example, several accounts of out-of-body experiences and ghost stories I have heard or read about gave me a lot more hope for some kind of afterlife than I would ever have otherwise simply based on my own experiences and understanding because I don’t really trust the Bible or Church leaders enough to take their word for it.
Now I don’t even consider spirits to be a particularly miraculous or supernatural phenomenon anymore because I think they are simply a perfectly normal aspect of nature that scientists don’t fully understand yet (and may never understand). Of course, die-hard skeptics could experience the same kind of thing and simply assume that their mind was playing tricks on them as long as they are already convinced that conscious spirits completely separate from a physical brain are impossible.
If we really need to throw out all anecdotal evidence that can’t be directly verified then I would have no choice but to be some kind of agnostic/deist/pantheist/atheist content to assume that there is probably no afterlife and if there is some kind of vague “higher power” then it almost certainly does not care about individual people in a personal way. But I can’t really believe in coincidences like this and am quite content to consider all evidence that I find interesting whether physical, hearsay, or outright lies and trying to sort out the elusive meaning of all this information is half the fun of it as far as I’m concerned because limiting myself to only consider whatever can be proven beyond reasonable doubt is boring and depressing.
Ultimately, I don’t think any other person’s spiritual experience is valid for another, even if the person telling me is a “true” prophet, even if they have true “stewardship” over me. I know I am taking that to an extreme, but that is where my thinking takes me. Now … I do not mean at all to say that someone else’s spiritual experience is never valuable to me. It can be very valuable in many ways, perhaps even in ways the other person does not understand or intend.
The only way a person can truly “verify” someone else’s spiritual experience, if you want to work with it from a scientific perspective (which I don’t think really works anyway), is to have a new personal spiritual experience that verifies to you that another person’s experience is valid. To say it more condensed, you must have a “spiritual witness” of your own to validate what someone is telling you.
I agree also with what others already said about reproducing the conditions. There are nearly infinite numbers of variables at work at any given time when we have a spiritual experience — time, surroundings, mood, all sorts of body chemistry, etc. Some events can never be repeated the same. Like Ray’s story, there will never be another first time he blessed that infant son. If he did it again, it would be a repeat, and would be tainted by the memories of the first time.
That is a great example of why I often think of the religious tapping into the irrational, and I mean irrational in the mathematical sense (not philosophical or psychological). Life is like the unfolding of the digits of an irrational number, like a divine proportion, it never repeats itself.
The spiritual implications of this are profound. It means you must really become responsible for your self, your decisions and your actions. It is the essence of truly freeing “free agency.” If we explore this long enough, we will eventually see that we must not, and can not, depend upon anyone but God. Can we even lay our excuse and blame at God’s feet? Perhaps in the end, we can not even do that.
Brian Johnston wrote:The spiritual implications of this are profound. It means you must really become responsible for your self, your decisions and your actions. It is the essence of truly freeing “free agency.” If we explore this long enough, we will eventually see that we must not, and can not, depend upon anyone but God. Can we even lay our excuse and blame at God’s feet? Perhaps in the end, we can not even do that.
LOVE this! And maybe when we come to understand the true nature of God, it will become clear why we must learn self-reliance in this life.
I have a hard time replicating my own spiritual experiences when trying to think back on them or trying to share them in a testimony. It is like waking up after having an awesome dream and I want to try so hard to go back to sleep real quick and get back into that awesome dream…never seems to work for me. It is an experience that comes and goes…and I try to retain and learn from it best I can.
(let alone someone else replicating it)
Anyone read the “folie a deux” link, and what did they think? SamBee wrote:Anyone read the “folie a deux” link, and what did they think?
I read it. It seems that this syndrome requires two individuals to be in somewhat proximity of each other and share some kind of common belief structure. It would explain much about how people in a group experience similar spiritual manifestations. But the point of the original post was if spiritual manifestations can be replicated on demand and with entirely different individuals. Obviously not.
Cadence wrote:SamBee wrote:Anyone read the “folie a deux” link, and what did they think?
I read it. It seems that this syndrome requires two individuals to be in somewhat proximity of each other and share some kind of common belief structure. It would explain much about how people in a group experience similar spiritual manifestations. But the point of the original post was if spiritual manifestations can be replicated on demand and with entirely different individuals. Obviously not.
I think folie a deux, is one of these things, along with ball lightning, will o’ the wisp etc, which would actually explain a lot of paranormal phenomena, if it were more widely known.
I wonder how common folie a deux (or a trois/quatre (4/5) etc) is. I mention it, because in a way, it is a form of replication, not a scientific form, but replication nonetheless. And moreover, it’s replication of a delusion… (As opposed to a theoretical spiritual experience)
Of course, there is yet another argument FOR religious experience… namely that it may be a physical phenomenon, but it’s also part of our God-given hardware, i.e. we have this facility for a reason.
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