For many christians, personal testimony, personal experience is a really big deal.

But does personal experience really prove anything?

Isn't it at best like an ink blot test which reveals more about the person than provides any evidence one way or another about god?

Personal testimony is by nature subjective; moreover when the things experienced are non-material, there can't even be plausibility within what is generally knowable.

If your friend tells you he caught a fish thiiis big, at least we know fishes have been known to exist and can be interacted with in a stable way.

The only way you can prove something is to test it. It terms of personal experience, you come up with a well thought through hypothesis, you then test that theory to see if it works. You then repeat the test a number of times and come to a conclusion.

The initial experience itself cannot prove anything, but the tests after the intial experience may prove something.

(April 30, 2011 at 11:35 am)FadingW Wrote: If your friend tells you he caught a fish thiiis big, at least we know fishes have been known to exist and can be interacted with in a stable way.

How do we know that fishes exist? By experience, surely? People had fish-like experiences and, through trust in their perception and the validation of others having (assumedly) similar experiences, came to believe that there are such things as fish, and then the fact that fish exist became common knowledge. Just as with religious experiences, there is a leap from the epistemological (the belief that fish exist) to the metaphysical (that fish exist). Quite a few philosophers (William Alston comes to mind) have argued that experiences of God can be thought of in a similar way.

(April 30, 2011 at 12:12 pm)Matthaios Wrote:

(April 30, 2011 at 11:35 am)FadingW Wrote: If your friend tells you he caught a fish thiiis big, at least we know fishes have been known to exist and can be interacted with in a stable way.

How do we know that fishes exist? By experience, surely? People had fish-like experiences and, through trust in their perception and the validation of others having (assumedly) similar experiences, came to believe that there are such things as fish, and then the fact that fish exist became common knowledge. Just as with religious experiences, there is a leap from the epistemological (the belief that fish exist) to the metaphysical (that fish exist). Quite a few philosophers (William Alston comes to mind) have argued that experiences of God can be thought of in a similar way.

Yeah, but I can't go throw a line out into the water and catch god with a spinner bait.

Quote:But does personal experience really prove anything?

Not a fucking thing...to anyone other than the lunatic in question.

(April 30, 2011 at 12:15 pm)Cinjin Cain Wrote: Yeah, but I can't go throw a line out into the water and catch god with a spinner bait.

I don't see how that contradicts my previous post.

(April 30, 2011 at 12:21 pm)Matthaios Wrote:

(April 30, 2011 at 12:15 pm)Cinjin Cain Wrote: Yeah, but I can't go throw a line out into the water and catch god with a spinner bait.

I don't see how that contradicts my previous post.

You can test the hypothesis that fish exist. By physically catching a fish.

Thinking a fish dosen't allow that fish to exist anywhere apart from the mind.

(April 30, 2011 at 12:24 pm)ib.me.ub Wrote:

(April 30, 2011 at 12:21 pm)Matthaios Wrote:

(April 30, 2011 at 12:15 pm)Cinjin Cain Wrote: Yeah, but I can't go throw a line out into the water and catch god with a spinner bait.

I don't see how that contradicts my previous post.

You can test the hypothesis that fish exist. By physically catching a fish.

Thinking a fish dosen't allow that fish to exist anywhere apart from the mind.

ty ib ... that was my initial thought. Basic but logical.

(April 30, 2011 at 12:24 pm)ib.me.ub Wrote: You can test the hypothesis that fish exist. By physically catching a fish.

Right, but the hypothesis is whether the fish experienced actually exists or is just a mental construct of some sort. Going out and having another experience of a fish doesn't seem to help a great deal with that hypothesis.

(April 30, 2011 at 12:12 pm)Matthaios Wrote: How do we know that fishes exist? By experience, surely? People had fish-like experiences and, through trust in their perception and the validation of others having (assumedly) similar experiences, came to believe that there are such things as fish, and then the fact that fish exist became common knowledge. Just as with religious experiences, there is a leap from the epistemological (the belief that fish exist) to the metaphysical (that fish exist). Quite a few philosophers (William Alston comes to mind) have argued that experiences of God can be thought of in a similar way.

No "experience" of God can be proven to be anything but a psychological illusion.