Ok I admit it

[JesusLover1]

But my mom is completely normal mentally.

Once again, you miss the point. My point was that certainty doesn't count for shit.

And how do you know your mom is completely normal mentally, because she hasn't been diagnosed with anything?

Yes, and she's so rationally about everything in her life. And she refuses to lie, even if the truth might hurt someone's feelings.

[Simon Moon]

But my mom is completely normal mentally.

So are most of the people that are certain that they were abducted by aliens.

They are probably not lying, they are almost assuredly not reporting a real alien abduction, but they are indeed WRONG.

[JesusLover1]

Did you guys ever think my mom just saw an angel?

[Esquilax]

She is absolutely, 100% certain she clearly saw him for more than just a faint glance of an eye. She is as certain as possible, it wasn't just a vague thing she only faintly saw.

I know, that's what I'm saying: memories take on greater importance if the person wants to believe something about them, stories get wilder and more elaborate the more they get told.

I'm saying whatever she saw may have started out as a glance, that the original stimuli might have been tiny. But she lies awake at night, thinking about it: "Did I maybe see an angel? Holy crap, I saw an angel!" And suddenly, we have the makings of a story. She mulls it over for a few days, and the more distant the original stimuli becomes, the more hazy the actual memory of it is, and she really wants to believe it was an angel now. Was it just a thing in the corner of her eye? No! She saw it much more clearly than that!

Over time, she tells the story to someone else. And then to another, only this time she's got a new baseline for how significant the event was from the last time she told it, and so on, and so forth.

Our memories are crazy like that, I don't know what else to tell you. I have perfectly clear, real as all hell memories of myself floating at my old primary school, flying around as if under low gravity, even pushing myself off from a specific tree I could probably take you to see. But as real as those are to me, I know they aren't actually real. It was probably just a dream or something that was so vivid it stuck, and over time the memory of it being a dream faded, leaving only the crazy part intact.

[Bad Wolf]

Yes, and she's so rationally about everything in her life. And she refuses to lie, even if the truth might hurt someone's feelings.

And again you miss my point. That fact that she is undiagnosed with any mental disorder, does not mean that she does not have one.

Rationality has no bearing on truth. You can rationalize things both the wrong way and the right way.

And if she refuses to lie, to save someone's feelings, I don't think she is a very nice person.

[LostLocke]

You should check out Brain Games sometime.
Despite how powerful and advanced our brains are you'll get to see just how easy it is to trick it.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

---

So she says, but the human memory isn't as accurate as you might think. Our memories inflate in importance, warp to fit the narrative we want to be true, and are just generally tainted by our perception. Embellishments just happen, dude: what might have been a flash in the corner of the eye becomes a clear, eye contact visualization over repeated tellings of the story.

You need to let go of this idea that human experience is perfect or always worthy of attention. It's just not; we have entire fields of study dedicated to refining our own personal experiences down to just the facts.

---

She is absolutely, 100% certain she clearly saw him for more than just a faint glance of an eye. She is as certain as possible, it wasn't just a vague thing she only faintly saw.

You know what the Bible says about such things.

---

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...rsion=NKJV

---

Based on what you've written chances are she was experiencing hypnagogia. http://listverse.com/2013/10/23/10-weird...cking-you/

[JesusLover1]

If people can just imagine anything, what can we believe?

[Simon Moon]

Did you guys ever think my mom just saw an angel?

Here are just some of the hurdles she would have to clear to convince us:

1. Provide demonstrable evidence that she observed something external to herself. That there was a real phenomena to even examine.
2. Provide demonstrable evidence that it did not have a natural explanation.
3. Provide demonstrable evidence that the supernatural exists.
4. Provide demonstrable evidence that angels exist as part of the supernatural.
5. Provide demonstrable evidence that what she saw actually fit the definition of an angel.
Etc, etc...

Until there is some real phenomena that is observable, there is no reason to include the possibility that she saw an angel. There are just too many natural explanations for what she claims she saw.

[Mr. Moncrieff]

DO you dismiss the "relationships" people of other religions have with their deities?

It can be explained. It's the NEED to believe in something greater than the world around you. To make you feel better about your mortality by inventing an afterlife.

Only Christians have a PERSONAL relationship with their SAVIOR.

/thread.

Right there