(February 25, 2016 at 9:36 am)robvalue Wrote: That's exactly right. I don't accuse people of lying about their personal experiences. I accept that they are telling me what they believe happened. It's just that people are notoriously bad at accurately describing events, and no one is qualified to identify previously unknown phenomena like "God".
The fact that "God" just happened to look exactly how they would expect God to look, when there's obviously nothing real to compare to, says a lot. Same goes for any other supernatural business.
Yep, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable... even just how the question is asked can influence how it is perceived 'how fast was the car going when it smashed into the tree?' will influence perception and make you think 'fast'. And NDE's are another one... the testimony is unreliable unless they interview quick because of the mind's ability to fill in the gaps... to 'confabulate'. I've had some memories as well, mainly from my childhood, which turned out to be demonstrably false - impossible situations that couldn't have happened based on what I later learned from photographs etc... things like the layout of a room etc. So the mind is more than capable of making things up, modifying memories after the fact, and seeing what it wants/expects to see.
