First things first

[DeistPaladin]

I wonder how most people interpret "natural" versus "supernatural". To me, if gods exist, they and everything they create are natural. boss?

Exactly!

You've hit the nail on why I can say I'm a deist who rejects claims of the supernatural. If it exists, it can be studied or understood and therefore has properties. If I'm right that God exists, then if we somehow had infinite knowledge, we could understand the nature, properties and limitations of God.

Me too. I wonder if there would be interest in a thread on strange things experienced as small children. I would definitely be interested in hearing about yours DeistP to see how mine might be similar. I wonder if anyone has researched such things.

As a child, I thought our basement was haunted. I kept telling myself there's no such things as ghosts (I was raised by atheist parents) but it all still seemed frightening enough. On some level, I knew it was irrational which is why I never told anyone but even still, I never went down there alone. Whenever I was alone in our basement, I sometimes hallucinated heavy breathing, a strange gurgling voice and once even felt a hand on my shoulder.

The problem went away somewhere around the time when I came of age. I went down into the basement actively looking for the thing, challenging my own fears and expecting to find it was all in my head. Sure enough, no sign of any ghosts. Since then, I've been the type to open umbrellas inside, say "bloody Mary" three times in the mirror or "tempt fate" by saying "what could possibly go wrong", etc. I've learned the way to conquer superstitious fears is to demonstrate how it's all just in the mind.

In retrospect, it's not hard to figure out what it was that I experienced as a child. Basements are dark, scary places away from the sun, often the scenes for ghost stories. Our imagination is so intense, especially as children, that self-induced hallucinations aren't hard to come by.

Same thing is true for topic drift...