Atheists

Tough question. I'll begin with a couple of caveats. First, this is trying to explain the ineffable. For a human to describe the source of the universe is kind of like a dog attempting to explain human brain development. We rely on analogies to things we're familiar with: human intelligence and creativity, but we have a strong suspicion that whatever force or process that produced the universe may be so different from us that these concepts have little meaning. Second, keep in mind that I'm not trying to prove that the universe was created by an intelligence--just that such a possibility is not untenable in light of current scientific knowledge. Third, although I use concepts and arguments borrowed from ID theorists like William Dembski, I'm not making the same pretentious claims they are. I don't think anyone yet has PROVEN the existence of an Intelligent Designer, and that sort of thing doesn't concern me. Fourth, I think of creative intelligence as being consistent with pantheism, Stoic natural law, the Brahman of the upanishads, and the Deism of the Founding Fathers, as well as more personal figures like Yaweh-Elohim and Allah. Creative intelligence entails the ability to plan, or in the case of pantheism, to impart to the parts an order inherent in the whole.

That being said,the defining feature of intelligent agents,according to Dembsky, is their ability to create complex specified information (CSI). Information is the actualization of one possibility over others. Complexity is a sequencing or ordering of units or events in a manner that is improbable. Specification is conformity to an independently given pattern, such as a circular or triangular shape, a repetitive series of numbers, symmetry, geometric progression,e.g., Morse Code, DNA,etc. Suppose a vistor from Outer Space arrived on earth and was trying to determine whether or not the figures on Mount Rushmore and Shakespeare's Hamlet were products of creative intelligence or blind natural processes. It might be aware that highly complex, face-like patterns can be produced by the action of wind and rain on rock over long periods of time, but the probablilities of that producing the Mount Rushmore faces would be low and the "specification" wouild be obvious once pictures of the actual presidents were obtained and compared with those carved in the mountain. Likewise, Hamlet might have been produced by an army of chimps seated at word processers if they were seated there for eons, especially if a process like natural selection eliminated the mistakes. But in choosing the most likely explanation, comparison of Hamlet to other known human literature would favor an explanation in terms of creative intelligence. So I'd be looking for evidence of CSI. I don't think Dembski has found it outside of human artifacts. I don't think Dawkins et al have ruled it out.

 

Iterations of an equation like produces infinite complexity with self-similar patterns in different scales. Complexity is the delicate border between simple order and complete chaos. Several of similar type equations give result very much like naturally occurs things in the universe. I think people would have trouble believing CSI if they knew that something with so much power was using such simple equations that us primitive humans could figure out.

 

What part of physical reality does this equation describe? Your example might not convey specification, in Dembski's sense, which is admittedly poorly defined as "independently known". Besides, us primitive humans are certainly intelligent enough to figure out that equation. That ain't chopped liver.

 

Okiefreak:

And yet it is still more reasonable to conclude that the universe is its own source upon considering all we know of it, than the product of something else. In teleological theory there is always the spurious inference that design in nature implies overall design.

 

In case you haven't noticed, the artist formerly called wayfaring stranger has been born again as okiefreak, because we discovered some other dude had the wayfaring stranger name first. (How likely is that? There must be a divine purpose in this somewhere). The original wayfaring stranger is presumably around, but I'm the one who has been posting on the atheism, christianity, and islam sites. I think we've both been doing the existentialism and rainbow family sites.

My born again experience has given me new perspective on the recent discussion on this thread. I mentioned Dawkins and Dembski and the concept of specified complexity. The two dudes had an exchange over whether or not a roomful of chimps at a wordprocessor could come up with the phrase "METHINKS THERE IS A WEASEL." Fascinating and enlightening as it was, METHINKS these guys need to get a life. I think the logical-mathematical approach has its uses, but the debate in question seems pretty close to the medieval go-around over how many angels can stand on the head of a pin.

 

There's all kinds of stuff in Genesis that can be disproven by science. Such as it's claim that the earth was created before the stars. Many stars we see are further away in light years than the age of the earth in years, therefore they are older than the earth. There's lots of other BS in there that doesn't stand up to experimental observation.

 

Not to mention that light was created before the sun. So? The logical conclusion is that the Old Testament isn't literally true. Is that a newsflash? Genesis wasn't meant to be a scientific treatise.

 

True, Genesis isn't a book of science. It's a history of the world from "creation" to the descent of the children of Israel into ancient Egypt. But if your father said he painted your mother, cut her out and sprinkled dust on her to make her human, and then she gave birth to you by asexual reproduction as he played the violin, that story is not meant to be a scientific discussion about biology. But you could use knowledge of how things work in biology to infer that he is full of shit anyway. If the point of the story is something other than how your parents met and how you came to be, it probably doesn't matter. The teller of the story is delusional and may not even be your father after all.

 

It depends on how you look at it. Genesis played a central role in my "born again" experience. Specifically the part about humans being created in God's image and likeness took on new meaning when it occurred to me that every human I encounter reflects divinity. It changed my outlook on life,and made going to Wal Mart a whole new experience! But I don't take it literally. As early as the 4th century, St. Augustine,one of the most respected thinkers of Christianity, established that Genesis isn't to be taken literally, and in particular, challenged the idea that the earth was created in seven days. Even earlier, Origen, another church father, wrote: "What intelligent person will suppose that there was a first, a second and a third day, that there was evening and morning without the existence of the sun and moon and stars? Or that there was a first day without a sky? Who could be so silly to think that God planted a paradise in Eden the way a human gardener does, and that He made in this garden a visible, palpable, tree of life, so that by tasting its fruit with ones bodily teeth, one should receive life?...If God is represented as walking in the garden in the evening, or Adam as hiding under the tree, I do not think anyone can doubt that these things are inteded to express certain mysteries in a metaphorical way."

 

If it depends on how you look at it, you could determine that the part about being created in God's image is the silly metaphorical part and that the part about the Earth being created in 7 days is spot on. As are the parts about planting a paradise, etc. If God or the authors of the bible can't just come out and say what it is we're supposed to believe then it's all up to interpretation and you get a world full of different religions based on different interpretations.... wait... oh that already happened. <<rim shot>> People who write your daily horoscopes do the same thing. They write their horoscopes vague enough so that a bunch of people can look at it and say "wow, that means X" where X can be a different thing for each person.

What I'm hearing from you is that you've picked out certain things from the Bible that ring true spiritually and philosophically to you, and that you've adopted those things into your thinking. Is that right? If so, I have nothing against that. There are some good lessons to be learned from Christianity. But I don't think it's fair to tie philosophies to a god. It's like saying you have to believe in these things because it's God's way, and if you don't you're going to hell. Like a king who wields his power because he was "chosen by god". Philosophies should stand on their own merits.

You may not personally take it to these extremes. But there are many religious people who do.

 

I don't rely exclusively on scripture for guidance on religious or ethical matters, and it's mostly metaphor and allegory. That's how humans deal with ineffable truths. There wasn't a New Testament during the first century of Christianity. Early Christians were essentially charismatic in their approach to religion, and there was quite a variety in beliefs. I'm essentially charismatic myself, relying on judgment, intuition, and leaps of faith, within the constraints of reason and science. And I'm aware that other people using similar means are arriving at diametrically opposed conclusions. That's life. I have confidence in my judgments just as I also have confidence in my political judgments, but obviously others disagree, since Bush was re-elected. But the religious right is wrong! If not, I'm an idiot without hope of making any sense of reality. I also have confidence that at least some of my judgments will be dead wrong, but it's the best anybody can do. Science can't tell us whether Hillary, Romney, etc, would be good presidents, but it's not just a coin toss, and I don't think I'm being purely irrational in saying that some candidates some people are supporting would be disasters. I try my best,stay infomed,and try not to take myself too seriously.

Jesus said we can tell the authentic good guys from the phonies by their fruits. To me, the real test of religion or irrelgion is what it does for the believers, and how it influences the way they conduct themselves and treat others. Are they so preoccupied with their own salvation that they don't care about others? Do they help the poor, look after widows, orphans, and the homeless, etc.? Do they stir up a lot of shit and judge people, like the dudes who show up at funerals to protest gays? How well do they handle crises and adversity, deaths, sickness, pain and suffering, etc.? If religion helps in dealing with these things, it's worthwhile, whether it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Wicca, whatever. If atheism or agnosticism works as well or better, go with that. I know atheists who would put Mother Teresa to shame, and "Christians" who would begrudge you the sweat from their genitalia. If my reading of scripture are correct, the former are following the teachings of Jesus, and the latter are like the Pharisees he condemned. As for "the king who weilds power because he was chosen by God", unfortunately that's a pesent day reality. The question is, can we oppose him more effectively-- outside or inside the ranks of religion?

 

Interesting experiment using MRI technology to observe actvity in different centers of the brain when people are given ethical dilemmas to solve. The relationship between the brain and our thoughts has been known for a long time. The psychologist William James, devout Christian who wrote perhaps the definitive work on religious experiences, wrote in 1892: "The immediate condition of a state of consciousness is an actvity of some sort in the cerebral hemispheres...One has only to consider how quickly consciousness may be abolished by a blow on the head...(or) by a full dose of alcohol..to see how at the mercy of bodily happenings our spirit is..." The conclusions you seem to draw from this, however, are more questionable, especially: "Complex emotions such as love are reduced to brain chemistry (i.e. serotonin and dopimine)". There are two problems: causality and reductionism.

As a scientist, I'm sure you're aware that correlation per se does not show causation. If brain activity and conscious thought happen together, the physical brain activity could be causing the subjective mental experience of thought (phenomenal consciousness), the subjective mental experience of thought could be causing the brain activity, or something else could be causing both. At present, no scientist can say where in the brain the desire to perform even the most basic activities, from wiggling a toe to whistling Dixie originates. I must say there have been dramatic experiments that would make anyone wonder what we are. For example, Pennfield, by stimulating certain parts of the brian with electrodes, was able to induce his subjects not only to recall memories but to re-live them, as though they were happening just then. Intriguing, but Harris' assessment of the state of research still stands.

The other problem is reductionism, the notion that the whole is "nothing but" the sum of its parts: love is nothing but brain chemistry, water is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen, Mozart is nothing but notes, Shakespeare is nothing but words, etc. Psychology was once dominated by behaviorists who were so enamored by reductionism that they denied that phenomenal consciousness, the most immediately accessible phenomenon we experience, even existed. I know one who still believes that, and for all I know it describes his actual mental condition: lights on, nobody home. But science doesn't have to be that way. By the way, when Valentines day comes around, don't write your sweetie that your dopamine and serotin levels are high, and your endorphins are in overdrive.

 

what it isss what it aint tell me what to do...

 

Do not assume that since I have not gone into great detail about why I say brain chemistry causes love that there are not reasons. This is not a scientific presentation. This is a casual internet forum where most readers are not educated in science and I do not have much time to give rigerous scientific proofs here. There is plenty of information out there on these subjects if you look for them. i.e., and quick google search came up with this:

Lauren Slater, in the 2/06 issue of National Geographic discusses love and the chemicals responsible. According to Slater's research, the chemicals triggered responsible for passionate love and long-term attachment love seem to be more particular to the activities in which both participate rather than to the nature of the specific people involved. Chemically, the serotonin effects of being in love have a similar chemical appearance to obsessive-compulsive disorder, which could explain why a person in love cannot think of anyone else. For this reason, being on a SSRI and other antidepressants, which treat OCD, impede one's ability to fall in love.

The long-term attachment felt after the initial "in love" passionate phase of the relationship ends is related to exytocin, a chemical released after orgasm.

According to Slater's research, novelty triggers attraction. Thus, nerve-racking activities like riding a roller coaster are good on dates. Even working out for several minutes can make one more attracted to other people on account of increased heart rate and other physiological responses.

Another quick google search turned up a paper by Pochon, Levy, et al, titled "The Role of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in the Preparation of Forthcoming Actions: an fMRI Study", where they find via MRI how the desire to perform an action (such as wiggling a toe) originates in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex. How can you make these blanket statements about what scientists cannot say? I don't mean to be rude, but have you even looked?

But the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts. I may have said love is nothing but dopamine and seratonin, but obviously there is more to it than that. It's all the sensory inputs that our brains experience. It's the way our brains process that information. And serotonine and dopamine play a large part in how our brains process that information. It's also the actions that we feel compelled to do as a result of how our brains work. Love cannot be reduced to two chemicals. But there are a large number of ultimately explainable things that it can be reduced to.

Reductionalism only fails when we reduce too far, which can happen, and I am guilty of that sometimes. But I don't think that changes what I consider to be true - that you can ultimately reduce anything to a sum of its parts.

 

So much to google, so little time. But I'm somewhat aware of what's being done--enough to know that there are several conflicting theories about it and that experts in the field are far more cautious than you are in coming to causal, reductionist conclusions. For example, Professor Koch, at Cal Tech, believes that for each conscious experience, from the Mona Lisa to your Aunt Millie, there is a unique set of neurons that fires in a specific way. Professor Greenfield at Oxford, drawing on the work of John Searle and Daniel Dennett, believes that each conscious experience is a more holistic property of large networks of neurons that synchronize into coordinated assemblies and then disband. Mc Fadden emphasizes the influence of the synchronous firing on the brain's electromagnetic field. His cemi theory locates consciousness in the EM field that modifies electrical charges across neural membranes and influences the probability that particular neurons will fire, with a feedback loop that accounts for "free will". Yet none of these studies really solves what Chalmers calls the "hard problem": How can our subjective phenomenal experience of consciousness be explained in terms of its neurological base? McGinn denies that it can be solved at all, and devout atheist Sam Harris is convinced that a lot of the naturalistic explanations that have been offered are pseudoscientific windowdressing for fundamental ignorance.

But this is only a conclusionary assumption. Emergentism in molecular biology addresses processes arising out of chemical interactions in the cell which form interconnected feedback cycles with properties lacking in the individual reactions. When you reduce love to physiological components, do you really understand the phenomenon?

Last weekend, I had the delightful experience of taking my girlfriend on a getaway along the scenic Talihena trail across eastern Oklahoma and Arkansas, skirting the ridges of the Ouachita mountains, with spectacular views of the fall foliage. This peak romantic experience could be viewed in terms of brain chemistry--the chemical effects of seasonal changes on the coloration of vegetation, the perception of these stimuli by human sensory organs, the triggering of hormonal changes associated with pleasure, and the cognitive interpretation of all this as "beauty and romance". It's useful for scientists to study phenomena like this in these terms. But a couple in the situation I described would probably not have their experience enhanced by this knowledge, and I'm not sure that the exercise in scientific reductionism would quite capture the ultimate significance of it all.

Can we reduce Justice to judges, lawyers, bail bondsmen, etc.? And does this affect our behavior in any way? If you reduce your significant other to skin, bones, muscle, neruons, homones, etc., do you still hold her/him in the same regard? And does it make any compelling sense to do this? And will (s)he still need you, will she still feed you, when you're sixty-four?

Daniel Dennett, a leading consciousness theorist, has written a book Breaking the Spell in which he relentlessly applies scientific reductionism to the phenomenon of religion, apologizing while he does this that it may be the equivalent of a cell phone going off in the middle of the opera La Traviata. It's an interesting book, but I still wonder if he gets it.

 

Okie:

But is there any ultimate significance to it all? Which is not to question that you and your girl are capable of giving significance to your experience.
What does love signify?

On the topic of reduction---The scientific approach is too open to be anti-poetical. Religion on the other hand...

 

That wasn't the statement that I was responding to. You said "At present, no scientist can say where in the brain the desire to perform even the most basic activities, from wiggling a toe to whistling Dixie originates."

That is in line with my understanding of the brain as well.

I thought what you wrote was unclear, so I looked up Mc Fadden and consciousness and found http://www.unisci.com/stories/20022/0516026.htm

After reading that I think you have accurately described his hypothesis which is unclear. He says an EM field is formed within the brain that is actually our consciousness. An EM field is typically a field in a vacuum or other medium that does not significantly modify the EM field. On the contrary, the brain is packed with neurons which influence and drive the field. As I was reading the article, I thought this hypothesis could be tested by placing a large magnet near the skull to disrupt the field. If his hypothesis is correct a large magnet would disrupt consciousness. He does address this by saying that our skin, skull and cerebrospinal fluid shield us from external electric fields. I disagree. If that were true then MRIs would not work. If you're still in doubt try it on a small animal without an endoskeleton or semi-thick layer of skin. See if there's any change in behavior. I see a lot of handwaving in his hypothesis and no experimentation, which would be needed to advance it to a theory.

There are no doubt a myriad of electrical impulses within the brain. But these are low-power, short range transfers of energy between neuron synapses. And because of their short range, they are less susceptable to external magnetic fields. His discussions on how centers of the brain are trained to recognize the structure and number of leaves in a tree and trained when we learn to drive are well documented in the field of neural networks. Neural networks have been replicated in computer software for decades. That is not consciousness either. Consciousness is the net effect of all these processes going on within the brain.

You seem to be drawn to those who declare something as unknowable. McGinn's inability to understand a problem is not my concern. As for Sam Harris, I have not read his work or his views on naturalistic explainations. I am more interested in theories that have passed the test of experiementation and of scientists and thinkers who have not tossed their hands up in resignation and find a way to come up with hypothesis and test them. It does not have to be one all encompassing theory that instantly provides the answer. Science is a step by step methodical process that inches us closer to an understanding of how things work one piece at a time.

Exactly. Group behavior can, and often does arise from large numbers of smaller reactions. This does not discount reductionalism - it's the definition of reductionalism. For example, in plasma physics, we know how charged particles interact on microscopic scales. And then we use statistical mechanics to talk about the behaviour of a large field of charged particles, or plasma, to describe its behaviour on macroscopic scales. Because of reductionalism, sunspots, solar flares, and fusion/fission reactors can be described as the interaction of sub-atomic particles.

Understanding the physiological components does not cause me to forget the feelings of love. I still know love in the emotional sense. But at the same time I know that it can be understood in the physiological sense. So yes, I would say understanding love in multiple levels brings me closer to understanding the true nature of love.

Sometimes knowledge of the microscopic processesses adds to the experience and sometimes it doesn't. In the case of love, I would say that it does not - unless someone was unable to love, and their doctor advised them that their antidepressants was inhibiting their ability to love. Then in that case an understanding of the physiological processes would make the feeling of love possible.

When I look at a sunset though, I see it on two levels. I see the beauty of the scene, and I also see how the effects of atmospheric scattering produces the light display. I think that adds to the experience because I notice with greater clairity how the light changes from different parts of the sky and I get a better sense of the scale and processes happening than I would if I just saw the scene of a sunset.

As I said, reductionalism fails when we reduce too far. Don't forget the lawmakers, the feedback between written laws and the application of laws, the constitution, the people who wrote the constitution, the history that influenced those people, the instinctual sense of fairness that our species as well as other species have, and that good ol' anterior cingulate cortex.

 

I pretty much agree with you, except that I base my conclusion on (pardon the "F" word) faith, of the low grade kind that Santayana calls "animal faith"--the kind we rely on to know that 2+2=4 and that Mr. Stiffy is not just a figment of my imagination. On one of the other forums, I recently had to deal with a post by a dude who argued that we can't really be sure of these things, and asked defiantly to disprove that 2+2=5. And I don't think I can. But I sense intuitively that to avoid ending up in a straitjacket and to get on with life we have to make the "leap" (or in this case hop or skip) of faith and just accept it. You have a strong faith in naturalism, and so do I because of its results. If I had brain cancer, I'd pick gamma knife radiation over a faith healer without a second thought. Where we differ, I think, is that I leave the door open for "something more". In his study of Varieties of Religious Experience, William James identifies this sense of "something more" as the essence of the religious attitude.And naturalists who shut the door on that possibility seem just as closed minded to me as those who think there are questions scientists will never answer.

While I respect science, I'm skeptical of an idealized model that views it as an entirely objective process that can be relied upon to come up with all the answers. The findings of individual studies are useful, but to contribute to our understanding of the really important questions, the knowledge has to be integrated within the framework of broader theories, which are always tentative and based on inference. I have more confidence in laboratory experiments and studies using control groups than I do in other areas of science where these methods are less available, e.g., natural selection. Darwin's theory, impressive as it admittedly is, is largely based on inferences from circumstantial evidence and is far from airtight. One of the problems with natural selection is that it depends on genetic mutations, but most mutations are detrimental to an organism and those that aren't tend to be statistically neutralized in sizeable populations. Supplemental naturalistic theories like genetic drift can help to resolve the problem, but atheists like Dawkins seem a bit overconfident in their Blind Watchmaker. Science is a human enterpise, and unfortunately can sometimes be subject to the same human biases encountered in other areas of life. The spectacle of conflicting scientific testimonials on issues like global warming and other environmental issues suggests that factors other than just science may be invloved. When orthodoxies become accepted by the scientific establishment that controls the peer review process of a given discipline, they can be hard to break. Faith in naturalism may be one of those orthodoxys. I'm certainly not suggesting the extreme postion of the post-modernists that science is just a social construct, but I don't think it's entirely immune to dogma and ideology either.

Water, as we know, is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but it has properties that those constituents don't have. That's why I wouldn't say it's "nothing but" hydrogen and oxygen.

Good. But you're not denying the value of beauty or saying "nothing but".

Are you saying that it's just a matter of taking account of the complexity of all the interconnections in the system? Maybe so, if you add the human ideal (an abstraction with a lot of affective loading) to the mix. But it still can be appreciated or valued independently on a different level, the way you can see the beauty in the sunset while acknowledging the contributions of its components.

 

Simple, just get 2 apples, and then 2 more apples, and count them. As long as we agree on what '2','4','+', and '=' mean, it's easy. You could redefine those concepts, but then we wouldn't be talking about the same thing any more. Philosophers have a way of making things more difficult then they are. I like Mariel Hemmingway's comment to two professors caught up in the discussion of whether we can know if reality really exists or not. She says "Why don't you start by assuming you don't exist and see where that gets you." LOL. Like the Matrix, we could all be plugged into an extremely complex simulator and the reality we see could all be BS. And your right, we have to start off by assuming by ffff.... ffff.... ugh faith (ptewy ptewy) that certain things are true. And I think this is the beginning of knowledge. When we begin to learn, we just have to accept certain things like 2+2 is four. But once we advance in our learning then we learn the reasons why what we had earlier assumed is actually true.

And then other times, when we advance in our learning, we start to question the basic assumptions we believed by faith. Is the world really flat? Do I have to eat my meat before I have pudding? Does God really exist?

I think the 'something more' is how we all give meaning to our lives. Naturalists still need meaning to their lives. It may not be as grandiose as worshiping a supernatural being, it may be as simple as being a good father to your children.

What properties are you talking about? All the properties of water I can think of are as a direct result of its molecular structure, and how its molecular structure interacts with light, gravity, and other matter.

I don't deny the value of beauty to ourselves. It is a completely subjective thing that has no meaning beyond how I experience things, except for shared experiences where more than one person shares the same experience and feels similarly about it. But even then, beyond those people, or even beyond the whole human race if it's a large enough shared feeling, it is completely subjective and inconsequential.

Yes.

True.

So let's come back around full circle, before we get too far off track, with what started this line of conversation and I'll restate where I'm coming from: The consciousness is linked 1-1 with the brain. I believe there's no soul, and you also said "I'm not sure there is a "soul" that survives the body after death." You agree, reluctantly, that naturalism does explain things when all factors are accounted for. We both recognize that there's the human experience, which I say can ultimately be explained by completely natural processes.

What I'm still trying to get at is this: Specifically, what elements of life do you see as supernatural, that cannot be explained by natural causes, and what evidence do you have that these supernatural occurances even exist?

 

I prefer to phrase the question: what elements of life make me think that there might be apects of reality that seem to be outside prevailing naturalistic frameworks, and may relate to a higher level of being within and/or outside of us?
(1)I'm impressed by the fine-tunedness of the universe, and beyond that feel it's remarkable we won the cosmic sweepstakes, that we evolved into beings who are aware of reality, when the course of evolution didn't have to go that way;(2) I am also pretty impressed with the phenomenon of consciousness, the most immediately accessible reality we know. There is Chalmers "hard question": how and why we have this phenomenal, subjective reality we identify as us inside our heads. He asks, why couldn't we be zombies? In other words, what function does consciousness serve from an evolutionary standpoint. Various suggestions have been put forward that consciousness helps somehow to perform some sort of integrating function, but I don't get it; (3) I'm generally awed by the phenomenon of existence. Like Einstein, Carl Sagan & Julian Huxley, I find the vast complexity and reguarity of the universe awe inspiring, and I have the same feelings toward humanity;(4) I'm fascinated by the phenomenon of synchronicity that Jung was also intrigued by--the uncanny coincidences in our lives that I and just about everybody else has experienced. Of course, naturalists would say they're just coincidences, & over the course of a liftime, everybody will experience several of them as a result of sheer chance. There are also the kinds of "paranormal" experiences that I hear about from friends who otherwise are normal, level-headed dudes--being healed of a wound by sleeping overnigt in a pyramid, seeing auras, etc. I take them with a grain of salt and put them in the X-files for future reference. (5) There's also that personal life-altering religious experience I and numerous othes have had, which in my case can be explained entirely in naturalistic terms. It's not so much that science could never explain these phenomena; it's that science doesn't seem to be interested in doing so. (6) Finally,there's the multidimensional complexity of the religious phenomenon, offeringsychological, social and economic benefits. None of this is particulary "supernatural", but they point to something interesting beyond our conventional wisdom. My concept of God is like the Higher Power of the recovery groups--someting beyond the self, whether a Higher Intelligence or an impersonal force, or even the universe itself. But none of this is "evidence" in the sense it would convice you or anybody else.