Craig B
The reports don't indicate a quieter form of anything with lights in the sky and voices.
I was relying on Paul's signed reports. I am unpersuaded that Luke ever saw Paul during a visionary event, or that "Paul's testimony" as portrayed in
Acts was Paul's work. In any case, the "quiet" is by comparison with a certain style of shamanic performance, unquiet as viewed by spectators, not the interior quality of the expereince for the person involved.
That's right. But Muhammad and Paul both wrongly believed that they were in contact with supernatural beings.
You know more about their private mental states than I do. I just know what they wrote, not what they personally believed.
No doubt that's all perfectly wholesome, but the idea that they are of supernatural origin, if not "diseased" - and I made no such suggestion - is at least false.
You didn't, but you did mention widespread undiagnosed epilepsy, and offered "another example of the same phenomenon" which told us that Mohammed "sometimes growled like a camel, foamed at his mouth, and streamed with perspiration." Somebody might connect the dots, despite your strenuous efforts to dissuade them. Thank you for clarifying.
Your patient has been dead for almost 1400 years, Doctor, and you have no remains. Your diagnosis is exactly baseless.
pakeha
"Seizures" and glossolalia have been part of the spiritual conman's bag of tricks for ages. It always sets off alarm signals when I read or hear of someone claiming spiritual validity via these two behaviours.
Not necessarily "tricks." Good actors can convincingly feign seizures, but there's no question in my mind that Deren (who had a theatrical background) learned to have an actual seizure, for example. The interruption of ordinary conscious activity is what is seen as the "opening to the supernatural." This interruption can take many forms, and be accompanied by many physical "signs," such as loss of bodily control.
I obviously do not take any physical presentation as evidence of supernatural contact.
Still, the honesty of Paul isn't evidence one way or another of Jesus' existence, is it?
Isn't it? I estimate that Paul's writing is more likely to have been found in the possible worlds which include a historical Jesus than in the possible worlds which do not. You may assess it otherwise, but we are past the question of whether it is evidence, and are now dickering about its bearing.
Did you perhaps mean that Paul does not testify to direct knowledge of Jesus' existence, or ...?
I raised that question somewhere in the Triple-thread recently with zugzwang. I don't see where Paul apparently having written "I saw Jesus in Jerusalem back before Pontius Pilate killed him" would add much to the evidentiary value of Paul's writing. It would clarify what Paul is claiming to be true, which isn't really all that murky, but wouldn't better serve as evidence for it, IMO.
(Edited to correct zugzwang's user name.
Disclaimer: it sometimes happens that I misspell a username. If that is the case, then it is unintentional and accidental, even if the misspelling is itself a possibly meaningful string.)
