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From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Rosen comments at length on Sargent on rye toast
Message-ID: <1522@pucc-h>
Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 10:00:35 EST
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.1522
Posted: Thu Nov 29 10:00:35 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Dec-84 05:49:35 EST
References: <231@pyuxd.UUCP> <1469@pucc-h>, <265@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Computing Crypt
Lines: 117

[Rye toast? Is that nuking a city in New York or a very small town in Arizona?]

>> How do you explain the fact that in May, 1972, a man laid his hands
>> on me and prayed, and I received the ability to speak without conscious
>> thought in a language I don't believe I've ever heard?  And I'm not the
>> only Christian of my acquaintance with this gift.

> Babies also speak in a language that I've never heard, Jeff.  If you were
> without conscious thought, how were you aware of what was going on?  Have you
> analyzed what you have said by listening to recordings of the speech?  Have
> you verified ANYTHING about the episodes?  What is the miraculous thing about
> being hypnotized and babbling nonsense?  Why do you believe that to be
> miraculous or divinely inspired?  [GETTING BACK TO THOSE POINTS THAT DON'T
> GET ANSWERED...]

It is, alas, sometimes hard for me to believe that you don't deliberately
misunderstand me.  All I meant was that my speech was not consciously
controlled, not that I was unconscious.  I was not hypnotized.  When I
speak in tongues nowadays, I am not hypnotized, since I can instantly start
or stop.  My experience is corroborated by that of many others.

I have not analyzed my glossolalia; I don't need to.  I believe this
phenomenon to be a gift from God because it has been useful many times
in helping me past psychological/spiritual roadblocks I could see no
way around -- i.e. I come to a point in my conscious prayer where progress
seems impossible, so I let the Spirit pray for me, and an exit is shown
to me.  I don't need to analyze it, because it works.

>> How about using your reasoning capacities to see the fallacies in some of
>> your points?

> I take it by this statement of yours that you simply don't believe that I
> reflect and analyze my own thoughts, beliefs, and preconceptions....
> Since you feel I'm negligent in "using reasoning capacities to see my own
> fallacies", why don't you point some of those fallacies out to me?  Or do
> you just assume that because I disagree with you, my points "must"
> have fallacies?  If not, tell us what they are.

I did get a little carried away there (I wasn't in a very good mood for
some days last week).  Some of the fallacies, or at least difficulties, are
well pointed out in that book that you panned -- "Miracles", by Lewis.  I
venture to point out a few sentences from "Miracles", beginning with a couple
of definitions:

"Some people believe that nothing exists except Nature; I call these people
*Naturalists*.  Others think that, besides Nature, there exists something
else; I call them *Supernaturalists*."

"What the Naturalist believes is that the ultimate Fact, the thing you can't
go behind, is a vast process in space and time which is *going on of its own
accord.*  Inside that total system every particular event...happens because
some other event has happened; in the long run, because the Total Event is
happening....  All...things and events are so completely interlocked that no
one of them can claim the slightest independence from 'the whole show'....
Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will:  for free will would
mean that human beings have the power of independent action, the power of
doing something more or other than what was involved by the total series of
events.  And any such separate power of originating events is what the
Naturalist denies.  Spontaneity, originality, action 'on its own', is a
privilege reserved for 'the whole show', which he calls *Nature*."

"By Naturalism we mean the doctrine that only Nature--the whole interlocked
system--exists."

"All possible knowledge...depends on the validity of reasoning....  Unless
human reasoning is valid no science can be true.  It follows that no account
of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our
thinking to be a real insight.  A theory which explained everything else in
the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking
was valid would be utterly out of court.  For that theory would itself have
been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of
course, be itself demolished.  It would have destroyed its own credentials.
It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound--a proof that
there are no such things as proofs--which is nonsense."

"We may in fact state it as a rule that *no thought is valid if it can be
fully explained as the result of irrational causes*....  Now it would clearly
be preposterous to apply this rule to each particular thought as we come to it
and yet not to apply it to all thoughts taken collectively, that is, to human
reason as a whole.  Each particular thought is valueless if it is the result
of irrational causes.  Obviously, then, the whole process of human thought,
what we call Reason, is equally valueless if it is the result of irrational
causes.  Hence every theory of the universe which makes the human mind a
result of irrational causes is inadmissible, for it would be a proof that
there are no such things as proofs.  Which is nonsense.
   "But Naturalism, as commonly held, is precisely a theory of this sort.
The mind, like every other particular thing or event, is supposed to be
simply the product of the Total System.  It is supposed to be that and
nothing more, to have no power whatever of 'going on its own accord'.  And
THE TOTAL SYSTEM IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE RATIONAL [emphasis mine].  All
thoughts whatever are therefore the results of irrational causes, and
nothing more than that.  The finest piece of scientific reasoning is caused
in just the same irrational way as the thoughts a man has because a bit of
bone is pressing on his brain.  If we continue to apply our Rule, both are
equally valueless.  And if we stop applying our rule we are no better off.
For then the Naturalist will have to admit that thoughts produced by lunacy
or alcohol or by the mere wish to disbelieve in Naturalism are just as valid
as his own thoughts.  What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
The Naturalist cannot condemn other people's thoughts because they have
irrational causes and continue to believe his own, which have (if Naturalism
is true) equally irrational causes."

> But I will ask again:  what is the NON-physical universe?

Charley Wingate had what I thought was a reasonable answer to this; alas, I
did not memorize it.  Perhaps Charley can re-post it.

> Does this talk of "outside the 'natural', 'physical' universe" mean
> ANYTHING?????

As per the above discussion, this talk of there being nothing but the
natural, physical universe means nothing.

-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
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Clearing /tmp