RE: Carl Sagan's no evidence claim

Jim Taggart (jtaggart@astea.com)
Tue, 30 Sep 1997 11:57:03 -0400

> ----------
> From: pwason@abacus.bates.edu[SMTP:pwason@abacus.bates.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 1997 10:34
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Carl Sagan's no evidence claim
>
<snip>
> When people like Sagan claim there is no evidence for God,
> they are
> dismissing the personal testimony of literally billions of people
> today and
> throughout history. They may not say this in so many words, but they
> are in effect claiming to know that every one of these billions of
> people is
> deeply psychologically deceived. (It is also rather ironic that some
> of
> these same scholars then turn around and claim that Christians are the
> ones who are "arrogant" in their knowledge claims! But that is another
> issue.)
>
Good point.

> One obvious complication is that the exact content of this
> testimony varies so much -- this is so even just among Christians, but
> far
> more so if we take all claims of religious experience together, from
> Nuer
> witches seen flying upside down to blinding lights near the city of
> Damascus. It is reasonable for the sceptic to ask how these could all
> be
> experiences of an objectively real "something" outside the person
> (like
> God) if they are so different. Several possible answers come to mind
> -- 1)
> they are all experiences of spiritual beings, but of different beings,
> 2)
> they are all experiences of God, but how we understand and explain our
> experience of God is so culture bound that when the descriptions are
> put
> side-by-side they seem to be incompatible, or 3) some are experiences
> of an objective spirit world while others are psychological quirks.
>
Actually it's probably more like the fable of the blind men and the
elephant. Why should all of us experience the spiritual realm in the
same, or even similar, ways?