Here’s something I stole from C.S. Lewis (again):
"I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles. Whatever experiences we may have, we shall not regard them as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural. Any event which is claimed as a miracle is, in the last resort, an experience received from the senses; and the senses are not infallible. We can always say we have been the victims of an illusion; if we disbelieve in the supernatural this is what we shall always say. Hence, whether miracles have really ceased or not, they would certainly appear to cease in Western Europe as materialism became the popular creed. For let us make no mistake. If the end of the world appeared in all the literal trappings of the Apocalypse, if the modern materialist saw with his own eyes the heavens rolled up and the great white throne appearing, if he had the sensation of being himself hurled into the Lake of Fire, he would continue forever, in that lake itself, to regard his experience as an illusion and to find the explanation of it in psychoanalysis, or cerebral pathology. Experience by itself proves nothing. If a man doubts whether he is dreaming or waking, no experiment can solve his doubt, since every experiment may itself be part of the dream. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it.
Lewis is wrong. I highlighted the error. The senses always convey the information, however we can
interpret the signals incorretly. To say that the senses may “fool” us does lead to nighmare: “if the senses would not provide the correct information - how would we know”?
Actually, this is only true to the one sense, which is truly a “distant” sense - vision. No one can incorrectly interpret the sounds; no one can imagine that the blaring of a siren is “really” just a quiet sound of a violin. Or to mistakenly imagine that the stench of rotting carcass is “really” the smell of a rose. The touch and the taste are even more “close-up” senses. You cannot misinterpret a beating and imagine that it is “really” a loving caress.
The “vision” can be incorrectly interpreted, but that is all.
So experience is the final arbiter. That lady did not
see a ghost, she saw something she
interpreted to be a ghost. Not to mention, that if a “ghost” is visible, then it is part of the physical universe, subject to the “scientific” method.
I disagree with your perception of my view.
I did not mean it as a “personal” you…
Allow me to admit: everything that is physical IS subject to the scientific method.
Well, then, since the interface is part of the physical world, it would be subject to the scientific method.
I am not certain you understand my view of what would constitute a “miracle”. To me it appears you assume that I believe some natural, material thing would suddenly- spontaneously- cease acting according to its nature. Possibly calling for an expansion of the laws we thought we knew concerning it.
That is the only proper way to approach it. The alternative: “it cannot be caused by any natural phenomenon” presupposes omniscience.
My view is otherwise: simply that if there were some unimaginable force or thing outside the material universe (not improbably Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover”) that was able to interfere with the workings of Nature- I do not see how science could be expected to tell us much about it. Nor do I think there could be a controlled experiment to detect the presence of that thing. Like we established earlier- your methodology precludes you from discovering anything but scientific facts.
Again, we play the percentages. To imagine that we do not know everything about the physical universe is just the admission of our lack of omniscience. It is much more probable that we do not know the actual cause, then to assume that an unknown and unknowable entity, employing some unimaginable means made it somehow happen. This would be sheer “magic”, unknowable forever. And since - insofar - all those “unexplained” miraculous events all turned out to be natural phenomena, we play the percenatges.
My question: Would your methodology also leave out things like history, or the idea that I would do better NOT to be a cruel and treacherous person?
History is not part of the reality. The past does not exist. The other part can be explained very simply and rationally. It is to your long-term benefit to adhere to the principle of reciprocity. It can be proven by the branch of mathematics called “game theory”.
