Anyway, my conclusion is that subjective “feeling” of “real” spiritual presense is subjective and many people can claim that same validation for mutually contradictory beliefs.
Yes, but the same can be said of almost anything… and beliefs that seem to be mutually contradictory when viewed through the monotheistic assumptions that (A) all spiritual reality must be resolvable to a single Person, and (B) therefore, it is not possible that different people in different circumstances and different locales simply encounter different Gods, may be less so if those assumptions are not made. And, of course, there is always the possibility that somebody is just flat wrong
- a possibility that I do keep in mind regarding my own beliefs as well as those of others, since one of my strongest core beliefs is that revelation is both incomplete and ongoing.
The claims of ANY religion have to be stacked up against other evidence–especially historical.
That “especially” also cuts both ways, though. Looking at the whole course of human history, polytheism seems to be our default setting - and since it’s obvious that you and I would disagree on whether monotheism is progress or aberration, let’s just not go there and save the bus fare.
The more honest neopagans admit that’s lacking
I beg to differ, at least in my own case. I worship the Gods of the Greeks, the ancestral Gods who live at the
fons et origo of our civilization, and who, I believe, have always been here for those with eyes to see… and there are entire university departments devoted to studying the evidence of the faith in and works of my Gods.
As the late Aldous Huxley admitted , pantheist as he was, mystical experiences are HIGHLY influenced by one’s preparation–doing a lot of buddhist religious reading and discussion is going to produce a buddhist mystical experience, ditto for a neopagan.
Of course, when I had my synagogue experiences, I had already been actively pagan for a number of years, and was visiting the synagogue more out of my longstanding interest in comparative religion… And in all my years of intense Christian preparation, I never had a Christian mystical experience. But maybe thisis the infamous exception that somehow “proves” the rule?
…Private Revelation is NOT binding on any Catholic but he who personaly experiences it–and that as long as it does NOT contradict the teachings of the Church.
Exactly. Taking that to the next logical step, I take the “classical” deist position that
all religious experience is ultimately subjective, and your experience - or the experience of the Biblical authors, or of the writers of Greek myth if it comes to that - should not be, indeed CANnot be, taken as absolutely authoritative.
Which leads me to the obvious question - if you reject personal spiritual experience as insufficient, what is the basis on which you personally choose to accept Catholic teaching as authoritative?
) applied to monotheists as a class, not specifically you, LionOfNarnia. Sorry if that was unclear.