@arfa brane --
No, I'm not hallucinating. I can see this stuff at will.
Doesn't mean that it's not a hallucination. I can force myself to hallucinate at will, but what I see has no bearing on what is really there, that's what makes it a hallucination. As I said, this phenomenon is entirely subjective and thus is susceptible to the liabilities of your all-too-human brain.
No that isn't true either. Only I can look inside my own head. But suppose other people tell you the same thing--they can see light--how do you know they aren't just making it up?
I don't know, that's why personal testimony isn't acceptable as evidence in such matters. But let us put this in a different light.
Suppose I come up to you and tell you that I have a fire breathing dragon in my garage, surely you'd want to see it. I mean the world is littered with myths and legends about dragons(and their slayers) but no one has ever produced a shred of evidence that points to their existence. What an opportunity!
So you go to my garage and look in to find no dragon, lots of junk but no dragon can be found.
"Where's the dragon?" You ask.
"Oh she's right here," I reply. "I neglected to tell you that it's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flower on the floor to capture her footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
You suggest using thermal imaging to detect it's invisible, fiery breath.
"Good idea," I say, "but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray paint the dragon to make her visible.
"Good idea, except she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
For every single test you come up with I come up with a special explanation of why it won't work. What's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? There's absolutely no discernible at all, and that's one of the points of this thought experiment. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions that are immune to disproof are veridically worthless, and your inability to disprove my contention is not the same thing as proving it right. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing in the absence of evidence on nothing more than my say-so.
Now(and this is the other point of the experiment), in such a scenario, would you trust, just based on my testimony, that I did indeed have such a dragon in my garage? Or would you start to wonder if it was all in my head? Would having a group of such claims coming from different people improve their validity? No, of course it wouldn't. Argumentum ad populum.
By the way, I got this thought experiment from Carl Sagan's
Demon Haunted World, a book that you should seriously pick up.
Yes it is like light. It's bright and shiny and it centers your mind, unlike light you see with your eyes. The sounds are like sound too.
No, it's not like light at all. Not only does this "inner light" lack any energy, wavelength(which are sort of interchangeable), or discernible physical effect, but it is subjective instead of objective. In addition to that this "inner light" isn't made of anything similar to light. This "inner light" is the workings of the brain, programmed by evolution, to do certain things. Light is large numbers of photons and visible light is a large number of photons within a certain range of wavelengths. You say that it's "bright and shiny", but these are not specific characteristics of light, they are shared with other things(such as certain reflective surfaces), furthermore light is not necessarily either bright or shiny. Certain wavelengths of light are completely invisible to us either because they're too energetic(such as X-rays) or not energetic enough(infra-red light).
So, no matter how you wish to slice it, your comparison is hopelessly flawed. There simply aren't enough points of commonality for a comparison to take place. What's really happening here is that your brain is interpreting non-sensory stimuli in the same way it normally interprets sensory stimuli, thus causing a hallucination. Given the complexity of the neural pathways and the fact that the brain can be "trained" to respond to stimuli in a certain way, this is not an uncommon occurrence. In fact it's exceedingly common.
No, it is NOT metaphorical.
I think that you need to look up the word "metaphor" because I don't think it means what you think it means.
Can you breathe metaphorically?
Yes, I can. I can
breathe in knowledge or the emotions of those around me just like I can
learn by osmosis. Both of these are metaphors, just like your "inner light"
But YOU said that, I didn't.
Actually you
did say that. You said, and I'm quoting here, "God is light". Now, light is synonymous with photons, therefore the phrase "God is photons" is syntactically identical to what you said. That you didn't mean that is irrelevant on this point because this is actually what you said. Now, if you meant something different then the fault of the miscommunication lies with you for not adhering to agreed upon definitions or informing us of your personal definition.
I said I can see what I (and a lot of others) call light, inside my head.
And the best, most parsimonious explanation for this is emphathetically
not that god is suspending the laws of the universe to send you a message. The best explanation is that you and your colleagues are experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations. This is the explanation that requires the least number of assumptions.
It is not photons of light, and it does not impinge on my retinas.
Then it is not light but some other phenomenon.
How fraking hard is this to understand? Light is made up of photons which are the smallest particle of light and the carrier particle for the electromagnetic force. If "light" isn't made up of photons then it is, by definition, not light. QED.
You're the one who is distracted by your overwhelming need to dismiss my claims.
"Overwhelming need"? No. Perversely sadistic desire? Possibly. However I don't really need to dismiss your claims, the overwhelming majority of them are self-collapsing, no work is needed on my part. I do this mainly for the hidden audience, those who stalk the threads but don't actively participate. The fence sitters and undecideds that could go one way or another. Seeing your arguments thoroughly trounced may be the convincing they need, at the very least it will give them something to think about.
I have stuck on point for this thread. You said that the statement "god is light" can't be empirically disproven(of course this all depends on which god we're talking about, but we were talking about the god of the bible so that solves that problem). Given that photons are light and that photons are completely incapable of fulfilling the role of god as necessitated by the bible, your statement categorically cannot be true. It has been disproven.
The only way you've been able to dangle on the edge of the cliff is by retconning the definition of the word light, playing semantics games, and asserting that a metaphorical usage of the word is literal. I think that I've done a decent job of staying within the bounds of the OP's topic(for the most part).
And I asked you if you believe in your breathing reflex. If you claim you can breathe, how can this be independently verified, and why shouldn't it be dismissed as something you're just making up?
And I refused to bite your trollbait, however if you're
that adamant about it I'll tell you.
My breathing reflex can be independently verified by any number of means, it has nothing to do with belief. Visual observation would be enough under most circumstances, however there are several mechanical options as well. For example, we could place a pressure sensitive device across my chest and wrap it in an inflexible band, the oscillation in pressure would indicate my breathing independent of any bias possible. See, again your "impossible" questions are mere child's play for me.
However, I would remind you that this is, once again, a red herring which has nothing to do with the topic of the thread. I indulged you by answering your question, now please stop asking irrelevant questions and stick to the topic.
Since control of breathing is a way to meditate (or, if you like, to experience God), science as such appears to have a problem here.
You're about seventy years behind on the science here. We have many, many ways to monitor vital signs(obviously you've never been to a hospital), including the rate of breathing. We've also independently observed that certain brainstates can reduce or increase breathing and heart rates through the discrete release of chemical stimulants and depressants. Science has no problem with this, nor does it have a problem with introspection/meditation/prayer having an effect on the brain of the one doing it, it's all been observed and documented. And best of all, every single effect of such practices can be easily achieved with no supernatural/spiritual/religious elements at all. They aren't needed.
You call it "experiencing god"(we call it self-reflection and introspection) on baseless grounds. There's no evidence that anything beyond the brain and body are taking part in this experience. Again, you're making unsupported assumptions based on your own ignorance of the subject in question, rather than continue in a vain attempt to catch me in some mistake or fallacy(especially since you can't seem to recognize them) you would do better to spend your time reading up on these subjects so that you aren't so ignorant about them.
Suppose I claim I can control my breathing to the extent I can also control my heartbeat, by slowing it down at will? More unverifiable illusions?
Nope, perfectly verifiable as they produce reactions which we can monitor and observe, both directly and indirectly. However, and I know where you're going with this, this is not a valid comparison for your "inner light", not enough commonalities.
