rosborne979 wrote:Foxfyre wrote:But those who claim to have experienced God and via that experience know ID to be fact number into the millions. Can you say something is extraordinary when many millions of people, that cloud of witnesses, testify to the experience?
It depends on the basic assumptions you use to view the world.
If you already believe in the supernatural, then no claim is ever really extraordinary. Ghosts and Demons, Gnomes and Fairies, Gods and Devils, an endless pantheon of possibilities are all equally valid. Many people belive in Ghosts and Demons, Zombies, Vampires, Witches, Shades and Spirits, does the fact that millions believe in that make them true. Of course not.
But if you approach the world scientifically, then it doesn't matter how many people believe it, it's still an extraordinary claim.
I don't know whether there are ghosts or demons. I've never seen either and there is not (yet) a sufficient cloud of credible witnesses who claim to have seen or experienced such to convince me of their existence.
As I don't know anybody who has ever seen a zombie or vampire or witch or shade or spirit or gnome or fairy (assuming a spirit is different from a ghost), I would find such a claim interesting but not believable. I might even think millions of people claiming a religious experience to be extraordinary if I had not shared their experience.
But just like the people who touched the stove and found it hot are more likely to believe me when I report that the stove was hot, when I experience what millions claim to have experienced, it is not difficult to accept something as fact.
As I told FM, I don't ask or require you to believe me. But neither can you disprove or falsify my belief with any known scientific principle or by your own disbelief.
And it is for this reason, that no science teacher worth his salt would tell a child that there is no Intelligent Design for the universe.
