Yes, but science offers everything concerning existence. To prove that it is real and it exists requires proof. You do not require proof to talk about the supernatural as a religious concept. I do not reject the idea of the supernatural. Only in the existence of it based on fallacies. As a concept the supernatural is an accepted basis for much fiction and most religions. Testimony is not physical evidence. People lie, people are mistaken, people mislead. There is no evidence to support what the expert testified to, either. It is an opinion. Psychiatry is science. If he can prove his demons, then there is a proper way to go about it. Nor does it mean that they can or must exist. Lack of evidence means that we cannot know, we can only believe or not believe. We have documented cases of people being convicted of witchcraft. Does that mean magic must exist or that people sometimes behave illogically?
If someone who is completely conscious reports things like that, we call it "crazy". If someone who is less than completely conscious reports things like that, we attribute it to hypnagogic hallucinations, abnormal dream states, etc. Or do you also believe the pain in your toe is due to a demon sitting there chewing on it?
I have, in fact, walked on water. Furthermore I can do so anytime that I wish (in January in Alberta). I can hypothsize that Jesus also walked on water and I'm only awaiting evidence that the Sea of Galilee was ever frozen in the first century to proclaim my theory. Seriously, you have touched upon something important here. The "fact " that Jesus walked on water has been presented to me by fundamentalists as "evidence" of Christ's supernatural powers. This is astonishing, because it is clear to me that the story of Christ walking on the water was a parable. It was never intended to demonstrate the supernatural power of Jesus. It was intended to illustrate the faith of the fisherman! Is is not ironic that the Bible-is-the-literal-truth-people miss the point and a nonbeliever like myself actually gets the message!
Pretty much like Moses parting the Red Sea. Historians have theorized that instead of the Charlton Heston version with him throwing his staff and the sea splitting in half, that actually the Red Sea was very swampy and Moses knew the exact times that the water level would rise and when it would be extremely low. There are a bunch of other naturalistic bible theories, people have to be very careful when they start taking the bible literally.
this is what i never get. if we are to throw evidence out the window and just start believing things left and right, how do we know when to stop? why isnt witchcraft true? there is no shortage of witnesses that will claim it is true. and large groups of relatively civilized people have found people guilty of witchcraft to the extent that must be burned. what, am i to believe that those peeps were wrong? all of them? there is no evidence that says they were wrong, and their evidence clearly showed that the ladies were witches. am so arrogant as to just proclaim all those folks to be liars or just crazy? where is my evidence for that?
martin has brought this up before, but i dont get the debate over the supernatural. i strongly believe there is none of it, but how christians can think someone is a kook because they see pink elephants i cant understand. sounds like those hypocritical democrats. people all over the world since the beginning of time have believed in every sort of imaginable b.s. story just because their parents said so (or because they are psycho). so you believe in some omni omni omni god-entity thing with absolutely no evidence and they believe in pink elephants.
no sh!t? around that same year, but closer to dawn, we were launching a boat in Montegut when the sky lit up just like you said. we actually were able to see a trail of smoke glowing that faded away right after this happened. only we didn't leave. we waited to see if anything else would happened. about 2 beers later, we finished launching the boat and headed to the camp.
when people realize that their beliefs are totally arbitrary and identical to whatever it is they do not believe, thats when they become atheist. this is why the secret weapon of atheists is teaching comparative religions to children. then they realize that theirs is only one among countless crazy scams, no more likely to be right than the others.
