I'm sorry your Mom died, but what you have is an anecdote.

I'm sure your perceived experience means a lot to you, but the most probable answer is pretty simple: you imagined it. Human memory is incredibly fallible and at times of emotional stress even more so. There have been numerous studies that have shown this.

And yes, science can't explain everything.... yet. But that doesn't mean we just get to fill in the blanks.

There is no "fact" that there is "something beyond us". In fact, everything we know has shown that there almost certainly isn't anything beyond us (at least in a supernatural sense).

Meanwhile, where's our resident young earther? Cmon @shinyblurry. Bill Nye is calling you out.

I grew up in a nonreligious household. My mom died a week after I graduated HS. ( It was 1980- before cell phones.) I had left the house that day and was out all day. Late in the afternoon I heard my mom say "goodby" . It was her voice and she was not there but still I heard it clear as day.

I got home late that evening and my dad was waiting in the living room to tell me that mom died.

Bill Nye and others like him have a point but still can not answer experiences like I and others have had. There is no evolution theory that explains supernatural events.

Yes I believe in GOD. There is something out there that science can't explain. Yes there are a lot of nut job preachers and followers. It does not change the fact there is something beyond us.


We will all find out on our deathbed.

@poolcleaner

Hi poolcleaner,

Thank you for sharing where you're coming from with me, I appreciate it. My story is a lot different than yours. I grew up in a home without any religion and God was not discussed, for or against. By default, I was agnostic towards the idea. I did not believe in anything supernatural; I probably would have fit in here fairly well for the most part. I was extremely liberal on many different topics and that seems to be the norm, here.

What changed is that I started to have supernatural experiences and things started happening to me which you couldn't explain away by mere chance. On that basis I started to explore the possibilities, fell into the new age for awhile, and then God reached down one day and pulled out a Christian out of that mess. That's the super short condensed version of what happened.

Even when I became a Christian, I still held to all of the secular views that I did before. It's only when I started to investigate the scientific evidence for these things that I changed my mind. I would still believe those things to this day if it wasn't for the evidence and where it pointed. I will get back to you on this; I'd like some time to come up with some good information for you. God bless!

The good wishes are appreciated. Having a twice broken back sucks.
I think people see 'coincidence' and think it's amazing or supernatural, but they don't see the billions of non-coincidences that DON'T happen daily. If they could see every possible coincidence, the ones that come to pass would seem far more ordinary.
In your analogy, I would first think perhaps there's a problem with their ammo/guns, then I might think they are all horrible shots, THEN I might think they might have missed on purpose. What I would not think is that god stopped the bullets! Because something could have been by design does not mean it IS.

it's been a really bad week for my back and lots of meds have been needed, which impairs my math skills. My mistake there...and I've retracted that....and I apologize.

It's no problem. It's completely understandable for what you're going through over there. I'll say a prayer for you and your family. Hopefully some pain free days are coming your way soon.

Doing the math correctly, I see you ARE right that it's about 400 times the distance.
But they (and so you) are wrong that it's 400 times the "size". You are right that the radiuses/diameters are a ratio of 400-1. That's different from size, even 2d size.
It may seem semantical, but to me it's an important distinction. This is what I took issue with mostly, since I was CERTAIN the actual "size" (in 3D) is no where near a ratio of 400-1, but closer to 64 million -1. Even in 2D it's nothing like 400-1.

Point taken..you were just trying to be accurate in the way the terms were defined.

Also, I'm not intentionally ignoring your point, it is an interesting fact that the ratios are close, but only coincidental IMO, certainly not 'proof' of anything supernatural.
EDIT: even if they were a perfect ratio, it would only suggest a physical law of motion we don't know or fully understand yet.
I would be interested to see a list of other planets and their moons to see if any other planet/moon (or combination of moons) in our solar system shows the same ratios. Neither answer would make me think anything supernatural however, it's just not that kind of question in my eyes.

Taken by itself, it is an extraordinary coincidence if you deem it as such. Yet, when you pile on the many other factors that have to line up for us to have life here, I find coincidence isn't the appropiate word. Now, some say that because it is such a huge Universe, there are bound to be planets like these (which isn't proven, btw)..and we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves on one of them because we would expect to find conditions which allow for our existence, given that we exist. I don't think that is a persausive argument.

There is a good analogy about this that I borrowed from the net:

"Suppose you are to be executed by a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen, all of them aiming rifles at your heart. You are blindfolded; the command is given; you hear the deafening roar of the rifles. And you observe that you are still alive. The 100 marksmen missed!"

Taking off the blindfold, you do not observe that you are dead. No surprise there: you could not observe that you are dead. Nonetheless, you should be astonished to observe that you are alive. The entire firing squad missed you altogether! Surprise at that extremely improbable fact is wholly justified - and that calls for an explanation. You would immediately suspect that they missed you on purpose, by design."

Yes...you are correct....I either did my distance-math backwards, or missed a button entering the distance to the moon into my calculator...it's been a really bad week for my back and lots of meds have been needed, which impairs my math skills. My mistake there...and I've retracted that....and I apologize.
Doing the math correctly, I see you ARE right that it's about 400 times the distance.
But they (and so you) are wrong that it's 400 times the "size". You are right that the radiuses/diameters are a ratio of 400-1. That's different from size, even 2d size.
It may seem semantical, but to me it's an important distinction. This is what I took issue with mostly, since I was CERTAIN the actual "size" (in 3D) is no where near a ratio of 400-1, but closer to 64 million -1. Even in 2D it's nothing like 400-1.

Also, I'm not intentionally ignoring your point, it is an interesting fact that the ratios are close, but only coincidental IMO, certainly not 'proof' of anything supernatural.
EDIT: even if they were a perfect ratio, it would only suggest a physical law of motion we don't know or fully understand yet.
I would be interested to see a list of other planets and their moons to see if any other planet/moon (or combination of moons) in our solar system shows the same ratios. Neither answer would make me think anything supernatural however, it's just not that kind of question in my eyes.

Hey Newtboy,

God provided four major lines of evidence so that you would know that He exists. The first is Creation itself:

Rom 1:18-20 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

His existence is so evident from the Creation that He considers that people are without excuse for their unbelief.

A quick science fact for you:

The Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun, and the Sun is 400 times farther away from the Moon. This is the reason they appear to be the same size in the sky. The Moon is also receding from the Earth at a few centimeters at year. This would mean it is only a “coincidence” that we happen to live at a time that the Sun and Moon have an exact correspondence in the sky, making solar eclipses possible. Yet, the scripture says God created the Sun and the Moon for signs and seasons, for days and years. The amount of “coincidences” really adds up to an absurdity when you study the conditions necessary for us to be here. You can find a good study on that here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Privileged-Planet-John-Rhys-Davies/dp/B0002E34C0

The other lines of evidence are your conscience, the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and bible prophecy. I understand, perhaps, where you’re coming from. It very much has to do with what your worldview is. If you start apriori with the idea that there is no supernatural and no divine being, you won’t recognize the evidence right in front of your face. You will instead embrace alternative explanations for the origins of life which appear to be pragmatic but start with a greater amount of faith required than a belief in an all powerful Creator God.

But what if the 'holy spirit' tells me clearly that I don't need to believe in any supernatural insanity to be a good person (which is the most important, and often missed lesson of religion)? Or that my 'heavenly reward' is in life, in knowing I'm a decent person to others, no afterlife required?
It seems that should be just fine, according to some scripture (not that I care about or believe in scripture) and should be enough to get proselytizers to let me be, but it's not.

It depends on what you mean when you use the word good. I'll venture that you are using a relative standard of good, but that isn't the standard that God uses. Usually, when we call ourselves good it is in comparison to other people. You might think, I've never raped or murdered, and I am certainly no Adolf Hitler or Ted Bundy, so I am good by basis of comparison. Yet, what God calls good is moral perfection, and everything that falls short of that He calls evil. His standard is an absolute standard, not a relative one, and so our relative standard of good is not good enough.

When people call themselves good, generally, what they really mean is that they have good intentions. In our hearts we want to do right and think good things about people, yet the reality is usually starkly different. If you examine yourself in the light of the 10 commandments, even just four of them such as do not lie, do not steal, do not covet, do not take the Lords name is vain, you probably find them that you've broken them hundreds if not thousands of times in your life. Jesus took the standard even higher and said that if we hate anyone, we've murdered them in our hearts, and if we look at a woman with lust we have committed adultery with them in our hearts. If our lives were an open book and people could see not only what we've done but also what was going on in our hearts, would anyone call us good? I can say for myself it would be an open and shut case.

This is why we need a Savior; we will be judged for what we do in this life and our goodness isn't good enough. That is why Jesus came; to pay the price that we cannot pay so that we can be forgiven for our sins and have eternal life. Whether you care about the scripture, think about whether you would ever jump out of a plane without a parachute. That's exactly what you are prepared to do by entering into eternity without Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

But what if the 'holy spirit' tells me clearly that I don't need to believe in any supernatural insanity to be a good person (which is the most important, and often missed lesson of religion)? Or that my 'heavenly reward' is in life, in knowing I'm a decent person to others, no afterlife required?
It seems that should be just fine, according to some scripture (not that I care about or believe in scripture) and should be enough to get proselytizers to let me be, but it's not.

Kaneda is from Canada.

Osric Chau. Played the young Monk in Emmerich's "2012", and Kevin Tran on "Supernatural".

@RedSky

I'd like to know how you expect to quintuple the availability of every vital resource in the next 50-100 years while somehow reducing the environmental impact of that necessary increase to what you acknowledge needs to be less than the present level. This is supernatural thinking. Corporations don't pollute, incidentally, the fundamental structure of our global society pollutes; which would be no problem whatsoever if there were fewer of us.

It's fine if you'd prefer to just keep the majority of the world in mediaeval poverty, or alternatively impoverish everyone equally; colossally immoral, but by contrast actually physically possible.

Our success as an organism has been implicitly tied to energy availability for our entire history. The bubble of economic and technological advancement we've ridden since the industrial revolution is driven by unprecedented access to energy in the form of irreplaceable fossil fuels. It requires continual investment of energy to maintain. The practical exploitability of wind, solar, wave, geothermal and hydroelectric sources combined doesn't come close, not even close to the demand we'll place on them with population on the scale you're quite comfortable to allow. Fissile materials are limited and similarly irreplaceable; we've been steadily failing to develop fusion power for sixty years.

The innovation of new sources of energy is not guaranteed, unless you have some new breakthrough in physics you'd like to share? Efficiency gains are strictly limited.

If you think we'll have the ability to support billions of people on a sustainable basis at some time in the future, well great, LET'S WAIT UNTIL WE HAVE THAT ABILITY BEFORE WE BET EVERYTHING ON IT.

I think your quote may be wrong, quantum physics deals only with the sub-atomic level.
Atoms and/or molecules do not behave like some particles do. Particles also can't be in 2 places at once, but appear to be able to move from one place to another without traveling between. It's an incredibly difficult science to understand, more so when it's basic principles are misunderstood.
This has nothing whatsoever (or barely anything, nothing directly) to do with evolution. It is an attempt at explaining the sub atomic world, not the atomic one. Evolution happens in the macro/atomic level and larger. It MAY happen in some unknown way in the sub atomic level, but hasn't been noted or studied there that I know of.
Did I state or imply that 'there's no way gawd did it'? I don't think so, you are projecting. While I don't 'believe' in gawd(s), I do leave open the miniscule possibility it exists, or that one did before the big bang....one problem is there's no real set definition for gawd, so if something outside our universe created this one, is that "gawd"? Must it be super-natural, or simply a creator? Must it exist in our universe to count? How about in our perceptible dimensions? Could it just be alien to our universe, but not a supernatural omniscient direct human creator? There's far too many points of view on that to have consensus of what constitutes a 'gawd'.
I will state that there's no proof, or even evidence, of a (or many) gawd(s). That said...Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, (thanks Mr Jackson), so there's also no 'proof' it doesn't exist (it's hard or impossible to prove a negative).
Jumping to the conclusion that, because there's no proof of no gawd, it must exist, is also close minded against the high probability (likelihood) that it doesn't, and never did, exist outside human minds.
Science and gawd don't go together or explain each other any more than addition explains a words spelling. They're totally different arenas of thought. Thinking that science 'proves' the existence of 'gawd' either greatly overstates the 'proof' or completely misunderstands science. At best, science doesn't disprove the existence of 'gawd(s)', but then again that was never the mission of science or real scientists...they don't deal with/in theology at all.
I would point out that, most Christians (or any religious people really) have repeatedly 'proven' the non-existence of 'gawd(s)' to themselves...all gawds except the one they think exists....but for some reason the one they believe in is exempt from all the proofs (math term, not bad English).

EDIT: What science has done is disprove most, if not all 'proofs' put forward alleging to prove the existence of gawd(s), and also removed all requirements for ones existence to explain the universe and existence.

How about let's ask them to stop putting ANY supernatural bullshit on TV as fact. If people want to believe in magic, that's their problem. If people want to say publicly that magic is real and controls your life (just send money and we'll explain how to manipulate that for a better life), they should all be jailed for fraud. Yes, that includes preachers and clergy, but is not limited to them.

EDIT: or better yet, how about petitioning our representatives to create a law making it illegal to ask for money for anything 'supernatural'? If they want to pretend their magic is real for free, that's fine I guess. That would get most of them out of the racket.

I wasn't raised in a religious home so I never had that aspect in my life of seeking comfort from the idea of God. I believed that we were products of random chance, although the real love and connection I felt to people and this reality did not feel that way. Essentially, though, I had resigned myself to the fact of my future death, and that eventually no one would ever remember or care that I even existed.

I was an agnostic towards the idea of God at that point. Atheism to me was the other extreme from theism, and I believed that the rational standpoint was agnosticism. If you did not have equal skepticism towards either side, I felt you were being intellectually dishonest. You could sum it up in a simple statement, that everything, including the fact that anything exists at all, is equally unlikely. To try to get that fact to point towards or away from a God in my opinion just showed bias.

I changed my mind when I began to have supernatural experiences. This didn't make me a theist, but it did open my eyes to the idea that there was a spiritual reality. It was in pursuing that spirituality that I received revelation that an all powerful, benevolent God does exist. After this, I became a Christian and was born again, and transformed into a new person.

So, what I would say is, there is no evidence of God beyond personal revelation by God. This is by design because God requires us to seek Him by faith. He is seeking those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth. If you want to know whether there is a God or not, you must seek Him with all of your heart. Seek Him while it is still called today, because today is the day of salvation.

Jeremiah 29:13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

Firm agnostic here too. The most sane ideology to have today. Tomorrow it might be something else but i feel agnostics are the only ones to use diplomacy between godders and no-godders. Both groups can never understand each other, agnostics understand them both.

To anyone saying that agnosticism is simply just indecisiveness, and that is both sides: it is not. We simply don't think it's an issue you need to be on one side or the other. That's what you do. We accept both views and navigate between them trying to find what is real and what is not, since both sides try to manipulate true facts all the time according to your needs. We don't do that. If something, agnosticism is the true scientific approach; trying to find out what is true without any predisposition or beliefs...

It's ONLY that both sides are now so far apart that anything that contradicts them, is totally blasphemous/unscientific. There is no such thing as true agnosticism. There are people who are closer to believing in god and further away and no one cares how you think. People who belong to either of the marginal camps seems like idiots to me who are never going to be coaxed in either way; the more evidence you put on the table for one argument, you will oppose it even more. Its a futile discussion. We got much bigger problems to solve than if there's a god.

At the moment, there are more evidence pointing that there is no god. Nothing has been proven as a fact in either way. There would be same amount of violence with or without religion, the reasons would change superficially but nothing would change or will change if you abolish or religion. It takes about 10 years that new batch of believers arrive even if you eradicated all religion and all history: if you wipe people minds now, tomorrow someone believes in angels or goblins.. Or dragons.. It's inbuilt survival mechanism: you don't get it all, there must be a bigger plan etc.. it's human nature, not a part of our society. The feeling the presence of God is scientifically proven to be just a short circuit in our brain.. That alone makes it certain that belief in supernatural will go on.