J Neil Schulman

If you believed God existed but that God only rarely entered into communication with human beings using an inner voice, as Joan of Arc claimed, would you still find my claim to be incredible?

If I believed that God exists and that he sometimes, if rarely, communicates with human beings, I would not necessarily reject your claim outright, but I would be very, very skeptical.

Btw, I don't think Joan claimed to hear an inner voice. The voices she heard, like the visions she saw, appeared to have an external origin.

Ghs

I don't know what the difference would be between reporting an inner voice that only one person hears and reporting a voice having an external origin that only one person hears.

But since you bring up a possible distinction, here's a weird story for your trouble.

In May 2002 I was a speaker at the national convention of the Foundation for Economic Education in Las Vegas. I was accompanied by my mother, Betty, at that time 77 years old, and before she had problems walking or severe age-related memory problems. After an extended illness, my dad, Julius Schulman -- a concert violinist (see his web page at http://www.juliusschulman.com)-- had passed away 18 months earlier.

In between speakers and panels my mom and I walked through the dealer's room. Escape from Heaven was just published and in addition to speaking at the con I was passing out copies of the new novel to friends and for promotional purposes. Laissez Faire Books had a table there and I dropped off a copy. I also gave copies to Teller and Kerry Pearson. Lots of friends were in attendance, including SEK3.

Near the front of the room was a dealer selling audio lectures on Austrian Economics in Spanish. They had CD's playing music to draw people to their table. As my mom and I got closer we both heard what sounded to us like a 19th century violin concerto with orchestra composed in the style of someone like Tschaikovsky or Mendelssohn, and it was being played by a first-rate solo violinist. There were two things that struck my mom and me simultaneously. First of all, it sounded like my father's style of playing, which after a lifetime of exposure we were both experts on. Second, it was a violin concerto that neither of us had heard before -- and this is also near impossible, given that we're both experts on violin repertoire -- especially the 19th century.

In something that reminds me of the scene near the beginning of Atlas Shrugged where Dagny Taggart asks the brakeman what he's whistling, I walked up to the guy at the table and asked him what the CD was he was playing. He said, "It's Bach."

Now, I know Bach's work intimately, and the violin concerto my mom and I were hearing was not Bach. You can't mistake baroque era violin for the romantic-era violin concerto my mom and I were hearing. I said so and asked to see the CD they were playing. He said he was just watching the table until the owner came back and if I returned in a half hour I could ask him.

So, a half hour later I returned to the table and asked the owner what the CD was that was playing when my mom and I walked by their table for the first time. He said, "Bach." I said something like, "Look, we know what we heard and it couldn't be Bach. Could I look through your CD's?" He said yes.

The CD in the player was Bach.

Every other CD they had at the table was Bach.

There was no CD at the table with any romantic 19th century violin concertos.

Draw your own conclusions. My mom and I know what we heard, and we both heard the same thing: an unknown violin concerto in the style of a 19th century composer -- the exact sort of violin repertoire my dad most loved to play, and which sounded like him playing -- coming out of a CD player that the owner's claim -- and the immediate evidence -- could not have been playing.

Everyone else aside from my mom and me said they heard Bach.

Before you return for the umpteenth time. give some thought about what your "argument" is supposed to be.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has become annoyed and frustrated by this problem. Here, in summary form, is my understanding of this issue:

Neil has repeatedly proclaimed that he doesn't expect anyone to accept his story about having met God; indeed, he said (in his book) that he wouldn't have believed his own story prior to the experience. And, sure enough, no one on OL seems to have believed his story. So what is Neil's problem? Having reported his experience for the consideration of others, there seems little more for Neil to say.

The problem is that Neil does in fact want to argue for the authenticity of his experience, and he has used two primary arguments to accomplish this, without distinguishing between them or even clearly articulating what they are.

1)The first might be called the credibility argument. Even if Neil cannot "prove" to others that his experiences were authentic, he maintains that his account is at least credible, i.e.. that it deserves serious consideration by rational people. Neil then falls back on this approach to condemn his critics as closed-minded and to present himself as harbinger of enlightenment to benighted Randians. He is here to teach us new ways of looking at the world, to explore fresh possibilities without abandoning our commitment to reason.

There are two basic problems with this argument. First, Neil's story is not credible and so does not deserve to be taken seriously. Second, there is nothing new or fresh, philosophically speaking, about Neil's story. It is nothing more than the old baloney sliced once again. It is the same kind of irrationalism that religious hucksters have been peddling for many centuries.

2) Neil's second "argument" consists of the claim that he has proved the existence of God to himself, even if he cannot prove this to others. Neil, we are to believe, has been rigorously self-critical in assessing the cognitive value of his story, and he thereby proved to himself that he did indeed mind-meld with God.

Of course, since Neil has steadfastly refused to specify criteria by which he distinguishes true from false religious experiences, we are left in the dark about which criteria Neil supposedly used to assess his own claims. Nevertheless, Neil gets testy when critics suggest that he did not employ rational standards or reach a rational conclusion.

The main problem, here as elsewhere, is that Neil's "argument" could be (and has been) used to justify virtually any personal experience. "I have compelling reasons to believe x, even if I cannot prove my claim to others." What religious nut has not used some variant of this argument, and sincerely so?

Neil is playing fast and loose with the notion of "proof." At the very least, in claiming that he has proved the existence of God to himself, he should be saying that any rational person who had the same sort of experiences would also conclude that God exists. But this is far from the case. On the contrary, I suspect that almost every person on OL, if he or she had a similar experience, would not reach the same conclusion that Neil did. But does Neil even consider the philosophical implications of this possibility? Nope. He mere repeats, again and again, that he used reason, not faith, to justify his beliefs.

Neil attempts to make his beliefs distinctive and appealing by stamping them with a quasi-Randian imprimatur. He tells us that, in accepting the authenticity of his experiences, he is merely being a good Randian who grounds his knowledge on his perceptual experiences. Is Neil really so dense as not to understand the difference between the perception of, say, a color versus the supposed "perception" of a god? I frankly don't know; but in any case, Neil's claim that he is merely following Randian methodology is bullshit.

Ghs

George H. Smith and only George H. Smith:

If you believed God existed but that God only rarely entered into communication with human beings using an inner voice, as Joan of Arc claimed, would you still find my claim to be incredible?

George H. Smith has reduced himself to nothing more than a self-proclaimed mantle of superior scholarship and empty huffing; others just repeat denials of points I've already answered (I came here for an argument; not a contradiction); and I've already read the books being recommended to me, which just aren't all that good.

Once again I'm done here until someone presents a challenge I find more intelligent than Biff H. Smith's schoolyard taunts.

Before you return for the umpteenth time. give some thought about what your "argument" is supposed to be.

As for the books, including mine, that "just aren't all that good," at least I don't have friends interview me and then call the transcript a "book." Did God teach you how to pad a resume, or did you figure out how to do pull off that scam on your own?

Ghs

Atheism: The Case Against God was one of the seminal influences on my thinking about the issue of whether God could exist. I've never said otherwise. Apologies if my reference to books that "weren't all that good" splashed too broadly.

George H. Smith has reduced himself to nothing more than a self-proclaimed mantle of superior scholarship and empty huffing; others just repeat denials of points I've already answered (I came here for an argument; not a contradiction); and I've already read the books being recommended to me, which just aren't all that good.

Once again I'm done here until someone presents a challenge I find more intelligent than Biff H. Smith's schoolyard taunts.

http://www.pulpless....ianprophet.html

My response to Schulman would have been what Cromwell once said:

In the bowels of Christ, think that ye might be mistaken?

Ba'al Chatzaf

I spent well over two years trying to prove to myself that I was mistaken, and couldn't do it.

I subscribe to every premise Ayn Rand puts forth in this video -- including her statement that substituting faith for reason is psychologically destructive and that faith-based religion is damaging to human self-esteem and reliance on reason.

Nowhere does she assert that God can not exist. She only says it is irrational to accept the existence of God on faith without proof.

Now, Rand did say no one can prove the existence of God. She was half correct. No one can prove the existence of God to someone else.

I do not accept the existence of God based on faith. I accept it from personal experience which I've tested with my reason and found impossible to negate as unreal. Having done so, to deny it would be exactly what Rand condemned: the denial of reality of someone without the confidence in his own individual reason.

How much more of this epistemological rat poison must we endure?

Ghs

I could be clever and say, "When the epistemological rats are dead, of course." But then you'd have another chance to talk about how un-mellow I am.

What's making you choke is that Objectivist epistemology places direct experience at the root of all perception and concept-formation. You've spent a life attacking people of faith and unlike the religious I don't regard faith as a tool of knowing anything. I had an experience. You are free to dismiss my interpretation of it because I regard it as proving to myself things you consider unprovable, but you are not going to get away with dismissing me as irrational. Sneer all you like. Use all the debate tricks in the Aleister Crowley handbook to try to throw me -- hey, the first thing I learned in any fight is how to fall.

The majority of my fans are atheists, and I think that's what bugs you most of all.

If the eight-hour event of 2/18/1997 had happened in isolation I might have been able to negate its reality by reducing it to a ketosis/dehydration-caused waking dream, albeit one which had the remarkable feature of allowing me to function normally while overlaying the perception of imagined features. But both prior and subsequent events gave me benchmarks for testing the experience as real or unreal; and a long period of my attempting to negate it as real, and failing to do so, finally convinced me it was real.

Neil, forgive me if this question has been asked and answered previously in this thread; the sheer volume of material is such that information is easily buried.

When you say that "prior events" gave you benchmarks for testing the experience as real or unreal, are you referring to the experience in which God manifested to you and told you to stop praying so hard or he would take your life, and the dream in which you were on trial, and the experiences regarding Simpson? Or are you referring to other experiences, and if so, can you say what they were?

When you say that "subsequent events" gave you benchmarks for testing the experience as real or unreal, can you say exactly what events these were and why they supported your conclusion?

Judith

Judith, it's a gestalt of my entire life's experiences. The 2/18/1997 event fits into the fabric of my life and weaves threads that made no sense to me otherwise. It explained to me things about myself that didn't fit together. No point my recounting them here because they're personal and meaningless to anyone else.

I'm going to do something I haven't yet done in this discussion. Quote scripture.

Matthew 7:16 - 7:20 attributes to Jesus "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."

Luke 6:44 For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.

Some source of this scripture had heard of Euripides, who'd said four centuries earlier:

Judge a tree from its fruit, not from its leaves.

The point is, if one claims that God is "good" and is acting on orders from God -- and God's orders are to go out and slaughter innocent people -- a rational person with a decent set of values smells a rat. It's one of the reasons I refuse to take anything in the Bible as -- er -- Gospel. Too many human beings writing scripture justify appalling crimes and vilely evil legal codes by an appeal to divine authority. Either they're lying or God is capable of acting like a drunken child-beater, and despite the Book of Job needed to get sober and make amends to his kids. I suggested in my novel Escape from Heaven (and much earlier in some lines I gave Victor Koman which he used in his novel The Jehovah Contract) that God taking on a human body, walking a mile in our moccasins, and getting himself nailed onto a cross for blasphemy seemed like a repentant God taking his medicine. I don't know what God could have done for the first two steps which require reliance on a higher power, but deciding not to interfere further in our free-will decisions would have been a good Step Nine for him.

The person I mind-melded with has a good heart. He didn't tell me to kill anyone. He did prove to me his respect for life, reason, and individual liberty. If Ayn Rand met this guy she'd like him. I may have been too harsh on Joan of Arc -- who was, after all, a patriot defending her country from invaders -- but George H. Smith's standard that God is more interested in talking to people with swords than people with pens strikes me as curious, considering how much effective use of media to spread stories is part of a whole lot of claimed human contacts with God.

Did your god happen to say anything about calling people who disagree with or criticize you assorted names, such as asshole, liar, dishonest, cocksucker, and so forth?

That's some fruit. Only someone divinely inspired could possibly think of such clever things to say.

Ghs

Just goes to show I'm not divine, George -- just a good old boy who had an interview with the Big Guy.

Does it take a hard struggle always to miss the point, George, or are you simply a natural genius at it?

If you have a point, other than the one on your head, I have yet to see it.

Ghs

Glad you're through alternating being sweet and vile to me, George. Consistent hostility is easier to navigate.

Atheists often are unsubtle in choosing the worst examples of theists to trot out as bad examples of what happens to you when you abandon reason and engage in whim-worshipping -- for example, no longer being an atheist. It's a technique you see in movies like Reefer Madness and Red Highway. Or what Mr. Scherk did in this discussion by trotting out end-of-worlders and a guy who went after his girlfriend with a knife.

Me, my values, work, and life weren't destroyed by a direct one-on-one with God. I didn't even have to lead an army into battle or get nailed to a cross.

I call that two points for lapsed atheism.

It is in an interesting phenomenon that the debunkers of myths are often blamed by the believers.

Here's another fraudster exposed: the religious guru Sai Baba, who his believers think has the superatural power to e. g. materialize "holy ash" in his hands, which he then strews on the believers' heads. But the primitive trick Sai Baba uses is crushing a little pill filled with ash between his fingers.

This and other tricks of the liar Sai Baba exposed here:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Yblhsr1O4IQ

Not my hero, Baba!

--Brant

sob

Together with the videos debunking the fraudster, there was a (now closed) blog.

Interesting to observe that, instead of thanking the debunkers, some believers attacked them, asking for the videos to be removed because they insulted their belief .

So instead of being ashamed of their own gullibility and outraged at the fraudster who insulted their intelligence by using incredibly primitive tricks to suggest he can materialize "holy ash" from his hand or a "golden lingam" from his mouth, they want to kill the messenger istead.

Classic case of a sacrificium intellectus to keep the faith. In the conflict between reason and faith, it is reason which has to go because in the mind of these believers, faith is considered to be the higher value.

I can't understand why Neil S. Schulman is so critical of someone like James Randi, an another unmasker of fraudsters, like e. g. Uri Geller.

To me, J. Randi is the epitome of a rational man in is approach to these things, therefore shouldn't Neil - who says of himself that he has not abandoned rational thinking - be grateful for individuals like Randi whose rational faculties enable them to expose such trickery?

Moreover, the substantive points in my post are obviously unaffected by dropping the word "trance" in favor of some other word to label Neil's temporarily abnormal state of consciousness. So lamenting my deployment of that word seems diversionary.

I agree. It is strictly speaking, not really a question of terminology. What often happens in discusions of this type is that participans of both parties land in some linguistic sideshow where the meanings of various terms are beig vigourously debated, while the core of the issue gets lost in it all.

I'm asking myself what we could do to avoid such sideshows this time.

In order to establish a common epistemological denominator for all participants, I'll start with some simple statements which imo can be regarded as true by all participants.

A: There exist individuals who claim to have had an encounter with a god.

B: These claimed encounters encounters with a god are either

1) real

2) not real

As for 2) not real: there exist two possiblites:

2') the indvidual lied, i. e. made up a story knowing it to be false.

2'') the individual was, for whatever reason, deluded.

2'') comprises all kinds of delusions, and whether one calls them psychotic breaks, hallucinations, figments, etc. is a secondary issue.

So my question to Neil is: do you agree that that all claimed god encounters fall in one of these sections:

1) real encounter

2) not-real encounter:

2') made-up story 2'') delusion

Where would you place, going by your gut feeling, Joan of Arc's claimed god encounter?

Above my pay grade. I tell what happened to me and my interpretation of it. I have my conclusions based on my own experience. Everyone else gets to slap me and Joan of Arc around for what we said happened to us.

Consider, for example [ . . . ] that maybe there are multiple universes which explain apparent miracles/paranormalities, etc. What is the evidence for any of this?

See my Message 537

Posted 31 December 2010 - 10:38 AM

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26132/?ref=rss

and also

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.html

For those who haven't followed the original links, the evidence is quite interesting, but the jury is, as they say, still out. Before we can accept this stuff as a warrant for Neil's exuberant certainty about a god that operates in multiple universes, we should probably wait for him to explain the evidence and how it offers support for his theories about god, and how god operates between and among the varied universes. It's quite a stretch between the one and the other, of course -- and of course the two papers say nothing about Starbuckle's question to the reality of "apparent miracles/paranormalities."

Beyond that, as one might expect, the headlines don't tell the whole story . . . here's a couple of paragraphs from the Physics.org story:

In the most recent study on pre-Big Bang science posted at arXiv.org, a team of researchers from the UK, Canada, and the US, Stephen M. Feeney, et al, have revealed that they have discovered four statistically unlikely circular patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The researchers think that these marks could be “bruises” that our universe has incurred from being bumped four times by other universes. If they turn out to be correct, it would be the first evidence that universes other than ours do exist.

[ . . . ]

Still, the scientists acknowledge that it is rather easy to find a variety of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB. The researchers emphasize that more work is needed to confirm this claim, which could come in short time from the Planck satellite, which has a resolution three times better than that of WMAP [ (where the current data comes from), as well as an order of magnitude greater sensitivity. Nevertheless, they hope that the search for bubble collisions could provide some insight into the history of our universe, whether or not the collisions turn out to be real.

[ . . . ]

This is the second study in the past month that has used CMB data to search for what could have occurred before the Big Bang. In the first study, Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan found concentric circles with lower-than-average temperature variation in the CMB, which could be evidence for a cyclic cosmology in which Big Bangs occur over and over.

Not to burst Neil's bubble, but the 'evidence' is as yet only an intriguing finding, subject to confirmation/falsification by imagery from the Planck satellite -- and of course, subject to some rigourous critical evaluations, which have proliferated in the physic community.

One reasonably accessible story in the New York Times puts the paper highlighted by Neil and the earlier Penrose/Gurzadyan paper into perspective. I suggest a gander at that precis to those who want some familiarity with the kinds of 'evidence' Neil is quick to accept.

I do thank Neil for coming back to this thread, and for enduring the backstage communication with me. Neil, I suggest you put up a separate thread to introduce the book by Donald D Hoffman that you recommended to me. It would allow us to discuss a sort of 'universal consciousness' that doesn't entail god concepts.

You stated there was no evidence. I showed you there was evidence. Evidence is not proof. Evidence is what scientists use to justify exploring a theory looking for proof or attempting to disprove a theory. Usually this process leads to another theory.

Neil,

1) Ketosis/dehydration induced 'vision quests' have been happening for millenia.

2) People would believe you in a heartbeat if you offered even a shred of a profound insight into a previously intractable problem or mystery. If you mind melded with the Almighty, where's the insight?

3) You a science-fiction author that financially profits from fiction.

Seriously, rationally, what should we conclude??

Bob

Rationally, you need to characterize the facts correctly before you analyze them.

How My God Experience Ruined My Life

by J. Neil Schulman

Before I mind-melded with God I was a successful writer with two published novels and three published non-fiction books; and I'd had an episode I wrote of The Twilight Zone produced on CBS.

After I mind-melded with God I was a successful writer with three published novels, a published collection of short stories, a published collection of my screenwriting, and seven more books; the Twilight Zone produced on CBS; and I wrote, produced, and directed my first feature film which won two film-festival awards.

Thanks for the reminder of your resumé. I think it's been at least a week or two since your last one.

Before I mind-melded with God I was a libertarian activist for individual rights and against statism.

After I mind-melded with God I was a libertarian activist for individual rights and against statism.

Before I mind-melded with God I disliked faith-based religion and arbitrary binding traditions.

After I mind-melded with God I disliked faith-based religion and arbitrary binding traditions.

Before I mind-melded with God I advocated that people rely on reason instead of faith.

After I mind-melded with God I advocated that people rely on reason instead of faith.

Before I mind-melded with God I wasted my time not going to church.

After I mind-melded with God I wasted my time not going to church.

Yep. My mind-meld with God sure as heck ruined my life and degraded my values system.

You should title your next book How God Didn't Change My Life.

Ghs

Does it take a hard struggle always to miss the point, George, or are you simply a natural genius at it?

How My God Experience Ruined My Life

by J. Neil Schulman

Before I mind-melded with God I was a successful writer with two published novels and three published non-fiction books; and I'd had an episode I wrote of The Twilight Zone produced on CBS.

After I mind-melded with God I was a successful writer with three published novels, a published collection of short stories, a published collection of my screenwriting, and seven more books; the Twilight Zone produced on CBS; and I wrote, produced, and directed my first feature film which won two film-festival awards.

Before I mind-melded with God I was a libertarian activist for individual rights and against statism.

After I mind-melded with God I was a libertarian activist for individual rights and against statism.

Before I mind-melded with God I disliked faith-based religion and arbitrary binding traditions.

After I mind-melded with God I disliked faith-based religion and arbitrary binding traditions.

Before I mind-melded with God I advocated that people rely on reason instead of faith.

After I mind-melded with God I advocated that people rely on reason instead of faith.

Before I mind-melded with God I wasted my time not going to church.

After I mind-melded with God I wasted my time not going to church.

Yep. My mind-meld with God sure as heck ruined my life and degraded my values system.

Rand's metaphysics starts with "existence exists," rejecting any primacy of consciousness.

False dichotomy, since there is no reason to negate that that which Exists has always had the attribute of consciousness. The assumption that consciousness arrived later to the party is nothing more than an unproved hypothesis, and on this assertion I'm perfectly entitled to demand compelling proof. Since life has never been created in a lab out of non-life, and human-level self-consciousness has never been duplicated in a lab, the assertion that consciousness is a product of evolution rests where it was when first offered well over a century ago: untested and unproved.

By the way, Rand, herself, denied accepting evolution as a proved theory.

The working out of the implications of the axioms implies rejection of theism, since theism (including Neil's theism) in various ways violates the principles of identity and causality.

Now you're claiming for yourself omniscience regarding identity and causality? That's what is required to assert one particular view as the only possibly true one.

The "testing against Objectivist premises" stuff is so much nonsense. We know from the memoir, and certainly from this thread, that Neil's professed Objectivist-style rationalism has crumpled in certain key respects, both theoretically and in practice. Consider, for example, his unargued-for claims that the God who body-occupied him is "everlasting," that human beings are splinters or offshoots of God created by him, that maybe there are multiple universes which explain apparent miracles/paranormalities, etc. What is the evidence for any of this?

See my Message 537

Posted 31 December 2010 - 10:38 AM

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26132/?ref=rss

and also

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.html

Thus, Neil is offended by a comparison of his experience to that of a man who was "talking in tongues, declaring himself God, threatening [a friend] with a knife and doing other things that were out of character.... They were having a conversation about God, she said, when he suddenly declared that he was God." ...

What was being compared and what is the point of the comparison? Is to show that others with similar experiences must have identical a] values and b] beliefs in purported consequence of their purported experiences--or to show that they can have starkly clashing values and beliefs as either inherited from their pre-experience selves and/or as revised, amended or distorted by the info purportedly conveyed during the purported linkup with the purported beyond?

It is obviously something about the objectively assessable nature of the values and beliefs of the witnesses that allows us to make judgments about the knowledge-content/claims and values content/claims generated by the witnesses' contradictory experiences of the purported beyond and the lessons they take from their experience of it. It is something about the this-worldly, mutually perceivable and mutually checkable and communicable nature of those values and beliefs that enables us to decide which of those values and beliefs are reasonable and which are not reasonable.

But if _that's_ the case, if it's the objective reality that every normal adult can perceive and infer about which allows us to make these fundamental determinations about which supernaturally-conferred values and beliefs are correct and which are not--judgments that no contradictory claims about the supernatural and deities may properly be allowed to override--then Neil's experience can have and should have no epistemological or ethical bearing on what he believes about the world or what he chooses to do in it. ...

But if, instead, that experience ought properly to substantively shape Neil's beliefs and values because it is so vivid and persuasive to him, would he be willing to concede that similarly empowered Islamic terrorists also justified, on the basis of their own vividly experienced revelations and unshakeable convictions, in knocking off a few thousand WTC denizens cuz Allah said so? The terrorist Islamicists, too, think life on earth is just a temporary way station. No biggie, in their view, if a true believer also dies in the holocaust; they'll just pop over to the celestial gates for post-mortal processing. The dreams in which Allah told them so may have been as clear and vivid as anything that Neil experienced.

I don't suspect, I know--I'm not merely stipulating but actively affirming--that Neil unequivocally rejects the values and beliefs of the Islamicists. But what if, after a suitable period of physical self-deprivation, Neil were to experience a second God-takeover that is equivalent in power and persuasiveness of the first, but in which God made clear that that the conduct of the 9/11 thugs does indeed meet with his divine approval, that this sort of thing is, after all, what is on the right track, not the libertarianism and the O.J.-is-innocent stuff? What then?

I'm going to do something I haven't yet done in this discussion. Quote scripture.

Matthew 7:16 - 7:20 attributes to Jesus "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."

Luke 6:44 For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.

Some source of this scripture had heard of Euripides, who'd said four centuries earlier:

Judge a tree from its fruit, not from its leaves.

The point is, if one claims that God is "good" and is acting on orders from God -- and God's orders are to go out and slaughter innocent people -- a rational person with a decent set of values smells a rat. It's one of the reasons I refuse to take anything in the Bible as -- er -- Gospel. Too many human beings writing scripture justify appalling crimes and vilely evil legal codes by an appeal to divine authority. Either they're lying or God is capable of acting like a drunken child-beater, and despite the Book of Job needed to get sober and make amends to his kids. I suggested in my novel Escape from Heaven (and much earlier in some lines I gave Victor Koman which he used in his novel The Jehovah Contract) that God taking on a human body, walking a mile in our moccasins, and getting himself nailed onto a cross for blasphemy seemed like a repentant God taking his medicine. I don't know what God could have done for the first two steps which require reliance on a higher power, but deciding not to interfere further in our free-will decisions would have been a good Step Nine for him.

The person I mind-melded with has a good heart. He didn't tell me to kill anyone. He did prove to me his respect for life, reason, and individual liberty. If Ayn Rand met this guy she'd like him. I may have been too harsh on Joan of Arc -- who was, after all, a patriot defending her country from invaders -- but George H. Smith's standard that God is more interested in talking to people with swords than people with pens strikes me as curious, considering how much effective use of media to spread stories is part of a whole lot of claimed human contacts with God.

I've said before, only half joking, that in my case he was sick of dealing with amateurs and wanted someone with a Writers Guild Card. But just maybe that I'd written Stopping Power -- which is all about defending the innocent from criminals and invaders -- had as much to do with his choice. (And it did have an endorsement from "Moses.") :-)

Your premise is the non-existence of God. Period. I share that premise, but I've generally avoided arguing with Neil. Why? Because his position is invulnerable in spite of what seems to be great defensiveness on his part. So, we have a never-ending battle because Neil keeps sallying forth from his fortress his swords cutting the air with great swishes and the rest of us exclaiming "You missed us! You missed us! Here's why you missed us: You're sitting on your horse backwards!"

Among the points Neil makes in my email exchanges with him is that I misunderstand Objectivism/Rand, which is almost certainly true. My most recent misunderstanding of this type was when I asked him about George:

George doesn't accept that god mind-melded with you. So what? Why does that matter to you? No non-believer in a spirit world is going to accept your account as you interpret it without a leap of faith. It's just the way things are in the world.

Neil replied that it is the ridicule that annoyed him, not the non-acceptance, and that George was "denying the Objectivist premises we share."

That stumped me, of course, so I asked, "Which premises has he denied? A basic Objectivist premise like Atheism?"

Which point reveals me as sitting backwards on the horse, since Neil says that atheism is not in any way a premise of the philosophy, and that to so assert is a lie.

Some kind soul has put together some excerpts from Rand's TV appearances with Phil Donohue and Tom Snyder -- where she speaks of faith and reason, god and atheism. I am hoping another kind soul with a top-drawer grasp of Objectivism can tell us where atheism actually fits in Objectivism, if not as premise . . .

I subscribe to every premise Ayn Rand puts forth in this video -- including her statement that substituting faith for reason is psychologically destructive and that faith-based religion is damaging to human self-esteem and reliance on reason.

Nowhere does she assert that God can not exist. She only says it is irrational to accept the existence of God on faith without proof.

Now, Rand did say no one can prove the existence of God. She was half correct. No one can prove the existence of God to someone else.

I do not accept the existence of God based on faith. I accept it from personal experience which I've tested with my reason and found impossible to negate as unreal. Having done so, to deny it would be exactly what Rand condemned: the denial of reality of someone without the confidence in his own individual reason.

Neil can be read as asking for or hoping for a leap of faith from others, but in light of his repeated explicit denials of this, I am willing to stipulate that he is not asking for a leap of faith from others. He is, though, hoping for acceptance of the legitimacy of his own leap of faith, which he insists is not a leap of faith.

Imo you have distilled here and put in clear words exactly what Neil is hoping for.

Is Starbuckle right in his assessment, Neil?

No. The question self negates by assuming its conclusion that the only way I could accept an experience as real is by faith. If the eight-hour event of 2/18/1997 had happened in isolation I might have been able to negate its reality by reducing it to a ketosis/dehydration-caused waking dream, albeit one which had the remarkable feature of allowing me to function normally while overlaying the perception of imagined features. But both prior and subsequent events gave me benchmarks for testing the experience as real or unreal; and a long period of my attempting to negate it as real, and failing to do so, finally convinced me it was real. Having satisfied myself that it's real, I reject and -- frankly, I'm insulted by -- the charge that it requires an act of faith for me to decide an event which I've thoroughly tested against my Objectivist-inclusive premises was real. Accepting the experience as real and its content as tested valid, no good Objectivist could "fake reality" by declaring it otherwise.

Now, this still leaves the question of my hopes and expectations regarding how others react. I'm an author. I always hope, with anything I write on any topic, that others find what I write compelling. When I label something I write fiction I also hope they find it entertaining and sometimes didactically useful. When I label something I write non-fiction, I hope they find it has useful real-world applications.

In the case of my "Vulcan Mind-Meld With God," where by my own standards of skepticism I can have no reasonable expectation that someone else who has not had an event in their own life which makes it possible for them to regard my experience as real can regard my experience as anything but unreal, the best I can hope for is to accept my account as a personal report of use only as anecdotal evidence of something rare, and if I have succeeded in negating the contradictions and claims of the impossible, as something that might later find scientific proof. I have no expectations; I hope for people who say they prize reason to keep an open mind and not act like dogmatic cultists.

I have found more dogmatic cultists in this discussion than people with scientific curiosity. I certainly have found few I regard as an Objectivist in the school of Ayn Rand and the Brandens. They never regarded the existence of God as impossible and atheism as a primary tenet of Objectivism. Their atheism never went further than demanding that faith not be the basis for concluding the existence of God, and that God not be undefinable or unknowable, and that the supernatural not contradict the natural or known laws of existence and identity, and that if extrasensory perception existed concepts built from it would not contradict knowledge gained from the other senses.

I have met these challenges. I don't expect anyone here to accept that statement, but I've been a friend of Barbara Branden for many years and when we last discussed it this past summer she was far from dismissive.

I only lump you in with the Rapture Lady because of the poignancy of her appeal. The appeal is beyond reason, as is yours. The only way any atheist could accept your "temporarily abnormal state of consciousness" as a real mind meld with the eternal creator of the universe is to put aside reason and make a leap of faith.

It is very sad that you can't see that this stark reality.

For other readers, let me make the distinctions you are apparently incapable of reading with comprehension.

Question Number One: Did J. Neil Schulman have an experience that after extensive testing against his Objectivist premises he concluded was sufficient reason for him to regard as a real contact with a being that satisfies a non-faith-based, non-religious, non-dogmatic, non-scriptural, non-contradictory and non-supernatural definition of an eternal creator with a human personality?

Yes.

Question Number Two: Can J. Neil Schulman rationally demand any other human being to accept his experience as real, or his interpretation of the experience as valid?

No.

Question Number Three:

Is anyone else's disbelief sufficient reason for J. Neil Schulman, after concluding his experience was real, to deny it?

No.

Question Number Four: Is a report of anecdotal evidence from a person who denies faith as a basis to accept a report nonetheless of potential utilitarian value to those who take such reports as a reason to keep an open mind?

Yes.

That's why atheism as "God is impossible" as opposed to atheism as "I do not have sufficient reason to regard God as real" is the religious dogma I came here to challenge.

You're as much of a religious dogmatic as the Pope, but not honest about it.

I have found another case of god appearance. From a Texas newspaper's crime blotter (like Neil, I have made a standing Google Search for I Met God).

Blotter: Report: Man’s behavior turns strange

07:35 AM CST on Tuesday, December 21, 2010

By Donna Fielder / Staff Writer

Paramedics took a man to a hospital for evaluation Sunday after his friend reported to police that he was talking in tongues, declaring himself God, threatening her with a knife and doing other things that were out of character.

The woman said her friend asked her to accompany him to a movie, but she suggested they watch a movie at her apartment instead.

They were having a conversation about God, she said, when he suddenly declared that he was God.

He announced that they were going to have sex. She told him that was disrespectful and he insisted that they were going to have a sexual encounter and picked up a pair of scissors, according to a police report.

She ran into the bathroom, and he threw the scissors across the room and ran into the living room.

She was fearful for him and followed. She reported that she saw him “levitate” for about 10 feet across the room. She feared he was going to go over the balcony, so she shoved a table across the door.

He picked up a knife and she defended herself with a curtain rod, she said. Then she grabbed a baseball bat. He began chanting “Red, green, go” over and over and “flying” around the room, she said.

He was flailing his arms and hit her, the report states. She struck him with the bat, she said. He began speaking in a language she didn’t understand. She called 911 at that point.

She told police that her friend uses steroids and GHB, called the date rape drug, but that he did not appear to have taken anything when he first arrived.

Later she reported that he was texting her from the hospital that he was not sorry for what happened.

Find a witness who says I threatened anyone with a weapon between noon and eight pm on February 18, 1997. You won't. It didn't happen. But still you make this second vile comparison in your last two posts, the first one being to an end-of-the-worlder.

Yes, I've continued to read this forum.

No, I will not jump back in except to say the following:

Since I resigned from this forum there have been numerous posts lying about things I've supposedly written here, and attacking straw men based on these lies.

Read it for yourself. Find where I ever called Joan of Arc's experience a hallucination, as Xray attributed to me. I explicitly refused either to affirm or deny anyone else's experience.

Starbuckle describes my experience as a "trance." You try taking a meeting with a lawyer during a trance. I double dare you.

Find where I ever asked George H. Smith to accept my experience on faith, as William Scherk asserts as a segue to lumping me in with end-of-the-worlders. I explicitly and repeatedly have denied faith as a basis to accept any fact as true, and have explicitly said I ask no one to accept my experience as true on faith.

I resigned from this forum because of the dishonesty here, which continues unabated in my absence.

The nub of the matter seems to be this: Neil had a subjective experience, for which he has no competent, contemporaneous evidence, other than his own testimony. He has no witnesses, no recordings, and no fingerprints. In fairness to Neil, we wouldn't expect recordings or fingerprints, but a contemporaneous witness would have been nice.

Of course, "evidence" is not the only thing that conceivably support his claims. For instance, during the 8 hour mind meld, God could have told him something or provided an insight that conceivably place tipped the scales somewhat in his favor regarding his claims. I half joked that an explanation for the cure for cancer could do this rather nicely, but something less and more difficult to test than this wouldn't hurt Neil's claims either, for example: an historical insight about a turning point in the Civil War, a comment on Jesus' rank in the pantheon, even something about whether there is such a thing as eternal punishment after death. So far, Neil hasn't offered much in this area either, unless one counts thoughts about Bill Clinton being over his head as president as a qualifying insight in this area. I do not, but perhaps there are great insights God gave Neil that he is not offering, for reasons of his (and God's) own. I have asked for them, and Neil so far is not sharing them.

Separate and apart from contemporaneous evidence and/or worthwhile insights, Neil's responses to standard objections to his experience could conceivably sway some to consider his experience more seriously, but frankly, his responses have revealed--to put it kindly--a fair amount of confusion and backtracking. And not a small amount of name-calling either. Less kindly, one could easily infer from Neil's responses that he is making some of his arguments up as he goes along. Although this doesn't end the matter, Neil has not exactly helped his cause during the course of this thread. One cannot reasonably expect Neil to convert Ghs in five posts or less, but is it asking too much for him to have advanced his argument better than he has done here? I don't think so.

Finally, I could see something vaguely akin to "inspiration" as a basis on which someone might further explore Neil's claims, but there is nothing particularly inspirational about the God he describes.

I, like most of us, have managed to go my whole life without threatening to kill somebody. Our introduction to Neil's God reveals that he has threatened to kill him at least once, and without much cause, as far as I can tell. But more important, in the absence of evidence or insights, there are frankly more inspiring Gods out there to choose from. As I have mentioned in previous posts, there is a decent literature (Carl Jung, Jack Miles, etc.) that argues/implies that the Christian God saw fit to die on the cross not only to allow atonement by us for our wrongs/sins (through belief in Him), but also because He decided/reached the conclusion that He too needed atonement. No offense to Neil, but Carl Jung is Carl Jung and Jack Miles won the Pulitzer Prize for his efforts. Moreover, there is also a fair amount of current theology afoot (known as universalism) that argues that the Christian God's death on the cross not only redeems those who believe, but everyone, including our very own George H. Smith and Starbuckle, who can't bring themselves to believe. One Death fits all, more or less.

My guess is that those inclined to believe in God will likely find a God willing to atone for His own misdeeds and prepared to save everybody as a result of His supreme sacrifice (and for which, for our purposes here, there is a great deal more contemporaneous evidence and subjective testimony) far more inspiring than anything Neil has said about his God.

Here is what seems to be left about Neil's claims: he has little or no competent evidence, he has presented to us no Godly arguments or insights of any significance, and his God is not all that inspiring, except, apparently, to Neil alone, and perhaps his sister.

None of this, of course, affects the sincerity of Neil's claim or the intensity of his 8 hour experience, but, at the end of the day, it is pretty thin gruel for the rest of us.

Maybe you find no inspiration in discovering that we are of the same kind of everlasting consciousness as God, but I do.

Maybe you can't distinguish between "killing" in the sense of extinguishing a conscious being forever, or merely separating that consciousness from its mortal body, but I can.

Maybe you aren't impressed by the idea that God respects others' liberty so much he won't overpower their independent volition, but I am.

And if God didn't give me something I can use as proof of his existence, maybe it's because he foresaw -- as I see now -- that someone bound and determined to choose any other explanation will always be able to find one.

I'm out of here -- and this time if I pray for anything, it's the willpower to mean it.

George H. Smith asked me to attempt to negate my experience the same way he challenged his own arguments in Atheism: The Case Against God.

My book, I Met God -- God Without Religion, Scripture, or Faith documents that that I have attempted to negate my experiences of a real encounter with God.

And here is my bottom line, even today: nothing I experienced can not be explained by conventional means. Nor have I ever claimed otherwise.

Why, then, do I persist in asserting the reality of the experience? Why don't I simply admit that I experienced a temporary break with reality and that my experience was fantasy cooked up by an imaginative brain that was stressed by dehydration and ketosis?

Here's why:

[video deleted]

FYI: My ultimate experience was February 18, 1997. Contact was released in July 1997, so it could not have influenced my experience.

You conveniently left out some relevant background details. Humans had previously received transmissions from a distant planet that gave a detailed blueprint for a mechanism beyond current technological knowledge. At the very least this gave considerable credibility to the experience related by Foster's character. Moreover, as I recall, at the end of the movie there is reference to a suppressed static-filled video tape that corresponds to the length of time reported by Foster's character.

If, in contrast, Foster's character had claimed to have been transported to another planet via a dream or by purely psychic means, and without any independent evidence that intelligent life exists on another planet, then her account would not have been credible. Lastly, keep in mind that her experience could be replicated by others in the same machine that she used. If, say, 100 people used the same machine but got negative results, then this would cast very serious doubts on her story.

So I tell you what, Neil: Have God send you some blueprints for a highly sophisticated device hitherto unknown to humans, and I will take your report more seriously.

Ghs

Perfect example of how you drop context.

James Woods' character in Contact, Michael Kitz, puts forward a perfectly plausible alternative explanation that the message and blueprints were all an expensive scheme to defraud the world, conducted by the eccentric billionaire S.R. Hadden. Kitz makes a perfect George H. Smith argument that nothing extraordinary happened. Ellie Arroway is left with no evidence to present that her experience was anything but subjective. She doesn't have access to the 18 hours of blank static anymore than I have access to anything that can prove my experience was real.

And I don't believe you. If I sent you the blueprints for the Interociter (a movie device stolen from the novel and movie This Island Earth) you'd find some reason to negate them as anything extraordinary.

As I said, the controversy could be settled by having other people use the same device. Foster's speech at the end is an absurd sop to religionists. No competent scientist would say such a thing. It would be relatively easy to verify that the transmission of over 60.000 pages of technical data came from outer space, not from Earth, and any scientist worth her salt would insist that her claims should be verified by repeating the experiment.

Moreover, the character played by James Woods is politically motivated to suppress evidence. It's been a while since I have seen "Contact," but I don't recall that he actually disbelieves the account given by Dr. Arroway (Foster). So do you claim that your evidence has been suppressed by the U.S. Government?

As for your Interocitor, simply reveal detailed blueprints for one that actually works, and we will go from there. At the very least you could make a fortune by selling them.

Meanwhile, are there any other works of fiction that you would like to cite in support of your personal experiences? How about "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and other movies by Ed Wood?

Ghs

Go fuck yourself, you dishonest snide cocksucker.

JNS wrote: "FYI: My ultimate experience was February 18, 1997. Contact was released in July 1997, so it could not have influenced my experience."

Sagan's novel Contact was published in 1985. I assume Neil hadn't read it by February 1997. But the chronology is neither here nor there. Modern science fiction has been around since, let's say, the 1930s and 1940s. Neil's theology is one influenced by the ideas of sf. God is familiar with the literature.

That specific dialogue in the movie Contact written by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg was not released until five months after my experience.

This is another case where the context of something I write in this forum is completely ignored to make a cheap irrelevant, paralogical straw-man argument.

You have shifted ground repeatedly in this discussion.

Ghs

The hell I have. You just are incapable of forming a gestalt from the numerous specific answers I give to your misconceived questions.

On second thought that might be unfair. You might understand me perfectly well and simply drop context to win a debating point.