The material world is often called the "real" world by strict materialists, who believe anything and everything can be explained away as natural phenomena. In the mind of a strict materialist, a personal experience with ghosts must be explainable as either an optical illusion or figment of the imagination, but never as the disembodied mind or spirit of a dead person, no matter what sort of evidence has been offered. Strict materialists don't believe in God, Satan, angels, demons, ghosts, or any other type of supernatural phenomena. I do, but I would never dream of trying to convince a strict materialist that Scott Patterson's ghost story was true. I wasn't there. I wouldn't even try to convince a strict materialist that my own personal ghost stories are true. Although the experiences documented in my writing constituted empirical evidence of supernatural phenomena collected via the scientific method, they are merely anecdotes to any third parties. It is rational, and logical to immediately seek a "natural" explanation for an inexplicable...until you run out of possible explanations that don't defy all logic and reason. All I would say to the strict materialist is this: when you run out of other options to explain some phenomena, leave open the possibility of a supernatural explanation. Don't completely rule out anything without evidence, or a better explanation. Even though Jesus implies that ghosts exist in the Bible when he differentiates between the characteristics of a ghost to his resurrected form, the strict materialist will not accept that as legitimate … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2016
Hope without faith
Recently a friend of mine had an exchange on the internet with an atheist during which he asked what compelling evidence for an omnipotent (supernatural) deity might change the atheist's mind. My friend received this answer in reply: If all the stars were rearranged in the sky to spell "this is God communicating with you" and that everyone around the world could see it in their own language at the same time, then that would really make me change my mind. It's a good thing, knowing the standard for evidence of God has been set so low! (For the tone deaf, that was practically dripping with sarcasm.) I wondered to myself: does this person apply the same level of skepticism to climate change, or the theory of evolution? Was this person even being serious? After all, sciency types and the evangelists of scientism like to huff and puff about insufficient evidence for belief in a supernatural God, but they typically become quite vague or absurd when asked what it would specifically take to pass their personal threshold of disbelief. Then I remembered the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton, who said, "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything." At some point it occurred to me that this particular atheist might be thinking of author Douglas Adams as some sort of god. The evidence requested can be found on the pages of Adams's classic novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. However, in that hilarious book, God's message was not conveyed to humanity by reorganizing stars to spell words, … [Read more...]
