Requirements to Believe In a Supernatural Event

So take a 20th century individual that meets the following requirements:

1. Religious leader with many noted followers and disciples;
2. Claimed supernatural abilities;
3. Millions of lives changed by his teachings;
4. Wrote a book considered one of the top spiritual books of the 20th century;
5. Before death, having no demonstrated health issues
announced to disciples it was time to leave this world. Provided spiritual messange and shortly thereafter slumped to the floor.
6. Funeral home announced that the body did not decay and issued a notarized letter to that effect. This lack of decay is pronounced a miracle.

So here we have an apparent supernatural claim regarding a spiritual teacher that has happend in modern time, not 2000 years ago. We have an actual book written by the spiritual teacher making supernatural claims. It is written by him, not unknown individuals decades after death. We have a miracle associated with death. So my question to Christians. Given the above should this man's supernatural claims considered to be true? Should we perhaps worship this man?

I will be happy to provide the name of this person and further information if anyone cares to comment. If no one is comforable addressing this post I will not provide the name of the person. I would expect Christians not to comment as the evidence associated with this person is certainly stronger than the evidence for Jesus. We have contemporary records. We have evidence. We have a book and we have millions claiming to "know."

 

With all the preservatives in the average diet, eventually, none of us will decay. We will be preserved like people-kerky!

 

People on an average unhealthy diet currently get all manner of fungal infections on their skin and the like.

 

True. Botox was once a taboo topic, but now, its so common, no one raises an eyebrow.

 

There have been monks that undergo a rigorous and lengthy ritual of slow starvation and regularly drinking a tea that's basically turpentine that supposedly, if done correctly, will cause the body to not decay upon death. The most successful of these monks is still on display at a shrine in a medititive position, looking quite mummified but otherwise unrotten.

Has there been a chemical analysis done on the tissue of the religious leader you speak of?

 

Thanks for responding to this thread. I am going to hold off commenting on your comment until tomorrow afternoon for reasons that will be obvious then.

 

Jesus never wanted to be 'worshipped'. The church took his teachings, threw out the ones that didn't fit with its plans, and created a hierarchical power structure out of something that is meant to unify mankind in unconditional love. It turned Jesus and God into something to worship, rather than recognize that we are all one and the same being, that God is all that has ever existed.

There have been many spiritual books written in the last couple hundred years through channeling that help clarify Jesus' message to humanity that have not been altered by scheming powermongers. The only way to discern truth in them is through meditation and conversations with your higher self, spirit guides, etc.

Until the soul is ready for a message or piece of information, spiritual messages will seem like nonsense. That is as it should be. Eventually, when enough of humanity has been through a spiritual awakening, science and spirituality will be indistinguishable from each other.

 

The individuals I am talking about (I will provide the name later), did not apparently want to be worshipped either. Not sure what your point is, The question I am trying to determine is what criteria do people use to validate supernatural claims. So for now let's call the guy I am taking about Geru X

Historical Proof of Existence
Jesus - Anonymous hearsay accounts written years/decades after the fact.
Geru X - Contemporary historical records, pictures, testimony from identifiable witnesses that are still alive.

Spiritual Claims
Jesus - Anonymous hearsay accounts in Bible written years/decades after the fact.
Geru X - Claims provided in directly in books written by Geru X and also 20th century lectures.

Empirical Evidence of Supernatural Claims
Jesus - Anonymous hearsay account in Bible written years/decades after the fact.
Geru X - Letter from mortician that the body did not decay. Accounts in modern newspaper. Direct 1rst person testimony from followers that are alive and available to be interviewed.

Decerned by followers to provide spiritual truth via meditation and communication with a higher self.
Jesus - Yes
Geru X - Yes


BTW, the guy I am going to identify communicated with Jesus as did Paul. He said the same things you say about the early church establishing a power structure and altering the teachings of Jesus accordingly.

What you call decerning the truth is impacted I believe by cultural conditioning. Cause claims of truth always seem to align with culture. But that being said, your method for decerning truth is exactly the method identified by the Geru I am going to identify. later.

 

Lol, well, I'm interested to see who you mention. Hopefully it is not Charles Manson, lol. I know he called himself 'God' and 'Jesus'.

 

My OP appears to be generating little interest so I am going to go ahead and provide the rest of the story. The question you ask is exactly the sort of question anyone should ask regarding a supernatural claim, i.e., has any scientific analysis been done to support the claim.

The individual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramahansa_Yogananda

The supernatural claim.
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com...orruption-sister-lauru-may-1952-srf-magazine/

The explanation.
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/srfblacklist/yogananda-s-incorruptibility-after-death-myth-t293.html

 

Yoganda.

https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/yogananda-and-jesus-the-second-coming-of-christ/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100050236640221

 

So it was a good embalming job. Isn't Vladimir Lenin still on display? I think he died even longer ago, still looks pretty good.

 

I read Yogananda's famous book when I was 16 years old. I also read the mirical claims about the body, read newspaper claims that he had not been embalmed and thought this guys spiritual BS was was legit. Of course at that age I didn't have a clue what critical thinking and also didn't have a clue what empirical evidence was.

The book that changed millions. lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_a_Yogi

 

I'm still not clear what the point of all of this is. What are you trying to say?

 

The point is indicated by the OP Title. My point is how easily people accept supernatural claims without evidence. Or to put it another way, the gullability of people accepting supernatural claims made by religions. It seems like for religions, gullability and a lack of critical thinking are virtues. I may have not done a very good job of it, but I tried to demonstrate that there is more of a basis to believe the supernatural claims of Yoganada, a Hindu, than the Christian claims of the Bible. Of course I believe in neither. I guess the overall point is that humans have a very low tolerance for ambiguity and when needed invent a world view. I hear Christians use the term "World View" all of the time as if subjective and objective reality is the same thing.

 

I think relying strictly on evidence to believe something is the sign of a lazy mind. So is believing only what others indoctrinate you into. Truth lies within you.

Believe in the supernatural, or not. That is your choice. Personally, I think when science becomes advanced enough, there will be no need for the word supernatural, because science and spirituality will be indistinguishable from one another.

At this point there is a lot we cannot prove, because our science is so primitive. Lack of evidence does not mean that something is not true. Dismissing something as false until there is evidence showing it to be true is, as I said, a sign of a lazy mind, or spirit.

 

Subjective truth and objective truth are different. By definition objective truth does not lie within anybody.

As far a science and the supernatural, as we learn more about the universe the scope of science increases and a belief in the supernatural decreases. They will never be the same thing. I don't assert any god claims to be false without evidence. Neither will I believe these claims without evidence. This Yoganada character is asserted to be a 20th century Jesus. Look at some of the stuff people claim on that Facebook page I linked too. Just shows how one person's spiritual truth is another person's BS. I will have to note that these claimed gods never seem to reveal anything useful as discovered by science such as the germ theory, the earth not being flat or the center of the universe, etc.

Two sides of the same subjective reality coin.

 

Your second paragraph isn't going to work.

Science and religion don't share methodologies or fundamental assumptions. Plus, they don't pursue answers to the same questions.

 

I think religion and spirituality are quite different. Religion has set dogma, usually the product of humans with an agenda. Spirituality is a continuous search for truth across many lifetimes. I see many similarities with science, though not, of course, it’s methods and standards. Just in subject matter.
Just as a small example, spirituality deals in large part with vibrations, with similarities that seem eerily close to what I’ve heard about string theory and whatnot. I’m not going to pretend I know much about quantum physics at all, but I have a gut feeling that in the end conclusions that spirituality and science come to will be one and the same.
if you are going to ask for proof, sorry, I can’t provide any. I just know what my own journey with spirituality has taught me. It is ongoing and always evolving, one piece leading to the next in a great cosmic puzzle.

 

you kind of said what I said. As scientific knowledge increases, things we previously thought to be magic or supernatural we realize are not so. That’s what I mean by spirituality and science eventually being one and the same. The spiritual and supernatural are simply things our science is too primitive to understand yet.

 

I agree with you on religion.

But, I don't accept that spirituality has a methodology for extending what we know. It's foundation is that anything one can possibly conceive of is just as valid as anything else. And, in spirituality there is no possibility of determining whether an idea someone has is progress or not progress.

In science, we got to quantum wave theory by observation and proof, by eliminating huge numbers of ideas that were found to be false. Even in theoretical physics, where wild untestable ideas live, those ideas are strongly held to being consistent with what is known. So, there are still huge numbers of ideas that are found to be false.

If spirituality were a method of search, I would expect to see analogous progress being made in discarding ideas found to be failures as well as some sort of analogous statement of current progress or understanding.

 

The "progress" is an individual journey. It is unknowable to others, until their soul is at the point where it is ready for it. It is this way by design. It is the way god/creator/universe/whatever you want to call it experiences itself.
By the time technology is able to make sense of what spirituality knows, technology will no longer be needed. We will at that point be our "higher selves", and we will be the ones guiding our present selves along on their journey, as time and space will be meaningless.
Nope, I have no proof of any of this. Call it the ravings of a lunatic, or something to look into, as you will! In any case, science is awesome. It is what allows us to make sense of all of this stuff going on around us in our current primitive conditions. But it is not the ultimate truth of what is really going on. At least not in our basic understanding of it all.

 

I am surmising that your thesis is something of a put-on. That is, it would seem that you are trying to equate this supposed modern religious leader, with Jesus Christ. While I do not count myself among Christ's faithful followers, it is clear that your comparison is highly deficient. First of all, belief in the Divinity of Jesus is not at all based, strictly on a factual analysis of supposed details of his life-- it is the resonant truth of His Message, which rings genuine, in the hearts of believers. Do you care to share the philosophical teachings, of this preacher whose identity you, for no apparent reason, are withholding?

Then, if we look at the "evidence" of this modern god's divinity, it is almost all insignificant, and-- if one was to accept all the claims regarding Jesus's acts-- it compares very poorly, with an accounting of Jesus raising people from the dead, for instance.

1. Having many followers & disciples-- "noted" or otherwise-- is not the least proof of divinity.

2. Claiming to possess supernatural abilities, I should not need explain, is nothing at all like actually having those powers; nor does claiming it, even match the confirmed ability, to do a really nifty card trick.

3. Millions of lives have been changed by the teachings of Hitler, as well. Does that make him a God?

4. Writing "one of the top spiritual books of the 20th century," again, LOL, implies no divinity. If anyone writes books on spirituality, then a few of those must, necessarily, be considered "the top" ones. What about the authors of the other top spiritual books of the 20th century? And of those of the nineteenth century? And of the eighteenth? And so on.

5. "Having demonstrated no health issues," prior to their death, is not supernatural: it is the result of some combination of healthy life practices, and good genes.

I have to ask you about your last cited bit of evidence, "Funeral home announced that the body did not decay." I assume you mean, that it had not undergone the normal amount of decay, seen of all dead bodies. This is the one item in your list that-- while certainly not leading to only the one possible explanation-- which is certainly curious. Can you supply more detailed information about that? Did the funeral home, nonetheless, preserve this spiritual leader's body, with formaldehyde? If so, it pretty much kills that point-- one would be putting all their faith, into a notarized letter, written by someone at the funeral home (who was one of the man's followers?). I mean, Trump got a doctor to release a letter, saying that he was "astonishingly healthy." Not everything that everyone claims, can be believed. If it could be, then you could have shortened your list, to just this spiritual leader's personal claim.

 

I agree with the personal journey part, and fully accept that many find benefit. It would be great if spiritual exploration found testable truths that could be agreed upon.

It's certainly true that there are numerous questions that science has not answered so far. Exploration is a human process, not a one time illumination.

 

You can choose to believe what you want to believe. Others can do the same.