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From: scott@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Scott Deerwester)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Personal experience and Rosen's dream
Message-ID: <382@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Mar-85 15:34:35 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.382
Posted: Tue Mar 26 15:34:35 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Mar-85 04:35:20 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 84

First a brief recap:  RR = Rich Rosen, SD = Scott Deerwester.

RR:

I had a dream...

SD:

All that you're doing is saying, "See, I can make up an example of a
personal experience that clearly has no relationship to reality.
Therefore no personal experiences, including yours, can be used as
the basis for anything."  Sorry, but I'm not convinced.

RR:

[FLAME ON]
How *DARE* you claim that I made up my example!!!  I really experienced
all the things I described, and who are YOU to claim that it's all
falsified or made-up????

Oh, I see, *you* can claim that MINE are made up, but I can't claim that
YOURS are made up.  Quite a double standard there.

SD:

Point one:
I claim that I believe that the experiences that I allude to actually
happened.  You said that you were being satirical:

>	... If this offends you, realize that this is an example of satire.

implying that the experiences of which you spoke did not actually
occur.  What double standard?  *I* didn't claim that your experiences
were made up.  *You* did.  I just believed you.

RR:

I lied.  In fact I am lying right now.  But more importantly, just because
it was satirical doesn't mean it didn't actually happen.  I had that dream.
God spoke to me in that dream.  In that very tone that I described.  Are you
calling me a liar?  Was I wrong if I believed that that was god?  If you
can answer "yes" to either of those questions, then it's only fair that I
make the same claims about your personal subjective experiences, lest we
engage in a double standard.

-----

If your point is that it's possible for somebody to make it
impossible for others to know whether he's lying or not, then you've
demonstrated it very well, I think.  You've flip-flopped so many
times between claiming that you're lying and that you're telling the
truth that I don't really even care anymore.

The point that I was trying to address in my original response still
stands though.  The situation that I was addressing is where somebody
says something like,

	"Well people who believes in {fill in your favorite religion}
	have exactly the same experiences that you describe.  How
	come yours are more valid than theirs?"

The argument is empty.  If the experiences that you're talking about
are just your conjectures about what might be possible, that's not
the same thing as first person accounts of real experiences.  In
saying this, I'm making no arguments at all about what the personal
experiences of actual people might or might not mean.  I am neither
saying (at least not here) that my experiences do mean anything or
that yours don't.  I am, however, asserting that a particular
argument that you and others have made doesn't have any meaning.

You've made it pretty much impossible to judge whether your dream is
real or invented.  As a matter of fact, since you have at times
asserted that it was invented, assertions to the contrary are pretty
hard to believe.  It seems to me that what you're saying is, "Well,
okay, the dream was made up, but it *might* have happened.  So
pretend that it really did and respond that way."  No dice.
-- 
	Scott Deerwester
	Graduate Library School
	University of Chicago

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