The Richstag is burning: Trump's Coup d'etat

Richstag burning in Berlin on 27 February 1933
Of course the Reichstag was the German equivalent of the capital building. It was burned and Hitler used the opportunity to claim emergency powers and that set him up to rule with absolute power. [1]


I do know something about how to conduct a coup and over throw a government, what do I know? In 1989 I was an activist for The Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador (CISPES) we worked on all central America issues. We brought in a speaker named Philip Clay Roettinger, he was in charge of over throwing the democratically electided Arbinz government of Guatemala imn 1954. He told me all about how he did it (he was working for CIA at the time).[2] I helped set up his tour in Dallas and  drove him around, my brother and I.They struck on multiple fronts. They took control of the media ad put out their propaganda as news, they created concussion and strife in many sectors and made the afraid for fear of violence,

If we open our eyes and look at this years  election we can see this very strategy Beijing applied now by the Trump political machine, When Trump first started encouraging his stooges to observe voting and make sure there is no fraud I observed that this is a dog whistle it really means intimidate the other side and suppress the vote, We now have main stream media reports of voter intimidation squads brassily going ab out Hispanic neighborhoods in Dallas asking elderly Hispanics how they are voting![3]  Hispanic community  organizers report elderly are telling them they are afraid to vote,[4]

Hispanic leaders in Tarrant County have filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, alleging that senior citizens are being intimidated into not voting.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the complaint from the United Hispanic Council of Tarrant County says a voter fraud investigation has "left a trail of confused and upset seniors who are now afraid of voting," either in person or by absentee ballot.
Concerns have arisen over mail-in ballots, which some people think can lead to "vote harvesting" — the illegal process of filling out and returning the ballots of valid voters without their consent....This is voter suppression," Fort Worth Councilman Sal Espino told the Star-Telegram. "When these people go talk to seniors, they are accusing them of doing something wrong, making it seem as though they shouldn't have voted by mail."[5]

These guys are actually going door to door in older Hispanic neighborhoods pretending to be :"vote inspectors" and trying to convey the impression that the people did something wrong to vote absentee, [6] Presumably the word gets around don't vote or these inspectors will come. Star Telegram. Dallas Morning News, fox4, WBAP these are some of the most respected news media in Dallas and have been all my life, They are Republican slanted most of eh time, This is not a Democratic trick this is hard news.

Trump has carefully laid the ground work for this. He does not have to tell anyone to go door to door, it's just the kind of thing his stooges come up with on their own but egged on by Trump's constant insistence for months that the election will be rigged, Of course he never says how he knows this but gives the impression that he has inside information. This is what "they" do all the time, We are dealing with the devil herself so we have to be extra careful. He has been spewing this hogwash for months (since August) [7] 

On a completely different level there is the email propaganda. Wiklileaks has been releasing it every day since august in a calculated effort to control our election. The link between Wikileaks and Putin is well known no mystery there, .He's clearly seeking to aid Trump[8] Trump publicly asked the Russians to interfere in our election.[9] Trump supporters talk like Hillary's use of private server is the treasonous act like it's  highly illegal bit it's not illegal at all.,When I point out that every other secretary of state has done it and that Bush and Cheney did it and they destroyed thousands of emails [10] they switch to abortion. She is or abortion so they can't vote for her, That's not illegal.

Then yesterday they tried springing the October surprise. The FBI has reported the email investigation there are thousands of more emails that prove he;s guilty, Suddenly the election springs back the other way .Trump has won! it's over president ;Trump is ready to take office,. according to local republican media.

(1) it's not re opened but finding new emails had to be reported to the committee

(2) they are not Hillary's emails they her functionaries

(3) They don't know what is on them they could just as easily be unimportant

(4) The FBI director violated policy because they usually don't want to influence elections, they could easily have waited a week.

(5) now he admits he did it to help Trump

The truth is much less explosive. There is no indication the emails in question were withheld by Clinton during the investigation, the law enforcement official told Newsweek, nor does the discovery suggest she did anything illegal. Also, none of the emails were to or from Clinton, the official said. Moreover, despite the widespread claims in the media that this development had prompted the FBI to “reopen” the case, it did not; such investigations are never actually closed, and it is common for law enforcement to discover new information that needs to be examined.[11]

According to CBS Reid accusses FBI head Comey of  sitting on the proof taht Trump works for Putin and violated the Hatch act

In his last few months in the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, isn’t pulling any punches -- especially after the recent revelations by FBI Director James Comey that more emails were found that could be related to the Clinton email probe. 

The pugilistic Reid, who plans to retire after finishing out this term in Congress, penned a blistering letter to Comey Sunday, accusing the FBI chief of holding back “explosive” information about Donald Trump’s close Russian ties while possibly violating the Hatch Act by reviving the Clinton email investigation. 

“Your actions in recent months have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another,” Reid wrote, adding that through Comey’s “partisan actions, you may have broken the law.”[12]

It's just another part of the coup attempt. It's just one of the multiple  levels of confusion destabilization requires, These are the same kinds of things we did to destroy the Nicaragua democracy or the Guatemalan democracy of 54, and Putin did to destroy Ukraine democracy. It is obvious to me (I know I am no expert but I some things) that this is a classic case just on a boarder scale.  If we need a stronger commendation to foreign power, the Putin government has paid big money to Trump;'s people. [13]

Several have said if Trump loses they already to fight with guns blazing and one said Hilary needs to be assassinated, Trump is not going to stop just because he loses. This is only the beginning of Putin's revenge on democracy for winning the cold war.[14]

The Boston Globe reports that Trump supporters are starting to believe what the GOP presidential nominee has repeatedly told them — that the election will be "rigged" as part of a massive conspiracy to defeat him at the hands of "crooked Hillary." And the impact of Trump's incendiary statements could be felt far beyond Election Day, undermining Americans' faith in democracy and making it difficult to govern — or worse. “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Clinton at recent rally in Cincinnati. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.”At a rally in North Carolina on Friday, Trump declared: “It’s one big fix. This whole election is being rigged.’’At the same rally, a Trump supporter attacked a protester, shoving him and putting him in a headlock, as the crowd erupted in chants of "USA, USA!": [15]

Sources



[1] Wikiv article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand,  listen (help·info)) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch council communist, was caught at the scene of the fire and arrested for the crime. Van der Lubbe was an unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany. He declared that he had started the fire and was tried and sentenced to death. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazi Party that communists were plotting against the German government. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany."

[2] Wikipedia articleon Roettinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Roettinger (accessed 10/30/16)
[3] Tom Steele, "Tarrant county group claims sioemers are beimg intimidated into not voting," Dallas News, Dallas Mornking News, online news URL 
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/elections/2016/10/28/tarrant-county-group-claims-seniors-intimidated-voting (accessed 10/30/16)
I also saw the report on air yesterday on Fox 4 local news in Dallas.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] WBAP 820 radio,"Rights Group Claims Ft Worth Hispanics Face Voter Intimidation." Posted on October 29, 2016 online URL
http://www.wbap.com/2016/10/29/rights-group-claims-fort-worth-hispanics-face-voter-intimidation/
this is the most respected radio news source in North Texas and has been since 1960s
[7] Jamelle Bouie,"Donald Trump is Settimga Timeb omb for Racial Violence"Dallas News powered by Dallas Morning News, commemtary, oct 11. 16 online URL
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/10/11/donald-trump-setting-time-bomb-racial-violence-election-day

 Contributor
Jamelle Bouie is chief political correspondent for Slate, which first published this column.
[8] Max Chafkinand and Vernon Silver, "How Julian Assange Turned WikiLeaks Into Trump’s Best Friend,"Bloomberg business week October 11, 2016 — 6:00 AM EDT October 12, 2016 — 12:50 PM EDT

From 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-11/how-julian-assange-turned-wikileaks-into-trump-s-best-friend  (accessed 10/30/16)

[9] Philip Rucker, et al, "Trump invites Russia To meddle In US Presidential Race" The Washington Post, July 27, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-invites-russia-to-meddle-in-the-us-presidential-race-with-clintons-emails/2016/07/27/a85d799e-5414-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html
(accessed 10/30/16)

[10] Nina Burleigh, "The Bush Whitehoue lost 22 Million Emails," Newsweek, Sept 12, 2016http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-house-lost-22-millioemails497373.html

[11] Kurt Eichenwold, "HlaryClinton's Emails" NewsWeek 10,l28.16

http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-emails-fbi-comey-donald-trump-anthony-weiner-huma-abedin-514918

[12] REENA FLORES CBS NEWS October 30, 2016, 6:38 PM

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/harry-reid-letter-fbi-james-comey-clinton-emails-trump-russia-ties-hatch-act/

[13]Andrew Kramer , et al.,"Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Trump's Campaign Chief." New York Times (August 14, 2016)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html
[13] john wright NCRMOctober 15, 201

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/johnwright/trump_supporters_warn_of_armed_revolt_if_he_loses_rigged_election_call_for_clinton_s_assassination

October surprise email story killed: Hillary still leading Race

http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/10/28/sorry-gop-that-new-emails-investigation-story-took-less-than-2-hours-to-get-debunked-details/

Republicans across America cackled with glee as the latest bogus “news” story about Hillary Clinton’s emails took the Internet by storm. After all, Fridays are slow news days and reporters gotta report. But, as Laurence Lewis from Daily Koswants to remind everyone, “despite the horrendous reporting, the FBI is NOT reopening” their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Read more Get details

argument from God Corrolate

We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the world.The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? The answer is in the argument below. Here let us set out some general parameters:

We can set up criteria based upon what we would expect from encounter with the divine:

A. Life Transforming and vital in a positive life=affirming sense

B. It would give us a sense of the transcendent and the divine.

C. No alternate or naturalistic causality could be proven

These criteria are based upon the writings of the great mystics and religious thinkers of history, especially in the Christian tradition, and distilled into /theory by W.T. Stace. The theory is verified and validated by several hundred studies using various methodologies all of them published in peer reviewed journals. The following argument is based upon the findings of these studies. All of this, the studies, the methods used, Stace's theory, these studies and their methodologies are discussed in depth in The Trace of God: a Rational Warrant for Belief by Joseph Hinman, (all proceeds go to non profit) available on Amazon



Read much about the book on the Trace of God blog..

Argument:


(1) Real effects come from real causes

(2) If effects are real chances are the cause is real

(3) the effects of mystical experience are real

(4) Therefore, the cause of mystical experience is real.

(5) the content of mystical experience is about the divine

(6) Since the content of ME is divine the cause must be the divine

(7) Since the cause is real and it is divine then the divine must be real.

(8) Therefore belief in the divine is warranted by ME


I do not claim that I have proved the existence of God. This is a rational reason to believe in God., Therefore Belief in God is rationally warranted,. not proved but warranted,

Top Baptist puts it on the line in land mark speech

A speech by Russell Moore the head of  Southern Baptist Convention spells it all out on Trump. It will be in First Things but I only have a review by By ROD DREHER • October 24, 2016, 11:44 PM in The Ameirca Comncservtiove
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-religious-right-a-eulogy/

Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore delivered one 
hell heck of a speech Monday night in New York. When First Things magazine tapped Moore to deliver its prestigious annual Erasmus Lecture, I wonder if the editors imagined how consequential the speech was going to be. It amounts to a eulogy for the Religious Right, delivered by a conservative Southern Baptist who has had enough. I believe it will be seen as a generation-defining speech, a line in the sand between the Old Guard and the Next Generation, as well as a line in the sand marking the end of an era and the opening of a new one.

Moving forward to the political situation today, Moore said that economic and foreign policy conservatism will come out of the 2016 election beaten up, but they will adjust and recover. It’s different with religious conservatism, because “the reason for the
existence of religious conservatism is, after all, about moral formation and family values.”
And here’s where Russell Moore started throwing punches. Hard ones:
The crisis before us now is that of a national Religious Right political

Russell Moore (from erlc.org)
establishment that has waved away some of the most repugnant aspects of immorality — from calls for torture and war crimes to the embrace of an “alt-Right” movement of white identity ethno-nationalists and anti-Semites to the kind of sexual degradation of women we could previously avoid by not choosing to listen to Howard Stern on the radio or the subscribe to Hustler magazine. Some of these—mostly evangelical—political leaders have waved away misogyny and sexually predatory language as “locker room talk” or “macho” behavior. Some have suggested that their candidate has never claimed to be “a choirboy”—thereby defining deviancy down to such a degree that respect for women and respect for the vulnerable and respect for sexual morality is infantile and unrealistic. One said that his support for this candidate was never about shared values anyway. Others suggested that we need a strongman, and implied a strongman unencumbered by too many moral convictions, in order to fight the system and save Christians from a hostile culture. Some Christian political activist leaders said that those who could not in good conscience stand with either of the major party candidates this year were guilty of “moral preening” and of putting our consciences before the country, sometimes even putting the words “conscience” and “witness” in scare quotes worthy of an Obama Administration solicitor general.
Moore went all-out condemning religious conservative figures who, in his view, traded their moral principles for first-class seats on the Trump Train. The same movement that condemned Bill Clinton for his immorality and denounced feminists for their hypocrisy in sticking by Clinton for the sake of holding on to power has produced leaders who have done exactly the same thing. For Moore, they are morally bankrupt, and the world knows it, even if they don’t. And it’s their own fault:
Mr. Trump did not give us this. This is a preexisting condition. The Religious Right turns out to be the people the Religious Right warned us about.
Significantly, Moore drew a distinction between religious conservatism per se (which he said is doing pretty well), and politicized religious conservatism, which has committed suicide this year.
read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-religious-right-a-eulogy/

Does the problem of evil/pain warrant unbelief?

Jason Thibodeau. Poster at Secular Outpost, argues that there are two uses of the problem of evil/pain but one use overshadows the other,. He says it not only can the argument be used to assail Christian belief as irrational but it can also be used to warrant unbelief. In the latter case one would forgo picking on Christian beloief and merely justify unbelief,

The problem of evil can be used in two different ways.  It can be used offensively; that is, in an attempt to criticize and undermine theistic belief, to show that theism is false and that belief in God is unfounded. But it can also be used defensively, i.e., to show that atheism is epistemically warranted, justified, or reasonable.  Of these two distinct uses, the first is by far the most common. But I think that the almost exclusive use of the problem of evil as part of an offensive attack has obscured the value of the defensive use. Used defensively, the problem of evil can serve as the basis for additional arguments against many versions of Christianity.[1]

This is really an analogous to the move I make of arguing for belief as rationally warranted rather than proving the existence fro God, I'm afraid I must agree with this latter view, We can argue down the notion of Christian belief as irrational even against the POE/P but I think it is true that unbelief could be warranted in this manner, The problem is there are differing degrees of warrant, surely. It may still be possible to argue that the warrant for belief is stronger and to produce a turn around argument.

He argues that the existence of "a fully rational and informed theist" does not add much to the question:

 Let’s also assume that it is possible for a person to be an informed theist without having made some error in logic or reasoning, or deliberate ignoring relevant evidence. We can call this person afully rational and informed theist. One question we can ask is what relevance the existence of fully informed and rational theists have to the question of whether God exists. I would suggest that the answer to this question is: not much. The existence of such individuals does not provide much by way of evidence that God exists nor does it provide evidence that God does not exist.[2]

Yet he finds that the existence of a fully informed and rational atheist makes a difference, so it;s the opposite. "Such a person has dutifully considered all of the relevant arguments for the existence and non-existence of God and ... has made no errors in logic or reasoning, and has not deliberately ignored any relevant evidence. Despite this, the atheist sees no reason to abandon her atheism."[3]

It seems to me that the existence of such people is very relevant to this question. If God exists, then there is a perfect being who loves every individual and, given the enormous value of a relationship with the perfect being, must want to have a relationship with every individual that is capable of having such a relationship. Given that believing in God is necessary for having such a fulfilling relationship, God must not want any person to believe that he does not exist.

Like much of the argumentation on the SOP this one inspired by J.L.Schellenberg (Argument from Divine Hiddeness). God's divine hiddenness is morally wrong because it means condemning well meaning seeking people who just haven't put it together in the way believers do, that is unjust and thus immoral, The Christian God cannot be unjust or immoral. 

Given that the atheistic belief of such atheists is non-voluntary (and so cannot be deliberately changed), ... Thus, the conjunction of beliefs that I have describe (that God exists; that God punishes, allows to be punished, etc. people who don’t believe in God; and that there are non-theists turned fully rational and informed atheists) is inconsistent.

 "What does seem very relevant, for reasons that are implicit in what I have written here, is whether there are any non-theists turned fully rational and informed atheists. It strikes me that the various versions of the argument from evil show us that it is possible to be such an atheist."

It seemed to me at first that he was saying two uses for POE the latter being warrant unbelief rather than attacking belief. But then he seems to go after Plantinga and thus stretch the warrant for unbelief into an a priori disproof of belief. So it appears to turn out that there are not really two uses but it;s just a matter of weather one wishes to attack or defend. While I do grant that a rational warrant derived from the realization of an inconsistency in the rejected position is a indictment of that position, I think there are three major issues that mitigate this position and while they don't disprove the warrant they might imply that belief in God is better warranted,

I have three observations that I think blunt the force of his argument:

(1) he assumes that logic is the only way to know truth but God's existence could be intuitive and the atheist cold be denying the intuitive. 

He clearly sets up the notion that an atheist who studies the issues and reasons flawlessly  is blameless. Clearly he sees reasom and logic as the hallmarks of truth. But what if belief and culpability for unbelief is not matter of reason and logic alone but induces an intuitive sense? What if it is the rejection of this intuitive sense that is the most serious sin of all. Certainly reasoning in a flawed manner can't be a sin. That does not require moral decision.Since an intuitive sense involves the same sort of internal conscience faculty as moral this might signal the possibility that there is a similar process at work.,Rejecting the sense of God;'s reality placed upon the heart may be a moral issue, and at least it constitutes another form of knowledge that has to be addressed. This highlights the fallacy of his argument in the aspect that he ascribes blamelessness to reason and logic, One who has considered the arguments as matters of logical puzzle working is blameless and salvation worthy. But this completely overlooks a moral obligation  to believe which is one of the first things one shucks in becoming an atheist. It also asserts that there are other methods of knowing truth which of course logicians don't want to hear.

(2 ) we could make different assumptions  assumptions about hell

His assumption is that the price of failing to comprehend God's reality is eternal damnation. There is no true obligation to believe in that, No creed spells out such an obligation, I argue that the Bible does not really teach eternal conscious torment as punishment.[4]  Thibodeau.  seems to include annihilation in the classification of unjust consequences, Yet that's what they are opting for when they choose to be atheists, Now of course they like to think they don't choose to be atheists, but I did, I recall thinking "Ok I'll be an atheist," I'm not saying that in itself is blameworthy. I'm only saying that annihilation is not necessarily unfair, It's a just solution fort one who does not qualify for the goal of eternal life and yet doesn't merit damnation. 

 Yet I'm not even saying this definitely the issue. If one truly has been brutally self honest and sought all avenues and reasoned flawlessly and feels no tinge of intuitive sense of God then an atheistic response may not met with any sort of blame or reprisal.  It is only logical that if two aspects of doctrine are inconsistent we should change the doctrine and bring it into conformity with the most basic principle, I think the most basic Principe about God is love, That's why they call it "liberal" theology.

(3) POE/S is justified given the importance of soteriologocal drama [5]

I agree that the problem of evil is a serious issue it something we must maintain and be aware of and always seek to deal with. It is not the knockout t punch a lot of atheists assume. It is inconsistent that God as described in christian theology would allow pain and suffering. But that does not mean there can't be mitigation reasons that make the allowance of pain, suffering, and evil necessary. The major mitigation is the necessity of the search, God puts upon the heart a desire to seek him. That's why the psalm says the fool has said in his heart there is no God, not the fools has reasoned logically there is no evidence for God. The Bible asserts that when onev goes down the path of reason there is confidence that one will find god, "come let us reason together," Of course this is not always the case but the fool is only brought int it where the influence upon the heart is shut off.

God is not hidden. There is no exclusion of thinking but the real battle ground of faith is in the heart. Reason's role in salvation is like that of philosophy in positivism.It is there to clear away the clutter so that science (in this case the heart) can do it's work.The difference is we are not clearing away the clutter for science we are clearing it away for the heart. The search the soteriological drama as I call it, is crucial. If God shut down all source of pain and protected us from ever hurting we would not need to search for truth, But the search is how we internalize values of the good, So the search must go on. Thus the general allowance of  POE/S is necessary, That's why there is no gratuitous evil. Even calamity that has no moral consequence is justified because preventing it woudl negate the search, no one searches for what is obvious and if God eliminated all pain we would cleanly know without a doubt there;s a God. That's not hiding it's just the necessity to search.

Finally salvation is not just a matter of  ascent to be like, it involves a commitment of one;'s life to God, But we can't do that without belief. At least in Christian perspective. Just asserting there is or is not a God is only a first step toward relationship with God which is the point of salvation. Paul intimates that one who follows the good is following Jesus defacto (Rom 2:6-14), so salvation is not just av cut and dried matter of intellectual assent to a proposition. Yet it' not merited but a free gift of grace.

Sources

[1] Jason Thibodeau, "How to Use the Argument From Evil." Secular Outpost, Oct. 19. 2016, blog\
URL:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/10/19/how-to-use-the-argument-from-evil/#disqus_thread  (accessed 10/25/16) no page numbers

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid, all quotatiojs of Thibodeau from this article

[4] Joseph Hinman, "Why I don't believe in Hell" Doxa, website URL: 

http://www.doxa.ws/Theology/hell.html  (access 10/25/16)

[5] _______ "Soteriologiocal Drama," The Religious A Priori, website
http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2011/04/answer-to-theodicy-soteriological-drama.html

(access 10/25/16)

see also "Twelve Angry Stereo Types"

http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2011/04/twelve-angry-sterio-typesanswering-mark.html

Children of the lack of reading the material they criticize

 

In 2014 my first book was published, (see add below). That work centered around a huge body of academic work that proves religious experience is good for you and is life transforming (long term positive dramatic change in life). There are 200 studies or more covering a 50 year period and they are still coming, I have found a couple since the book came out, I use this material in backing my God arguments. At the basis of the research is a methodological apparatus called "The M scale" it's a control mechanism for sorting between real mystical experience and mere wool gathering, Bringing this body of work together and focusing it on apologetic is ground breaking. Atheist blogger "I am Skeptical" (aka "Skepy" to the Cadre) put down my book having not read it. Now he's cut lose on an article I did on Cadre called "Children of The .Lack of a God." But it's really an excuse to bash my book more. His blog peice hatchet job is called "Children of the lack of objectivity." That explains the title of this piece.

 I wrote an article that received interested from  an academic conference at U of Georgia. It's basically a summary of my book with a good clear explanation of the M scale. That can be found here:

http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2016/10/berninis-ecstasy-of-st.html

Here are my answer's to Skepy's blog article below.

Joe Hinman raises an issue [1] that is worth considering.  It is the question of how we can relate to something for which we have no familiarity and no experience.  It may not be easy to understand something that you've never seen or never experienced.  He asks the question:...What Hinman wants us to think is that atheists have no understanding of Christians' belief in God because they haven't experienced it for themselves.  Of course, this is the same old trope that we hear over and over again.  And it's just not true.[2]

He assumes that there is nothing there to explained so therefore any human feeling is as good as another therefore he knows all about it. That is manifest nonsense. One of the major things that body of researche I used in writing my book proves is that religious experience is not had by all humans and there is a huge difference in any old religious feeling and the kind we call "mystical." That is the point of having an M scale in the first place because all experiences are not the same,[3] Some atheists (small group) do have mystical experiences and the studies show that these atheists react to the experiences the same way that religious people do but they use different terminology, but they are the same experiences.I did write about this in my book.[4] Some atheists do wind up converting to religious belief as did I.

He takes up on my color analogy that one born having never seen blue or yellow can't understand what it's like by mere description, just as atheists can't understand religious experience just by hearing discrimination.Then he makes the argument that we can know enough it even without exposure to color:"You can't understand what it's like qualitatively to see blue or yellow unless you've had the experience, but you can understand how those sensations are caused from a physiological perspective, and you can understand what kind of sensory stimulation causes them...."  But so what? That does not answer the issue, Understanding how they are caused is not the point, Without knowing what the sensation of religious experience is like  you can't judge it's reality, It's quite common for mystics to explain their experiences as "more real than reality," That is not the full basis for my argument but it is part of it.

But is it true that atheists have never had the inner experience of God that Hinman speaks of?  Not in the least.  Hinman ignores a couple of very key points:  One is that whether or not we believe in God, we are all humans and we all have the same kinds of inner feelings and experiences.  The other is that the majority of atheists are former believers."  

I just got through answering this, The fact of The M scale (which ha been validated  by research) proves that human experience is not all the same. Other scales exist as well, even though the M scale is the most corroborated by validating studies, they all find the same thing,[5] All the studies such as Wuthnow demonstrate this fact. Those who have mystical experience are experiencing something different than the average human that' why there;s a big correlation between this experience and life transformation, the results of two major studies: The Wuthnow study and the Noble study

Long-Term Effects
Wuthnow:
*Say their lives are more meaningful,
 *think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life isMeditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble:
*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,*increased love and compassion[6] 

The people who have these experiences are more likely then the average person to find themselves growing in these characteristics such as Wuthnow and Noble document. when he says "the other is that the majority of atheists are former believers." That proves nothing because most believers don't have mystical experiences and those who do are at the mature end of the spectrum. In other words, mystical experience is synonymous with maturity, at least in terms of Christian spirituality, according to the Voyle study.[7]

He asserts that we all have mystical experiences:

On the first of those points, there is no question that there is some kind of inner feeling we all experience that creates a sense of awe or spirituality.  It may be felt with more intensity by some, but we pretty much all feel it at some time in our lives.  In fact, Hinman makes this the basis of his pseudo-scientific claims about warrant for belief.  But as I said, this experience can be understood at different levels.  We all have some understanding of what it feels like because we all have felt it to some degree.

Wuthnow (above) proposes a theory that all have such experiences but for most it's very mild. He points to William James who  also made such an argument, The whole point of scoring the scale is that there are varying intensities. If he's not a believer in God or any sort of transformative ontology then he probably has not had such experience to the degree necessary for understanding. As for my claims about warrant I have documented this time and time again, they are based upon the works of a major logician in the rhetorical tradition who made major contribution to debate theory, Stephan Tulmin.[8]

He reduces the complexity of cause to a one liner that is essentially  a falsehood because it's too much a simplification to amount to anything. "There is disagreement about what causes it.  Theists think it is caused by God, but science has shown that the same feelings can be caused by certain kinds of physical stimulus, or even by psychological manipulation." I devoted a whole chapter to this in the book,  By physical stimulus he means brain chemistry, I document philosopher John Hick showed that researcher's who use helmets and so forth to stimulate such experience do not use controls like the M scale thus they cannot establish that they have indeed produced mystical experiences,[9] Moreover, there is an argument made by Dr. Hood (inventor of the M sclae) that atheists cannot answer. There is just as much reason to think God would use brain chemistry to allow u to feel his presence as not, Thus merely tying the experience to brain chemistry proves nothing, The tie at this stage is broken by my (8) tie breakers, see the article link to at the top.

At this point he wastes a lot of time in foolish speculation over "meaning: of the experience when he could be reading my book and understanding how actual scientists (psychologists) think about it,

And then there is the question of meaning.  How does the mind interpret this experience?  That depends entirely on what concepts and associations already exist in the mind.  We associate red with the concept danger mainly because that concept is culturally ingrained in us.  The same is true of religious experience.  The interpretation of a religious experience is based on concepts we already have in our mind.  No Christian would ever have a religious experience that causes him to become a Buddhist if he didn't already have some knowledge of Buddhism, and vice versa.  Nobody ever learns something new from a religious experience.  The religious experience only serves to reinforce what we already believe.

This shows his utter ignorance, I document cases where mystical experience converted people, the famous Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo became Vadanta because of such an experience. It is quite common for one to find that one's sacred doctrine is contradicted by mystical experiences. I don't advise using it to establish doctrine and I deal with this in a whole chapter, the last chapter of my book, Eventually, doctrines are dependent on many things such as reason and logic, culture, tradition, but mystical experiences are the same the world over regardless of the doctrines. [10] these experiences do not determine one;s religious tradition but they demonstrate a reality behind all traditions.

He ventures off into more ignorant prattle trying to claim credit  for an experience he's never had:

The other point that Hinman ignores is a common mistake among Christians who love to pretend that their understanding is so much superior to that of atheists.  Most of us have been raised as believers.  We do know what it's like to have a religious experience and interpret it as the experience of God.  We've been there and done that.  The difference is that the atheist who is an ex-believer has more ways to interpret the experience.  The atheist understands that God is not the only possible reality, and not the only possible way to explain what we observe and what we feel.  The atheist sees it from a wider perspective, because he knows what the Christian feels, and he can still take a more objective view that encompasses a greater body of understanding.

Some of the more authoritative measures of incidence rate put mystical experience at about 1 in 4 and that does not even speak to the level of intensity. True mystics are more rare. So just being a believer is not a ticket to mystical enlightenment. There is a difference, As I said  above the Voyle study proves that mystical experience is the mature end of Christian experience, in so doing it also proves that just being a believer doesn't mean you have had a mystical experience.

I have to laugh every time I hear Christians making these claims about how blind atheists are, how limited their epistemological toolbox is.  We reject God belief, not because it is outside our understanding, but because our understanding is broader.  When it comes to interpreting our experiences, we have more than just one way to see everything.  We are not limited to always arriving at the same old conclusion that was instilled in us when we were children.  We can look beyond those childhood beliefs and see more.  Most of all, when looking at a broader range of choices in how to understand something, we can base our decision on objective evaluation, because we are not hemmed in by religious faith.