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I just think Paul didn't particularly care. He would not be the first or last person to interpret being struck by lighting as a message from God.

Paul was a super naturalist. A person who is free to interpret amazing events as either being super natural, or of not being so (albeit he was of a faith that interpreted certain specific events as necessarily being super natural).

A naturalist (at least the way I use the word--which I think is pretty conventional) holds a doctrine that super natural interpretations of events are universally invalid. They will usually never express it this way, because people like to think of themselves as open minded et al. But the fact is, if you hold that there is no super nature, then you hold that no event is super natural.

However this doctrine is arrived at, once in place it is quite immune to any contrary evidence. For any remotely feasible alternative explanation to a super natural explanation is automatically preferred. Moreover, even when no apparent natural explanation seems remotely feasible, a naturalist holding such a doctrine will presume that there is some unknown trick, mistake, lie, error, or something else that invalidates an otherwise convincing proof of super-naturalism.

Now firmly held unshakable doctrines are nothing new. But the really funny thing about this doctrine, is that the people holding it think of themselves as being skeptics and great believers of following evidence and reason.

”Paul was a super naturalist. A person who is free to interpret amazing events as either being super natural, or of not being so (albeit he was of a faith that interpreted certain specific events as necessarily being super natural).”

Of course he was. And everybody is free to interpret anything they want any way they want. Some of them will actually even be correct in their interpretation. The point still remains that Paul had a spiritual experience that he understood to be an encounter with Christ. Not, of course, the “risen Christ” because his encounter occurred after the Ascension. It was a vision, and there is no indication in anything he wrote that he understood it as anything other.

”A naturalist (at least the way I use the word--which I think is pretty conventional) holds a doctrine that super natural interpretations of events are universally invalid. They will usually never express it this way, because people like to think of themselves as open minded et al. But the fact is, if you hold that there is no super nature, then you hold that no event is super natural.”

Close, but not quite. A naturalist simply understands “supernatural” to be an oxymoronic term. Almost the entire corpus of modern technology consists (for example) of perfectly natural things that a few centuries ago would have been indistinguishable from magic. The ability to speak to someone on the other side of the globe. The ability to send pictures and sounds through thin air. Heavier than air flight. Nuclear weapons. The list goes on and on.

The simple truth is that the more and more we learn about the universe, the less and less there appears to be for God to do.

A naturalist understands that if something exists, it is by definition natural no matter how unlikely or magical it may have seemed at one time. This is one of the reasons successful science is exclusively naturalistic. It never punts on the question of “why” with mystical speculation or intellectual surrender to ignorance. Instead, it ruthlessly pursues exploration of “how.”

When a naturalist dismisses a “supernatural phenomenon” out of hand it is always and only because the phenomenon has not actually been shown to even exist. Show us it exists and we will not only accept its existence, we will be your partner in explaining it.

Now… I know you might object that some things have no scientific explanation. I don’t think I need to point out that this is an historically risky position to take. It has never proven true yet.

”However this doctrine is arrived at, once in place it is quite immune to any contrary evidence. For any remotely feasible alternative explanation to a super natural explanation is automatically preferred. Moreover, even when no apparent natural explanation seems remotely feasible, a naturalist holding such a doctrine will presume that there is some unknown trick, mistake, lie, error, or something else that invalidates an otherwise convincing proof of super-naturalism.”

Nothing in that paragraph is true. It is an egregious caricature that derives, as far as I can tell, from unhappiness that so many petty miracles actually have been exposed as a “trick, mistake, lie, error, or something else.” It has always been a puzzle to me why the exposure of religious charlatans (and let’s be frank, it has been a cottage industry for millennia) is not embraced by religious people as positive, desirable and good. Certainly there can be no virtue in believing a lie…. Can there?

It is my experience that the “conflict between religion and science” is not generated by the scientists. The history of that conflict is invariably one of reaction by religionists to scientific knowledge they object to… not any active effort by scientists to prove religion false. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but they prove the rule rather than call it into question.

A perfect example is the OP of this thread. It is a bald faced, bitter, and ultimately deeply false attack on naturalism and science. What did we do to deserve it? All we did is discover knowledge that you guys do not like, or that you find unacceptable. It leads us to conclusions that are at variance with your faith. It drives conclusions regarding what is true and what is not true that you do not like.

So?

”Now firmly held unshakable doctrines are nothing new. But the really funny thing about this doctrine, is that the people holding it think of themselves as being skeptics and great believers of following evidence and reason.”

You are projecting.