*Please read this side note. I am not trying to convert anyone. I am unbiased on this issue of theism. I just want to hear different opinions on what this man experienced. Yes, this a true experience. It was a talk given by Boyd K. Packer. Look it up on google if you don't believe me. No, this is not my experience. And, yes, I know I already asked this question.. but I didn't word it right. So, I reworded it so I get more of the answers I was wanting. I just thought that this man went through an interesting experience and i just wanted to hear different opinions. Please, feel free to share and I know it's kinda long. And yes.. I really am intending this as a question!*
(Experience from Boyd K. Packer)
I sat on a plane next to a professed atheist who pressed his disbelief in God so urgently that I bore my testimony to him. “You are wrong,” I said, “there is a God. I know He lives!”
He protested, “You don’t know. Nobody knows that! You can’t know it!” When I would not yield, the atheist, who was an attorney, asked perhaps the ultimate question on the subject of testimony. “All right,” he said in a sneering, condescending way, “you say you know. Tell me how you know.”
When I attempted to answer, even though I held advanced academic degrees, I was helpless to communicate.
When I used the words Spirit and witness, the atheist responded, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” The words prayer, discernment, and faith, were equally meaningless to him. “You see,” he said, “you don’t really know. If you did, you would be able to tell me how you know.”
I felt, perhaps, that I had borne my testimony to him unwisely and was at a loss as to what to do. Then came the experience! Something came into my mind. The quote, "“A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas … and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.”
Such an idea came into my mind and I said to the atheist, “Let me ask if you know what salt tastes like.”
“Of course I do,” was his reply.
“When did you taste salt last?”
“I just had dinner on the plane.”
“You just think you know what salt tastes like,” I said.
He insisted, “I know what salt tastes like as well as I know anything.”
“If I gave you a cup of salt and a cup of sugar and let you taste them both, could you tell the salt from the sugar?”
“Now you are getting juvenile,” was his reply. “Of course I could tell the difference. I know what salt tastes like. It is an everyday experience—I know it as well as I know anything.”
“Then,” I said, “assuming that I have never tasted salt, explain to me just what it tastes like.”
After some thought, he ventured, “Well-I-uh, it is not sweet and it is not sour.”
“You’ve told me what it isn’t, not what it is.”
After several aask me anything strokes ultimatettempts, of course, he could not do it. He could not convey, in words alone, so ordinary an experience as tasting salt. I bore testimony to him once again and said, “I know there is a God. You ridiculed that testimony and said that if I did know, I would be able to tell you exactly how I know. My friend, spiritually speaking, I have tasted salt. I am no more able to convey to you in words how this knowledge has come than you are to tell me what salt tastes like. But I say to you again, there is a God! He does live! And just because you don’t know, don’t try to tell me that I don’t know, for I do!”
As we parted, I heard him mutter, “I don’t need your religion for a crutch! I don’t need it.”
From that experience forward, I have never been embarrassed or ashamed that I could not explain in words alone everything I know spiritually. The Apostle Paul said it this way:
“We speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
It sounds like a total fabrication. Mr Packer has been caught in lies before.
And if it is not:
I can give you some salt to taste. Whether you believe in salt or not put some on your tongue and you will taste it.
As for his conviction proving his God is real:
What about the Catholic who says that his version of God is real?
What about the Hindu who says that Vishnu is Lord?
What about the Muslim who says Allah is Great and above all?
What about the man who, with absolute certainty, says that he is Napoleon Bonaparte?
Why is it that the last one, with the evidence that we see against his claim, is declared delusional - but the man, with the evidence that we see against his claim, who says god is real must be given respect.
This was not a real experience, it was a thought experiment and the man who created it never said it was a real experience.
In my opinion, it doesn't help the atheist or theist cause, but it is interesting.
Salt is observable, hence real. Gods only exist inside the human mind, though.
That never happened, did it?
If you believe that Boyd K. Packer (the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) was speaking a true recollection of any event, you maybe a good candidate to believe in invisible friends
It seems characteristic of an atheist that whenever you beat them in a logical argument, they are still not convinced. They only become irritated.
Whether it's a true story or a very good thought-experiment does not matter. It makes a clear point.
It is useless for people who believe in God to try to argue people who do not believe in God over to their point of view. Just as it is impossible to describe the taste of salt, it is impossible to explain why you believe in God.
If Gask me anything strokes ultimateod wants Atheists to believe, He'll give them their own salt. The humans should shut up.
Whatever. This is all just a semantics game. You call it a miracle - I call it a coincidence. You call it prayer - I call it delusionally talking to yourself.
Bottom line is that there is no evidence of any supernatural beings.
I think it is cherry picking.
That may work for a deist view of God, but for a god that intercedes in the business of man, we don't need to 'explain' god. We can show his works are not real.
So, I cannot argue against the idea of a deist impartial, uncaring, uninvolved god. I can argue that holding this god in any high regard is pointless. but I can't argue against it.
So this is a straw-man really. Frame the idea around something, then say... Well I'm not claiming God matters, or god does anything, I'm just saying there is a "GOD". Well, okay. But it is irrelevant.
The typical CHRISTIAN God includes lots of "magic" and "mysticism" Miracles, power of prayer, etc. All of them can be tested, and shown to be false.
--not superstitious
A rather silly attempt to dodge the fact that there's no evidence of any kind for any claimed god.
And to dodge the fact the he doesn't "know" there's a god.
When you also consider that Boyd K. Packer is famous for telling young mormon boys *proven false lies* about "masturbation," the entire thing is quickly dismissed.
The story is almost certainly made-up anyway. It's a common tactic: make up a story about an "atheist" who gets befuddled by a sincere "testimony." So probably just another Packer lie.
Peace.
I don't think it's an "experience" as much as a "story" ... just like everything else in your bible.
The atheist sounds like quite a jerk.
Hmmm. This is the same argument someone else came up with recently - how would you explain the colour red to a room full of blind people. The answer then was that you could explain about light and wavelengths etc and you could provide experts who can testify that red exists. If you provide enough people who have done independent tests and found evidence of the colour red, then you have to believe them.
It's the same with salt. You may have never tasted it, but you have four other senses - you can see, touch and smell it. You can also find people who have physically tasted it and can give actual evidence that it exists and presumably there is evidence that can be provided in terms of taste receptors on the tongue and how they respond to salt.
Contrast that to someone who claims to know God exists - for a fact. Yet that person has never seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled god, and cannot provide independently verified evidence that said god exists, and you still just have someone who mistakes wishful thinking for fact.
Too much salt is bad for you.
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