Okay fair enough, we can not say they are all subjective. But I never said that, my last post was trying to restate what YOU say, what your argument is, in a coherent way. It was bad wording, you corrected me. Let's move on.
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Here it is then:[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Your indeniable, potentialy scientific proof that the Holy Spirit is objective is the cumulated testimonies of people [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]claiming[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif] to have had an[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif] experience[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif] they believe to have been a direct link to the Holy Spirit. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]You consider that recorded testimony of [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]experiences[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif] from many different individuals is enough to prove the Holy Spirit is objective.[/FONT]
You accepted that as being roughly what you say.
Several issues.
1- How do we know the accounts are reliable? (problem of trust, if you don't understand the difference between trust in science and trust in eyewitness testimonies, you need to look it up, that's your major problem. We do not trust science based on testimonies of the scientists, but based on their published data, which can be verified and reproduced. We have testable data on what the scientists say. I trust the scientists because what they say is verifiable, testable. That is what makes them scientists and not mere reporters. A testimony is just a story we have to take on faith. The plural of anecdote is not data.)
2- We can't label the experiences objective either. That's what we are trying to find out, isn't it?
If what is described in the testimonies were subjective or objective influences. To assume they were subjective or objective in our premise would be circular. We need an argument that brings us to the conclusion they were objective or not without assuming it in our premises. That's why your argument about testimonies as evidence fails, it is circular if it is to work because you have no independent evidence. Either it is a neutral set of premises that doesn't bring us to a conclusion, or we have to assume our conclusion in our premises. If the premise is that the experiences were subjective, our conclusion is that they were subjective, if we assume them to have been be objective, the conclusion is that they were objective. It is useless. That's is exactly the kind of circularity I wanted to avoid.
3- People can be deceived into thinking something is objective when it is not. Delusions, errors, embellishments, there are countless ways for an account to be false. Mass hallucination or deception is also possible (example : false shooting in a mall a couple of weeks ago). How do we determine if the people writing the accounts were deceived or not if we only have their word for it?
4- Are reporters always reporting the truth? are eyewitnesses? are you?
5- Since when is a testimony, a recounted story of what a person perceived happened, a reliable source of evidence? Even in court testimonies are dubious and need to be verified to be taken into account as evidence. Judges don't just take people's word for it, because they learned that testimonies are unreliable (check the case of Ronald Cotton for a shocking example). If we need to have independent evidence to verify a testimony about, say, a rape, before accepting it, why do you think we don't need to have independent evidence to verify a testimony about a miracle or a direct interaction with God? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A testimony doesn't count as evidence of truth, under any circumstance, let alone for a miracle. We need more evidence for such a claim, not less.
6- We're not talking about miracles involving the senses, we're talking about an inner influence of the Holy Spirit. That is a personal experience that if it were not for an objective Holy Spirit, would be subjective. Subjective is the default here, the thing we don't need much evidence to prove, the thing it is natural to assume, the one occam's razor favors. I'm trying to stay neutral to avoid that bias, the bias scientists are definitely showing. But between the two, the extraordinary claim is that the holy spirit is an objective supernatural influence. If we have only the word of the people having that experience to show for it, then we don't have any evidence for it. We just have their word for it.
If we want to show scientifically that the HS is objective, we need something more than the testimonies of the people who claim to have experienced a contact with the Holy Spirit. We need, for example, testable data about people being affected by the HS in ways they could not have been if the Holy Spirit was subjective. We need concrete objective evidence of effects before we can deduce a supernatural objective cause and eliminate the possibility of a natural subjective cause. The accounts of the impressions of believers don't count. To accept such as evidence is not sound thinking, I'm sorry.
