God has been known to speak to people through dreams, visions and gut feelings.
In addition to your discussion with APMason:
When you have a gut feeling, how do you know whether this is (most likely) a regular gut feeling, or whether this is (most likely) God speaking to you ? Gut feelings are different from visions (and possibly dreams), since even perfectly sane and healthy people have them all the time.
*There’s a joke I can’t find about some Talmudic scholars who are arguing. They ask God, a voice booms out from the heavens which one is right, and the others fail to update.
I can’t find the source right now, but AFAIK this isn’t merely a joke, but a parable from somewhere in the Talmud. One of the rabbis wants to build an oven in a way that’s proscribed by the Law (because it’d be more convenient for some engineering reason that I forget), and the other rabbis are citing the Law at him to explain why this is wrong. The point of the parable is that the Law is paramount; not even God has the power to break it (to say nothing of mere mortal rabbis). The theme of rules and laws being ironclad is a trope of Judaism that does not, AFAIK, exist in Christianity.
In the Talmudic story, the voice of God makes a claim about the proper interpretation of the Law, but it is dismissed because the interpretation of the Law lies in the domain of Men, where it is bound by certain peculiar hermeneutics. The point is that Halacha does not flow from a single divine authority, but is produced by a legal tradition.
And that’s not what I’m thinking of. It’s probably a joke about the parable, though. But I distinctly recall it NOT having a moral and being on the internet on a site of Jewish jokes.
Bugmaster: Well, go with your gut either way, since it’s probably right.
It could be something really surprising to you that you don’t think makes sense or is true, just as one example. Of course, if not, I can’t think of a good way off the top of my head.
Well, go with your gut either way, since it’s probably right.
Hmm, are you saying that going with your gut is most often the right choice ? Perhaps your gut is smarter than mine, since I can recall many examples from my own life when trusting my intuitions turned out to be a bad idea. Research likewise shows that human intuition often produces wrong answers to important questions; what we call “critical thinking” today is largely a collection of techniques that help people overcome their intuitive biases. Nowadays, whenever I get a gut feeling about something, I try to make the effort to double-check it in a more systematic fashion, just to make sure (excluding exceptional situations such as “I feel like there might be a tiger in that bush”, of course).
I’m claiming that going with your gut instinct usually produces good results, and when time is limited produces the best results available unless there’s a very simple bias involved and an equally simple correction to fix it.
Sometimes I feel my gut is smarter than my explicit reasoning, as I sometimes, when I have to make a decision in a very limited time, I make a choice which, five seconds later, I can’t fully make sense of, but on further reflection I realize it was indeed the most reasonable possible choice after all. (There might some kind of bias I fail to fully correct for, though.)
In addition to your discussion with APMason:
When you have a gut feeling, how do you know whether this is (most likely) a regular gut feeling, or whether this is (most likely) God speaking to you ? Gut feelings are different from visions (and possibly dreams), since even perfectly sane and healthy people have them all the time.
I can’t find the source right now, but AFAIK this isn’t merely a joke, but a parable from somewhere in the Talmud. One of the rabbis wants to build an oven in a way that’s proscribed by the Law (because it’d be more convenient for some engineering reason that I forget), and the other rabbis are citing the Law at him to explain why this is wrong. The point of the parable is that the Law is paramount; not even God has the power to break it (to say nothing of mere mortal rabbis). The theme of rules and laws being ironclad is a trope of Judaism that does not, AFAIK, exist in Christianity.
In the Talmudic story, the voice of God makes a claim about the proper interpretation of the Law, but it is dismissed because the interpretation of the Law lies in the domain of Men, where it is bound by certain peculiar hermeneutics. The point is that Halacha does not flow from a single divine authority, but is produced by a legal tradition.
What? The religious lawyers made up a story to overtly usurp God!
And that’s not what I’m thinking of. It’s probably a joke about the parable, though. But I distinctly recall it NOT having a moral and being on the internet on a site of Jewish jokes.
Bugmaster: Well, go with your gut either way, since it’s probably right.
It could be something really surprising to you that you don’t think makes sense or is true, just as one example. Of course, if not, I can’t think of a good way off the top of my head.
Hmm, are you saying that going with your gut is most often the right choice ? Perhaps your gut is smarter than mine, since I can recall many examples from my own life when trusting my intuitions turned out to be a bad idea. Research likewise shows that human intuition often produces wrong answers to important questions; what we call “critical thinking” today is largely a collection of techniques that help people overcome their intuitive biases. Nowadays, whenever I get a gut feeling about something, I try to make the effort to double-check it in a more systematic fashion, just to make sure (excluding exceptional situations such as “I feel like there might be a tiger in that bush”, of course).
I’m claiming that going with your gut instinct usually produces good results, and when time is limited produces the best results available unless there’s a very simple bias involved and an equally simple correction to fix it.
Sometimes I feel my gut is smarter than my explicit reasoning, as I sometimes, when I have to make a decision in a very limited time, I make a choice which, five seconds later, I can’t fully make sense of, but on further reflection I realize it was indeed the most reasonable possible choice after all. (There might some kind of bias I fail to fully correct for, though.)