What Really Happened to Saul/Paul on the Road to Damascus?

I will say what is written in the Acts of the Apostles is fictionalized. Paul own words is the better source. 



It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.

2 Corinthians 12:1-7, NRSV

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

— 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, NIV

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. [...] But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being.

— Galatians 1:11–16, NIV



Since Paul himself does not reference any trip to Damascus, it’s doubtful this event happened. Paul may have had some strong conversion experience, but he does not say much beyond the above. His “thorn” I daresay is the suspicion he might be deluding himself. 

He did not write about it at all, this account shows up in the Acts written well after Paul’s death. There is a lot of dramatic license to beef up the action taken by the gospel writers just like today. Folks think these writers were following these guys around, they were not. 

Paul (our Paul) just wants to believe what he wants to believe.

There's no way Saul of Tarsus saw money in a "Jesus racket". It was a deadly racket. The best a "naysayer" can say is that he intended to go undercover, but later events make that a bit unbelievable.

So, we're left with either it really happened to him, or he was on a drug trip, or someone went to great lengths to fool him. It's doubtful a tax collector and fishermen had Houdini tricks, and it's doubtful he would be entrusted with his duties if he was a drug addict, so something really happened to him.

People do go blind as they get older, via torn retina or detached retina, but there was no "cure" for this in those days. He was cured.

Just because our Paul doesn't like the Acts doesn't mean it didn't happen. Our Paul is just another of the haters who says "if it's in the Bible, I refuse to believe it" simply because it is in the Bible. No other historical record gets the irrational hate that the Old and New Testament get. No other historical record gets the unmotivated denial that these get, not even the Greek myths. 

Since there is no possible rational or natural explanation for this "scapegoating" of the Bible, the explanation must be supernatural. 

The trouble with the haters on this site is that they refuse to be objective like I am. I set out decades ago to prove that Christianity was fraudulent, but got upshot by the facts, and decided to go objectively into research. When you go objectively into research, you realize only the Holy Ghost could have accomplished the little good in a world where Satan is the prince, and so many principalities try to make the New Testament fail. Even the papacy itself from the era when women ran the papacy on through Benedict VIII and Clement V, on through the evils that the papacy did against Albighensians and other Christians, even the papacy itself did all it could to totally destroy the Holy Ghost and Christianity.

How Christianity survived all of this has to be supernatural. The Holy Ghost had zero friends in positions of power.

And this Paul did not say that. Go back and reread what I said, you theist bigot, pagan hater. 

As is, I have way more respect for the Apostle Paul than you ever will. I think he was in many ways a spiritual giant. He more than anyone got Christianity out there and the early church was a much kinder religion than most pagan cults. That's his influence...too bad it couldn't stay that way. I see him as real man who did real things. Why do you think wanting to know the truth about things is a form of hate? Explain that to me. You seek the truth, but we others can't unless it is to your approval. 

I try to bring factual information to people who would like to read it, this is not a church after all, where I should respect your sensibilities, but a chat room open to all ideas. Yet I get called time and again hater for just putting the widely available information out there. This does not make me like your religion any better. 

Just read the text for yourself. Paul himself says he went to straight to Jerusalem after Jesus appeared to him. He says nothing about a road, Damacus, or being blinded, or some kind man healing him for several years before going to Jerusalem. You'd think something that dramatic, he would have mentioned. 

And do you think people in the olden days were any different than we are now? They were not. Paul was not in for the money.  That's not how people got rich. There was no capitalism. You had to be born into wealth to have it. He seems to have genuinely believed in his mission and that the Risen Christ had appeared to him in dreams. Maybe he did, but I have no way of proving that he did. 

However, it is your self-righteous, exclusionary attitude that is killing the Body of Christ. It stinks on ice now. And it has nothing to do with what Paul or Jesus taught. They only reason Protestants and Catholics get along now is your mutual hatred of progressives and liberals. But once we are gone, you go right back to fighting over who has the correct Jesus. 

I want to advance knowledge, not faith. How much do you really believe yourself?