Arriving at a Theistic Belief

[RestlessSoul]

I have most of these in my library, but I don't see your point.

The point is that generations of seekers, visionaries and creative thinkers have left written records of their personal epiphanies. You only have to dip into your own library, to read about dozens of them. The one thing they all have in common is that they speak of an awakening to new vistas, an expansion of perception beyond anything they had previously known or experienced; they were “rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence” as one man put it.

Do you think they were all deluded? There seem too many common threads down the centuries and across cultures, for these testimonies to be justifiably dismissed without consideration.

 

[Sheldon]

The point is that generations of seekers, visionaries and creative thinkers have left written records of their personal epiphanies. You only have to dip into your own library, to read about dozens of them.

Have you read Lord of The Rings, or the Harry Potter books? Just because someone imagines something and writes down the experience, as fascinating as such renditions can be, and as well written, dose not evidence the claims they make.

Have you read Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, it says more to me about the human condition than anything I was ever taught, or have heard or read about any religion. As moving as some of the writing can be.

The one thing they all have in common is that they speak of an awakening to new vistas, an expansion of perception beyond anything they had previously known or experienced; they were “rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence” as one man put it.

Personal experiences can be deeply profound and moving, and the human imagination is almost boundless, beyond that I'm not sure I see personal testimonies, however well written, as being evidence for themselves, otherwise I'd have to believe them all, even contradictory claims.

Do you think they were all deluded? There seem too many common threads down the centuries and across cultures, for these testimonies to be justifiably dismissed without consideration.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Have you read Lord of The Rings, or the Harry Potter books? Just because someone imagines something and writes down the experience, as fascinating as such renditions can be, and as well written, dose not evidence the claims they make.

Have you read Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, it says more to me about the human condition than anything I was ever taught, or have heard or read about any religion. As moving as some of the writing can be.



Personal experiences can be deeply profound and moving, and the human imagination is almost boundless, beyond that I'm not sure I see personal testimonies, however well written, as being evidence for themselves, otherwise I'd have to believe them all, even contradictory claims.

Do you think they were all deluded? There seem too many common threads down the centuries and across cultures, for these testimonies to be justifiably dismissed without consideration.

I read the Lord of the Rings when I was a teenager, loved it; it was about the timeless struggle between Good and Evil, wasn't it? Sort of like Paradise Lost meets Homer's Odyssey. I don't think you were meant to take it as the literal truth. All great literature contains gems of truth certainly, but that's not quite the same thing.

I haven't read any Somerset Maugham, that's something I must put right while there is still time; thanks for reminding me.

You're tying yourself up in knots of logic again Sheldon btw. Being open to possibilities that do not fit neatly into the parameters of your understanding, does not mean you have to believe everything suggested to you. But surely you recognise there is some value to intuition and imagination? Otherwise, why would God, the Universe, or random probability have gifted us these qualities?

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
- Albert Einstein

 

[DNB]

1. No, it doesn't.
2. Yes, we are cognitively unique. So what?
Evolution develops what's reproductively advantageous. Tribal solidarity and altruism are useful traits.
Yes, humans are very clever. As for a catalyst, I don't follow your argument.

Man is the most intelligent being on the planet, and yet, he acts like the creature the most devoid of any sense and pragmatism: smokes cigarettes, drinks and parties himself to death, over-eats, is full of racism and bigotry, are war mongers, the most noblest of vocations have become synonymous with greed and corruption, ... all the traits that make him the most ludicrous of all living entities on the earth. There is clearly a spiritual warfare within man, that no other being can attest to.

If there is no God, then the catalyst that causes a theist to hold to his beliefs cannot be said to be intelligence, but delusion and psychosis. Especially considering all the time, money and conflict caused by religion. Man is either a spiritual being, or he is profoundly a demented fool.

 

[Valjean]

The point is that generations of seekers, visionaries and creative thinkers have left written records of their personal epiphanies. You only have to dip into your own library, to read about dozens of them. The one thing they all have in common is that they speak of an awakening to new vistas, an expansion of perception beyond anything they had previously known or experienced; they were “rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence” as one man put it.

Do you think they were all deluded? There seem too many common threads down the centuries and across cultures, for these testimonies to be justifiably dismissed without consideration.

From my post #73:
"Good points, and maybe valid if referring only to the Mystical Experience, which is fairly consistent and universal. But even this seems to have no relation to religion or the Abrahamic God."

The delusions are not consistent, nor are their attributions, and the only common experience is more connected to Eastern than Western traditions.

I'm not dismissing experience. I'm questioning the consistency, causes and neurology of the many varieties of epiphany. They are not all having a common experience.
Is the experience of someone at a religious revival the same as the ecstatic experience of someone using drugs, seizing, experiencing pain, or music, or starving?
Are you calling different experiences by a single name, and connecting them to a single religious belief system? Neuroscience of religion - Wikipedia

Could even the Mystical Experience be purely a product of a common neurology, producing a common hallucination? Is the commonality a product of a common God, or a shared biology?

 

[KWED]

It's often argued that theists start with a belief in a literal deity (for whatever reasons) then try to find evidence to support it. However I think many people do start with what they consider to be evidence first, even if it's not generally accepted as such.

Why do you believe? Does belief necessarily require evidence? If so, what qualifies?

The reality is that most religionists start with childhood indoctrination. Everything subsequent is then coloured by confirmation bias.

The number of people who move from a reason and evidence based rejection of gods to faith based on "new evidence" is so tiny as to be negligible. And even if it does happen, that "evidence" can be shown to be nothing of the sort.

 

[KWED]

My journey did not start with belief in a literal deity nor with any evidence. As I've noted before, I started as an atheist. At one point I gradually started thinking there had to be something more than just pure materialism, that life had to have intrinsic meaning and that if there was intrinsic meaning then all the suffering etc had to have a purpose.

The evidence, both experiential and intellectual, came later.

Classic question begging and argument from personal incredulity.
You started with the assumption that "there must be something else" and then accepted whatever seemed to confirm this pre-existing conclusion.
There is literally no evidence or rational argument for the supernatural.

Of course, I understand that you feel that you are able to justify your beliefs to yourself, but every religionist believes that about their beliefs. And they will often reject others' "evidential" belief claims just as others reject theirs.

 

[KWED]

In my opinion, belief of this kind does not require evidence, rather, it produces evidence.

This is called "confirmation bias".

When it comes to the role of evidence, my perspective is that the point of evidence isn't to determine whether or not theistic belief is rational or irrational. Instead, the nature of evidence is to show the believer that he or she is on the right path and is moving toward the ultimate goal

So you believe that someone can be convinced that their belief is correct, despite it being irrational?

 

[KWED]

I believe in my theism through experience. My evidence based on my theistic belief is personal to that extent. If I told everyone of my theistic beliefs by trying to point out the evidence, they would either look at me as a nutcase, or give me the viewpoint that "this life is the only life." I personally disagree with that statement, as I feel there is more outside of this objective or physical universe. What qualifies to me of evidential theism is this, once you experience the presence through that deity within the psyche, then their must be that possible proof that their is a possible afterlife concept outside of this universe.

Don't get me wrong I believe in making the most and enjoying out of the here and now. I understand many viewpoints surrounding an afterlife concept can be regarded as theory. However this is my own personal take on it, concerning my theism.

We know that the brain can produce experiences that are not real, despite seeming completely real to the subject.
Therefore any "personal psychic experience" cannot be claimed as "evidence".
To paraphrase Hume, if you experience something that means the laws of nature are meaningless, it is more likely that you simply imagined it.

 

[KWED]

Many people have a limited conception of what may constitute reality, and of how others may comprehend and experience it.

I think plenty of people understand that others might claim that there is more to reality than what can be observed, detected, tested, predicted, etc.
The issue is that such claims are essentially meaningless and useless.

 

[KWED]

I think it always needs evidence and at the minimum the evidence is that he got the idea somehow. Without knowing the idea, person could not believe it. And that the idea exists, is the minimum evidence. In many cases I understand it is not necessary enough.

So simply being able to think about something is evidence for the existence of that thing?

 

[KWED]

Have you bothered to look for any evidence to support this assumption?

The evidence is clear. The vast majority of religionists follow the religion they were raised in. Hardly anyone changes religion, and only a proportion of those do so on evidential claims. What's more, whenever such "evidence" is presented it is usually flawed. A classic example are the "Quran scientific miracles" that are claimed to be the reason for a number of converts to Islam. Whether the claim is true or not, the claims of miraculous scientific knowledge in the Quran are demonstrably false. So at best it is evidence that some people are easily convinced by nonsense. But then the number of people who fall for obvious confidence tricks confirms this.

Disclaimer; this is not an invitation to get googling.

That is a rather strange statement. You ask for evidence, then say you are not interested in seeing the evidence.

 

[KWED]

The origins of life and the universe that we live in, are inexplicable without appealing to an omnipotent and omnipresent, transcendent Being.

Nonsense. There are plenty of plausible hypotheses for both that do not require a supernatural god.
What's more, adding an extra layer of inexplicability doesn't answer any questions.

Morality and love would be meaningless without a source that embodied these principles, and that imbued that dimension within humankind.

More nonsense. Morality, love and other such concepts have clear evolutionary benefit.
What's more, some of god's "morality" is no longer considered acceptable by civilised society.

The search for God presupposes His existence,

I'm sure you can see the fatal flaw in that statement.

Man's awe of the universe and the awareness of his moral obligation in order to sustain peace, love and life, came first. Then, the search for the answers came after....

Early man explained his environment through means that were miles away from god and religion as it is generally known today. And the actual answers for the universe that we have so far discovered have no need for any supernatural element.

 

[KWED]

Do they tend to be atheist, or is this another unevidenced generalisation about who thinks what and why?

Around 95% of members of the Royal Society and the Americal Academy of Science are non-religious.

And do you make a distinction between agnosticism, which is a position entirely commensurate with logic and reason, and atheism, which requires accepting an unfalsifiable proposition (that God does not exist)?

Oh dear, another dictionary fairy has just died.
"Agnostic" is just a measure of the certainty of a person's atheism. An atheist can be agnostic, as can a theist.

Also, the claims of the existence of specific gods are falsifiable.

 

[KWED]

To answer my own question:

(Sorry @Sheldon , I am dubious about trusting any source quoted by you on this subject)

Source: Scientists data from Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey, conducted in May and June 2009; for complete question wording, see survey topline. General public data from Pew Research Center survey conducted in July 2006; for complete question wording, see survey topline. Numbers may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

How does that study define "scientist"?
Is it merely a person who holds a science-based qualification? A person who works in the field of science, with or without qualifications? People with postgraduate qualifications or some kind of speciality?

 

[Sheldon]

I think it always needs evidence and at the minimum the evidence is that he got the idea somehow. Without knowing the idea, person could not believe it. And that the idea exists, is the minimum evidence. In many cases I understand it is not necessary enough.

You're just describing human imagination, and humans have a long track record of imagining things that are not remotely real. We excel at story telling, and it is a compelling medium for communicating ideas, to imagine this makes those stories real is pretty obviously flawed reasoning.

 

[KWED]

It seems perfectly logical to me that agnosticism, not atheism, is the epistemic default; which is why I asked if you made the distinction.

Is it also perfectly logical to you that all claims that have neither supporting nor refuting evidence must therefore be a reasonable possibility?

So we can't quite conclude, as I think you were implying earlier, that "all the smart people are atheists."

Oh, don't put yourself down. There are plenty of "smart people" who believe in god.
However, there are very few high-level physicists, neurologists, biologists, etc who do - which was the actual point.

So it is clear that when people are highly qualified in, and conduct extensive research into the nature of the universe and life, most of them reject the idea that a god had anything to do with it.
Why do you think that could be?

 

[Sheldon]

You're tying yourself up in knots of logic again Sheldon btw. Being open to possibilities that do not fit neatly into the parameters of your understanding, does not mean you have to believe everything suggested to you. But surely you recognise there is some value to intuition and imagination? Otherwise, why would God, the Universe, or random probability have gifted us these qualities?

OK firstly logic is a method of reasoning that adheres to strict principles of validation, I didn't create it, and it's efficacy is manifest. So implying it hampers reasoning is just silly. If someone wants to ignore logic, in order to pretend they're not making irrational claims then crack on, but I will be pointing it out nonetheless, and that is not "tying me up in knots". Which is preposterous sorry.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
- Albert Einstein

Firstly I've never denied the importance of imagination, just contested the idea that imagined things are real without any corroborating objective evidence. I also think you've misunderstood your mined quote, and what's more you've edited quite a bit out of it, but since like so many theists you have brought Einstein into it, here is another quote from him.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

Albert Einstein...

Without imagination our knowledge would not progress, which was the point that Einstein was making, however if you think that means we should accept imagined ideas prima facie, or without any supporting objective evidence, then you are misunderstanding what he was saying.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Is it also perfectly logical to you that all claims that have neither supporting nor refuting evidence must therefore be a reasonable possibility?
...

The problem is that reasonable has no evidence. It is apparently individual in a given brain. You are using one cognitive model for evidence and reasonable. I can use another for some parts of the everyday world.

 

[KWED]

Man's innate desire and need to both comprehend and apprehend the supernatural, necessitates a source for this impulse. No other creature on earth delves into these realms, nor can they.

Do you know that other primates, or dolphins don't have the concept of the spiritual - or is it a bare assertion?
Why do you think elephants undertake elaborate burial rituals or chimps and bonobos have collective grief rituals for dead members of their group?

Evolution does not develop spiritual awareness as in love, altruism, charity, compassion, etc...

Erm, yes it does. It is observed in other species and has obvious evolutionary benefits.

The ontological requirements must be there to begin with.

Why?

Again, there is a distinct dichotomy and disparity between what man can fathom and comprehend, than what any other living being on this planet can.

How is one particular species' evolved abilities evidence for a god?

And, it is not intellect that defines this distinction, for if there is no God, then the catalyst behind such a deluded belief would have to be a lack of intelligence, or a malfunction in one's perception.