Arriving at a Theistic Belief

[mikkel_the_dane]

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. ...

As far as I can tell the law of non-contradiction has a limit, that you have overlooked. That also applies to the 2 other classical laws in logic.

 

[RestlessSoul]

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?

Different cultural traditions between East and West dictate that religious experience and practice are described and interpreted in different terms, but the Spirit is the same imo. There is enough common ground between The Gospels, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, not to mention the writings of Christian mystics like St John of The Cross and Julian of Norwich, plus Sufi poets like Rumi and Attar, to illustrate that while the language and cultural dressing varies, experience of the Sublime is universal.

If you believe that material existence is all there is, then you will naturally try to explain or understand all phenomena in those terms. I understand that modern science has made considerable progress in monitoring the way sensation, experience, and response to stimuli register in the brain. Clearly, this does not mean the experience originates in the brain, nor that the entire kaleidoscopic range of human experience can be viewed purely as a neurological function. At the very least, you must accept that the measurable neurological response originates normally as a result of sensory stimuli. The brain is responding to something, it is not manufacturing the experience itself; except, as you argue, in the case of hallucination.

Hallucinations are generally accompanied by a range of other pathologies. When a person betraying other symptoms of psychosis tells us they have been receiving messages from God, we can perhaps dismiss this as a hallucination. When a person tells us that they have had a profound spiritual experience which has led them to a new, infinitely more satisfying and productive way of living than they had been capable of before, we would do well to at least look at the evidence with an open mind. Here is one example;

"...Confined in a hospital [our friend's] gorge rose as he bitterly called out: "If there is a God, he hasn't done much for me!"
But later, alone in his room...like a thunderbolt, a great thought came. It crowded out all else:
'Who are you to say there is no God?'
This man recounts that hs tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love..."

Easy enough to dismiss the experience above as a hallucination if you are so inclined. But consider this; the man who had that experience walked out of an institution whose doctors had pronounced him a hopeless case, and never went back there. Instead, a once hopeless drunk, he went on to lead a full and productive life characterised by love and service towards others. If his experience was really just a hallucination, wouldn't we expect it to have led him in the opposite direction - not out of a psychiatric ward, but into one?

That man's experience is by no means a one off be, I've personally met and spoken with many like him. History and literature is replete with other examples; Tolstoy's account of Prince Andrei's epiphany at the dressing station during the Battle of Borodino being imo one of the most transcendent passages of writing in the Western canon.

 

[KWED]

We discern the invisible by using other senses. Is birdsong visible? Or the scent of a rose?

How do you detect the undetectable?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

How do you detect the undetectable?

It depends on how you view experience and what you take for granted when you analyze it. That applies to us all.

 

[KWED]

Is it reasonable to dismiss evidence simply because it doesn’t meet your preconceptions? If millions of people testify that they have had profound spiritual experiences of a kind they consider truly miraculous, is it reasonable to claim this does not constitute evidence?

So you hold the position that all gods exist and all beliefs are equally true, as long as people claim to have had a "profound spiritual experience" relating to them?
And what is the cutoff point in regard to numbers of people experiencing these things? One? Ten? One hundred?

 

[KWED]

I trust Jesus due to the evidence for the Bible both within and outside the Bible.

It there any external evidence for the supernatural contents of the Bible, other than people claiming to believe in it?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Different cultural traditions between East and West dictate that religious experience and practice are described and interpreted in different terms, but the Spirit is the same imo. There is enough common ground between The Gospels, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, not to mention the writings of Christian mystics like St John of The Cross and Julian of Norwich, plus Sufi poets like Rumi and Attar, to illustrate that while the language and cultural dressing varies, experience of the Sublime is universal.

If you believe that material existence is all there is, then you will naturally try to explain or understand all phenomena in those terms. I understand that modern science has made considerable progress in monitoring the way sensation, experience, and response to stimuli register in the brain. Clearly, this does not mean the experience originates in the brain, nor that the entire kaleidoscopic range of human experience can be viewed purely as a neurological function. At the very least, you must accept that the measurable neurological response originates normally as a result of sensory stimuli. The brain is responding to something, it is not manufacturing the experience itself; except, as you argue, in the case of hallucination.

Hallucinations are generally accompanied by a range of other pathologies. When a person betraying other symptoms of psychosis tells us they have been receiving messages from God, we can perhaps dismiss this as a hallucination. When a person tells us that they have had a profound spiritual experience which has led them to a new, infinitely more satisfying and productive way of living than they had been capable of before, we would do well to at least look at the evidence with an open mind. Here is one example;

"...Confined in a hospital [our friend's] gorge rose as he bitterly called out: "If there is a God, he hasn't done much for me!"
But later, alone in his room...like a thunderbolt, a great thought came. It crowded out all else:
'Who are you to say there is no God?'
This man recounts that hs tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love..."

Easy enough to dismiss the experience above as a hallucination if you are so inclined. But consider this; the man who had that experience walked out of an institution whose doctors had pronounced him a hopeless case, and never went back there. Instead, a once hopeless drunk, he went on to lead a full and productive life characterised by love and service towards others. If his experience was really just a hallucination, wouldn't we expect it to have led him in the opposite direction - not out of a psychiatric ward, but into one?

That man's experience is by no means a one off be, I've personally met and spoken with many like him. History and literature is replete with other examples; Tolstoy's account of Prince Andrei's epiphany at the dressing station during the Battle of Borodino being imo one of the most transcendent passages of writing in the Western canon.

Well, yes. You have a point, but you are assuming a somehow positive metaphysics. As a skeptic I can do what you do without metaphysics.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It there any external evidence for the supernatural contents of the Bible, other than people claiming to believe in it?

No, evidence assumes the natural, so per definition there can't be any evidence for the supernatural.

 

[KWED]

What % is vast majority? Is that more or less than virtually all

The hierarchy is as follows...
Everyone.
Almost everyone.
Virtually everyone.
Nearly everyone.
Pretty Much Everyone.
Everyone (note, not the same as the other "everyone")
Mostly.
Some.
Everyone (see above).
My mates.
No one.
Almost no one.
Some people.
Everyone (very different to the above).
About Half.
None.
I don't know.
A Few.
In My Experience.

 

[RestlessSoul]

How do you detect the undetectable?

Obviously you don’t. However, because something is not readily detectable using the toolset you are most familiar with, does not mean it is undetectable to everyone.

To say, “If we can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist”, is an example of Logical Positivism, a philosophical perspective now largely discredited as solipsistic.

To say, “If I can’t detect it, it doesn’t exist”, is an example of a mind in thrall to ego. And the ego will go to almost any lengths to keep one’s mind in thrall. Until you learn to silence the ego, it’s clamour will drown out much that the senses could perceive.

 

[KWED]

No, it isn't.
It uses an appeal to the beliefs, tastes, or values of a group of people, stating that because a certain opinion or attitude is held by a majority, it is therefore correct.

That is not the case in the example above. It has nothing to do with a majority, nor their opinion on a particular issue.

I think you are guilty of a fallacy of a fallacy.

The initial argument was that because millions of people claim to have experienced x, x is therefore true.
That is classic ad pop.

 

[KWED]

Argumentum ad populum uses an appeal to the beliefs, tastes, or values of a group of people, stating that because a certain opinion or attitude is held by a majority, it is therefore correct.

Does that apply to people who have experienced something that you haven't? Are you suggesting that their experiences are only their opinion, and you know that their experiences weren't real?

So you are claiming that because a number of people claim to have experienced x, then they did experience x.
Which is classic ad pop.

 

[KWED]

Stardust and protoplasm, or whatever the big-bang theory denotes as the substance behind all creation, does not seminate a spiritual being, either in constitution or awareness.

You are question begging "spiritual being".

 

[KWED]

See William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, and;
Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,
for studies of these phenomena from a secular, psychological perspective.

See John Milton; Paradise Lost,
William Blake; The Marriage Between Heaven and Hell, All Religions Are One
Emily Dickinson; various poems
Leo Tolstoy; War and Peace,
Mikhael Bulgakov; The Master and Margarita,
for literary examples of how personal epiphanies and spiritual awakenings have informed the artistic process.

Human imagination is not evidence for the supernatural.

 

[muhammad_isa]

So you are claiming that because a number of people claim to have experienced x, then they did experience x.
Which is classic ad pop.

I'm not claiming it .. I'm saying that it is worth investigating.

 

[KWED]

Once again, your personal skepticism doesn’t of itself invalidate other people’s lived experience. You’ll have to do better than simply reaching into your box of Latin fallacies, which you appear to have learned by rote but not really understood.

Ironically, you are like the medieval peasant who refuses to believe the earth is a globe, despite the testimony of people who have been to sea and caught a glimpse of it’s true dimensions.

Ironically, it is you who is displaying the irony with your analogy.
You are the person insisting that your beliefs must be true because you have not seen any refuting evidence.
You are using the argument from personal incredulity by claiming that there must be something more.

 

[KWED]

That's odd, since you've thus read the most influential person's influential statements that have transformed culture, enlightened billions and changed history.

I'm not sure if "being influential, transforming culture [convincing many of their ideology] and changing history" are necessarily good things. I can think of a few monsters who fit that description.

 

[KWED]

I will take a look of course, but you made the claim here, surely you can demonstrate something to support it? Perhaps not then.

I have noticed quite a bit of the...
*makes claim*
*claim is challenged*
*insists this isn't the right place to discuss it*
...type thing on these threads.

 

[KWED]

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.

Many people genuinely believe their experiences to be real, even if they were not.
Also, not sure if all those writers you mentioned were claiming that what they were writing about actually exists.

 

[KWED]

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.

1. Not everyone has self-destructive tendencies.
2. Much bigotry and intolerance originates in religion.
3. People often favour instant gratification over the long-term and uncertain gains of moderation.

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.

Not really. These are a consequence of childhood indoctrination.

Especially considering all the time, money and conflict caused by religion. Man is either a spiritual being, or he is profoundly a demented fool.

Perhaps his foolish dementia is caused by his mistaken belief in the spiritual?
It seems true that the less religious, secular societies tend to rank higher on safety, security, welfare, health etc than those that promote or follow a spiritual path.