Does a belief in a god show lack of education?

[KWED]

"The first example applies to brothers, one living in Germany and one living in Texas in the United States, who have who formed detailed plans and commitments through regular written letters to attend an american college together.

More than a year of almost weekly letters have allowed them to plan in detail their courses of study and common living arrangement, etc.

At one point, each receives a separate revelation on the same day regarding a drastic change to their plan.

In their separate revelations, each are told NOT to do as they planned, but are each told to take different paths than they planned for so many months.

Both brothers have the same revelations, concerning the same subject, on the same day, at the same time as it were. They each write a letter to one another on the same day describing their individual experience as the reason to change these plans. The two separate revelations are received by the two brothers on different continents at the same time and their letters cross each other at the same time in the mail between countries.

One brother starts his letter with the sentence:
"Dear Larry, I hope you are not disappointed, but the Lord has told me we are not supposed to go to school together." And then he writes what he feels he was told to do.

The other brother writes:
"Dear Gary, I hope you are not disappointed, but the Lord has told me we are not supposed to go to school together." And then he writes what he feels HE was told to do.

Each Brother reads an "identical" introductory sentence when they receive the letter.
Both brothers complete re-oriented their lives away from a shared goal they’d spent months planning toward, based on the strength of their separate and distinct revelations.

If only one brother had experienced the “revelation” and had asked my opinion about HIS "revelation", then I might have been tempted to labeling the experience as a possible, perhaps even a probable delusion.
However, once I understand the FULL circumstances, then I have a greater difficulty doing this.
Once I know the FULL circumstances, the diagnosis of delusion is less probable. It's also difficult to label this as two separate delusions, on two separate continents, yet having a delusion at the same time, on the same subject and against a shared goal.
Especially since both individuals seem mentally normal and have never been prone to delusions.

Also, there are objective elements existing that I might consider as evidence that the experience actually happened as the brothers claimed.
For example, there may be diary entries in separate diaries, made on separate continents.
The letters might have date stamps to refer to (one letter to the U.S. and one letter in europe), etc.) It's this sort objective data that I am referring to that revelation may carry within it, as evidence that the phenomenon is not generated within the person - as a delusion, or hallucination is.

Firstly, this is mere anecdote. Without verifiable evidence that the events happened as described, it can be dismissed as fabrication.

Secondly, why does god bother to intervene in such trivial cases but doesn't send a revelation to people to prevent them being murdered, brutally raped, their children killed in accidents, pensioners defrauded of their savings etc.
It's the same issue as people claiming that god answered their prayer for an A in a test, while he ignores the prayers of millions of parents of children dying in great suffering.
This kind of callous and arrogant self-interest is one of the more distasteful elements of religious belief.

 

[Sheldon]

Only a fallacy if the argument is untrue. "Most men urinate while standing" is an explanation.

An argumentum ad populum fallacy is a bare appeal to numbers, Your example is not is it, we could easily evidence or falsify that claim. That's where this example differs form the previous claim I pointed out, which was a bare appeal to numbers, take a lok at it again, and see if understand.

 

[Sheldon]

Firstly, this is mere anecdote. Without verifiable evidence that the events happened as described, it can be dismissed as fabrication.

I had the exact same thought initially, but even giving the benefit of the doubt saw that both examples were based on known common logical fallacies. Without wising to be unkind, I wasn't surprised, as I have seen such clams too often to be surprised when I find them to be irrational.

Somehow I'm betting this fact will be cited as somehow my fault, that won't be a surprise either. It usually involves a no true Scotsman fallacy. By the way, if that happens, and I predicted it exactly, that doesn't make it prophecy or revelation.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Equivocation.

You are saying most people do not hear from God (or claim to do so), equate God with conscience promptings, etc.?

 

[BilliardsBall]

Nope, I included a link, it explains precisely what the fallacy entails, and what you posted was an argumentum ad populum fallacy.

No--I posted a fact.

 

[BilliardsBall]

An argumentum ad populum fallacy is a bare appeal to numbers, Your example is not is it, we could easily evidence or falsify that claim. That's where this example differs form the previous claim I pointed out, which was a bare appeal to numbers, take a lok at it again, and see if understand.

No, I posted a fact.

 

[BilliardsBall]

So you hear an actual voice telling you stuff (rather than internal monologue), and believe that voice is from a supernatural entity independent of your own brain?

Cool! What sort of thing does it say to you?

That anyone who denies that have internal discussions, not just monologues, is full of beans.

 

[KWED]

No, I posted a fact.

What you posted was speculation based on observation. You claimed it was and ad pop argument. It isn't.

 

[KWED]

That anyone who denies that have internal discussions, not just monologues, is full of beans.

That is what an internal monologue is.
Few people believe there is actually a second voice, independent of their own consciousness, replying to them. Those who do are almost certainly suffering from delusion.

And you forgot to say what kind of thing god says to you.

And while you are at it, you can explain how you know it is actually god rather than schizophrenic auditory hallucination, for example.

 

[Muffled]

I've seen it said to people here on numerous occasions that they are not highly educated if they believe in a god.

I've seen it said to some that claim that a god has spoken to them that they are possibility suffering of mental illness.

Do you think these hold truth's?

I believe I have BS in Management Information Systems and my pastor has a doctorate in Education.

The claim about mental ilness comes from ignorance both of Christians and mental illness.

 

[Muffled]

Poorly educated people are more gullible in being victims of fraud and believing in absurd claims, but even well educated can be duped.

Religious and cultural concepts tend to be adopted by members of the community as social learning. So belief in God is not necessarily due to education. We see less religious belief in the USA over the last few decades because disbelief is more prevalent as an option.

The problems of belief in concepts that are extreme or fantastic is what comes into question.

I believe the idea is that people are being tricked in some way but there is none of that except what comes from the devil since he is a deceiver by nature and usually he opposes belief in God.

 

[Muffled]

Not the first, but for the second...

If they mean it literally, and we aren't talking about hypnagogic/hypnopompic states, drugs, physical extremes, etc., then yes: I'll suspect mental illness.

I believe the reverse is true. You deny reality.

 

[Clear]

POST ONE OF TWO

@BilliardsBall said : “Consider that most people still think God speaks to them.”
@KWED said : "I don't know a single person who hears voices and thinks it is god.”
Clear responded : “I think this discrepancy is due, to a large part, the context of the posters.
One is a Christian who is speaking from the position of a Christian who associates with Christians who believe in revelation and the other is a non religionists who is speaking from the position of a non Christian.”
@KWED replied : “I would still contend that even most Christians do not have a voice in their head that they believe is the actual god actually speaking to them - which is what Balls is talking about.”


Hi @KWED


I agree with your new and different claim regarding the hearing an actual "voice in their head" though I do not think @BilliardsBall is simply talking about hearing voices in ones head when he says “God speaks to them”.
For example, Billiardsball also believes the biblical text is the word of God and is God’s message to individuals (he and I have spoken on this subject before).
@BilliardsBall will have to clarify if your assumption on this point is correct.


1) Knowledge recieved from an external source is evidence of an external source

KWED said : “Until it has been demonstrated that the god supposedly responsible for any claimed "revelation" actually exists, it cannot simply be assumed to be "authentic".

I understand the logic here and partly agree in that people come up with all sorts of explanations for revelation to deny revelation.
I don’t agree with the logic that revelation itself is not evidence for revelation itself just as I would not agree that the receipt of a letter in the mail is not evidence that someone exists that sent the letter.

For example, IF one received specific knowledge or guidance which is clearly external to themselves that they did not have and could not know, then the fact that they are given guidance and knowledge external to themselves is evidence of an external source of that knowledge.

For example, I have a friend who received a revelation about a corrected date of the death of his great grandfather.
After doing research he found that the newspaper dates were wrong and the date given him by revelation was correct.
The fact that he was given corrected information that he was never exposed to in his life is, itself evidence that this specific information came from a source external to himself.
You may call this external source of knowledge anything you want (God, metaphysical connection to the universe, etc), it is still an external source.



2) Personal experiences are not anecdotes to the person who is experiencing them. Objective evidence of an experience does confirm the experience.
KWED said : “Any such claim is unverifiable anecdote and therefore is not evidence and confirms nothing.”

This is an erroneous assumption.
When I spoke of the two brothers living on different continents having the save revelation on the same subject given on the same day, resulting in the same letters on the same subject with the same messages, and the same life-goal changes, I am not speaking of anecdotes. I am one of the brothers.
I still have the physical letter sent to me, it is still postmarked, it still says what I claimed it says, my brother still lives and he has my letter.
These are physical objective evidence that the experience happened just as I said it did.
I would not blame you if you choose to disbelieve the actual event occurred.
But in that case, your disbelief is not evidence that the experience did not occur and goes against the objective evidence that it did occur.



KWED said : “Furthermore, we know that under certain conditions the brain can produce hallucinatory experiences that are considered real by the subject. “
Of course you are correct in this statement.
The next question is if your application of this fact is correct.

Do you think the a shared “hallucination” best explains how two brothers experience the same hallucination on different continents on the same day on the same subject resulting in the same shared experience is a correct diagnosis, especially when such hallucinations must explain how extracorporal knowledge is transferred to individuals?

It it more likely that your desire to deny such experiences are revelation results in your conclusion of "hallucination" than it is that the two brothers on different continents had actual "hallucinations" on the same subject at the same time and wrote the same letters with the same words?



KWED said : “So until there is some independent, verifiable evidence that supports the existence of said god, any such claims are best explained by psychotic episode or fabrication.”
As a medical professional , you think your diagnosis is supportable or even logical?.

A psychotic episode is a lost of touch with reality.
In this case there are real letters having real sentences and other individuals who are not psychotic are able to confirm they really exist.
I am not offended by the suggestion I might be lying but then I can ask what evidence do you have that I am lying about what happened to me?


KWED, Let me give another non-anecdotal example that might help readers understand why psychosis is an illogical diagnosis for you to make :

While traveling interstate with my family I noticed a car for sale on a street corner in Las Vegas. I phoned the owner and bought the car and brought it back to my home state to restore.
Months later when the car was ready to license I found I had lost the title. I prayed for help in finding the title but no luck.

Finally, after more months I decided to simply try to find another, similar car to use the original for parts and looked through the newspaper in Las Vegas for a similar car.

I found a likely ad in a Las Vegas news paper and called it.
As I spoke to the owner in the ad I realized he was the original person who sold me the original car so long ago.
He simply had two of the same type of cars and had decided that weekend to place and ad for his second car and he was happy to arrange for a duplicate title for the car I had bought from him.

This that this does not fit the conditions for psychosis in either myself nor the original seller.

How does one explain the likelihood of this happening as "likely". If it is "unlikely", then how "unlikely" is it? How unlikely is it that such episodes happen over and over during a lifetime.

For example :
While I could have picked a northern city such as Salt lake, or Reno, or Denver, I picked las Vegas to start my search. (It was not the closest city). One in four?

Las Vegas has a population of 2 million people. What are the chances I could contact the original owner without contact information? One in a million?

The original owner just happened to pick that weekend to put his second care in the paper that weekend. I am not sure how to calculate the odds of this (one in 52?, I don’t know)

What are the chances that I would pick that specific newspaper the owner used to place his ad? Perhaps one in 4? (at the time there were not more than 6 or 7 newspapers in las vegas).

What are the chances that this owner had the type of car I was looking for? (I don't know how one even calculates the likelihood of such things).

While it was quite likely I was the type of person to lose a title, the increasing unlikelihood of other conditions make this connection incredibly unlikely. Not inconcieveable, just incredibly unlikely.

The fact that such experiences happen over and over and over during a lifetime increases the unlikelihood that they are simply chance. Who wins a lottery one hundred times in their lifetime?


I grant that individuals tend to see what they want to see, whatever their bias is. (Some like the Velocity moto 900LC - while I am more happy with the base XSR900.... - Our biases are not necessarily based on logic.)

My bias is that being given knowledge or guidance outside of my own ability comes from an external source.
You may call that source anything you want (God, the great cosmic knowledge base, an unconscious metaphysical connection to the universe, etc.) but the source still, to me, feels external to myself.

@Sheldons bias may be to see my second example as “clearly a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. “ while the example is clearly NOT a post hoc fallacy.
An Post hoc fallacy : “lies in a conclusion based solely on the order of events” but none of my examples come to their conclusion "solely on the order of events".

My examples are multiple in nature and do not stand alone and they are NOT based solely on an order of events and they are simply examples of a lifetime of a pattern of examples.


Let me give another example.

My son’s car was stolen and I asked him to clear out the garage of all parts from the cars he’s put together.

He cleared out everything to his own home except an old steering wheel. For some reason he felt he should not throw that away and instead, should leave it in my garage instead of taking it to his home and in his garage. He also felt he should keep the single key to the car that was stolen.

Some time later I go a call at home from my son.

He said he was at work and had, for some reason, felt like taking the key to this car with him to work though he'd never felt like doing that in the past.

later, the police had called and said the found his car and had called for a tow truck since the car was undriveable. He asked why the car was undriveable and they replied that it was missing a steering wheel. My son asked me to bring the steering wheel he left in the garage and he had the key but we had to pick up the car before the tow truck arrived if he was to pick up the car and avoid storage fees for the car.

I simply picked up the old steering wheel and he met me at the location where they found the car. He bolted on the wheel and put in the key he took to work that morning and drove the car home.

Such examples are not based “solely on the order of events” and they are not the shared psychotic episodes of my son, myself and the policemen involved.

POST TWO OF TWO FOLLOWS

 

[Clear]

POST TWO OF TWO

Instead there are many other factors that are involved such as the unreasonableness of throwing away multiple valuable items but keeping an old steering wheel and the unexplainable urge to take the key of a stolen car to work with you and the timing of doing it on the very day you needed it.

The fact that the only thing missing was the key and the unexplained absence of a steering wheel when other items of value remained.

When asked about the motivation to keep the steering wheel in my garage rather than to throw it away or take it to his home, it was not a voice, but simply a strong feeling that is what he should have done. Same with taking the key of the stolen car to work with him. He simply felt a strong feeling that he should do it.

Again, if taken as a single and separate occurrence in a life, such an event can be simple coincidence.
However, such examples go on and on and on.
And, as such occurrences add up over and over and over, then at some point they are no longer explained by simple coincidence.

When I speak to the Christians I am friends with, almost all of them have similar personal examples to a greater or lessor degree many, many times in their lives.

This is partly why I think that your comment that "I don't know a single person who hears voices and thinks it is god.” (As it relates to revelation of all sorts – not just voices) is simply because you do not have the experience of being with the type of people to have experiences with revelation.

If someone can come up with a better explanation for external knowledge given to individuals I am open to suggestions that are not metaphysical but, as a medical clinician who does see individuals with psychosis and hallucinations, I do not think simply attributing all metaphysical episodes to psychosis or hallucination is accurate or logical.

I also admit that many, many experiences feel so sacred and private that I would expect individuals to be quite reticent to speak of them.


In any case @KWED , I hope your own life and it's experiences are wonderful and insightful.


Clear
τωφιτζφυω

 

[KWED]

POST ONE OF TWO

Brief is best. If not, try and include a tl;dr

I agree with your new and different claim regarding the hearing an actual "voice in their head" though I do not think @BilliardsBall is simply talking about hearing voices in ones head when he says “God speaks to them”.
For example, Billiardsball also believes the biblical text is the word of God and is God’s message to individuals (he and I have spoken on this subject before).
@BilliardsBall will have to clarify if your assumption on this point is correct.

He has already clarified. It is a distinct voice in his head, separate to his internal monologue, that is the actual voice of god.

1) Knowledge recieved from an external source is evidence of an external source

Only if that external source has been verified. Until then it is merely a claim that it came from an external rather than an internal source.

I don’t agree with the logic that revelation itself is not evidence for revelation itself just as I would not agree that the receipt of a letter in the mail is not evidence that someone exists that sent the letter.

The problem with your analogy is that receiving a letter in the mail is a verifiable, physical event. You can show people the letter, and the mail service will have a record of the delivery.
A "revelation" is merely an unverifiable claim. Even if someone claims to have had a revelation, there is no way of knowing if they are merely delusional or lying.

For example, IF one received specific knowledge or guidance which is clearly external to themselves that they did not have and could not know, then the fact that they are given guidance and knowledge external to themselves is evidence of an external source of that knowledge.

Yet again, there is no way of verifying any of this. How would you test to determine if someone's knowledge really came from god, or just from a physical source?

For example, I have a friend who received a revelation about a corrected date of the death of his great grandfather.
After doing research he found that the newspaper dates were wrong and the date given him by revelation was correct.
The fact that he was given corrected information that he was never exposed to in his life is, itself evidence that this specific information came from a source external to himself.
You may call this external source of knowledge anything you want (God, metaphysical connection to the universe, etc), it is still an external source.

Firstly, this is anecdotal.
Second, if he verified the correct date by "normal" means, they the correct date was knowable without supernatural revelation. We have only your account of his account. Either or both could be wrong.

2) Personal experiences are not anecdotes to the person who is experiencing them. Objective evidence of an experience does confirm the experience.

"Anecdote" means a story related to someone else so does not apply the the subject of the story.
Personal experience is notoriously unreliable. Many studies have show people's recollections of events are often flawed.
Also, personal experience of internal events can be delusion or hallucination. This is a known fact. People also make things up or can be mistaken. Simply thinking something does not mean it necessarily happened.
A memory is not "objective evidence".

This is an erroneous assumption.
When I spoke of the two brothers living on different continents having the save revelation on the same subject given on the same day, resulting in the same letters on the same subject with the same messages, and the same life-goal changes, I am not speaking of anecdotes. I am one of the brothers.

Of course it is an anecdote! You are telling me a story about alleged events.

I still have the physical letter sent to me, it is still postmarked, it still says what I claimed it says, my brother still lives and he has my letter.
These are physical objective evidence that the experience happened just as I said it did.
I would not blame you if you choose to disbelieve the actual event occurred.

Given the lengths people go to to support their religious beliefs, I would not be surprised if there was fabrication or mistake in there somewhere.

But in that case, your disbelief is not evidence that the experience did not occur and goes against the objective evidence that it did occur.

No. It is scepticism about extraordinary claims that are unsupported by evidence. Simply saying "but I have evidence that you do not have access to" is a meaningless argument.

As a medical professional , you think your diagnosis is supportable or even logical?.

Of course. Any patient presenting with claims to be hearing voices (that were clearly not merely their internal monologue) would have an initial diagnosis of schizophrenia of other delusional state, especially if they insisted that the voice was god communicating directly with them.

In this case there are real letters having real sentences and other individuals who are not psychotic are able to confirm they really exist.
I am not offended by the suggestion I might be lying but then I can ask what evidence do you have that I am lying about what happened to me?

If what you are saying is true, and there is physical, verifiable evidence plus multiple witnesses, then I expect it has been documented in one of the many murals that report this sort of thing.
Could you post a link to such a source so I can study the evidence myself?

KWED, Let me give another non-anecdotal example that might help readers understand why psychosis is an illogical diagnosis for you to make :
While traveling interstate with my family I noticed ...

You do realise that this is just another anecdote?

 

[Clear]

Clear said : “Knowledge recieved from an external source is evidence of an external source”
KWED responded : “Only if that external source has been verified. “

Of course this is incorrect.,
An external source need not be verified to be evidence.
If I, as an external source of knowledge tell my child that a specific jar has cookies in it then the fact that he received that knowledge from me and now has knowledge there are cookies in the jar is evidence someone told him that.
It does not need to be verified to you that I told him. I did.
I think you are conflating a thing that happened with trying to prove a thing happened.
I am not trying to prove it.


KWED said : “Until then it is merely a claim that it came from an external rather than an internal source.”
Of course this is incorrect.
It is not merely a claim that I told him about the cookie jar. It actually happened.

I think you are conflating actual reality with trying to prove that reality to another person..
In reality, if a tree falls in a forest, it does not need to be verified by anyone.
It is simply a reality independent upon anyone else knowing it happened or believing it happened.


KWED said : “Even if someone claims to have had a revelation, there is no way of knowing if they are merely delusional or lying."
I agree.
But, now you are not speaking of revelation but instead you are speaking of proving revelation to another person rather than the simple reality of it happening.

For example: You say you like the Velocity moto 900LC.
If this is true then it doesn't matter that it is verified, you know it is true.

However, IF you are going to try to PROVE it to me, this is different.
You cannot even prove to me you like the Velocity moto 900LC that you say you lilke.
While I cannot tell if you are delusional or lying, it doesn’t matter until you try to prove it.

If you think something must be proven and verified to be true, tell us why something must be proven or verified in order to be true.


KWED said : "Simply saying "but I have evidence that you do not have access to" is a meaningless argument."
I did not say that.
You seem to be making the assumption that I am trying to prove to you that individuals have revelation from God. I am not.
I am simply explaining that individuals who have revelation often have objective evidence that revelation occurred.

Clear
τωφιφισιω

 

[F1fan]

I believe the idea is that people are being tricked in some way but there is none of that except what comes from the devil since he is a deceiver by nature and usually he opposes belief in God.

Perhaps the people that told you there was a God and Devil are the deceivers.

That's probably a serious question you've never pondered.

 

[Yazata]

I've seen it said to people here on numerous occasions that they are not highly educated if they believe in a god.

I agree that atheists often make that assertion, but I've never heard any really plausible justification for it.

I think that there is some loose inverse correlation in the Western world between belief in God and amount of university education. But that might be mostly a matter of indoctrination, or of wanting to fit into a supposedly superior subculture in which atheism is conventional wisdom. It certainly wouldn't apply to theology students. And I don't think that most university graduates are very philosophically sophisticated or able to justify their atheism very well.

I've seen it said to some that claim that a god has spoken to them that they are possibility suffering of mental illness.

Doesn't the plausibility of that one depend in some large part on whether or not one already accepts the initial premise that God exists?

Do you think these hold truth's?

Maybe to some extent. Especially the second one, when somebody is literally "hearing" a voice that they are totally convinced is the voice of God.

 

[Sheldon]

No--I posted a fact.

You posted a bare appeal to numbers, here it is again verbatim.

Consider that most people still think God speaks to them.

That is a bare appeal to numbers, even were you to evidence that most people think this, it is still a bare appeal to numbers, which is an argumentum ad populum fallacy, as the number of people who believe something tells us nothing about its validity, that's why in informal logic this is considered a fallacy.

You seem unaware of this.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You are saying most people do not hear from God (or claim to do so), equate God with conscience promptings, etc.?

No. I was not saying that.