You didn't read my post properly, though it was a short one.. I declared you the winner, not me. You won the game, because you were the first poster on the thread who understood the rules and was willing to play by them. Everyone else either claimed not to understand the OP, or recognised the game but had no wish to join the other players.
Sorry about misunderstanding you.
Do you subject music, or poetry, or a movie, to rigourous empiricism and logic; or do you ever use your intuition, go where others lead, search for inspiration? Isn't there a working part of the conscious self, beyond the intellect, beyond the ego, which you engage with when you're playing? That, I suggest, is the part of you which is closest to divinity, to the transcendent; your logical, empirical constructs won't get you there. Intuition, inspiration, and a willingness to take risks and have faith, these are the tools that might help your spirit take wing.
Thank you, but I'm aware.
You're misunderstanding my position. When I say that I am a strict empiricist and reject faith-based thought, I am referring to how I decide what is true about the world and how I assemble a mental map over a lifetime that is to manage the rest of conscious experience, all of which is nonrational, and includes pleasant and unpleasant experiences. This is where life is lived. Reason is not an end, but a means to optimizing experience.
Without that nonrational palette of experiences, life has no meaning for many. The anhedonia of severe depression refers to the loss of feeling, and can lead to suicide, even if reason remains intact. If it has no substrate to manage, no symphony of nonrational highs and lows to conduct, it is useless, and life empty.
Thus, the nonrational is really where we live. I haven't missed that fact. My staunch defense of what others call scientism is a statement that only empiricism can teach my rational mind how to do that better, and decisions will come from that process alone.
The nonrational is the palette and the rational the brush. The nonrational is the horse and the rational the rider.
You mentioned music. Yes, I was a passionate electric guitarist from about 1970-2005, but don't play much any more. Guitar is learned empirically, rationally. One learns facts first about scales, chords, harmony, keys, time signatures, and chord chemistry (the relationship of chords to one another in apiece). One learns the fingering for the scales and chords, and practices them until he has mastered the elements of music. He learns a repertoire of the songs of others and sees how the songs he likes are constructed. This is studied like chemistry and contract bridge, using the rational mind.
And why? If just this, it's all been pointless. The magic comes during performance, when one leaves thinking about things behind and switches to a different mode, where the music flows from the fingertips like singing with the hands. This is a spiritual experience, a rapture of sorts, and it the reason for all that came before in preparation, which facilitates and manages that nonrational experience.
So, when I say that reason is how I manage the panoply of good and bad experiences in an effort to facilitate the latter and avoid or minimize the latter, I mean that reason does this better than faith-based beliefs. When I praise the brush over the fingers for managing the palette of pigments that will be the painting, I am not overlooking the palette as your question suggests.
Even if you don't think you have a soul, you must acknowledge that Jimi Hendrix had one - metaphorically at least.
Somehow, the Star Trek archetype of the passionate Captian Kirk versus the cold, calculating "logical" Mr. Spock supervenes in discussions of the superiority of reason over faith, as if the one promoting reason is promoting as an end rather than a means to an end, and that there is nothing else inside him. Of course you wonder about a soul. The soul of Jimi Hendrix that you speak of is the one I just spoke of, but I don't use that language when it might be ambiguous whether I am being literal or metaphorical when I say soul. When I say that I don't like such-and-such style of music because it has no soul, I am not concerned about being misunderstood. But if I say my soul flies when the music is right, you might not know that I don't believe that I have a literal soul that literally can leave my body.
This is de rigueur in these discussions. The theist has decided BY FAITH that the atheist is empty. I saw this recently and had a chuckle. Here's a spiritualist (maybe a theist as well, I don't know) placing himself above those with religion, and both above the atheist, who is described to be as empty as a robotic vacuum mindlessly bumping into objects in the room and "measuring" them then turning and mindlessly going somewhere else until it makes another measurement:
People who have decided by faith that atheist are empty vessels have an inaccurate mental map of reality. If they make decisions based on it, they are apt to make mistakes as I believe you have made here. You just saw me as the Roomba (robot), as you post suggests. This may be why so many theists behave as if they are trying to rescue atheists from a life without meaning or purpose when they exhort us to loosen up and try God.
You've probably seen
@PureX 's argument (the following is as much for him) that the strict empiricist (and atheist) should lower the deflector shields and accept God, because it feels good to him. It seems to have given him more purpose and more color in his life, which is probably important to him, as he is an artist. And he is frustrated that others won't join him. He considers atheism irrational and absurd, an effort to cling onto an empty life.
First, notice that he is using reason to manage his nonrational palette. He's using 'therefore' kind of thinking to make decisions to maximize the good experiences and chase away the less desirable ones that characterized his pre-theistic journey. That's the value of reason to him, and to me, and to every other sentient creature capable of reasoning. That's what it can do.
But because he has a faith-based element to his mental map that sees atheists as empty, he just can't understand why somebody like me wouldn't be interested in a god belief. He sees it as stubbornness and foolishness. But as I have expressed to him and others on these threads, I already have what he is suggesting I pursue with faith. I found it in secular humanism, which is a rich worldview that embraces reason and empathy, and seeks to promote human development and opportunity. This leads to a sense of connection, satisfaction, and purpose, and leaves one wanting nothing that faith or religion could provide.
His error leads to a dysphoria - cognitive dissonance, frustration - the kind of pigment on the palette we try to minimize in the painting of our lives. Reason could correct that for him. He just needs to listen to the atheists and recognize that he has them wrong, and that they don't want or need what he is suggesting, understand why they say no to faith and theism, and maybe even begin to investigate secular humanism if he can see what it has done for others.
This is the price of a wrong idea. If he could repair his mental map and see that many atheists are just fine without religion, perhaps he wouldn't be starting threads promoting ice to eskimos, which frustrates him when they say they don't need it, because he is selling remotely, knows how much ice cubes do for him in Florida, can't see all of the ice surrounding these people, and beats his head against the wall trying to help them learn the value of ice. If he had a more accurate map, he would behave differently, and experience less dysphoria tilting at windmills.
This underscores the value of empiricism and being right. If he took his opinion of atheists from the evidence that they provide him, such as what I just wrote, he'd have a more accurate mental map, one with one more correct idea and one fewer incorrect idea. He relies on that map to make decisions, since they tell him how the world is. But when the map is wrong, well, the journey isn't as smooth, and a smooth ride through life (the pursuit and attainment of happiness) is the goal.
It's hard-wired into all of us, including my dogs, to seek what brings happiness and avoid that which brings the opposite. They instinctively get happy when they see the harnesses come out, meaning a walk, but shake as they get close to the vet and look for ways to avoid it. They have learned empirically what the evidence of a harness or the vets office implies, and added that to their map of reality. It helps them anticipate outcomes. And to the extent possible for them, to control them as well.
That's what we do as well, but at a more nuanced level that includes things like planning and delayed gratification to facilitate that goal. Our huge advantage is the reasoning faculty, but it doesn't do much good if one suppresses it like a carbon monoxide detector that's had its batteries removed, and decides what's true using faith, then adds that to his mental map and make decisions based on that being correct even if it is just a wrong guess.
Anyway, I ask all theists (and self-identifying spiritualists) who are reading this and who have been taught that the atheist is incomplete, to look around them at actual atheists, and ask yourself if the evidence in the posting of atheists supports that presumption. Do I sound like I lack passion or direction? Is Chopra correct about us having no experience except taking measurements?
It isn't generally important to the atheist to be understood, but it might help the theist to be correct about the atheist. It might help explain why they aren't interested in theism.
Who becomes a theist in midlife or later? People with unmet needs, people that feel like they are in a whole and need support, need to forgive themselves, need redemption, or feel like they are powerless in a dangerous world. There's a good reason that more conversions occur on Skid Row and Death Row than Restaurant Row.
I'm happy for those people if faith can fill that emptiness, or in any other way provide support and guidance. But hear me when I say that that's not me, and to not project your own experience of benefiting from faith onto others that have met those needs without it.
And finally, does this sound like I put too much faith in science, as scientism implies? I don't really know what that is saying specifically. I'm not putting any faith in science or looking for any answers from it except how the world works, most knowledge of which comes from informal science (the experience of daily life) and not physics books. I don't look to formal science to maximize the experience of life. It gives me things as air conditioners and vaccines, which make life better, but there are no answers there on living life or what really matters or finding happiness. That comes from informal science - experience and accurate map making - and its application to managing the nonrational parade of phenomena characterizing the human experience.
