Since several people suggested that the very bad signal to noise ratio was the reason they didn't bother to respond to my post over on teilhard's chocolate thread (otherwise they might have commented), I thought I would start a new thread repeating that particular post, as well as the post that prompted it.
What I am posting in this thread is a response to the idea that a believing, theistic approach to life (grounded in experience) is simply based on groupthink and fuzzy, shallow thinking. Of course, I cannot say that my own life experience corresponds to a carefully crafted scientific experiment and thus is immune to errors in thought. But then, most people don't necessarily turn their own lives into science experiments. Usually, people use their own set of past experiences to help guide their future choices. And unless one is willing to cede the self-determination of their own life to an outside committee of critics, generally one continues to proceed on their own path, guided by their own reasoning and experience. If things on this path go reasonably well, one continues on the same path. If things go rather badly, one rethinks their current position and perhaps changes course.
The simple fact of the matter is that everyone here starts from some basic, familiar (to them) position, often inherited from their family upbringing, and formed by experiences over a number of years. After all, we are not alien visitors on a strange planet trying to figure out everything from scratch because everything we see is suspect. We proceed from where we are and reason through things based on experience and observation, both of our own lives and of other peoples lives. And it should be obvious to anyone that something that can seem strange or unusual to one person can very much be an normal, everyday thing to someone else. Life and life experiences vary from person to person, family to family and group to group.
So the fact that I have made choices in my life that seem questionable or strange to anyone else here should not be a surprise to them, just as their different choices should not be a surprise to me. Also, just because choices differ from one another doesn't mean that no thought was given to them. (In my case I have given my choices quite a bit of thought.) But the idea that the only reason someone follows their religious path is because they were indoctrinated to do so, and that any further thought given to their current path is largely fuzzy and unfocused, and thus, they simply meekly and unquestioningly accept what they have been taught, is rather presumptuous. (Yes, of course there are people who simply follow along. But such an attitude is not universal, otherwise there would not be such strong opinions about theology and God from the many, many believing and non-believing individuals and groups.)
The post I made was in response to McAtheist's repeated queries to teilhard about problems that McAtheist observed regarding "experience". Since I believe I have a friendly relationship with McAtheist, I thought I would offer my response to his points to see what he might say about them. Sadly, the thread kept roaring on in less than helpful ways and he may have lost interest.
t: A Person who has NO actual Real-Life Experience of a reported Phenomenon is NOT in a GOOD Position to make high-handed DISMISSAL thereof ... But, tell you what ... Since you're obviously so terribly KEEN on discussing "Crystal Power," I will start up a Thread for you, okay ... ???
What I am obviously keen on discussing is the credibility and accuracy of your unsubstantiated claim that "the BEST knowledge we can have " about the existence of gods "derives from Experience..." I have raised very legitimate questions about how valuable these so-called "god experiences" are in determining the correct attribution of the cause of the experiences. Some of the problems I have raised include:
* being tainting by externally imposed expectations, like when people are told what they are supposed to feel/see/experience starting with their earliest childhood religious training;
* being tainting by "sharing" the experience with people vested in a particular interpretation, so that all the experiences are smoooged into one homogenous story;
* being tainted by the hardening of experiencer's position when confronted with different and skeptical interpretations of your position;
* the very malleable nature of human memory, etc. which includes our commonly used ability to re-write any event in our past or to invent events in our past.
All of these problems are supported by lots of well-documented research and are compounded when there is no external way to gauge the extent of the damage caused by them, as in your so-called "god experiences."
You have consistently failed to address any of them and they cast significant doubt on your evaluation of the "knowledge" you think you get from your so-called "god experiences."
Why exactly are we supposed to ignore this suite of observed, documented, legitimate data in favor of your unsubstantiated and obviously biased opinion?
What discussion did you imagine to have on the Atheism board with this topic?
I appreciate your honest, sincere effort to try to pursue a more generalized understanding of the concepts regarding God. I also understand your frustration with teilhard's statement regarding God as a mystery. And although I personally wouldn't characterize God using that exact word, I do understand the basic idea he is getting at. Basically, the finite, limited, sometimes (oftentimes) inaccurate human grasp of something so vastly different in scope as God must conceptually be, could easily lead most anyone to fairly describe their own currently limited understanding of God in such a way.
But even with a very limited grasp of God, the desire to know more about the subject can prompt a person to begin pursuing a path that will hopefully lead to greater understanding of the subject. After all, no matter what wonders a person might have heard lie in a particular compass direction, the only real way to gain further knowledge and understanding of what may lie in that direction is to actually begin to make one's journey in that direction and see what happens as one proceeds. (I often think of the narratives about Abraham in this way.)
At some point, there is going to be a divergence in the experiences and understanding of a person making such a journey and of those who have not. (This seems like a very reasonable assumption to me.) And since one of the main changes in a person attempting to make a journey towards God is going to be the altering of their perspective ( a very mental process), it may be hard to convey an accurate sense of why their perspective has changed in their journey so far, as well as why they consider that changed perspective on their part to be justified.
In my own older thread concerning tipping point evidence, I tried to convey some (not all) experiences that struck me as making the case for me to continue to pursue my own journey towards God. Others who read what I had tried to convey offered all sorts of reasons why they considered the incidents to be less than compelling to them. But an armchair critique of a brief narrative isn't really a fair evaluation of what may have happened, nor is a brief narrative a complete picture of what may have happened in actuality. That's the problem with history. The events can't be easily re-examined. Nonetheless, the events, as personally experienced, are often enough to impel a person to pursue the subject further.
But as to your quite reasonable questions/problems, here is my take.
* being tainting by externally imposed expectations, like when people are told what they are supposed to feel/see/experience starting with their earliest childhood religious training;
I'm not quite sure this fully applies in my case. My religious upbringing included the concept of answered prayer. When one is using prayer (and only prayer) to handle an illness and expects a positive change in outcome, and the outcome occurs, that usually makes an impact that goes beyond simply being told how to interpret such a matter. (Yes, people will often suggest other reasons for the change to have occurred, but if such things happen often enough, those occurrences will definitely make an impact on one's outlook on such things.)
For instance, my dad did not grow up believing in answered prayer. But when he married my mom, he encountered a different set of experiences. Before I was born, the two of them were stuck in a bad snowstorm in NY at his family's house and couldn't get out. Somehow while there, he had a case of blood poisoning in one arm (there was visible progress of the condition getting worse) and there was no way to get him to a doctor to handle the situation. My mom called a friend for help with prayer about the situation and the problem quickly stopped. My dad was obviously grateful for the help. I am guessing that was why he had no problems with prayer being used for his children's well being when we were growing up. He only had one requirement for my mom approaching things in this way. If prayer wasn't working, she was to take us to the doctor. As far as I know, this never happened. (We did follow state medical requirements if there was no way to obtain a legal exemption. We very much wanted to be law abiding.) And my dad continued to rely on prayer for his own needs because he found it to be effective, not because he was told how to view things as a child.
* being tainting by "sharing" the experience with people vested in a particular interpretation, so that all the experiences are smoooged into one homogenous story;
Well, sharing experiences of healing through prayer helped our church members encourage each other in their own journey God-ward. (That's what church communities do. We support one another in our individual journeys.) It wasn't so much about offering a particular interpretation, but more about describing a particular approach and outcome. However, everyone was free to pursue their own journey at their own pace. No one was compelled to take any stands they weren't prepared to take. Deciding to follow God is very much a personal choice.
* being tainted by the hardening of experiencer's position when confronted with different and skeptical interpretations of your position;
Once again, the skeptical interpretations tend to be of the armchair variety. Without something a bit more serious and studied (usually never offered or given), why should anyone take someone else's off-the-cuff opinion over their own long term personal experience and practice?
* the very malleable nature of human memory, etc. which includes our commonly used ability to re-write any event in our past or to invent events in our past.
Yes, memory does tend to be malleable. But once again, when a person such as myself is choosing to use prayer, I am approaching something in the here and now, so memory of it isn't exactly an issue. The choice to use prayer is dictated by memory of past successful experience, but whatever it is that is bothering me is staring me in the face right at the time.
(And just in case the crystal subject is still an an issue in your thought, I am curious as to how many advocates of crystal power would forgo emergency visits to the hospital and choose to rely solely on their crystals for help. Because that's the level of trust I personally have regarding God. And I have only arrived at that level of trust by learning to rely on God over a long period of time. One's experience really does matter when making such choices.)
So, do you have valid questions? Yes, I think you do. And everything should be discussable in a friendly, equitable way. But even if you never feel personally convinced of the usefulness of God, other people such as myself (through our own hard-won, long term experience) have found something we personally think is worth pursuing further.
So, are we correct in our personal assumption that God is real? Only time and experience will tell.
> After all, no matter what wonders a person might have heard lie in a particular
> compass direction, the only real way to gain further knowledge and understanding
> of what may lie in that direction is to actually begin to make one's journey in that
> direction and see what happens as one proceeds.
The problem, in this case, is that there is nothing objectively there - only subjectively. As a result different people exploring in that direction come to such widely different experiences that they come into considerable conflict when they try to share stories of what they found. It's like if you had a room that a huge number of people had entered and explored, and some came back and reported an elephant, some came back and reported a huge snake, some came back and reported zombies, some came back and reported the room was empty, some came back and reported dragons, and so on and so forth. The people who experience the same thing in the room have a tendency to band together and support each other and to try to invalidate the various groups that saw something different - which, IMO, is rather foolish given how subjective the experiences of the room are, but many of them want their experiences of the room to be objective rather than subjective.
Atheists are the group who experienced the empty room, and they tend to get the worst attacks from the various groups that experienced something in the room. The other groups at least agree that *something* is in the room and can just think the other groups were foolish/blind/silly enough to misinterpret what was clearly there (what they experienced, of course), but the atheists' experiencing an empty room brings *all* their experiences into question. Many of the others can't even admit that atheists have experienced the room at all ... they regard the atheists as not having even entered, because if they had entered the room they would have found *something* - there's no way anyone could experience the room as being empty, right?
Unfortunately, as understanding as you usually are, I think you fell victim to this bias in your description:
> At some point, there is going to be a divergence in the experiences and understanding
> of a person making such a journey and of those who have not. (This seems like a
> very reasonable assumption to me.) And since one of the main changes in a
> person attempting to make a journey towards God is going to be the altering
> of their perspective ( a very mental process), it may be hard to convey an accurate
> sense of why their perspective has changed in their journey so far, as well as why
> they consider that changed perspective on their part to be justified.
What makes you think that atheists haven't made the journey? Why are you assuming that they didn't journey at all, rather than having journied and found the room to be empty of the elephant you believe it is there? Why do you assume that it has to be a journey towards God (what you believe is in the room) rather than a journey towards truth (which includes the possibility that the room might actually be empty)?
> But an armchair critique of a brief narrative isn't really a fair evaluation of what may
> have happened, nor is a brief narrative a complete picture of what may have
> happened in actuality. That's the problem with history. The events can't be
> easily re-examined. Nonetheless, the events, as personally experienced, are often
> enough to impel a person to pursue the subject further.
It may not be an 'armchair critique' - it may be the result of experiences as valid as your own, as strong as your own, and just incompatible with your own. The person critiquing your experiences may be doing so based on his own experiences which are just fundamentally incompatible - you experienced an elephant in the room, he experienced an empty room. As long as the experience is understood as being subjective there's no problem with that; it's only when people expect the experience to be objective that conflicts arrive. "You can't have experienced X because I experienced Y."
> Once again, the skeptical interpretations tend to be of the armchair variety. Without
> something a bit more serious and studied (usually never offered or given), why
> should anyone take someone else's off-the-cuff opinion over their own long term
> personal experience and practice?
I disagree strongly on this. The atheists often have as much experience on these issues and have explored them as deeply as the theists - we just had very different experiences and came to very different conclusions. Describing that as 'armchair' implies that anyone who experienced an empty room must actually not have explored the room at all ... which, IMO, is a highly prejudicial approach. The main reason I get upset with Teilhard's repeated exhortations that we should taste his chocolate is that he not only assumes that we would taste chocolate like he has ... far worse, he assumes that we *haven't* given it a fair taste. IMO many of us have and found his chocolate to be empty air - there was *nothing* there in our experience. And given the subjective nature of all this, our experience of empty air is as valid and convincing as his experience of chocolate.
Your version of it is a lot more respectful than his, but I think you have a little of the same bias - the same tendency to believe that people who found nothing must not have actually looked. Am I perhaps misinterpreting what you said? I hope so. In any case please don't think I'm putting you in the same category as those who attack our characters and say we must be deliberately blind/foolish/evil for not seeing the same thing they see.
> So, do you have valid questions? Yes, I think you do. And everything should be
> discussable in a friendly, equitable way. But even if you never feel personally
> convinced of the usefulness of God, other people such as myself (through our
> own hard-won, long term experience) have found something we personally
> think is worth pursuing further.
And that is fine with me. I really have no problem with those who believe they found something in the room ... as long as they don't tell me I have to find the same thing or attack my character for not having found it. And that's really not your style.
Since several people suggested that the very bad signal to noise ratio was the reason they didn't bother to respond to my post over on teilhard's chocolate thread (otherwise they might have commented), I thought I would start a new thread repeating that particular post, as well as the post that prompted it.
What I am posting in this thread is a response to the idea that a believing, theistic approach to life (grounded in experience) is simply based on groupthink and fuzzy, shallow thinking. Of course, I cannot say that my own life experience corresponds to a carefully crafted scientific experiment and thus is immune to errors in thought. But then, most people don't necessarily turn their own lives into science experiments. Usually, people use their own set of past experiences to help guide their future choices. And unless one is willing to cede the self-determination of their own life to an outside committee of critics, generally one continues to proceed on their own path, guided by their own reasoning and experience. If things on this path go reasonably well, one continues on the same path. If things go rather badly, one rethinks their current position and perhaps changes course.
The simple fact of the matter is that everyone here starts from some basic, familiar (to them) position, often inherited from their family upbringing, and formed by experiences over a number of years. After all, we are not alien visitors on a strange planet trying to figure out everything from scratch because everything we see is suspect. We proceed from where we are and reason through things based on experience and observation, both of our own lives and of other peoples lives. And it should be obvious to anyone that something that can seem strange or unusual to one person can very much be an normal, everyday thing to someone else. Life and life experiences vary from person to person, family to family and group to group.
So the fact that I have made choices in my life that seem questionable or strange to anyone else here should not be a surprise to them, just as their different choices should not be a surprise to me. Also, just because choices differ from one another doesn't mean that no thought was given to them. (In my case I have given my choices quite a bit of thought.) But the idea that the only reason someone follows their religious path is because they were indoctrinated to do so, and that any further thought given to their current path is largely fuzzy and unfocused, and thus, they simply meekly and unquestioningly accept what they have been taught, is rather presumptuous. (Yes, of course there are people who simply follow along. But such an attitude is not universal, otherwise there would not be such strong opinions about theology and God from the many, many believing and non-believing individuals and groups.)
The post I made was in response to McAtheist's repeated queries to teilhard about problems that McAtheist observed regarding "experience". Since I believe I have a friendly relationship with McAtheist, I thought I would offer my response to his points to see what he might say about them. Sadly, the thread kept roaring on in less than helpful ways and he may have lost interest.
Anyway, here they are again in a new thread.
I have a couple of comments.
1) Have you ever encountered someone who came up with the idea of God without having heard about it from someone else? I haven't. To the contrary, almost everyone in the US, where I grew up, heard about God and religion from family, friends, on TV, and so on. I've never encountered anyone with no prior knowledge of God who had an out-of-the-blue experience that led them to the idea of and belief in God.
2). I have encountered people who claim to have had some sort of extraordinary experience that confirmed their belief that there is a God. My take on that is, good for them, but their claim of a personal experience does nothing to convince me, or to think they have obtained some kind of superior knowledge or experience. I don't know what it is they're talking about, and don't care much about it at this point. What does affect me is when the some (not all, by any means) of these people try to say they have obtained or experienced something superior, want to talk or post about it over and over, and say or imply that I and others like me lack knowledge (or am lacking in other ways) because I haven't experienced what they did or believe as they do.
I was indoctrinated in beliefs from early childhood, I sought experiences through a variety of practices, I looked into a couple of different religions, and I didn't find anything there. For decades I had no interest in religion or beliefs. I came back to it as I neared middle age, and again ... nothing. I basically came to disbelief on my own. That doesn't make me inferior, and it doesn't make me superior either. It is what it is. I do think there are far more reasons to disbelieve than to believe, but you can't stop people from believing in what they wish to believe, and it would be a waste of time to try. I just wish certain believers would realize that.
I've never heard of a Hindu encountering Jesus in a religious experience, and teilhard says he's never encountered Zeus.
It seems that if your culture is Christian you experience Christian supernatural beings, if your culture is Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Shinto &c, then you experience Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Shinto &c supernatural beings respectively.
This seems to suggest an answer to the question posed in the title of this thread.
I've never heard of a Hindu encountering Jesus in a religious experience, and teilhard says he's never encountered Zeus.
It seems that if your culture is Christian you experience Christian supernatural beings, if your culture is Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Shinto &c, then you experience Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Shinto &c supernatural beings respectively.
This seems to suggest an answer to the question posed in the title of this thread.
Most sects of Buddhism lack supernatural beings... so lumping them in with the others seems a tad ignorant. Whatever they (including myself) experience, it is not external beings, or "beings" of any sort, they're not even trying to experience beings, real or imaginary... you do realize the whole point of Buddhism is to look within, yes?
Also-my culture is "drunken Irish Roman Catholic".... yet I became a Nichiren Buddhist at age 18, due to an experience. Point being-your premise is likely true in most cases, but clearly exceptions exist. I sure tried to "experience" the Jesus-Jehovah sandwich, through various churches, during my search, among some other things (none on your list), yet got no experiences through them.
No question, culture (parents really I would argue) have the largest influence on the faith of the majority-I can agree with that. But you forgot the words "usually" or "Mostly" or "majority"....
Since several people suggested that the very bad signal to noise ratio was the reason they didn't bother to respond to my post over on teilhard's chocolate thread (otherwise they might have commented), I thought I would start a new thread repeating that particular post, as well as the post that prompted it.
You must remember that the chocolate being offered is not candy but Ex-Lax for the mind.
What I am posting in this thread is a response to the idea that a believing, theistic approach to life (grounded in experience) is simply based on groupthink and fuzzy, shallow thinking.....
Such "experiences" are notoriously unreliable for getting at the truth. They are often based on childhood indoctrination, and/or cultural training. What was "experienced" does not always conform the the reality of the situation. Then, what about the millions of Atheists that "experience" life with no gods? Don't our experiences count?
The simple fact of the matter is that everyone here starts from some basic, familiar (to them) position, often inherited from their family upbringing, and formed by experiences over a number of years....
You have to take into account that the interpretation of those "experiences" are based on that childhood indoctrination. That childhood indoctrination is very often so complete that the adult simply cannot go against it. It's a psychological conditioning that is pretty much hard wired into the persons brain. Then add to that the rewards that society gives to those that follow along with the cultural beliefs, and you have a problem that no amount of rational discourse can crack.
Dave - Just a Man in the Mountains.
I am a Humanist. I believe in a rational philosophy of life, informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by a desire to do good for its own sake and not by an expectation of a reward or fear of punishment in an afterlife.
Most sects of Buddhism lack supernatural beings... so lumping them in with the others seems a tad ignorant. Whatever they (including myself) experience, it is not external beings, or "beings" of any sort, they're not even trying to experience beings, real or imaginary... you do realize the whole point of Buddhism is to look within, yes?
In theory I totally agree with you. (as a former soto Zen guy especially so)
In practice though, I saw a lot more of the seductive path of believing dieties were involved and could be appealed to. Pure land being a strong example of this.
Most sects of Buddhism lack supernatural beings... so lumping them in with the others seems a tad ignorant. Whatever they (including myself) experience, it is not external beings, or "beings" of any sort, they're not even trying to experience beings, real or imaginary... you do realize the whole point of Buddhism is to look within, yes?
In theory I totally agree with you. (as a former soto Zen guy especially so)
In practice though, I saw a lot more of the seductive path of believing dieties were involved and could be appealed to. Pure land being a strong example of this.
Just sayin' is all. :)
Fair enough. I always saw pure land so far from Buddhism that it was basically christianity with a cooler guy to pray to. I always wondered why they thought the Pure Land was in the West.... (ignoring the fact that a 2 dimensional directional scale doesn't really work in space).
