When I was once an atheist
Offline As per request, I am posting a topic as to why I changed from atheist to Theist.
I was a Christian for a great deal of my life, I was so during high school. I went to a catholic school, and in my grade 12 biology class, I learned about evolution according to the provincal standard. There were religion classes offered, (you had to take them), but contrary to popular belief, they taught us of other religions as well and promoted tolerance.
I never really gave my Theism a second thought to be honest.
Then I started university, first as a chemistry major, so I had to take courses in chemistry, mathematics, and physics. About the end of the first semester, I did begin to question. How could God exist if the laws of chemistry/physics can explain how things got to be? I had read about the creationist's thoeries and how they could be explained through science. So throughout that time period, I was atheist.
That changed about third year. I had switched majors to physics since I enjoyed the classes, and didn't like the chemistry labs. The more I studied it, the more intriging it became.
I read up on physicists/Biologists biographies, and found that some actually did believe in God. This got me questioning my atheism. Why can't science and God co-exist? I pondered this point, and since science is the main argument in any atheist debate, I found it as a key component. Then I realized, yes, they can co-exist. The more I studied science, the more I questioned. By studing, I realized that things may not always be what they seem, and could be dramitically different.
And so began my re-conversion back to Theism.
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:I see this as a reasonable assumption. That there is a reason.Explanation in how does not equal or mean there is a motive in why.
Yes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look.
Quote:Not that it needs purpose, but that it has purpose.'Useless unless percieved' sounds like you are trying to find a purpose to make it fit.
Perhaps, but I see no problem seeking a purpose.
If you ask why X does A you are assuming that there is a motive. This will lead to the idea of an intellect because a motive needs intellect. It doesn't matter if you can't answer why once you got the idea of motives to the workings of existence. The assumption has been made by asking the question. That was my point.
Isn't it human nature to wonder? Have you ever wondered why X does A?
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Offline Voiderest wrote:I fail to see why you existence needs a why. By beginning with why you are assuming that there is a fundamental purpose to being or existence.
I need a why, analogous to the way I need food or water. There is something working in my conciousness that wants a why. Maybe you don't need a why but that does not change my need. Perhaps this is one of the key differences between theists and atheists. Clearly I am generalizing, but it seems that atheists are more content with a view of reality that contains no why.
Bingo. "Why" is a completley irrelevant question when not concerning the intent of intelligent entities. "How", yes, but "why" is meaningless in the context of "Why am I here?" or "Why are we alone?"
Why implies a meaning and a purpose, where none is necessary.
The reason we yearn for "why" is because of the assumed intent programmed into our brains by evolution. We automatically assume everything around us has an intent and desire. This would have helped our early acestors in avoiding predators, catching animals, and discerning the intents and actions of others. This qaulity of our brains has simply been misapplied to grander questions about the universe. Inanimate objects have no intent and no desire, there is no purpose to the universe any more than there is a purpose and desire in a rock.
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Offline Why implies a meaning and a purpose, where none is necessary.
You may consider it unnecessary, but I don't.
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Offline Yes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look.
You talked about reason as though is means the answer to why. Unless you think something has motive why is the wrong question to ask.
Isn't it human nature to wonder? Have you ever wondered why X does A?
I asked myself why I ask why and realized why is a question you ask something that thinks. How is what you ask of inanimate.
If X doesn't have a mind there is no answer to why. It would be like asking a rock why it falls.
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Offline You may consider it unnecessary, but I don't.
For existence or your existence?
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Offline WaveFreak
I don't understand where you see duplicity. If I wanted the easiest answers, I would hang out at a psychics forum and have all the personal validation I could possibly desire. I could probably spin it up into fucking hero status. But my presence here signals a desire for something more "real". Nobody cuts me any slack at this site. I don't endure that for the hell of it.
Not cutting you any slack? All I did was question your conclusions. And yes I feel your explanation as I understand it in the post above is textbook duplicity since you claim to believe in something supernatural that is in some fashion connected to past experiences you have had. I don’t think it unfair for me to point out that you say straightforwardly that you are “certain” that the experiences are not the work of leprechauns but that you still believe them to be connected to your desired belief system. Sorry, but that is textbook duplicity on the face of it, and I’m not even getting into the more prerogative language in calling what you are doing special pleading, though in absence of anything else from you I’d have to say I’m leaning in that direction.
Please note also that my disagreement with your conclusions is strongly worded. I accept that. The topic is one I am passionate about. I’m also aware that I might not have the complete picture. I didn’t read all of the posts in all of the pages prior, and I skimmed some leading up to this exchange. It was with that in mind that I asked you to qualify your position more and to explain in more detail what it is you mean when you say “empirical” and “science” and how it is you are able to delineate one supernatural explanation for your experiences from another. As far as I can tell, you have failed to even attempt that up until now. If I am wrong and you have, please read that as an oversight on my part and direct me to where you have made such contributions. I can then get back to you.
There is also a very real practical consideration here. I haven't the time nor resources to scientifically investigate anything. I would think that most of the people that post here, like me, are not scientists and that even those that are not studying these phenomena. Also, I suspect it would be very difficult to find funding for something so speculative. So the rigorous empirical approach that would satisfy the minds of RSS is at this point in time quite impossible.
That is certainly a fair enough point. Please note that I’m looking at your experiences more generally than specifically at this point because my premise isn’t so much that you need to exhaust all possible channels of logical investigation before coming to a conclusion. What I am more interested in is your willingness to attribute a supernatural truth to your conclusions if in fact you haven’t even the ability look the natural explanations that are available. This is an important point I think.
Let’s say I have a near death experience near a subway and I am moved to tears at the knowledge that I almost lost my life. I can do several things with this experience, all of which act as a mirror to how I wish to view the world in which I live.
My approach to such a situation is to be as scientific as I can about it (given time, resources, etc.) to see what forces if any saved my life, and more importantly to adjust (if need be) my subway rituals so that I can be safer in the future and so I can give sound advice to my fellow commuters. This type of situation did indeed happen to me very recently while diving in PG in the Philippines. I’ll explain it in more detail because I am asking you to do the same thing. That seems only the fair thing to do.
When I was at 4 meters of water doing my safety stop, a large boat went over the top of our dive group. The propeller from this boat missed the head of the woman I love by a margin that still sends shivers down my spine. I moved quickly to the right myself and was lucky to only have the boat’s outrigger skim over the top of my tank. This was a highly charged experience for me, I can assure you. I dreamt about it over several nights following and I remembered details I usually don’t recall with my typical dreams. In fact, I don’t remember the vast majority of my dreams at all. I kept seeing this situation over and over in my head, and this anxiety kept me from going back into the water. I talked to other divers, learned better safety procedures through reading, found out why it is that boats and divers sometimes get too close to each other, talked to a diving psychologist friend about my fears of going back into the water, about my dreams, etc.
I now know what I did wrong in this situation and I know through looking at past dive accidents that I was fortunate to get a second chance with a sport I love and with the woman I love. This is scientific enough in my opinion and it is in this vein that I am using the word science for this discussion.
This process I underwent was in no way exhaustive in the terms you state are impossible for laymen like ourselves. You are right that I couldn’t have exhausted all of the possibilities either. For instance, I never traveled to the PADI or DAN offices to inquire about this issue. I didn’t do a case study on the past dive accidents with boats in the Philippines over say the last 20 years. I didn’t do sonar or light measurements off the coast of the area to see if they played a role in our near miss. Nonetheless, time consuming his process was, relatively speaking. And it did involve research into history, psychology, physics, and even biology to the degree that these focused on these types of diving situations.
My understanding of your approach to this kind of scenario (and please correct me if you feel I am making a straw man here) is to attribute our being spared on this dive to the god Poseidon. I could also “know” retrospectively “for certain” that it wasn’t the Christian god who saved me, or pink unicorns or the rather tiresome example of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.
That I claim these not to be the correct supernatural answers is based solely on my desire to have it so. This should be seen for what it is. I don’t think it unfair to say as a rebuttal to such a claim that some degree of the scientific method is necessary here for no other reason than to mitigate your emotions from the case in a way that allows you to get real understanding in a meaningful way.
For instance, my fearful first impression of what happened was that the boat driver was negligent and the idiot almost killed my girl. I was pissed off and ready to kill him. Thank reason and a bit of chill out time on the boat ride back that I started to dissect what had happened before getting back to shore. This is my point. Even a modicum of science in whatever the necessary field is for a given situation is far better than allowing supernatural pinning to take hold. This for me is highly self evident and it allows me to find truth proclamations of the kind that are squarely rooted on earth, not to mention being curbed enough in scope to be truth enough for me without having to be truthful for others. Say for instance that this experience and the same research done by someone else would lead them to give up diving altogether. This truth would be just as valid as mine and my decision to go back into the water. That being the case, I don’t suffer the same duplicity you do because the process is objective enough to keep me from needing or even desiring any special pleading.
If I had gone back ashore with some endangered species in my pocket which I burned on a spit for Poseidon, would you have accepted the excuse that I didn’t really have the time to pull together a panel of experts to study boat and diver buoyancy or some such far reaching project so I’m just going to attribute it to Poseidon? I seriously doubt that you would.
Why then allow yourself to do this? And therein lies the crux of the issue. If you...
1) feel that my experience is somehow different to yours, then perhaps you could explain how.
2) feel that your approach in linking your god construct to your experience is not the same as I have displayed with Poseidon in this example, then may I ask you how to justify this?
3) can see the weakness in claiming Poseidon as an agent in my surviving in this case, can you demonstrate how your experience differs significantly to warrant truth to your own claims?
4) don’t accept someone claiming Poseidon as savior in this scenario, would you accept it if the claimant chose your own god construct? If yes, what grounds would you give? If no, how is this claim different form yours?
If you cannot or will not answer these questions, then I feel well within grounds to stand by my first assessment that you applied in post hoc and special pleading fashion a truth value to something based solely on your emotions. Again, I find such a practice distasteful for all the reasons I have already outlined. We haven’t even gotten into whether or not you feel the same way about emotional derivatives. I suspect that you do not think as I do for obvious reasons.
I am just a regular Joe of above average intelligence trying to make sense of life. It's the best I have to offer. Sorry it can't be more.
One need not be an Einstein to view these issues objectively. Average intelligence is enough anyhow. What’s at issue is your integrity and your resolve. Please don’t read my use of integrity as a slight. It’s an opinion.
Cheers!
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Offline I'm amazed at your endurance in these debates. Personally I would have given up on explaining the same thing over and over and over again.
Good luck to you and may you find what you seek.
Cheers.
A mystic is someone who wants to understand the universe, but is too lazy to study physics.
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Not cutting you any slack? All I did was question your conclusions.
You misinterpret my meaning. That I don't get cut any slack around here is one of the reasons I hang out.
And yes I feel your explanation as I understand it in the post above is textbook duplicity since you claim to believe in something supernatural that is in some fashion connected to past experiences you have had.
I don't believe in the supernatural. No matter what experiences I have had, there is no magic place from whence they came.
I don’t think it unfair for me to point out that you say straightforwardly that you are “certain” that the experiences are not the work of leprechauns but that you still believe them to be connected to your desired belief system.
DESIRED belief system? This is just flat wrong. I have systematically rejected vast swaths of theism and religious thinking because it is nothing more than tripe. If I desired a "supernatural" world view I would join the Psychic Network. I am more likely to contribute money to James Randi's organization.
The topic is one I am passionate about. I’m also aware that I might not have the complete picture. I didn’t read all of the posts in all of the pages prior, and I skimmed some leading up to this exchange. It was with that in mind that I asked you to qualify your position more and to explain in more detail what it is you mean when you say “empirical” and “science” and how it is you are able to delineate one supernatural explanation for your experiences from another.
By empirical and scientific I mean measurable, repeatable, etc.
And again, supernatural is a useless term to me.
As far as I can tell, you have failed to even attempt that up until now. If I am wrong and you have, please read that as an oversight on my part and direct me to where you have made such contributions. I can then get back to you.
Attempt what? I experienced events a,b, and c. Are you expecting me to categorize these events in a manner consistent with your interpretation of reality? Based on what? Your good looks?
What I am more interested in is your willingness to attribute a supernatural truth to your conclusions if in fact you haven’t even the ability look the natural explanations that are available. This is an important point I think.
There is no such thing as supernatural
My understanding of your approach to this kind of scenario (and please correct me if you feel I am making a straw man here) is to attribute our being spared on this dive to the god Poseidon. I could also “know” retrospectively “for certain” that it wasn’t the Christian god who saved me, or pink unicorns or the rather tiresome example of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.
I understand what you are trying to say. But if everyone on the dive saw a giant hand pick up and move the boat then burning a sacrafice to Poseidon would be appropriate.
BTW, I glad the dive turned out ok.
I have had experiences that can be explained in much the way your dive incident can. I had an incident while surfing where if the waves hadn't "miraculously" stopped breaking I probably would have drown. But I know that waves come in sets and I was damn lucky that the last wave came through BEFORE I lost control and sucked in a lung full of water. I didn't run to the shore and burn a lamb.
I have also had some remarkable, highly improbable coincidences happen. But it's easy to put those in the "Whoa, that was weird" category where as anybody fully enveloped in religiosity would immediately assign them to god.
I have had a few experiences that defy any categorization.
Part of the problem is that I am not willing to "bare my soul" on an internet forum. I am a very private person and I'm already seriously pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone. The relative anonymity of the internet provides some cover, but not enough. My presence here is very selfish. I am extracting what I need from the people around here. Perhaps someday I'll be able to give something back. More likely I will just fade away into cyber space and life will go on.
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Offline The universe is made up of data and energy. This energy is then used to make matter which is of course what stuff is made of. The matter has energy inequalites and transfer data, for example we know the sun is burning hydrogen because of the light emissions. The process of fusing hydrogen creates data. This data is basically useless, unless a sentient being percieves it. That is our purpose. That is how this consciousness exists. Through the data. That is also how we get our consciousness, through our brains interputing data.
There is no 'data' without our brains creating it through our conventions of measuring and modelling; information doesn't exist apart from our framing of phenomina.
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Offline Wavefreak
You misinterpret my meaning. That I don't get cut any slack around here is one of the reasons I hang out.
Okay, I see your point. Glad to hear it.
I don't believe in the supernatural. No matter what experiences I have had, there is no magic place from whence they came.
DESIRED belief system? This is just flat wrong. I have systematically rejected vast swaths of theism and religious thinking because it is nothing more than tripe. If I desired a "supernatural" world view I would join the Psychic Network. I am more likely to contribute money to James Randi's organization.
By empirical and scientific I mean measurable, repeatable, etc.And again, supernatural is a useless term to me.
Attempt what? I experienced events a,b, and c. Are you expecting me to categorize these events in a manner consistent with your interpretation of reality? Based on what? Your good looks?
I understand what you are trying to say. But if everyone on the dive saw a giant hand pick up and move the boat then burning a sacrafice to Poseidon would be appropriate.
BTW, I glad the dive turned out ok.
), thanks. I’m a much better diver for the experience. I have had experiences that can be explained in much the way your dive incident can. I had an incident while surfing where if the waves hadn't "miraculously" stopped breaking I probably would have drown. But I know that waves come in sets and I was damn lucky that the last wave came through BEFORE I lost control and sucked in a lung full of water. I didn't run to the shore and burn a lamb.
I have also had some remarkable, highly improbable coincidences happen. But it's easy to put those in the "Whoa, that was weird" category where as anybody fully enveloped in religiosity would immediately assign them to god.
Part of the problem is that I am not willing to "bare my soul" on an internet forum.
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Offline Dadvocate
Rather than answer point by point I think I'll go right to what I think your asking for.
Spiritual and spirituality are actually terrible words. They invoke far too many traditional ideas. The simpilist definition for *me* is what ever states of mind I enter when contemplating "god". Even god is a problematic word since it also invokes so much baggage. Unfortunately there is very little language other than what already exists to discuss such things. Even saying "entering an altered state of conciousness" carries baggage.
I am going to look up Sam Harris. I'll get back to you on that.
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Offline Sam Harris seems a bit out there for me. I did a cursory search on his ideas of spirituality and he seems a little loose in what he accepts as genuine knowledge. His ideas of spirituality as a replicable mystic mind state is close to what I think but I have great difficulty in assuming that what is experienced in such states of mind is automatically valid. It still must hold up to comparison with external reality.
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Offline i wonder if this might help to explain these "spiritual"or devine coincidences...
science shows our mind is a predicting machine, so maybe subconscious thoughts can lead us to these coincidences...
for example, one day i rode my bike to the store and my bike lock wouldnt lock, so after extensively trying to lock it, i gave up and just barely pushed it in... after coming back out from the store i said to myself.... i bet its locked-and it was... THEN i said this just goes to show my amazing power of prediction, immediatly after i said that it started raining!----true story.
so the point is i could use this as a personal "gods" message to show me he exists,
or i can think about how my subconscious could have somehow been aware that it was going to rain soon, like animals can, and then along this line of thought i can imagine how this "coincidence" occured.
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Offline its better rationally to consider how our subconscious could have an effect that leads us into these situations... think of our dreams and the way how those lead us to certain situations in them..
and think how our mind takes input from our environment( in waking conscious )and compares it to previous thoughts and experiences, patterns we've learned, things we have strong emotions about,etc....
-to predict what will happen next and urge us to act in sequence, according to those thoughts and how we understand to address those situations, and come to ideal conclusions or satisfactory results in those situations.
think how strong emotional inclinations (religious faith and our personified version of god) might urge us to a "sequence" where at the conclusion of it, is so coincidental that it is deemed as a spiritual or devine event.
i know this doesnt make much sense, so im open to you all asking more questions about it so i can help to better explain what i mean.
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Offline Wavefreak
I just got back in from Malarayat. It is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, enough to move one to spiritual ruminations, whatever your definition of spiritual is...
Thanks for taking the time to look over Sam Harris' ideas more. If nothing else you get a glimpse of where am coming from. I'd like to allow him to respond for himself, so I will go back over "End of Faith" and Letter to a "Christian nation" tonight and find my dog eared pages on this point. I'm paraphrasing him from memory at this stage, and I want to be sure I establish a link between your critique and where I am coming from also. I’ll need to quote the relevant sections, which will take a day to get right. In the meantime, could I get you to clarify something for me? When you say that:
“It still must hold up to comparison with external reality” what do you mean?
If a shaman chants endlessly for two days, for instance, barely taking in water and food to survive, and comes to a revelation about his life and what he should do, how could he “validate” this in conjunction with external reality? Does he need to validate a vision of his life to an external audience, or is it good enough for him to have this vision quest for himself?
How about this?
One of the more outlandish second language acquisition techniques I learned in grad school a few years back was called “Jazz Chants.” This process of language learning is based on repetitive sounds or isolated language points used in musically inspired stories or quips. The process of chanting starts first with a facilitator and then is passed to students with varying succession to play out the language point and to drive it into deeper areas of understanding in the brain.
It wasn’t until later when I was visiting at a temple in Korea that I realized the same process was used by the monks there when they did their morning and evening prayers. The facilitator started the “chant” and the disciples if you will continued the process in their tradition. It was quite fascinating I can tell you.
In the former “educational” case, I would argue that one possible example of “validation externally” is the improved pronunciation of a student or for advanced levels a better intuition for idioms of a second language. Indeed, I’ve seen this work exactly that way. The harder sell, for me, would be an “external” reality applied to a vision that one of the monks saw under such chanting that told him about Buddha or some such thing. But then my understanding of Sam Harris’ point is that the process, the chanting, is very human and can indeed help to create “higher” states of consciousness, which much less wishy-washy than “altered states of consciousness” in my opinion.
I don’t think Harris is arguing for a greater truth value for such a spiritual endeavor. He wouldn’t argue for instance that a vision maintained by an artist in deep meditation that love can only truly be expressed artistically in clay have binding truth for anyone except that artist. He would argue, I believe, that meditation is something that has real benefits for humanity on the whole, especially when this process is undergone without the baggage that theism places on it. I really want to be sure I don’t misrepresent him here, so I will find the relevant passages in the books I have read and cite them in a later post.
I’d highly recommend the interview RRS does with him, too, as I recall him speaking briefly on this very point.
I need sleep now. Take care!
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Offline I may have to but Sam Harris on my reading list. Unfortunately, one of the unintended consequences of haunting the RSS site is that my reading list is getting additions MUCH faster than deletions. DAMN my real life. There is so much INTERESTING stuff out there and I'm stuck dealing with Sarbanes Oxley and I.T. controls.
Blech!
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Offline for example, one day i rode my bike to the store and my bike lock wouldnt lock, so after extensively trying to lock it, i gave up and just barely pushed it in... after coming back out from the store i said to myself.... i bet its locked-and it was... THEN i said this just goes to show my amazing power of prediction, immediatly after i said that it started raining!----true story.
That's the best you got?
True story ...
About 30 years ago, when I was still going to a fundie church I decided to do a "retreat". For me this meant grabbing my backback and hitch hiking up into the mountains, specifically, Idyllwild in Southern Califonia. I was going to fast and pray for the whole time and then go wherever my thumb took me. Basically three or for days in the mountains then stick out the thumb and go wherever. North, South, East, West - a random "experiment" in god leading me to where he wanted me. So after a few days on the mountain (10,000 foot elevation - REALLY a gorgeous place) I starting hitching to my destiny. Getting a ride in the mountains isn't too hard. People seemed to not be too afraid of hitch hikers. So I easily got a ride into Riverside County. The dude was cool with my Jesus thing so he understood when I didn't smoke his weed on the way down the crazy winding curves. But he was a bit toasted when we got back to civilization. Fun ride. He dropped me off on some expressway offramp. I really had no idea where I was. Just some random highway in the middle of Riverside County. So I stuck out my thumb and waited. And waited. And waited. For 8 frickin hours I stood on this onramp trying to get a ride. I must have looked a little a scary. Now remember, my frame of mind was "god is leading me some place". So after 8 hours of hundreds if not thousands (This is effectively part of the Los Angeles mega-lopolis - so think LOTS of traffic) of cars passing by I said screw it. Instead of going East, I'll go West (could have been North/South - don't recall exactly). So I cross over to the other side of the road, stick out my thumb to go the other way and the THE VERY FIRST CAR stops and picks me up. Turns out he was gay and he wanted to do me. We went to some motel and spent a couple of hours talking religion and he tried his damnedest to seduce me. Not my thing. He went off to a friends house, I stayed in the motel and we met for breakfast the next morning. When I told him I was "randomly" going where god wanted me, he insisted that I go back to San Francisco with him and live in his house and work in his resteraunt. I declined, though he seemed genuinely disappointed. He had business in Los Angeles so he agreed to drop me off some where. We drove into L.A. County and he dropped me off some place. I had no clue where I was. Basically, the dude asked me where I wanted to to be dropped off and I said "this looks fine". So there I am, on some random expressway onramp in the middle of L.A. county. Millions of people and a crazed hitchiker. I stick out my thumb, and a short while later who happens to drive by and pick me up? The son of the pastor of my church where I go back in San Diego. Turns out he was on his way home for lunch. He took me home, gave me lunch then later dropped me off on the Pacific Coast Highway. He strongly urged me to go back home.
So calculate the odds. I stayed in the mountains for an undetermined amount of time (I actually left a day earlier than my use permit allowed). I stand all day on an onramp and get picked up by the FIRST car going the other way. I get dropped of at a "random" onramp the NEXT day in just the right window of time where the son of my pastor is a going to be (I stood at that one less than an hour - a fast pickup by a hitcher's standard).
Now remember, my frame of mind is "where is god leading me?".
So there I am, standing on the Pacific Coast Highway somewrhere around Newport Beach. I have a standing invitation to go to San Francisco. The gay dude gave me his address and phone number. He offered me a job and a place to live. He even sent me Christmas cards for a few years after that. I could go North to San Francisco and experience the gay culture before AIDS drastically changed things (think parties and lots of orgasms) or South back to San Diego.
I went South.
Too weird, huh?
Now anybody completely entranced with religion, god, and spirituality would immediately say "Yup. God was guiding you." But I put that into the "Whoa. That was weird" category and scratch my head and wonder.
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Offline thats definatly pretty weird, but it still seems mundane enough to be explained though.
although it is pretty hard to account that the church you left from for your religious adventure, was the one with the son who picked you up.
--all this made me consider some survey i heard about, where people who tried to solve a new crossword puzzle in a newspaper that noone has seen before, scored much less than people who tried to solve an old newpaper crossword puzzle that people have solved before, even though they themselves have never seen it.
and of the coincidences where family members "sense" that something bad happened to another familiy member that lives far away.
maybe there is something in human instinct which we are not even aware of, but that connects us somehow??? i dunno.
there are just things in this universe that make you wonder
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Offline there are just things in this universe that make you wonder
Indeed. Curiosity is a strange mistress. She makes us seek new and intersting things and baffles us along the way.
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Offline Wave Freak
Spiritual and spirituality are actually terrible words. They invoke far too many traditional ideas.
The simpilist definition for *me* is what ever states of mind I enter when contemplating "god".
I completely missed this the first time around when I read over it too quickly last night. It kind of throws a monkey wrench in the plans I had for the discussion to be honest because I wanted to offer up Harris’ ideas as a catalyst on spirituality. If indeed you don’t want to go this route, it would not make much sense for me to continue in that vein.
Let’s look at your morphology for a moment and then see where it takes us.
Let me see if what we have now.
If I understand you correctly, the “state of mind” reference requires a level of introspective. By that I mean a person experiences X-situation and either immediately or later undergoes a kind of Y-awareness of the event and what it means with regard to Z-god.
As you say, the word god carries with it even more significant connotations, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
What I would like to ask you now is how contemplation comes into the picture with this statement. It doesn’t appear at first glance to be loaded in this case, but I would argue that the crux rests here more so than with the words spirituality and god.
Contemplation can be done tabula rasa style with no agenda for instance, and the results are thus less inhibited and in most cases less organized. For instance, a technique used by our drama teacher here in the high school is to have students set up what she calls mental scaffolding, which basically means that she gives the students enough of a contextualized situation to get them thinking in a specific way. Generally this practice is prefaced by the students “getting into character” doing, ironically enough, chanting exercises so that they can project who they “are” for this piece.
Anyway, as the session goes, the teacher gets the actors/characters into a situation and then hits them with a series of “Who’s Line Is It Anyway” crises and then lets the students react in character impromptu style to what’s going on. The process is messy and at times hard to watch as each of these young actors let themselves go for lack of a better term and become these other people. Oftentimes, the experience is highly emotional. It was for me also when I watched it. I also tried to do it and found it very hard to let myself go in the process. Anyway, in this case the possibilities are open, especially for these talented kids, whereas for me, the pent up rational introvert that I can be at times could not let it happen effectively. I could not let go of my critique side long enough to merely experience what was happening.
And this goes for the contemplation as well in what has now become a longwinded example (sorry). For the students who are well trained even at this young age, the channels are open because they aren’t holding back anything. They are leaving themselves open to a higher or at least theatrical truth. Call this the higher state of consciousness I mentioned in my last post.
In the oddest of my examples on this board then, I have pinned myself as the theist because I went into the process with preconceived notions about my character and about the situations I was placed in. I couldn’t be disconnected from myself because one I lacked the training frankly and two because I am a very, very skeptical person in such things. As with most things in life, one’s talents in one arena are you’re a burden in other ways.
My point in all this is to say that a life experience taken in with blinders on can skew the results, this is as true for an atheist as it is for any theist. I am abundantly aware of that. If a theist (not necessarily you) experiences something amazing like what you describe to Ninja Artist above, something that fits into your "Whoa, that was weird" category, then he or she is bound by the limitations of the mindset catalyst as well. You say so yourself in that example:
So calculate the odds. I stayed in the mountains for an undetermined amount of time (I actually left a day earlier than my use permit allowed). I stand all day on an onramp and get picked up by the FIRST car going the other way. I get dropped of at a "random" onramp the NEXT day in just the right window of time where the son of my pastor is a going to be (I stood at that one less than an hour - a fast pickup by a hitcher's standard). Now remember, my frame of mind is "where is god leading me?".
This is exactly what I am referring to here. Given your mindset in this case, the assumption would have to be that god is playing a role here (in this case the Judeo Christian god). For me experiencing the same thing (minus the god motivation obviously), I would definitely chalk it up to mere coincidence, although an unlikely chance all the same. He only thing that sheds light on either of our ways of looking at this is to accept what we can know and what we can explain rationally.
Again, I feel there is little in the way for assuming any outside force here. By outside, I mean outside of logical thinking. And I tread softly here because of your statement earlier about not wanting to get too personal. Please keep in mind that I speak from my own perspective.
In your story, what would the conclusion have been if you had crossed the road after 8.5 hours and not been picked up there either? Let’s say for the sake of argument that you later get picked up by a farmer who lives in that area and are given a place to stay, some work and some food. What if there you met a girl and fell in love? Would that have been just as “whoa”? “God” kept me on that road until the farmer could find me, right? What if, perish the thought, you get picked up on the other side of the road by a psycho who kills you? In looking at the chain of events, would that have been equally worthy of “whoa”? And if your pastor hadn’t have seen you and brought you back to SD, and another interesting course would have played out, would that have been worthy of “whoa”? All of these credited to god, all of these highly rational outcomes in my book.
In the end, life, fate if you will, is the architect of “whoa” and it is so for both positive and negative outcomes. It simply is what it is, a series of events run through a matrix of human interaction that leads to many, millions of unlikely and likely outcomes every single day. My mindset being what it is “contemplates” this outcome and the ones I could just as easily cite and says this is proof of nothing more than life on our planet. Yours it seems at least applies the “whoa” to something more than that natural explanation, though I am being very cautious at this point not to say supernatural. Perhaps I should just leave it at “unexplained”? Hell, that term would work fine for me actually, though I gather it lacks the teeth you would use for your way of thinking.
Getting back to god then. If, for the sake of argument we are talking about an abstract god that means nothing more than the forces that make things tick, flow downhill, orbit stars and exponentially expand, then yes I would say it is “god” also. But then god is a vacuous term meaning much the same as any nondescript entity. I figure that this is not something that would sit well with you. I can’t tell to be honest.
If, however, you are claiming that ‘god’ has even a modicum of forethought and a smidgen of ability to interact with you on that clandestine road trip then I have to say that you are contradicting yourself in claiming that you give no supernatural explanations any credence.
This brings us right back to spirituality, like it or not. Your “whoa” is my “whoa” if indeed that thinking process is one that takes in probability and looks at it objectively, I argue as the students do on the stage who let go and be in the moment outside of their own heads. If you in your mindset apply a corporeal god to what happened (as it appears you did at that time) then the contemplation is limited to the degree that you are almost required to stack assumptions up that lead straight into supernatural constructs. And this is why we can’t seem to meet on a definition of terms.
I hope this reads as I intended it.
Cheers!
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Offline I hope this reads as I intended it.Cheers!
Heh heh. Probably not. But that's why we keep trying.
A corporeal entity of godlike stature is closer to what I believe than some sppoky spirit thing. But it is not necessary that it be constructed of any currently known states of matter or energy. A hundred years ago, neutrinos were not yet conceived of. But they were there, weakly interacting with the more mundane particles. In my mind, for anything to interact with my reality it must be tied to it in some way. As I am material, then it must have some material component. Perhaps it is some as yet unkown field, force, or whatever, but any such entity must be material or I have no possible way of interacting with it.
Assigning cause to such an entity is a completely different question. Here in lies a the real problem. In the hitchiking story, there are two views that explain it - one that it was a highly improbale but still random event. The other, it was possibly some interaction with a divine entity. How can one tell the difference? The real problem as I see it is that this is the type of event sequence that cannot be subjected to direct empirical analysis. While we can build circumstantial evidence for random chance, it is still a sreies of events that by its very nature is not replicatable so that any hypothesis, divine or random, cannot be tested. We can deveop neuralogical and psychological explanations, but even these are based on obervation of different event sequences and drawing commonalities between them. But the actual events in question cannot be subject to experimentation. So it leaves the question for me, how many times must such improbabilities occur before they outweigh the possibility of random chance? If such a weird sequence of events happens once in a life time, it seems more plausible that it was nothing more than random. But when similar weirdness happens over a period of years with some regularity, what happens to the strength of the randomness explanation? At what point does the correlation between self-induced states of mind and external events outside of ones direct control become sufficient to suggest some other causality than simple randomenss?
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Offline all this made me consider some survey i heard about, where people who tried to solve a new crossword puzzle in a newspaper that noone has seen before, scored much less than people who tried to solve an old newpaper crossword puzzle that people have solved before, even though they themselves have never seen it.
Cheers!
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Offline evil religion wrote:Cpt_pineapple wrote:Argument by popularity.
Nope its not an argument from popularity. It just happens to be a statistical fact that the experts in how the world actually works (scientists) happen to be far more likely to be atheist. In fact the more educated a person is the more likely they are to be atheist. Generally the more developed a country is the higher the propoertion of atheists. The higher the leves of literacy in a given population generally the higher the levels of atheism. You can draw what you want from these statistical facts. These statistics do warrent an explanation clearly something intersting is going on here.
But the number of Theist scientists are not zero.
Indeed. But why are the experts on how the world actually works far far less likely to believe in God? You can't fish out the odd few scientists who happen to believe in God and use them as "evidence" that science has no conflict with religion. Science and religion are quite clearly in conflict and the statistics back this up. A scientific education tends to lead to a rejection of God theory.
Quote:Quote:I personally think it's because they don't think God and science can co-exist.Some may some may not. I would actually be in the camp that thinks that sience and God can not co-exist. I really can't see how they can.
Why not? Why don't you think they could co-exist?
Because magic is not a scientific concept.
Because God is not an explanation
Because all the evidence tends to point to a universe in which God does not exist.
Quote:Quote:Science can only take us so far.
Perhaps but at least it takes us somewhere. Religion explains nothing, its tells us nothing useful about the world, it is useless in this respect. It may comfort and support people it could conceivably help some people be better kinder people but at explaining how the world actually works religion is a complete and utter failure.
Music doesn't explain how the world works, Literature doesn't explain how the world works..etc...
Indeed. But it does not pretend to. Religion does. It makes claims about how the world is. It makes very important and fundamental claims about how the world started, is ordered and how it will continue. Music, literartue and art make no such claims they exist within their own domain. Religion try's to sneak into the domain of science namely "our understanding of the way the world works" it has no business doing this. Unfortunatly if religion accepts its true place then it is nothing more than a fiction.
Quote:Quote:Quote:Quote:It's like getting an upgraded computer, you don't need it, but it helps you understand things.But God does not explain anything. Magic is not an explanation!
I didn't say explain, I said understand.
Ok then God does not increase out understaning of anything.
Invoking magic in no way deepens our level of understanding
It increases our understanding of why.
No it does not it merely begs a whole load of other "whys?" and "hows?". It does not explain the origion of anything its just means we ask "where did God come from?".
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Offline Assigning cause to such an entity is a completely different question. Here in lies a the real problem. In the hitchiking story, there are two views that explain it - one that it was a highly improbale but still random event. The other, it was possibly some interaction with a divine entity.
Isn’t this a false dichotomy? What if it is an entity of great power but not of a divine origin? What if the entity is actually an advanced species of humans (say time travelers) or aliens who are randomly experimenting on us measly humans? Isn’t it just as improbable to be picked up on the other side of the road by the second, third, twenty-fifth and one hundredth car as it is the first? And in your case it wasn’t really the first, it was the first after 8.5 hours sure, but that significantly changes the wonder does it not? I agree that unlikely is a good word, but I am still not impressed to the point that this needs to be given a status greater than the anecdotal fact that it makes for a good story. All of the things that happened to you are well within the realm of possibility because they are all natural events.
What are the odds of rolling a 6 when you pick up a di? Well it is 5:1. What are the odds of rolling that di and getting 6 again? The same. How crazy is it if you do that 6 times in a row? Okay pretty slim in the chance category. But if you have 6.5 billion people doing it, could you imagine one person getting it? If so, does this induce a god as an agent? I would say an emphatic no. Why, because it is physically possible. The gravity involved and the shape of the dice on a flat surface requires that 6 numbers come up. It’s as simple as that.
As I have mentioned in other threads on creationist topics, a poster on this board or another (I honestly can’t remember) wrote that the best way to cut the legs out from under a creationist who claims near impossible probabilities to explain how our planet and life came into existence is to listen to them talking about huge “near impossibilities” for size, weight, height, temperature variations etc. and then wait until they say how improbable our existence would be without a creator. All one needs is a couple rolls of quarters and that same flat surface. Toss the coins out on the table, floor, whatever and then ask what the odds are you would get that exact combination of heads and tails in that exact pattern. Then ask the creationist if he/she sees you as god, divine or otherwise.
If the conversation is still taking place you could point out that all the improbable numbers used by him/her to show how lucky we are to be here underscores what we do see in the universe, a whole lot of nothing but space and dead planets that didn’t get it. What would impress us to see divine will would be numerous planets with life given our reality in the universe. The same holds true here for things that are natural that take place on planet earth. The feelings we have when we are fortunate enough (or conversely unfortunate enough) to end up in one of these cases can be called spiritual, sure . But then I would call that natural too for all the reasons I’ve mentioned before.
Cheers!
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Offline Wave Freak
How can one tell the difference? The real problem as I see it is that this is the type of event sequence that cannot be subjected to direct empirical analysis. While we can build circumstantial evidence for random chance, it is still a sreies of events that by its very nature is not replicatable so that any hypothesis, divine or random, cannot be tested. We can deveop neuralogical and psychological explanations, but even these are based on obervation of different event sequences and drawing commonalities between them. But the actual events in question cannot be subject to experimentation.
Okay, it is certainly unlikely that someone would want to spend money on an experiment of this sort, but this is not synonymous with not being able to do it at all. For instance, the factors are tangible enough to be of use in selecting a group of controlled hitchhikers, some theist and some atheist, polytheist, etc. and give them a rouse that the experiment is something completely different than it is.
We could get a group of drivers going in either direction along a chosen road, driving at times of the day that we specify as relevant for the experiment, also keeping the drivers in the dark about what is going on. The drivers could be surveyed beforehand on a host of topics, imbedded within this could be questions about whether or not they pick up hitchhikers. We could select what we deem the appropriate number of drivers representing all kinds of people who would then drive in the specific directions we determined were appropriate. On top of all that we could select hitchers in a core group of friends/family so that we could have these significant relations driving up or down roads at various points as well to see if “connection” could be made. The data could be collected. People who know far better than I do about these things could pick apart how poorly I did this experiment (as I am sure you are about to do) and then—assuming money and interest—someone could do the experiment again in a far better way.
There could be all sorts of data, the most important of which would be the impressions made by those people who were picked up and what their perceptions were after the fact. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that the people who found themselves in even somewhat similar circumstances to your story would apply the meaning they had going in, the atheist saying that it is coincidence, the monotheist applying a god construct if unlikely enough, and the others following in their ilk as well.
This is definitely a problematic endeavor for sure. But it could be done and the empirical evidence would exponentially grow the more the test was run. I think it would be fascinating if it were actually done for what it is worth. Again, I’m not sure of the human importance of such an experiment, but I am very certain that motivated scientists could definitely do this and data could be compiled.
Cheers!
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Offline Quote:Assigning cause to such an entity is a completely different question. Here in lies a the real problem. In the hitchiking story, there are two views that explain it - one that it was a highly improbale but still random event. The other, it was possibly some interaction with a divine entity.Isn’t this a false dichotomy? What if it is an entity of great power but not of a divine origin? What if the entity is actually an advanced species of humans (say time travelers) or aliens who are randomly experimenting on us measly humans?
I'm decidedly different than most theists on this. I don't consider the extent of such an entity important, only the role. I can barely, if at all, understand what human conciousness is. Speculating on whether a super-concious entity is infinite, omniscient, ompnipotent or divine (what ever divine means) is an excercise in futility. These words lack any real meaning to me. What is important to me is how I fit into the schema. I believe that the nature of my finite conciousness puts me in a position that at some point an entity of sufficiently great conciousness outstrips my ability to discern entities of even greater conciousness. In other words, an entity with a conciousness level of X is so far beyond me that I have no way of differentiating between this entity and an entity of conciousness level X+1. In my mind, there could be an infinite number of entites of greater conciousness than X but I cannot discern any difference between them. I may not even be able to tell if they are separate entities and in appearance they may manifest to my mind as a single being. The point is that once the limit of my comprehension is reached there is nothing more that I can grasp.
Isn’t it just as improbable to be picked up on the other side of the road by the second, third, twenty-fifth and one hundredth car as it is the first? And in your case it wasn’t really the first, it was the first after 8.5 hours sure, but that significantly changes the wonder does it not? I agree that unlikely is a good word, but I am still not impressed to the point that this needs to be given a status greater than the anecdotal fact that it makes for a good story. All of the things that happened to you are well within the realm of possibility because they are all natural events.
All this is true until you correlate the state of mind to the events. You cannot divorce the motivation for crossing the road from the sequence of events. It is part of the reality of the situatiion. It is part of the chain of causality. If I had not crossed at THAT time, THAT car would not have picked me up and THAT person would not have dropped me off where the son of my pastor would have picked me up. And BOTH those people supplied the context of a choice - do I go to San Francisco and experiment with a hedonistic lifestyle or back to my home town in San Diego and continue down a "spiritual" road? It is not the only fact that these events were improbable, but that these improbable events happened within a context and that the actors in that context were fully relevant to the state of mind that inititated the events.
It is this context that can't be duplicated in any experiment. You could take 1000 hitch hikers and a million drivers and set up some random driving, pick up the hitch hikers thing, but you have already destroyed the context. All the drivers and hitchers would know they were part of an experiment and it would fundamentally change the states of mind involved. An accurate re-inactment would require that the drivers were going about their normal daily business without any knowledge of any particular hitch hiker or that they weer even being observed. The drivers would have to end up picking up a hitch hiker that they personally know. So either all the drivers would have to know the target, or all the drivers would have to know a different target. If all the drivers know the target, then it is certain that the target would be pickd up by somebody known to him. If all the drivers have a different target, then you would need as many hitchers as drivers. I find it difficult to figure out the probablity of the events even as described.
Lets try to frame it in probability. I left point A at time T. So the first question is what is the probablity that I would be dropped off on that particular on ramp where the pastors son picked me up? All of the rides I got getting to the mountains can be discarded. I was going there directly. On the way down, the events are dependant. So the total probablity requires knowing the probablity of each part. So what is the probablity that the first ride I got would drop me off at the place where the second guy would pick me up and subsequently drop me off where Gary (the son of the pastor) would come along. Let's arbitraily say that in the mountains, one out of 10 cars picks up a hitch hiker. So we could calculate the potential rides in Idyllwild as 10% of the cars that are passing where I stood. In this pool of potential rides, what is the probablity that the driver that picks me up will be going all the way down the mountain and droppping me off at the particular place where the second driver would pick me up? I can't begin to assign a probablity. What do I need to know to calculate this? And I haven't even got to the second driver. And further, with the second driver, he not only picked me up, but actually hung around the area and gave me a ride the next day. So not only would we need a "random" pickup at the second point, but the second driver would have to have some motivation for giving me a ride the next day. I'm sorry but I just see no way of replicating this sequence of evenets in any empirical manner because it is not only random pickups and drop offs but it also requires understanding intent and motivation of the actors. How can you build an experiemnt that incorporates both the randomness of the hitch hiking and the intent and motivations of the actors?
So you see, it is not just the randomness that made it weird. Add in the particular actors, there intent an motivations, and it really gets out there.
Help me out here. How can I frame this is terms of probablity?
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Offline I'm decidedly different than most theists on this. I don't consider the extent of such an entity important, only the role. I can barely, if at all, understand what human conciousness is. Speculating on whether a super-concious entity is infinite, omniscient, ompnipotent or divine (what ever divine means) is an excercise in futility.
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Offline It's starting to feel like we are having two separate conversations. Civil, maybe even cordial, but different none the less. What is it we are trying to accomplish here?
I related a series of events. These events when taken in the full context of the actors were highly improbable. My question is when do highly improbable events become so unlikely as to indicate a purely random explanation is insufficient and you must begin to look for some other cause?
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Offline Hello, Wavefreak
Darn it! I'd hoped to get back to work in time to post these before you had a chance to respond. I had meant to have three separate posts (thus the numbering) but ran into life trouble. I hope that by posting the other two I begin to answer your question above. I think I should not edit what I've written so as to stay true to my own thinking as the issues develop in this topic.
I'll only add that my reason for e-chatting with you is to better understand your position. I suffer no conversion delusions as I hope you do not. I'm engaging you to understand myself and my beliefs better and to understand yours, which I find more challenging than your run of the mill theist.
Here are the remaining two posts from yesterday...
What is important to me is how I fit into the schema. I believe that the nature of my finite conciousness puts me in a position that at some point an entity of sufficiently great conciousness outstrips my ability to discern entities of even greater conciousness. In other words, an entity with a conciousness level of X is so far beyond me that I have no way of differentiating between this entity and an entity of conciousness level X+1. In my mind, there could be an infinite number of entites of greater conciousness than X but I cannot discern any difference between them. I may not even be able to tell if they are separate entities and in appearance they may manifest to my mind as a single being. The point is that once the limit of my comprehension is reached there is nothing more that I can grasp.
All this is true until you correlate the state of mind to the events. You cannot divorce the motivation for crossing the road from the sequence of events. It is part of the reality of the situation.
{fixed for readability}
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Offline … If all the drivers know the target, then it is certain that the target would be picked up by somebody known to him.
Yes, I understand that there are considerations for tester bias all over the place with my example, but in the end you have to face the fact that a driver picking up someone along a frequented road is a natural event that happens quite often know doubt, and for any number of very logical reasons. The only thing that creates the impression of “whoa” is the person who has the mindset to do so. You’ve all but admitted this yourself. Regarding the quote, what if it was your parents or someone else who knew you were on this journey, who rallied the troops to find you? What if they are sworn to secrecy about this? You’d never know the difference and your conclusion would be based on a false premise from the get-go because you’d think the finding of you as quite unlikely, but in fact it would be the outcome of a purposeful search.
Lets try to frame it in probability…
Whether or not I accept the probability scenario you give here is irrelevant. If you are a person who holds to your definition of the scientific method (whether applied by a layman or a professional), then any truth derivative given a chain of events needs to be hashed out within the confines of this method. All of the numbers in the world won’t change the fact that the events are natural and fall somewhere along the line of probable outcomes given all of the data going in. Your question about the odds of the pastor dropping his son off at that exact place where you would be dropped off after two rides is missing the point in my opinion because no matter how high you stack the odds, you have to run it through a matrix of 6.5 billion people to get an accurate number. The gargantuan leap from that to an interactive, corporeal, unseen, unnamed, completely out of the bounds of anything we can qualify naturally entity is more than you need to take in any context. If it weren’t for the mindset you insist is so important in viewing your experience, Wavefreak, then it wouldn’t be anything more than a random set of events, so much so that the same events with a different mindset prove to be either unimportant or lead to entirely different conclusions for the person experiencing them. Stack all of these potential occurrences up and what it comes down to is random interaction taking place for billions of people simultaneously with all kinds of nutty things going on.
And I would say that puts all the probability of life for all of us into the proper perspective.
This is a highly enjoyable conversation for me.
Cheers!
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Offline It has been an interesting exchange. I should probably clarify a few things. First, I don't consider the events described as proof of god's existence. My personal convictions come from numerous experiences, of which this one is but a piece of a much larger puzzle. What I find relating this story good for is that it just far enough "out there" to make it a good launching point for this type of discussion. But it isn't so bizarre as to be immediately dismissed as rantings (I saw Jesus in a cloud! Glory!)
What is certain is that to be picked up by my pastor's son in the middle of LA county after randomly hitchiking several hundred miles is highly improbable. This is exactly the type of thing that many people would say is evidence of god's interaction with our lives. For many people, invoking a higher power (ooze if you wish) is a BETTER explanation than waving it away as an extraordinary coincidence. Here in lies the crux of the problem atheists face. There are many people that can relate similar stories. Stories that stretch probablities to the limits of believability, strectching them to the point were invoking a higher power becomes an easier explanation. An atheist saying that random events is as good or better an explanation as god holds no water with people already pre-disposed towards belief.
As an aside, when I left San Diego, the only person I told I was leaving was my mother. I didn't tell her where I was going and she told me she didn't care if I ever came back. We had a special relationship. There was no one looking for me. Also, my first sexual experience was as child with an authority figure. My first consensual experience was homosexual. There was some very real relevance to the sexuality of the man that picked me up, offered me a life in San Francisco and ultimately dropped me off at the spot where my pastor's son would be soon driving by.
One of the problems I have with the statement that there is no evidence of a god like entity in the universe is that I have yet to hear a good explanation of what sufficient evidence would be. I have heard "god sperm in a test tube" which is clearly facetious. And I also expect that most people think of evidence of god as something dramatic like walking on water or raising the dead. Maybe these "miracles" would conform to the classic Christian god concepts, but for me it seems far more likely that any interaction would be vastly more subtle. The example of the simple events described could even be a starting point of looking for such subtleties. Conceivably, if we were able to assign a reasonable probablity to the events, and were were to collect enough similar events from a diverse population whose probabilities could also be calculated, we could calculate the deviation from pure randomness. Were such a deviation shown, then we would have evidence of SOMETHING, now wouldn't we? But such a study will never happen, IMHO. Those that are inclined to believe will not care - they see enough evidence already. Those inclined to non-belief will see no point in such an excercise.
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Offline Hello again wavefreak,
So you believe, based on your personal experience, that god acts by skewing probabilities?
I agree that we could test for this, in some form I think there have been studies, but as you say: The skeptics find the flaws in the study and the true believers dismiss the skeptics. Would you change your mind if such an experiment found nothing? Would I?
Doesn't this subtlety seem odd thou?
You look at "mediums", "healing prayer", some "alternative medicine", and all claim this kind of subtlety. And if you investigate the claim, many times the believers blame the investigation for the failure of their claim.
Doesn't it bother you that there is no process behind this subtelty?
For most of the actions we see in the universe, we know of a process behind it. Your claim about god subtle actions and many other theistic or pseudo-scientific claims lack any reasonable process for their explanation.
When you balance the evidence you have for everything else you know about how the world works (a.k.a. science) with the ease of human brains to find patterns in noise and randomness and to misjudge statistics, I find it more likely that all these instances of "subtlety" are a product of the brain and not a manifestation of the divine.
Cheers,
Richard
A mystic is someone who wants to understand the universe, but is too lazy to study physics.
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Offline Hello again wavefreak,
So you believe, based on your personal experience, that god acts by skewing probabilities?
That is an interesting way of putting it. I suppose I could go with that to a certain extent. It might not be the only way such interaction takes place.
I agree that we could test for this, in some form I think there have been studies, but as you say: The skeptics find the flaws in the study and the true believers dismiss the skeptics. Would you change your mind if such an experiment found nothing? Would I?
To remain intellectually honest, I would have to accept the results. But I have to admit that my personal bias would require a pretty definitive outcome.
Doesn't this subtlety seem odd thou?
Not at all. Neutrinos barely interact with "normal" matter, yet without them the universe would not hold together. Even the more visible forces such as gravity and electromagnatism are in a certain balance. Subtlety seems written into the universe. I would expect that any god scale entity would not violate such balance and subtlety without extreme cause.
You look at "mediums", "healing prayer", some "alternative medicine", and all claim this kind of subtlety. And if you investigate the claim, many times the believers blame the investigation for the failure of their claim.
I think this is part of the problem with investigating this. If belief is required, non-belief in an investigator would effect the investigation. I tend to think that most such spritualism is a crock, but I've also experienced eenough "odd" things to make me question some of my assumptions.
Doesn't it bother you that there is no process behind this subtelty?
No process or no known process? To me, there must be some process. Having magic unfettered by anything is tantamount to chaos. The universe is complex, but it has structure. It is not in a state of anarchy.
For most of the actions we see in the universe, we know of a process behind it. Your claim about god subtle actions and many other theistic or pseudo-scientific claims lack any reasonable process for their explanation.
Well, at least for the events I described, there was a process. It involved time spent in contemplation, preparing my mind for something. That is a process. But what I think many skeptics are looking for is more akin to an exchange of energy or particles between agents, something that is quantifiable and subject to mathematical description.
When you balance the evidence you have for everything else you know about how the world works (a.k.a. science) with the ease of human brains to find patterns in noise and randomness and to misjudge statistics, I find it more likely that all these instances of "subtlety" are a product of the brain and not a manifestation of the divine.
Cheers,
Richard
I understand this position, even if I don't agree with it. The one thing that is both difficult to describe and quantify is the psychological impact of some experiences. A single series of events such has my hitch hiking story is at the very least an amazing series of coincidences. But given the mental state induced through the contemplative excercise it carried a great deal of import. How is it that random events so cleanly dovetailed with the non-randomness of my thoughts? And taken in isolation, such an experience might be written off as a weird, but cool, trip. But taken in context of a whole chain of similar experiences, then the psycological impact is magnified many fold.
Another problem is how can you separate confirmation bias from actual events? Part of the problem with this is that any contemplative excercise of this type pre-supposes belief. A person must both believe and want such interaction with divinity to take place. But the state of belief itself affects the interpretation of any outcome.
And yet another problem is that, if we posit that a divinity is self aware and willful, then we have to deal with it not operating according to our whims. It may or may not react in any manner consistent with our expectations. Even in studying human psychology, the experiments have to be carefully crafted to eliminate bias - sometimes to the point of setting up tests that appear to the subject to be looking for one thing when in actually, the researcher is investigating something completely different. Sometimes I find it amusing that we could expect god to allow us to investigate him/her. "Excuse me. God. Could you sit still for a minute while I hook you up to my god detector?"
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Offline Echoing you I have to say: I understand your position, even if I don't agree with it.
Here is another angle to discuss. Let's say a person has a personal experience which induces harmful effects.
What would you consider the cause was? The same god you get your positive personal experiences from? (I assumed they are positive) Or a mental illness, personal problem, depression?
Cheers
A mystic is someone who wants to understand the universe, but is too lazy to study physics.
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That’s a nifty double standard, don’t you think? You are honest enough to note that you haven’t any empirical or scientific explanations for what you have experienced, but you can say “for certain” that the events that happened to you are not products of the Thetan victims of Xenu, leprechauns, or the Pants Pixies of the G-String Nebula. If you haven’t done the empirical or scientific work, by what means do you achieve that certainty in objective standards?
I have to say that you seem to have employed reasonable tools for not accepting these explanations for a host of reasons I would probably agree with wholeheartedly. Mythologies do tend to fall short of the mark scientifically speaking. But then there is that final step you haven’t taken which relates to your personal mythology that for some reason doesn’t get lumped together with the rest of the nonsense. Obviously you are free to play whatever favorites you like, and it seems you admit that in the quote above. I for one would have a very hard time allowing myself this duplicity.
And I should say that technically you do have at least an empirical hypothesis in that you claim the experiences you had “are best interpreted as spiritual.” Well, if you’ve come to that conclusion through your own experience and your own duplicity, that would make your conclusion empirically derived. Not soundly derived, but at least empirical from your own perspective.
But as with anything in the real world, conclusions are only as good as the process under which they are derived. And the definitions are important as always. By spiritual, do you mean “pertaining to the spirit or soul” or do you mean something akin to what Sam Harris means, something like “pertaining to the mind or intellect”? As with the word theory, there are certainly bones to be picked before tossing the word around too loosely.
Using the latter definition then, I have no doubt that your experiences were spiritual ala Sam Harris. The caveat of course is not allowing the emotions that come from the higher state of consciousness that leads to an earthly spirituality to lead one astray into flights of imaginary fancy. At least that is how I see things.
Assuming the feelings are connected ex-corporally to some higher being would be just such a move in my opinion. I would call it a cop out to stop the investigation there frankly. That you readily admit to not having any scientific support for your conclusion seems to lend credence to the idea that you really haven’t done much in the way of investigation in the first place. It seems to me that you’ve hitched your wagon to the first palpitation of higher meaning and left it at that. If the experience is so significant for you, why toss up your hands so easily, if indeed my quick summation is accurate? If I am wrong and you have indeed endeavored to find this scientific evidence you claim is lacking, may I asked by what process you underwent to come up with nothing at all in the area of science? Actually, I’d be much more interested in how you achieved objective “certainty” that leprechauns are not behind all the really neat stuff that happens to us to make us wonder.
Cheers!
Nope its not an argument from popularity. It just happens to be a statistical fact that the experts in how the world actually works (scientists) happen to be far more likely to be atheist. In fact the more educated a person is the more likely they are to be atheist. Generally the more developed a country is the higher the propoertion of atheists. The higher the leves of literacy in a given population generally the higher the levels of atheism. You can draw what you want from these statistical facts. These statistics do warrent an explanation clearly something intersting is going on here.
Some may some may not. I would actually be in the camp that thinks that sience and God can not co-exist. I really can't see how they can.
Perhaps but at least it takes us somewhere. Religion explains nothing, its tells us nothing useful about the world, it is useless in this respect. It may comfort and support people it could conceivably help some people be better kinder people but at explaining how the world actually works religion is a complete and utter failure.
Ok then God does not increase out understaning of anything.
Invoking magic in no way deepens our level of understanding
So you reject any supernatural God I presume?
Interesting.
What natural properties does God have?
How did he overcome the conservation of energy when he created teh universe?
Great. Then how did this entity come to exist? How did it cause universe? How did it exist outside the universe prior to its creation? How do you explain the existence of a hughely complex entity capabable of thought?
I don't see why this means that there is a God though. It one thing to say that your personal experiance is not currently explainable by any known physical process it is quiote another to then move on to say therfore God! Its a classic God of the gaps falicy.
I don't understand where you see duplicity. If I wanted the easiest answers, I would hang out at a psychics forum and have all the personal validation I could possibly desire. I could probably spin it up into fucking hero status. But my presence here signals a desire for something more "real". Nobody cuts me any slack at this site. I don't endure that for the hell of it.
There is also a very real practical consideration here. I haven't the time nor resources to scientifically investigate anything. I would think that most of the people that post here, like me, are not scientists and that even those that are are not studying these phenomena. Also, I suspect it would be very difficult to find funding for something so speculative. So the rigorous empirical approach that would satisfy the minds of RSS is at this point in time quite impossible.
I am just a regular Joe of above average intelligence trying to make sense of life. It's the best I have to offer. Sorry it can't be more.
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Are you able to describe these events, or whatever, in any detail? It's funny you mention this because my cousin Sean said VERY similar things happened to him before he went insane. We had talks about it a crap load before it hit... it intense skyzophrenia.
He was not a religious person, and isn't now, but he said that he had certain experiences that he could not describe that made him certain that there was a God.
Also, it simply seems really fake when someone says that they experienced something that they can't put into words. If able, use words that emulate other experiences to help paint a picture. For example, when guitarists describe their guitar tone they use words like "crunch" and "muddy". If able, try to describe it the best you can. I'm genuinely curious about this experience.
Edit: I didn't mean for this to come off as an attack or anything. Just giving a personal experience of something that someone said they experienced and couldn't describe it. I'm EXTREMELY curious of what this encounter consisted of.
Sorry, but not god of the gaps. I am saying that a specific personal experience was an encounter with god. I am not saying that because it lacks a scientific explanation it must be god.
Is that woo-woo enough for you?
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Fortunately, I am not schizophrenic. I have been fully evaluated by neurologists, neuropsychologists, etc. While I am prone to depression, I have none of the traits of any the psychotic disorders. Accept for a benign veneous angioma, my brain is structurally normal.
As for any description, let's just say my brain was on fire. Or more accurately, my mind. I never did any hallucinogenics, never smoked tobacco, was drunk once. Smoked grass for about 6 months when I was 18. Gave it up for religious reasons. Then I gave up religion for religious reasons
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But the number of Theist scientists are not zero.
Why not? Why don't you think they could co-exist?
Music doesn't explain how the world works, Literature doesn't explain how the world works..etc...
Ok then God does not increase out understaning of anything.
Invoking magic in no way deepens our level of understanding
It increases our understanding of why.