More Religious Nutters

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

As for mysticism, it actually has a much more firm and set meaning than "superstition": belief in a form of truth which must be attained through direct experience rather than intellectual exercise. Wikipedia's English article on it doesn't seem too bad. It'll probably do a better job of explaining it than I can. I think the url is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism

The problem here is that thinking in terms of "direct experience" isn't really rationally supportable.

It is possible for people to have hallucinatory experiences, and yet we do not feel that there is anything strange about scientific explanations of these. In fact, the material basis of religious experience is an area of current study IIRC.

The Greeks (with the notable exception of Aristotle) used to think that their dead ancestors visited them in dreams, because they didn't know how dreams occur (take this from someone who has waded through screeds of Greek Dream Theory). We have a pretty good idea of how dreams occur now, and it isn't visiting dead ancestors.

Now which is the more likely explanation: that God is talking to you, or that something abnormal is happening in your brain? Dostoyevsky had many such experiences due to his epilepsy.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Ok, let's try again. So what makes your beliefs better than those of "kooks?"

Jesus. Now get back to work, your Revolution misses you and it has its work cut out for it. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have an in-depth discussion of religion with a hardcore commie who knows nothing of the subject and doesn't want to, but I'm a methodical person, and I like to complete my "pointlessly masochistic dead-end conversations to have before I die" list in order. I still have to ask Ron Paul what he thinks of NATO and have that chat with PETA about USDA meat plant inspections.

Agathon, if you'd ever had a religious experience you'd know you're talking nonsense. Such feelings are completely different from anything experienced in normal life. You might as well suggest the brain can make up a totally new color or smell. Also, I believe what you were trying to say was, "people examining accounts of Dostoyevsky's life have chalked his religious experiences up to epilepsy because they dismiss out of hand the possibility of them being anything more." If you get to call him, St. Seraphim, St. Teresa of Avila, the Buddha, et al crazy, I get to allege that scientific evidence is a trick caused by witchcraft.

[Whaleboy]

Elok as far as I can tell, you haven't distinguished between superstitious kookery and Christianity. What do you think is the distinction here?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

Agathon, if you'd ever had a religious experience you'd know you're talking nonsense. Such feelings are completely different from anything experienced in normal life. You might as well suggest the brain can make up a totally new color or smell.

I don't think Dostoyevsky was crazy, he was an epileptic.

It really doesn't matter whether I have had a religious experience or not. I'd like you to answer the question of whether you think any mental event (including perceptual events) necessitates the existence of some extra mental reality that directly corresponds to it.

You are assuming that this has to be like a colour or smell. It doesn't have to be. Philosophers have been aware since Plato that cognition is separate from sensation.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Elok

Wezil...no. Just quit already.

Kuci - Now that was me trolling....

[Elok]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Elok as far as I can tell, you haven't distinguished between superstitious kookery and Christianity. What do you think is the distinction here?

Well, as for superstition, I've spent most of this thread dismissing that label as applied to religions. Superstition is (to me) defined as "folk pseudoscience," and a completely different animal. It describes phenomena measurable and falsifiable by science. I used "kooky" to describe the two examples Kid gave, for different reasons.

In the latter case, UFOs are generally not understood to be supernatural, but to be space aliens. The laws of physics as I understand them are so thoroughly stacked against faster-than-light travel of any kind that I consider the possibility safe to dismiss. With the former, I was overly hasty to apply the label from a consistency POV, albeit I'd want to hear reasons why these spirits made the sound of footsteps if they were not actually impacting the physical world, and why they were bothering to pace around the tent. Xianity has a system of internally consistent reasoning in place to explain all these oddities. Well, most, anyway.

Agathon: I'm not sure we're on the same page here (sorry, but your philosophy-speak really is hard to decode). I'm not saying that religious experiences ARE colors or smells, but analogous to them in a way. It's a common saying in some circles that you can't make up a new color, that our conception of color is bound by the ones we know. You can't invent a color that isn't just a combination of existing ones.

For example, look at your example of Greek dream visitations: say Homer has a dream of Odysseus chasing a centaur around a forest for some reason. The centaur is known to Homer from Greek lore, and it seems to have been compiled from the known entities of horses and men. Homer of course knows what a forest is too, and while he doesn't know what Oddyseus looked like assuming he was a historical person, he has a preexisting concept of "Odysseus," the hero. You could say that his brain assembled those pieces at random into a dream. The same could be said for hallucinations: they assemble things we know or have heard of in nonsensical ways, sometimes quite novel.

But religious experience, or at least the one I had, has no such analogs. It was a presence of a type completely foreign to my experience, impossible to describe accurately because it was like nothing at all in normal life. You're in effect suggesting that the brain is building a house without bricks. There's also the question of why I should disbelieve my own experience when I have an explanation for it (no matter how silly that explanation may sound to you).

The physical aspect of religious experience presents no problem to me, BTW. I assume you're referring to the notorious "God helmets" that zap a part of the brain with magnetism and get people to think they're having one? Why should that bother me? We're physical beings, there's bound to be a physical effect of anything we feel. With a sensation that visceral, I'd be surprised if there were NOT a sign of it in the brain. If anything, the existence of the phenomenon, to me, raises the question of why we have that little reflex in the first place if there is no God for it to respond to. I suppose it could be an evolutionary "glitch," like the appendix, but...eh. That's one BIG glitch.

[Blake]

Buddhism is very big on direct experience, since a part of meditation and just general buddhist practice is to halt the intellectual process, or at least not let it get carried away making up stuff (the brain is great at making up stories to fit experience).

But that is probably at stark contrast with what you'd think mysticism to be - which usually would be making up fanciful stories to fit experience....

You don't have to go far into buddhism at all to gain direct experience of things which psychology doesn't even seem to know exists. A senior buddhist monk probably wouldn't be classified as human by psychology measures, because all those things which a human mind are "meant" to do, don't arise. Psychology probably denies that it's even possible to end the arising of greed and hatred - but from direct experience I know it is. I certainly can't prove to anyone that I no longer experience greed or hatred but I know for myself that these emotions don't arise within my mind.

When I just started my path long ago - that is, believing in Karma and Rebirth. I actually decided to justify my belief because I didn't have the understanding of how those things actually work (I do now).

The justification I used was:
Does this belief lead to harm? Or does this belief lead to good?

Both Karma and Rebirth*, lead to good and not harm, good for myself and good for those I interact with (at least using the logic that "good intentions lead to good outcomes more often than bad intentions do"). So to me, it simply didn't matter what science says on the subject (babble), the ends justify the means and such. If I needed wonky beliefs to become a more moral person, so be it.

Noting that I actually wanted to believe in rebirth and karma so it was more an act of not suppressing those beliefs using the rational process.

* Rebirth needs to be taken in the proper context, and that is with karma. If rebirth is viewed as wiping the slate clean, then it obviously does not lead to good, but if it's viewed as carrying the old baggage over, then it does lead to good. The right buddhist view on both rebirth and karma is essentially "Time will never eliminate your baggage" - and it's encouraged to not think too speculate too much on how time doesn't do that. A good example, is that if you commit suicide, you'll be reborn with the same mental festers which led to the suicidal thoughts arising - if you want to get out of the misery of life, you confront the mental festers directly.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

Agathon: I'm not sure we're on the same page here (sorry, but your philosophy-speak really is hard to decode). I'm not saying that religious experiences ARE colors or smells, but analogous to them in a way. It's a common saying in some circles that you can't make up a new color, that our conception of color is bound by the ones we know. You can't invent a color that isn't just a combination of existing ones.

For example, look at your example of Greek dream visitations: say Homer has a dream of Odysseus chasing a centaur around a forest for some reason. The centaur is known to Homer from Greek lore, and it seems to have been compiled from the known entities of horses and men. Homer of course knows what a forest is too, and while he doesn't know what Oddyseus looked like assuming he was a historical person, he has a preexisting concept of "Odysseus," the hero. You could say that his brain assembled those pieces at random into a dream. The same could be said for hallucinations: they assemble things we know or have heard of in nonsensical ways, sometimes quite novel.

This is called empricism. It is largely discredited, since we have no reason to believe that all of our brain events must represent external realities. There's no reason to believe that. Plenty of mental events have no external correspondent. For example, when I feel fear it is not because my mind is copying fear from the outside world, because fear has no objective reality.

The physical aspect of religious experience presents no problem to me, BTW. I assume you're referring to the notorious "God helmets" that zap a part of the brain with magnetism and get people to think they're having one? Why should that bother me? We're physical beings, there's bound to be a physical effect of anything we feel. With a sensation that visceral, I'd be surprised if there were NOT a sign of it in the brain. If anything, the existence of the phenomenon, to me, raises the question of why we have that little reflex in the first place if there is no God for it to respond to. I suppose it could be an evolutionary "glitch," like the appendix, but...eh. That's one BIG glitch.

OK I did mean something like the "God Helmet". So your position is that such events cannot be explained by brain science without reference to supernatural causes. We know that there are many evolutionary glitches already (like the female orgasm, which appears to be completely unnecessary from a reproductive standpoint).

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_%28biology%29

Which is more likely? That these experiences are some sort of spandrel, or that they are evidence of a deity?

edit: it doesn't even have to be a spandrel. Believing in a deity could have some evolutionary value as a characteristic, but that doesn't make belief in a god true.

[Perfection]

Originally posted by Agathon

edit: it doesn't even have to be a spandrel. Believing in a deity could have some evolutionary value as a characteristic, but that doesn't make belief in a god true.

How would that be?

[b etor]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Ok, let's try again. So what makes your beliefs better than those of "kooks?"

the kooks

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by Wezil
I need to make a thread to poke fun at the mystics next. I've overlooked them so far.

Don't tell me you're at war with the mystics. Next thing you'll be dressing up in a bunny suit and throwing fake blood all over the place.

[DirtyMartini]

HAYDEN, Idaho (AP) -- A man who believed he bore the biblical "mark of the beast" used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.

The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff's deputies arrived Saturday. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.

"It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived," sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. "He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn't bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad."

It was not immediately clear whether the man has a history of mental illness. Hospital spokeswoman Lisa Johnson would not say whether an attempt was made to reattach the hand, citing patient confidentiality.

The Book of Revelation in the New Testament contains a passage in which an angel is quoted as saying: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink the wine of God's fury."

The book of Matthew also contains the passage: "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for you whole body to do into hell."

Wolfinger said he didn't know which hand was amputated

Must have been making too many calls to Reeves, LA.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Agathon
This is called empricism. It is largely discredited, since we have no reason to believe that all of our brain events must represent external realities. There's no reason to believe that. Plenty of mental events have no external correspondent. For example, when I feel fear it is not because my mind is copying fear from the outside world, because fear has no objective reality.

Empiricism is indeed largely discredited...within philosophical circles. That's why I'm not a philosopher. Actually, I'm used to empiricism referring to the general attitude, "if I can't sense it/measure it in some way, for my purposes it ain't there." Your fear example sounds nonsensical to me, since fear is not just an abstract concept but a reaction, and a very important one at that. It's a logical derivation of the instinct to self-preservation combined with the existence of something dangerous to oneself. Religious experience is more of a feeling than a set of sensory-type data, so it might be apt, but can you name a form of psychological disorder that causes the brain to feel something that it never feels under other circumstances? For instance, phobias cause irrational fear, but there are things that it makes sense to be afraid of.

OK I did mean something like the "God Helmet". So your position is that such events cannot be explained by brain science without reference to supernatural causes. We know that there are many evolutionary glitches already (like the female orgasm, which appears to be completely unnecessary from a reproductive standpoint).

Actually, I didn't mean that they cannot be explained without the supernatural (as far as I know, they haven't come up with a good explanation, but that's another matter), just that our understanding of the biological nuts and bolts and ability to stimulate them ourselves does not invalidate the experience itself, any more than our ability to masturbate shows that women don't exist.

Like I said, I know that there are evolutionary non sequiturs, I'm the one that brought 'em up. I would like to point out that the female orgasm is analogous to the male orgasm, like many aspects of the female reproductive system, and furthermore that it has a known cause, namely stimulation of the genitals. The God Helmets work using magnets, no? Is there a natural phenomenon that causes focused magnetic fields to target one region of our brains? Like a really weird solar flare or something?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_%28biology%29

Which is more likely? That these experiences are some sort of spandrel, or that they are evidence of a deity?

edit: it doesn't even have to be a spandrel. Believing in a deity could have some evolutionary value as a characteristic, but that doesn't make belief in a god true.

First of all, I must rap you on the knuckles for speaking of probability in a theological context. That's one of my pet peeves; if you don't know the various causes of an event, along with the frequency of those causes, you can't say anything about its likelihood. Supposedly God doesn't even HAVE a cause, so...I know, figure of speech.

Anyway, back to the discussion. I'm curious as to what the evolutionary value could be. The experiences don't appear to tie in to anything like food or sex, and tend to incapacitate the person having them. St. Seraphim was known to just stand in place, looking awestruck, for hours at a time (though that's an extreme case). The wife of my church's deacon just wept for ten minutes when it hit her. As you and others have pointed out, the condition resembles mental illness. That's not advantageous in any material sense. It sounds like it should be selected against rather than for, but it's apparently pretty widespread. But then neither of us is an evolutionary biologist. Do you know one?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Blake
I certainly can't prove to anyone that I no longer experience greed or hatred but I know for myself that these emotions don't arise within my mind.

can hatred be good if directed against a fictional entity allowing you to derive satisfaction when that fictional entity meets it's well deserved demise?

[Kuciwalker]

Actually, I didn't mean that they cannot be explained without the supernatural (as far as I know, they haven't come up with a good explanation, but that's another matter), just that our understanding of the biological nuts and bolts and ability to stimulate them ourselves does not invalidate the experience itself, any more than our ability to masturbate shows that women don't exist.