Stephen T-B

God works every day - just look around: the sun rose this morning, didn't it? The flowers are blooming, aren't they (well, not in Leeds, but anywhere a bit warmer, I expect), you had something to eat when you got up, didn't you?
And God does all this because he loves you. He gives proof of His love every day in a thousand and one ways
Hallelujah!
- What's that? You did not have something to eat this morning? Your child died last night because she hadn't anything to eat for a week?.The government ordered your house to be demolished because you constructed it on the sidewalk? Your husband has AIDS?
God does all this because he loves you. He gives proof of His love every day in a thousand and one ways
Hallelujah!

Scottyman

The problem that I have is that people use religion to bolster their positions in a negative way. Take George W. for instance and his clan.

Katherine Harris the attourney general of florida declared "God Bless America" after the vote count was killed by the comission and Bush declared the winner by the Supreme Court. An absoutly illegal act in an absurd election process.

George W. loves to refer to other countries as "Axis of Evil" and said he is on a "Moral Crusade" to rid the world of it. He's a religious nut BTW!

The 9/11 hijackers said "Praise to god, Allah is good" before they hurled flying bombs loaded with innocent people into some of the biggest symbols of democracy.

The Palastinians evoke praises to god before they anhialate themselves in crowed public places. The Israelies are just as bad.

The Roman Catholic church has forcibly converted or slaughtered masses of fellow humans in it's colorful history.

The hindus massacre the muslims and vice versa.

The religious right in the US uses fear and blackmail to keep people in line and bend political policy in their favor.

I'm sick and tired of religion. It is the main source of human strife. If people want to pray in private and lead quiet moral lifes so be it but organized religion has caused more harm than good on this planet in my opinion and it's an absolute lie to boot.

Jack the Bodiless

luvluv:

Obviously nobody here can prove or disprove the hypothesis that you actually have received communications from God, but I think we can make a reasonable stab at determining whether you are the sort of person who who is likely to interpret random feelings and happenings as "coming from God".

[armchair psychologist mode]

Let's see what we have to go on.
Compare this with:
We can thus determine that you had already switched over to being a rather committed Christian (actually listening to sermons, reading the Bible, discussing religion with fellow Christians) before coming to the conclusion that God was talking to you. Therefore it was not a contributory factor in your conversion, and you had already adopted the mindset of "seeing the hand of God at work in the world" by this time. You were ready.

Incidentally, we also see a tendency to put the most favorable "spin" on things. You had a good sex life and now you're not getting any, right?
These decisions have measurable negative effects (loss of income). There are no measurable positive effects outside your own mind: you have decided to adopt a positive interpretation of what would otherwise be misfortune. The notion that God is guiding you in the right direction is entirely subjective. You have arbitrarily decided that this is so, and that makes you happy.

In fact, you have sought to argue that these experiences must have been real BECAUSE they didn't lead you to outcomes that you would have chosen! If they did, then God is helping you to achieve your goals. If not, then God is directing you to new goals, which you retrospectively and subjectively decree to be "good". Therefore God cannot fail, either way.
This does not appear to be the case. And the fact that you apparently believe it to be true, nevertheless, says much about your objectivity.

Christianity has NOT been spectaculary successful in India (did you see Hinduwoman's thread entitled "Christians can't even convert Hindus"?). It is Islam, not Christianity, which has made major inroads into Hinduism. Allah has a more persuasive message than YHWH.

Historically, where Christianity HAS prevailed, this has been due almost entirely to technological advantage: the Christians were backed by "more powerful magic" than the natives (guns and such). This was certainly true in the Age of Exploration, but also largely true of the post-Constantine Roman Empire.

If there is one God, then apparently Mohammed is his Prophet. Unlike Christianity, Islam has prevailed against opponents of comparable technology and sophistication. Your belief that Christianity has "the most forceful message" indicates a tendency to translate a wish into a "fact": to credit Christianity with more influence than it actually has.

This implies a tendency to attribute random events to the Christian God.

[/armchair psychologist mode]

luvluv

Sorry, kids. I was violently seperated from internet access the past week by a brutal work schedule.

Honestly, I think perhaps this thread has run it's course, but I'll offer some parting responses.

Firstly, I never said that religious experience was useful as evidence to anyone but the believer. Family Man is absolutely right to suggest that I could be lying. If I were him, that is what I would probably believe. I know that I am not lying, and therefore my personal experience does what it is intended to do... confirm my faith, and no one else's.

Family, I think in a way we have been talking around each other. We agree on your central point, that religious experience is not very good evidence to anyone other than the person who is experiencing it. It may have some effect if it occurs to someone you know personally, and are able to see a great change in their behavior and outlook. But, generally speaking, the religious experiences of a stranger are nearly worthless as evidence. However, this does not mean that they are not genuine. Like lie detectors in court, religious experiences are not admissible evidence because there is so much potential for them to be mistaken, but like lie detectors, they may yet and still occasionally be accurate.

In my mind, you have yet to make a sound logical argument, because you are equivocating "untrustworthy" with "false". The word of a jailhouse informant is generally considered untrustworthy, but that does not make it false. One must establish the veracity of the claim by investigation of the SPECIFIC claim in order to falsify it. Therefore, the veracity of my or of any other persons everyday religious experiences has not been falsified. I just want to make that clear to everyone because I don't think we are being emphatic enough about the distinction within this argument. Untrustworthy evidence is quite often absolutely accurate, even if we have reasons to distrust it's source.

So Family Man I essentially agree that religious experiences are not trustwortyh evidence but I see no logical means by which you can proceed, from that fact alone, to make the positive claim that all claims of religious experiences are false.

I encourage you to formalize the argument and then you will, I think, see that you have not established many of your claims if your goal is to declare religious experiences false. That is all I have been disputing. If you merely wish to declare religious experiences (of others) untrustworthy, I think you have made your case. I would never debate you on whether or not religious experiences of others are anything to stake your life on.

Jack:

I actually make more money now than I did at the time, though my potential for advancement has lessened. Indeed the positive effects are not measurable, because the primary positive effect is my emotional health.

To be more explicit, I used to have very, very bad self-esteem. I honestly thought that my entire human worth was tied up in my success in my field. I can honestly remember thinking, as a freshman in college, that if I didn't achieve a certain amount of success in my first three years out of college that it would be time to consider suicide. I'm ashamed to admit that now. My problem was that I was pursuing success blindly because I thought the only way I could be as good as other people would be to be more succesful than everyone else. I would be blindly following that path right now, feeling good about myself when I succeded in my occupational goals, feeling miserable and worthless when I was not. In my former way of thinking, friends and relationships didn't mean anything. If I wasn't the best, I was nobody.

God took me off of that track by totally taking me out of that world. He let me see what I had in my family and friends, and He let me know that there were people who loved me regardless of what I achieved, and no one more than Himself. He let me know that I had worth just as a human being, capable of loving and being loved. This understanding set me free to be a real, happy, free human being BEFORE I achieved any success. It left me free to persue my dreams not to as a pursuit of some pathetic, elusive and temporal validation, but to persue them with self-love, self-respect, and totally for the enjoyment they bring to myself and others.

If God never knocked me off the career track, I never would have slowed down long enough to really look in the mirror and realize this about myself. Also, in the meantime, I have improved greatly as a writer. My best work, the work I absolutely love the most, has come since my conversion. The work is a reflection of my renewed personal outlook from a perspective of honesty and self-love. I can see a lot of the people around me living their lives in the same way I used to, and in exploring that I believe I have found my voice.

Anyway, if you are going to armchair psycho-analyze me, I thought I'd give you some more information with which to make your hypothesis. If you would dare to actually look at me for a second as a fellow human being, with the same feelings, experiences, and intelligence you have, instead of as some self-brainwased boob, you might find some strand of common experience in my story. It is just possible that I am not brainwashing myself. It is just possible that I have come in contact with an incredible Source of love, power, and caring. It is just possible that this Source has changed the course of my life for the good.

The only measurable change that has occured in me has not been in my head, it has been in my heart. No greater change can be measured than that.

emur

Luvluv

To the extent that your experience of God has led you to positive things like a higher self esteem, better treatment of others and a positive impact on the world around you, I can say bravo!

But others have an experience of God that leds them to split churches, kill abortion doctors, hate homosexuals, attempt genocide, etc.

When looked at from the outside, experiences of God aren't consistent. Inconsistency leads to questions on the validity of such experiences, both good and bad.

So while I am glad that your God experience has made you a better person, I am skeptical of its validity due to the great inconsistencies that I observe with those who claim such things.
Thus I come up with other possible explanations, such as I have read in this thread.

Mel

Family Man

Actually, I'd say it is not very good evidence even to the person that is experiencing it. How experiences are perceived are a very tricky thing, and if society has set up expectations that experiences should be interpreted in a certain way, then we have to question whether the interpretation is a result of the experience itself or that of the expectation.

First, I've seen conversions that have had negative effects on the person having made the conversion: they become arrogant and overly zealous in the promotion of their new beliefs, among other things.

Second, while I've also seen people who have become better people because of a religious conversion, it doesn't follow that that makes the religious belief true. The key to becoming a better person, in my opinion, is to take societal obligations seriously. One does not have to hold a religious belief to do that.

I do agree with this. However, I would only argue that they only may be genuine. I don't think there is any way to verify that they are geniune.

Then you have misunderstood what I've been saying. I've never offered this argument as a proof against the existence of god. I'm simply saying that it cannot be used as evidence for god, because it is untrustworthy. Untrustworthy evidence certainly can't be used to promote a position.

It isn't for us to falsify your claims. It is for you to establish the truth of your claim. If your evidence is untrustworthy, then there is no reason to accept your claim. The fact that your claim may be true despite the untrustworthiness of your evidence doesn't help us come to the conclusion that your claim is true.

That isn't a claim I've made. If a religious experience can be shown not be influenced by societal expectations, then we could claim it is true. All I've said is that I haven't seen a religious experience claim that successfully meets that test.

That is all I've been arguing. And I thank you for your graciousness.

luvluv

Family Man:

Well, of course the person having the religious experience can and should examine the experience to find out whether or not it was genuine. But I think a person, like myself, can be careful in interpreting religious experiences. I still believe a person can look into their own life and their own expectation and even in the face of defeaters confirm rationally that their experience was genuine. I've done that with my own experiences, and I've even re-thought them in the context of this conversation, and frankly I have had experiences which really cannot be denied. I know this very well because these experiences have involved painful sacrifices on my part and, on one occassion, I tried for months to actively DISBELIEVE that a certain message was coming from God. Ultimately, I had to conceed that it was and I had to obey it, but it was a painful, tearful, sacrifice. I find it very hard to believe that such an experience could fit neatly into the paradigm of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So if what you are saying is that everyone, even those who can assess their own experiences in the light of all relevant psychological evidence, should throw away all religious experiences SOLELY on the grounds of sfp, I would say that would be excessive in the extreme. Rather, one should carefully and, as much as is possible, objectively analyze one's experiences to see whether or not they have any potential to be genuine.

Well, this does not falsify the notion that the experiences of both types of people were not genuine. The Bible, for one, is pretty clear on the fact that being religious or even having an actual relationship with God is not guaranteed to make you a better person unless you submit to God's leanings. I was free to make the choice not to listen to God and to go on pursuing my career at whatever cost. If I had done so, I would be a mean and surly person today, and in all likliehod I would probably still identify myself as a Christian. A religious experience, genuine or not, is no guarantee of spiritual progress unless one CHOOSES to allow that to happen. I'm betting that everyone in here has had what could be, if they allowed it, be described as a religious experience. But they have chosen either to ignore it or to distrust it. You may have actually been contacted by God in some unique way, but you chose to dismiss it as untrustworty.

The problem with your stance, Family Man, is this: if you are truly as open to the possibility of the existence of God as you claim, your stance on religious experiences essentially cuts you off from all possible experience of God. If you openly deny the one means by which all those who believe they know God say that God will reach out to you, then you can never truly be open to His presence. I would say that you should at the very least not apply this criteria to your own experiences (if you have ever had one, or if you ever have one in the future) because the only way you can come to know God (if you are truly open to that possibility) is to give your religious experiences the benefit of the doubt until they are explicitly and fully falsified. But if you will allow the slightest misgivings or logical loopholes to decide that your religious experiences aren't real, you are effectively immune to ever coming into contact with God. There will never, ever be an experience that you have that you cannot find a naturalistic explanation to if you want to, no matter how improbable. If you are truly open, this won't be a problem, but if not, then even a full blown visual/auditory appearance of the Almighty could easily be dismissed by you as a hallucination.

No, indeed not. Faith is involved. However, I do believe a person can have access to enough evidence to justify trusting in those experiences. I believe I have such evidence from my emotional, spiritual, and physical life that most of my experiences were genuine.

I think it can, in certain situations. For instance, if one convict in a prison said that he saw a guard hit an inmate, that might be untrustworthy evidence. However, if ALL of the inmates in a prison offered testimony saying that a guard hit an inmate, and all of the prisoners offered up matching testimony regarding when and how the incident occured without ever having had the opportunity to corroborate, then there is reason to trust their word. I have had experiences like this, where other Christians have described religious experiences which sound identical to the experiences I have had. In such cases, if they are numerous, specific, and accurate enough, I think one can rationally justify believing there is something genuine behind them.

I'm just saying that the untrustworthiness of testimony can be off-set by other considerations. This is the weak point in your position to me. You seem to think that the one issue of the possibility of sfp absolves you of the obligation to do an honest inquiry into the extenuating circumstances surrounding a religious experience. If you adopt such a methodology you are stacking the deck against ever experiencing God ever. With all due respect, and I mean this absolutely, I think your argument in this area is deeply flawed. I really think that it is simply the poor application of logic and evidentiary standards to simply dismiss ALL religious experiences out of hand as evidence of anything SOLELY because of the possibility of an sfp.

I'm not really asking for you to accept my claim. I think it would be wonderful if you did, but I don't expect you to. I simply think that you have set the bar for accepting religious experiences as genuine so high, and have set the bar for defeaters of religious experiences so low, that you could never be convinced that a religious experience no matter what the surrounding circumstances were.

Can you describe one that would? Because if I am understanding you correctly, it isn't possible for any religious experience to overcome the boundaries you have set up in your mind against them, no matter how genuine they are.

I don't think you will ever be given the absolutely fool-proof, one hundred percent undeniable proof that you are demanding. No religious person operates on that kind of footing, though we'd probably all like to. To a certain extent, I think you are misunderstanding the religious project. There is a certain amount of faith and risk involved, even in something perhaps as trivial as tentatively exploring the veracity of a reported religious experience. It involves, at the very least, the willingness to see whether or not there are ANY grounds on which these experiences can be trusted. True openness might require you to lower your evidentiary standards just a little and explore some possibilities as if they were actual. Most people would never have a relationship with anyone who folded their arms, refused to give an inch, and demanded that the other party presented 100% proof of their trustworthiness, backed with scientific evidence, before they would be befriend them. And if we are insulted by such a demand, wouldn't God be as well? Wouldn't He, like ourselves, be more likely to respond to an honestly open person who just gave us the benefit of the doubt... at least initially?

It's something to think about. You aren't going to be forced into theistic servitude just by operating under the assumption, just one time, that a religious experience you've had is real. True openness might require you to take a few steps to see where this would lead you. Perhaps to church or to an honest conversation with a religious friend. It might require that you obey what you thought God might have been telling you (in a dream or however it happened). If you honestly explored the possibility, you might find it was genuine and brought you into contact with something momentous and real. If not, hey, you tried.

cricket

When I walk at night and turn a corner, I notice the moon is following me. Others have experienced this very thing.

luvluv

cricket I think we can safely elevate the level of this conversation without any danger that anyone here will not be able to keep up.

I already admitted that a person ought to consider all possible defeaters of her experiences in order to assess whether or not they were genuine, and if a plausible and readily available naturalistic explanation sufficed they should go with the evidence.

So, why bother with that last comment?

cricket

To see if I was on your "invisible" list.

It's been a long time since you've responded to any of my posts.