luvluv

Sorry, for the most part I didn't think you were talking to me. It is hard being the only one supporting a position against several opponents to respond to every worthy comment. Were all of your concerns addressed?

Fiach

I firmly agree. We know that delusional hallucinations either auditory or visual do vary greatly from person to person but most so between people of different belief systems. Third world Catholics quite often see the Vigin Mary. Protestant Christians tend to always see Christ. These experiences are generated in the brain and the pathways have been delineated in the brain. Deep central frontal nuclei activate and these do two things: (a) suppress the superior posterior parietal lobule that determines our boundaries with the external world and ourselves. (b) stimulates the superior temporal gyrus that generates auditory hallucinations (voices, religious music), and the inferior posterior temporal gyru generates visions (Jesus, Mary, Muhammad, Brahma, passed away relatives, and even Satan.) The amygdala is the central relay center for all of these. Magnetic Resonance Imaging with radioisotope scanning and SPECT scanning have shown the areas involved when the person experiences these.

Like the hallucinations in fully developed Schizophrenia, all are associated with that peculiar dissociation state (trance), and loss of sense of location in space and time. The more time a person spends in this delusional universe, the harder it becomes to operate rationally in the real world. My hypothesis is that relgious experiences are either near psychoses or the mild form of psychosis in a spectrum of worsening all the way to violent chaotic paranoid schizophrenia. There is no coincidence that the violence, and genocides in the world have had religious overtones. Is religion a form of endemic mental illness? I don't know. It either is a mental illness or a factor precipitating mental illness in the genetically susceptible.

Fiach

Family Man

Question, Luvluv:

Is it necessary to accept the possibility of such experience before one can experience them?

luvluv

Family Man:

I don't think so. I would suspect that God has probably made overtures to you in the past that you perhaps dismissed. I think that it would be necessary, if you had such an experience, to for a period of time act as if it was real. I think that is the essence of faith. It is something you act upon. I think would have to follow such an experience where it lead you, at least until it proved to be unworthy of the effort.

Family Man

First, let's make note of one thing: a truly open mind has to be open to the possibility that something may or may not be true. To make such a determination, some sort of standard has to be put forth. That's what I've done on this thread. Luvluv, you haven't even begun to demonstrate the problem with my standard or in how it interpreted. The fact that you've come to decisions that you've attributed to a god after a great deal of hestitation and doubt -- even to the point of trying to disbelieve -- doesn't mean that your eventual attribution isn't part of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nor does your belief that you're a better person because you believe that you listen to God do a thing to counter my arguments, especially since you agree that your unsubstantiated testimony is flawed evidence. So let's move on to issues with a little more substance.

You try to tell me that I've set it up so that it is impossible to say that religious experiences are true. Absolutely untrue. It is quite easy to imagine a situation where a rational person would have to conclude that an experience is a legitimately religious one. For example, I have a non-serious but inconvenient medical condition. Now let's say that a creature came down, announced that it was an angel, appeared to several of my family and friends, and proceeded to cure my condition -- verifiable by a visit to the doctor. Let's further assume that such visitations occur to other people, all with witnesses and all concluding with events that could be verified independently similar to my own. Could I claim that that experience was a result of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Nope. Could I claim that I suffered a hallucination? No, too many independent witnesses. There is nothing inherent in my formulation that rules out all religious experiences. Furthermore, my formulation is based on a very well-known and established phenonemon. The fact that all religious experiences fit under the critieria of a self-fulfilling prophecy is not a problem of how I set up the critieria. It is a problem for Christians that perceive their experiences the way they do. Luvluv is like a defendant who claims his trial is unfair because all the evidence points to his guilt. In other words, Luvluv, the problem isn't the critieria I suggest; the problem is the way religious experiences are described in your tradition. A truly opened-minded person would have to conclude that religious experiences as described by Christians are illegimate because that's the way the evidence points.

In fact, you're the one with a unfalsifiable position. You haven't given us a single standard by which we can evaluate whether a religious experience is true or not. Your entire argument has been: "It's true because I believe it to be true." That isn't exactly the hallmark of an open mind.

The fact is I'm not cut off from possible experiences of God. I've simply come to the rational conclusion that the experiences as described by Christians are not legitimate ones because are the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that the reports of these "experiences" are inherently unreliable, and that they have set the standards so low that anything could be a religious experience.

Look at your prisoner example. Noting that the testimony of one inmate's testimony might be unreliable, you immediately set up conditions where it could be deemed reliable: there are many inmates and they are separated where they give their testimony without collusion. Here there is no possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the conditions are set up so that the testimony is reliable. Your example was entirely self-defeating, luvluv, because unlike your prison example you can't turn your religious experiences into reliable evidence.

But you say, other people have experiences similar to mine. Well, gosh, what a surprise! Considering that my opening post demonstrated how the expectations for religious experiences have already been set up for you, is it a surprise that Christians see similarities in their experience? Unlike your prison example, you are not all witnessing the same external event. You are not all separated and giving your testimony without collusion. In fact, Christians collude all the time about what these experiences allegedly are.

In short, the problem with your view, in my opinion, isn't that I've set my standards too high. It is that you've set your standards so low that anything could be religious experience. Where are the standards for determining whether a religious experiences is a real one or not? You have given us any. On the other hand, I have taken a well-known criteria, applied it, and found the religious experiences as described to fail a very reasonable criteria. There is nothing close-minded about my conclusion; it is simply demanded by logic and by the evidence presented.

Family Man

You just contradicted yourself. If I have to "act as if it were real" for a period of time then I have to assume that it is true before coming to the conclusion that the experience was real. That ought to be obvious.

Next question: can you demonstrate any other phenonemon where it is required to believe something is true before you can experience it?

wordsmyth

I would be interested to know what methodology you used to analyze your (personal) experience(s) so that I can better understand how you came to the conclusion that divine intervention was the only possible explanation. I would also be interested to know how you inferred that the divine intervention involved could only possibly be the xian deity specifically.

ReasonableDoubt

Family Man: Next question: can you demonstrate any other phenonemon where it is required to believe something is true before you can experience it?

Actually this is a big belief in the self-help movement. A lot of psychologists subscribe to the idea that you must visualize something in your mind first and have the belief that you are successfully achieving something, and then you actually will acheive it. This has nothing to do with God though.
If, before a job interview, you believe you get the job, you will get the job, and vice versa. Now of course this is not proveable but it seems to produce best selling self help books.

ReasonableDoubt

LuvLuv,

I apologize if this has already been covered in this thread- I haven't read the entire thing through word for word- but you said:
"But, if He does, what is so strange about Him making Himself known to people?"
It seems a lot of your arguments depend on humans' "Free Will". How does that square with you saying that God doesn't reveal himself to everybody or else there would be no free choice?
So he does decide to reveal himself to you and select others? Doesn't this interfere with your free will?

How do you account for the fact that apparently Lucifer (Satan) was actually in Heaven with God but still decided to rebel against him? Wasn't that of his free will ? I would say that if God chose to reveal himself completely and physically to everyone, there'd still be a significant number of people who would choose not to follow him, just as Satan and his angels did.

luvluv

Family Man:

You are aware that this has happened, aren't you? There are people, in modern times, whose religious experiences have been verified by medically documented healings. Would these experiences occuring to others count, or would they have to happen to you? If you could be given reliable medical evidence that there have been hundreds of people who had been "miraculously" cured in a manner accompanying a religious experience, would that indicate to you that their religious experiences were not the result of a sfp? If so, I may be able to help you in your search.

That's not at all what I've been saying. I've been saying that my own personal experiences are true because of the external results that come from obeying them. They are numerous enough that I've been able to establish an overwhelmingly positive track record with them, and on such grounds I am justified in believing them. I've said that on the grounds of the personal evidence that I possess, your specific critique would be insufficient. My position is that my religious experiences are real because they more often than not lead to legitimate, tangible, beautiful results that quite often come in ways that I could not have forseen.

I would disagree. I think it is possible to set the bar too low, but I don't believe I have, and in that one specific case I told you about I set the bar abnormally and aribitrarily high. It is human nature to set the standard of evidence extremely high for things we do not want to believe in and to set the standards low for things we do want to believe in. I think this applies to atheists as well as theists, and I think this tendency is as apparent in your approach as it is to my approach. To this day, I tend to set higher standards for religious experiences which lead to consequences I might not like than I do for religious experiences which lead to consequences I do like. It's just a simple fact of our nature that we can't escape no matter how rational we like to claim we are.

Here are some of the questions I ask myself when I am having a religious experience:

Are my selfish desires in anyway overly-involved in this?
Does what is being asked of me fit within the ethics of Christianity?
How will this effect others?
How strong is the impression?
What are the initial results of acting on this impression?
What are the long term results of acting on this impression? (if applicable)
Is this in line with "Loving my neighbor as myself"?

Among others. I do not have a specific process that I go through each and everytime, and generally it is probably not as deliberate or scientific as this list might make it sound. After a period of time, I believe I have just gotten better at filtering out all the false positives. In the Bible, Jesus says "My sheep know my voice." I believe that after a period of time following Christ and actively seeking to hear and obey His voice that you just become better at it. I know now, for instance, that an employee giving me too much change at the drive through is not God's attempt to bless me, nor is it God answering my prayer for financial blessing, because to accept the extra change would not be in line with any of the above criteria.

So, stuff like that. I'm afraid you'll never get an accurate representation simply from me attempting to recount it for you. I am in a relationship with God, so some of it just becomes about intimacy and comfort after a while, like it is with all relationships. I'm sure you don't follow any rigidly scientific plan to try to figure out what your wife means when she says something. After a while you can just tell where she's going by a look in her eye or a tone of voice. It is the same with being a Christian.

Well, Family Man, it is certainly your decision as to how to go about your own search for God. I am simply warning you that, speaking as a person who has a relationship with God, you have set your standards a little too high. You might have to reach a little bit to get contact with God, if that is what you really want. If you aren't willing to make that reach, frankly, you aren't serious. What is the problem? If you make the reach, and give God a sincere chance, and nothing happens, then you can be that much more sure that He doesn't exist. It's not really asking that much to put just a little bit of faith into the ultimate question.

But if you standoff-ishly demand that God produce a scientifically verifiable miracle before you will believe in Him, you may be setting the bar unnecessarily high. There are many people who have established contact with God on lesser grounds than that, so God is probably justified in denying to give you something that, despite your commitment to the necessity for evidence, is not really NECESSARY for believing in Him. It seems that this would be especially true if you were not willing to give Him the benefit of the doubt until such time as He performed such a miracle.

My point is, generally speaking, it simply is not necessary for there to be objective demonstrative proof of a proposition before you can believe something. If that were the case most people wouldn't believe much of anything. Do you have 100% verfiably accurate objective proof for your political beliefs? Your ethical beliefs? And do you believe them nonetheless, even to the point of promoting their belief in others?

Well, beyond what Reasonable Doubt said, I would say all personal relationships start with faith beyond the evidence. There is the example of a man walking into a room full of strangers. If he withholds belief that any of them are trustworthy or that any of them would like him, and decides to remain in his own corner until they prove to him that they are trustworthy and would consider him likeable, he is liable to cut never to befriend anyone in the room. However, if he goes into the room confidently, assuming that everyone in the room would find him a likeable fellow and thereby striking up conversations, he is likely to find the friendship that he BELIEVED he would get.

People are quite often quite offended when not given the simplest amount of faith in social situations.

Have you ever read The Will to Believe by philosopher/psychologist William James? You should check it out. He makes the case for religious belief on less than compelling evidence and makes it pretty well. There are cases, James says, where belief is the only thing that makes possible certain scenarios. Most of these scenarios center around the human relational domain. And since Christianity is a relationship, it only follows that our outreach to God might fall under the same category.

Now, I do believe that if we sincerely NEED evidence to believe, and if we really WANT to believe, that God will provide enough evidence for our belief. I do not believe that your will can ever be taken out of the equation however. I don't think God will ever give you so much evidence that you have no other choice BUT to believe. (This is partially in reference to your question, Reasonable Doubt ) He is not going to overwhelm you even with proof.

I am telling you this not as a critique, but as a bit of advice for a person who already has what it is you are searching for. You won't get a relationship with God if you demand that He overwhelm you with evidence such that you have no choice but to believe. You must believe out of your own free will, and He will probably not ever give you evidence that you cannot deny if you remain determined to do so. I'm telling you from experience that you are cutting yourself off from the Source. That's just a word of caution and advice, not an argumentative critique. It's your decision; it's your life. But in my experience and the experience I have gathered from other Christians, you seem to be on the wrong track.

Reasonable Doubt:

I hope I have cleared this up. It seems to me that God will never do anything in your life such that you cannot deny He was involved if that was your intention. The Bible says that even those who saw the miracles of Jesus saw fit to explain them away or to disbelieve them. I think there are cases where God does show stronger evidence to some people than He does to others, but in no case does God present evidence that is impossible to deny or rebel against.

Well, firstly I would like us to keep in mind that, in accordance with Biblical theology, the angels are several orders of magnitude more powerful, more intelligent, and more willful than we are. So it's probably apples and oranges. Further, I don't think that everyone would obey God, necessarily, even if He were revealed. I think the overwhelming majority would, but certainly not everyone. But the point is that all these decisions would now be coerced, even the decisions to disobey God would have in some sense been influenced by God's undeniable presence and power, and as such would not be a truly accurate reflection of what the person really wanted.