Perchance

Yes, I agree with you there.

Where is the disagreement?

I think it lies in the nature of God. How can we experience God through our senses? I would say we can't. Therefore, God does not seem to be different from the world around us. There is no sensory evidence that points to something undefined by the natural universe, since the senses themselves rely on input from the natural universe.

Are you saying there is some other sense that can "sense" God? Or that the senses are not trustworthy?

Yes, I agree on that, too.

But if evidence overwhelmingly points in favor of there not being a unicorn in the hall, then I am probably going to say that there is not a unicorn in the hall. If I can see, smell, hear, and touch a unicorn, then I am probably going to say there is a unicorn in front of me.

Once again, I don't see why trusting your senses is something to be avoided. And if you aren't saying that, then I don't see where you think we disagree.

So what?

You've stated above that you have to trust your senses and memory at some point. Now you're saying we should distrust them? Which is your point? Why do you seem to think that sensory evidence does not paint a clear picture of reality? Or if you're not saying that, what are you saying?

No, it isn't. If those thousand scientists are using inaccurate data, the wrong procedures, or are for some reason being pressured in such a way that they assume the wrong conclusion, then they are wrong. It doesn't matter how many of them there are.

Now, if a thousand scientists were saying something that had evidence behind it and seemed right, and the one scientist was saying something that had scanty evidence and seemed wrong, I would probably trust the thousand scientists.

But if the one scientist is the one conforming to the scientific process, testing his data accurately, and presenting lots of evidence, then I go with him. People can believe something that is wrong (obviously or subtly) all they like. That does not make them right. Truth of a claim has nothing to do with the number of people who believe it.

And frankly, if the only evidence offered for a claim was that a large number of people believed in it, I would be extremely suspicious (as I am of theistic claims that rely on numbers).

It is an appeal to popular opinion if your only argument is "90 people believe God exists. 1 person believes God doesn't exist. So, the 90 people must be right." It does not work that way. If there is other evidence to back it up, then no, it isn't just an appeal to popular opinion. But if the only "evidence" for the claim is "Well, large numbers of people think this way," then that is not evidence. And I am going to be even more suspicious of it if even one person has an experience of "God" that is different from the majority.

Because theism does not have the kind of support that sensory experiences do. One can come up with a reason for dismissing sensory data. For example, say that you know a patch of forest very well, and someone comes up to you claiming there is a circle of pines there. You know there is no circle of pines. Though you might want to go and check it out for yourself just to be sure, you can dismiss this claim with fair quickness and accuracy. Now, the person claiming this doesn't necessarily have to be deliberately lying; perhaps he or she saw a circle of trees that looked very similar to pines, or simply saw one pine tree and thought there must be more.

Theism is different, especially Christian theism. I have never encountered a reasonable way of picking truth out of the Bible (or another holy text) and dismissing that which is not true. For example, some theists say that the whole of the Bible boils down to the Ten Commandments and "Love thy neighbor." Why? What rational method do they have for picking this out? It comes down to feelings, or what someone else has told them. Until I see a rational method for separating the true metal from the dross in theism, I'm going to be skeptical that one exists. If you have a system that relies on reason instead of faith, please present it.

Until theistic claims can muster the kind of rational support that sensory experiences have, they do not deserve to be regarded as seriously. I would argue that granting religion a "special status," as if one should simply accept claims of a supreme being and miracles without examining its premises the way one would examine the premises of another claim, is also applying a double standard.

-Perchance.

not a theist

Perhaps the majority of intellectuals have accepted this definition, but I really rather doubt that the majority of people in general have. Most don't bother to formulate the properties of God in any systematic manner and also don't differentiate primary and secondary characteristics and weigh them differently.

In addition to this, I think that some of the definitions that you offered are not the majority conception of God for "western theism" in any sense.

[ July 14, 2002: Message edited by: not a theist ]</p>

Taffy Lewis

Perchance,

We experience mundane sized physical objects through our senses. God isn't supposed to be a mundane sized physical object.

No. I'm saying that we could experience God's presence and activity through religious experience. It might be a specific module in the brain that generates beliefs about God under the appropriate circumstances. Those circumstances might be purposefully caused directly or indirectly by God. There has been some discussion of a "God module" among neuroscientists. An interesting discussion can be found in the book Why God Won't Go Away that claims to support one very narrow type of religious experience.

I am not claiming that we should avoid trusting our senses. That would be insane. I am merely pointing out the fact that we must rely on them at some point if we are to acquire beliefs about our immediate physical environment. We have to trust them initially or in general.

We should treat all basic belief forming mechanisms this way. We must trust them initially and generally unless we have reason to doubt them. That includes religious experience or theistic perception.

In response to my question "Would you be more confident in an experimental result confirmed by one scientist or a result confirmed by one thousand?" you wrote:

None of these notions were part of my original question. My question was merely about the number of scientists. It was implicit in the question that all other considerations are held equal. Your additions to my question misrepresent it.

But you are right that if all of these other things are held to be true then it would be irrational to trust the thousand scientists rather than the one scientist.

I thought it was interesting that you said:

You said you "would probably" trust the thousand scientists given these circumstances. So there is a significant chance that you still wouldn't trust them?

At any rate, my original point holds. We would be more confident that some event occurred if more people claim to have experienced it rather than less.

You are relying on your senses to check the reliability of someone else's senses. This is parallel to relying on religious experience to dismiss other purported religious experiences (ie. experiences of God's commanding cruel or wicked actions).


I think what you really mean here is that until religious experience can be confirmed by evidence from the senses we should not regard it as seriously.

This is another example of a double standard. You don't require that our senses be independently confirmed yet you do require this of religious experience. Relying on one sense to check another sense or relying on someone else's sensory experience to confirm or disconfirm another person's are all instances of confirmation that are not independent. They are instances of the senses checking the senses. If the senses can check the senses then why can't religious experiences check other religious experiences?

Perchance

No, he's apparently supposed to be some kind of infinitely-sized (or infinite in a way that doesn't encompass size) supernatural object.

This is probably the fundamental point that I should have made earlier. We have confirmation that the physical world exists (unless you're going to take the position that we can't trust anything at all and have no sure knowledge of anything, which contradicts itself since your claim that we have no sure knowledge of anything is in fact a claim of knowledge). We have no such confirmation of the supernatural.

You seem to be saying that we should give God the benefit of the doubt. Why? The burden of proof lies on the one who asserts that God exists.

Tell me what God's characteristics are. Tell me how you know them. Tell me how another person can experience them. While you're at it, tell me how to define the supernatural on its own terms, rather than by what it is not (natural).

I can receive information about the natural world. I may have to double-check it, but I can receive it. I have never seen any manifestation of the supernatural.

Yes. There have also been experiments in which scientists were able to feign religious experience in the laboratory. God was not really there. The scientists simply stimulated the appropriate lobes of the brain, and the subjects in question believed they felt God.

I hope that you are not seriously suggesting religious experience stands on the same level as scientific proof. If you are, why stop there? What about dreams and tarot cards? What about the I Ching, and what about the people who believe they see unicorns in the forest?

If you're going to insist that "something" lies beyond the framework of the natural universe, then you have to be able to define what that "something" is, not just state what it is not. And you're going to have to come up with a new system of proof as well (since you've said that natural proof cannot be all that there is).

All of this, before I would give a supernatural claim the same credence as a scientific.


"We should treat all basic belief forming mechanisms this way."

Why?

What have they done to deserve an, "Oh, yes, I believe until proven otherwise?" Why not adopt the scientific method, which is, "I will test the evidence and see what hypothesis it supports?"

This is the reason why creationist science, for example, is not science. A scientist acting according to the scientific method does not start out with a conclusion and then search for evidence to fit the conclusion. He looks for evidence and from it draws a conclusion. He may start out with a hypothesis, but the hypothesis must be tesifiable and falsifiable. If it is neither, then it cannot be tested, and is not subject to scientific investigation, and is promptly outside the realm of science and into the realm of subjectivity. And if he clings to his hypothesis in the face of contrary evidence, then those watching are justified in having serious doubts about his committment to the scientific process.

What you are suggesting is more proof of the double standard that theists use all the time. Somehow, religious knowledge is "special." It should be believed in and then defended, rather than being one of the conclusions that is come to if the evidence warrants and supports it.

Argument by assertion does not work. Tell me why we should accept theistic systems without proof and wait for the proof, rather than looking for proof first and drawing a conclusion from that.

And, by the way, I do not "trust my senses initially" unless I have reason to do so. If I see a pair of shoes on the floor, and I have known in the past that shoes have been left in that particular place, then I probably won't think much about it. If I see a green towel lying on the foyer floor where it does not normally lie, then I am going to check twice to make sure it's not, for example, a rug, rather than saying, "Oh, well, I suppose I should just trust my senses and not question!"

Trusting without proof is the birth of faith, and the death of reason.


It was by no means implicit. Your original assertion was about religious, and not scientific, claims (that x amount of religious believers feel this way about God). Evidence might be implicit in a claim about numbers of scientists (although it should still be stated), but saying that "x amount of people believe in this way, which cannot be proved or supported by any other means of testing outside of itself" is an argument by numbers, an appeal to popular opinion.

Yes. If their claim was incredible and challenged the foundations of science as we know it- for example, if suddenly a thousand scientists were proclaiming, "We can cure all cancers by the same means that we cure breast cancer"- then I would be suspicious. I might not be suspicious if I saw evidence, but if all they released were conspiracy theories, such as "We can't get published in the scientific journals because people are afraid of our evidence," then I would continue being suspicious.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Theistic claims have produced remarkably little consistent proof, and many claims of miracles are restricted to ancient times when God was supposedly more active (or man was more credulous. Take your pick.)

:sigh:

No. Numbers are irrelevant if they are all you have. If you have ten people telling the same story of an accident, matching sensory details, giving the same answers when asked questions, and if their stories match up with outside evidence (such as evidence found around the scene of the accident) and other factors that do not depend on the subjective, impressionable brains of humans, then you might be more justified in believing them than an eleventh person who claimed to have seen something completely different.

In fact, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. And people in large crowds (such as mobs, at sports games, when being rallied for war) are more likely to fall victim to emotional coercion and become convinced they saw something that didn't happen, not less. People affect each other. Numbers mean nothing if not paired with evidence.

You haven't been paying attention.

I established a standard under which someone might dismiss somone else's claims- it is not borne out by the natural world of the forest you know well, nor by your previous experience. You have not established why people are more justified in claiming belief in God's "good deeds" than in his wicked ones. Why are the wicked ones less believable?

Exactly.

Because what we perceive through our senses is reality. There is no person in the world who completely ignores his or her senses, because:

a) Such is not conducive to life. If someone insisted that he saw a cliff but the cliff was a delusion or not really there, he would still fall over the cliff. Someone can ignore reality all he likes. Reality does not ignore him.
b) We have reflexes and instincts that respond to sensory evidence we cannot control. Someone can say all he likes, "I don't really believe that stove is hot," but his hand will flinch back from it nevertheless.
c) The skeptic of the senses is still relying on them even when he claims he isn't (for example, a skeptic can say that he distrusts his sense of hearing, but he will still want his opponent to listen to his arguments).

Religious experiences:

a) Do not agree. The 20,000+ Christian denominations are evidence of that.
b) Are not consistent. Someone does not receive the same response every time he or she prays or goes to church (or does another ritual). If religion functioned like science, then doing a prescribed ritual would produce the same response every time, just as performing the same experiment over and over again according to the same conditions and with the same materials yields the same response.
c) Are not based on facts. Humans can feel the same emotions that religious experiences produce over things they know are not true (such as crying at movies, or laughing at jokes, or feeling at peace when they read books).

These are some of the reasons that I don't feel religion is as valid as sensory experience. Sensory experience is consistent and constant. Religious experience is fleeting, personal, and subject to perhaps the greatest amount of self-deception of any area of human study.

Science has earned the regard it has by the results it turns in. Early scientists did not demand respect before they had results (or, if they did, people laughed at them). Religion cannot, therefore, demand to be taken seriously until it has proven it can be taken seriously.

-Perchance.

[ July 15, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>

Tristan Scott

Perhaps the nature of gods can be better found by reading Jung or Freud than by reading Aristotle or any of the theist philosophers. The reasons that most of the gods we create have the attributes they have says more about the human male psyche than anything else.

Taffy Lewis

Perchance,

Your post is full of bald, bold assertions and some question begging remarks. You say:

Yes, we do have good reason to believe there is a physical world. We acquire this belief through sensory experience. But in order to reasonably believe there is a physical world we do not require that we independently confirm that our senses are reliable. The simple reason is that we cannot do this. We cannot offer an independent verification that our senses are reliable. Any information we obtain about the physical world is acquired through our senses or reasoning from beliefs gained through our senses. We have no other means of learning about our immediate physical environment and therefore have no means to support our senses. In order to avoid applying a double standard we should not require independent confirmation of religious experience.

I suggested earlier that how things seem in experience is good reason to believe that's how things are in reality unless we have reason to believe otherwise. You want to make an ad hoc addition to this general principle. You want to say something like "How things seem in experience is good reason to believe that's how things are in reality unless we have reason to believe otherwise OR UNLESS IT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE."

Suppose one asserts that "our senses give us reliable information about the physical world". Does one have a burden of proof to support that claim?

Just because you haven't experienced God that doesn't mean others haven't.

Further, I doubt that there is a meaningful distinction between the natural and the supernatural. If someone tells me that some particle has the properties of mass, charge, position, and momentum I really do learn something about that object. However, if they say "Oh yeah.....and it's natural", then I don't learn anything new. I think that neither the term 'natural' nor 'supernatural' has any meaning. But whether or not God exists seems to me to make sense even if false.

You know the forest well because you trust past sensory experiences. People are justified in believing that God is just and loving because the vast majority of religious experiences have portrayed him this way. Also, all experiences aren't equally forceful. We are more confident in some sensory experiences than in others. This holds true of religious experience as well. And experiences of God's benevolence have been more forceful and more common. This can be supported by descriptions of theistic experiences. I would dismiss purported experiences of unicorns for this very reason. They do not fit in with my beliefs about how the world works. And my beliefs about how the world works are derived from a general trust of my senses.

Maybe you wish to treat religious experiences differently because you have the prior belief that there is no God and thus he cannot be experienced.

But you can only know that a green towel does not normally lie there if you have trusted your senses in the past. It seems crazy to say that you have to double check every sensory experience you have. Not to mention this is hopelessly circular if it is intended as a justification for a general trust of our senses.

Anyway, it is still the case that you are following the general principle that how things seem is good reason to believe that's how things are unless you have reason to believe otherwise. You can only check a "seeming" by using a further "seeming" and if the initial seeming has no evidential force then why should the further "seeming"?

You say:

This clearly begs the question. The theist would not admit that God's existence is an extraordinary claim. Describing something as "extraordinary" means that it is not the sort of thing that ordinarily happens, ie. it is unlikely. But whether theism is unlikely is the very question at issue.

This does not change the fact that we cannot give a noncircular, independent confirmation of the claim that "Our senses are reliable." All of the "support" you have suggested was acquired through your senses and is thus circular reasoning. Just as you cannot reasonably use the testimony of some person to validate the testimony of that person you cannot use the senses to validate the reliability of the senses.

But I don't need evidence or support for my senses. I find myself compelled to accept them and that is enough for me.

These are all exaggerated claims. With regard to (a), the different denominations have enough in common for you to at least consider them theistic. So you must think they have something in common. Further, the differences between denominations are due to cultural differences and personal values about how to worship. They do not express important disagreements about God's nature. All western theists agree that God is a personal being of unsurpassable greatness who is transcendent, ultimate, and the creator and sustainer of everything apart from himself.

With regard to (b), one cannot make God jump through hoops. God is a personal being and not some impersonal physical object. He can act freely and not mechanistically.

Further, there are quite a few inconsistent experiences of the physical world. You are again applying a double standard. You require that religious experiences have no inconsistencies yet you do not require this of sensory experiences.

And with regard to (c), you have begged the question by assuming that religious experiences are not based on facts. Further, a person can have sensory experiences of things they know are not true. For example, people sometimes see things which are not there while under the influence of drugs. So what? That does not cast doubt on the general reliability of sensory experience.

I do not claim that we can be as confident in religious claims as we are in claims based upon our senses or scientific claims. I merely claim that religious experiences are not subject to damaging objections and that it is rational to believe in God on its basis. Memory is not as reliable as immediate sensory experience but we still have good reason to trust it in general.

At any rate, thanks for your response.

Perchance

Now I'm confused.

If you can understand and recognize these as argument fallacies, then why not the notion of argumentum ad numerum? It's not that different.

You're missing the point (and also begging the question).

The sensory evidence we have, and the evidence we can derive from that, and what we can extrapolate from it, is all that we have. No one has ever determined a way to prove the supernatural within the confines of the physical. And no one has come up with a way of defining the supernatural that has its own rules, is defined by what it is (rather than by what it is not, such as "not natural") and exists on its own ground.

You are begging the question by assuming that supernatural realms exist without first offering proof of this. Sensory evidence constitutes the proof of a physical world, and also explains quite nicely things like emotions, religious experiences, and wishful thinking often cited as "proof" of the supernatural.

Also, I notice you didn't answer my question about other belief systems. Is "western theism" the only "religion" that should be taken seriously? What about claims of alien abduction? If I am asked to believe first (without proof, and against logical explanations such as psychosomatism) that someone displaying stigmata had an encounter with Jesus, then must I also believe without proof and against logical explanations that someone displaying an odd scar was abducted by aliens?


You have not yet provided a definition of "religious experience" to explain how it is different from distorted sensory experience, or offered an example that is not explicable by sensory evidence and the logical method.

Science can provide a host of explanations for the way that people feel about God (such as the psychosomatic idea that some people bleed stigmata because they want so badly to believe that their mind convinces their bodies to display the signs). You're saying that there are other explanations than these, and we need to believe them instead.

Why?

Show how they are more logical, have more evidence, are more worthy of belief. If you argue this can't be done on scientific grounds, then tell me about religious "grounds."

And don't simply repeat anecdotes. A key point of the scientific method is that its experiments must be replicated, or the results are not accepted. Religious experience has to be at least as good, or why abandon the scientific method when it comes to judging it? Give me a prediction that can be tested and falsified by religious experience, and that predicts the same thing will happen if repeated.

Dodging the question.

Yes, the one who makes a positive claim always has the burden of proof. These conversations are equal in their stupidity:

Atheist: "God doesn't exist."
Theist: "Why?"
Atheist: "Because!"

Theist: "God exists."
Atheist: "Why?
Theist: "Because!"

One doesn't get excepted because of what one is claiming.

I have tried to back up my ideas that sensory experience is all there is numerous times, while you have offered no arguments in defense of your own position, but here they are again:

1) Sensory evidence is consistent. One person can see, smell, feel, and perhaps even taste and hear (through means of sap on the tongue and wind in the leaves) a tree, and another person can verify through the senses that there is indeed a tree there. Religious experience cannot be verified by another person; instead, we are asked to take it on "faith."
2) Sensory experience is constant. A wooden chair that is black one day does not turn green unless it has outside help (such as paint). In contrast, religious experience varies greatly from person to person, from day to day, and from ritual to ritual, and with no discernible pattern behind it (unless one takes into account "non-religious" evidence such as a variation of moods).
3) Sensory evidence can set standards. We can evaluate claims as true or false (or along a spectrum of truth and falsehood). So far, the dictum "believe everything" hasn't yet produced any proof that a religious claim is "more true" than any other.
4) Sensory evidence can explain itself according to the laws of logic. Religion falls down when it tries to do this. And there is, as yet, no good reason that the laws of logic should be suspended for religion.
5) Sensory evidence can be tested, falsified, and predicted by the scientific method. Religious experience cannot. Until it can, or can come up with some comparable method, then there is no reason to stampede away from science and fling oneself madly into religion.

The question I ask of religion is the same one I ask of sensory evidence- not "Yes, but..." but "Why?" You claim that we should treat religious experience on its own ground, just as we treat sensory evidence on its own ground. The difference is that we have not proven there is some kind of realm outside the physical and sensory world where this "religious evidence" applies. All we have proof of so far is the physical world, and that means that we must rely on its laws to judge things.

Yes, one can say the physical world is a closed, circular, self-referential system. But only after one has proven there is a world outside it.

Yep. And I'm holding the door open to having a religious experience or hearing a sound theistic argument (none yet).

But, again, one needs to present a claim along with its evidence, not just a claim. The religious person has no proof that there are not invisible pink unicorns behind Jupiter, either, and that others haven't really experienced contact with them, but most doubt the existence of invisible pink unicorns behind Jupiter just the same.

You just made my point for me. Thank you.

The distinction between "natural" and "supernatureal" doesn't appear to have meaning because the "supernatural" doesn't have properties of its own in the way that the natural world and its objects do. It can only be defined by what it is not, or by analogies with the natural world.

If the idea that "God exists" make sense to you, then why am I not allowed to just say "Atheism makes sense to me" and be done with it? Instead, you demand proof for my feelings. Why am I not allowed to demand proof for yours?

Laying aside the argumentum ad numerum fallacy in the previous statement for a moment...

How do you know that the majority have been just and loving? Did you count them?

How did you make the distinction? Did you say, "Well, a true religious experience meets criteria X and Y and Z. Therefore, this is a true religious experience. This is not."? Or did you simply say, "I have had experience with God as just and loving. That therefore means that all people must have."?

Or did someone just tell you?

Ah! A possible standard. Good.

Explain what you mean by "equally forceful." How is this tested? Do the theistic experiences you've read or heard about share a common thread beyond "God's nice," as the experiments scientists perform have to rely on the scientific method? Or is there a possibility (even a slight one) that you picked and chose what you wanted to hear, and ignored the people who have, for example, experienced such things as demons, or who have never had a religious experience at all?

To give a quote that's been kicking around for quite some time: "We're both atheists. I just believe in one God less than you do."

Unicorns "don't fit in with your beliefs about how the world works." And God doesn't fit into mine. Yet somehow you demand your God-claim should be taken seriously, while unicorns are not worth your time and attention.

My belief that I have never encountered a god, and that it is extremely likely there isn't one, is based on a general trust of my senses as well. But that is because I trust the sensory world is all that there is and believe there is nothing outside it (that we have yet proven). Earlier, you said that God is a supernatural object not perceptible through our senses. How have you experienced him, then?

And maybe you wish to treat religious experiences differently because you have the prior belief that there is a God and thus he can be experienced.

I have explained why I have a problem with believing something and then looking for evidence for it, rather than looking at the evidence and seeing what fits it, or what can be extrapolated from it. As far as I know, the evidence has not shown me that there is a God. Could I be wrong? Perhaps. Could I be subconsciously convincing myself against the evidence? Perhaps.

But opening that door means that I am just as free to psychologize you. Perhaps you have an intense fear of death, and longing for immortality, and that means that you must cling to God. Or perhaps your parents told you that there was a God when you were very young, and questioning that belief would feel like betraying your parents.

You see? Argument by assertion and psychologizing in the end fails because it can work both ways, and both participants end up sure they're right with nothing learned.

By this point my life (23 years), most sensory experiences I've had over and over again, so that I don't need to check them. Water has been wet, over and over again. Stone has been hard, over and over again. Chocolate tastes sweet, over and over again. No, I don't need to double-check them, because in most cases I hardly notice them anymore.

And it is only circular if you are assuming (without proving it) that something more than our senses exists. Yes, in that case I would be trapped in a circular system, ignoring some other system of proof. But you haven't presented this system of proof. Why not? Out with it, if you have it.

Or perhaps it doesn't exist...

Because of the nature of the "seeming." If an explanation is offered that is consistent with what I know in the past and with the evidence around me, I am content to accept it. If an experience violently contradicts one or the other of these (or both, as a lot of religious experiences do), then I am not content to accept it. I have a mind that won't shut up, that sometimes even doubts whether a clear memory I have really happened. So it's impossible to expect me to bind it closed and accept religious experiences with a little smile (rather than accept the naturalistic explanations for religious experiences).

The theist might not accept that God's existence is an extraordinary claim. The atheist most certainly would (as would someone who had never heard of the god under question). But, again, you seem to be acting as though we should automatically adopt the theist's perspective, rather than the atheist's or someone who stands outside the question altogether.

Not only is theism unlikely when compared with such things as the natural world, the inconsistency of religious experience, the long history of falsified claims with evidence to religion, and so on, but there is strong evidence that it relies on rather crude psychological factors to continue to exist (such as the fear of hell and indoctrination into children). Children are born atheists; they are not born with a god-belief. On the other hand, they are born with eyes that can see, hands that can touch, ears that can hear, and other organs of sense.

If we're going to argue over unlikeliness and innateness, then it would seem theism is more unlikely than atheism. But even if we ignore this, theism still has to stand and fall on common ground, and be tested on rational grounds just as philosophical systems and scientific theories are. There cannot be a special, protected ground for it; it needs to be dragged squirming into the light and examined.

If you assert that there needs to be a special, protected ground for it, then you are making a positive claim for which I have seen no evidence so far. Evidence, please.

Again...

Only circular if you assume there is something outside it that could provide different sensory information or invalidate it. In the case of someone's testimony, we know there are numerous things that could invalidate it (other people's testimony, lie detector tests, the person's ties to the victim that might mean he is lying to protect someone, and so on). Sensory experience can only be invalidated by something outside sensory experience, or something which exists for which there is no explanation (which leads into "God of the gaps," assuming that if a scientific explanation doesn't exist yet it never will, and that Goddidit for everything we don't know about yet, ignoring all the possible contradictory explanations). And no one's described something outside sensory experience yet.

Enough for you, maybe. Not enough for me.

And I do need evidence and support for everything, especially extraordinary claims.


Chuckle...giggle...snort...

No important differences? You've never heard a JW claim that everyone who is not a JW is going to hell, or a Baptist claim that Catholics are demons, or a Protestant claim that Catholics are a cult?

What's your definition of "important difference" again?

Meaningless words.

What is "unsurpassable greatness?" Please explain.

What is "transcendant?" Please explain. And explain on its own merits, not just saying "not limited."

What does "ultimate" mean? Please explain.

Why do you believe that the universe needs a sustainer? Please explain.

While you're at it, please prove that all western theists agree on this, and in the same manner that you do.

How damned convenient for the theist.

"God isn't going to do that because he doesn't want to!"

I have only your word for it that God is personal (whatever that means, since you have provided me with no definition). And if you mean "acting freely" (how do you prove that?) and "sentient" as a human being...

Well, you can indeed make a human being jump through hoops, if you have a taste for coercion. Or you can persuade him or her. Or you can make a bargain.

Theists conveniently except God from all these things, insisting on "personality" while taking away one of its defining traits.


I require that religious experiences explain their inconsistencies. If I have an inconsistent physical experience (for example, sticking a pencil in water and seeing it look bent even though I can feel that it is still straight), then there are physical laws (the way that light travels in water, for example) to explain this.

Religious experience proponents seem to want both the inconsistencies and the explanation for these inconsistencies to be "Goddidit."

I claim they aren't based on facts because they are based on emotions. Yes, a person may see things that are not there, and realize this later. But most theists are unwilling to consider alternate explanations for their experiences. The fact that there are nice psychological theories on this talking about self-deception, self-aggrandizement, and the reasons for believing in God get ignored.

Damaging objections? So they cannot be disproven?

Why are you even attempting to argue about them logically, then, or convince others they exist? You think they can be proven, but not disproven?

If something is not subject to "damaging objections," (that is, disproof), it is not rational. Sorry. And memories can be twisted and falsified by wishful thinking, emotions like fear, and the testimonies of others. "Not as reliable" is a huge understatement.

You're welcome.

-Perchance.

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>

Taffy Lewis

Perchance,

You quote me as saying:

Then you claim:

How have I begged any question here? You immediately follow the claim that I have begged the question with the simple assertion that "The sensory evidence we have, and the evidence we can derive from that, and what we can extrapolate from it, is all that we have." This is the question at issue. This is what the debate is about. You can't simply assert that your position is correct unless you aren't interested in debate or discussion.

First, I don't know what you mean by 'supernatural'. And I think the term 'natural' has no meaningful content. As with most people who use the term, it is likely that you have defined the term 'natural' so broadly that anything that exists or possibly exists would be included. The term can't exclude anything and therefore has no meaning. "If everybody is somebody then no one is anybody."

Secondly, I have not assumed a God exists. I have appealled to religious experience and a simple principle of rationality that says how things seem in experience is good reason to think that's how things are in reality unless you have reason to believe otherwise. This is the same justification we give for belief in the physical world. We say we see it, or hear it, or appeal to sensory experience in some way. And if we didn't use the principle of rationality I referred to we would not feel compelled to move from the "seemings" to the belief in the physical world.


You attempted to give support to the belief that our senses are reliable. You said:

As to (1), having a consistent set of experiences does not mean they are the only means of acquiring information about the world. I might have access to some reality through means A, B, and C and they may be consistent. How would that imply that there is not some means D that gives us access to reality as well?

Further, mere consistency does not support the claim that experiences are veridical. A lie can be perfectly consistent. There could even be dozens of liars who all tell you a consistent story.

Also, similar reports of religious experiences are confirmations of other religious experiences that are similar. If Bob claims to experiences God's strengthening him and later Jane reports the same thing then that would be a case of confirmation. Further, all of my beliefs don't have to be confirmed by someone else in order for me to be rational in accepting them. I remember having orange juice for breakfast last Friday. There is no public evidence that this was so and I could not prove it to anyone else. Yet I am perfectly rational in believing I had orange juice last Friday.

In (2) you claim that religious experiences vary greatly. Sensory experiences vary greatly. The experiences I had yesterday are not the same experiences I am having today. Sure, the chair still looks black. But God is still portrayed as good, loving, and just.

As to (3), I have already given a reason for rejecting many religious experiences. They do not fit in with the overall pattern of God as just, loving, and perfectly good.

And with regard to (4), I have been applying logic to religious concepts.

And lastly, in (5) you say religious beliefs cannot be tested by science and so we shouldn't trust them. But again, there are perfectly mundane beliefs that I do not or cannot support by the scientific method. For example, my belief that I had orange juice for breakfast last Friday. There is no public evidence to support that claim. So I shouldn't believe it? That would be clearly insane.

It is my feeling that you want to subject religious beliefs to the most strict requirements as possible because you want to dismiss them. But you fail to realize that you don't ordinarily subject your beliefs to these standards. How many of your beliefs are based upon the scientific method? Very few. You don't run around all day trying to muster scientific support for everything you come to believe. Pefectly mundane beliefs such as what you did last week or last month are not subject to the scientific method. And it's not confined to memory. I believe I have a headache. I don't have to call a group of neuroscientists and have them perform CAT scans and MRIs and other tests in order to rationally believe that I have a headache. Also, I believe there is a cool breeze blowing through my living room. I don't have to set up thermometers and wind measuring devices to rationally believe this.

I grant that the most certain and secure knowledge we have is acquired through the scientific method. However, that does not mean beliefs that are not acquired this way are irrational or unreasonable or illogical.

Apart from "unsurpassable greatness", I have defined all of the terms in my first post. "Unsurpasable greatness" can be understand as valuing something to the greatest degree one can. It's a matter of seeing something as so important that everything else possible is less than it.

You object to negative descriptions or merely saying what something is not. However, I have not merely said what God is not. I have given many positive descriptions. I have said God is personal and has power and knowledge. Further, we offer negative descriptions of some physical objects. Photons have no mass for example. So I don't find this problematic.

As I said earlier, by "natural" you just mean "anything whatsoever" or "whatever there is". No term could be more broad than this and thus it necessarily can't exclude anything. So there is no reason for the theist to deny that God is natural in this sense. It just means he exists. The theist would insist that he is natural. It's a perfectly innocuous admission.

You can't coerce God. Further, persuading or bargaining do not imply that the person couldn't refuse what you want.

I have already admitted that many religious experiences are not genuine. There could be any number of reasons why some people have such experiences. And they may include self-deception and self-aggrandizement. But we know that this is true of sensory experience too.

They are not in fact subjected to damaging objections. It's not that religious belief couldn't be. The atheist might think of a good argument against God's existence. Or the atheist might prove that the concept of God is inconsistent. I only claim that this has not in fact happened.

I'll draw this to an end. I don't like long posts. But I thank you for taking the time to answer my post in such detail.

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Taffy Lewis ]</p>

Perchance

Taffy...

Let's see:

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

You make your own assertions that you then either abandon or do not attempt to explain. I am at least trying to explain why I do not think that mine are assertions (backing it up with evidence from the physical world and so on). You do not explain where you're getting your "God is this way," "religious experiences are this way," and so on.

And if it comes from your own sensory and religious experiences, then why are you allowed to trust yours but I am not allowed to trust mine? You never did answer that question, and I am highly interested in it. What makes it right that we should smile and nod and take a theist at her word, and frown and turn our backs on someone who claims that God may not exist, does not exist, or is an Invisible Pink Unicorn?

Psychologizing again.

If I were to respond, "It is likely that you have defined the term 'God' so broadly that anyone saying, 'I had an encounter with God' must be believed no matter what he says," would you accept that?

And there are definitions for supernatural and natural that most people accept. Pick up any good dictionary. I think you'll find that supernatural has a less full-bodied definition than natural, but there they are just the same.

And by the 'logic' you've used earlier, surely if more than one person believes in something, it must be true?

More assumptions.

If we did as you suggest, then we wouldn't have any principle of "innocent until proven guilty," and no scientific process. We would just go with what we thought looked true- "Well, he was there, and he had a grudge. He must have killed her!"- or what "common sense" says- "There sun must go around the earth. Look at the way it comes up and sets every day."

Besides, no one (except maybe you) feels "compelled" to believe. Again, if we all did, there would be no such thing as scientific investigation. We would have been happy to agree that thunder and lightning were caused by God, and leave it at that. In fact, we would have been happy to agree that women and mares were impregnated by the air, and leave it at that.

Sensory evidence can be compelling, but it is not overwhelming. It does not make you do things.

I'll try to explain this again.

Because we can speculate all we like, but that doesn't mean there's another reality. I might speculate that a little demon who sits three feet behind my left shoulder causes it to rain. Can anyone disprove this? Probably not.

But can someone think I'm an idiot because we have good explanations for how it rains and I say, "But it might be true?" Yes.

The onus of proof is on the person who makes the positive claim. If a theist says, "There might be another reality," it's up to him to prove it, not up to the atheist to disprove it.

Taffy...

Do you even realize that this destroys your own argument about religious proof completely?

If people can be liars and all tell a consistent story, then the standard of "confirmation" for religious experience cannot be trusted blindly. We cannot nod and accept that God exists, or that God is this way, or that God is that way, because a few people (or even many) say so.

Why is sensory experience subject to tests and checks and changes and doubt, but religious experience isn't?

Interesting. Try these examples, then. Would you accept them? (I suspect not, but let's see).

1) I thought I heard La Llorona, the condemned spirit of Cortez's Aztec mistress, wailing one night while I was down in Mexico.
2) My teacher thought she heard the same thing.
3) Therefore, La Llorona exists.

1) George Smith, an atheist, argues in Atheism: The Case Against God that God does not exist, and believes his own arguments.
2) I agree with him.
3) Therefore, God does not exist.

1) A dedicated atheist cares enough about the IPU (Invisible Pink Unicorn) to make a <a href="http://"http://www.geocities.com/ipuprophecy/ipu"" target="_blank">webpage</a> dedicated to her.
2) Another atheist comes and joins him.
3) Therefore, the IPU exists.

They are no different in form from your example.

Do they work?

Of course not. All they prove is that people think a certain way, not that the thing they are thinking about exists.

We'll see if this makes any impression.


And wicked, cruel, and heartless. How dare you say that your religious experiences are worth more than another person's?

I experienced God yesterday as non-existent, and so indifferent and blind and mute and unintelligent and unintelligible. How is my experience not valuable?

If someone were to say that he had a religious experience that said God was going to send him to hell, and someone else agreed with him, wouldn't you be compelled, under your own standard of confirmation as set out above, to agree that God was that way?

Really? Where?

You chose a really bad example there. Of course there are ways to test if you had orange juice. We can test the contents of your stomach, for example. We can test your urine. We can ask others if they saw you drinking orange juice. We can look in your fridge for the orange juice bottle, or carton. We can check your dishwasher for an unwashed glass displaying orange juice stains. We can check the garbage to see if you have recently thrown away a bottle or carton of orange juice. We can check any receipts you may have saved from the store and see if you bought orange juice in the past week.

Do you see?

Besides, I am willing to accept that you might have drunk orange juice because that is not an extraordinary claim. I have seen it done, I have done it, and I know that it happens. If you said, on the other hand, that while you were drinking orange juice God spoke to you from the orange juice and commanded you to sacrifice celery to him while watching "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" then I would have a sneaking little suspicion you might be lying (or on drugs, or hallucinating).

Do you see the difference?

(By the way, if you're interested, there's a long thread in which several people participated called "Extraordinary Claims and Extraordinary Evidence" in the Biblical Criticism forum. Check it out).

This is all evidence that you're feeling through your senses (wind on your skin, and possibly the sound of it blowing through the curtains, and the headache causing pain in your head). I would be inclined to agree that you can trust your senses, as I've been agreeing all along, unless you have a reason to suspect they're not right or they're acting up on you.

Are you arguing that you can feel God through the senses? If so, please give me an example. If not, this is, again, a bad example to use.

Nope. But it means that you need proof, other than argument by assertion and argumentum ad numerum.

In what way? How do you see something as so important that everything pales in comparison?

I know how I see things of the world around me in this way. I may decide that keeping my balance is of the utmost importance at the moment because I am on a tightrope and I don't want to fall to my death. I might decide that duty is the most important thing because I want to make my family happy. And so on.

But how do you value God? [I}Why[/I] do you value God so much?

And how do you know that God is this way? So far, you've got a bunch of unnamed "western theists" supporting you. Who are they? Where do you get your data?

There are ways to discuss and describe (and point out to other people) that photons have no mass. What comparable method exists for demonstrating that God is the way you think he is? Or that he exists at all?

No, it's not.

What is natural is subject to natural laws. Most theists will not accept this as an attribute of God, insisting that he can contravene natural laws if he chooses. What is natural is limited; it has a sliding scale of what it can do and what it cannot do. It is easy for a frog to jump, for example. It is harder for a frog to move across land without jumping. It is impossible for a frog to fly. Yet the theist would declare God out of bounds.

What is natural also makes an impact on us, whether that is direct (such as pain) or indirect (such as providing light for us to see), or can be tested to see what might happen when a human comes into contact with it. What evidence is there for God that cannot be explained (and better explained) by natural happenings?


Let's see. I want to try this.

"You can coerce God!"

No, I don't think my saying it makes it true. On the other hand, I don't think your saying it makes it true either, since you haven't provided any evidence.

Why can't you coerce God? And saying "God's God" is circular reasoning.

Noooo. But persuading or bargaining means that the person can agree to do it.

Besides, what is prayer, if not a means of persuading or bargaining?

You've said that religious experiences that are positive really happen, while negative ones (or searching for God that produces no results) do not.

Why do you think that your own definition of religious experience is genuine and immune to self-deception, and others are not? You still haven't explained this.

Besides, if sensory and religious experience are separate, as you seem to keep declaring, then asserting that sensory experience can be exaggerated has no impact on your argument whatsoever.


Claim. Offer no proof.

How many arguments have you read? Can you explain why you find them wrong? Or why atheists are wrong in their confirmations when religious people are right as long as they are confirming religious experience?

I'll draw this to an end, too (because I'm at the end ). But I wonder how many of my questions you'll answer.

-Perchance.

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>