Taffy Lewis

Toto:

This is not independent verification. You are using your senses to verify your senses.

Also, if you only had one sense, sight for instance. Are you saying it wouldn't be reasonable to trust it?

MadKally

I understand exactly what you are saying Taffy. I happen to know that there is an invisible Tootsie Roll in the center of every black hole in the universe. Like you, I believe in everything that exists.

GunnerJ

Puts an interesting new spin on the question, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"

Toto

I am using one source of information to verify another, plus other people's senses. Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that we are all part of some dream world, but it does reduce the odds considerably.

God impressions, however, are all over the map, show no consistency, and are easily faked. So I don't give them any weight as evidence.

If your only sense organ were your eyes, and you were nearsighted and knew you had a cataract, and you saw a light in the sky, would you take that as proof of the existence of space aliens in a UFO without verification? Or would you want some external verification of that?

Taffy Lewis

Toto:

To suggest experiences of God "show no consistency" is just a bit extreme. The god of western theism for example is fairly consistently represented as perfect and personal in nature. And I doubt that they are as easily faked as you'd like to suggest. How would you cause someone to have a fake experience of God?

Toto

Read the article that started this thread. You can cause someone to have a fake experience of God with magnetic fields. People have also used LSD, alcohol, extreme physical sensations, fasting and sleep deprivation, meditation, etc. Unless you define every experience of god as real - but then you get back to the question of why Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Deists, Hindus, etc have different expressions of god, and how you know my cat is not god. (You still haven't explained that.)

The god of "western theism" is represented as perfect because that is part of the philosophical position of western philosophers. I don't think it is based on religious experience, just a philosphical stance. And I don't think there is any consistency about experiencing god as personal - as I read about mystic experiences, people have more often experinced god as an impersonal unifying force, or a feeling of being one with the universe.

But we were not talking about western theism, which has tried to suppress the god experience in any case. Is there some reason god would be confined to Europeans? How perfect a god could that be?

Taffy Lewis

Toto:

And all of these factors can bring about nonveridical sensory experiences. That doesn't call into question sensory experience in general. You seem to be applying a double standard.

I don't see that the existence of God and experiences of being one with the universe or experiences of an impersonal unifying force are inconsistent.

The god of western theism would include muslims as well. And the god of western theism is quite similar to various forms of hindu monotheism, the monotheism of the hindu philosophers Ramanuja and Madhva for example.

Further, why do you believe western theists have tried to suppress experience of God?

Toto

Taffy -

regarding double standard: there are verifiable sense experiences, then there are fake sense experiences. We have a way of telling them apart. Where is your verifiable god experience? If you say that God told you to blow up an airplane, how do I prove that you are wrong? If I say my cat is god, how can you prove me wrong?

How consistant is the idea of god? The OT god is angry, vengeful, warlike. The idea of God that Christian philosphers came up with is onmibenevolent and perfect, except that he still sends unbelievers to hell to be tortured for eternity. The Muslim god apparently approves of wars, and rewards suicide bombers with sensual pleasures in the afterlife. Do any of these have anything in common with the goddess Kali? Does any of this have anything in common with the Zen Buddhist idea of a sacred dimension to life? Or with a Voudon trance? Or Holy Rollers?

Your earlier post said that western theism consistantly found that god was perfect and personal. I pointed out that many god feelings are not of a personal force, but of an impersonal one. You slid right over that. Do you understand the difference between a personal god and an impersonal divine force?

In fact, I don't think you have said anything new or coherent at all. I will wait until you address the issue of why my cat is or is not god.

Taffy Lewis

Toto:

You can only distinguish between veridical sensory experiences and illusory sensory experiences by accepting sensory experience as generally reliable. We treat sensory experiences as reliable until we have reason to doubt them. By doing so we build a conceptual scheme about how the world works and some experiences do not fit this scheme and are thus judged illusory.

For example: Suppose someone were to claim that they saw water running uphill. We have good reason to believe that this experience is illusory because we have accepted past experiences of the behavior of water as reliable and built a picture of how water behaves on the basis of those experiences. The experience of water running uphill does not fit in with past experiences of water. Unless the experience is very forceful we would be justified in rejecting it.

By parity of argument, we should treat sensory experiences similarly. For example: the vast majority of experiences of God have presented him as unsurpassably loving. If someone were to claim God commanded them to kill all Jews then we would have good reason to believe that the experience was illusory since it does not fit our concept of God.

It's not a matter of either accepting all religious experiences as genuine or accepting all as illusory. There is a more reasonable middle ground. Many experiences of God are genuine and some are illusory. This is just as it is with sensory experience. Most sensory experiences are genuine and some are illusory.

There are only 66 books in the bible and not nearly that many purported authors. The writers of the bible are just as fallible as anyone else. Further, there have been millions of people through history who have claimed to have experienced a personal transcendent being of unsurpassable greatness. Portrayals of God as "angry, vengeful, warlike" have been by far the minority.

The idea of a God who is perfectly loving and who physically and psychologically torments people forever for simply not believing in him is certainly inconsistent. But very few people claim to actually experience hell. Far more people claim to experience God's loving presence. So the doctrine of hell as eternal physical and psychological torment can be dispensed with.

The actions of a signicant minority of fanatics doesn't undermine the Islamic faith anymore than the actions of pseudoscientists undermine science.

Actually, I said:

My point is that the existence of God and the existence of an impersonal unifying force do not seem mutually exclusive. Why can't they both exist? Nothing in the experiences of either seems to entail that the other doesn't exist.

From my own past experiences of cats I have every reason to believe that they are nothing more than a specific biological species of organism. Is there something special about your cat that would make someone think it is a god?

The Other Michael

Hello Taffy Lewis,

So you are saying that we shouldn't trust those portions of the Bible which portray a deity that doesn't match your concept of God?

I think there is a reasonable amount of evidence to show that the vast majority of automobiles are perfectly safe to travel in. This doesn't refute the fact that some automobiles are NOT safe to travel in. The "vast majority" (how do you know??) would seem to just indicate that your God is usually an affable fellow(ette), but doesn't preclude him/her from being a raging psychopath upon occasion (as documented in the Christian Holy Book).

How do you KNOW that many (claimed) experiences of God are genuine, absent evidence? What evidence/sources do you have for this information? How did the people who had "genuine" experiences prove that to you? I've not had an experience of God (that I've been able to identify as such) nor has anyone demonstrated to me that any such claimed experience is actually "of" God. Is my lack of sensory experience of God genuine or illusory?

What is your source for the "millions" figure?

The more limited portrayals as "angry, vengeful, warlike" don't preclude that those three adjectives are accurate. I'd hazard that most people would portray me as a kind, generous, helpful, pleasant person, yet their experiences don't have to invalidate the few people who might have a distinctly negative impression of my behavior. But then I don't allege to be omnibenevolent.

If man was made in God's image, perhaps then even God has a bad hair day (so to speak).

Few people have returned from the dead to report on the actual conditions "on the far side", so I think you may be a bit quick on the draw to say that Hell doesn't exist, based on the limited reports of those who have experienced it.

I doubt that Hell does exist, but then I'm not the one with a "Holy Book" of divinely-inspired writings that says, in multiple places, that it does.

cheers,
Michael