vollkan wrote:The difference is that the experiences of individuals, even if they are "similar" are not verifiable and can more readily be explained by the extraordinary ability of the mind to trick itself.
You've needlessly precluded a lot of potentially useful data (as well as a lot of crap). That's not scientifically rigorous/epistemologically virtuous at all.
vollkan wrote:However, the religious "experience" is not something that can be replicated in that regard and is far more sensibly explained by a combination of natural phenomena and the brain tricking itself.
It seems we're stuck, then. I disagree that this is the assessment we must take, and I'm a little uncertain as to how you could be convinced if this is how God presents God's self, if you're throwing away data willy-nilly because it has the potential to be wrong. The bit about "not being in control of the subject" is significant, because replication is indeed more difficult, but it cannot invalidate the possibility. (It sure does make it harder to "prove", though.)
vollkan wrote:We may consider it a miracle if we win the lottery twice in a row and get struck by lightning after winning each time. However, that is still statistically possible . It does not point to divine intervention.
The fact that many people have subjective religious experiences does not point to the existence of god, so much as it does the ubiquity of mental illusions.
I agree with you on this first paragraph, and am curious as to how you concluded the second.
vollkan wrote:But faith in itself depends on taking a belief despite or in spite of evidence. Even if you base it on some scientific basis like "complexity" (which is not evidence for God, as you probably well know) faith requires a belief to be taken without evidence.
There is no point in a reasoning process where you can reasonably conclude a supernatural phenomena. You may not have an answer, but bewilderment is not evidence for god.
I really, really think you're not listening to what I'm saying, then.
I'm asserting that
because of
the evidence I've experience, belief in God is not only warranted, it is
proper
. You keep asserting that I must be believing in God despite of or in spite of evidence. There is clearly some contradiction going on here.
vollkan wrote:As you say yourself, it could just be a mental malfunction. Let's take that possibility and compare it with the experience of God one. Now, why is God more likely than your brain contemporaneously malfunctioning?
Why is God more likely than those people throughout history having their brains malfunctioning?
Remember, the proportion of people who have these experiences is still relatively small. I see no reason why you can conclude it is God.
I'm not certain this proportion is as small as you think it is. In fact, there are Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Zoroastrians, Christians, etc. that have perceived God,
and continue to perceive God on a daily basis
, contemporaneously and throughout history. I'm really not certain why I
ought
to conclude this is widespread mental defect. It seems terribly consistent with what I see, read, and hear. I've genuinely considered the alternatives, and I don't find them compelling.
vollkan wrote:Reproducability and verifiability. If I want, I can call every other person in the lab over to look at the test tube with me. I can take photographs of the tube. It is wholly different from me individually hearing voices/believing I am abducted by aliens/seeing santa.
I suspect you will have trouble fitting Jesus on the Xerox.
vollkan wrote:No. I am not dismissing this at all. I am simply saying that the only sensible explanation is mental malfunction. I fail to see why these experiences point to a divine being. Here's a thought: Is it possible that our brain may have the capacity for this hearing voices thing as an evolutionary product, given how frequently people have these experiences in times of despair? My point is simple: Where there is a logical, natural explanation, it is wrong to invoke the supernatural.
I'm still having trouble as to why I must adopt your conclusion as "the only sensible explanation". You seem to have concluded there is no God already, then interpreted the data in light of this conclusion.
vollkan wrote:My problem with the contextualist approach is this: At some level all Christians assert that some element of the Bible is true (ie. Jesus's resurrection, or even Jesus's historical existence). Now, most Christians also reject other elements as historical anachronisms or purely symbolic (ie. Adam and Eve).
My problem is that I can see no basis for asserting that some parts can be disregarded other than centrality to faith. Why should Adam and Eve be purely symbolic but not Jesus, other than for modern convenience?
Excellent question! I think it revolves centrally upon the misconception (spread largely by Christians) that the Bible is a dingle, unified unit. I'm sure you've seen examples of how Revelations has been taken quite literally, when it's literary style would never have been taken literally by the original reader. Imagine you read a text, and it begins, "Once upon a time...". You will understand it in a different way than a piece which begins "Houston, Texas (AP) - A fire began...", and rightly so. There are some things which are absolutely critical as literal to the Christian faith, which includes the literal existence, death and bodily resurrection of Jesus the Christ as God. There are other things which are perceived as such, but really aren't.
Sarcastro wrote:Well if you're making the argument that there are lots of experiences so God is real, that's pretty different from just taking your experience as proof, which is how I originally understood your use of the word "revelation". However, now you're just getting into taking lots of anecdotal evidence.
I object to your use of the word "just" here. I'm talking about lots of experience - anecdotal or otherwise. In some sense, what other experience could we work from? Suppose Jesus walked into Times Square, spoke of Heaven, raised someone from the dead, then ascended back into heaven in the course of an hour. What evidence are we working from? Will it prove or disprove God's existence? I assert it wouldn't do either, but it would be part of the entire body of evidence to consider.
Sarcastro wrote:My contention is simply that no miracle of the former sort has ever happened, on account of them being impossible and all.
That's rather semantic.
I'd agree that nothing impossible has ever happened, too! Of course, I think things like changing water into wine are perfectly possible, because I don't believe in a closed system, I believe there is a God who intervenes in this world.
Sarcastro wrote:As far as I can see, choosing to believe something against all scientific evidence - even if you think you've seen a miracle - is irrational. To say it goes hand-in-hand with reason, well, I'm not even sure how to respond to that. Do you think the scientific method leads us to believe that God exists?
I agree that believing in something against reason is irrational. I do think that a scientific approach
on the whole
can (and often does) lead to belief in God. I cannot say it always leads to belief in God, as I've seen instances where people are not led to belief in God. I suspect science isn't the end-all-be-all that it's being made out to be - but please don't take this as me discounting the necessity for an intellectually rigorous approach. (I've already expressed numerous times my displeasure for people who argue against reason.)
Sarcastro wrote:I'm not trying to pigeonhole people as anything. I simply have never been given an example of rational religious belief, and I contend that it is by definition impossible. You really haven't done anything to change my mind; as intelligently as you argue, you've haven't really given me a good, rational reason for your beliefs. Why do you believe in God?
I gave a small slice of this earlier:
Thesp wrote:I'll give you a couple - I thought very hard about sharing this - so please understand this is a moment of vulnerability here in some real respect. I have heard God speak to me on a number of occasions, especially in prayer - let me refer specifically to one instance. The language was particularly clear, obtrusive and unmistakable, and it was giving me direct guidance in my life. I have thought long and hard about such instances, as it very well could be that I have some sort of mental imbalance (or even just occasional malfunctions), and that indeed I have not heard (or perhaps more accurately, perceived) God's voice at all. Yet my mental faculties otherwise function perfectly normally and I have no reason to doubt that I am fully sane. My overall experience of God is remarkably consistent with those of my fellow Christian community, both contemporary and throughout history. (The Bible speaks of people's encounters of God thoughout history (i.e. the burning bush in Exodus), and is not the only record of people's experiences of God.)
I apologize if I am being overly abstract, I can be more specific if necessary (though perhaps at a later time, I need t catch up with some mafia games!). I further believe that my belief in God has come from, to borrow from Alvin Plantinga, "cognitive processes or faculties that are functioning properly, in a cognitive environment that is propitious for that exercise of cognitive powers, according to a design plan that is successfully aimed at the production of true belief".
Sarcastro wrote:Obviously I can't say much about any encounters with God, though I'd defy you to show me how believing in subjective experience over scientific knowledge is rational.
Science involves subjective experience. Science takes that experience, compares it with similar experiences over time, and often has the luxury of being able to reproduce experiments to test variables. God comes across as very difficult to test, as God just won't stay under the slide in the microscope. So, given that we are forced to work with our unreproducible experiences if we are to piece together anything about who God is, if God should exist, what do we do? We share them and piece them together. I think there is enough shared experience throughout our world over a long history of time continuing to the present day to suggest it's worth examining,
at the least
.
Sarcastro wrote:As for the similar experiences - well, people lie, people are crazy, and, most commonly, people are inclined to interpret things to mean what they want them to mean.
Yes, it makes it much more difficult to wade through them. It seems, though, that you must explain away
each and every one
of these experiences in such a way. If you want to employ Occam's Razor here, it seems a simpler explanation is that there might be something there. It's not the
easiest
explanation, but it's the simplest.
Sarcastro wrote:Why are you a Methodist as opposed to, say, a Baptist? An Anglican? A Catholic? A Muslim? A Jew? A Buddhist? A Hindu? A Zoroastrian? A Norse Pagan? A Shintoist? A Rastafarian? A Pastafarian? And so on and so forth.
A strict behaviorist would say it's because I'm a product of my environment. I say it's because Methodism (specifically United Methodism) aligns so very closely with my epistemological approach and belief in who God is.
Sarcastro wrote:Further, I'm assuming that you were born into a Methodist family and/or community. If I'm correct in assuming that, don't you think it's a bit of a coincidence that you happened to born where you were, rather than, say, India? If you were born in India, do you think you would have still become a Methodist? I'm assuming that you think being born in India would not actually have changed the reality of the world, so if you'd been born in India, Methodism would still have been the correct religion, right? Do you believe that you are favoured by God, and that is why you were born into a place where Methodism is frequently practiced? In any of your encounters with God, did he explicitly say that you were to be a Methodist? Do you know for sure that they were encounters with a Methodist/Christian/Monotheistic god and not, say, Shiva or Loki or Ra or Sun Wukong or Veles or Belobog or Athena or Amaterasu or Anansi?
I was raised in the Baptist church by Baptist parents. I found Methodism to make more sense and have a much more sensical approach towards tradition (appreciation without fear or strict adherence), the scriptures (as sacred texts that aren't rigid words), and reason (as a foundation and bedrock). I have known others who grew up Baptist and became atheist, some agnostic, some Baptist, some Methodist, some other things entirely. I am indeed aware of my cultural situation, and understand that were I born in an area where other religions are dominant, it's entirely possible I would be more familiar with other faith traditions. (However, there's a certain presupposition to this I'm not sure I can go all the way on - if I'm substantially different, then I'm substantially different, possibly to the point of not being me - whatever that is.) I don't believe I particularly was favored by God to be born in an area that Methodism is prevalent, though I do consider myself fortunate.
I don't recall God ever telling me to be Methodist, though. While I could not say with 100% certainty that my encounters have been with the God of Christian faith, they have been consistent with my understanding from others of who that God is. Admittedly, I believe that others who have encountered God (such as the Hindu in India, to continue the example given) have actually experienced YHWH, and have interpreted their revelation incorrectly. I have done some substantive research into other religions, and found them either not meshing with my experience of God, and/or having internal rational problems I could not see answers to. From the abstract, this is why I believe in God. I acknowledge I might be wrong, but I think I'm right. (It's sort of how I play mafia.
)
I hope this helps answer your question. I've seen a lot of a-rational or irrational Christians out there, and it always worries me, because while their hearts are in the right place, their minds might be leading people astray. I think there is plenty of room for a rational, robust faith in God.