If you examine correctly, he does claim they apply to his own way of thinking.
I realize Iamb has acknowledged that a spiritual experience is available for others, just not for him. But his insistence that it’s all in the head degrades the actual experience. He wants objective proof of a subjective certainty. That could apply to our beliefs in science as being able to state objective reality. It can apply to our experiences with qualia. Changeaux argued that our ability to communicate exposes many experiences as common to “all reasonable men and women.” (“What Makes Us Think”.) It is from our common insights that we are able to communicate at all. In short, the fact that we can communicate shows that we have no radical subjective/objective divide such as would prevent you from understanding what I am saying to you. Reasonable men and women have and have had spiritual experiences.
On the contrary, what should be obvious is that assertions such as this can only be understood substantively in a particular context understood from a particular point of view.
And then the part where any disputes that occur either are or are not able to be examined, then described, then [possibly] resolved utilizing the tools of theologians or philosophers or scientists.
Evil? Where and when? Pertaining to what particular behaviors that precipitate what particular consequences?
Also, what is obvious to me is that we all come into this world with deeply rooted wants and needs. Some more or less amenable to “reason”, some more or less not. And that these wants and needs have ever and always come into conflict. And that those who come to desire one set of consequences are in fact prone to call those who want another “evil”.
So this couple kidnap an 8-year-old girl. He rapes her, while the woman stands by. Then the woman kills her by hitting in the head with a hammer which they had purchased prior to the assault.
To reduce that to “conflicting goods” or “we desire one set of consequences and they want another set of consequences” is disgusting. It is evil.
Well, look at it this way:
God [most of them] are omnipotent. And, in being all powerful, He could surely have interjected at any time to stop this.
He did not.
So, how evil can it really be?
Also, given that God [most of them] are omniscient, there is nothing that these folks do that He was not already privy to.
So, how can it be said that, for all practical purposes, they have the freedom to choose anything at all?
Philosophy hides the emptiness.
Right, like the gods aren’t invented to do much the same.
Reasonable men/women have had spiritual experiences but not all and it is impossible to communicate something to someone where no “similar” experience exists (the fault then lies with the speaker and not the listener).
There’s fault to be assigned?
If fault is emotionally loaded for you then consider the word error.
The word “error” doesn’t seem to fit either. In what way is an explanation of a spiritual experience to one who has never had such an experience in error? If you tell a child not to play in the street because he may get hit by a car, does it matter that the child has never been hit by a car?
If you have a rebellious child who refuses to listen, then you are error.
That’s way too simplistic.
Right. There is a way to understand all of these things [including God and religion] and the folks around you [being reasonable] understand them as you do.
They know that there is a God and that morality is objective.
I’m the only one who just doesn’t “get it”.
That seems to be your argument.
Tequila:
Tequila is a regional specific name for a distilled beverage made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila, 65 km northwest of Guadalajara, and in the highlands of the central western Mexican state of Jalisco.
Now, out in the world that we live in, does tequila exist? You know, objectively? And, if John takes a swig from a bottle, is it possible to determine if it was tequila that he drank. Objectively, for example?
God:
1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
2. (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
Now, out in the world that we live in, does God exist? You know, objectively? And, if John attends a religious service in a Jewish synagogue, is it possible to determine if the congregation worships and adores the God? Objectively, for example?
That is the distinction that I make. I’m still in the dark regarding the one that you make.
Come on, what does this really have to do with establishing that tequila does in fact exist in a world where tequila does in fact exist?
How is it really the same thing as someone who is a Jew, trying to convince someone who is a Catholic or a Protestant or a Moslem or a Hindu or a Shinto or a Sikh or a Baha’i or a Buddhist etc., that they [and they alone] believe in the one true Creator?
In fact the one thing they all share in common is that they have no capacity [that I have ever come across] to move beyond faith and to demonstrate the actual existence of their God. Not beyond the circularity derived from arguing that God must exists because the Scriptures say so and that the Scriptures must be true because it is the word of God.
Why? Because when we get to the end of any particular religious narrative there is still nothing there but the narrative itself.
And that’s your dead-end, not mine.
After all, my own narrative ends with “I” falling over into the abyss for all eternity.
And, thus, in my opinion, your narrative is bascially just a soothing psychological contraption that allows you to convince yourself that this is not true at all.
It is comforting and consoling in a way that my own grim conjectures can never be.
So, okay, in that really, really crucial respect, you win. Hell, I’ve never denied that.
All this reveals is how little you know me. I have spent many, many years immersed in the exploration of God and religion. And these experiences [over and over and over and over again] encompassed considerably more than just intellectual exercises.
And no matter how many times I acknowledge that the personal experiences of others are no less credible than my own, you refuse to accept this as a starting point regarding my own views on these relationships. The irony being that my entire frame of mind here revolves precisely around the existential parameters of dasein. Our perspectives on God and religion are clearly derived in large part from our own subjective/subjunctive interactions with others – historically, culturally, experientially.
I merely note that in a philosophy venue the focus will invariably be on those things that do transcend that which we merely think or believe or know “in our head”; and, instead, aims to explore that which either can be demonstrated empirically and phenomenally or that which we can encompass logically such that all reasonable men and women are obligated to think and to believe and to know what we do.
And then, on this thread, I am curious as to how all of that is then related to morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side of it.
In other words, what, existentially, God and religion are almost always all about.
And, if an atheist subscribes to the immutable laws of matter as applicable to mind, how is that not in turn but “a leap of faith”?
Of course a neuroscientist exploring the mechanics of human choice through fMRI technology might be either a theist or an atheist.
And there have always been ways to rationalize both frames of mind.
It just comes down to whether or not it is finally resolved before each of us one by one falls over into the abyss.
And it’s not like we have a choice there, right?
It is simplistic to expect another to change but it is far from simplistic to change our own approach when we are in error.
From my perspective, this ever and always revolves around the extent to which [regarding God and religion] one is able to demonstrate that another is in error. As opposed to merely pointing out that “in our heads” we think that we know different [or conflicting] things about them.
Bullshit.
There is clearly an important distinction to be made between having a perspetive on God and religion and arguing the only thing that is real about God and religion is what you think about them.
If God and religion are only and always what you think they are “in your head”, what would even be the point of coming into a forum like this and exchanging your views with others? After all, would not the exchanges themselves be just one more manifestation [embodiment] of solipsism?
No, instead it makes considerably more sense to speculate that your own particular perspective on God and religion will come in large part from the life that you have lived — your indoctrination as a child, the cumulative experiences that you had, all of the information and knowledge you happened upon.
And then speculating on how, had all of that been different, your frame of mind would be different in turn.
And then asking yourself to what extent the theologian or the philosopher is able to take all of that into account and then to demonstrate that which all rational men and women are obligated to believe.
This being a forum for discussing God and religion in a philosophy venue.
This is the idea that a person is a blank slate that is (almost) entirely written by his experiences. He is born without any predisposition or innate characteristics.
Yet scientific studies show that young children show an interest and belief in god even when they have never been exposed to ideas about god.
Other studies show that even very young children have a concept of fairness.
So the ‘blank slate’ theory seems to be incorrect.