Proofs of Evolution: A Mediocre Debate (Faith, robinrohan and their invitees)

Not much serious talk in the college cafeteria? Or faculty lounge or whatever.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-14-2006 01:17 PM

Why do some people have religious experiences and others do not?If you've had one, could you describe it?

Not sure what you mean by a "religious experience." I've decribed some experiences of supernatural things here and there at EvC. Some "religious experiences" are really only such things and not experiences of God. There are some experiences I would not tell because they are too personal, and that would be the case with most Christians.

One thing I could say is that before I was a believer I used to wonder the same thing. Answer is it isn't about who the people are. Could happen to anyone, could happen to you.I was surrounded by people who believed in all kinds of spiritual/supernatural things, friends who had seemed like normal rational western student types in the sixties and became weirdos following every kind of eastern and cultic and occultic thing in the seventies. I exaggerate I guess, but it was awfully depressing, because I'd retained my respect for western rationalism and got rather cynical through it all. THEY had various "religious experiences" (some drug-induced) and they thought I was "too analytical." I certainly got sick of being called that.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-14-2006 07:26 PM

So it's not a matter of somebody being "receptive"? When somebody says that, it means you're smart, and they don't like you being smart.

Certainly not if you're talking about experiences of God. Believe in Him and set yourself to obey Him, you'll experience His reality.But if you mean like the "psychics" who have visions and get messages, then there is a sort of receptivity involved, but according to Biblical understanding it's really demon activity, and you DON'T want that. Now you can call me a crazy old woman again. I gather you may have experienced it yourself?Actually they were awfully certain of the superiority of their "nonlinear" thinking, and I'm sure some of them had quite a few IQ points on me, so I dunno about that "smart" bit.But it is really really odd that scientist types were always attracted to me. Until I started being a believer, and then the poor things got so worried about me.

No, I wasn't thinking of that. It's just curious that it's not a matter of what one believes, apparently, or even if one is a "good" person; it's not a matter of making yourself psychologically receptive to such an experience. It seems that God just picks our certain people and decides to communicate with them. That's what I'm gathering from your remarks. That's part of a drunken tirade. I'm reasonably sober at the moment. Not at all. You are quite analytic. In fact, I think you are too analytic. You need to experience BEING and let life flow through you. Listen to the music of BEING's strange, irregular rhythm. Stop thinking and start LIVING. And blah de blah de blah.

That says it. That's the way it is throughout the Bible too.

I don't see this. Suppose I had my doubts about the existence of Timbuctoo. There is this old and famous book that describes Timbuctoo in great detail, and there are these people who say they have been to Timbuctoo, and I see shows on TV about Timbuctoo. Still, I refuse to believe there is such a place.Is there anything "immoral" about such a stance? I don't think so. One might call my belief foolish, but not immoral.Or another example, perhaps better. Suppose a man is cheating on his wife. The wife does not believe it. There are various clues that crop up suggesting that he is in fact cheating. A friend informs her that he is cheating. It's really fairly obvious that he is cheating, though not overtly so. Is the wife immoral in continuing to not believe that her husband is cheating? Foolish, I grant you--but immoral?Such is the case with a religious system that considers belief in a set of doctrines a moral act and disbelief an immoral act. Such is the case with Christianity but in particular Calvinism.

A long time ago, Parasomnium wrote this great post in which he discussed consciousness. The question he posed was, if you wanted to describe to somebody what it was like to be conscious, what would you say? Parasomnium's brilliant answer was, "I feel like I am incorporeal."That's it, exactly. What does this have to do with the Confessions?Well, I am reading along in Augustine's book and trying to figure out what his problem was. Of course, he was leading this sensual and worldly life and feeling rather guilty about it, but there was some theretical problem as well. He could not believe in a corporeal God: that made no sense to him. On the other hand, he could not conceive of incorporeality either. How could something be incorporeal?Then he starts talking about memory--the power of memory to bring back the lost objects of the past: He goes on about that for awhile, and I'm thinking, what is this all about? And then it begins to dawn on me that this incorporeality that he could not conceive of is present there in his own mind. The objects of memory are incorporeal. The mind itself is incorporeal. Therefore, there is such a quality as incorporeality.Now we know what is meant by the term "supernatural." It means that which is incorporeal. The mind, says Augustine, is supernatural.I feel like I am incorporeal: the origin of religion.

That makes a certain sense, but I think that based on scripture God regards it as immoral to distrust good evidence to such an extent, or to distrust honest reports by honest people. I'd guess it's a species of lying, bearing false witness.In the case of the wife's denial of the husband's cheating, I feel for the wife and figure she's fighting what she knows to be the truth because what rightly matters to her is being threatened, and trusting her husband is normally a good thing, so it is hard to see it as quite the same situation. Motive is a big determining factor. But I suppose nevertheless it is similar -- to deny the evidence and well-meant revelation is fairly a form of bearing false witness. Preserving truth has high value. I don't think you are characterizing it correctly when you call it "belief in a set of doctrines." What are the doctrines? That God is a personal Being who relates to us, that Jesus is God, that He became incarnate, that He died for sinners and that sort of thing?To call these "doctrines" seems to me to put yourself at a distance from them -- even maybe to do so by a species of bearing false witness. They are historical facts that you are told in much the same way you are told about the existence of Timbuctoo, by the witness of a book written by apparently sincere people, and by the people who trust the book as well, or have had experiences that confirm it. In this case there are also more important consequences to believing or disbelieving than in the case of Timbuctoo. "...that he who believes on Him should have eternal life." I guess you can always say "Well, if I go to Hell for eternity at least I know it was my own choice, and foolish though it might be I can't call it immoral.""The fool" in the Bible is also one who doesn't believe. "The fool has said in his heart 'there is no God.'" So being foolish isn't much better than lying anyway.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 10:34 AM

Yes. Those are doctrines. A doctrine is just a belief. The Athanasian Creed is a set of codified doctrines. This is cryptic. Maybe so. If disbelief in these Christian doctrines is not only foolish but immoral, it means that foolishness is not innocent. I think you would agree that an innocent mistake cannot be immoral?What about other foolish beliefs, say a practical foolish belief?Suppose there was this man that had a decent job and his family depended on the income from this job. But one day he discovers an opportunity to hire on with another company which will not only pay him more but give him better job satisfation, he thinks. He goes to interviews and everything seems fine. The people are nice and the company looks great. Little does he know that all is not well with this company (say, some company like Enron). He innocently takes this job. The "doctrine" he believes in is, "This is a solid company."A few months later he has no job, and as a result his family suffers.Was his belief innocent--or immoral?

But my point was that in fact all these doctrines are simply statements of facts amply illustrated in the Bible throughout many reported historical events and encounters. The various Creeds merely codify the conclusions and inferences for easy reference.So someone tells you there is this Timbuctoo and there are even pictures, but you don't believe it; and then somebody writes out a list of the main evidences that there is a Timbuctoo and you call that "doctrine" as if it were something else than the same reasons you should believe there is a Timbuctoo. "Doctrine," like "just a belief," separates you from the facts just enough to confirm you in your disbelief. "The fool" in the Bible isn't much like what we normally call a fool. In the Bible the fool is spiritually blind. He follows his impulses, he refuses to apply himself to Wisdom. The fool in the Book of Proverbs gets seduced by a woman for instance, which is going to lead to his death. This is the kind of foolishness that refuses to learn that there are dire consequences to sin. Most of us have this kind of foolishness, all the more so in our modern world that denies God or Spiritual Reality.This isn't about mistakes in judgment about everyday situations. The choice to change jobs that turned out for the worse WAS an innocent mistake just because we can't know everything. It looked like a good move, there were no bad motives.But you've been told by many that the only way to avoid an eternity of misery is to give yourself to Jesus Christ. Refusing that is a different kind of foolishness. It's not based on bad judgment or lack of knowledge. You have the knowledge, you've been told, the people who have told you have your best interests at heart.{abe: to clean up a couple of confusing sentences.}This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 07:43 PM

I like Parasomnium's "feeling of incorporeality" as a clue to consciousness. I agree that our awareness of our minds is a clue to there being a reality beyond the physical that materialists insist is all there is, and I've appreciated your feeling that physicality couldn't possibly produce mind, but I'm not sure I'd say that mind is "supernatural." Maybe in the sense you mean the word it is. Did Augustine really say that?My first understanding of God was of Universal Mind. I went around for days thinking about how we are all living within a vast spiritual "soup" as it were, all surrounded and interpenetrated by the Mind of God. The entire universe is immersed in this Mind, this invisible immaterial nonphysical active conscious living "soup." Some orthodox/traditional Christian discussions of the nature of God seem to confirm something along these lines too. Immanence. He is separate from His creation but not one atom of it exists without His sustaining presence.The atmosphere seemed to become "electric" as I thought about all this at that time. (As a matter of dull physical fact the biggest electrical storm I've ever seen happened during that period. It made me laugh. The air crackled with nearly nonstop lightning.)I don't even remember Augustine wondering about a corporeal God, and don't see how anybody has such an idea at all. My understanding of God was of complete incorporeality/nonphysicality from the start. Rather, it's evidence for a spiritual reality, as a contrast with the dominant materialistic worldview, but hardly the origin of the idea.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 07:50 PM

Faith There is a physical explanation for the "feeling of incorporeality" and readily explains the illusion.The brain does not have a nervous feedback system in the way that the body does. We feel a corporeal body due simply to the nervous system.
Since the brain has no awareness of itself produced by nervous action to convey a sense of physicality the brain thus interprets the mind as being seperate. Hence we have the illusion of a seperation between mind and body.This also readily explains why the mind is overtly influenced by physical actions upon the brain.This message has been edited by sidelined, Sun, 2006-01-15 03:29 PM

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But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time.