Wow. That's really long, Modulous.
I've printed it off and'll read it over some lunch. I'll edit this message with a reply when I get back.
Nobody is suggesting that the experiences are fabrications
Straggler has been saying that peoples' tendencies to make things up lends weight to the position in god not existing.
The IPU argument is a handy way to open the door of discussion to why we are associating these experiences with certain culturally convenient ideas such as God or Allah, or Deity, or Vishnu, the Elders, a Leszi etc etc and whether it is wise, consistent, rational or whatever to believe that those associations meaningfully correspond to an external entity.
Right, if say you're using your subjective experience to conclude that its Jesus.
But to conclude a general non-descript god-like thing, especially when the experience is corroborated by many people, doesn't match up as directly to the IPU argument. That's why it doesn't work against the Deist position.
You might not have made up the experience (as in, the experience happened) but the entity you associated that with might well have been a human invention (deliberate or inadvertant). Just as if someone had a religious, subjective experience that the IPU visited them and rescued them from the Purple Oyster it doesn't follow that either of those entities should be believed to exist.
Again, with the Deists' god's lack of description, it doesn't leave us much to be invented. It doesn't fit on the argument.
If a person, upon confronting the IPU argument, agrees and says "Yes, I could have associated that experience with the IPU had I grown up in a culture infused with the IPU or had I been contemplating the IPU at the time.", then the IPU argument has pretty much served its purpose.
Agreed.
If, on the other hand, they dismiss the IPU as an illogical argument with perhaps the suggestion that the IPU is intrinsically silly whereas the Garage-Dragon or the Leszi, the Domovoi or the Djinn is not - then we have something to debate. Such as why that is the case.
Again, the Deists' god doesn't fit.
I think, thought I'd be interested to see data on it, that almost all humans have some kind of 'religious experience' at least once in their lives - Maybe I'm lucky in that I have had many. I know the power that lies behind them and the desire to explain what just happened, even if in only symbolic or metaphorical or poetic kinds of ways. I know how it feels to associate those experiences with a menagerie of entities and 'levels', 'states', 'planes of beings' and so on. The question is: is it a good idea to believe that the poetry is real?
On the contrary, is it a good idea to think its bullshit?
I don't think it really matters that much in day-to-day life.
As far as I am aware, religious experiences are a little more difficult to understand than human vision. But we know enough to be able to recreate them in a lab a statistically significant amount of the time, some people (myself included) can voluntarily invoke one. Certain drugs and certain brain malfunctions (such as those caused during epilepsy) can also result in powerful religious experiences.
Those results don't reduce a god being behind some of them.
Lets say a ghost opens a door, walks into a room and reveals itself to someone and then disappears. If someone else then comes along and the door opens, that doesn't mean that a ghost had to have walked into the room. It rules out that every time the door a ghost has walked in, but it doesn't rule out the time that the ghost did walk into the room.
We can, if we desire, dismiss all that evidence, dismiss the evidence of the quick tendency for the brain to make associates and spot patterns and see conscious intention behind the otherwise unexplained events in our lives, and declare "But my subjective religious experience really did point to a divine external entity of some kind, even if I make no claims about that entity's characteristics!"
The IPU is getting left behind though - since her original purpose was to simply show that there needs to be more said than 'I believe in such a such unverifiable unfalsifiable entity' and we are now getting into the territory of saying much more than that. She can be extended to show up a cultural bias with our associations, she can be extended to show that subjective experiences don't necessarily mean what we want them to mean (or think that they mean).
Most importantly though the IPU serves her inherited purpose when she shows that it is the believer that has to justify their belief, not the disbeliever who has to justify their disbelief in an entity that there is no way to 'point' at. Believers have to justify why they believe that alien life likely exists - and they have to justify why they believe the Garage-Dragon exists, or the Leszi or the Domovoi or the Djinn - if the believer wants/expects anybody to seriously consider their beliefs.
Are people really expecting others to seriously consider their beliefs based on their own, not the other's, subjective beliefs alone though?
quote:
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense...
If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
Who's claiming that "it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it"?
To conclude - the IPU isn't a logical fallacy when used to argue against a faith-based belief.
As long as those beliefs contian specifics and are expected to be seriously considered.
For me to say that my subjective experience has convinced me that some general kind of god-like thing exists is different than the IPU argument.
For the most part the IPU gambit exposes a level of defensiveness, some denial and then, with persistence, the admission of subjectivity and perhaps even arbitrariness in choice (eg., special pleading) on behalf of the believer.
But the pleading
is special in that my experience tells me that a god exists but it does not tell me that the IPU exists.
Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2
