argument from religous experince

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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argument from religous experince

Post by Metacrock » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:22 pm

Decision Making Paradigm: logic of the lamp post"

AT the heart of all religious belief and all organized religions is experience and the sense of the numinous. This is the foundation of religious belief. If we are going to argue for God it would behoove us to examine the nature of this sense of the numinous.

The logic of the lamp post is this: we can't find our keys in the dark. We look under lamp post even if we did not drop them there because that is where we will find them. We can't find God in sense data, because God is not given in sense data. So we look in place we will find him, personal experience. Since this is the basis of religious belief it makes sense to look there.

Co-determinate: The co-determinate is like the Derridian trace, or like a fingerprint. It's the accompanying sign that is always found with the thing itself. In other words, like trailing the inviable man in the snow. You can't see the inviable man, but you can see his footprints, and wherever he is in the snow his prints will always follow.

We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the world.

Now how do we know the co-determinate? Schleiermacher saw it as the feeling of utter dependence, because the object or correlates of having such a feeling was the thing that evokes the feeling. Just feelings of sublimity imply that one encounters the sublime, feelings of love imply that there is a beloved, so feelings of utter dependence imply that there is a universal necessity upon which the live world and worlds are supremely utterly dependent. We can also include mystical experince and life transformation because these are part and parcel of what is meant by the idea of religion and the divine. As far back as we can dig for artifacts we seem to find some form of mystical experince at the heart of all organized religion. So we can conclude that God, religion, and life transformation always go hand in hand. The studies themselves tell us that life transformation always accompanies dramatic experiences which are understood as and which evoke a strong sense of the Holy. Is this really phenomenological? We can screw up our phenomenological credentials by responding to it in a non phenomenological way. But it is the product of the phenomenological method, because it derives from observation of the phenomena and allowing the phenomena to tell us what categories to group the data into.





The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answerer in the argument below. Here let us set out some general perameters:

(1) The trace produced content with specifically religious affects

(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine reality, are trans formative of life goals and self actualization

(3) Cannot be accounted for by alternate causality or other means.

_________________________________
this is the actual argument,

Argument:



(1)There are real affects from Mystical experince.

(2)These affects cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and affect, bogus mental states or epiphenomena.

(3)Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explanations we should assume that they are genuine.

(4)Since mystical experince is usually experince of something, the Holy, the sacred some sort of greater transcendent reality we should assume that the object is real since the affects or real, are that the affects are the result of some real higher reality.

(5)The true measure of the reality of the co-determinate is the transfomrative power of the affects. Since those are real we can assume the apparent cause is real.
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Re: argument from religous experince

Post by Metacrock » Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:10 am

we got no discussion on this one. But it shows my arguments.
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Re: argument from religous experince

Post by Metacrock » Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:09 pm

nygreenguy wrote:Found a neat article on the brain and religion.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =110997741
allow me to link it:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =110997741
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Re: argument from religous experince

Post by Metacrock » Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:17 pm

that is the issue I've been debating with them on carm about for a long time. They think the presence of one chemical proves that it's all just nationalistically caused and has nothing to do with God. I've disproved that with about 15 arguments that they don't even answer. I actually wrote a blog piece about the very article you linked to:


http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2009/05/b ... er-to.html

Please read that article. But to summarize my arguments.

(1) Most brain research does not use the M Scale or any other proven scale to control for religious experince. So they cannot prove prove that they did actually evoke such an experience.

(2) most people who have these experiences are not talking drugs and don't use silosibin so if their experiences are caused by chemicals they would have to be from a chemical imbalance or an accident of birth whereby the person just has an abundance of that chemical. If that is the case it doesn't explain:

(a) how it is that most chemical imbalances are extremely deleterious and never enable one to get one's life in order, which RE does.

(b) why it only kicks in after or with religious conversion and not before.

(3) God would have to either use chemicals to communicate (because we are the type of organisms that have to have chemical transmitters for thought) or he would have to make a special creation so that people could feel his presence and have the effects. Thus the presence of chemicals is not proof at all that its' not God involved in the process. We should expect to find chemicals even if God does it.
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Re: argument from religous experince

Post by Cheeky Monkey » Thu Jul 30, 2009 4:23 pm

Metacrock wrote: The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answerer in the argument below. Here let us set out some general perameters:

(1) The trace produced content with specifically religious affects

(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine reality, are trans formative of life goals and self actualization

(3) Cannot be accounted for by alternate causality or other means.
if I may play devil's advocate for the moment without engaging in the argument (just yet) you probably know from experience that no atheist or skeptic would accept parametre 3. Especially at CARM where people spend their time jumping on YECs (they're bouncey) everyone is highly sensitized to aninverted burden of proof. No matter what you might think of the context or the argument 3 's a show stopper for any skeptic with the courage of their convictions.
"They'll be sorry. They'll be sorry if I die - except that I can't. Whatever you do it ends up raining. What's it all for? What's the point of it all? And if it hasn't got a point, what's the point of that? (Monkey, Great Sage Equal of Heaven)

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Re: argument from religous experince

Post by Cheeky Monkey » Thu Jul 30, 2009 4:42 pm

Metacrock wrote:that is the issue I've been debating with them on carm about for a long time. They think the presence of one chemical proves that it's all just nationalistically caused and has nothing to do with God. I've disproved that with about 15 arguments that they don't even answer. I actually wrote a blog piece about the very article you linked to:

to summarize my arguments.

(1) Most brain research does not use the M Scale or any other proven scale to control for religious experince. So they cannot prove prove that they did actually evoke such an experience.
Again in the spirit of helping as a reviewer, I'm still up to my neck Evidence Based Medcine right now. To me this argument seems barse ackwards. The default position would be that brain chemicals in duce RE so if researchers got it wrong or used the wrong tools bad luck for the researchers. The default hypothesis wins IMHO. It may well be that atheists might start from a position that 'this research demonstrates that RE=BC" but if pressed hard one can easily fall back on my above argument.
(2) most people who have these experiences are not talking drugs and don't use silosibin so if their experiences are caused by chemicals they would have to be from a chemical imbalance or an accident of birth whereby the person just has an abundance of that chemical. If that is the case it doesn't explain:

(a) how it is that most chemical imbalances are extremely deleterious and never enable one to get one's life in order, which RE does.

(b) why it only kicks in after or with religious conversion and not before.

(3) God would have to either use chemicals to communicate (because we are the type of organisms that have to have chemical transmitters for thought) or he would have to make a special creation so that people could feel his presence and have the effects. Thus the presence of chemicals is not proof at all that its' not God involved in the process. We should expect to find chemicals even if God does it.
"They'll be sorry. They'll be sorry if I die - except that I can't. Whatever you do it ends up raining. What's it all for? What's the point of it all? And if it hasn't got a point, what's the point of that? (Monkey, Great Sage Equal of Heaven)

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Re: argument from religous experince

Post by Metacrock » Thu Jul 30, 2009 7:39 pm

Cheeky Monkey wrote:
Metacrock wrote: The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answerer in the argument below. Here let us set out some general perameters:

(1) The trace produced content with specifically religious affects

(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine reality, are trans formative of life goals and self actualization

(3) Cannot be accounted for by alternate causality or other means.
if I may play devil's advocate for the moment without engaging in the argument (just yet) you probably know from experience that no atheist or skeptic would accept parametre 3. Especially at CARM where people spend their time jumping on YECs (they're bouncey) everyone is highly sensitized to aninverted burden of proof. No matter what you might think of the context or the argument 3 's a show stopper for any skeptic with the courage of their convictions.

you wouldn't accept it on its face, but after months of arguing it on carm I have yet to see them come up with anything that comes to pulling the argument. I've got seven tie breakers and they can't answer one.
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Re: argument from religous experince

Post by Cheeky Monkey » Thu Jul 30, 2009 8:16 pm

Metacrock wrote:
Cheeky Monkey wrote:
Metacrock wrote: The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answerer in the argument below. Here let us set out some general perameters:

(1) The trace produced content with specifically religious affects

(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine reality, are trans formative of life goals and self actualization

(3) Cannot be accounted for by alternate causality or other means.
if I may play devil's advocate for the moment without engaging in the argument (just yet) you probably know from experience that no atheist or skeptic would accept parametre 3. Especially at CARM where people spend their time jumping on YECs (they're bouncey) everyone is highly sensitized to aninverted burden of proof. No matter what you might think of the context or the argument 3 's a show stopper for any skeptic with the courage of their convictions.

you wouldn't accept it on its face, but after months of arguing it on carm I have yet to see them come up with anything that comes to pulling the argument. I've got seven tie breakers and they can't answer one.
Wow interesting. You'd think since this is the only part of the initial parametres that attempts to address and establish that the phenomena is supernatural you'd think people would be all over it.
"They'll be sorry. They'll be sorry if I die - except that I can't. Whatever you do it ends up raining. What's it all for? What's the point of it all? And if it hasn't got a point, what's the point of that? (Monkey, Great Sage Equal of Heaven)

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