Theism, magical thinking and CAM.

[hiyymer]

So here's my question - how do theists avoid becoming aware that their beliefs are magical? I was once a theist, many moons ago and obviously failed to avoid such an awareness - ergo by my teens atheism was in the ascent!

Am I just wrong, do most theists accept it is magical thinking but that the magic exists?

How do you avoid being aware that green is magic? The tree is a pile of atoms reflecting light at some wavelength. It's not green. Why do you believe it's green? Aren't you aware that green is magic?

[Bruce Burleson]

Which one is god? The experience or the objective reality? How can one experience anything objective? Experience is subjective.

A scientist observing bacteria under a microscope experiences something objective. He sees the bacteria, which is objective. His observation of it is subjective - it happens in his brain. God is objective. My experience of God is subjective. Does this help?

[Bruce Burleson]

In dismissing the concept of revelation, you are closing yourself off from the experience of an objective reality, which is God.

Is that biblical? I mean that my knowing such an experience is subjective would disbar me from having the experience? Or does it mean that because I don't think a 'god experience' is an objective reality then I won't experience a god as objective reality? (I'm inclined to agree with the latter!).

When Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus told Peter that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but his Father in heaven. Matthew 16. Without revelation from God, no one understands who Jesus is. Jesus is objective, and God is objective, but the experience of the revelation from God to the believer is subjective.

[Bruce Burleson]

How can you tell the difference between experiencing god and schizophrenia (or any other mental illness)?

I've never had schizophrenia, so I don't know. But the DSM IV does not classify religious faith as a mental disorder, so I suppose one difference is that experiencing God is not listed in the DSM IV as a mental illness. Also, people suffering from schizophrenia truly have difficulties functioning in the world, if they are not on their meds. That is not the case with the average person of faith, assuming that there is not a recognized mental illness involved.

[Bruce Burleson]

How about just SEEING him?
Can you take a picture to show others that he really exists and isn't just a figment of your imagination?

No, I can't see him or take a picture of him. Can you show me a picture of a top quark? Now, technology may advance at some point in the future where photos can be taken of top quarks and God. But right now, as far as I know, there is no scientific tool to measure or record God in any way. One has to rely upon revelation.

But things have a way of working out for me that seems to suggest some aspect of material presence. Opportunities, prospects, clients, resources all seem to come out of thin air just when I need them. My entire life has seemed like one big answered prayer in a way...

That's just luck. Your interpretation of it is biased, and more than likely selective.

Says you.

[Bruce Burleson]

This part of the conversation was about your claim that your experiences were...let's be specific:

My experience of God appears to me to come from external stimuli, just as my happiness in seeing my grandchildren. In other words, I relate it to an objective reality, not simply something that is happening in my head.

To which Floppit asked the above question at the beginning of the quote.

So the question as to the objective part of the experience still is unanswered.

The objective part is God. The subjective part is my experience of God. The objective part of scientist looking at bacteria in a microscope is the bacteria. The subjective part is his experience of seeing the bacteria in the microscope.

[Bruce Burleson]

If it's objective, it can be demonstrated in some fashion.

What you are describing is indistinguishable from Sam Berkowitz believing that dogs were possessed by demons telling him to kill people.

The technology to observe and record every single objective reality in the universe and beyond the universe does not yet exist, so you are wrong. We cannot demonstrate the existence of every single planet in the universe, for example. We cannot yet demonstrate exactly what dark matter and dark energy are. You are assuming that science is much more advanced than it actually is.

There are many factors that distinguish my experience of God from David Berkowitz' experience of demon-possessed dogs. For one thing, I don't kill people and am not in prison. That's a fairly big difference.

[Svartalf]

I just read that yesterday and it was so awesome I just had to try fit it in some where

Which of Fred's works is that from?

[FBM]

Which one is god? The experience or the objective reality? How can one experience anything objective? Experience is subjective.

A scientist observing bacteria under a microscope experiences something objective. He sees the bacteria, which is objective. His observation of it is subjective - it happens in his brain. God is objective. My experience of God is subjective. Does this help?

Not really. How do you know that anything exists outside your experience of it? I'm not sure enough of my own experiences that I'm willing to propose a magical, supernatural structure to the universe that is based on a story I read that has no supporting evidence. I'd be a little more humble, and consider that maybe I'm misinterpreting my experiences. A lot of people have religious experiences and only a few of them attribute them to the Abrahamic god. Those experiences are filed in lots of different categories in lots of different traditions. If you want to believe that your experiences and an old book outweigh the profound, absolute, glaring lack of evidence, that's cool with me, though. I don't have a dog in this race.

[hiyymer]

Which one is god? The experience or the objective reality? How can one experience anything objective? Experience is subjective.

A scientist observing bacteria under a microscope experiences something objective. He sees the bacteria, which is objective. His observation of it is subjective - it happens in his brain. God is objective. My experience of God is subjective. Does this help?

Yet many of the characteristics of the observed bacteria are not part of the bacteria but are supplied by the brain; color, apparent solidity, etc. So that's not really the objective bacteria either. The objective bacteria must be only the aspects of the bacteria that can be shown to be out there independent of our experience.

So then there is the question, what are the objective aspects of a god that can be shown to be out there independent of our experience, if any. God is an agent, like the self or other person that we experience in our "mind", and as far as we know the characteristics of agents that are intentional, self-caused, moral are all made up by the brain to represent fully caused biological processes. The tiger's blood sugar is down, setting off a sensation of hunger, compelling the tiger's cortex to attend to finding food, and before you know it we have a tiger that is a self-caused agent intending to eat. But objectively there is no free-willed intention; no actual agent in that sense. It's just a convention of the brain that works to further our replication.

[JimC]

Which one is god? The experience or the objective reality? How can one experience anything objective? Experience is subjective.

A scientist observing bacteria under a microscope experiences something objective. He sees the bacteria, which is objective. His observation of it is subjective - it happens in his brain. God is objective. My experience of God is subjective. Does this help?

The scientist can call someone else over, let them use the microscope, and they can compare observations. Pictures, measurements and further experiments can follow, and can be replicated in someone else's lab...

Not the same at all...

[Mysturji]

How about just SEEING him?
Can you take a picture to show others that he really exists and isn't just a figment of your imagination?

No, I can't see him or take a picture of him. Can you show me a picture of a top quark? Now, technology may advance at some point in the future where photos can be taken of top quarks and God. But right now, as far as I know, there is no scientific tool to measure or record God in any way. One has to rely upon revelation.

There is evidence for quarks. Solid evidence. Like at one time there was solid evidence for all kinds of other particles that they couldn't take pictures of either... like these ones:

There is absolutely no evidence for your imaginary friend.

But things have a way of working out for me that seems to suggest some aspect of material presence. Opportunities, prospects, clients, resources all seem to come out of thin air just when I need them. My entire life has seemed like one big answered prayer in a way...

That's just luck. Your interpretation of it is biased, and more than likely selective.

Says you.[/quote]
Yup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVfYV2rc ... 21Pq9YVgwA

[floppit]

I started out this thread wondering what happened to the way believers think - much more so than what they think. I also began by seeing a difference in belief in CAM and belief in gods, actually I'm less sure of that now.

I have found it really interesting to talk to one or two, I doubt either is representative - if for no other reason than choosing to be here but it's been interesting none the less. I know I 'experience' the world inside my head but the existence of the world extends far beyond little me, as I'm sure believers see their chosen god to exist far beyond them, even far beyond our dimension! No ties to the real world have been suggested, nothing outside a persons head, no miracles claimed, no water walked on, just feeling, feelings tested by how well they match already held beliefs. I suspect that the egocentric-ism I see in that is paralleled by a believer's view of imagining we just evolved rather than being crafted by a better being, that we can live without worship of a deity.

I'm not sure I can get any more from the discussion, unless I chose to abandon the notion that ideas need a tie to the material world rather than simply back to the idea, or believers had a 'revelation' that ideas bound to themselves come from people, an aha moment of realisation why there are so many religions, why a person is far more likely to follow their parents religion than a new one, why religion is different to rational enquiry; well, unless some of that took place the argument would be like chewing tough meat, not worth it once the flavour's gone!

[hiyymer]

I'm not sure I can get any more from the discussion, unless I chose to abandon the notion that ideas need a tie to the material world rather than simply back to the idea, or believers had a 'revelation' that ideas bound to themselves come from people, an aha moment of realisation why there are so many religions, why a person is far more likely to follow their parents religion than a new one, why religion is different to rational enquiry; well, unless some of that took place the argument would be like chewing tough meat, not worth it once the flavour's gone!

The problem is the limits of what is rational. That is what evolutionary biology demonstrates. Morality, gods, my own me being me, only exist in our experience. They are mechanisms of a caused biological process. When I say I know right from wrong, it is an irrational process that is producing that feeling that I know which moral choice I SHOULD make. When my implicit biological motivations are in conflict I experience the moral choice. It is just my biological regulation doing its thing. We know that independently from my experience I am an animal with behaviors and drives and instincts that have evolved over the eons through the process of natural selection. There is no "reason" for them and no underlying purpose except replication. There are only rationalizations, and god told me to do it is actually an excellent rationalization. Reason is a tool which helps us be effective, but it cannot make what is irrational rational. There is a certain satisfaction in calling it god and making it into an agent that reveals the purpose that we experience as being there. We don't want any damn scientist telling us that the purpose doesn't really exist. We are all driven by the illusion of moral progress, whatever we call it. If you have a problem with the ephemeral quality of gods, you do it some other way. Even scientists who know better will replace god with the rationally enlightened moral "we" freed from nature, and try to pretend that there's something real about that. That's the "tie to the material world".

[Bruce Burleson]

Yet many of the characteristics of the observed bacteria are not part of the bacteria but are supplied by the brain; color, apparent solidity, etc. So that's not really the objective bacteria either. The objective bacteria must be only the aspects of the bacteria that can be shown to be out there independent of our experience.

Seriously, how can anything be "shown" independent of our experience. Once you "show" it, in any form whatsoever, we process it through our brains and it becomes part of our experience. You can show me 2+2=4, and I experience that in my brain. You can't separate the objective from the subjective once you attempt to observe it. So, there is an objective God (IMO), and I experience him subjectively (IMO).