Atheist Illiteracy Pays Off

Atheist Intellectuals at Work


I was amazed to find this morning that my hits went from about 84 over the weekend to over 400 this morning. How could that be? I look at stat counter "recent came from" and found a search engine blog sort of thing were no nothings make little comments about things they don't understand, one caleld "read it" were another illiterate atheist who knows nothing at all about science, logic, philosophy, or thought chimes in with his two cents worth of ignorance agasint a preice I posted called "the Religious A priori."


The piece they are so outraged over is saying that things fall through the cracks in science and some issues are not scientific issues. God is not a scientific issue. So what's so alarming and scary? But It must strike a never. Someone just ent a hate male saying "anyone who claims to understand this stuff is insane." So I'm just being attack by vermin who know nothing and who are outraged because I have knowledge they don't have.

Powers 1 point2 points3 points 1 hour ago[-]

The challenges are absorbed into the paradigm untl there are so many the paradigm has to shit. This may never happen in naturalism.

I spat my tea all over my laptop...

• permalink

Moral Universe is a Peaceable Kingdom

"The Peaceable Kingdom" Edward Hicks


A few posts ago I expounded upon a particular point pertaining to my theory about theodicy. That is why God allows pain, suffering, and evil. That answer is God allows the kind world we have so that we search for truth in our hearts and that because it enables us to internalize the values of the good. That answer has generated a firestorm in the comment section in a three way debate in which Kristen is fending off attacks by her self, taking on two vociferous (but fully human) posters at once: Hermit (of course, our answer to the loyal opposition) and Anonymous (yes, another Anonymous, who knows!?). But opponents are bright and clever and Kristen has been sloughing it out with them, but she's been staying in the ring trading punch for punch.


To set the stage, my take on the whole question of theodicy is the free will defense, but I have augmented that with my view about the need for internalizing the values of the good, to me this is the bottom line. It goes like this: God wants us to have free will so we will have a moral universe. Moral universe doesn't necessarily mean one in which nothing immoral ever happens, but one in which free moral agents willing choose the good. Now that is important because without that you don't really have a moral universe, you have to allow free will, meaning allow the risk of evil choices, in order to have a moral universe. So ironically to have a moral universe you have to risk a screwed up universe in which immoral things happen. This is because "moral universe" means " universe where moral decision making is part of the deal.

The reason it's important to allow moral decision making is because it's part of growth. God could make a world of robots who never disobey but that would not be a moral universe, because they would not be free moral agents, there would be no moral decision making. Through moral decisions we internalize the values of the good. To make moral decisions we must seek truth and answers to major questions all of which requires more internalizing of values. So the real bottom line of what God seems to want in creation is a universe in which free moral agents grow in their heart's choices of good over evil and in which they come to be wise, progressive, adult, mature citizens of the kingdom. The price God pays for that is the world has to be screwed up:

(1) The possibility of evil choices must be constant

(2) God can't end all threats of pain and suffering all the time or there would be no search. No search for what one already knows. If every time we almost hurt ourselves some magic force prevented it we would not to search for truth because we would know obviously what the truth is; vis God's existence at any rate. We would figure it all out.

(3) Pain and suffering must exist in such a world Because for God to act to stop them all the time would be a dead give away.

(4) It's no good saying but God could lessen the degree because perhaps he has. We don't have a really horrible planet to compare it to so we don't know what we've been spared.

The Typical Atheist answer to all of this is to multiply examples. They seem to think if they find the most heart rending ironic seeming form of pain then they have proved that God can't really be good. But that doesn't work because it doesn't answer the exact point about internalizing and the need for search. With that understood the point of allowing a world of suffering is always outweighed by negation of the greater harm of being robots. The problem of not having free will would always be a greater evil and you can't multiple enough examples to stack up to outweighing that.

There are a couple of other points to be made:

I1) Only God can calculate the pay off.

There are too many variables and we don't have the complexity (much less the location outside time) to understand the future and what the facts that must be weighed really are. Only God could figure out if loss of free will would outweigh the evils.

(2) We can trust God to make the best decision

We have no choice for one thing, but for another, God is proved worthy of out trust in the atonement and the things he's done in our lives (for those who are willing to corporate long enough to build trust). So we can trust that God is the only true and fair judge who could weight the balance sheet between harms and goods and choose if creation is worth it.

(3) Counter balancing pleasures.

You have the problem of pain you also have the problem of pleasure. Why are we able to indulge in a seemingly unlimited capacity for small and simple pleasures? We we can appreciate them seeming to a greater extent than other animals. we can philosophize about them and develop them, we can even enjoy their deprivation or delayed gratification. There are a veritable unlimited range of good things in life. This is not a night mare planet. Yet nightmarish things happen, but so do you wonderful things. Only God can judge the balance sheet.


Now let's look at some of the arguments being made. But remember: they haven't really come to terms with the point about internalizing the good.

Anon,

Uh uh. What about the price innocents pay for the drama? Children killed in war or the Holocaust? Are they victims so that the rest of us can make choices? No thanks.

But that's just piling up the harms like I was talking about. it's more than just "so we can make choices." It's the nature of morality is. Children don't have to be hurt. It's not God hurts me. You choose to hur them, I choose to hurt them, humans choose to hurt kids and let them be hurt. We choose. the counter to that is taking away our ability to choose. Then we can't grow, we can't have spiritual maturity we can't understand the values of the good, we can't be good. It wouldn't mean anything to us that children aren't being hurt if we were unable to take the risk and the choices. But we do not have to choose to hurt them. It's irrational to blame God for giving us the right to choose things then blaming him because we make stupid choices.

What if the government took away your children every time they cried for any reason. "You want me to risk hurting my children feelings, no thanks, take them away don't let me be a parent." It's a risk, we have to take risks to make progress.

At that point Kristen reinforced the same point with a much longer argument.

I had argued that people choose to start wars so Hermit chimes in:


Hermit:

But those wars are, according to you, consistent with God's plan. You can't dodge God's responsibility for the carnage in your precious drama if He's the one who set the stage.

Notice that he puts in terms of "wars are consistent with God's plan" as though God said "I think we should have wars..." I said wars are choice by humans and their bad choices. Hermit immediately takes the onus off humanity to choose righty and blames God for allows us to make choices, ignoring the whole concept of internalizing the good. In essence he's arguing aginst knowing the good, being free, making progress, being moral, making decison, being an adult. He thinks by tagging children on to it why that why has to outweigh any value. I have a feeling he would object to having having his kids taken away on the premisie they he made them sad at some point.

Kirsten makes the parent argument, you can't blame a parent everytime the kids don't like their deicsions. But then Hermit takes the onus off the paretns, by disrupting the parental analogy:

Hermit:

The parental analogy is a weak one, anyway; the God in Joe's drama isn't just a parent; He's allegedly the one who established life itself and all the conditions of life deliberately in order to produce the kinds of conflicts we see around us. Do you deliberately set up conditions in which your children will come into conflict with each other and then stand back to watch the battle unfold without intervening so they can "internalize" the lessons of that conflict? That's what the God of Joe's Soteriological Drama does...

I hope Ive been a better parent to my children than that.

So on the one had he wants to recognize that the parent analogy is limited when he can't answer the argument, on the other he wants to use it again when it helps him. He wants to argue that God is just holding back while conflicts brew like a bad parent who doesn't stop his kids stupid decisions, on the other hand he recognizes he's not really parent that's not really analogous but then he goes back to blaming him within the parental analogy. So he can't have it both ways.

Look at the irrational nature of the argument in the first place. I will show that this argument (about war and parenting) is nothing more attempt to multiply examples. He keeps the parent analogy going when he says God created "in order to produce the kinds of conflicts we see around us." That is a misrepresentation of the argument. I never anything about God wanting to set up conflicts or problems or suffering to order to do anything. I am not arguing that suffering builds character. Internalizing values build character bu tit' snot necessary that we suffer to do that, it is necessary that we seek, and to seek we have to live in a world where answers aren't as obvious as they would be if God sheltered us from all harm. That point has gone unanswered in all the comments our two loyal opponents make, but every time the issue is raised the slide back into the parent analogy; a good parent prevents trouble and stops his kids from fighting so god is not a good parent.Even though he's already admitted the parent analogy doesn't apply or has limited value.

This is nothing more than the old atheist fallacy of send the dead buys back in:

Atheist argues X
I beat the fu out of X
Atheist argues Y
I beat the fu out of Y
Atheist argues P
I beat the fu out of P
Atheist says "Yes, but here's X, you haven't beatin X."

But Atheists in this battle admitted X didn't apply that much (before using it again in the next breath). So let's take the parent analogy out of the debate because they admit it doesn't apply!
At his point I said:

Meta:

but you haven't estabished that the balance sheet doesn't tally up on the side of allowing the drama. yes there' pain and suffering and evil but it would a thousand times more so where there no free will. We can't even understand the steaks but just with what little I do understand i would rather take all the pain I've had in life (I've had my share) and more than to save all that but have no free will.

Without free will life would be totally meaningless.

So the balance sheet does tally and we don't have the knowledge or the insight to say it doesn't.

now can we lay wars at the feet of God as though human responsibility does not exist. This is just another ploy by those fully human atheists (human all to human) to evade their responsiblity for moral failure.

you are just saying "why did you have to make so I have to use self control? why can't you just force me when I want to be forced?

To all of this Hermit brings in the "why can't God just limit pain" argument which I dealt with above:

Hermit

Free will is already limited in all kinds of ways. Making people just a little bit more empathetic so they wouldn't kill each, doesn't destroy free will any more than making some people genetically predisposed to homosexuality does.

This is still avoiding the internalization argument. The need for free outweighs anything. It's the primary value because without it goodness would not exist on earth among humans. You can't good where there are no moral choices. Arguing God could limit the evil more than he does assumes that we know how much he does. There's an infinite amount of suffering we could be spared right now because God limits how much evil is around. There's no net argument there. That doesn't outweigh the internalization argument.

Then Hermit falls back to the "God sets the stage" arguemnt:

Hermit:

On the contrary, I put all the responsibility on humanity; it's you who want God to be responsible for the circumstances in which your "drama" plays out. I'm just pointing out that if God indeed set the stage then He has to take at least some responsibility for the pain and suffering and evil inherent in the drama.

This is quite odd because he contradicts himself twice in this statement. First he says he puts the whole responsibility on man. Ok argument over! Thanks for agreeing. O but wait, then he says if God set the stage he has to take some responsibility. But that contradicts saying that the responsibility is all man's. Why should God "take responsibility" for our choices just because he gave us free will? Does that mean the Department of Motor vehicles must take responsibility for giving me a drivers license, so I'm not to blame if I drive drunk and kill someone the guy at the license place has to lose his job? What do you mean "set the stage?" He created a world that works by natural means and can run on its own in that world being evolved who have free will and can reason for themselves, but they also screw things up a lot, but God is to blame?

Who says God doesn't "take responsibility" what's he supposed to do, turn in his halo? He designed a moral law in us so we have innate ideas of how to be good. He moved into history as one of us so we can get the idea of how to be by his example, he died on the cross to forgive us when we do screw up and he sent people he knows to tell us when we stop listening to him, he had his guys write a collection of works so we have a written text with the basic ideas in it, lots of examples of what happens when we do screw up. All of these things some humans mock, deride refuse to listen to, but it's God's fault for giving them mouths. Just like it was God's fault for giving man Eve. But the basic point itself does nothing to refute the concept of the need for moral universe, the need to internalize the good, and the fact that free will outweighs any harm because upon free will ride the whole of the moral universe.

as I said,

Meta:

you are just saying "why did you have to make so I have to use self control? why can't you just force me when I want to be forced?

Kristen and Hermit argue some more about the nature of the parental argument, balme each otehr for bring it up ;-)

At this point Anon comes back take us to a new vista:


Anon:

Hermit is raising the issue of natural evil, which, unfortunately, both Meta & Kristen have been avoiding. Meta's example of war is highly problematic--Stalin & Hitler start the wars, and innocents suffer. Diseases and genetic problems cause deaths. Sure, this may teach us lessons about peace over war or applyiong our brains to medicine and engineering rather than building nukes, but this is an awfully high cost--and thus an inefficient God. Simply claiming "you don't know the meaning of the term 'drama'" or arguing about parental analogies has done nothing to address this bigger issue that sticks in many people's craws.

I don't think Hermit actaully raised the issue of natural evil as such, except tangentially. But be that as it may, (if he wants credit for raising it I'll give it to him) I am not avoiding anything. First of all "natural evil" is a misnomer. Tornadoes, Hurricanes, famines, floods, diesiease these things are not "evil." There are no moral choices involved. They are "bad" they are suffering, we could call them "natural suffering." But they are not "evil" as such. Secondly, my answer does account for them:

(1) The are the result of the consqeunce of living in a real world.

In a world with weather, biology, and nerve endings, we are going to feel pain.

(2) That God does not immediately protect us form such things (not to say he never does) is because we have to have a world in which the answers must be sought in the heart.

Of course this goes back to the whole point of the overall soteriolgocail drama theory: to internalize the good we must live in a world where searching for ultimate truth is the point of life. If there were no natural disasters and callamities we would not need to search.

Note: this is not the same saying suffering builds character so God designed a world where we have to suffer. God created a world where searching is necesary. The extent to which harms are amiliorated is dependent upon us. We can chooose to make things better for people who suffer.

At that point the sketpics are going to bring back the attempt to multiply examples until they stack them up so high they outweigh free will. But that will never happen because without free will we could not appreciate the problems of pain. If we did not have a world in which we must search and thus risk evil choices and their consequences (one of which is no helping victims of natural disaster and disease as we should) if we did not have such a world but were choiceless robots we could not appreciate the pain we now feel as something wrong or bad the result of bad choices. To even have a grasp of a problem in relation to pain we have to have the kind of world in which we feel pain. Thus multiplying examples cannot ever outweigh the value of internalizing the good. Moreover, if there was no moral universe, a universe in which free moral agents internalize the good, then the suffering we do encounter would just be "noise" just part of the background of what is, rather than holding any special chatter as "the trials and transmutations of life."

But Anon seems to miss the point:

Anon:

You contradict yourself, or at least your wording suggests as much. God doesn't allow suffering to teach us vs the point of living in such a world is to search for such answers. If God does not allow suffering, why is it there? Don't say free will. Do non-elites have free will in starting wars? Do people have free will in deciding whether their children will have genetic disorders that kill them? The a typhoon or tidal wave will wipe out a community?

I didn't say God doesn't allow suffering. I was speaking to the wording Hermit has used that implies God specifically wants suffering to happen and God doesn't goes out of his way to cause it. God soes not cause any of it. It's only the permissive result of what God allows, which is our free will, and the resulting cause of our choices is pain and suffering. God has jsut easily dsigned into the system the means to negate such suffering, its' up to us to take advantage of it.

then he wants to press the issue, do the little unpowerful people have a choice in wars, doe anyone have a choice in floods? No but God isn't purposely starting each war or causing each flood. So this just amounts to multiplying examples. You an think up new outrages all day long they will never outweigh the nature of the good which is fostered by allowing a moral universe. This applies to all the stuff I said about the tally sheet and how only God can do the tally. None of that has been answered. now they are just bring the dead guys back again. They have not answered the argument but they want to keep bringing the stuff answered.


Anon:

You could argue that the best we can do is search for lessons and answers in this context--that's perfectly valid, but then you have not solved the issue of why such suffering exists in the first place.

I have. I have explained why it's allowed and that having it still outweighs the consequence of not having it. The greater evil would be stasis: no moral progress, no learning, no choice, no free will, no moral universe, no good. you are trying to make phsyical the wrost thing that ever ever ever ever be. It's not. I admit it's hard to see that when you set concerete suffering against theoretical loss of free will. But if you think about it ihas to outwigh. Because otherwise the horrific nature of the concrete suffering wouldn't even matter to us. In order to give your arugment any philosophcial significance or any theologcial significance you have to concede to my point.

Then Anon fallas back into Old athist saws.

Kristen:

"And the conclusion that the ancients came to in the Book of Job was that it's just not that simple-- bad things aren't always deserved, but it's possible to have faith and trust in God anyway, knowing that our understanding is limited and God's is not."

Anon:

Or the Book of Job had an answer--God is not all-powerful. In which case, many people's "faith" has to be reexamined.

but clearly that's not the answer the book of Job embraces. Othersie the whole "who hung the north over an empty place?" Monologue would make no sense. The real point of the book is the wager, the meaning of which is "we can't know the answer. There could be a logical asnwer that we just don't think of." Putting in terms of a wager is not important, that's just a Maguffin. It could be anything. It's a plot device to fill an unimportant gap in the plot. The reasl answer in my view, the real thing the maguffin stands in for is internalizing the good.

Anon:

So if God is not all-powerful, where does God fit in this picture? And what happens to Joe's entire framework? What do we do with "natural evil"? I don't see an answer here.

We have to bracket that discussion as it is a lot more tricky than you think. But I am not freaked out by the concept that God is limited by logical necessity. Nor is it logical to think that limited omnipotance is any kind of disproof of God. "Some people will have to re exaine their faith," but so what? Some people will have to do that just to read the discussion we are having.

After Kristen mounted a fine defense of Job it all comes back to the same old "bring the dead guys back to battle" fallacy of the atheists, and once again they try to stack up and multiply exmaples:

Anon:

Neither you nor Joe can explain to me why letting millions of helpless children die of AIDs serves to edify the human race, and I'm just not impressed with appeals to ineffable plans that we "just can't understand...

Now it's millions. Holy multiplication Batman. But yes, it has been. It has been so explained. because having a moral universe (which is predicated upon free will) outweighs everything else. You can stack up up to seven billion dying in horrible agony and all the ecologial disasters possile and it still wont outweigh the importnace of a moral universe, because without that the pain and suffering you are stacking up become just a pile a meat. The only thing that makes the suffering real human agony that requires an answer is if is part of a universe in which the vlaues of the good matter. If we can't internalize the values of the good and grow as spiritual beings then we are just mindless little orgnaizism stuting and fretting our time in the petry dish and like so much scum at the bottom of the shower we go our sipmle way and are no more.

the only thing that gives it human dignity and the kind of moral authroity that you want it to have is that it happens in a moral unvierse. yes it is a celestiral catch 22.

Nature of the Atonement

The following essay is from DOXA. I put it up because tonight on CARM I ran into an argument I've seen a number of times, but not until now did it dawn on me why people make it. I suddenly realized so few people understand why there was an atonement. The average Christian understanding is so screwed most of them can't explain it to another person. This is reflected in the answers to this argument.


The argument goes like this: So what if Jesus was crucified? what's the big deal? There re much worse ways to suffer. Crucificition is bad but it is far from the worst thing that can happen to you. So why was it a sacrifice, I mean after all he is God, what would it matter to him if he dies? And he got to come back."


Now this is incredibly ignorant, but it occurs to me there re some resins for this kind of chaotic thinking, b ut also one big hidden premise. Before launching into that analysis, however, I would like to comment on the inadequacy of Christian understanding.

First, most Christians try to answer this out of a need for piety. They do not give a theological answer, they give a pious one. The pious answer can't beundestood by modern people, they lack pious feelings, so it just makes it worse. The pious answer of course is to try and mount up the pain and make it seem so very much worse. O. Jesus suffered in hell and he suffers every minute and he's still suffering and he felt all the agony in the world. Of course it doesn't' really say that anywhere in the Bible. While I think this si true, and while my pious side feels the prier sense of reversions Dan gratitude to our savior for this work, we can't use this to answer the question because modern impiety can't understand the answer. They just hear us reiterating their hidden primes.

The other Christian answers are Propitiatory atonement, Substitutionary, or Moral government. These are the tree major ways of looking at the atonement. Propitiation means to turn away anger. This answer is also incomprehensible t moderns. God is so very angry with us that he can't stand the sight of us, he hats o stick Jesus between himself and us so he will see Jesus and turn away his anger. This just makes God seem like a red faced historical parent who couldn't comprehend the consequences of his creation when he decided to make it. Substitutionary atonement says Jesus took our place, he received the penalty our sins deserved. This comes in two verities. One is financial translation, Jesus paid the debt. the other is closer to moral government, Jesus was exiducted because he stepped in and took the place of the guilty party. Both of these are also problematic, because they really allow the guilty to get off Scott free and persecute an innocent person. The thing is in real Fe you could not go down to the jail and talk them into letting you take another prisoners place. WE can harp on how this is a grace so fine we can't undersigned it in the natural mind, and relapse into piety again singing the praises to God for doing this wonderful act, but it wont answer the atheists questions.

I realize that the view I hold to is a little known minority view. I know I'm bucking the mainstream. But I think it makes a lot more sense and actuals why there was an atonement. Before getting into it, however, I want to comment upon the atheist hidden premise. The explicit premise of the atheist argument is that atonement works by Jesus suffering a whole lot. If Jesus suffers enough then restitution is made. But wait, restitution for what? For our sins? Then why should Jesus suffer more than we do or more than our victims do? Why do antes seem to think, as was argued on CRAM tonight, that Jesus must suffer more than anyone ever has for the atonement to work? It's because the hidden premise is that God is guilty and the atonement is the time God pays for his own mistakes. Jesus has to suffer more than anyone to make up for what God has done, inconveniencing us by creating us.

The sickness of the modern mind can scarcely comprehend Christian theology now. I wonder if it isn't too late and we are just past the day when people in the West can really be saved?

I mean consider the idea that usually acompanies this argument: well he is God after all, a little torutre death cant' hurt him. In the old days, when we had a culture that ran on Christian memories, people said how great that God would do this for us when he didn't have to! NOw the argument is "Of course he had to, it's the least he can do, after all I didn't asked to be born, so I'm entitaled to whatever goodies can get in compensation." That's why I think the hidden premise is to blame God; its as though they are saying God has to suffer more than anyone to make up for the suffering he caued as creator. This sort of atttitude is very troubling.

In any case, my view is the Participatory atonement. It was embraced by several church fathers and modern theologians supporting it are mentioned below:





I.The Atonement: God's Solidarity With Humanity.



A. The inadquacy of Financial Transactions

Many ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of Jesus' death on the cross as analogus to a finacial transaction. Usually this idea goes something like this: we are in hock to the devil because we sinned. God pays the debt we owe by sending Jesus to die for us, and that pays off the devil. The problem with this view is the Bible never says we owe the devil anything. We owe God. The financial transaction model is inadqueate. Matters of the soul are much more important than any monitary arrangement and buiness transactions and banking do not do justice to the import of the issue. Moreover, there is a more sophisticated model; that of the sacrafice for sin. In this model Jesus is like a sacraficial lamb who is murdered in our place. This model is also inadequate because it is based on a primative notion of sacrafice. The one making the sacrafice pays over something valuable to him to apease an angry God. In this case God is paying himself. This view is also called the "propitiatior view" becuase it is based upon propitation, which means to turn away wrath. The more meaningful notion is that of Solidarity. The Solidarity or "participatry" view says that Jesus entered human history to participate in our lot as finiate humans, and he dide as a means of identifying with us. We are under the law of sin and death, we are under curse of the law (we sin, we die, we are not capable in our own human strength of being good enough to merit salvation). IN taking on the penalty of sin (while remaining sinless) Jesus died in our stead; not inthe mannar of a premative animal sacrafice (that is just a metaphor) but as one of us, so that through identification with us, we might identify with him and therefore, partake of his newness of life.



B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity


In the book of Hebrews it says "in former times God spoke in many and verious ways through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken more perfectly through his son." Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to humanity. The prophets were speaking for God, but their words were limited in how much they could tell us about God. Jesus was God in the flesh and as such, we can see clearly by his charactor, his actions, and his teachings what God wants of us and how much God cares about us. God is for humanity, God is on our side! The greatest sign of God's support of our cuase as needy humans is Jesus death on the cross, a death in solidarity with us as victims of our own sinful hearts and socieities. Thus we can see the lengths God is will to go to to point us toward himself. There are many verses in the Bible that seem to contradict this view. These are the verses which seem to say that Atonement is preipiatory.



C. Death in Solidarity with Victims


1) Support from Modern Theologians


Three Major Modern Theologians support the solidarity notion of atonement: Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), Matthew L. Lamb (Solidarity With Victims), and D.E.H. Whiteley (The Theology of St. Paul).In the 1980s Moltmann (German Calvinist) was called the greatest living protestant theologian, and made his name in laying the groundwork for what became liberation theology. Lamb (Catholic Priest) was big name in political theology, and Whiteley (scholar at Oxford) was a major Pauline scholar in the 1960s.In his work The Crucified God Moltmann interprits the cry of Jesus on the cross, "my God my God why have you forsaken me" as a statement of solidarity, placing him in identification with all who feel abandoned by God.Whiteley: "If St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement] it is best described as one of salvation through participation [the 'solidarity' view]: Christ shared all of our experience, sin alone excepted, including death in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life...Paul does not hold a theory of substitution..." (The Theology of St. Paul, 130)An example of one of the great classical theologians of the early chruch who held to a similar view is St. Irenaeus (according to Whiteley, 133).



2) Scrtiptural

...all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore burried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certanly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Chrsit Jesus.(Romans 6:1-5)

In Short, if we have united ouselves to Chrsit, entered his death and been raised to life, we participate in his death and ressurection thourgh our act of solidairty, united with Christ in his death, than it stands tto reason that his death is an act of solidarity with us, that he expresses his solidarity with humanity in his death.

This is why Jesus cries out on the cross "why have you forsaken me?" According to Moltmann this is an expression of Solidarity with all who feel abandoned by God.Jesus death in solidarity creates the grounds for forgiveness, since it is through his death that we express our solidarity, and through that, share in his life in union with Christ. Many verses seem to suggest a propitiatory view. But these are actually speaking of the affects of the solidarity. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath thorugh him! For if when we were considered God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! What appears to be saying that the shedding of blood is what creates forgiveness is actually saying that the death in solidarity cretaes the grounds for reconciliation. IT says we were enemies then we were reconciled to him thorugh the death, his expression of solidarity changes the ground, when we express our solidarity and enter into the death we are giving up to God, we move from enemy to friend, and in that sense the shedding of blood, the death in solidarity, creates the conditions through which we can be and are forgiven. He goes on to talk about sharing in his life, which is participation, solidarity, unity.



D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.

Jurgen Moltmann's notion of Solidarity (see The Crucified God) is based upon the notion of Political solidarity. Chrsit died in Solidarity wiht victims. He took upon himself a political death by purposly angering the powers of the day. Thus in his death he identifies with victims of oppression. But we are all vitims of oppression. Sin has a social dimension, the injustice we experience as the hands of society and social and governmental institutions is primarily and at a very basic level the result of the social aspects of sin. Power, and political machinations begin in the sinful heart, the ego, the desire for power, and they manifest themselves through institutions built by the will to power over the other. But in a more fundamental sense we are all victims of our own sinful natures. We scheme against others on some level to build ourselve up and secure our condiitions in life. IN this sense we cannot help but do injustice to others. In return injustice is done to us.Jesus died in solidarity with us, he underwent the ultiamte consquences of living in a sinful world, in order to demonstrate the depths of God's love and God's desire to save us. Take an analogy from political organizing. IN Central America governments often send "death squads" to murder labor unionists and political dissenter. IN Guartemala there were some American organizations which organized for college students to go to Guatemala and escourt the leaders of dissenting groups so that they would not be murdered.

The logic was that the death squads wouldn't hurt an American Student because it would bring bad press and shut off U.S. govenment funds to their military. As disturbing as these political implications are, let's stay focussed on the Gospel. Jesus is like those students, and like some of them, he was actually killed. But unlike them he went out of his way to be killed, to be victimized by the the rage of the sinful and power seeking so that he could illustrate to us the desire of God; that God is on our side, God is on the side of the poor, the vitimized, the marginalized, and the lost. Jesus said "a physician is not sent to the well but to the sick."The key to salvation is to accept God's statement of solidarity, to express our solidarity with God by placing ourselves into the death of Christ (by identification with it, by trust in it's efficacy for our salvation).



E. Atonement is a Primetive Concept?


This charge is made quite often by internet-skeptics, espeically Jewish anti-missionaries who confuse the concept wtih the notion of Human sacrifice. But the charge rests on the idea that sacrafice itself is a premative notion. If one committs a crime, someone else should not pay for it. This attack can be put forward in many forms but the basic notion revolves around the idea that one person dying for the sins of another, taking the penalty or sacrificing to remove the guilt of another is a premative concept. None of this applies with the Participatory view of the atonement (solidarity) since the workings of Christ's death, the mannar in which it secures salavtion, is neither through turning away of wrath nor taking upon himself other's sins, but the creation of the grounds through which one declairs one's own solidarity with God and the grounds through which God accepts that solidairty and extends his own; the identification of God himself with the needs and crys of his own creation.



F. Unfair to Jesus as God's Son?



Internet skeptics sometimes argue that God can't be trusted if he would sacrafice his son. This is so silly and such a misunderstanding of Christian doctirne and the nature of religious belief that it hardly deserves an answer. Obviously God is three persons in one essence, the Trinity , Trinune Godhead. Clearly God's act of solidarity was made with the unanimity of a single Godhead. God is not three God's, and is always in concert with himself.

Answering Attack on my Experience Argument

A college kid ("kidnonothing") with a blog called NO Nothing Space has delivered a series of ingenious and devistitaing blows against my blog and my personal experience arguments. This kid is so ingenious he actually makes fun of the name "metacrock" ("a crock of Meta" is the matchless creative and extremely deep title of his thing, whatever it is).No one in the history of man has ever thought to make fun of the name "meatcrock." Of cousre I choose that name because its so serious and no one would ever make fun of it. Like the name "kidnonothing" connotes a real thinker.

This is an attack on my defense of mystical experience in the fact of the chemical determinist onslaught.

I was scouring the internet for purely unrandom rubbish when I came across this gem of Christian paranoia.

Note immediately that the hate group minion uses the phrase "rubbish" but also "paranoia" of my article which is an intellectual analysis of the issues involved in mystical experience and chemical determinism. So answering atheist attacks on arguments make one paranoid?

Despite my unabashed dislike of apologetics, I often find myself indulging an argument here or there, or all the time for the sake of entertainment. Some have called me a verbal masochist, because I thoroughly enjoy the stress-inducing frustration of arguing the qualities of the non-existent. You can probably get a hint as to why I latched onto this guy's blog post, already.

So it's peranoid to write a serious peice about mystical experince and brain chemistry. right, got it.I would love to see this, ahahaahah "philosophy major's" term paper. O god!

The author is a fellow by the name of Joe Hinman, or at least that's what he calls himself. I have no reason to doubt, but I'm naturally skeptical of all things. So I'll call him Joanne for now until he can prove beyond reasonable doubt that he is in fact Joe Hinman, and not Joanne. Just kidding.

What a comedian. what is that about? O the little child has heard that making fun of names is a way to intimidate and at the ripe old age of 23 he has absolutely no no sill at pull off intimidation tactics.

This character has a lot more bile to spill under the guise being creative and clever so I'll deal with that on atheist watch. Let's try to find some kind of kernel of intelligent criticism.

His first contention is that the study authors can't show that they are actually testing "real mystical experiences". Well, Joe, neither can anyone show that there is such a thing as a mystical experience to begin with, or that these experiences are not biochemical. Relying on current neurological ignorance won't get anyone anywhere in the long run, because neurologists will eventually find out what's going on in our heads while we are experiencing these "mystical experiences". And I don't know how many people can distinguish between "real mystical experiences" and "unreal mystical experiences", as if there is some coherently meaningful division between the two that everyone magically knows.

He demonstrates the only ignorance my argument turns upon. The point is not that my argument turns upon the ignorance in the state of the art in research of mystical experience. We know how to tell if a person had a mystical experience or that, that is no problem. We use the M scale (Mysticism scale) developed by Ralph Hood, which I did talk about in my blog piece and which this "person" is totally ignorant. The M scale is the state of the art research instrument, cross culturally validated it has become the the method of choice in psychology of religion. Here is the text in Hood's text book which will demonstrate the cross cultural validation of the scale and what it means for social science research. Hood is immanent and one of the major researchers in his field. But He ant no 23 year old "philosphy" major.

Joe rests on the idea that these guys who are studying how the brain manufactures religious experiences don't know about the M-scale. Anyone who's familiar with Joe "Metacrock" Hinman will have heard of this scale ad nauseum. But on the face of it, that accusation seems rather obtuse.

Yet somehow not as obtuse as this guy's reading sills. I said that the people such as Presinger who claim that they manufacture religious experiences by inducing them with drugs like serotonin or little helmets that shock the brain (the serotonin study that LaCanuck on CARM is always harping about) those guys don't know about the M scale. If the delicate genius would actaully their studies as I have done, he would see that. Of course he's too busy writing brilliant blog stuff this this, where he demonstrates his acute reading reading comprehension. So this proves that telling this guy something ad nauseum doesn't help him understand it.

It is unlikely that people who are researching mystical experiences don't know about a nearly half-century old, popular psychology scale. It is also an ultimately irrelevant consideration. One of the reasons why I'm not particularly keen on using the m-scale to criticize neurological research is because it's essentially a psychological aptitude test. The scale isn't meant to answer neurological questions. So when researchers are trying to figure out what parts of the brain are functioning to manufacture the sensations that we normally associate with mystical experiences, the m-scale is completely useless because it can't tell us anything about how the brain is working in its neurological makeup.

This is where this guy's true genius comes to the fore. This is the kind of brilliant understanding that produced one of the most success and well engineered lighter than air ships, and filled it with Hydrogen, the Hindenberg! He thinks I'm saying Presinger has never actually herd the term "M scale." Well that's not his field just because he does neurobiology doesn't mean he knows anything about psychology of religion. But to be fair he might sleep with a copy under his pillow for all I know, but he hasn't used it in his studies. Now here's the clever bit, by half: This guy thinks I'm saying that the M scale is about neurology. I think anyone with half a brain who read my previous article understood that I said nothing about that. The M scales tells us if one has had a real mystical experience or not. It's the only cross culturally validated way to measure the depth of a mystical experience. He's right the M scale is not about neurology, that's not my argument Hindenburg!

What's the importance of them not using it? Let's be clear now, by not using it the researchers such as Pretinger cannot prove the evoked mystical experiences. This guy thinks they can just do some neurology stuff and see the mystical experience in the brain. they cannot. They have no basis form which to connect brain chemistry with mystical experience before they prove they've produced one. But they can't prove that because they don't use the M scale to measure it! Hindenburg has demonstrated poor reading comprehension skills so let's say it again. Put it in social parlance: there is no control on their measurement of what they have produced in terms of mystical experience. They can't prove they did it. Without using the M scale they have no verifiable reliable accepted measurement to prove they made a mystical experience happen. you can't just say "I feel something about God, or I thought about God while I had this helmet on" and call that a mystical experience.

Atheists have bought into the assumption that they are not human, that they are merely chemical robots, sacks of chemicals with electricity flowing through them. They can't appreciate the holistic value so reduce rather than seek to understand. So they are just willing assume that mystical experience is nothing more than chemicals in the head so it need not be proved. They are willing to accept sloppy scientific procedure when it comes to backing up their pet ideology. In The New Frontier of Religion and Science, John Hick has a whole chapter where develops this argument. The brain research guys who try to reduce religious experience to brain chemistry are fine neurologists but they sloppy social scientists. Without using a validated control they have no way to prove that they produced a mystical experience. They can brag all they want to about their findings but their findings are not controlled and are suspect. But Andrew Newberg who pioneered in research of the "God part of the brain" tell us in Why God Wont Go Away that these experiences are real. They not illusions or trick of the mind, something real is actually happening in the brain when we think about God. Buit even he doesn't use the M scale so even can't prove he's produced a mystical experience, but he also doesn't claim to have done so. His research is about what happens in the brain when people think about God, it's not about mystical experience.

But missing the point is not enough for Hindenberg. He moves on to new heights of misunderstanding:


Second, Joe argues that:

All these researchers are doing is trying to line up the presence of some tranquilizing chemical such as serotonin and some form of thought which includes religious imagery. That doesn't prove anything because they can never show that the serotonin is the actual cause of the transformation effects that occur long term over the life span of the subject many years subsequent.

The first problem I have with this statement is that there's absolutely nothing insubstantial about lining up neurochemistry with the overall manifestation of the mystical experience or any experience for that matter.

Yes there sure is something wrong with it when you have a control to show that that's what you produced in the first place. But secondly, he doesn't seem to get that I'm not talking about the initial experience or the feeling of the experience (such as sweaty palms or something) I'm talking about the long term effects, did it make you nicer, did it change your life, did you feel more love. ect. Some of the 350 studies I talk about compare M scale respondents with transactional self actualization scales to see that mystical experiences have actually increased their sense of this or that, or have achieved this or that, or have been self actualized or not. They find that those who experience mystical experience are more self actualized than those who do not have such experiences. The actualization can be linked to the mystical experience. AT that point the brain chemistry quite beside the point.

Newberg found from his research that religious or mystical experiences predictably correlate with increased frontal lobe activity and a negatively correlated parietal lobe activity.

That's not a chemical in the bran, that's a part of the brain. While I'm sure a chemical is involved that's not the issue because I'm talking about mapping the expeinces in the geography of the brain I'm talking the long term effects in life.

The frontal lobe is the part of the brain where we essentially concentrate and the parietal lobe is where we get our spatial awareness from. This basically means that people having the experience will become aware of their individuallity slipping away and they will "become one with the universe"... man. And this is a repeatable phenomenon. The question neurologists are trying to answer is what is neurochemically going on in our brains that causes these kinds of sensations to occur.

Hindenberg has done it again! He has surpassed his level of obtusity! In brilliant display of not getting the point he approaches the sublime level of the obtuse. First, Newberg states explicitly that his research is not a damper on the common theory, belief in God or the idea that mystical experience is a trace of the divine. He actually argues that his research proves it is a work of the divine. He argues for an understanding of divine that would entail "God" (of object of ultimate concern) working through brain chemistry. He establishes that there is a spirituality of the neurological centers. None of the chemical reductionists have managed to disprove the divine origins of the experience. Just because chemicals are involved is no argument against the involvement of the divine.

Newberg: Why God Wont Go Away:

A skeptic might suggest that a biological origin to all spiritual longings and experiences, including the universal human yearning to connect with something divine, could be explained as a delusion caused by the chemical misfiring of a bundle of nerve cells. But …After years of scientific study, and careful consideration of the a neurological process that has evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is.(157-172)

Newberg again:

…Tracing spiritual experience to neurological behavior does not disprove its realness. If God does exist, for example, and if He appeared to you in some incarnation, you would have no way of experiencing His presence, except as part of a neurologically generated rendition of reality. You would need auditory processing to hear his voice, visual processing to see His face, and cognitive processing to make sense of his message. Even if he spoke to you mystically, without words, you would need cognitive functions to comprehend his meaning, and input form the brain’s emotional centers to fill you with rapture and awe. Neurology makes it clear: there is no other way for God to get into your head except through the brain’s neural pathways. Correspondingly, God cannot exist as a concept or as reality anyplace else but in your mind. In this sense, both spiritual experiences and experiences of a more ordinary material nature are made real to the mind in the very same way—through the processing powers of the brain and the cognitive functions of the mind. Whatever the ultimate nature of spiritual experience might be—weather it is in fact an actual perception of spiritual reality—or merely an interpretation of sheer neurological function—all that is meaningful in human spirituality happens in the mind. In other words, the mind is mystical by default.

Hindenberg

The second problem I have with this statement is that Joe wants us to honestly believe that neurologists can "never show that the serotonin is the actual cause of the transformation effets that occur long term over the life span of the subject many years subsequent." Now this might very well be true (anticlimactic, no?), but it's a rather deceptive point and completely irrelevant.

Completely irrelevant! Is' the whole argument! that is the actual point,very nub, the crucial turning point of my whole argument. It's the lynch pen, the transcendental signifier of my whole heuristic. See what I mean? Is he not the Master of missing the point? This is the single most crucial turning point of the whole argument that I make, in fact all four of my mystical experience based arguments, and yet he doesn't even get it,he think it's irrelevant! If the argument turns on this point and you don't have an answer to you have not answered my argument, stupid!

It's also crucial because it's a tie breaker. If the opening of neural receptors could be an act of God or a naturalistic act either one, and there's no way to tell, then we have to seek some other difference between the two states. The real difference is people who have mystical experience go on to have life transformations and have much better lives and much deeper insights and so on. that's the crucial point that makes the difference in having it or not having it.If you can't link that to the chemical reaction then you have done nothing to set the naturalistic hypothesis above the common core hypothesis as the valid interpretation. That is so long as the transformation effects are linked to the experience, the psychosocial research, including the M scale demonstrates that link very forcefully.

All of this was in the previous article btw. Many of my readers who aren't philosophy majors got it.

No one is trying to show that any specific chemical causes a transformative affect on people's lives over long lenghts of time. Researchers are simply trying to discover what causes the experience itself.

Yes genius, that's true. That's why they are wrong! that's why people who argue that those kings of studies disprove the divine connection to the experience are dead wrong and making asses of themselves because they don't understand the arguments or the logic of he research. They also show a total lack of knowledge concerning the data. They clearly are not well read in the field, ie psychology of religion.

No one denies that self-reported religious experiences are affective. That's patently obvious. If you have an experience that makes you think you're Brahman, you're going to have a fundamentally new outlook on life. Moreover, there is an underlying question of whether the experience is or is not a religious one to begin with or just an experience that's very weird.

With that statement the maestro misses the point brilliantly again, and in so doing demonstrates himself to be totally ignorant. There is no basis in the research to demonstrate that people who have mystical experiences have suddenly just started thinking of themselves as some kind of spiritual giants. There's no evidence to connect mystical experience to heightened sense of one's own importance. There's plenty of evidence to connect it to greater humility, or a deeper sense of one's lack of importance in terms of just being part of a whole that's greater than one's self. But there's no evidence that translates into arrogance. It's atheists who don't even have any religious experiences who are abhorrently arrogant and who demonstrate an ignorance to match. Like so many lazy ignorant people who can't be bothered to read the research, Hindenburg makes assumptions about the character of mystical experiencers which are contrary to the data. But one often attacks an enemy for likeness he sees in himself.

Joe introduces a number of ad hoc contrivances afterwards to buttress the overall point, all essentially dealing with god's involvement in the process. So I won't really get into those, since, quite frankly, it's a waste of time. So instead I will stop here. Abrupt, aren't I? You'll have to forgive me as I get accustomed to writing blogs.

This reference demonstrates Hindenberg's sheer genius at not knowing important bodies of literature that are crucial to the issue. Those would be Shcleiermacher contrivances and Rodolphe Otto Contrivances. I do urge Hindenberg to look those names up on Wiki as I'm' sure he's never heard of them.

Just the Facts Mam? Is Science the only From of Knowledge?

Kandinsky


One thing I've often noticed about message boards, they work in waves. What I mean is, a wave of one kind of argument will come out and that's all you hear for a time. The atheists all say the same things and point out the same things and they do it wave. Right now the wave is for the notion that sicence is the only form of Knowledge and only matters of fact are real. So in other words, if something isn't supportedd by fact hen it's "imaginary." That's the big pay off form them, God is "imaginary" so you would have to be a big fool to believe there's a God. Not one single fact proves God is He's "imaginary." The only that matters is fact. All you can believe is fact. If you believe something that is not a prove fact you are just the biggest kind of jackass the world has ever seen.

Robert T. on CARM says:

Things that are said to exist are detectable and evidenced; otherwise, existence becomes a meaningless word. What is the difference between a thing that exists and a thing that is only imaginary?

Lee Randolph on Debunking Christianity:


"Disregarding Established Knolwedge" 7/12/29

Its simple,
If your beliefs are not consitent with established human knowledge, then they probably are not justified. In that case, other people are not justified in believing what you say about them, and furthermore you have no reason to expect anyone to believe you.

So knowledge has to be established to be accepted. But then one wonders how we ever make new discoveries? They would have to start out as established, then they wouldn't be discoveries. If it is the case that we can let the barrier down long enough to find some new facts then it's not the case that only estabilshed knowledge is valid. Of course he's going to say it matters how it's established Now this is where the ideology comes in. Because he is going to say there's only one way to establish knowledge, that's his way; science. But not just any science obviously, because when I have discussed 350 empirical studies and documented why they are good studies and given a bibliography with every study listed, even then the atheists are too lazy to look up a single one. They brush whole lot of them aside without one single "fact" or one counter study, with no support at all for their ignorant dismissal. They are just cock sure that they must be crap and so there's no need to investigate. That's the true mark of "free thinking" that one is narrow minded and unwilling to investigate. They sweep aside studies with no good reason, using chinsy arguments such as "Depok Chopra is listed on the same bibliography so these studies must be bad." They are so deeply committed to scientific knowledge.

The fact is they have no commitment at all to learning or science. They mark out science as the only valid form of knowledge merely because they mistakenly think that it protects them from an angry God. Too lazy to think they seek to hide behind a wall of "facts." Hiding behind numbers they think makes them invulnerable to argument. They don't have to think, they don't have to face who they are or what they have done, that's not in the numbers so it doesn't matter. Now that the new mantra "just the facts" is going around as the latest atheist gimmick (just as God hates amputees did at one time) they have quick, easy to spout an automatic response so they don't have to think about the issues. There are no issues, it's easy as pie. Either you just shut up, hate Christians, follow what the atheist websites tell you is important and believe "the facts of science" and you don't have to sweat it. There's absolutely no data for God and so therefore its' stupid to believe all the other other ideological regurgitation from the great fool know nothing Dawkins.

It doesn't require some fancy Postmodern bs to see this for the naive position it is. The absurd mythology of the pristine holy scientific data, all knowing, inviolable, enlightened data that almost reeks of medieval devotional parlance. One almost expects to see them genuflect before a test tube. People gather data. That is to say, weak foolish and self interested human beings gather data. "Facts" are deceptive and they are not always what they seem. It is super foolish to pretend that there is this great wall of data that protects you from the angry God and proves your reductionist anti-human world view and makes you invincible and all knowing.People are biased bigoted self interested jerks. Facts can be false, they can be looked at wrong, they can be misinterpreted, they can be researched selectively, they can be foolish and unimportant. The famous journal debate in the 30s between Lundberg and Lynd, Lundberg argued sociologists don't collect data on the number bricks in a tenement and economists don't collect dates on coins in the economy. All research is selective and it is always done with an ideology in mind. All research is aimed at backing a paradigm.

Facts stack up to support a paradigm. They are the bed rock upon which a paradigm sits. But when the paradigm shifts (which happens because there are too many anomalies it no longer explains enough) then the facts that supported the old paradigm, still facts, become unimportant anomalies and no longer matter. It takes more than facts. you have to understand the big picture. You have to self aware, know the limitation of your view and your biases and you have to understand the philosophical stage upon which your data is presented. That's the only way to make sense of anything. People research collectively, they screen facts selectively.

To an ideologue the only facts that matter are those that support the ideology (paradigm). Thus all other facts are not counter evidence, they are merely anomalies to be absorbed by the paradigm and forgotten. Such is the case with atheist arguments.

Look at Mark, a guy on carm who attacked my writing, droning on and on about how fact oriented he is. I have presented a slew of facts. I have 350 studies that back up a huge array of data, representing thousands of facts. These are facts. It's a fact that people with this experience score higher on self actualization tests than those who don't. But that means nothing at all to any athist. water off a ducks back. ITs' a fact and it's well prove by what do agheists choose in stead of facts. They take un supported undocumented bs off the cuff that minimize the importance of the data and totally ignores the facts.

Has Mr. Fact man (Mark) ever presented a single fact? one study? no not to my knowledge. In all the years I've been on CARM (since 99) I have seen three atheists use studies, each one of them used just one study.People like Mark rant and rave about the importance of facts. They have no facts at all that disprove God. they make totally supported statements about the alleged lack of facts backing belief in God knowing full were there are thousands of facts supporting arguments for God and the only problem is the squabble over interpretation (of course they have a totally biased motive to down paly disregard and demean the facts presented in God arguments). Suddenly the fact are totally unimportant and philosophical concerns come the fore again and interpretation becomes all important when arguments life tuning arise. The atheist respect for the facts is totally limited to facts that support his world view only!

The scientistic or reductionist crowd has changed the meaning of the term knowledge. They have redefined the concept to the point that it no longer means anything but scinece. They have done a reductionism on the concept. Wikipeidia defines scinece as "knowledge." This is not an authoritative source, but it is a good indication of the fallout among popular view points.

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") refers to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique or practice.[1]

The problem here is Scientia is not science. That term had a special meaning prior to the advent of mathematical probability. I did a major paper in Graduate school on this and it was part of my dissertation research. Ian Hacking documents that scientist was authority, it was a kind of "probability" prior to Pascal's version of mathematical probability and it worked by the authoritative sighting of traditional venerated sources. In the general population the easy formulation of "science = knowledge" has come to be made so lazily and easily that this is all people know. People no longer bother to distinguish between types of knowledge. The notion that science is the only form of knowledge follows naturally out of that reductionism.

The "real" authoritative dictionary definition of "knowledge" is not limited to just scientific knowledge.

Webster's online Dictionary

Main Entry:
knowl·edge Listen to the pronunciation of knowledge
Pronunciation:
\ˈnä-lij\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English knowlege, from knowlechen to acknowledge, irregular from knowen
Date:
14th century

1obsolete : cognizance2 a (1): the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (2): acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique b (1): the fact or condition of being aware of something (2): the range of one's information or understanding c: the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition d: the fact or condition of having information or of being learned 3archaic : sexual intercourse4 a: the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind barchaic : a branch of learning

This definition of knowledge from the real dictionary does not limit knowledge to science, in include awareness of anything including art. Atheist limit knowledge to science in the mistaken delusional belief that science somehow disproves God and provides them with a means of buffeting the logic of God arguments they can't beat.
The irony is that even though the reductionists have foisted this er zots view upon the public scientists themselves don't buy it. Scientists working environmental fields for example have gained respect for "traditional forms of knowledge" (that means "primitive people gathering roots and herbs). Scientists working in these fields contrived ways to preserve and venerate the use of traditional knowledge while understanding it's application to modern science.


"Science, Traditional Knowledge and Sustained Development"
CSU Series on Science for Sustainable Development No. 4

In addressing the goals of sustainable development, the role of science is crucial; scientific knowledge and appropriate technologies are central to resolving the economic, social and environmental problems that make current development paths unsustainable. However, science does not constitute the only form of knowledge, and closer links need to be established between science and other forms and systems of knowledge in addressing sustainable development issues and problems at the local level such as natural resources management and biodiversity conservation.

Traditional societies, usually with strong cultural roots, have nurtured and refined systems of knowledge of their own, relating to such diverse domains as astronomy, meteorology, geology, ecology, botany, agriculture, physiology, psychology and health. Such knowledge systems represent an enormous wealth. Not only do they represent other approaches of the acquisition and construction of knowledge and harbour information often as yet unknown to science, but they are also expressions of other relationships between society and nature in general and of sustainable ways of managing natural resources in particular.

(ICSU is tied into UNESCO).


Science still relies upon reason for it's premises and for the understanding of its data. This means that science as a pristine and pure fact rather appertains which is always objective and correct is an illusion and myth. Since still requires reason and so one must understand logic and reason to understand science.

Course work.info "Some People think Science is the Supreme From of knowledge."
gooble html version

Science also relies on reason as a way of knowing. Reason is used to turn the data that the scientist has collected into a logical conclusion. Sometimes scientists draw the wrong conclusions from their research. This is called post hoc ergo propter hoc or 'false cause'. For instance: 'both today and yesterday it rained. I did not take my umbrella with me on either day; I will lake it with me tomorrow to ensure that it does not rain.' It is important to realise "the essence of scientific truth: it can never be proved experimentally that a claim is correct, but it can be proved that it's wrong".4* This is because of a characteristic of the logic that a scientist uses when interpreting his data. This interpretation is generally done through Induction, the idea that because your experiments keep confirming your hypothesis, the hypothesis is correct. Karl Popper observed that every swan he had seen was white. He concluded that all swans were white. However he had been observing swans in the northern hemisphere, and black swans exist in places such as Australia. Albert Einstein said: "A thousand experiments may prove my hypothesis right, but one experiment can prove it wrong”.5 No scientific theory is certain; it has just not been proved wrong yet. However most of us accept that it is true that day turns to night because the earth is turning on its axis. Therefore some theories are so close to certain that they are accepted as true.

The book that I'm writing, and almost finished, is a prime example of the need to go beyond this mere wall of numbers in seeking truth. There's a vast subject area atheists are as afraid to explore, that is the field of psychology and religion. This is the field that produced the 350 studies on religious experience. There is much more to it than just that. The study I posted before, about religious expedience and the "physically challenged" is a prime example. That study demonstrates the use of reason, philosophy and other areas of knowledge in the scientific method to produce a deeper understanding of human experience. They are not trying to reduce experience to a wall of numbers so they don't have to take responsibility or feel anything, they are trying to actually get at a reality about being human. That study even uses phenomenology in a way that allows the data to suggest categories rather than submerging the data in preconceived categories.

That's the whole point of phenomenology in the first place We normally pigeon hole sense data into preconceived categories. This means that most research is done to confirm biases rather than to find truths. Phenomenology is an attempt to get around that process by allowing the data to suggest the categories itself. With the phenomenological outlook the kind of data used is sense data not numbers that have already been digested and transformed into ledger sheets or distilled into biased pre ordained conclusions. This sort of thing has been going on in psychology for a long time. Some of it is wacky, some is "new age," some is very valid and it requires reason to discern which is which. The reductionist pigeon hole because they have to have that unassailable wall of numbers to hide behind. They reduce anything to the distilled numbers that can be used to support their biases.

The atheists create an even more truncated step in this process by directly filtering all "facts" through the ideological lens. Half of my God arguments are based upon empirical data. But the atheists can't handle, they can't answer God arguments so in an attempt to just make theists shut up and stop embarrassing them with stuff they can't answer they come up with the idea that God arguments are just wrong headed a priori and they are not be listened to. Thus the facts that support those arguments have to go away. They are not longer facts and they are not important facts, they are just anomalies to be absorbed into he paradigm.Atheists on the message boards have such little regard for the facts (the one's I present, well documented and totally researched thousands of empirically scientific facts gathered in hundreds of studies) they refuse to even look one of them up! that's how dedicated they are to facts.The bias and hypocrisy of researchers is the most important fact of all.

We have to think about God in terms of philosophical arguments because God transcends "thinghood" and is not given in sense data. This is far from meaning that God is not detectable. But we can't do in science, we have to use other means. There are other means. We know that scientific knowledge and method allows things to fall through the cracks away. Induction by its nature, in terms of scientific usage, only takes averages and allows things that don't fit the average to fall through he cracks. On a basic simple level, the average woman is not strong enough to beat up the average man. But there are women who can mop the floor with me because they don't fit the average, probably neither do I. The very concept that knowing about great ideas is not intelligent and doesn't require intellectual ability (which is something most of these atheists believe) merely because they don't accept philosophy and thinking, is just idiotic. They have to rule out the acquisition of knowledge concerning great ideas.

The real tyranny comes in where they attempt to rule out any epistemic or ontological alternative merely because it doesn't suit their ideology. God is at the basis of reality, God is the foundation of reality. God is not a thing in creation. So naturally God can't be studied directly through empirical means, he's not given in sense data. God has to be fall between the cracks. Then he's ruled out of established knowledge because only that which is given in sense data can be distilled into the impregnable wall of numbers. The wall of numbers (the one atheists hide behind so can't see them) is only constructed out of "facts" they deem important anyway (those that support their ideology). So at that rate they already have multiple levels of reduction where they have closed the cracks on the things that fall between them and merely pretend they were never there. The supreme arrogance of this tyranny is the worst in humanity. The reason is because they are willing to screen out the most sacred ideas, love, truth, tolerance, open mindedness, learning, thinking, art, life, emotion, morality, merely to get God arguments off their backs and to maintain this impregnable wall of numbers behind which they imagine God can't see them.

We can see them doing this screening process all the time. I hate to pick on Lee Randolph again, but he so clearly typifies this ideological goose stepping:
7/10/2009 "direct evidence of moral behavior from evolution."

My working hypothesis is that Game Theory and simple rules derived from self-interest are sufficient to generate self-organized behavior that is labeled as "Morality". Here's more evidence to back that up.

Evolution Guides Cooperative Turn-taking, Game Theory-based Computer Simulations Show, ScienceDaily.com


"We published indirect evidence for this in 2004; we have now shown it directly and found a simple explanation for it. Our findings confirm that cooperation does not always require benevolence or deliberate planning. This form of cooperation, at least, is guided by an ‘invisible hand’, as happens so often in Darwin’s theory of natural selection.”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that just finding biological roots for behaviors is not morality. We are not getting at the origins of morality by showing forerunners in biology. All we do with that is to show, maybe, the origins of our inspirations for morality. Trying to reduce values to pragmatic tips for survive is not a valid means of demonstrating the nature of moral thinking. We could explore than invisible hand thing. There might be an organizing principle that suggests the TS argument, or it might just be an empty invisible hand that has nothing better to than fill itself with a useless exercise in number crunching. But the fact remains, morality is a form of ethics, and ethical requires ethical decision making. you can't get an ought out of an is, biological tenderizes for behavior are only "is." Before you can turn these unimportant facts into ethical decisions you have to do some thinking, that thinking has been done for the most part by philosophers. This is part of what we call "knowledge." So to understand mortally we have to expand you knowledge base to something other than science.

Facts are not knowledge. We need to understand the global nature of knowledge. Facts are not the limit on the nature of knowledge. Like Webster's says that knowledge is any understanding of anything. In an educational sense "knowledge" is the learning we derive from understanding what we study. We can't narrow the field of matters deemed worthy to study to just scientific matters. The basic human condition is what should concern us because we are human Our condition implies that all knowledge is important. We need to be global in our understanding of knowledge. The ontological and the metaphysical are above the scientific because they include the sweeping structures that tell us what is important knowledge and what is a lose collection of "facts" gathered as the analogue to a string collection. The hard science reductionists are even willing to cancel out social sciences. We need all of it, art, literature, philosophy, history, social science, every field. The reductionist ideology seeks to control minds. It seeks to shut down learning and shut down reflection upon being human.
__________________

Internalize the Values of the Good

One of the arguments that I make and of which I am most proud (I really believe God showed it to me) is my soteriolgocial drama. That is my version of the free will Defense. Why does God allow evil, pain,and suffering? It's because we have to have free will and means we run the risk of wrong choices and wrong choices lead to evil, pain and suffering. My argument is a bit different than the conventional one because turns on the idea that we have to have the sort of world in which we live, one where we must search for truth in our hearts, because that's the only way to internalize the values of the good. Here's a run down on the argument:

Basic assumptions


There are three basic assumptions that are hidden, or perhaps not so obivioius, but nevertheless must be dealt with here.

(1) The assumption that God wants a "moral universe" and that this value outweighs all others.


The idea that God wants a moral universe I take from my basic view of God and morality. Following in the footsteps of Joseph Fletcher (Situation Ethics) I assume that love is the background of the moral universe (this is also an Augustinian view). I also assume that there is a deeply ontological connection between love and Being. Axiomatically, in my view point, love is the basic impitus of Being itself. Thus, it seems reasonable to me that, if morality is an upshot of love, or if love motivates moral behavior, then the creation of a moral universe is essential.


(2) that internal "seeking" leads to greater internalization of values than forced compliance or complaisance that would be the result of intimidation.

That's a pretty fair assumption. We all know that people will a lot more to achieve a goal they truly beileve in than one they merely feel forced or obligated to follow but couldn't care less about.

(3)the the drama or the big mystery is the only way to accomplish that end.

The pursuit of the value system becomes a search of the heart for ultimate meaning,that ensures that people continue to seek it until it has been fully internalized.

The argument would look like this:


(1)God's purpose in creation: to create a Moral Universe, that is one in which free moral agents willingly choose the Good.

(2) Moral choice requires absolutely that choice be free (thus free will is necessitated).

(3) Allowance of free choices requires the risk that the chooser will make evil choices

(4)The possibility of evil choices is a risk God must run, thus the value of free outweighs all other considerations, since without there would be no moral universe and the purpose of creation would be thwarted.


This leaves the atheist in the position of demanding to know why God doesn't just tell everyone that he's there, and that he requires moral behavior, and what that entails. Thus there would be no mystery and people would be much less inclined to sin.

This is the point where Soteriological Drama figures into it. Argument on Soteriological Drama:


(5) Life is a "Drama" not for the sake of entertainment, but in the sense that a dramatic tension exists between our ordinary observations of life on a daily basis, and the ultimate goals, ends and purposes for which we are on this earth.

(6) Clearly God wants us to seek on a level other than the obvious, daily, demonstrative level or he would have made the situation more plain to us

(7) We can assume that the reason for the "big mystery" is the internalization of choices. If God appeared to the world in open objective fashion and laid down the rules, we would probably all try to follow them, but we would not want to follow them. Thus our obedience would be lip service and not from the heart.

(8) therefore, God wants a heart felt response which is internationalized value system that comes through the search for existential answers; that search is phenomenological; introspective, internal, not amenable to ordinary demonstrative evidence.


In other words, we are part of a great drama and our actions and our dilemmas and our choices are all part of the way we respond to the situation as characters in a drama.

This theory also explains why God doesn't often regenerate limbs in healing the sick. That would be a dead giveaway. God creates criteria under which healing takes place, that criteria can't negate the overall plan of a search.

So the pivotal point is this bit about internalizing the good. That's one point that atheists steadfastly reject. Why do we need to internalize values? What does it mean to internalize values and so on? Of course it means that when we internalize values we really believe them. They are our own, we taken into our psyche's and we make them ours because in internalizing we really get to know them. We have to defend them and think them through we come to really know them. What are values of the Good? Love, forgiveness, reciprocity, compassion, to name a few.

I have now found a study that links internalizing values with meaning in life. International values is a means of transforming one's life and moving into a position of growth, progress, and personal enlightenment.


Loretta Do Rozario’s hermeneutic Phenomenological study of those with disabled people indicates the value of peak experience or self transcendence, the transformative power of religious experience. The study was conducted as serious of interviews with respondents chosen for disabilities and hardships that they faced (more about the mythology in chapter four, “studies”). The study proceeded based upon two major procedures, analysis of interviews done with respondents and autobiographies the respondents wrote. The findings indicate a set of over all strategies and paradigms that people use to enable them to move forward and survive and deal with their conditions. The major results show that the states of hardship and joy can coexist in the same life at the same time but these depend upon strategies. Mystical experience is not a panacea through which all problems vanish just because one has this experience. But the study does show that the transformative power of religious experience as a whole and mystical experience in particular, is a vital and integral part of making the strategies work. The sense of spiritual unity involves transcendence of the self, thus making suffering bearable. Spiritual awareness (which is clearly an aspect of experience) fosters hope through belief in some greater aspect such as the divine or a cosmic force; religious assurance as a value of traditional beliefs; religious experience along with rituals provides order and meaning; adds to the sense of an existential journey in which the sufferer is growing and progressing, and the idea of purgatory enables one to separate oneself from suffering.

The findings of this study put the experience of having an illness or disability into an overall context of a person’s universal search for meaning and self transcending. This can be likened to Victory Frankl’s belief, based upon his experience of living in a Nazi concentration camp, that ‘suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning…and that through suffering one is given a last chance to actualize the highest value to fulfill the deepest meaning…’ People in this study concurred with this personal and contextual interpretation of illness and disability, by reaffirming that the process of meaning making was similar to that of the mythology of the hero and heroine’s journey, which depicts a universal journey from a separation of self to a return to ‘true self…’ The inner awareness of wholeness despite all the odds points to an implicit experience of life which can transcend form and matter. This experience of wholeness or consciousness extends and challenges the view of disability and illness as only a meaning making and revaluing opportunity in the lives of people. Instead, the model of wholeness and reconstitution point to the possibility of an implicit order of consciousness or wholeness in which people who have undergone some crisis or critical incident in their lives may be able to access and experience a ‘deeper reality’ or ‘flow’ in life…similar to the insights of the great religions (author points to social psychologist Csikentmihalyi).

Thus the “shared” aspect of the experience is not in terms of physical navigation the world, not shared perception of objective objects, but the “inter-subjective” similarities of navigation in life. RE is an integral aspect of the spiritual and psychological wherewithal that we all need to “make it” to bear up under the material trammels and horrific disappointments and tragedies that life brings our way. Just as the same kinds of experiences, the same emotional and para-senstory features are experienced by people the world over so the same coping ability and meaning and journey to wholeness is also experienced through RE.

This is the important bit:and that through suffering one is given a last chance to actualize the highest value to fulfill the deepest meaning…’ What that says is that through suffering, though living in the kind of world in which we live, we internalize the values of the good (higher values) and through that process develop a sense of personal fulfillment, growth and transformation.

This study has triple impact for three of my arguments:

(1) For the soteriological drama

it proves the validity of internalizing the values of the good. It shows hat living in the kind of world we have internalizing the values is the upshot. This demonstrates the justification for this sort of world. We have to have it in other to make spiritual progress. Of course atheists will argue God can just create us that way but that's not the case. We have to go through this process or it's not Us learning! That's like a little kid wishing to be an adult instantly; if the wish was granted he wouldn't have any experience of growing up and learning for himself.

(2) Religious experience arguments.

Demonstration of the life transformational nature of religious experience. That far outstrips any rival experience atheists offer.

(3) Arguments about sin in heaven.

At times they argue, will God allow sin in heaven? The theory is that if we have free will we can sin in heaven, and of course we would want to. But this disproves that nonsense because heaven is only made of people who choose to be there. since they will have experienced this internalizing values of the good the wont want to give up their progress and return to the infantile state of sin.

How We Know Things Part 2

Do you see these chairs?



Followup to the other post I did on this "how we know things" topic. I posted the same blog piece you see in part 1 over at CARM. Crystal Star did not respond but Emuse took up the challenge. Emuse is an intelligent guy who I have always respected as a thinker.

Essentially he's taking issue with the Thomas Reid argument part of the thing. This first statement he makes is bout this proposition in the TR argument:

No empirical evidence can prove the existence of the external world, other minds, or the reality of history, or other such basic things.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Emuse View Post

This assertion is extremely clumsy and ignores many important distinctions.
No it is not and you can't prove it is. you are totally wrong. I guess you never read Descartes. show me the data then. where's the epistemological data?

It is correct to say that the external world cannot be proved empirically or on the basis of rational argument. The existence of the external world must therefore be assumed because rational or empirical proof of it is impossible in principle. It is not reasonable to ask for a type of proof (ie, empirical) if the type of proof is known to be impossible.

Meta:

No it's not. Rational proof of the external world is possible in principle if and only if you are wiling to make judgments and assumptions, not if you demand epistemological proof.

the empiricist dilemma is absolute. you can't get out side your perceptions to check them and make sure they are true.

The epistemological level is above (or should I say "more primary?) than that of the empirical level. The epistemological level would demand an absolute means of accounting for the appearances we take for granted as the world around us. No amount of empirical data can ever guarantee that level of knowing because any data that would be had as part of a world illusion would also be illusory.

At this point the sphincter mind set reductionist crowd usually says something like "that's so stupid to doubt our experiences of the world, it's right there in front of you I have no reason to doubt it." But look at what they are doing. they are making an assumption. At that point they are willing to leap across the barrier, the chasm of logic, to make a leap of faith and assume their perceptions are real. Yet when I want to do this concerning my perceptions of God's presence they assert it's just an illusion caused by chemicals. So atheists are always trying to privilege their position while disadvantaging mine.

They want absolute proof in terms of God. But they are not willing to supply that kind of proof for their own view point, they expect that to be granted a prori as part of the presumptions imposed by science the gate keeper of reality. Rational proof of the external world depends upon one assuming certain thins, such as the inviolability of perception otherwise how could any proof ever break out of the circle of epistemological doubt? Unless you can get outside your own perceptions to check it you can't trust the data, but what do you perceive with if not your own perceptions? At some point you have to make a leap of faith to assume that data is accruate. You must rust sense data or you are doomed to remain in the morass.


Quote:Emuse

The same is true of history. We cannot transport ourselves into the past or bring the past into the present so that it can form a part of our ongoing experience. Therefore empirical proof of historical events is impossible in principle.

Meta:

look, you are right. But there's the problem. it doesn't help your side it helps my side. Because to the extent that you prove we can trust external reality through scientific evidence you also prove we can trust that God is real or that there is a Transcendental Signifier in the real world through the same mechanism and the same forms of assumptions that you get with science.

By "same mechanism" I mean you have to trust sense data to give an accurate portrayal of the world around you. By "mechanism" I mean both reason and the epistemic assumptions we make that enable us to take the reality of the world for granted.

still me:

(1)the scientific studies prove that RE meets the criteria.

that's the first reason.

(2) TS proves we have to assert the reality of TS in order to even speak or think. So we have to assume it is beyond the mind.

Quote:Emuse

However, in relation to the claims of Christianity, this is not the case. Empirical evidence that Jesus is risen from the dead is not, in principle, impossible.

Meta:

that's not the issue. We are talking about the existence of God. we are not talking "Christian evidences." you don't come to belief in Jesus based upon belief in the resurrection. you accept the resurrection as a consequence of belief.

Quote:Emuse

It is quite within his capacity to appear and prove himself empirically. Heck .. he could have remained on earth and left us with undeniable proof. However, it is not enough to assume that everything fits into the category of "that which cannot be proved" and try and arbitrarily lump everything into the same category.

Meta:

he proves himself to me. That's a stupid argument. how silly can you get? that's down right anti- intellectual. (no offense).

Actually I blew that response. I really wasn't on target as to what he was arguing. He's not trying to limit our capacity to aruge for the Res he's trying to limit the capacity for arguing that there's a category of unprovable. But what I should have said was that we have to assume the state of affairs we know. Given what we know about the world with the data we have available to us in status quot, resurrection is unprovable. But even if God did make himself known in the way he describes or even in another more evocative or less questionable way, there would still be room to say "this is only an illusion, or a dream." I'm sure there will be atheists if there is a white throne of judgment who stand before it and refuse to admit its real. I am betting if the there's a hell some atheist will be there several million years before they begin to get the drift.





Quote:Emuse

It runs much deeper than this. We have already seen that external reality is something that must be assumed. Once we assume external reality, we assume the existence of others. One important aspect of external reality (an important basis on which we assume it to be external) is that others around me share the same experiences as me at the same time.

Meta:

that argument turns against you with the Reid argument, because it proves RE can meet the same criteria that we use to make that assumption.

thus RE is fitting within the same assumption paradigm.

It's funny how they never heard me say that I am making the same assumption. what he said:

external reality is something that must be assumed. Once we assume external reality, we assume the existence of others.

That is really the basis of he Reid argument. They are assuming that whips up on my argument and yet that's what I'm saying myself. Somehow they never hear that, nor do they hear what I say when I continue and add that it turns in favor of my argument disproves their position it means that all we can do is make a judgment and the criteria we use to make it is met by Religoius experience! They usually wind up giving the same criteria as well.


he's also contradicted himself at this point because above he tries to narrow the margin of unprovable to the point of casting doubt upon the category, now he seems to embrace the category.

Quote:Emuse

For example, if there is a chair in the room then it will not be the case that others will experience it and I won't. It is not simply enough to say that experiences must be regular and consistent. There must also be shared or shareable in principle. If someone has regular, consistent experiences but those experiences are not shared by others around that person then a problem is likely to be assumed so your statement is woefully incomplete.

Meta:

Now you know that I have included "shared" every single time. I have proved they are shared. millions of people all over the world, maybe as many as 1 in 4 have mystical experience. All over the world they stack to be the same. they are all alike that is proved clearly and definitely by, you got it, the ever loving M scale!

Quote:Emuse

Nope. It is also the fact that the experience is shared by others around me. If I could see a chair in the room but others around me could see no chair then I would seriously doubt what was going on with my mind.

Meta:

But not all expressions are shared. you have a different level of consciousness than other people. But still assume you are real even though no one else but you knows what it's like to be you.

Of course that hits at the Cogito. The only thing we can be sure of apart from any assumptions or external reality is the cogito guarantees our own existence. But even that has been cast into doubt by subsequent philosophers (subsequnt to Descartes of course). I'm not sure my interjection of this point isn't also a screw up. I guess I was getting at the idea that some things on the most basic level can be ventured and that includes being itself and our relationship to Being.

Quote:Emuse

And that fact that it is not regular and consistent to the same degree cannot be arbitrarily skipped over as though it is unimportant. Not only that, it does not possess that quality of being shareable.

Meta

it doesn't have to be. Religious experience is, but it doesn't have to be the case that every single experience is shared. who else is you? who shares your experience of being you?

I come closer to knowing that than you do because I had a partner in the womb. But even so he is not me.

Quote:Emuse

This is plainly false. Believers all over the world come to very different and diverse interpretations of their experience. Some do not even credit the cause of the RE as having consciousness but simply see it as a guiding force.

Meta:

No they don't. you are ignoring the facts.
(1) I am speaking of the special experience called "mystical" or "peak" not just any experience of belief. So this is limited to a smaller group within the group of all believers. It's not all.

(2) this is new evidence that has emerged since the 80s but its' empirical, scientific and conclusive.

Quote:Emuse

Appeal to the consequent.

Meta:

no, take a class.

I didn't have the patience to explain it. He said this in relation to the idea that Mystical experience has real and lasting positive effects. He thinks that's a appeal to the consequent. That's easy to mistake for cause and effect, which is what is begin argued. The tests given are empircal. The people have the change in response to the mystical experience and then it's positive and useful and lasts, nothing about that is an appeal to the consequent. No more so than saying that one responded to a cold medicine by feeling better is an appeal to the consequent.

Here's description of appeal to the consequent (which is not a fallacy)

How to Think

© Copyright 1999, Charles King

Gerogetown University

Appeal to consequences

You can also make an argument, or more normally a counter-argument against someone else’s point of view, by appealing to consequences. These kinds of arguments normally have two different forms. You can appeal to the consequent conclusions to which someone is committed in making his argument, or you can appeal to undesirable consequences that flow from the course of action advocated by someone else. If you can show that the consequences of someone else’s position are either false or inconsistent, you have made a strong counter-argument of your own.

Here is how both kinds of argument work. Suppose you are discussing with someone when the United States should intervene militarily abroad. Suppose also that your companion is arguing that the United States had a moral obligation to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo because of the humanitarian disasters taking place there. You might make a counter-argument by appealing to consequences: If you believe that countries have moral obligations to intervene abroad, then the United States—and most other countries, based on their own moral precepts—would be in a state of near-continual war, invading this or that country based on a supposed moral obligation. That is an argument from consequences. If the consequences of your argument commit you to conclusions that you do not hold, the argument cannot be totally sound.

This quotation actually makes appearl to the consequent a positive thing one should do in an argument rather than a fallacy.

Here is one that uses appeal to the consequences as a fallacy:

It's called "the fallacy page"

Arguing that a proposition is true because belief in it has good consequences, or that it is false because belief in it has bad consequences is often an irrelevancy. For instance, a child's belief in Santa Claus may have good consequences in making the child happy and well-behaved, but these facts have nothing to do with whether there really is a Santa Claus.

That's how he's using it. Typical atheist thinking. The only thing they can think of is that I just assume because I believe in something it must have positive effects. The fact that these effects are derived from empirical data, and we are trusting empirical data at the moment because we have agreed that we are going to make epistemic judgments to accept empirical data when it can be validated, so this is not the consequences of belief, it's the consequence of an experience. The belief is an explanation of the experience!

If we accept that as a fallacy, not only would there be no debate, no policy debate, but atheists could never argue that religion is bad.

It's only a fallacy when the assumption is that the consequences comes from the belief itself, but when the data is empirical and it doesn't come from the belief but the experience, the belief follows as an explanation that's not fallacious at all.

(next quote he responds to by me:
therefore, we have as much justification for assuming religious belief based upon experience as for assuming the reality of the external world or the existence of other minds).



Quote:Emuse

I completely disagree. Your arguments so far gloss over so very important distinctions between the phenomena you are describing. Let us take other minds as an example.

Meta:

NO NO NO read the link man. you don't' read the material. this is exactly what Hood says. I just got through summarizing that chapter in my book because Hood asked me to. It met with his specifications. It's his findings. read them.

Quote:Emuse

I can see that I have a particular ontology (two arms, two legs and so on) and have direct knowledge that I possess a mind. I see other beings with the same physical ontology to myself and which engage in similar/identical behaviors. That they have have a mind such as my own is the best explanation for their perceived behavior. So the claim that there is no empirical support for the claim that other minds exist is misleading to say the least.

Meta

you are arguing from analogy

That contradicts your previous position. The only way he can get out of the contradiction is to admit that this statement is based upon the assertion and the epistemic judgments he's willing to stipulate above. That means no proof, just leap of faith. So we can still cast doubt on the external world if absolute proof is sought.It's only because he's willing to accept the criteria that we can make that leap. It's the diving board. But then that includes RE because it meets the criteria (regular, consistent, shared).

Empirical evidence on the "shared" characteristic of mystical experience means not that people have the very same experience but that mystics all over the world have experinces and relate to them in the same way.

from Gackenback

Lukoff (1985) identified five common characteristics of mystical experiences which could be operationalized for assessment purposes. They are:

1. Ecstatic mood, which he identified as the most common feature;
2. Sense of newly gained knowledge, which includes a belief that the mysteries of life have been revealed;
3. Perceptual alterations, which range from "heightened sensations to auditory and visual hallucinations (p. 167)";
4. Delusions (if present) have themes related to mythology, which includes an incredible range diversity and range;
5. No conceptual disorganization, unlike psychotic persons those with mystical experiences do NOT suffer from disturbances in language and speech.
It can be seen from the explanation of PC earlier that this list of qualities overlaps in part those delineated by Alexander et al.

There is far better evidence in the work of Ralhph Hood jr. of University of Tennesse Chattenouga. Hood's M scale demontrates that when the specific names are taken out mystical experince and the relationship of mystics to their experinces and the funciton of those experinces in their over all belief systems are identical. See the link to Hood's text book read pages 321-325.

How Do We Know?

you don't know what this is do you?
But it does exist.*



sometimes atheists ask things like "how do you know God is good?" I also feel they are not asking sincerely they think they are being cleaver but they are really walking right into it. Here is a recent example from CARM that I feel serves as well as any as a "typical" example this sort of line.this is by "Crystal Star."

Hi, I've asked this in other threads but haven't gotten an answer. I was thinking hypothetically if the a God existed, would it be possible for it to actually prove itself to us so we can believe, with our limited human minds and technology? (from its perspective) I can't think of a way for it to give us undeniable evidence since we are talking about a being that has the intelligence well beyond our own and has the ability to create the universe (what I've seen Christians usually describe it as).

She(?) thinks she is making a devastating point against belief. But in fact she's actually laying the ground work for one of my best God arguments. I agree that there is no such ting as evidence that is "undeniable." She this person construes that as a a reason not to believe it actually just points up the folly of demanding such proof. If it is impossible to have "undeniable proof' why expect it? But this is no reason to assume we can't know, and it's reason to assume we can't community with God. We don't have to have exhaustive knowledge of God to be aware of God. We can sense God's presence and experience God's power in our lives without knowing exhaustive and exactly what God is.

The biggest reason why walked into a trap is because what she says here, the dilemma that she sets up is exactly the position I need to be in to spring my argument from Epistemic judgment (aka "the Thomas Reid Argument").

Argument:

---

(1) No empirical evidence can prove the existence of the external world, other minds, or the reality of history, or other such basic things.

(2) We do not find this epistemological dilemma debilitating on a daily basis because we assume that if our experiences are consistent and regular than we can navigate in "reality" whether it is ultimately illusory of not.

(3) Consistency and regularity of personal experience is the key.

(4) religious experience can also be regular and consistent, perhaps not to the same degree, but in the same way.

(5) Inersubjective

RE of this type has a commonality shared by believers all over the world, in different times and different places, just as the external world seems to be perceived the same by everyone.

(6) Real and Lasting effects.


(7) therefore, we have as much justification for assuming religious belief based upon experience as for assuming the reality of the external world or the existence of other minds.


See note on the Thomas Reid project and Reid himself end page 2

*We assume reality by means of a Jugement

*we make such judgments based upon certain criteria

*Because RE fits the same criteria we are justified in making the same assumption; ie that these experiences are indicative of a reality.

VIII. The Thomas Reid Argument.

A. How do we Know the external world exists?

Philosophers have often expressed skepticism about the external world, the existence of other minds, and even one's own existence. Rene Descartes went so far as to build an elaborate system of rationalism to demonstrate the existence of the external world, beginning with his famous cogito, "I think, therefore, I am." Of course, he didn't really doubt his own existence. The point was to show the method of rationalism at work. Nevertheless, this basic point, that of epistemology (how we know what we know) has always plagued philosophy. It seems no one has ever really given an adequate account. But the important point here is not so much what philosophers have said but what most people do. The way we approach life on a daily basis the assumptions we make about the external world. Skeptics are fond of saying that it is irrational to believe things without proof. I would argue that they, an all of us, believe the most crucial and most basic things without any proof whosoever, and we live based upon those assumptions which are gleaned with no proof of their veracity at all! (me, from the God argument list on Doxa--see the full argument)

In other words the atheist can't answer that argument any better. There's no advantage there in being an atheist, but that's no reason to assume we are debilitated in finding God. We have to make an epistemic judgment anyway, so since Religious experience meets the criteria by which we do that, that is in itself reason enough to believe in God.

How do we know this is not just a very powerful being who is trying to do something evil and is tricking us into thinking its a good God? A very powerful being would be very much capable of doing that. So asking us to believe in it and worship it when its not proving this to us doesn't make any sense and is irrational for it to demand that we believe and worship it when we don't have a way of knowing this.

I originally answered this by demonstrating that God is not "a being" but being itself. That rules out a "very powerful being deriving us." Why? Because it's not a question of a powerful being but one of being itself, which cannot device unless we want to think that deceptions is the basis of all being, if that is the case then there's no standard of truth to compare it to. But I don't think she understands the argument because I don't think she, or even HRG understand what's being said when I say God is not a being but the ground of being. For those who wish to explore this concept further see my (several) pages on Doxa.

I have another couple of arguemnts as to how we can know we are not being decieved by God.

(1) Love and a life time of "knowing" God

(2) The ontological nature of the Good.


(1) Love and the life time of knowing God

We can have experience of God over a life time. In my 30+ years of being a Christian I have never know the presence, the sense of love, the numinous that I think of as "God" to be deceiving. There have been times when I thought it might be that, but it always turns out not to be. Sometimes it seems God knows best and I don't have a clue so it could be deceptions, but it doesn't work out that way. There's no reason to think it will. As Kierkegaard said "If the lover is asked 'why this one and not some other beloved?' the only real answer a lover can offer is 'there is no other.'" In other words "this is the one."


(2) The ontological nature of the good.

The ontological nature of the good is such that it can't be the derivative. Good cannot be second. Good must be the act of an eternal creator since God can't the immitation. This is so because Good proceed from the same impulse that being shears with love; the impulse to give. But the nature of evil is such that it can only be a mockery of the good. Evil is about power, evil is about tearing down. Evil is about power but the kind of power that comes from being creator its about the kind power that one takes and hangs on to ruthlessly. Because the nature of the good is such that it proceeds from the basis of being and form love. That is the character we understand to be divine based upon the experience of all mystics the world over, and upon our basic human concept of good. Thus the original, eternal, ground of being cannot be evil and thus cannot be deceptive.

think about what we are saying when we speak of deception. Deceptions means to distort the truth. That means there's a truth to disport. Therefore, if we link evil with deception, evil must be the copy as deception is a derivation from what is. Thus what is is true and what distorts and derives from it to trick and device is by itself nature a copy. Thus evil can't be the origin, it can't be the original state of things, it can only be the undermining of what already is. Thus the original creator would be good and would establish truth, and the pretender would be the deceiver.

What it comes down to is we are talking about a being that goes beyond the human minds understanding. So we can't know its full nature, thus we can't know its real place in the universe and its relation with it, thus we can't know if what its doing is right or if what someone describes about it is correct and so its not possible for us to truthfully believe or worship it.

Yes but going to the Thomas Reid argument, we can't know anything anyway. you are as much in the dark theists. Atheist have no edge there. We could be all brains in vasts. We could all be a figment of my imagination. She has no way of discerining this. She has no magic data that assures her this is not the case. She merely decides that it's not and moves on. The criteria we use to decide reality religous expeirnce fits. So therefore, religious experience is as trustworthy as that used by atheists. In fact I would say it's more so because it answers questions that atheists have to pretend don't matter or don't exist.

Further, punishing us because we don't believe would be like punishing a disabled person wheel chair because they can't run a marathon, or punishing a dog because it doesn't know rocket science.

that's just a matter of theological venue.

*just a building at the Texas State Fair grounds.