Children of the lack of reading the material they criticize

 

In 2014 my first book was published, (see add below). That work centered around a huge body of academic work that proves religious experience is good for you and is life transforming (long term positive dramatic change in life). There are 200 studies or more covering a 50 year period and they are still coming, I have found a couple since the book came out, I use this material in backing my God arguments. At the basis of the research is a methodological apparatus called "The M scale" it's a control mechanism for sorting between real mystical experience and mere wool gathering, Bringing this body of work together and focusing it on apologetic is ground breaking. Atheist blogger "I am Skeptical" (aka "Skepy" to the Cadre) put down my book having not read it. Now he's cut lose on an article I did on Cadre called "Children of The .Lack of a God." But it's really an excuse to bash my book more. His blog peice hatchet job is called "Children of the lack of objectivity." That explains the title of this piece.

 I wrote an article that received interested from  an academic conference at U of Georgia. It's basically a summary of my book with a good clear explanation of the M scale. That can be found here:

http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2016/10/berninis-ecstasy-of-st.html

Here are my answer's to Skepy's blog article below.

Joe Hinman raises an issue [1] that is worth considering.  It is the question of how we can relate to something for which we have no familiarity and no experience.  It may not be easy to understand something that you've never seen or never experienced.  He asks the question:...What Hinman wants us to think is that atheists have no understanding of Christians' belief in God because they haven't experienced it for themselves.  Of course, this is the same old trope that we hear over and over again.  And it's just not true.[2]

He assumes that there is nothing there to explained so therefore any human feeling is as good as another therefore he knows all about it. That is manifest nonsense. One of the major things that body of researche I used in writing my book proves is that religious experience is not had by all humans and there is a huge difference in any old religious feeling and the kind we call "mystical." That is the point of having an M scale in the first place because all experiences are not the same,[3] Some atheists (small group) do have mystical experiences and the studies show that these atheists react to the experiences the same way that religious people do but they use different terminology, but they are the same experiences.I did write about this in my book.[4] Some atheists do wind up converting to religious belief as did I.

He takes up on my color analogy that one born having never seen blue or yellow can't understand what it's like by mere description, just as atheists can't understand religious experience just by hearing discrimination.Then he makes the argument that we can know enough it even without exposure to color:"You can't understand what it's like qualitatively to see blue or yellow unless you've had the experience, but you can understand how those sensations are caused from a physiological perspective, and you can understand what kind of sensory stimulation causes them...."  But so what? That does not answer the issue, Understanding how they are caused is not the point, Without knowing what the sensation of religious experience is like  you can't judge it's reality, It's quite common for mystics to explain their experiences as "more real than reality," That is not the full basis for my argument but it is part of it.

But is it true that atheists have never had the inner experience of God that Hinman speaks of?  Not in the least.  Hinman ignores a couple of very key points:  One is that whether or not we believe in God, we are all humans and we all have the same kinds of inner feelings and experiences.  The other is that the majority of atheists are former believers."  

I just got through answering this, The fact of The M scale (which ha been validated  by research) proves that human experience is not all the same. Other scales exist as well, even though the M scale is the most corroborated by validating studies, they all find the same thing,[5] All the studies such as Wuthnow demonstrate this fact. Those who have mystical experience are experiencing something different than the average human that' why there;s a big correlation between this experience and life transformation, the results of two major studies: The Wuthnow study and the Noble study

Long-Term Effects
Wuthnow:
*Say their lives are more meaningful,
 *think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life isMeditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble:
*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,*increased love and compassion[6] 

The people who have these experiences are more likely then the average person to find themselves growing in these characteristics such as Wuthnow and Noble document. when he says "the other is that the majority of atheists are former believers." That proves nothing because most believers don't have mystical experiences and those who do are at the mature end of the spectrum. In other words, mystical experience is synonymous with maturity, at least in terms of Christian spirituality, according to the Voyle study.[7]

He asserts that we all have mystical experiences:

On the first of those points, there is no question that there is some kind of inner feeling we all experience that creates a sense of awe or spirituality.  It may be felt with more intensity by some, but we pretty much all feel it at some time in our lives.  In fact, Hinman makes this the basis of his pseudo-scientific claims about warrant for belief.  But as I said, this experience can be understood at different levels.  We all have some understanding of what it feels like because we all have felt it to some degree.

Wuthnow (above) proposes a theory that all have such experiences but for most it's very mild. He points to William James who  also made such an argument, The whole point of scoring the scale is that there are varying intensities. If he's not a believer in God or any sort of transformative ontology then he probably has not had such experience to the degree necessary for understanding. As for my claims about warrant I have documented this time and time again, they are based upon the works of a major logician in the rhetorical tradition who made major contribution to debate theory, Stephan Tulmin.[8]

He reduces the complexity of cause to a one liner that is essentially  a falsehood because it's too much a simplification to amount to anything. "There is disagreement about what causes it.  Theists think it is caused by God, but science has shown that the same feelings can be caused by certain kinds of physical stimulus, or even by psychological manipulation." I devoted a whole chapter to this in the book,  By physical stimulus he means brain chemistry, I document philosopher John Hick showed that researcher's who use helmets and so forth to stimulate such experience do not use controls like the M scale thus they cannot establish that they have indeed produced mystical experiences,[9] Moreover, there is an argument made by Dr. Hood (inventor of the M sclae) that atheists cannot answer. There is just as much reason to think God would use brain chemistry to allow u to feel his presence as not, Thus merely tying the experience to brain chemistry proves nothing, The tie at this stage is broken by my (8) tie breakers, see the article link to at the top.

At this point he wastes a lot of time in foolish speculation over "meaning: of the experience when he could be reading my book and understanding how actual scientists (psychologists) think about it,

And then there is the question of meaning.  How does the mind interpret this experience?  That depends entirely on what concepts and associations already exist in the mind.  We associate red with the concept danger mainly because that concept is culturally ingrained in us.  The same is true of religious experience.  The interpretation of a religious experience is based on concepts we already have in our mind.  No Christian would ever have a religious experience that causes him to become a Buddhist if he didn't already have some knowledge of Buddhism, and vice versa.  Nobody ever learns something new from a religious experience.  The religious experience only serves to reinforce what we already believe.

This shows his utter ignorance, I document cases where mystical experience converted people, the famous Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo became Vadanta because of such an experience. It is quite common for one to find that one's sacred doctrine is contradicted by mystical experiences. I don't advise using it to establish doctrine and I deal with this in a whole chapter, the last chapter of my book, Eventually, doctrines are dependent on many things such as reason and logic, culture, tradition, but mystical experiences are the same the world over regardless of the doctrines. [10] these experiences do not determine one;s religious tradition but they demonstrate a reality behind all traditions.

He ventures off into more ignorant prattle trying to claim credit  for an experience he's never had:

The other point that Hinman ignores is a common mistake among Christians who love to pretend that their understanding is so much superior to that of atheists.  Most of us have been raised as believers.  We do know what it's like to have a religious experience and interpret it as the experience of God.  We've been there and done that.  The difference is that the atheist who is an ex-believer has more ways to interpret the experience.  The atheist understands that God is not the only possible reality, and not the only possible way to explain what we observe and what we feel.  The atheist sees it from a wider perspective, because he knows what the Christian feels, and he can still take a more objective view that encompasses a greater body of understanding.

Some of the more authoritative measures of incidence rate put mystical experience at about 1 in 4 and that does not even speak to the level of intensity. True mystics are more rare. So just being a believer is not a ticket to mystical enlightenment. There is a difference, As I said  above the Voyle study proves that mystical experience is the mature end of Christian experience, in so doing it also proves that just being a believer doesn't mean you have had a mystical experience.

I have to laugh every time I hear Christians making these claims about how blind atheists are, how limited their epistemological toolbox is.  We reject God belief, not because it is outside our understanding, but because our understanding is broader.  When it comes to interpreting our experiences, we have more than just one way to see everything.  We are not limited to always arriving at the same old conclusion that was instilled in us when we were children.  We can look beyond those childhood beliefs and see more.  Most of all, when looking at a broader range of choices in how to understand something, we can base our decision on objective evaluation, because we are not hemmed in by religious faith.