Phenomenology and Theological Method

 
Frederick Schleiermacher 1768-1834


Atheists are hung up on empirical knowledge. That's why so many of them (not all by many) insist that we have no info about God, you can't verify God and so forth.  They also go on and on about how stupid theology is, even though most of them have never read a single page of it. So this is my attempt to communicate some basics about the nature of theology and types of knowledge other than science.

God cannot be the subject of empirical data because the divine not given in sense data. That's because God is not just another object along side objects in creation. God is not just another thing, God is the basis of reality. That's like a fish scientist saying "they assigned me to study this thing called 'water' but I can't find any water." he says that because it never dawns on him that its' all around him, the medium in which he lives and he's always looking through it. he can't see the water because he's looking through it.

That's sort of the case with God because God is the basis of reality, the ground of Being. "in him we live and move and have our being." When we try to look at God and see him directly we look through him because in a sense he's the medium in which we live.

The only answer to this is to search for something else. We don't look for empirical evidence of God, we look for a "co-determinate." That is, we look for the signature of God, or to use a Derridian term the "trace of God." Like the aura of a neutrino. We can't photograph neutrinos directly but we have photographed their auras that are the reaction of Neutrinos with other partials. When you see that aura you know you have one.

But the trace of God has to be the result of a subjective or intersubjective understanding. So rather than subject it to empirical means, we need allow the sense data to determine the categories under which we organize our thinking about God.

Schleiermacher was the originator of this kind of thinking (prior to Brentano who is attributed to be the inventor of Phenomenology). Here is Schleiermacher's take on God consciousness. We don't search for God in objective terms we search for "God consciousness."


Phenomenology


Phenomenology is very important because it is the alternative way of thinking to either empirical science and hangs ups on inductive data, or deductive reasoning and hang ups on the a priori. When I say "allow the sense data to determine the categories," what do I mean? (this is very crucial to understanding every point I make on message boards):

What that means is, you have a bit of qualia, an impression of the say sense data strikes us,the way something appears to us. Let's say the desk my computer sits upon. Our tendency is to tuck it away into a neat category based upon our preconceived notions of desks. This is a bit of wooden furniture, it's function is proving a surface for writing and bit of storage for what we write. We plug in the label "made in Hong Kong" and we say "it's a cheap desk." Now we have a sub category. all that is pre set in our minds based upon our understanding of the universe vis a vie witting surfaces. But if we approach the desk phenomenologically, we don't say "o a cheap piece of furniture for holding my computer--manufactured in formerly British colony, the home of Jackie Chan, thus a Kung fu capitalist cheap desk. but we just say "there is this object that appears in my sense data, and it seems to provide uses x,y,z. So it may not be a desk at all in terms of its functionality, perhaps it would work better as a door stop. Or perhaps this door put across two saw horses would make a better desk. That's not part of my preconceived notion because it's not made to be a desk, but it might work better."

Ok that's a trivial example, so much for my understanding of desks and their place in the universe. But, when we consider other thins, things of more gravity such as empirical science and religion, or religious belief and experience, the nature of myth and religious texts, you can see how the outcome might might be a lot more significant if we do it one way as opposed to another.

The way the atheists want to to it is to demand certain things, and those things require sense data and that sense data is preconceived to belong in certain categories and to rule out other sense data. Thus they wind up asking for probability of miracles when in fact by definition a miracle cannot be probable. So they rule out any kind of miracle based upon the pre conceived category of "things that do no happen because we don't observe them so they are too improbable." Whereas in reality, since miracles are things that are impossible, but happen anyway because some higher law overrides that of probability, they are just arbitrarily crossing out the category of the possible and arbitrarily arranging their understanding of the universe to exclude the SN, then demanding that, well there's no evidence for it (because we have filed all the evidence under the preconceived category of "that which does not happen.").


Religion not Reducible to Knowledge


Frederick Schleiermacher, (1768-1834) in On Religion: Speeches to it's Cultured Dispisers, and The Christian Faith,sets forth the view that religion is not reducible to knowledge or ethical systems. It is primarily a phenomenological apprehension of God consciousness through means of religious affections. Affections is a term not used much anymore, and it is easily confused with mere emotion. Sometimes Schleiermacher is understood as saying that "I become emotional when I pay and thus there must be an object of my emotional feelings." Though he does venture close to this position in one form of the argument, this is not exactly what he's saying.

In the earlier form of his argument he was saying that affections were indicative of a sense of God, but in the Christian Faith he argues that there is a greater sense of unity in the life world and a sense of the dependence of all things in the life world upon something higher.

What is this feeling of utter dependence? It is the sense of the unity in the life world and it's greater reliance upon a higher reality. It is not to be confused with the stary sky at night in the desert feeling, but is akin to it. I like to think about the feeling of being in my backyard late on a summer night, listening to the sounds of the freeway dying out and realizing a certain harmony in the life world and the sense that all of this exists because it stems form a higher thing. There is more to it than that but I don't have time to go into it. That's just a short hand for those of us to whom this is a new concept to get some sort of handle on it. Nor does"feeling" here mean "emotion" but it is connected to the religious affections. In the early version S. thought it was a correlate between the religious affections and God; God must be there because I can feel love for him when I pray to him. But that's not what it's saying in the better version.


Platonic background.


The basic assumptions Schleiermacher is making are Platonic. He believes that the feeling of utter dependence is the backdrop, the pre-given, pre-cognitive notion behind the ontological argument. IN other words, what Anselm tried to capture in his logical argument is felt by everyone, if they were honest, in a pre-cognitive way. In other words, before one thinks about it, it is this "feeling" of utter dependence. After one thinks it out and makes it into a logical argument it is the ontological argument.


Unity in the Life world.


"Life world," or Labeinswelt is a term used in German philosophy. It implies the world of one's culturally constructed life, the "world" we 'live in.' Life as we experience it on a daily basis. The unity one senses in the life world is intuitive and unites the experiences and aspirations of the individual in a sense of integration and belonging in in the world. As Heidegger says "a being in the world." Schleiermacher is saying that there is a special intuitive sense that everyone can grasp of this whole, this unity, being bound up with a higher reality, being dependent upon a higher unity. In other words, the "feeling" can be understood as an intuitive sense of "radical contingency" (int he sense of the above ontological arguments).

He goes on to say that the feeling is based upon the ontological principle as its theoretical background, but doesn't' depend on the argument because it proceeds the argument as the pre-given pre-theoretical pre-cognitive realization of what Anslem sat down and thought about and turned into a rational argument: why has the fools said in his heart 'there is no God?' Why a fool? Because in the heart we know God. To deny this is to deny the most basic realization about reality.


All religions seek to do three things:

a) to identify the human problematic, b) to identify an ultimate transformative experience (UTE) which resolves the problematic, and c) to mediate between the two.

But not all religions are equal. All are relative to the truth but not all are equal. Some mediate the UTE better than others, or in a more accessible way than others. Given the foregoing, my criteria are that:

1) a religious tradition reflect a human problematic which is meaningful in terms of the what we find in the world.

2) the UTE be found to really resolve the problematic.

3) it mediates the UTE in such a way as to be effective and accessible. 4) its putative and crucial historical claims be historically probable given the ontological and epistemological assumptions that are required within the inner logic of that belief system.

5) it be consistent with itself and with the external world in a way that touches these factors.

These mean that I am not interested in piddling Biblical contradictions such as how many women went to the tomb, ect. but in terms of the major claims of the faith as they touch the human problematic and its resolution.


A religious tradition is like a language, and theology is a conversation. Since God is mystical reality, beyond words, to speak of our experiences of God one must encode those experiences into cultural constructs, that makes for the differences in different religions. Traditions are like languages in that they furnish a vocabulary for dealing with such experiences based upon past experiences in an inter-subjective fashion. The point of the discussion is to mediate transformation. One moves into mediation through the conversation of theology. One is then able to come terms with mediation on a personal and experiential level as is still able to relate intersubjectively with others who have similar experiences.

The question then,is not which religion is "true," but which one best mediates transformation. For the individual who answers that question, and comes to identify with a tradition, that is the conversation to take up; join that tradition. For me its Christianity. As part of the conversation one can set up criteria for understanding the conversation, criteria such as those listed above.

How Does the Bible fulfill these criteria? First, what is the Bible? Is it a rule book? Is it a manual of discipline? Is it a science textbook? A history book? No it is none of these. The Bible, the Canon, the NT in particular, is a means of bestowing Grace. What does that mean? It means first, it is not an epistemology! It is not a method of knowing how we know, nor is it a history book. It is a means of coming into contact with the UTE mentioned above. This means that the primary thing it has to do to demonstrate its veracity is not be accurate historically, although it is that in the main; but rather, its task is to connect one to the depository of truth in the teachings of Jesus such that one is made open to the ultimate transformative experience. Thus the main thing the Bible has to do to fulfill these criteria is to communicate this transformation. This can only be judged phenomenologically. It is not a matter of proving that the events are true, although there are ensconces where that becomes important.

Thus the main problem is not the existence of these piddling so-called contradictions (and my experience is 90% of them stem from not knowing how to read a text), but rather the extent to which the world and life stack up to the picture presented as a fallen world, engaged in the human problematic and transformed by the light of Christ. Now that means that the extent to which the problematic is adequately reflected, that being sin, separation from God, meaninglessness, the wages of sin, the dregs of life, and so forth, vs. the saving power of God's grace to transform life and change the direction in which one lives to face God and to hope and future. This is something that cannot be decided by the historical aspects or by any objective account. It is merely the individual's problem to understand and to experience. That is the nature of what religion does and the extent to which Christianity does it more accessibly and more efficaciously is the extent to which it should be seen as valid.

The efficacy is not an objective issue either, but the fact that only a couple of religions in the world share the concept of Grace should be a clue. No other religion (save Pure Land Buddhism) have this notion. For all the others there is a problem of one's own efforts. The Grace mediates and administrates through *****ures is experienced in the life of the believer, and can be found also in prayer, in the sacraments and so forth.

Where the historical questions should enter into it are where the mediation of the UTE hedges upon these historical aspects. Obviously the existence of Jesus of Nazareth would be one, his death on the cross another. The Resurrection of course, doctrinally is also crucial, but since that cannot be established in an empirical sense, seeing as no historical question can be, we must use historical probability. That is not blunted by the minor discrepancies in the number of women at the tomb or who got there first. That sort of thinking is to think in terms of a video documentary. We expect the NT to have the sort of accuracy we find in a court room because we are moderns and we watch too much television. The number of women and when they got to the tomb etc. does not have a bearing on whether the tomb actually existed, was guarded and was found empty. Nor does it really change the fact that people claimed to have seen Jesus after his death alive and well and ascending into heaven. We can view the different strands of NT witness as separate sources, since they were not written as one book, but by different authors at different times and brought together later.

The historicity of the NT is a logical assumption given the nature of the works. We can expect that the Gospels will be polemical. We do not need to assume, however, that they will be fabricated from whole cloth. They are the product of the communities that redacted them. That is viewed as a fatal weakness in fundamentalist circles, tantamount to saying that they are lies. But that is silly. In reality there is no particular reason why the community cannot be a witness. The differences in the accounts are produced by either the ordering of periscopes to underscore various theological points or the use of witnesses who fanned out through the various communities and whose individual view points make up the variety of the text. This is not to be confused with contradiction simply because it reflects differences in individual's view points and distracts us from the more important points of agreement; the tomb was empty, the Lord was seen risen, there were people who put there hands in his nail prints, etc.

The overall question about Biblical contradiction goes back to the basic nature of the text. What sort of text is it? Is it a Sunday school book? A science text book? A history book? And how does inspiration work? The question about the nature of inspiration is the most crucial. This is because the basic notion of the fundamentalists is that of verbal plenary inspiration. If we assume that this is the only sort of inspiration than we have a problem. One mistake and verbal plenary inspiration is out the window. The assumption that every verse is inspired and every word is true comes not from the Church fathers or from the Christian tradition. It actually starts with Humanists in the Renaissance and finds its final development in the 19th century with people like J. N. Drably and Warfield. (see, Avery Dulles Models of Revelation).

One of my major reasons for rejecting this model of revelation is because it is not true to the nature of transformation. Verbal plenary inspiration assumes that God uses authors like we use pencils or like businessmen use secretaries, to take dictation (that is). But why should we assume that this is the only form of inspiration? Only because we have been conditioned by American Christianity to assume that this must be the case. This comes from the Reformation's tendency to see the Bible as epistemology rather than as a means of bestowing grace (see William Abraham, Canon and Criterion). Why should be approach the text with this kind of baggage? We should approach it, not assuming that Moses et al. were fundamentalist preachers, but that they experienced God in their lives through the transformative power of the Spirit and that their writings and redactions are a reflection of this experience. That is more in keeping with the nature of religion as we find it around the world. That being the case, we should have no problem with finding that mythology of Babylonian and Suzerain cultures are used in Genesis, with the view toward standing them on their heads, or that some passages are idealized history that reflect a nationalistic agenda. But the experiences of God come through in the text in spite of these problems because the text itself, when viewed in dialectical relation between reader and text (Barth/Dulles) does bestow grace and does enable transformation.

After all the Biblical texts were not written as "The Bible" but were complied from a huge voluminous body of works which were accepted as "holy books" for quite some time before they were collected and put in a single list and even longer before they were printed as one book: the Bible. Therefore, that this book may contradict itself on some points is of no consequence. Rather than reflecting dictation, or literal writing as though the author was merely a pencil in the hands of God, what they really reflect is the record of people's experiences of God in their lives and the way in which those experiences suggested their choice of material/redaction. In short, inspiration of text is a product of the transformation afore mentioned. It is the verbalization of inner-experience which mediates grace, and in turn it mediates grace itself.

The Bible is not the Perfect Revelation of God to humanity. Jesus is that perfect revelation. The Gospels are merely the record of Jesus' teachings, deposited with the communities and encoded for safe keeping in the list chosen through Apostolic backing to assure Christian identity. For that matter the Bible as a whole is a reflection of the experience of transformation and as such, since it was the product of human agents we can expect it to have human flaws. The extent to which those flaws are negligible can be judge the ability of that deposit of truth to adequately promote transformation. Christ authorizes the Apostles, the Apostles authorize the community, the community authorizes the tradition, and the tradition authorizes the canon.

Changing of The Mazeways or Loss of Religiosity?

...When I was a kid Sunday morning made Dallas look like a ghost town. On days when I had an occasion not to go to chruch but to drive somewhere, such as traveling, or in high school when I stopped going to chruch (much to the consternation of my parents) the town seemed abandoned on Sunday morning. Everyone  was in chruch. Now you can't tell it is Sunday. People are out doing all the stuff they do on Saturday. Parks are full, playing Frisbee with dogs, playing football, going for walks, sitting at side walk cafes, having dates, "Saturday, in the park, could have been the forth of  July." There's essentially no difference between Sunday and Saturday until noon when the chruch people get out, then it's only discernible at family style cafeterias and supermarkets. Does this trend really mark a loss in religiosity?
....Recently there has been a spate of claims that atheism is increasing. These are backed by pseudo-scientific polling efforts. I've studied many of these claims for my other blog, Atheist Watch, and determined that they all bogus, especially those that pertain to the U.S. I have not found good counter data for world rate of atheist in population, but I do have reasons to doubt the only major measurement of that statistic in several years, done by an offshoot of Gallup polling, Win-Gallup International (which not affiliated with the famous Gallup organization). That can all be seen on my recent article on AW. So while I don't find claims of increasing rate of atheism in America, or even in world population disturbing what I do find disturbing is the loss of religiosity statistic.[1] Usually these polls rarely distinguish bewteen growth of "no religion" and actual atheism. What this means in practical terms is that large increases in "atheism" are base upon increase in a group that says it has "no religious affiliation." When that group is examined more closely half of them say they believe in God. Even of those who say they don't believe in God half are "I don't know" and half are "I am an actual atheist." If the none group is 14% half believe in God that's 7% that don't. half of those are "i don't know" only 3 and 1/2 % are actual atheists if we could "I am an atheist" as the definition.[2]
....In all of this figuring about "no religious affiliation" we also have statistics on "declining religiosity." That group is what concerns me. It means that even among those who say they do believe in God even many of those many not actually have relationships with God. The whole point of belief in God is to have a relationship with God. By relationship  is mean primarily a prayer life. I base my views about the importance of "relationship" with God on the models set forth in various texts concerning mystical experience. From a traditional standpoint we have the  teaching of great Christian mystics such as St. John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart, or St. Teresa of Avila.[3] If we listen to those guys we get strait forward advice about how important it is to have a prayer life, we also get a lot of advice about aestheticism that most of us have no intention of following. Perhaps that's ok but if we examine the hard data (from empirical studies on the effects of having religious experience--such as corroborating studies on the "M scale" by Ralph Hood We find that there are universal experiences that certain people in all cultures and all times have, and these experience traditionally labeled "mystical." the M Scale validates the work of W.T. Stace who based his finding on the writings of the great mystics around the world. What Hood's studies prove is that people are actually out there experiencing that which they term "the divine" in ways that stack up to Stace's theory.[4] All of that means that the mystics of the world got it right for the most part. Therefore, there is a relationship with something that is to be had. That "something" is experienced as a sense of all pervasive love and culminates in undifferentiated unity, that is seems to provide a deep penetrating insight into the meaning of life and the nature of reality to clarify everything. Moreover, it's wrapped up in a unity that blurs the distinction between the diversity of all things. In other words, it's all about "God." Studies that look at the effects of having these experiences show that they have profound life transforming effects upon those who experience them, more so than for those who don't.
....Since there is some kind of relationship to be had with "the infinite" then it behooves us to understand weather or not the depth of religiosity is really being lost, or is it just changing to the extent that the guide markers for religiosity are being obscured by new behaviors? Surveys show a loss of religiosity. Decline of religiosity is probalby the same thing as the growth of unaffiliated. What is the cause? 1 in 5 adults in America have no religious affiliation.

relaxed attitudes of 60s and 70s means that x ers were raised with no strong attachment to chruch. This still doesn't mean they don't believe in God. My personal personal is that young people are being confused and turned off by politics, the way the right wing tries to monopolize belief in the bible and in Jesus.[5]

The Highest ranked cetners of religiosity are Africa and Latin America in that order.

CCBI News

http://www.eni.ch‹‹ Back

16-08-2012 by Munyaradzi Makoni (ENInews via CNUA) Africa has topped the list of most devout regions of the world, with 89 percent calling themselves religious, according to a worldwide poll called "The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism." In Ghana, 96 percent of respondents said they were religious, followed by Nigeria at 93 percent and Kenya at 88 percent. There was no change in the Ghana figure since 2005, the last time the poll was conducted. Nigeria and Kenya were both down 1 percent. Conducted by WIN-Gallup International, the poll is based on interviews with 50,000 people from 57 countries and five continents. Participants were asked, "Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person, or a convinced atheist?" Worldwide, the number of self-proclaimed atheists rose to 7 percent from 4 percent in 2005. In other African countries, 75 percent of respondents in South Sudan said they were religious and 6 percent atheists. The number of religious South Africans has dropped to 64 percent from 83 percent in 2005.

In terms of religiosity, Latin America was second to Africa, with 84 percent of respondents saying they are religious. In South Asia, the figure was 83 percent and in the Arab world, 77 percent. In the U.S., the number of Americans who say they are "religious" dropped to 60 percent from 73 percent. The number of Americans who say they are atheists rose to 5 percent from 1 percent. [6]

The problem is I've seen the data on the rise of the "none" badly misrepresented. I've seen it used to indicate a rise in atheism when i reality it means a rise in "no religious affiliation" but among people who believe in God. What really seems to be going on, at least in America, is a changing of the Maze ways. It's a change in the ques that give people conventional references to reality. In other words behavior is different and people can't figure it out. That term "mazeway" comes form a Anthropologist named Anthony F.C.Wallace who a theory about how people takes their ques from society and learn how to act and what opinions to hold. When the maze ways change, when people's non verbal and verbal ques no longer stack up with expectations they become uncertain and start being afraid and doing things that dont' make sense.[7] An example is like long hair in the 60's. Boys suddenly stopped getting hair cuts, which was a right of passage for a male on the edge of puberty, suddenly they want to "look like girls." the older generation began spinning notions of end times and expecting nuclear war sermons began to be preached on moral decline. That was especially scary becuase it was accompanied by drug use, psychedelic shirts, bell bottoms, Iron Butterfly on the radio and other alarming indications of 60s pop culture. Not to say that the problems of American youth didn't become a lot more serious. That seems like such an innocent time time becuase things were a lot more simple and the doom and gloom senerios so off base.
....A cogent questoin at this point might be "how are these polls measuring religiosity? First, how is it defined:

Numerous studies have explored the different components of human religiosity (Brink, 1993; Hill & Hood 1999). What most have found is that there are multiple dimensions (they often employ factor analysis). For instance, Cornwall, Albrecht, Cunningham and Pitcher (1986) identify six dimensions of religiosity based on the understanding that there are at least three components to religious behavior: knowing (cognition in the mind), feeling (affect to the spirit), and doing (behavior of the body). For each of these components of religiosity there were two cross classifications resulting in the six dimensions^{[citation needed]}:

• Cognition
  • traditional orthodoxy
  • particularistic orthodoxy
• Affect
  • Palpable
  • Tangible
• Behavior
  • religious behavior
  • religious participation

Other researchers have found different dimensions, ranging generally from four to twelve components. What most measures of religiosity find is that there is at least some distinction between religious doctrine, religious practice, and spirituality.
For example^{[original research?]}, one can accept the truthfulness of the Bible (belief dimension), but never attend a church or even belong to an organized religion (practice dimension). Another example is an individual who does not hold orthodox Christian doctrines (belief dimension), but does attend a charismatic worship service (practice dimension) in order to develop his/her sense of oneness with the divine (spirituality dimension).[8]

....I don't go to chruch but I consider myself "religious" if we can use that term. The problem is there are devout believers who don't like the term "religious." for some Pentecostals, for example, that term implies a dead formal ceremony and legalistic attitude rather than a living relationship. Gallup finds that seven out of ten Americans are very or moderately religious. Protestantism is shrinking, however, as "unbranded" religion grows.[9] It's the change in the label that shifts the maze ways and causes a since of confusion. We find it hard to label as "religious" those who say they have no particular religious label. That doesn't' mean that they wont be labeled in another way that says "religious" in the future. It's all a matter of figuring out the new set of Maze ways. In Newport's article 40% are very religious, 29% moderately, while 31% "non religious" but that i not to say they don't believe in God. We know the 2009 pew study (above) that half the nons believe in God. The other half don't necessarily call themselves atheists. There even room for exploration in the "I don't know column. For example if that group says significant "I believe in a higher power I just don't call it God," do they qualify as atheist or as "would be God believers?" Apart form the expression of anger on message boards is the term "atheist" even meaningful at this point?

Broadly speaking, the United States remains a largely Christian nation, although one in which an increasing percentage of adults say that they don't have a formal religious identity. More than three-fourths (77%) of American adults in 2012 identify with a Christian religion, including Protestantism, Catholicism, other Christian religions, and Mormonism. Among only those Americans who have a religious identity, 94% are Christians, with the rest spread across several other religious categories.
Gallup's traditional religious identity question asks respondents about their religious preference, providing these response categories: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, another religion, or no religion. Those who say "another religion" are then asked: "Would that be a Christian religion, or is it not a Christian religion?" Most say their "other" religion is a Christian religion.[10]

 I have seen atheists use statistics to try and indicate that religion is declining in America. They show protestantism has declined from 69% in 1948 to 56% in 2008. While "none" increased in that era from 4% in 48 to 13% in 2008[11] belief in God did not decrease at all."Separate Gallup questioning earlier this year shows that 92% of Americans say they believe in God. This suggests that the lack of a religious identity is not in and of itself a sign of the total absence of religiosity."[12] 
....What is not reflect in any of the data is how to measure the hearts of those who are listed as "non" but say they believe in God. Traditional behavioral ques that mark one as religoius have changed. No longer is going to chruch and being a member of an institution the major means of understanding religiosity. That's not proof that there's no religion there. It's probably a mistake from a devotional stand point it's up to those who care to spread God's love to people. That's the real bottom line is how we treat people and that's going to speak the loudest to the unbeliever.


[1]Metacrock, "Is Atheism Increasing in World Population?" Atheist Watch. blog:
http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2013/05/is-atheism-increasing-in-world.html
[2]"Major Religions of the World Ranks by Numbers of Adherents" Adherents.com,
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.htmlhttp://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
see also Pew study of 2009 Nons On the rise" Pew Research Center 2009
http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspxhttp://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx
 where the same idea applies, "non" is rising to 20% while athist is still at 3%.
[3] the classic text on Christian mysticism is Mysticism by Evyln Underhill
[4] Metacrock, "The M Scale and Universal Nature of Mystical Experience." Atheist Watch, 10/5/12
http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-m-sacle-and-universal-nature-of.html
[5]Pew Research Center, "Nones on the rise." Pew 2009 study: http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx#growth
[6]CCBI news "

Africa is most devout region of the world: Poll results, Posted On : Aug. 16, 2012
http://ccbi.in/index.php/news/viewmore/7374
[7]Ilias Sabbir, "Theory of Revitalization Movement by Anthony F.C.Wallace.Acadmemia.edu
http://www.academia.edu/83954/Theory_of_Revitalization_Movement_by_Anthony_F._C._Wallace

see also Herbert Balamer (editor) Modern Christian Revivals (Anthology). University of Illinois, 1993, 209 on line copy:
 http://books.google.com/books?id=wYyjxUhOQTAC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=Wallace,+sociologist+who+used+concept+of+%22the+Maze+ways%22&source=bl&ots=8M6iiLVTwJ&sig=yJUvqGgmKaDvDP459SDiMqyGnyM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XPmQUZKwAcqirgH-k4HoBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Wallace%2C%20sociologist%20who%20used%20concept%20of%20%22the%20Maze%20ways%22&f=false
[8]"religiosity." Wikipedia,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity
[9] Frank Newport "Seven out of Ten Americans are very or moderately religious" Gallup Politics
 http://www.gallup.com/poll/159050/seven-americans-moderately-religious.aspx
[10]Ibid.
[11]Frank Newport "over Time Fewer Americans Identify as Christians,"
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124793/this-christmas-78-americans-identify-christian.aspx
[12]Frank Newport, "Christianity remains Dominant religion in America," Gallup, December 23, 2011.  http://www.gallup.com/poll/151760/christianity-remains-dominant-religion-united-states.aspx

Causality in Miracle Hunting.

In the discussions of miracles several atheists have made some big misconceptions.

(1) mistaken assumptions about my knowledge of correlation and cause.


some assume that since they are clever enough to know the very basic information, the difference in correlation and causality, that I must not know that because I'm a Christian and Christians are stupid, and they are so very clever to know some basic fact that all high school kids should get, correlation is not causality.

But what they don't get is that just as I argue inductively that correlation is indicative of a cause if certain conditions obtain, that doesn't mean I don't know the difference.

(2) Correlation is indicative of Cause.


What these very clever atheists don't get is that correlation is indicative of cause. part of the problem is that certain people don't seem know what indicative means. Be that as it may, there is an epistemological gap in our knowledge it is a problem at the most fundamental philosophical level. We can only establish causality in one way, buy making very tight correlations and eliminating alternate causes. This is the only way there is, and that's what Hume really proved with the billiard balls.

Science can't prove causes. We can only prove correlations. When I assume causes on miracles, it's the only way we ever establish cause. Hans (HRG the atheist guru on CARM) says "only if we eliminate the alternate causes." Yes, that's true, but it also leads to recursion of the original problem. Because if we can't observe causality and it must be inferred from correlation, then you can't say "I have eliminated an alternate cause by showing causality and eliminating it." That's just a repeat of the same problem. The alternate causes are only possibilities, they are not proven either. What it boils down to is in the final analysis a really tight correlation is the only way to determine cause. Although it is important to eliminate the alternative possible causes, essential in fact. What this means is I am right to assume causes from correlations, given that I can eliminate alternatives, and I usually can. There is also the need to show a mechanism. Yet causes have been inferred without knowing mechanisms, as with smoking = cancer, but mechanism is also inferred from correlations. That is what we always come back to.

All of this means that medical evidence showing the disease went away, when examined by scientific medicos is good evidence for miracles. It's not absolute, there is no absolute. There will always be a gap in our epistemology. We will always have to make epistemic judgment.


(3) Don't need to show hit rate


The argument is made we must show the percentage of those healed vs not healed.

That's ridiculous. The reason is because we do not know the reason when someone is not healed. We cannot assume "O not being healed means there's no God, because some are healed." Knowing the hit rate is important in many cases. such as prophesy, "so and so is a true prophet he predicted x," but how many predictions did the make that did not come true?

Knowing the hist rate is not true in terms of empirical evidence of healing because:

(a) We don't know if the not healing is the result of no God, or God just didn't want to heal. Because a will is on the other end of the prayer we cannot treat it like a natural process and expect it to behave like a drug in a field trial.

(b) Miracles are supposed to be impossible. they violate natural law. that's the whole theory of naturalism in a nut shell; nothing happens apart form natural law.

Thus if one miracle happens that proves miracles and all it takes is one. proving that x% are not healed doesn't prove anything. miracles are supposed to be impossible and can't happen, if one of them happens, or we can assume it happened, then that proves they do happen. We don't know the rate because God is not a drug. Divine healing is a matter of God's will.


(3) God's action in healing is not indicative of God's feelings about those healed or not healed.

This is the whole fallacy of the God hates amputees thing. You might as well say God hates breakfast because not once in my Christian walk has God ever made me scrambled eggs in the morning.

St. Augustine proved that there is no correlation between worldly prosperity or success and God's love. Rome was sacked by the vandals and everyone was saying "this disproves Christianity." but Augie said "no it doesn't, divine favor is not based worldly success. Stuff happens to Christians too, God causes it rain on the just and unjust."


(4) No double blind


Lourdes evidence does not need to be double blind First of all these are not "studies." They are not set up as a longitudinal study to see if healing works. These are real people and their journey to Lourdes is part of their journey in life in a search to be healed, they are not white lab mice plotting world conquest.

Secondly, double blind is used as a means of control so we know data is not contaminated by the subjects knowledge of the test. People suffering from an incurable disease cannot cure themselves. So it doesn't matter if they know. If the data shows the condition went away immediately and it can be documented that all traces are gone, the of course can assume healing, provided there is no counter cause such as he took a wonder drug before he left for Lourdes; they do certainly screen for that.

Of course there are still epistemological problems. There will always be such problems. That's why you can't prove you exist. But just as the answer to that problem is "Make epistemic judgment based upon regularity and inconsistency of data," so it goes with miracles, proving smoking causes cancer or anything else.

Thomas Reid got it right, we are justified in assuming empirical evidence provided it's strong evidence.

One more problem. When I say "correlation" this invites the question "how can you find a correlation if you don't know the hit rate? A correlation implies X and Y are seen together a lot, not just in one instance. But we can't go around giving people cancer and praying for them over and over to see if they ar always healed. We have to let multiple cases stand for correlation. But since we can't say why healing didn't take place we have to use empirical means to assert on a case by case basis.

Two of my 200 Religous Experience Studies now Avaible online

 


As long time readers know, I have been pushing a group of studies, which I have estimated to be about 200 (ball park) that prove the positive and transformative nature of religious experience. Most of these studies are not on the net. This fact has really drawn the ire of atheist mocking. I've put up with a lot of BS form athesit who are too lazy to look them up. They really talk like there's just no way in the world they can ever see them if I can't link to them, even though I got them and read them; it just take libaryr work which I guess lets them out. These are integral o many of the arguments I make for God, and also in response to charges that religion is bad for you.see list at bottom.
....This is why when  one is found on line it's a big deal for me. Two of these studies I have now found on line, so it is a major thing. In fact of these sources is major in terms of my over all set of arguments. the more important of the two is a literature search by David Lukoff and G. Lu. It summarizes several (18-20) studies. It's not a study itself it's a literature search but it's important because it was the only one up to that time. This is an old source, done back in 1988. I'll just briefly look at the less important of he two first. This is an actual study, the point of which was add to the literature on incidence and to see if there was a significant portion of the inexpedience rate for harmful experiences. That's important and I don't mean to minimize the value of the study, and it is a real study. Meaning they did more than just search publications to summarize other people's work.
,,,,The study is "Psychotherapists Attitudes Toward Clients Reporting Mystical Experiences." Loraine S. Allman, et al.,Psychotherapy Volume 29 /Winter1992/ Number 4. Questoinaire mailed to 650 membrs of American Psychological Association, chosen at random, who were in full time practice. It was answered by 280 respondents. 4.5% reported mystical experiences among clients in a 12 month period. Very few of these reported the experiences as pathological. 50% of the therapists themselves had mystical experiences at some point in their lives. 4% doesn't sound like much but it's 4% of those who are going to shrinks. There reasons for going couldn't be rleated to pathology in the experinces becuase so few of them psychologists find the experiences are pathological.
....The second Study, the literature search: "Transpersonal Psychology Research Review Topic, Mystical Experience," by David Lukoff and G. Lu. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1988. Vol. 20. No.2.
...Let's look at a couple of examples:

FINNEY,J.&MALONEY,H. (1985).

An empirical study of

contemplative prayer as an adjunct to psychotherapy.

Journal of Psychology and Theology,13(4), 284-90.

Methods:

The use of contemplative Christian prayer as an

adjunct to psychotherapy was investigated in

a time series quasi-experimental design in which each subject 

served as his orher own control. Six measures including the Hood

Mysticism Scale were administered to nine subjects who were

in therapy.

Findings:

Circumstantial support that the use of contempla-tiveprayer is associatedwith an improvement in psycho-

therapy was obtained on one measure, but this research design

could not separate out the effects of psychotherapy alone from

time alone. No association was found between the use

of contemplative prayer and the Hood Mysticism Scale or

the other two measures of religiosity

This is so historic for me. We see one of Hood's early papers on the M Scale one of the early studies he conducted. This is done well before his three factor solution:

HOOD,R.(1977). Eliciting mystical

states of consciousness with semistructured

nature experiences. Journal/or the Scientific

Study of Religion,16(2), 155-63.

Method:

The author obtained permission to conduct a study

of students engaging in outdoor activities. Following a raft trip,

rock climb and solo night in the wilderness (high stress

condition) and a canoe trip (low stress

condition), subjects were

immediately administered the Hood (1975) Mysticism Scale. A

"measure of anticipated stress was also administered just prior

to engaging in the activities.

Findings:

The high stress condition produced significantly

higher scores on the Mysticism Scale. The author concluded:

"any factor which suddenly emerges or is recognized to point to

the 'limits' of everyday reality may suddenly serve as a trigger to

mysticism. This is certainly likely in a stressful nature setting,

non-stressfully anticipated."

....There are two major ways these studies back God arguments: (1) they demonstrate that the experiences fit the criteria we habitually use to determine the reality of our experiences: regular, consistent, shared, enable navigation in life. That last one is due to the transformational effects of the experiences; (2) the nature of the experiences themselves involve an understanding of life and the world such that the experience itself is what we should expect from the divine. By that I mean it's an experience of holiness, it often conveys a sense of God's presence such that the experience says "wow that is God." Or if not "God" at least "supreme being, sense of the numinous, sense of transcendent power." Even atheists who refuse to accept the connection to God and who have the experiences describes the same thins and relate to it the same way as believers.
....Skeptics most often argument that we can't prove an external cause. We actually can. (1) The universal nature of the experience. When the specific aspects of a given tradition are removed and the experience is taken on its own terms it is seen that the same experiences are being  had all over the world in all times and cultures, they are just being explained differently according to the various traditions. (2) The other causalities can be eliminated and that's the only one left that makes sense. For example it makes no sense that such experiences would all be caused by some accident of brain chemistry yet it's always trans-formative and makes life dramatically better.

The Council on spiritual practices distills the benifits listed in two of the major studies and complies this list:

Long-Term Effects

Wuthnow:

*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate 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

I urge the reader to click on the link and read through these studies. There are only about 30 pages (161-184). They are very interesting and this is a good into to the research. Yet from the research that is the case. 


list of arguments where I use these studies:

Religious instinct (no 4) argument (especially page 2 where some of them are summarized)

Argument from co-determinate (aka "mystical experience") (no 7 on the list) "old no. 7."

Thomas Reid Argument, or from Epistemic judgement (Old No 8)

Empirical evidence of Supernatural

Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light.

 
Gunnar Björnstrand

I have reviewed several Bergman films on this blog, starting with my review of his death two years ago ("Greatness has Left the Planet: Ingmar Bergman Dies"). Since getting Netflix last Summer I've been watching what I consider to be the greatest films from the the greatest age of art films. From the late 40s, beginning with Italian Neo-Realism, which followed the lead of Viscanti, to the mid 50s in French "new Cinema" and on to the end of the 60s film make reach it's peak in terms of artistic direction. A host of great filmmakers cranked out sublime creations, the greatest among them was Sweden's Ingmar Bergman. Bergman has a special sensitivity to religion. He was an atheist, he did not pull punches about his feelings of angst at the lack of a God (in his world view) but he was not one of these message board Dawkies. He approaches it with a sensitivity that preserves the dignity and intelligence of the believer.

My favorite example of that sensitivity is from my second favorite film, "Wild Strawberries," and there is a scene I love in that film where two young men are competing for the effectiveness of a young lady. Their contest takes the place of an intellectual debate which grows more angry in every scene. Finally they break into a fist fight and both have black eyes. They are angrily corralled by their companions and put in the back seat with the girl between them. She casually turns to the young seminarian and says "so, does God exist?" Bergman shows sensitivity in a scene where all the travels are together at a table the old doctor quotes poetry about religious belief, the atheist doesn't get it the seminary guy does. So even though he's an atheist he still acknowledges that Belief has its reasons and those reasons appeal to the heart, that doesn't make them stupid. Bergman's father the Chaplin to the Queen of Sweden, but privately he was abusive to the young Ingmar as he grew up. Bergman thus had a sympathy for the religious life but also a revulsion and an acute awareness of the personal struggles that go on in the psyche of believers and seeking unbelievers.


Björnstrand and Thulin in
Winter Light




"Winter Light" is the second in Bergman's Trilogy: "Through the Glass Darkly," "Winter Light," and "The Silence." I have reviewed Thought he Glass Darkly on this bog, and also another Bergman film "The virgin Spring." One of his greats. The review of his death included a review of his greatest work, "The Seventh Seal." That is my favorite film of all time bar none. I am almost having a mystical experince just thinking about that film.

Winter light is like setting out for a wonderful vacation in a great setting such as the south of France, and suddenly finding yourself in a dentist chair for four hours screaming in pain. It has all the slow agonizing tedious build up to nothing of a root canal. Well, one might ask, "what's so great about that, it sounds like a crap movie." The first time you watch it, it is. But it grows on you. If you think about it latter you come to realize you did see a fine film. I would not put it in the ranks of the Seventh Seal, or the the Seven Samurai for that matter, but it is a great film. That intense tedium that goes nowhere is intentional. Bergman wants you to feel that. That's the Katharsis. He also wants the film to look dismal, soul crunching, cold, barren, stark, bleak and it does. The setting is a small Island off the coast of Sweden. It has modern convinces but everything is shabby and gritty and the people are isolated and the region is a backwater.It's the kind of place that one begins a practice in (say in medicine) because there's no where to go from there but up.

The first scene is in a church as the Sunday service begins. In fact, the whole film takes place on that Sunday between the noon service and the evening service which is only bout three and half hours. The building is interesting, the service is dismal. The building is old and crumbling with vaulted sealing and very Norse looking statues of Christ on the cross. There are only seven people in the whole church and they are spread out around the sanctuary. The only people who sit together are one couple, the others all lonely individuals who have no one to sit with even in spite of their being a small enough group to have an intimate service. The service is anything but intimate. It's mechanical, and legalistic, formal and by the book. The people in the service, with the exceptions of an old woman and a a hunchback who seem moved by it all.

The opening of the film and the slow unfolding of conflict imply a real slap in the face to Christian belief. The minister, played by Bergman's best friend Gunnar Björnstrand, mutters under his breath "what a ridiculous image" as he gases at the cross.Everything is old and falling apart, ony two out of seven parishioners who bother to show up really get anything out of it, the rest is all perfunctory. The minister (Thomas) stays to talk to the one couple who sat together. The man is a fisherman played by Max Von Sydow (the Father in Virgin Spring, also the exorcist himself in that fim). The fisherman's problem is that he's depressed, to the point of suicide, because he's fretting about the bomb. This is a very periodized anxiety of that era. In that day it would have spoken to the audience. But the minister is totally inept at dealing with the man's problems. He gets him to agree to come back latter and talk to him in private session without his wife. The couple leaves and the minister's girl friend (Marta--Ingrid Thulin) comes in. She is clinging and mothering and hovering and suffocating. She gets him to read a letter which he reads before the return of the fisherman. The content of the letter is a sketch of all the problems in their relationship. The intensity builds as the text of the letter is acted by Thulin. The scene is a masterpiece as Bergman does not allow the camera to stray from a close up of her face as she speaks the text which the minister is reading. This is a violation of all the rules of film making. The close up grows in intensity as the problems of the couple are revealed. The viewer wants to move on but can't. The intensity of the letter is drilled into the face of the audience.

Thomas is sick, he has fever but he's pushing himself. In real life Bergman got the doctor to prescribe ineffective medicine for Björnstrand's bronchitis so he would really appear sick. While we might give Thomas some points for sticking to his duty we have to subtract them from Thomas again because his counciling technique was totally inept. He did not talk about the man's problems at all. Instead he told the fisherman about his own problems. He confessed his lack of belief and all but said things are pretty hopeless. He talked about is ideas of God but not in a way that shed theological light but in an intensely private way that could only be described as self indulgent.The man leaves clearly more distraught than when he came. Surprise, he goes right out and shoots himself.

There is a great scene, the only real outdoor scene where Thomas goes to issue last rights and help with the body. The Fisherman has shot himself in front of a stream which is moving very swiftly. There are mountains around, but none of it is beautiful. Of cousre it's black and white but even so nature can be beautiful in black and white, the great open outdoor forested scenes of Virgin Spring are wonderfully beautiful, this is not. The stream looks cold and bleak and like one might drawn. The mountains look gritty, everything looks gritty, snowy stark and bleak. This is of course, the way Bergman wants it to look. The American Title is "Winter Light" so named because the quality of light in the film is muted. this is the light of the winter in Sweden, dark, somber not happy sunshine but cloudy and stark. The scene focuses on a body being put in a body bag. Thomas doesn't seem shaken as much as bored. He's so self absorbed even this guy's doesn't make him re think what he's doing.It's clear he has no calling. He's just a guy doing a job. He could be a plumber. One can't help but wonder if this wasn't Bergman's feeling about his father's ministry.

The arch of conflict come after this scene where Thomas and Marta have a showdown int he school where Marta teaches and lives in the back. Thomas basically lets her have it. He doesn't like her. he tells her so. He is humiliated her, she's clinging and so forth. She has a habit of calling "poor little Thomas" and hanging to his back. But it's clear if we read between the lines that her main sin is she is not his dead wife. He was really in love with his wife, he says, he will never get over her. He speaks of her "mockery of my dead wife." Marta looks helpless and breaks off her sobbing to say "I didn't know her." To me that means he does see a similarity between the two, but resents it. Marta does have some qualities that his wife had, but she's not the right woman.

Before the evening service Marta sits in the pew and talks to one of the seven, now six members of the church, a little hunchback guy who plays the organ. The hunchback, payed by Johan Allan Edwall, tells her that Thomas and his wife had the same problems that she and Thomas have. Thomas has exaggerated his love for her becasue she's gone and though guilt built her into a saint while she was actually clinging and smothering. He also observes that Thomas's talk of searching, is there a God and so forth is just a way of keeping at bay the realizations about his own character flaws. His search for certainty is a false search because he's using God as a scape goat and search for certainty of himself not God. The real Swedish title of the film is a word meaning "the communicants." That has a double meaning because it applies to the parishioners of the church doing communion but also to the communication between the characters: in both cases it's an ironic title because their doing of communion is hollow and without feeling and their communication is non existent. The only real communicating done in the film is he little hunchback's analysis of Thomas and his revelation to Marta that Thomas and his wife also had the same kind of relationship. The Hunchback is also the only real religious character in the movie. He's the only one (other than perhaps the old woman who is only in it for one fleeting close up at the beginning) for whom faith is really a way of life and really moving.

The film ends with the beginning of the evening service. There are only three people there for the service, the hunchback, the minister and the former girlfriend. But Thomas goes on anyway. He begins "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God almighty..." as though those meaning anything to him. Another formalistic service by wrote, never mind that the audience is only one person (the other guy plays the music). As long as one person is there the service must go on. We can take this in two ways, either "the show must go on" a dig at Christianity becasue they are so pathetic that even with just three people they still can't depart from the script. Or we can see it as hope because even if only one person receives it the word of God is not lost.

The devastating critique of Christianity and its' position in Swedish culture in this film are obvious. What can be seen if one looks closer are the points of Bergman's sensitivity to religious belief. The only really "together" character was the only religious character who sums it all up in a knowing way and does only actual communicating in the film. The hopeful aspect of the end, even though a bleak winter kind of hope, that even if only one person hears God is still there, the word is not spoken in vein. Of course Bergman didn't believe God was there, but what he actually did believe is unclear, what is clear is that he actually did have a sense of admiration and sympathy for the true believer and the true seeker.

This film reminds me of the life of great theologian Carl Barth. Barth came out of seminary typical nineteenth century liberal. The triumphalism of post millennial was shattered by WWI and he had nothing to say to an audience. He was put in charge of a parish where only three old women came tot he service. But he didn't go by wrote, he formed an intimate little service and discussed what to do about it. He learned from these women what they needed to hear why they believed, why the modern church had nothing to day to people. From there he launched his revolution in neo-Orthodoxy whic brought people back to the churches.

Winter light is a great film, even though I wont put it on a level with Bergman's greatest, ironic since he wanted it to be part of the great Trilogy, like all great films it leads one to think about great ideas.

That was how I ended this review the first time. I think Bergman actually makes a couple of observations that are really insightful about spiritual life. One is that the people getting something out to the chruch service are the only one's willing to really put something into it, the one's transcend the formal obligatory ritual and actually try to see what it's all about. The other insight is that those spiritual one, the organist is allowing the faith to speak to him rather than imposing his own problems over it as a means of using God as something to blame.


I thought I would share the comments made on this one the first time I posted it. apparently I'm the only one who actually reviewed this film. I may be the only person who likes it:

cl said...

You said, "So even though he's an atheist he still acknowledges that Belief has its reasons and those reasons appeal to the heart, that doesn't make them stupid."

Bravo for him, and you for sharing.

11:49 PM

Anonymous said...

Your commentary is very well written, actually the only good one we have managed to find of Winter Light and it is obvious you really get into the film and its meaning. It is very refreshing to read thoughtful critiques instead of mere sypnosis of the plot or anti-religious raging vagaries.
You would like to give you an excuse to watch the film again to clear out a couple of minor confused memories of the last scenes. There are actually four characters in the chapel in Frostmass (frost instead of Crist +mass= not a mass of\for\from Christ, but of frost, that is if frost is frost in Swedish.... The hunchback is the sexton, not the organ player. The hunchback seems to be a religious person, and the only one who is actually reading the Bible (though he started for all the wrong reasons, and used it as a sedative to go to sleep. He has got interested by the passages about the passion, and comments on the emphasis on the physical suffering of Christ (which is actually not so much so in the biblical accounts). He points that Christ's spiritual suffering must have been much greater: loneliness, indifference to him from friends, being deserted,feeling abandoned by God the Father himself). He implies that Christ Himself must have doubted (mmmm, partial interpretation?,we are forgetting about Psalm 22 and fulfilment of prophecies, the role of Christ as substitute, and the horror of suffering for human sins...) Anyway, that is seen to strike home with the minister, who then goes into the chapel and does his performance again, with Martha(the diligent, obsequious servant), the deformed sexton (neurotically exacting in his ritualism, but having gained an ever so small speck of insight), and the cynical bufonesc organ player.
I agree on the multiple possible readings: the show goes on, it is a show alright. But then it is the unbelieving that makes it a show, a vain ritual, not faith. The irony is that the unbelivers cling to the ritual unable to free thamselves. The chapel is empty of believers, except maybe, the sexton, but then why shoul true believers attend this mockery of spiritual communion? Martha's prayer before the service begins is, well considered, the truest prayer: an honest humble recognition of failure, helplessness, self-abhorence. The closest thing in the film to the possessed boy's father who said to Jesus "I belive, Lord, help my unbelieve" (Mark, 9:24), though not quite there. It may also hint that to these wretched people, even this pitiful scrap of the Gospel is better than no Gospel at all.
I was an atheist until 32, brought up by an atheist Father who has come close to taking orders and a Roman Catholic mother whom I never saw read the Bible, do other than recited prayers once a year to bless Christmas dinner and who did not, at that time,any meaningful spiritual relationship with God either in theory or in practice.
Like Martha in the film, there came a point when the revelation to my conscience of human crookedness, more so of my own, brought me down to my knees. I too, like Thomas, a doubting Thomas, was angry against a God I swore I didn't believe in.
Like the deformed sexton, I too am pathetic in my every effort to do good. Like the cynical organ player, I too feel the compulsion to give myself over to sin and the apparent sense of liberation of not following Christ. But having been there, I know what to expect of myself and the world, and having tasted just a little bit of the Jesus who said "Love your enemy", "come to me, you the overwhelmed and fed-up", "Father forgive them", "Love one another as I loved you",and "Those that listen to me are my mother and brothers and sisters", I'd rather stay out of the palace and the city and in the tents with God.
Keep up the excellent writing and pithy comments.
With respect and affection in Jesus,
Cristina Newton

Their Evidence, and Ours

....

 I don't think atheists care about evidence, even though they call for it all the time. Evidence just means that one has something to reason from. What atheists demand is absolute proof, and at a level that can't be given for anything. I would bet that if for some reason atheists didn't like science, no amount of scientific "proof" wood suffice to prove to them that science works; because they would demand absolute proof, which can't be gotten. The reason I don't think they care about evidence is because I've been discussing this list of about 200 empirical studies form scientific journals, studies on the nature and effects of having religious experiences. I've construed several God arguments based upon these studies. In five years haven't managed to look up a single one of them. They have said the most ridiculous things about them, such as the idea "that study is on a bibliography where a source by Deepak Chopra is also listed. So it must be a bad study! As though studies it gets listed with effect it's methodology expost facto. They have said, "these are surveys, people could be lying, therefore, they are lying." To claiming to have read one of them when in fact it was only an article by one of the authors of a study. "Gee I read that whole study and it didn't say anything about methodology." It didn't even say it's a study, how absent minded. It's pretty clear they can't really care about evidence. They also deny that logic is evidence; evidence is anything that warrants a conclusion. Given this reality the constant demand for evidence for God and the accusation that there isn't any, the comparison with the atheist fortress of facts, leads me to make the following observations:



(1) Theists have a vast array of knowledge and argumentation built up over 2000 years, which basically amounts to a ton evidence for the existence of God. It's not absolute proof, because true, sure enough, actual absolute proof is just damn hard to come by on anything--even most scientific things; which is why they invented inductive reasoning. Science accepts correlation's as signs of causal relationships, it doesn't ever actually observe causality at work. But that kind of indicative relationship is not good for atheists when a God argument is involved. Then it must be absolute demonstration and direct observation.

(2) This double standard always works in favor of the atheist and never in favor of the theist. I suspect that's because Theists are trying to persuade atheists that a certain state of affairs is the case, and at the same time we are apt to be less critical of our own reasons for believing that. Atheists make a habit of denial and pride themselves on it.

Why is it a double standard? Because when it works to establish a unified system of naturalistic observation the atheist is only too happy to appeal to "we never see" "we always see" and "there is a strong correlation." We never see a man raised from the dead. We never see a severed limb restored. The correlation's between naturalistic cause and effect are rock solid and always work, so science gives us truth, and religion doesn't. But when those same kinds of correlation's are used to support a God argument, they are just no darn good. to wit: we never see anything pop out of absolute noting, we never even see absolute nothing, even QM particles seem to emerge from prior conditions such as Vacuum flux, so they are not really proof of something form nothing. But O tisg tosh, that doesn't prove anything and certainly QM proves that the universe could just pop up out of nothing!

(3) "laws of physics" are not real laws, they are only descriptions, aggregates of our observations. So they can't be used to argue for God in any way. But, when it comes to miraculous claims, the observations of such must always be discounted because they violate our standard norm for observation, and we must always assume they are wrong no matter how well documented or how inexplicable. We must always assume that only naturalistic events can happen, even though the whole concept of a naturalism can only be nothing more than an aggregate of our observations about the world; and surely they are anything but exhaustive. Thus one wood think that since our observations are not enough to establish immutable laws of the universe, they would not be enough to establish a metaphysics which says that only material realms exist and only materially caused events can happen! But guess again...!

(4) The only way atheists can really dismiss the evidence for God belief is to declare that it's not really evidence. Thus they argue that evidence is only scientific fact and nothing else. They ignore the fact that they must extrapolate from "fact" to the conclusions they draw from facts. The same relationship obtains between the assumption of phenomena such as neutrinos, which have never been seen directly but only ascertained by fitting the behavior of other particles with the abductive reasoning of the effects of neutrinos upon those particles. In other words, this is accounted for best by theorizing the existence of neutrinos. Since the 90s we have had more direct evidence, but still not actual observation of them directly and it's based upon the assumption ("this effect is best explained by neutrinos being there"). The very same process is involved in certain kinds of God arguments but atheists dogmatically refuse to accept those as evidence becuase they are not "official scientific data."

(5) They pooh pooh philosophy because it doesn't' produce objective concrete results. But they can't produce any scientific evidence to answer the most basic philosophical questions, and the more adept atheists will admit that it isn't the job of science to answer those questions anyway. Scientific evidence cannot give us answers on the most basic philosophical questions, rather than seeing this as a failing in science (or better yet, evidence of differing magisteria) they rather just chalck it up to the failing of the question! The question is no good because our methods dot' answer it!

(6) What it appears to me is the case is this; some methods are better tailed for philosophy. Those methods are more likely to yield a God argument and even a rational warrant for belief, because God is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. God is a matter of faint, after all, and in matters of faith a rational warrant is the best one should even hope for. But that's not good enough for atheists, they disparage the whole idea of a philosophical question (at least the scientistic ones do--that's not all of them, but some) yet they want an open ended universe with no hard and fast truth and no hard and fast morality!

(7)So it seems that if one accepts certain methods one can prove God within the nature of that language game. now of course one can reject those language games and choose others that are not quite as cozy with the divine and that's OK too. Neither approach is indicative of one's intelligence or one's morality. But, it does mean that since it may be just as rational given the choice of axioms and methodologies, then what that taps out to is belief in God is rationally warranted--it may not be only rational conclusion but it is one rational conclusion Now I know some of the more intelligent atheists will say "hey I'm fine with that." But then when push comes to shove they will be back again insisting that the lack of absolute proof leaves the method that yields God arguments in doubt, rather than the other way around. I don't see why either should be privileged. Why can't we just say that one method is better suited for one kind of question, the other for the other?

and if one of them says 'why should I ask those questions?' I say 'why shouldn't we leave the choice of questions to the questioner?

Does a New Study Find Religous Beleif Leads to Emotional Problems?

....I fully expect to find atheists saying this of the study discussed in The Huffington Post 04/24/2013, "Religion and Mental Health, New Study Links in 'Punative God' to emotional problems," to say this. The story is done by By Macrina Cooper-White.
....They Study was Published in the Journal of Religion and Health.[1] It shows that people who believe in an angry vengeful God are likely to suffer form mental health issues such as anxiety, paranoia and obsessive thinking. Sample included 1,426 Americans and the methodology consisted of  poll. They divided the people into three groups; angry God people, loving God people, indifferent God people (deist). Of course they found that the most problems were in the angry God group. Naturally there is no comparison to no God people, the study in Huff was complete with the obligatory admission "it's only a coloration, no attempt was made to look at cause.
....It actually  sounds pretty hallow. No comparison to those who don't believe in God, while other studies find people who experience God in a meaningful way* have much less depression and mental illness than those who don't, including atheists. Other studies find that Atheists suffer greater sense of low self esteem.[2] [3]The finding people who believe in a vengeful God are paranoid and obsessed sounds more like a value judgement on the part of the researchers. The researchers say not only that it's just a  correlation but also they can't really tell which way the causality flows: “We don't know whether it was the poorer mental health (anxiety, paranoia) that caused subjects to perceive God as punitive, or whether it was the view of God as punitive that caused the poor mental health.” [4]

The study Abstract Springer:

This study examines the association between beliefs about God and psychiatric symptoms in the context of Evolutionary Threat Assessment System Theory, using data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults (N = 1,426). Three beliefs about God were tested separately in ordinary least squares regression models to predict five classes of psychiatric symptoms: general anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion. Belief in a punitive God was positively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, while belief in a benevolent God was negatively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, controlling for demographic characteristics, religiousness, and strength of belief in God. Belief in a deistic God and one’s overall belief in God were not significantly related to any psychiatric symptoms.[5]

....This is hardly groundbreaking research. It's a good contribution to a huge body of research. The findings have already been done. Many times in other studies. They have been linked to atheists as well. Francis established the positive correlation between belief in God and good self esteem.[6] There's a much larger body of work that discusses the issues of self esteem and God image. Ralph Peidmont wrote about that body of work in his book Research into the Social Scientific Study of Religion volume 16.[7] He also discusses Francis's work. In that study (Francis) Peidmont quotes a positive correlation is established between good self esteem and a positive God image, that is a loving accepting God. Peidmont also quotes Bentson and Spilka persons with high levels of self esteem may fin it hard to get across to those with low self esteem that God is loving.

Persons with high levels of self esteem may find it difficult to share the same religious belief. A theology predicated upon a loving accepting God is cognitively compatible with high self esteem, but it could be a source of discomfort for a believer low in self esteem. It does not make good cognitive sense to be loved when one is unlovable. Consequently the latter person can march to a different theology, one that is more consistent with his self image. (Benson and Spilka 209-210).[8]

I've often wondered why atheists seem so much more hostile to those carrying a message a positive loving God than they do toward the old fire and brimstone fundies. Why don't they say "O good this is what I've been wanting?" Some actually sort of intimate this but this really explains the reaction of most of them. Ralph Hood invented the M Scale is one of the major sources I draw upon in my arguments about religious experience. Spilka was his co-Author in their book on the study of religious experience and empirical methods.[9]
....Studies show that increased religious commitment, not just experience of God's presence, but chruch attendance as a measure of commitment result in greater health beneifits including mental health.



Quote:

"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical staus in whihc research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alchohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."[10]

Peidmont shows that the literature on self esteem and God image is very complex and voluminous. There are trails that lead nowhere in that body of work. There are correlations between belief in God and low self esteem. When they correct for negative God image vs. positive they find the correlation is strong. This research is nothing new. Nor is it a negation of the positions I've argue for. I never said that any sort of belief in God is always positive. We should understand the nature of God as loving. The sever austere angry God that wants to fry everyone is going to produce negative results because it's not the truth about  God. Now we need to be rational beings and balance our egos. The ego is supposed to balance between the superego and id. So we can't be into a God who is so loving and kind that he has nothing to say and always gives us what we want and never get's upset no matter what we do. That's a mommy God, our servant. We don't want a God who is always demanding the rent. We the true and living God, God of Jesus whose love is never separated from us but who wants us to be good ground to grow fruit of the spirit in.
...I think atheists fear that emotions are a link to mental illness becuase they don't understand emotions. They think bottling them up and pretending they don't exist and pretending all their decisions are rational and logical is the key to mental health. Emotions are not mental illness. Venting them is probably better for mental health then keeping them bottled up. Emotions are not proof either. Emotions are the side effect. My religious experience arguments are not based upon feeling tingly. The tingly feeling is a side effect of sensing God's presence. The proof is the long term effects on things like mental health. How are we supposed to know that we have experienced God's presence if we don't mark it in some way? If it doesn't' stand out form other daily waking hours how are we supposed to take note of it's effects? So the side effect of emotion is important an healthy it helps us understand something important has been discovered and experienced. A huge body of studies shows us that religious expedience is not linked to mental illness.

1).Effects indicate that Mystical expereince cannot be reduced to Mental Illness.

Mental illness is usually either treatable or progressive (gets worse), but it is not positive over a long term. Mentally ill people do not gian long lasting postive effects from thier illness that gives them a heightend sense of well being and lasts for long term. Mental illness does not improve the sense of self-actualization or make one a "whole" person. Religious experience does this and mystical expereince or "peak experience" so so all the more. Evidence to document this point is found above under argument III, but more studies can also be sited.[see above, Larson, The Faith Factor, Study search]

2) No relationship Mysticism and Mental Illness.

[Noble, Kathleen D. (1987). ``Psychological Health and the Experience of Transcendence.'' The Counseling Psychologist, 15 (4), 601-614.]

Transpersonal Childhood Experiences of Higher States of Consciousness: Literature Review and Theoretical Integration (unpublished paper 1992) http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/cehsc/ipure.htm
Jayne Gackenback

"Scientific interest in the mystical experience was broadened with the research on psychoactive drugs. The popular belief was that such drugs mimicked either mystical states and/or schizophrenic ones (reviewed in Lukoff, Zanger & Lu, 1990). Although there is likely some physiological similarity as well as phenomenological recent work has shown clear differences. For instance, Oxman, Rosenberg, Schnurr, Tucker and Gala (1988) analyzed 66 autobiographical accounts of schizophrenia, hallucinogenic drug experiences, and mystical ecstasy as well as 28 control accounts of important personal experiences. They concluded that the: "subjective experiences of schizophrenia, hallucinogenic drug-induced states, and mystical ecstasy are more different from one another than alike" (p. 401).

(Ibid) "Relatedly, Caird (1987) found no relationship between reported mystical experience and neuroticism, psychoticism and lying while Spanos and Moretti (1988) found no relationship between a measure of mystical experience and psychopathology."

a. Trend toward positive view among psychologists.

Spiriutal Emergency

MYSTICAL OR UNITIVE EXPERIENCE

"Offsetting the clinical literature that views mystical experiences as pathological, many theorists (Bucke, 1961; Hood, 1974, 1976; James, 1961; Jung, 1973; Laski, 1968; Maslow, 1962, 1971; Stace, 1960; Underhill, 1955) have viewed mystical experiences as a sign of health and a powerful agent of transformation."

b. Most clinicians and clinical studies see postive.
(Ibid)

"Results of a recent survey (Allman, et al,. 1992) suggest that most clinicians do not view mystical experiences as pathological. Also, studies by several researchers have found that people reporting mystical experiences scored lower on psychopathology scales and higher on measures of psychological well-being than controls (Caird, 1987; Hood, 1976, 1977, 1979; Spanos and Moretti, 1988)".

c. Incidence rate suggests no pathology.

"Numerous studies assessing the incidence of mystical experience (Back and Bourque, 1970; Greeley, 1974, 1987; Hay and Morisy, 1978; Hood, 1974, 1975, 1977; Thomas and Cooper, 1980) all support the conclusion that 30-40% of the population do have such experiences, suggesting that they are normal rather than pathological phenomena. In addition, a recent survey (Allman et al., 1992) has demonstrated that the number of patients who bring mystical experiences into treatment is not insignificant. Psychologists in full-time practice were asked to estimate the percentage of their clients over the past 12 months who had reported a mystical experience. The 285 respondents indicated that of the 20,670 clients seen during the past year, the incidence of mystical experience was 4.5%. This clearly challenges the GAP report on Mysticism, which claims that "mystical experiences are rarely observed in psychotherapeutic practice" (Group for Advancement of Psychiatry, 1976, p. 799).

2) Not the restult of deprivation or fantasy; mystics tend to be successful people.

Council on Spiritual Practices

State of Unitive Consciousness http://www.csp.org/experience/docs/unitive_consciousness.html
"Furthermore, Greeley found no evidence to support the orthodox belief that frequent mystic experiences or psychic experiences stem from deprivation or psychopathology. His ''mystics'' were generally better educated, more successful economically, and less racist, and they were rated substantially happier on measures of psychological well-being. "

3) Mystisicm offers therapeutic insights.

"...Within the Western model we recognize and define psychosis as a suboptimal state of consciousness that views reality in a distorted way and does not recognize that distortion. It is therefore important to note that from the mystical perspective our usual state fits all the criteria of psychosis, being suboptimal, having a distorted view of reality, yet not recognizing that distortion. Indeed from the ultimate mystical perspective, psychosis can be defined as being trapped in, or attached to, any one state of consciousness, each of which by itself is necessarily limited and only relatively real.'' [-- page 665 ) [Roger Walsh (1980). The consciousness disciplines and the behavioral sciences: Questions of comparison and assessment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137(6), 663-673.

See Also: Lukoff, David & Francis G. Lu (1988). ``Transpersonal psychology research review: Topic: Mystical experiences.'' Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20 (2), 161-184. Charles T. Tart, Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm, p. 19.

[1] Nava Silton, Kevin J. Flannelly, Kathleen Galak, Christepher G. Ellison. "Beliefs About God and Mental Health Among American Adults." Journal of Religion and Health.
[2] Study By Francis discussed in this Blog "Rejection of Christianity and Self Esteem, a Review of a Study by Leslie Francis," Atheistwatch, monday 25,2010.
[3] Leslie Francis, God images and Self Esteem,
Online copy:
 http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pCkGD_RcbEEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=Correlation+between+low+self+esteem+and+rejection+of+Christianity&ots=N_dQ71PYn9&sig=e6MOHplN6PGvqMfSw2ftIrqc-Zo#v=onepage&q&f=true

[4] The researcher quoted in Macrina Cooper-White "Religion and Mental Health,  'Punative God' to emotional problems," the Huffington Post, 4/24/2013.
[5] Spinger Link: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10943-013-9712-3
[6] Francis Ibid.
[7] Ralph Peidmont wrote about that body of work in his book Research into the Social Scientific Study of Religion volume 16, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005,105.
Ralph L. Piedmont is Psychologist at the Department of Pastoral Counseling, Loyola College in Maryland, Columbia, USA. One of his publications is The Revised NEO Personality Inventory: Clinical and Research Applications (Plenum Press, 1998).
[8] Peidmont quoting Benston and Spilka
[9] Bernard Spilka and Ralph Hood, Jr. et al. Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach, fourth Edition. New York: Gilford Press, 2009.
[10] J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., National Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090. The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health.