Is Belief in God Maqgical Thinking?

On Huff post there is an article by Matthew Hutson, author of The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking. The article is called "All Paths Lead to Magical Thinking." (Posted: 09/19/2013 8:32 pm).

In recent years, psychologists have come to understand religion and paranormal belief as resulting, in most people, from simple errors in reasoning. You believe in God or astrology or a purpose in life because you apply ideas about people -- that they have thoughts and intentions -- to the natural world. Some display this tendency more than others, but it's there in everyone, even atheistic heathens like me. What has not been clarified is exactly how the various cognitive biases interact to produce specific ideas about the supernatural -- until now.

He presents a tour de force in the form of a bunch of studies that supposedly prove that religious belief is magical thinking. "In the November 2013 issue of Cognition, Aiyana Willard and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia report on the relative influence of three cognitive tendencies on three types of supernatural belief, as well as the role of cultural influence." This study supposedly shows that "cognitive biases explain religious belief."

 several studies show that people who think more intuitively are also more susceptible to magical thinking. One intuition that's been proposed as a foundation for religious thought is Cartesian mind-body dualism, the idea that a mind can exist independently of a body. (See chapter 5 of my book The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking, "The Soul Lives On.") This proposition allows for souls, ghosts, spirits, and gods, all made of disembodied mind-stuff. Explanations for dualism include belief in free will and the mutual inhibition of brain areas responsible for pondering feelings and physics.

Of cousre that doesn't say that any of these studies show that religious belief is magical thinking. Instead they present a possibility based upon the notion that more intuitive people are susceptible   to magical thinking. So that says "if you are not careful you  might do some magical thinking." Nor is a link provided between being more intuitive and religious belief. Although I would not doubt that believers are more intuitive, but the lack of prevision of that link is telling.

There just brings up a bait and switch that the Aiyana and Norenzayan study is pulling off. They discuss their methodology:

We used a path model to assess the extent to which several interacting cognitive tendencies, namely mentalizing, mind body dualism, teleological thinking, and anthropomorphism, as well as cultural exposure to religion, predict belief in God, paranormal beliefs and belief in life’s purpose. Our model, based on two independent samples (N = 492 and N = 920) found that the previously known relationship between mentalizing and belief is mediated by individual differences in dualism, and to a lesser extent by teleological thinking. Anthropomorphism was unrelated to religious belief, but was related to paranormal belief. Cultural exposure to religion (mostly Christianity) was negatively related to anthropomorphism, and was unrelated to any of the other cognitive tendencies. These patterns were robust for both men and women, and across at least two ethnic identifications. The data were most consistent with a path model suggesting that mentalizing comes first, which leads to dualism and teleology, which in turn lead to religious, paranormal, and life’s-purpose beliefs. Alternative theoretical models were tested but did not find empirical support.

Notice that anthropomorphism is not linked to religoius beilef but they are going to use it anyway because it's involved in belief. In fact all of these things are descriptions of various overlapping historical artifacts form religious thought because it goes back so far in human history. Most of them have not been disproved, none of them are magical thinking. What's the link bewteen teleology and magical thinking? Teleology means an end goal,  so religious thinking is teleological if and only if it assumes there's a creator who has a plan that's being fulfilled. Why is that in itself magical thinking? It's just logical if there is a creator. Has teleological thinking been proved to always be wrong? No, of course not and it's logical if there is a creator. So actually they are just begging the question. They are assuming there can't be a creator so therefore anything connected with belief must also be connected with magical thinking. This probably goes back to the biases of anti-clerical prejudice, that religion is superstition. So they start with the assumption religious beilef must be magical thinking because it's superstition, thus they just look for typical aspects of religious thought (many of which are connected to ancinet religious texts) and assume it's all magical thinking. No psychological link is provided that proves that teleological thinking is magical thinking.

When he says "several studies" he links back to his own website for the book 7 Laws of Magical Thinking (he uses the number 7 rather than writing "seven" seems infantile). So his article is just a rehash of his website. What are these studies what do they really show? Those are the ones that supposedly show that intuitive thinkers are apt to be suckers for magical thinking if they are not careful, but does it access the percentage of the time that they are not careful? Can't we still check the results by our own logic and empirical data?

One such satment in disclosing these "several studies:"

Psychologists who study the origins of religion say belief in God relies on several intuitions, including a teleological bias (the assumption that certain objects or event were designed intentionally) and Cartesian dualism (the belief that mind can exist independently of the body). So to become an atheist one must second-guess these automatic ways of thinking. And recently a number of studies have supported the idea that belief in God is influenced by cognitive style–how much of a second-guesser you are.

Why is teleology "intuitive" any more than it is logical? If God is what you believe in then is it not logical to assume God has a purpose in crating? it's not prove that necessarily intuitive. Not that they link intuitive thinking with magical thinking. His comment about Cartsteian thinking is ironic since major aspects of atheist thinking is also based upon Cartesian thinking. E.O. Wilson's world view is largley Cartesian and he produced evolutionary psychology which is important to atheist thinking.

One such  study: paper published last year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General by Amitai Shenhav studuents took cognitive reflection test and answered questions. This is so telling he says "The number of intuitive (incorrect) responses they gave on the CRT was correlated with their belief in God and immortal souls," so in other words intuitive means "wrong." How could one possibly study the validity of intuitive thinking when one defines it as "wrong form the outset? Moreover, they are judging it wrong because it's connected to God, is that not also what makes it "intuitive?" They are just running around in circles demanding that what they believe has to be true and using their baises as the basis for proof. When we look at the actual tests on the study (see link above) we find that the real way they administer it (reported badly by Hustson) was to compare math answers arrived at intuitively with the persons individual belief in God. They compared believers answers to non believers answers. We are infer that the believers missed more. Actually that would mean that intuitive thinking does not correlate to belief in God and that the better intuitive thinking is done by non believers. Why? Because they got more math problems right by intuitive means. That would destroy their link from intuitive thinking to magical thinking. Wouldn't it also matter what one used intuitive sense for? Perhaps intuitive sense is better at God finding than at mathematics. What if that's what it was made for? Massimp Pigliucci sights research and argues that intuition is domaion specific. Some things lend themselves to it and some don't. [1]  

Moreover, both studies demonstrated that intuitive CRT responses predicted the degree to which individuals reported having strengthened their belief in God since childhood, but not their familial religiosity during childhood, suggesting a causal relationship between cognitive style and change in belief over time. Study 3 revealed such a causal relationship over the short term: Experimentally inducing a mindset that favors intuition over reflection increases self-reported belief in God. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)[2]

So in other words because they have some evidence that initiative thinking is part of the stronger religious belief that means that religious belief is produced by intuitive thinking which is mostly wrong and is magical thinking. There are a number of things wrong with that methodology. That's not the same as proving that religion itself is derived from intuitive thinking. That is not even investigating the logic that goes into it. Nor does it investigate the right answers in one's personal life that lead to believe, they don't even offer a theological measuring devices for such answers. Putting up a bunch of math problems is not valid. People don't arrive at belief by just saying "I sense that God is really there." There is a sense of God's presence that people  have and they are totally confusing that sense with 'intuitive' thinking,' they don't have it they don't know how it feels or works so they assume it's "intuitive." Moreover, the term "intuitive" can refer to different things. There's no link that the kind of intuitive thinking (guessing) about the math is the same kind done by religious thinkers.


 There's an article in N.Y. Times that illustrates scientific work depending upon and being  conformed by intuitive thinking. The article is a chapter form a book by Philip Lieberman, Eve Spoke, Human Language and Human Evolution.[3]  The book is based upon scholarly work.

Over the past thirty years my colleagues and I have studied monkeys, chimpanzees, infants, children, normal adults, dyslexic adults, elderly people, and patients suffering from Parkinson's disease and other types of brain damage. We have also examined the skulls of our fossil ancestors, comparing them with those of newborn infants and apes. The focus of these studies has been the puzzle surrounding human evolution. Why are we so different from other animals, although we are at the same time so similar?...In some deep, unconscious way we "know" that dogs, cats, chimpanzees, and other intelligent animals would be human if they could only talk. Intuitively we know that talking = thinking = being human. The studies discussed below show that this intuition is correct.

 This may upset young earth creationists, which I don't  mind doing, but it doesn't disrupt my Christian faith because I don't see evolution as a disruption. Nor does it disprove the existence of the soul because that depends upon answering the question "why is it we did evolve to talk and other animals did not? There are two points that refute Hutson's ideas: (1) not only does religious belief depend upon intuitive thinking of a kind (at certain points) but so does scinece as well. (2) this scientist thinks that the intuitive thinking is proved correct by the scinece. So intuitive thinking is not always wrong. Some studies backing this up have shown that the correct results of intuitive thinking, while not better than other forms of knowing, are not worse.[4]

 U.S. Navy reserach has yielded so much scientific data backing the notion that there is an intuitive sense that aids troops in battle that they started a program to teach troops how to be more intuitive.

 Research in human pattern recognition and decision-making suggest that there is a "sixth sense" through which humans can detect and act on unique patterns without consciously and intentionally analyzing them. Evidence is accumulating that this capability, known as intuition or intuitive decision making, enables the rapid detection of patterns in ambiguous, uncertain and time restricted information contexts, that it informs the decision making process and, most importantly, that it may not require domain expertise to be effective. These properties make intuition a strong candidate for further exploration as the basis for developing a new set of decision support training technologies.[5]

 Ivy Estabrook, program manager at the office of Naval Resarch, says, "There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence, combined with solid research efforts, that suggests intuition is a critical aspect of how we humans interact with our environment and how, ultimately, we make many of our decisions."[6]

 Published in Popular source Sarah Moore form Alberta School of Business and colleagues from Duke and Cornell have produced research that proves that the first choice one makes is often the right choice. [7] That certainly implies an intuitive choice. While Trisha Greenhalgh discusses research that shows that intution is a valuable aid in medical diagnosis and that it improves with critical thinking about the process.

Intuition is not unscientific. It is a highly creative process, fundamental to hypothesis generation in science. The experienced practitioner should generate and follow clinical hunches as well as (not instead of applying the deductive principles of evidence-based medicine. The educational research literature suggests that we can improve our intuitive powers through systematic critical reflection about intuitive judgements--for example, through creative writing and dialogue with professional colleagues. It is time to revive and celebrate clinical storytelling as a method for professional education and development.[8]

 Not only is it not unscientific, not only can it assist in medical care, but it there's a large body of literature that shows it can be improved. How can it be improved (meaning the answers are right) if it's no good and it never works and it's just magical thinking?


Summary

(1) None of the studies demonstrate a real link between intuitive thinking and religious belief. They make an unsupported assertion that teleology and other quasi religious ideas are intuitive thinking. The closest thing to a link is one study that shows that believe was strengthened apart form family tie, but that does rule out logic, empirical data, discussions with friends and individual thought.

(2) The studies that claim to link religious belief with magical thinking are doing a bait and switch whereby the substitute intuitive thinking. They don't bother to consider the venue or the domain but merely assume that if intuitive thinking is wrong for math then it must be wrong for all things. They assume intuitive = magical, probably because they think belief in God is magic or supernatural is magic. Then they assert that since intuitive thinking doesn't work in one domain it work in any domain. Since that tag that as religious thinking then religious thinking is wrong. They actually prove nothing at accept that they are biased against religion.

(3) A vast body of scientific research disproves the idea that intuition is always wrong and doesn't work. It's not only backed by science it's part of science. I give examples of scientific work that is based upon intuitive thinking. It's not more special and unique to religious thought than is logic. Nor is it always wrong. The scientific reserach shows it has it's place where it's right, that including not only some scientific work but also medicine.


sources


[1]Massimo Pigliucci, Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life , New York: Basic books, 2012.

Massimo Pigliucci (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmassimo piʎˈʎuttʃi]; born January 16, 1964) is the chair of the Department of Philosophy at CUNY-Lehman College.^[1] He is also the editor in chief for the journal Philosophy & Theory in Biology.^[2] He is an outspoken critic of creationism and advocate of science education.

[2] Shenhav, Amitai; Rand, David G.; Greene, Joshua D. "Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God." abstract on line: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 141(3), (Aug 2012), 423-428 abstract on Apa Psychnet http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/141/3/423/  accessed 10/2/13.
[3] Philip Lieberman, "The Mice Talked at Midnight," except from Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution, New York: W.W. Norton, published in New York Times, on line http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lieberman-eve.html  accessed 10/2/13
[4]AJ Giannini, ME Barringer, MC Giannini, RH Loiselle. Lack of relationship between handedness and intuitive and intellectual (rationalistic) modes of information processing. Journal of General Psychology. 111:31-37 1984.
[5] Office of naval research Basic Research Challenge: Enhancing intuitive deicsion making.

Solicitation Number: 12-SN-0007

Agency: Department of the Navy
Office: Office of Naval Research
Location: ONR

  https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=be0a1ab47e05fe0f9c2bd0ffd5e40b1a&_cview=1
 accessed 10/2/13.
[6] Ivy Estabrook, uoted in Channing Joseph, "U.S. Program to Study How Troops Use Intuition," New York Times, Wednesday (Oct 2, 2013) story filed March 27, 2012, 5:09 pm on line
 http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/navy-program-to-study-how-troops-use-intuition/?_r=0
 accessed 10/2/13.
[7]Leon Watson ."why we are right to trust out gut intincts:Scientists discover First Decision is the Right One." Mail online updated 30 (August 2011)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031848/Why-right-trust-gut-instincts-Scientists-discover-decision-IS-right-one.html accessed 10/2/13
[8]Trisha Greenhalgh, "Intution and Evidence--Uneasy Bedfellows?" BJGP:British Journal of General Practice. 52, (478) May (2002) 395-400. On line article http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1314297/  accessed 10/2/13

Christmas and the Crucified God

 

This is my annual Christmas article. I have a guest article for friday and so I'll be off until after New Years. So I wish everyone a Mary Christmas!
Please Comment!!!

Christmas, God talk, incarnation, Jurgen Moltmann, Matthew Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, The Crucified God,


The Christian part of Christmas, that's the nativity scene with no trees or elves. That's the part you go to chruch to talk about. Show some mangers and some wise men and play the drummer boy song (eeeeee can't stand that son, p-rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum...enough already!) and you've done your bit for Christmas. I actually love Christmas, I like the manger and the baby and all that. Yet that is not what it's about. The entrance of Christ into the world in a lowly birth, worshiped by wise-men and heralded by angles and a star, those are nice folk tale elements. That masks what it's all about in the guise of cute fluffy heart warming imagery. Christmas is about the birth of Christ, God come in the flesh, and that signals to us the death of Christ; its meaning, it's end, it's un-final end and new beginning. The birth heralds more of the positive side of Jesus time in the flesh, his career, his mission, the promise and the possibilities. After all the angels said "peace on earth, good will toward men." How does that connect to a kid born in a manger?

Even with the positive possibilities of peace the birth hearlds the death and since we are compelled to think of both they both remind us of the meaning of Christ's mission and the reason for his coming. I used to read a book every Christmas, the same book. It was one of my all time favorite books; The Crucified God, by Jurgen Moltmann. The subtitle is very important: The Cross of Christ as the foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. That book seemed to most adequately sum up what the incarnation is about.

Motlmann was from the 60's to the 90's and maybe even up to the present was the greatest living Protestant theologian. He was best known for this book and his Theology of Hope. both of which served to dramatize and legitimize the theology of liberation and the struggles of Latin America. Moltmann's book is actually an argument for placing Praxis on the front burner of theology and leaving the dray musty doctrinal stuff on the back burner. Praxis is the idea of reflection upon material need, how to apply the lessons of theology in a practical way to people's needs.
....... 

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

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

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

I realize that the view I hold to is a little known minority view. I know I'm bucking the mainstream. But I think it makes a lot more sense and  actually explains why there was an atonement. Before getting into it, however, I want to comment upon the atheist hidden premise. The explicit premise of the atheist argument is that atonement works by Jesus suffering a whole lot. If Jesus suffers enough then restitution is made. But wait, restitution for what? For our sins? Then why should Jesus suffer more than we do or more than our victims do? Why do atheists seem to think,  that Jesus must suffer more than anyone ever has for the atonement to work? It's because the hidden premise is that God is guilty and the atonement is the time God pays for his own mistakes. Jesus has to suffer more than anyone to make up for what God has done, in conceiving of us by creating us. The sickness of the modern mind can scarcely comprehend Christian theology now. I wonder if it isn't too late and we are just past the day when people in the West can really be saved?

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

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

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

........A. The inadquacy of Financial Transactions

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

.......B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity

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

.......C. Death in Solidarity with Victims.............. 

1) Support from Modern Theologians

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

..............2) Scrtiptural

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

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

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

.......D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.

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

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

.......E. Atonement is a Primitive Concept?

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

The Blogging Parson

Moltmann's theodicy is the great strength of this work, in that it directly engages the protest atheism of the mid twentieth century without negating the powerful emotional impact of its claims. We are returned to the cross as the heart of the Christian message repeatedly - it is no accident that Luther features so strongly and so positively in these pages. Further, the rigour of his penetrating search for the implications of the cross for God himself has led him rightly to the trinity, and stands as a rebuke to the western tradition for neglecting this understanding of God for so long. The atonement is necessarily a trinitarian event/process. The sense of God identifying with human beings in Christ is also very strong. Moltmann develops a theology of the atonement with a cosmic scope, and does not fall into the trap of individualising the work of the cross.

Moltmann's work turns out to develop a "Trinitarian history of God." This works through a dialectic through which God rejects the Son, then accepts the son, then raises the son to a hope and a future in which we can participate. This also raises a dialectical relation between God and man because the son becomes part of humanity then humanity becomes part of the son through adoption to sonship and participation in the future. Christ particpates in our life and We in his. That's quite a philosophical turn on for a German.

Blogging Parson again:

We might complain that Moltmann's doctrine of God suffers from an overdose of Hegelianism, by presenting the history of the world as God's history, the process by which he realizes himself. By rejecting impassiblity and divine aseity, does he allow a compromise of God's freedom? This having been said, is God still as impersonal as he ever was under the scholastics? Further, the God presented here seems almost dependent on, or at least intrinsically tied to, the world. His is a vulnerable God. Moltmann's trinitarian reflection leaves him open to the charge of tritheism - however, he more than responds to such a charge in The Trinity and the Kingdom of God; and he is recapturing a biblical emphasis, after all.

While the cosmic vision of Moltmann's theologia crucis is admirable, it says almost nothing about individual salvation - in fact, it almost non-soteriological. He describes God's judgement in the terms of the "giving up" of human beings to their godlessness, as in Rom 1 (p.242). The atonement is achieved not by any substitutionary work of Christ but by his identifying with human beings in their lostness, by solidarity with them. In the end, his panentheism leads him to a universalist model; and the preaching of the cross becomes a following of God's example in identifying with the lost and godforsaken.

This last criticism I think is valid on the surface. Mostlamann doesn't spend a lot of time focusing on individual piety I think the implications for the individual are obvious and it's up to the individual to step into a relationship with God. For me I find Chrsitmas can be a great way to do what but only if you overlook the commercial crap and read a book like the Crucified God..



Online copy of Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann

Belief in God rationally warranted: Argument from God Corolate

;


This is the argument I make in my book (see side bar) but this version I used on Doxa before I thought about the book. The research is bolstered with studies I used in the book. I thought it's time I began discussing some of my best God arguments.

Decision Making Paradigm:

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

We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the world.The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? The answer is in the argument below. Here let us set out some general parameters:

We can set up criteria based upon what we would expect from encounter with the divine:

A. Life Transforming and vital in a positive life=affirming sense

B. It would give us a sense of the transcendent and the divine.

C. No alternate or naturalistic causality could be proven

These criteria are based upon the writings of the great mystics and religious thinkers of history, especially in the Christian tradition, and distilled into /theory by W.T. Stace. The theory is verified and validated by several hundred studies using various methodologies all of them published in peer reviewed journals. The following argument is based upon the findings of these studies. All of this, the studies, the methods used, Stace's theory, these studies and their methodologies are discussed in depth in The Trace of God: a Rational Warrant for Belief by Joseph Hinman, (all proceeds go to non profit) available on Amazon



Read much about the book on the Trace of God blog..

Argument:

(1) The affects and effects of mystical experience are real in that they are measurably transformative in a positive sense.

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

(3)Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explanations and the affects are real we should assume that they are genuine experiences of something transcendent of our own minds.

(4)Since mystical experience is usually experience of something, the Holy, the sacred, or some sort of greater transcendent reality we should assume that the origin of the experience is rooted in transcendent reality.

(5)Since mystical experience is usually about the divine we can assume a divine origin.

This fulfills the criteria for the trace: therefore, e are warranted in asserting that mystical experience is the trace of God, and this gives us warrant for belief in God.

Analysis:

Real Affects of Mystical Experience Imply Co-determinate

A. Study and Nature of Mystical Experiences

Mystical experience is only one aspect of religious experience, but I will focus on it in this argument. Most other kinds of religious experience are difficult to study since they are more subjective and have less dramatic results. But mystical experience can actually be measured empirically in terms of its affects, and can be compared favorably to other forms of conscious states.

1) Primarily Religious

Transpersonal Childhood Experiences of Higher States of Consciousness: Literature Review and Theoretical Integrationm (unpublished paper 1992 by Jayne Gackenback

http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/cehsc/ipure.htm

Gackenback website is Spiritwatch
Quotes:

"The experience of pure consciousness is typically called "mystical". The essence of the mystical experience has been debated for years (Horne, 1982). It is often held that "mysticism is a manifestation of something which is at the root of all religions (p. 16; Happold, 1963)." The empirical assessment of the mystical experience in psychology has occurred to a limited extent."

2) Defining charactoristics.

[Gackenback]

"In a recent review of the mystical experience Lukoff and Lu (1988) acknowledged that the "definition of a mystical experience ranges greatly (p. 163)." Maslow (1969) offered 35 definitions of "transcendence", a term often associated with mystical experiences and used by Alexander et al. to refer to the process of accessing PC."

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

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

3)Studies use Empirical Instruments.

Many skeptics have argued that one cannot study mystical experince scientifically. But it has been done many times, in fact there are a lot of studies and even empirical scales for measurement.

(Ibid.)

Quote:

"Three empirical instruments have been developed to date. They are the Mysticism Scale by Hood (1975), a specific question by Greeley (1974) and the State of Consciousness Inventory by Alexander (1982; Alexander, Boyer, & Alexander, 1987). Hood's (1975) scale was developed from conceptual categories identified by Stace (1960). Two primary factors emerged from the factor analysis of the 32 core statements. First is a general mysticism factor, which is defined as an experience of unity, temporal and spatial changes, inner subjectivity and ineffability. A second factor seems to be a measure of peoples tendency to view intense experiences within a religious framework. A much simpler definition was developed by Greeley (1974), "Have you ever felt as though you were very close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?" This was used by him in several national opinion surveys. In a systematic study of Greeley's question Thomas and Cooper (1980) concluded that responses to that question elicited experiences whose nature varied considerably. Using Stace's (1960) work they developed five criteria, including awesome emotions; feeling of oneness with God, nature or the universe; and a sense of the ineffable. They found that only 1% of their yes responses to Greeley's question were genuine mystical experiences. Thus Hood's scale seems to be the more widely used of these two broad measures of mysticism. It has received cross cultural validation" (Holm, 1982; Caird, 1988).

4) Incidence.

(Ibid.)

Quote:

"Several studies have looked at the incidence of mystical experiences. Greeley (1974) found 35% agreement to his question while Back and Bourque (1970) reported increases in frequency of these sorts of experiences from about 20% in 1962 to about 41% in 1967 to the question "Would you say that you have ever had a 'religious or mystical experience' that is, a moment of sudden religious awakening or insight?" Greeley (1987) reported a similar figure for 1973".

"The most researched inventory is the State of Consciousness Inventory (SCI; reviewed in Alexander, Boyer, and Alexander, 1987). The authors say "the SCI was designed for quantitative assessment of frequency of experiences of higher states of consciousness as defined in Vedic Psychology (p. 100)."

"In this case items were constructed from first person statements of practitioners of that meditative tradition, but items were also drawn from other authority literatures. Additional subscales were added to differentiate these experiences from normal waking experience, neurotic experience, and schizophrenic experience. Finally, a misleading item scale was added. These authors conceptualize the "mystical" experience as one which can momentarily occur in the process of the development of higher states of consciousness. For them the core state of consciousness is pure consciousness and from it develops these higher states of consciousness.

Whereas most researchers on mystical experiences study them as isolated or infrequent experiences with little if any theoretical "goal" for them, this group contextualizes them in a general model of development (Alexander et al., 1990) with their permanent establishment in an individual as a sign of the first higher state of consciousness. They point out that "during any developmental period, when awareness momentarily settles down to its least excited state, pure consciousness [mystical states] can be experienced (p. 310). " In terms of incidence they quote Maslow who felt that in the population at large less than one in 1,000 have frequent "peak" experiences so that the "full stabilization of a higher stage of consciousness appears to an event of all but historic significance (p. 310)."

"Virtually all of researchers using the SCI are very careful to distinguish the practice of meditation from the experience of pure consciousness, explaining that the former merely facilitates the latter. They also go to great pains to show that their multiple correlation's of health and well-being are strongest to the transcendent experience than to the entire practice of meditation (for psychophysiological review see Wallace, 1987; for individual difference review see Alexander et al., 1987;

B. Empirical Studies show Long-Term Positive Effects of Mystical Experience

Research Summary

From Council on Spiritual Practices Website

"States of Univtive Consciousness"

Also called Transcendent Experiences, Ego-Transcendence, Intense Religious Experience, Peak Experiences, Mystical Experiences, Cosmic Consciousness. Sources:

(1) Studies Wuthnow, Robert (1978). "Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3), 59-75.

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

Lukoff, David & Francis G. Lu (1988). ``Transpersonal psychology research review: Topic: Mystical experiences.'' Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20 (2), 161-184.

Roger Walsh (1980). The consciousness disciplines and the behavioral sciences: Questions of comparison and assessment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137(6), 663-673.

Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar (1983). ``Psychedelic Drugs in Psychiatry'' in Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, New York: Basic Books.

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. (Charles T. Tart, Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm, p. 19.)

(2)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

(3) 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." (4) 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)".

Announcement

I've removed moderation from new comments. They will appear right away, I really need to know that people are reading the blog. I appreciate comments that have been made. please make more!

Rational Warrant vs Reasonable Doubt

I thought this would be a good little diaoauge which tries to pin down exactly where the progress is vis Rational Warrant. I think the upshot of this is that the atheist is privileging doubt.

"What's his face" on CARM

WHF:

 your warrant to think God might not exist is not as strong as my warrant that he does.
Oh yes it is... Notice I offered just as much justification for my statement as you did for yours.[/quote]

Meta:
hardly. where are your 200 studies? You don't have a single argument that works by deductive logic or model logic. you don't have any emprical evidence. you have not one single study to back up disbelief in god.

all you really have is suspicion that there may not be a God. you have no actual postiive reasons for thinking there is not. I do have postiive reasons for thinking there is.

*my reasons correlate with personal experience that back doctrine.

*they are lined up with the rationale of deductive reason

*they are backed by empirical data

*they give more than a prima facie reaosn for accepting the co-determiante


* I have 8 tie breakers that the RE argument away from naturalistic brain chemistry alone.

* my RE fit the criteria we use for epistemic judgement

less than proof is ok. it it doesn't have to be proof it need not be proof.


 WHF:

It depends on how less than proof. Can you say how less than proof your argument is exactly, and why? I would accept beyond a reasonable doubt, such as the Earth orbits the Sun, which your case does not reach.

 Meta:

I have 200 empirical studies. you have bogus arguments like "no scientific evidence" taken out by the 200 studies.


calling inconclusive is misleading becuase "conclusive" is in the eye of the beholder.

 WHF:

If, within the case you make "conclusive" is in the eye of the beholder, it's not conclusive.

 Meta:
any impartial observer would have to give it to the one that has either the empirical data or the deductive edge. tie breakers have to count.

most people's reasons for being atheists are personal and emotional and not satisfying for real thinkers.

 WHF:

No Meta, this is horribly wrong. It's all about standards of evidence. Personal and emotional are more in the realm of believers.

 Meta:
no it's backed by several empirical studies and mound of empirical research around the concept of God image and self esteem. not just that one Lesie Francis study.


Originally Posted by Whatsisface

But all of the above is still inconclusive and does not reach the evidential standard of beyond a reasonable doubt as far as God's existence is concerned. This is my rational warrant, and the more you add to your side that's inconclusive, the stronger my warrant becomes.

 Meta:
now you are trying to bring proof in the back door. "Reasonable doubt" is not the limit on warrant. Neither is a reasonable doubt predicated upon a feeling of doubt. I don't think you have a reasonable doubt. you have a strong sense of doubt but how is that reasonable? It can't be backed up by reason. Yes you can give m e reasons but I disprove most of them.

It's going to reduce to a non demonstrable sense that you have in your gut vs. what I think are valid reasons that you deny as valid becuase they dont' jibe with your gut. then you are going to deny that it's intuitive and calim that it's "reason." In reality you can't ground your doubt in reason.

WHF:

You are one of the few here who actually tries to make a case for the existence of God but surely even you would admit it doesn't take you as far as beyond a reasonable doubt? 

 Meta:

what makes a doubt reasonable? I have a feeling we aren't goign to agree. What role does reasonable doubt plain in relation to the warrant.

My feeling is warrant is permissive not compulsive. so I think it comes down t a purely existential matter. No one is trying to make you bleieve if you don't want to, don't. your not wanting to believe cannot be construed as disproof of my warrant for belief.

WHF:

Can you see how you have not answered my question? 

 Meta:

no. I see a blank space there.


ok try it again:

WHF:

I asked you this...
Whatshisface:...It depends on how less than proof. Can you say how less than proof your argument is exactly, and why? I would accept beyond a reasonable doubt, such as the Earth orbits the Sun, which your case does not reach.

You answered with...
Metacrock...I have 200 empirical studies. you have bogus arguments like "no scientific evidence" taken out by the 200 studies.

Can you see how you have not answered my question? You have not said how less than proof your argument is and importantly, how you know this. 

 Meta:

no not at all. It looks ot me like 200 studies is a lot more proof than no studis and mere suspicion. how much less, 200 studies less. that answers your question.

He has not proved that room for doubt, which does still exist, mandates doubt as an unalterable course, nor does that room negate the validity of the postive reasons for belief.

Get answers to these questions when you buy the Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for belief, by Joseph Hinman, available on Amazon.

Answering Stephan Fry on his "world without God"

Stephen Fry


Stephan Fry is a comic actor who was often on Blackadder,(Brit com) and had a couple of shows with Hough Laurie ("House" on tv show House). Fry is a great actor and is hysterical, he's also a big time atheist and his atheistic propagandizing has gotten him called "an activist." He has a thing on youtube in which he extols the virtues of a world without God. His basic message seems to be that religion is only about governing external behavior while secular humanism is about the spiritual and inner depths plumbed ay the arts. At 0.52 he says it exactly. God of the Bible is only concerned with governing external behavior but we humanists care about the inner person. That is right before his diatribe on Prometheus.

He speaks to the greatness and poetry of the King James translation with its beautiful Elizabethan English. secular society fails the imagination because it did not replace the poetry of Bible. At that point he makes a statement that his, society the one he would bring in and to some extent the one his side has brought in, is not just unbelieving but "anti-theist." He asserts that the atheists must care about the internal the inner person, asserting that Christianity is just about controlling behavior. He asserts that they must not allow religion to have the beautiful and virtuous spiritual altruistic morally strong, not allow it to be "peculiar to religion." In a written quotation taken from this speech he says:

"I don't think we should ever allow religion the trick of maintaining that the spiritual and the beautiful and the noble and the altruistic and the morally strong and the virtuous are in any way inventions of religion or particular or peculiar to religion."
The Blasphemy Debate[1]

Religion is the origin of the concept of spirit. It's foolish to claim that the spiritual is not the monopoly of religion. It's only the watered down metaphorical version of spirit to which non religious thinking can lay claim. Art (including literature and poetry) are directly connected to religion. Of course I'm not saying that one must be religious to do art, but it would be foolish to pretend that they are antithetical. Fry doesn't exactly say that, and yet the impression is clearly created. German philosophers such as Hegel always associated spirit mind. It's often overlooked but the Greek word for spirit, pneuma, (nou-ma) while meaning primarily breath or wind also has carries a meaning of mind.[2]So the Greeks thought of breath as spirit but also associated it with life force, and thus with mind. The exercise of thought in writing or creating art is seen as "spiritual" idea of a real spirit as something immaterial that lives and thinks is seen as totally primitive. Most modern people would probably be willing to split the difference and to understand ourselves as having a spirit as life force and that as connected to intellect it also serves a metaphorical function. That metaphor is still more connected to religion and shared with art. In terms of Christian theology it can be understood and part of the imago dei.

He does make a statement about the barren road of Dawkins style of atheism, the reductive mentality. So he understands that problem. This is not your average illiterate atheist who thinks Daniel Dennett is great literature. He was an English major at Cambridge. I can have sympathy for his view point. He is the kind of atheist my brother and I admired and tried to be, literate and literary and appreciative of the arts. His speaking style is so smooth and with that debonair English highly educated manner he really puts it over. His use of the Prometheus myth he ties in with the Poet Shelly (Prometheus unbound) and his defiance of religion.

In the myth, Prometheus gives fire to man contrary to the will of the gods.. As punishment Zeus has him chained to a rock and a bird eats out hi liver every day, (the liver grows back because he's immortal). Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)was a major leader in the Romantic rebellion and especially its poetry. He is one of the greatest poets in the English language. Shelley himself expropriated the Prometheus myth as a symbol of romantic rebellion. The poet brining the light of knowledge and reason to man against the wishes of God. Here God stands for the authority structure politically, culturally and religiously. Shelley's wife Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein a story about a creature struggling against his creator. Fry is aware of all of this he points it out. I will pass over the odd coincidence that Lucifer is also light bearer. Of course in some versions of the myth Prometheus created man. But that doesn't fit because in Christian world view the creator of man is the creator of all things, and there can be no higher power.

According to Fry the Greeks are saying "we are as good as the gods." We have the liver. We are willing to defy the powers that be (for Fry that may mean society. organized religion, or God). He goes on in rhetorical bluster about how humanity is great. Here's a real point of contradiction in humanist ideology. Humanity is great, humanity invented God, but God ids no good. Despite the literacy and artistic appreciation Fry brings to the subject, the basic point--humanity can do it all without God--is hog wash. The truth of it is we can do all kinds of things without God. We are real good at screwing up the planet without God. We are veritable virtuosi at creating the potential for nuclear destruction. We show a fair degree of talent for murder, rape, and torture for political repression. The one thing we can't do without God is get our shit together as a species. 80,000 raped, tortured and murdered victims of the death squads in El Salvador, that was just in the 1980s. 60,000 in Guatemala, 70,000 victims of contra terror in Nicaragua. These are the things in which humanity excels.

Of course atheists try to blame Christianity for the evils of the world. We must admit Reagan fooled the Christians. Much of the support for his contra war came from evangelicals and fundamentalists. On the other hand, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot were atheists. The level of suffering and death due to communism was estimated at 1 million lives.[3] This is wrought by atheism, Marx's brilliant new humanity8 was as screwed up as the old humanity. But it's not as though I mean to impugn Humanity. We are created in the image of God, and so e can do wonderful things, even apart from any particular belief system. Not just art and literature but humans can excels at compassion, they act to save each other and sacrifice themselves for the good. Communism screwed itself but started with the best of intensions. From the Paris commune to the civil rights movement, from Mother jones to Mother Teresa, from Joan of Arc to Joan Baez humans have all beliefs have cone wonderful things. But they forget God they screw their movements as did communism. They thought they could theorize and manage their way into changing human nature.

It's true that we can screw up our movements with belief in God ad well. Look how the charismatic movement allowed itself to be coopted into a right wing organizing tool in the 80s. The core of communism is human nature. That can be good but when its bad it can be murderous. The core of religious belief is the supernatural reality of God.[4] Mystical experience lies at the core of all religious traditions. Mystical experience is transforming. It changes one's life in vital and dramatic and positive ways.[5]

Council on Spiritual Practices
STATES OF UNITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
Research Summary

Also called Transcendent Experiences, Ego-Transcendence, Intense Religious Experience, Peak Experiences, Mystical Experiences, Cosmic Consciousness Sources Wuthnow, Robert (1978). Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3), 59-75.

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

Lukoff, David & Francis G. Lu (1988). ``Transpersonal psychology research review: Topic: Mystical experiences.'' Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20 (2), 161-184.

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.
(Charles T. Tart, Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm, p. 19.)

Two of the major studies
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

(3) Trend toward positive view among psychologists..[6]

Spiriutal Emergency

MYSTICAL OR UNITIVE EXPERIENCE

Trend toward positive view among psychologists. Spiriutal Emergency MYSTICAL OR UNITIVE EXPERIENCE a. clinical literature does not see mystical experience as pathyology

"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).[8]

"we are captains of our soul" Fry adapts Henley's "Invictus." We will see if we are the captain of our souls when we face eternity. What do3s he do about the deterministic aspects of atheistic thought? That is by far the prevailing tendency among atheists. Chemical determinism is one of their most dominant positions. To hear most atheists on the nt tell it we are little more than automatons.
God no good if he exists. lqack of insight can't make a greatvclerical don't have smart Christians anymore. feeble nonesnwe

I mean it's perfectly obvious that if there were ever a God he has lost all possible taste. You've only got to look - forget the aggression and unpleasantness of the radical right or the Islamic hordes to the East - the sheer lack of intelligence and insight and ability to express themselves and to enthuse others of the priesthood and the clerisy here, in this country, and indeed in Europe, you know God once had Bach and Michelangelo on his side, he had Mozart, and now who does he have? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of sharing, you know?
(A distinctly possible side-swipe here in the then Archbishop of Canterbury being bearded and bespectacled)...[8]

So we see that beneath the Vanier of smooth talking education there lies a bigotry of the basest sort. Of we don't know if he's read any modern theologians so he would nod not know if there are any the likes of Leibniz or not. Of course the English are not known for theological Brilliants. He needs to turn to the Germans, the likes of Tillich, Bultmann, Bart and Moltmann. In England there was D.Z. Philips. Of course in America Plantinga and Alston. I guess that's the price they have to Pay for creating an environment hostile to belief. The English have N.T. Wright who is a brilliant scholar.

So Fry uses his smooth talk to feed the delusion of atheists that they can be good without God. That's why they are so kind and understanding and never insult anyone, because they are so full of that divine fire it just shines from them like the pyres of burning books in 1930s Germany. Hey it's hard enough to be good with God. We all know they are not achieving it without God.

Sources

[1] Stephan Fry with Christopher Hitchens.~ "Hay Festival pages," On the Guardian website no date given, online resource from Fry's website Age of the Sage, URL: http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/quotations/quotes/stephen_fry_gods_religions_beliefs.html

[2] Strongs Concordance with Hebrew and Greek Lexicon: on line copy URL
http://www.eliyah.com/cgi-bin/strongs.cgi?file=greeklexicon&isindex=spirit

4151. pneuma pnyoo'-mah from 4154; a current of air, i.e. breath (blast) or a breeze; by analogy or figuratively, a spirit, i.e. (human) the rational soul, (by implication) vital principle, mental disposition, etc., or (superhuman) an angel, demon, or (divine) God, Christ's spirit, the Holy Spirit:--ghost, life, spirit(-ual, -ually), mind. Compare 5590. [3] Scholar's Corner, "Atheism's Body Count," website, URL: http://www.scholarscorner.com/apologia/deathtoll.html accessed !2/13/15

[4] Ralf Hood Jr., Theoretical Fruits from the Empirical Study of Mysticism: A Jamesian Perspective Journal für Psychologie, Jg. 16 (2008), Ausgabe 3], PDF URL:
https://greatcommandmentseminar.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/hood_jfp1.pdf

[5] Joseph Hinman, The Trace of God: Rational Warrant for Belief, Colorado Springs: Grand Viaduct, 2014, 10-20.

[6] Council on Spiritual Practices, "Unitive Consciousness Research Summary," website URL: http://www.csp.org/experience/docs/unitive_consciousness.html

Council on Spirir5ual Practices sounds like wacy New agers but they are not. The are respected psychologists and researchers.

[7] Spiritual Compotency Research Center. Onjline Resource
http://www.spiritualcompetency.com/se/dxtx/types/mysticalexperience.html
formerly called "Spiritual emergency."

[8] age of sage, op. cit.

the note about the reference to arch Bishop was made by the folks on the British Guardian website.

existential crsis

only one guy is reading my blog.

let me hear from you

do you give a shit about this blog I need to know or shutting down. do you like the fun friday thing?

Fun Filled Friday:The Spirit of Christmas Past

Thank God its FFF. This is the last Friday before Christmas so I thought if I'm going to do a Christmas theme I have to do it now. One thing that ha always fascinated me is the history of Santa Claus. What I find most interesting is the shadowy forerunners of Santa, those folkloric figures from the mists of Europe's past that form the basis of the Santa Claus legend. That is what I will most concern myself with here. But of course I would be remiss in not discussing the historical making of the modern Santa Claus. Our modern North pole dwelling Coca Cola guzzling Santa has only been around since the late 19th century, and was formed out of developments that began to take shape right after the American revolution.(St. Nicholas Center)

Before that time Christmas wasn't much celebrated in America. We had it but it was not regarded. Of course the Colonists had the tradition of Father Christmas from England. Around the time of the American revolution Christmas had fallen into disfavor because he was English. The American fascination withy Santa Claus comes from The Dutch who had settled New York. The Dutch had a forerunner Claus, Sinterklaas. That name means Saint Nicholas but I'll get to him in a bit. Our term "Santa Claus" derives from this Dutch name. It Washington Irving (1783-1859:"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"-Headless horseman and all) who first made Santa Claus popular in America.

Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving wrote the satirical A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. Irving dedicates his satirical "history" to the New-York Historical Society, and makes dozens of references to an impish, pipe-smoking Saint Nicholas who brings gifts down chimneys, thus beginning a legend that will travel round the world. That it was published on St. Nicholas's feast day, December 6, 1809, was no accident.("Father of Christmas")

Irving's Modus Oporandi was to draw upon the folk traditions of New York Dutch that had been forgotten by most New Yorkers and that dipped way back into the fount of Northland folklore from the old country. His Santa road a horse there were no reindeer he did not live at the north Pole. I do not know if the Horse was Irving's idea but I think going down the chimney was already a Dutch idea. Yet Father Christmas didn't that. Dutch children were given candy and nuts in their shoes not stockings, they ere left on window ledges and the foot of the bed not hung from the fireplace. Two other figures were important in the making of modern Santa, John Nast the great political Cartoonist, that's a Nast Claus at the top.

1821 brought some new elements with publication of the first lithographed book in America, the Children's Friend. This "Santa Claus" arrived from the North in a sleigh with a flying reindeer. The anonymous poem and illustrations proved pivotal in shifting imagery away from a saintly bishop. Santa Claus fit a didactic mode, rewarding good behavior and punishing bad, leaving a "long, black birchen rod. (St. Nicholas Center, op.cit.)

Following that in 1823 Clement Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (aka "The Night Before Christmas"). That poem added the names of the reindeer. One interesting fact was the gesture he makes to go back up the chimney, putting his finger beside his nose. This gesture is recorded by Irving in his story and that same gesture was the Dutch way of winking when telling a tall tale or some story you know is just a yarn. From there the next big sr5eppw were 20 the century: Rudolph and Coke.

Saint Nicholas

The story of Santa Claus really begins with St. Nicholas who was a real historical man, although not much is known about him. We know he lived in

the Bishop of Myra (in present day Turkey) in the early fourth century, who was known for helping the poor and giving presents to children. In the Middle Ages, Christians celebrated his feast day, Dec. 6, by leaving gifts for children in their shoes.(finding Dulcinea: Christmas).

He was born around 280. No one knows when he died. He was supposedly wealthy and spent his family fortune helping the poor. He became so popular as a champion of children that for centuries he was as famous and as legendary as our Santa and he was the yearly gift giver spreading through Europe. His feast day was on December 6th that used to be the toy giving day. St. Nicholas was the toy giver.(History Channel "Santa Claus")



Shadows in the mists of time

Many of these treatments of Santa history begin with St. Nicholas but there were gift givers before him. The figures became the basis for the legend of gift giving Nicholas. They only hint at trace of forgotten times and cultures.

In Scandinavia the Norse God Odin acted as annual gift giver for children. He would fly around on his eight legged steed giving gifts. Children left their boots by the Chimney for Odin; who was associated with the Solstus thus linking him to December 25. The Germanic people had another gift given Frau Holda, winter.(Santa Claus' Pagan Origins). These two date to 13th century so they don't pre date St. Nicholas. In Italy we have Le Befanna who was said to have misled the wise men as they sought the Christ child. She went to find them to put it right but could not, thus wonders the giving gifts to children so as not to miss the Christ child, she too is 13th century. (Ibid).

In pre Christian times Germanic people and English celebrated mid winter festival of Yuletide. Many aspects of this tradition were absorbed into Christmas. This is where all the holy and Ivy stuff comes from. Father Christmas probably traces to that period, even though the first written sources are 15th century (Orchard, Andy (1997). Dictionary of Norse Mythology and Legend, page 187. Cassell). Likewise Odin is pre Christian ads sa god and probably as a gift giver as well, but our written sources begin in 13th century."The appearance of Santa Claus or Father Christmas, whose day is 25th of December, owes much to Odin, the old blue-hooded, cloaked, white-bearded Gift bringer of the north, who rode the midwinter sky on his eight-footed steed Sleipnir, visiting his people with gifts. … Odin, transformed into Father Christmas, then Santa Claus, prospered with St Nicholas and the Christchild became a leading player on the Christmas stage."(Baker, Margaret (2007 1962). Discovering Christmas Customs and Folklore: A Guide to Seasonal Rites Throughout the World, page 62. Osprey Publishing).


Polish Starman

Poland has a Pre Nicholas Santa figure called "Satarman." "In some regions of Poland, at the end of supper, Father Christmas, known as The Starman (very often the parish priest in disguise), accompanied by singing Starboys, pays a visit. He brings rewards to good children from Starland, and scolds the naughty ones, who eventually get their reward, too." (Polish Christmas). Starman is not jovial figure, no Ho ho ho, He first threatens to beat the children and then relents. Then he passes out presents.

In Russiia Father front and his grand daughrt are Clauslike gift givers but they fdon't pre date Nicholas. There is onewho does. Nicholas as gict giver in Ruwi is patterend after an older figure.

Ded Moroz or Father Frost, the Slavic version of Santa Claus, long ago became the symbol of Russian winter, New Year’s and presents. He is usually accompanied by his granddaughter Snegurochka riding with an evergreen tree in a traditional Russian troika, a sleigh drawn by three horses abreast.Snegurochka is a unique attribute of the image of Ded Moroz – none of his foreign colleagues have such a cute companion.The original Russian gift-giver was Saint Nicholas, the country's Patron Saint, whose Feast Day is celebrated on December 6th. The image of Saint Nicholas originates from the image of another hero – the ancient Morozko. In Russian folklore Morozko is a powerful hero and smith who chains water with his “iron” frosts. Morozko was not hostile to people - he helped them and presented them with awesome presents.In fairy tales Morozko is at times kind and at times evil. To be precise, he is kind towards the hard working and the good-hearted, but extremely severe with the mean and the lazy. And it is not about justice only. It is rather about two personalities living in one magical person.(Russiapesia).

The anti Santa

Even our modern Santa has his negative side. In my parents generation they would say that he would bring coal to bad children. Then it evolved to just a passive 'no gifts' for bad children. We have seen that older figures have more negativity. Starman is austere and threatens punishment although he's really a pushover. Even t5he Russian figure older than Nicholas is schizophrenic. There I an even older figure who hints at a forgotten past now very foreign. This is an actual evil figu8re2who balances Santa called "Krumpus." He's in the Bavarian Alps. He has a demonic face and horns, sound familiar? (Republican Candidate)?

In Austro-Bavarian Alpine folklore, Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure who, during the Christmas season, punishes children who have misbehaved, in contrast with Saint Nicholas, who rewards the well-behaved with gifts. Regions in Austria feature similar figures and, more widely, Krampus is one of a number of Companions of Saint Nicholas in regions of Europe. The origin of the figure is unclear; some folklorists and anthropologists have postulated a pre-Christian origin for the figure.( wiki Author sites:Crimmins, Peter (15 December 2011). "Horror For The Holidays: Meet The Anti-Santa". NPR. Retrieved 25 November 2015).

There are other such figures in surrounding areas. This is really ancient and moving back into the mists in a time we know little about. (Haid, Oliver (2006). "Christmas markets in the Tyrolean Alps: Representing regional traditions in a newly created world of Christmas". In David Picard, Mike Robinson. Festivals, tourism and social change: remaking worlds. Buffalo, New York: Channel View Publications. pp. 216–19. ISBN 978-1-84541-048-3).