quote:My imagination was never so fruitful, so hard but also good, so pure and true, as this. [Smile]
Well, if you're wrong, then yes it is. As I see it, those are two pretty positive possibilities.
Javert, I don't expect you to be able to tell, from my description alone, that what I'm saying is true. After all, you're not me. You have no idea what it's like being me, what it was like before I believed in God and after. So please understand that I'm not offering this evidence as a reason for you to believe in God. I'm simply answering questions people are asking me about my experiences with God.
What I'd expect would lead you to believe in God for yourself is if you put it to the test yourself. If you exercised some particle of faith and actually offered God your questions, your hopes and dreams, your troubles and doubts, if you approach him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and ask for his help. That is how I would expect you would get an answer for yourself, and then you would be in a position to judge whether it came from inside you or outside you.
I don't think there's any possible way you can judge my experiences along those lines. You just have to take my word that I'm describing as best I can what I've experienced.
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quote:Originally posted by Starsnuffer: Wow. This has really taken off, and notably not on topic...
I would like to suggest again that we stay on topic, but... free forum. I really would like responses to the questions I posed, not dodging around and then discussing side-topics.
Starsnuffer, you haven't been around long, but it's a longstanding tradition on hatrack not to try to constrain threads to the topic. We have rather freewheeling conversations here and we tend to like it that way. If a side topic is fruitful then it will get explored. If other people have more to say on the main topic, they will. We've found that attempts to straitjacket the conversation usually only kill it, and are no fun.
So I'd recommend just getting on board the roller coaster and enjoying the ride. Like Survivor notably said once, the point of having a group is going off track. It's like four wheel drive.
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quote:What I'd expect would lead you to believe in God for yourself is if you put it to the test yourself. If you exercised some particle of faith and actually offered God your questions, your hopes and dreams, your troubles and doubts, if you approach him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and ask for his help. That is how I would expect you would get an answer for yourself, and then you would be in a position to judge whether it came from inside you or outside you.
There are quite a number of people who do this and receive no response at all. Most atheists I know have at one time or another been sincerely seeking an answer to an "are you there" prayer to no avail.
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quote:What I'd expect would lead you to believe in God for yourself is if you put it to the test yourself. If you exercised some particle of faith and actually offered God your questions, your hopes and dreams, your troubles and doubts, if you approach him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and ask for his help. That is how I would expect you would get an answer for yourself, and then you would be in a position to judge whether it came from inside you or outside you.
There are quite a number of people who do this and receive no response at all. Most atheists I know have at one time or another been sincerely seeking an answer to an "are you there" prayer to no avail.
MattP, I believe you, and I don't know the answer to why this happens. One possible idea is that God is a person, so he chooses to answer those queries that lead people in the most fruitful directions, and not others. Another possible reason is that prayer is a skill, like seeing the pictures in the magic eye posters, and you have to work at it to get good at it. It might be naturally harder for some people than for others, for reasons of brain structure or other unknown reasons. It might also have to do with how important it is to you, how badly you need his help at that particular time. It might be there is more "static" in the fields sometimes or something. I definitely believe that God is natural and not supernatural, so real physical constraints can exist. I seriously can't make any judgment or theory as to why a given person finds it difficult to hear answers to prayer. I'm sorry if it makes you feel passed over or unloved. I feel certain that's not the case, that God loves everyone with a deep abiding love. I know it can't be for reasons of worthiness, since he will talk to me. The answer to your question is I just don't know.
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posted
Many of us who come to hold beliefs and faith do so out of a need for it. Often that comes as much from lack of evidence as its presence. A child does not need to have logical proof of his need for love, approval, protection, comfort etc of a parent, it is a function of his development.
Most of us develop changing understandings of our faith as experiences build. I have a hard time with much of the "religion" often coupled with faith, because I see a lot of it stopping deeper understanding rather than enhancing it, and I really cannot abide a system or a zealot who bases most of his conviction on the joy of being right or being powerful or being able to exclude others from the club.
(Personal belief) I don't think you get "get out of hell" points for correctly chosing the team or set of rituals or deprivations that God has selected and Satan has cammo'd. That seems like much of what gets preached, and I think that is sad.
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quote:My imagination was never so fruitful, so hard but also good, so pure and true, as this. [Smile]
Well, if you're wrong, then yes it is. As I see it, those are two pretty positive possibilities.
Javert, I don't expect you to be able to tell, from my description alone, that what I'm saying is true. After all, you're not me. You have no idea what it's like being me, what it was like before I believed in God and after. So please understand that I'm not offering this evidence as a reason for you to believe in God. I'm simply answering questions people are asking me about my experiences with God.
What I'd expect would lead you to believe in God for yourself is if you put it to the test yourself. If you exercised some particle of faith and actually offered God your questions, your hopes and dreams, your troubles and doubts, if you approach him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and ask for his help. That is how I would expect you would get an answer for yourself, and then you would be in a position to judge whether it came from inside you or outside you.
I don't think there's any possible way you can judge my experiences along those lines. You just have to take my word that I'm describing as best I can what I've experienced.
Your response seems a bit angry, and I hope I didn't anger you with my comment. (The internet making it hard to tell emotion, I may be completely wrong.) I was just saying that, in the event god actually doesn't exist, at the least it means you have a fruitful, intense and pure imagination. Which, in my opinion, is no bad thing. And I mean that with all sincerity.
As for the part where you ask me to seek out god, I was a Catholic for over 20 years. I did what you suggest many times. And I sit before this keyboard today an atheist. My apologies if that's a disappointment.
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quote:As for the part where you ask me to seek out god, I was a Catholic for over 20 years. I did what you suggest many times. And I sit before this keyboard today an atheist. My apologies if that's a disappointment.
Just as I cannot say that God answers* everyone's prayers and entreaties because He has often answered mine, you cannot say that since you lacked two-way communication in that area, others who claim to have not are mistaken.
It's an excellent reason for you to be an atheist. A very poor one for anyone else to be, wouldn't you agree?
---
*I mean 'answer' in a daily-use, secular kind of way. I do believe God answers all prayers or is at least listening to all prayers, but His answers are sometimes indirect and subtle at best.
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quote:As for the part where you ask me to seek out god, I was a Catholic for over 20 years. I did what you suggest many times. And I sit before this keyboard today an atheist. My apologies if that's a disappointment.
Just as I cannot say that God answers* everyone's prayers and entreaties because He has often answered mine, you cannot say that since you lacked two-way communication in that area, others who claim to have not are mistaken.
It's an excellent reason for you to be an atheist. A very poor one for anyone else to be, wouldn't you agree?
Correct. Exactly why your prayers and answers are great reasons for you to believe.
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posted
I think it's possible some people don't experience God the same way some people can't see certain colors. It's part of living in a fallen world.
That's pretty much my answer for everything.
I sometimes get folks who insist I must find meaning and answers in events like my son's death, but trying to do so makes me feel crazy. Sorry, I'll have to fit what I know of God around that and not inside it. (My son had a congenital heart defect of unknown cause.) I find my experience with the people who think it must have taught me wonderful lessons to have a similar flavor to the testing of atheists by believers.
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quote:What I'd expect would lead you to believe in God for yourself is if you put it to the test yourself. If you exercised some particle of faith and actually offered God your questions, your hopes and dreams, your troubles and doubts, if you approach him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and ask for his help. That is how I would expect you would get an answer for yourself, and then you would be in a position to judge whether it came from inside you or outside you.
There are quite a number of people who do this and receive no response at all. Most atheists I know have at one time or another been sincerely seeking an answer to an "are you there" prayer to no avail.
But again, we often have to rely just on their "say so" just as they rely on our "say so" when we say the experience works.
I can't fully understand why God would or would not answer a certain person's prayer. I assume God has His reasons for dealing with them thus, I only know it worked for me, and I didn't have a special method outside what the scriptures prescribes.
edit: I guess what I mean to say is I have heard Mormon turned atheists say, "But I kept ALL the commandments my ENTIRE life, and I prayed HOURS, and I read ALL the scriptures, but still no answer!"
I don't know if they are being truthful, or if they are, whether or not there were other factors that kept them from getting a testimony that they do not tell me flat out.
I can identify for myself why it was not until I was 19 that I had a testimony though I was raised in the church.
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quote:The default position for anybody, starting when they are young enough to understand, is to believe any and all claims.
As we grow older and learn skepticism, the default position is to believe things which seem to support our worldview, and to disbelieve things which seem to contradict it.
This is more or less what I was thinking, except I would probably rephrase it.
The default position for anybody, starting when they are young enough to understand, is to believe any and all claims. Anything is possible and believable, but I don't think that default position changes.
Over time we accumulate knowledge, and that knowledge eliminates, or at least reduces, different possibilities. The default position is still to believe things, it's just that our accumulated knowledge quickly eliminates the possibility of most new ideas. Depending on what types of knowledge have been accumulated in a person, certain possibilities are more easily eliminated than they are for others. In other words, we still tend to believe things, just as long as those beliefs aren’t contradicted by our other beliefs, but the default is still to believe.
If our default position is to not believe, I'm not sure we would ever desire to explore the unknown or unseen, because we would never believe there is anything out there to find.
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posted
That doesn't follow. As you said, we accumulate knowledge that informs our future beliefs.
I wouldn't imagine it would take much life experience to realize that there's things beyond what we can see. The desire to fill those gaps in our knowledge is what sent people to religion in the first place in my opinion. And science.
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quote:If our default position is to not believe, I'm not sure we would ever desire to explore the unknown or unseen, because we would never believe there is anything out there to find.
It's not the default to not believe in anything. It's the default to disbelieve claims made for which we have no prior evidence until we receive evidence for said claim.
And I think we may be stuck on the word "default". It's not default in that it is what everyone necessarily does. It is the default that you should operate from in order to discover best what is true.
At least, in my opinion, and as demonstrated by the history of skeptical inquiry.
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quote:I don't know if they are being truthful, or if they are, whether or not there were other factors that kept them from getting a testimony that they do not tell me flat out.
Well, as was mentioned a few pages ago, humility and repentance are actually the foundations and not righteous living. Even Joseph Smith's second vision was precipitated by repentance, and according to some accounts, his first. The vision of the brother of Jared was also preceeded by a bold confession.
But we are told over and over that living righteously precedes spiritual experiences. It's a bit of a puzzle, and touches on the dichotomy Matt B presented, about whether we are fundamentally like God or craven creatures with no hope except through divine grace. I tend to think it's possible to be both, though that makes it a paradox. So I go back to my original position that God is beyond logic.
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quote: I wouldn't imagine it would take much life experience to realize that there's things beyond what we can see.
What I'm saying is that I think we believe that things exist beyond what we see, not because previous knowledge suggests those may things exist, but because previous knowledge doesn't contradict our default position to believe.
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quote:It's the default to disbelieve claims made for which we have no prior evidence until we receive evidence for said claim.
See, I'm just not sure I can agree with this. Suppose I were locked inside a room since birth and completely isolated from people and the outside world (somehow I am magically provided with the bare necessities for survival). If after say twenty years someone comes in holding a picture of a jabberwocky, I'm not sure I would automatically disbelieve it and ask for more evidence. I think I would more likely believe that it does exist, that is, unless I had somehow acquired knowledge that would suggest that such creatures do not exist.
In other words, I believe something unless given a reason to not believe. Those reasons to not believe typically come in the form of prior knowledge. Over time, we acquire more reasons to not believe in more types of things.
quote: It is the default that you should operate from in order to discover best what is true.
I agree with this.
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posted
Another thought experiment: Ten different babies (in the 3 to 6 months old range) get separated from their respective siblings and lost in ten different forests/jungles of the world, by sheer accidence and incredible coincidence. They are all alone, until soon enough some animal family (think of the wolfs of the Jungle Book ) finds them respectively, and instead of eating them, they nourish them as if they were their own. This is to set some kind of “society” for each, but definitely not Human (and not the same between them).
The question is, if during 20 years of their life they don’t come back to “civilization”, what is their “default” position on religion? How sure one can be that they would believe in the existence of some kind of a deity, and how sure one can be that those ten deities would have anything in common one with the other?
posted
The position they have after twenty years isn't a default position, its a position arrived at after considerable experience. I would expect them to have considerably more belief in the supernatural than those who lived in 'civilization', though likely not much analogous to modern mainstream religions.
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posted
I would expect the exact same thing. This is to say that belief in supernatural might be a "default" but that has little to do with organized religion as we know it. Do you think the variants of "God” people believe in would exist without organized religion?
posted
I wouldn't call belief in the supernatural a 'default', then, because I don't consider wandering around in the jungle any more a 'default' than being raised by a pair of parents who were careful to explain things only in naturalistic explanations, and that when we don't know something it doesn't mean we won't discover a reason later.
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quote:Why would that question necessarily follow, Tom?
Because the only person who'd know for sure why he didn't receive a testimony until he was 19 would be God.
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quote:A child does not need to have logical proof of his need for love, approval, protection, comfort etc of a parent, it is a function of his development.
There is evidence, however, for when you grow up and think "wow, I could really go for some solitary confinement, maybe to take my mind off things." to suggest that this is not usually a beneficial escapade and is likely to lead to psychiatric problems, rather than the rest one hopes for. Part of the issue of using parenting as an example is that the evidence is built as you go along. You see that you and others around you are dong pretty well with parenting, but those who receive bad parenting generally turn out worse, those like Janey (the girl who basically received no contact with people until she was 11 years old and rescued from her abusive, mentally deranged parents) are completely dysfunctional. Though the evidence is not requested along the way you can decide based on evidence whether your children will do better being tossed into the woods to fend for themselves or being nurtured by you into the sorts of people you want them to be.
I don't know if there's any real answer to whether or not we believe fundamentally or not. I think that it has a lot to do with how you consider things. If you were locked in a room and all of a sudden some voice from outside said there are elephants out there, and explained what an elephant was, you'd be in no position to disbelieve that person, but you by no means have more reason to believe them than not, except on the basis that they are outside the box, and you are inside. Obviously you would be skeptical and attempt to figure out whether there really were elephants outside or not, because you'd probably be pretty bored in there, after all(maybe some psychiatric problems ). If you realize, however, that the elephant has no influence on your life, and that your belief or disbelief in it is insignificant you can go back to doing whatever you do in that box and the elephant ceases to be important.
Suppose now that the voice tells you that the elephant is the one that is keeping you in the box, and he tells you that the elephant will let you out if you believe in him, and if you devote some of your time to saying your sorry to him and giving him lavish compliments, and attempting to convince the bugs in your box that there's an elephant out there with great stuff to give you... I'll stop the allegory now for fear of over-simplifying matters, suffice it to say the bugs were going to believe in a giraffe that their special voice told them about, and that the man in the box doesn't see why saying thanks to the elephant and using time from his own life to thank someone for which he has no proof is worthy of being let out of the box, but being relentlessly skeptical and trying to understand what is going on as well as he can is not. I'm not sure I actually ended the allegory when I said. It just got condensed. Maybe worse than it would have been. (again, these posts make me anxious. That seems like a bad result from all our feelings and attitudes.)
This is sort of how I feel about people telling me there's a god and some great growth to be had from believing, only it's less credible because the voice isn't incorporeal, but coming from people nearby.
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posted
Star, that was precisely my point in using the parent child analogy - it is about the child's need, regardless of the parental answer. The reason horrible parenting is so damaging forever in a person's life is because a child's need forces him to "normalize" his parents actions, even when evil.
This is exactly what make religion dangerous. Any self-appointed flake can gain followers and scare the devil out or into them, and mess them up enough to do serious damage to self and others. Need is "supposed" to balanced by trustworthy answer. The freedom to choose and to act and to take corrective makes it possible to make errors and to recover from them. The legalistic approach prevents recovery more often than it prevents sin.
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quote:Originally posted by suminonA: Another thought experiment: Ten different babies (in the 3 to 6 months old range) get separated from their respective siblings and lost in ten different forests/jungles of the world, by sheer accidence and incredible coincidence. They are all alone, until soon enough some animal family (think of the wolfs of the Jungle Book ) finds them respectively, and instead of eating them, they nourish them as if they were their own. This is to set some kind of “society” for each, but definitely not Human (and not the same between them).
The question is, if during 20 years of their life they don’t come back to “civilization”, what is their “default” position on religion? How sure one can be that they would believe in the existence of some kind of a deity, and how sure one can be that those ten deities would have anything in common one with the other?
A.
The default would be feral child syndrome. Inability to use or acquire human language would make the question kind of moot, wouldn't you think? Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
In it's original context I took "default" to mean "logical default". Given a new theory, the logical default is to be critical until sufficient evidence is presented in support of theory.
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quote:I can identify for myself why it was not until I was 19 that I had a testimony though I was raised in the church.
You know the mind of God that well?
In part yes, because part of the experience was being given an understanding of why then at that moment.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: With all this talk of "default," I don't understand why that matters.
The default state of a human is nakedness, but most of us wear clothes when we go out.
The default state is ignorance, but most of us pursue knowledge.
The default state is to have no possessions, but most of us do our best to accrue them.
Default, shmefault.
It matters from an epistemological point of view.
Note: when I say here “justify the beliefs” I mean for themselves, at least, and to the others in order to be able to “defend” those beliefs.
If a belief in a specific deity would be the “default”, then those not believing in it should justify that non-belief with a minimum of arguments.
If a belief in “supernatural” (that comes from ignorance and fear) is the “default”, then both the believers in some specific deity and the non-believers in the supernatural should justify their beliefs.
If a non-belief in “supernatural” and any specific deity is the “default” then only those believing in them should have to have a justification.
Now, the other BIG point is indoctrination (i.e. assuring the same default as yours, to others). If you take some belief to be the “default” you would feel the “obligation” (read moral duty) to indoctrinate your descendents with it. I vote for zero indoctrination, and the best counter-argument to that I have heard against it was: with no indoctrination our descendents would take too much time to learn anything. (Think of rediscovering the proverbial wheel in everything). So I vote for education and the only true difference that I see from indoctrination is presenting the whole story each time, not the truncated knowledge that would assure your particular “default”.
- - -
Edit to add:
quote:Originally posted by Eaquae Legit: The default would be feral child syndrome. Inability to use or acquire human language would make the question kind of moot, wouldn't you think?
Well, I have no such expertise to have foreseen that, and I’ll take your word for it.
The point that line of “thought experiment” was trying to make is that, (from a scientific point of view at least), the Human Race began without language and “civilisation”. In those conditions, the “wandering in the forest” part was close to accurate, and that’s where I think that the conclusion about the “belief in supernatural” as a default would come from. (That’s where it comes from, for me).
quote:My imagination was never so fruitful, so hard but also good, so pure and true, as this. [Smile]
Well, if you're wrong, then yes it is. As I see it, those are two pretty positive possibilities.
Javert, I don't expect you to be able to tell, from my description alone, that what I'm saying is true. After all, you're not me. You have no idea what it's like being me, what it was like before I believed in God and after. So please understand that I'm not offering this evidence as a reason for you to believe in God. I'm simply answering questions people are asking me about my experiences with God.
What I'd expect would lead you to believe in God for yourself is if you put it to the test yourself. If you exercised some particle of faith and actually offered God your questions, your hopes and dreams, your troubles and doubts, if you approach him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and ask for his help. That is how I would expect you would get an answer for yourself, and then you would be in a position to judge whether it came from inside you or outside you.
I don't think there's any possible way you can judge my experiences along those lines. You just have to take my word that I'm describing as best I can what I've experienced.
Your response seems a bit angry, and I hope I didn't anger you with my comment. (The internet making it hard to tell emotion, I may be completely wrong.) I was just saying that, in the event god actually doesn't exist, at the least it means you have a fruitful, intense and pure imagination. Which, in my opinion, is no bad thing. And I mean that with all sincerity.
As for the part where you ask me to seek out god, I was a Catholic for over 20 years. I did what you suggest many times. And I sit before this keyboard today an atheist. My apologies if that's a disappointment.
Ah, I'm so sorry, Javert! I did misinterpret your comment, from reading too quickly, as assuming I'm delusional. Even still, I didn't mean to sound hostile in my reply so I'm sorry if I came off like that. I was raised Catholic and it never really took for me. My experiences in Catholic school and church weren't generally good ones, though I know others on this board have had better experiences. I wish you happiness in whatever path you pursue.
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