rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/12/85)
> Since there is no hard evidence to support the existence of a > deity or, for that matter, of any so-called "supernatural" > entity, > > Aha. Here is Rich Rosen belief #1. This belief is definitely not shared > by most of the people who claim to have religious experiences. They > claim that there is a lot of hard evidence that they are having an > experience. Then let's see some of it, Laura. Saying, as you have, "Look, the metabolic reading of her body have changed, that PROVES a supernatural/religious experience took place!!" Your evidence is always either subjective ("I felt that this happened, and I'm not willing to examine it in an objective light") or presumptive (see above quote). > This may not correspond to what you mean by a > ``supernatural entity'', though. We can now play ``what does > supernatural mean'', but I warn you, there is much greater disagreement > here than over ``what does religion mean''. And we've been through that too. If supernatural, as the name implies, means "beyond the natural", what indeed does that mean? What things that exist are not NATURAL? Thus supernatural must mean "things that don't exist". In its usage, it tends to mean "those things that are beyond our current limits of observation". Which would have made microorganisms supernatural hundreds of years ago. This is rehash. > one would normally work (in a typical analysis of a > non-religious oriented phenomena) from the assumption that the > thing for which there is no evidence does not exist. > > Wrong from the point of view of the people who have a religious > experience. They think that there *is* evidence. Their problem is > ``why don't you recognise it'' and ``why doesn't it happen to you as > well''? Wrong from any reasonable analytical point of view. The point of view of the people you mention above is PRESUMPTIVE in the extreme: have an experience, attribute it to causes YOU wish to attribute it to, ... > Without evidence showing verifiable evidence of a thing's > existence, or its observed effect on the "physical" world, via > Occam people would generally assume that it does not exist > until evidence of a viable nature presents itself. > > Again, wrong for the same reasons. I already *have* evidence, the > problem is that *you* won't accept it. You are waiting for evidence > that you will accept. The question becomes -- how likely is it that I > will *ever* present evidence that you will accept? Currently, I think > that the answer is ``extremely unlikely''. At this point, I generally > pack it in. What is it about my criteria that would make it impossible for me to accept your evidence? Is there something wrong with the criteria? What does it erroneously exclude? OR is there something wrong with the evidence? > The *possibility* that it may exist is left open, but such a > possibility evinces itself if and only if evidence is presented > to support it. > > Again, this argument is only good if there in fact *is* no evidence. If > there *is* evidence then in dealing with you I have a problem. Either > the problem is one of communication, or the problem is that you are in > some way incapable of understanding even perfect communication. YOUR perfect communication? Let's hear your evidence, Laura, and let's subject it to some real scrutiny, rather than simply listening to Arndtian utterances that there IS evidence. > However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of > deities and other forms of the so-called supernatural despite > the lack of realistic evidence. > > No. you cannot badger me into saying that my evidence is ``not > realistic'' because it does not suit you. You keep talking about your evidence, but you don't offer any of it. Don Black's kind plays the same sort of game, asserting the existence of evidence without providing it. If you're not playing such a game, then I would think you'd want to produce some of that evidence. > One can only assume that 1) these people have a different set > of criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have > some vested interest in believing that particular outcome of > analysis that they believe to be true. > > The other assumption is that the people who do not accept the evidence > have some sort of problem which prevents them from accepting what they > normally would accept. What might that "problem" be, Laura? It's becoming clear that this is not a reasoned reply but simply a series of repeated "you're wrong because you don't like my evidence" whinings. I've repeatedly described why such evidence is not reasonable. It's now up to you to explain why scientific criteria for evidence are wrong by omitting your evidence. Evidence isn't an equal employment opportunity situation where you can claim "he's discriminating against my evidence because it doesn't hold to his standards, thus he's wrong". There's a reason why there are standards. > Quite possibly both. I think we have shown endless times that > the nature of the subjective evidence offered in favor of > religious belief is tainted: How come your subjectivity shows > a different world view than someone else's? > > What is so odd about that? People have different world views regardless > of what experience is being evaluated. Why do some people like rock > music and some people like classical and some people like both? > > Which one is right? > > Yes, you want to ask that question. A good many mystics *don't* and > find it quite irrelevant. They either say ``they are all right'' or > ``they are all wrong'' depending. THIS is what you wish to submit as evidence of the reality of the existence of supernatural phenomena??? > If he/she is being deceived, how can you be sure it is not YOU > who has been deceived? > > You can't be absolutely sure. But you apply the same procedure that you > apply to find inconsistencies in any other beliefs that you have. By > the way, your phrasing ``YOU who has been deceived'' implies that the > deception is something that something else does to you. This fits into > the ``my religion is correct, yours is inspired by Satan'' model which > very few Christians use all across the board these days. Many > Christians use it to refer to a few religions, but at least they don't > seem to use it towards major religions any more. This is not the > generic mystic position which is more along the lines of ``deception is > something that you do to yourself''. True. External experiences, education, conditioning, etc. may effect (not just *A*ffect) such deception. > (Not to mention the way the brain is known to impose patterns > onto events/phenomena/ observations that upon closer > examination are shown to be quite wrong---like "recognizing" > someone at the airport and realizing that it wasn't them after > all.) > > If you mean this as an attempt to discredit mystics experiences as > happening at all, I would counter that by this logic you should not > believe that you ever recognise anyone since you could be mistaken. > If this is to insinuate that people who have religious experiences do > not question that they could be mistaken in interpreting them, then the > insinuation is wildly off the mark -- this is the second most common > topic of discussion whenever 2 or more mystics get together anywhere I > have been. (The first is ``comparing notes''...) So? It's not just an insinuation. You are talking about OTHERS' actions in mystical experiences, but you yourself in this very article are showing exactly the opposite: a complete lack of questioning the presumptions on which you are choosing to base the experiences. > With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might > readily accept the notion of the existence of a god (or any > other "supernatural" entity or form) is precisely because they > already believe it to be so: they hold the existence of such a > thing as an assumption, an axiom, and work ALL analysis of the > world from there. > > But here you reveal the axiom that you are using -- that the reason > Rich Rosen does not accept the evidence for the supernatural is that > such evidence does not exist. You conclusion, ``wishful thinking'' > follows from that. But what about your axiom? How can you be sure that > this is not ``wishful thinking'' on your part? But I showed above (and you seem to have shown by the very absence of presentation of hard evidence in your onw articles) that my "axiom" is correct. Only it's not an axiom---it's based on the state of the evidence. > "Why is life full of problems? Because god designed the world > that way knowing that it would be best for us not to have a > perfect life but rather to struggle and learn." Contrast this > with the simpler, less presumptive notion that life is full of > problems because all those problems are simply a part of the > natural flow of things, based on what we observe and codify as > physical laws. > > ``The natural flow of things'' is, from my perspective, a lot less > simple than ``because God wanted it that way''. What makes you say that > it is simpler? Because a "natural flow of things" simply means things happening because of the way things happen. Observation and codification of these "behaviors" through rigorous standards is called a "scientific method". But, getting back to the point, adding in the deity variable means making an assumption about this natural flow---that it is directed and "caused" by a force of will that permeates the universe. My own belief is that if there's anything akin to a deity out there, it is as a consciousness of the universe analogous to a human being's consciousness. > We experience them as problems because they conflict with our > wishes for a world ordered around our lives, and because such > conflicts are inevitable in a world with trillions of organisms > and objects caught up in the "natural flow". > > Are such conflicts *really* inevitable? If our understanding *really* > grew, is it not possible that we could learn to avoid such conflicts > and not act in a manner that puts one into conflict with other > organisms? Maybe. If I recall, one tenet of Buddhism is that it is desire that causes suffering (or, of you will, problems). The fewer desires you have, the fewer interests you have, the fewer interests you might have in conflict with other people and things, the fewer problems there are. I don't see problems (or suffering) as things that MUST be avoided in some idealistic world -- I tend to think they are a part of existence, and I am unwilling to give up my personal interests and desires solely for the purpose of avoiding "suffering". > As opposed to assuming, for whatever reason, the existence of > an ultimate "good" force that "designed" the universe to be a > certain way. > > This assumption is characteristic of theistic religions, but not > non-theistic religions. (Characteristic of religions, but not necessarily other belief systems.) Agreed. Such belief systems don't necessarily make that specific assumption about the nature of the creation/design of the universe. > These assumptions are not confined to religions (or, if you > prefer, theistic religions). The belief in so-called > "supernatural" phenomena of all sorts stems from the same sort > of presumptions. > > This statement is utterly inconsistent with religiojus belief that > ``good'' and ``evil'' as such do not exist, or that teh universe was > not created, or that the universe *is* God. I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you? My statement says that non-religious oriented belief systems such as yours have beliefs regarding supernatural phenomena that stem from the same SORT of presumptions. Not the same ones. Why are you trying so desperately to shove words down my throat? > For example, when statements are made about the similarities > between experiences of "mystics" of different belief systems, > this is cited as "evidence" that there is a supernatural force > behind them, rather than the more likely rational > > ``more likely'' -- here we find the embedded axiom that the existing > evidence is not good enough again... You betchum, Red Rider. And I've said why. And you still haven't offered any evidence to boot. > possibilities centering on simple human psychology and > biochemistry---the "physical" realm that some people would > claim that these experiences are (a priori) not a part of. > > What an incredibly small number of mystics you must have talked to, > Rich. I do not know a *single* one who claims that these experiences > have nothing to do with psychology and biochemistry. This leaves the > big question open, though. Psychology and biochemistry are facets of > the relationship that a man has with the rest of whatever-there-is -- > God, the rest of the world, the supernatural, whatever. Here we go again. Psychology and biochemistry are just names of sciences describing study of realms of the physical world, with which your mystics would claim that their experiences CAN NOT be totally explained by. It's like the other discussion we've been having---you claim "there are certain questions that cannot be answered" a priori. I was not alone in noting how presumptuous that is. The same applies to what I say above. [CONTINUED] -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/12/85)
> What you need is a theory of meaning. Are my religious experiences any > more or any less meaningful than my expriences of a symphony, or of my > friends, or of any readoing on cosmology that I happen to be doing, or > watching a tv soap opera, or getting drunk? How one decides on how more > or less meaningful these things are depends on what values a person > holds. How one gets what values one has is a good question. You and I > will never agree to how it happens, however, since I think that certain > values are freely chosen, and you don't believe in free will. Meaningfulness to individual people is always ALWAYS subjective. What's meaningful to you has ONLY to do with you and your experience and perception. Likewise with me. If any of us are lucky enough to find someone who shares our particular subjective meaningfulnesses about events/things/etc. then so much the better. But what's meaningful to an individual may in fact be a completely disjoint set from reality. That doesn't make their experience any less meaningful to them, but if they intend to live in this physical world, and if their "meaningfulnesses" conflict head on with reality, they're in trouble. > (Again, the question always left unanswered: what is meant by > "non-physical" or "supernatural", if not "beyond that which > humans can perceive"?) > > Ah, beyond which *certain* humans can perceive. The people who claim to > be doing the perceiving don't think that they are doing something which > they cannot do. To quote a famous philosopher: "Huh?" This is EXACTLY what I described above: the presumption that that which is perceived during the experience MUST be explained ONLY by "supernatural" causes. The point of my paragraph was that the word itself has no realistic meaning: if it means beyond the natural, and if natural means "that which is", then it means nothing. If natural means "that which we can observe", then I claim that that's a bogus definition, which changes with scientific discoveries like the microscope. Thus, the very concept of a "supernatural" is realistically meaningless. > I contend that all such analysis of the world by religious > believers, and the answers offered in such analysis, stem > directly from an a priori assumption of the existence of god, > or of some supernatural force of their own design. > Lewis' works are prime examples. Jeff Sargent, for example, > has used the phraseology "Why would you want to believe that > human beings are 'nothing but' lab specimens?" (... when you > have this other possibility to believe instead.) Laura > Creighton has spoken in net.philosophy of how without the > existence of "free will", she would find her existence > meaningless, and how thus she chooses to believe in free will. > > No. I do not ``choose to believe in free will''. I am incapable of > actually disbelieving it. There is a difference -- you (strangely for > someone who does not believe in free will) imply that I *could* choose > to not believe in it. But I find the effort of *trying* to disbelieve > in free will produces results which are sufficient for me to > extrapolate *if* I could disbelieve in free will *then* I would kill > myself. We've been through that in other discussions. Your choices are made by your internal biochemistry, and that biochemistry is influences by other chemicals inside your own body (try thinking clearly when you have heartburn) AND experiences outside of it. If I could logically convince you that your reasoning is flawed, and if you incorporate that into your knowledge base, then you would indeed "choose" not to believe in free will. The reason that, as you say yourself, you are "incapable of disbelieving it", is because your own constructs are set up so as to inhibit such reasoning from being so incorporated. (As with any evidence on any subject, which, when presented to certain people, they "refuse to believe"). To change that, you have to actually go back to altering the very patterning constructs you impose on knowledge entering your brain. And, maybe, to change *that*, you have to go back further and change something deeper. I don't know about you, but I find the workings of the brain in this matter fascinating. Maybe these are the reasons why some people have to spend years in analysis. > "Wanting to believe", the desirability of holding certain > beliefs as opposed to others owing to their intrinsic > "aesthetic" value rather than their veracity, becomes a factor > in forming belief systems for certain people. > > But I care about *both* veracity and aesthetic values. If so, then you also feel the need for rigorous standards of evidence for analysis. And if these standards exclude your evidence, you wouldn't blame the standards, you'd take another look at the evidence. > Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of > god/the supernatural as a given (obviously I and many others > simply do not), if not because you have some vested interest in > believing that it is so, what I have endlessly and perhaps > monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING? (From here on in, > please assume that phrases akin to "existence of god" refer to > "existence of any presumed supernatural phenomena".) > > Because we think that we have sufficient evidence and for some reason > you can't accept it. Perhaps you have a vested interest in not seeing > it; perhaps you honestly can't see it; perhaps you *could* but just > couldn't be bothered to. I'd be bothered to if you offered it. You've spent a whole article talking about it but never offering any of it. > Given that we are dealing with two forms of logic, one of which > starts off making the assumption that god exists and the other > of which does not, > > Your claim, Rich. Your axiom. Atheists discover religion and religious > people become atheists. Both religious and non-religious people would > dispute that ``there is a good'' or ``there is no god'' was an axiom in > their thinking. But I've shown above that the ONLY way to get to the "I believe in god" state is to either accept the assumption from the start, OR to say what-if with the assumption, analyze, see that it's all consistent, but somehow forget that the assumption was not a given in the first place. > a person using one form of logic cannot possibly convince the > person using the other form of logic to accept his position. > > This doesn't explain why people leave or join churches very well. Perhaps because it has nothing to do with logic. > This is not always true, because the two forms of logic and > their two sets of assumptions are NOT disjoint sets. In fact, > for most reasonable people, they are practically equivalent, > with the addition of the a priori assumption of god being the > only major difference between the two sets. Conclusions drawn > from the two sets of assumptions, however, can and will (and > do) wind up being radically different. The "impossibility of > convincing" that I mentioned above only comes into play when > the "extra" assumption has a role in the formation of some > conclusion. > > Again -- why do conversions happen? Why do people leave the church? Leave the church? If I answered that by saying "Because they saw the erroneousness of the assumptions through some enlightening experience", I'd be slaughtered alive for heresy, wouldn't I? Join the church? Religions fulfill some people's emotional needs (I'm not using or even implying the term usually inserted at this point---"crutch"). Needs of belonging to a group. Needs to feel certain things about the world. For some people the need is so very great that rational analysis is absolutely irrelevant and unimportant to them at that time. Once they are ingrained in the belief system, in any such belief system, if you accept its consistency, and if you choose not to ask why the assumptions are being made, you're there for good. > Religions have (individually and collectively) formed whole > volumes of such conclusions and codified them. In many cases, > "existence of god" and other assumptions don't even enter into > certain of these conclusions, and they form viable conclusions > about the world at large and life itself. (Some have devoted > entire lifetimes to thinking and writing about such analysis > and conclusions.) In other cases, assumptions about the nature > of god and "god's word" take precedence over both scientific > investigation and individual human needs. > The conflict comes into play where "existence of god" > assumptions (compounded by assumptions about what IS "god's > word" and who is qualified to be god's authority representative > on earth) are contradicted by rational inquisitive analysis and > investigation of the world itself, or by individual human needs > (arbitrarily?) denied/forbidden/not met by "god's word". Those > who make such assumptions may deny the claims of the > investigators (in "protest") solely because the claims would > force them to change their whole view of the universe based on > the evidence. If those people are in positions of earthly > authority, we may witness repression of such ideas, and of > people who hold them. We HAVE witnessed such repression in the > past, and we may be witnessing it again today. Some belief > systems that include notions of supernatural phenomena and even > deities do not fit this mold. I am specifically talking about > those that do. > > So, if you had made this clear 2 months ago, we wouldn't have had all > of this trouble. I did. The only part of this section, I recall, that was re-written for "the Mark III Beast" (this version of the article) was the last two sentences. If you recall, I was talking about religion, and I think by now you know that my definition of religion is on the strict side. Thus, as I also said two months ago, I wasn't talking about non-impositional belief systems of ANY sort, regardless of their being "theistic" or "non-theistic". This was all in there. You, as we've seen, chose to harp on one particular part. Now you see why in actuality it was really irrelevant to what I was trying to say. You could have substituted the word "theistic religion" in there if it made you feel better. YOU were the source of encouragement for me to rewrite the article to include all of the things you would refer to as religions. -- Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts. Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (04/13/85)
Rich, before you said that all subjective evidence was to be rejected because it was subjective. What good does it do me to present evidence if you are just going to reject it because it is subjective? What I was trying to do is to demonstrate that your beliefs are no less rigid than certain people that you were accusing of ``wishful thinking''. I didn't think that you had a shortage of evidence for the existence of religious experiences -- I thought that you had lots and rejected them all because they were subjective. This leaves a lot of people in a bind. You first reject all subjective evidence and then you say that there is no evidence. This doesn't help when you are overcome with a dread feeling and then discover that night that your best friend was killed at that time. It doesn't explain why you sometimes know that a friend who hasn't talked to you in weeks is on the other end when the telephone rings. It doesn't help when you are rudely shaken up walking through a park and feel that you are the plants and the trees and flowers growing beside you. It doesn't explain why you suddenly feel like calling your mother, who you haven't talked to in weeks and that when you phone her you discover that her best friend has just told her that she (her friend) has cancer. It doesn't explain why once (and only once) you have cut a regular deck of playing cards and named 30 cards correctly. It doesn't explain why meditation sometimes works on migraine headaches. Suppose you keep records and discover that you cannot account for all that happens by coincidence or chance. Then what? You still have nothing but subjective evidence which people can deny ever happened -- but you might want to shop around and see if anybody else has any explanations of what happened. Suppose your subjective evidence fits descriptions of somebody else's religious experiences? Suppose you never even knew the first thing about that religion before you started having these bizarre things happen in your life. I would maintain that you had rather strong subjective evidence for the truth of that religion. Not that that religion was absolutely true. Not that there was no truth in other religions. But that that religion had some truth, which you could grasp and find relevant. But - the evidence is still subjective. And you always could be mistaken, along with a lot of other people. Or you could be lying. Your claims will never stand up to a persistent skeptic who is determined to believe that you are either lying or a victim of mass hallucination, or mistaken or a victim of your own wishful thinking. There is no way to avoid this. The best you can aim for is the understanding from the point of view of the skeptic that you are sincere. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/17/85)
> before you said that all subjective evidence was to be rejected because > it was subjective. What good does it do me to present evidence if you > are just going to reject it because it is subjective? What I was trying > to do is to demonstrate that your beliefs are no less rigid than > certain people that you were accusing of ``wishful thinking''. I > didn't think that you had a shortage of evidence for the existence of > religious experiences -- I thought that you had lots and rejected them > all because they were subjective. This leaves a lot of people in a bind. > You first reject all subjective evidence and then you say that there is > no evidence. Same thing. What good does it do you, you ask? None. Because, as you yourself seem to acknowledge, such "evidence" is fraught with fallacy and flaw. The reason for being "rigid" is to ensure that flawed preconceptions do not get "into the mix" that results in an (erroneous) conclusion. It's that simple. The evidence, because of its extremely poor quality, is useless in determining the realities of the physical world. The nature of an individual human mind, the goings-on inside a particular person's head, yes, such experience is real to them and provides information about them. But what does itsay in relation to the world at large? Let's take a very poor example off the top of my head: a child whose parent has remarried sees the new step-parent, for whatever reason, as being cruel and mean. Any punishment by the new stepparent is seen as cruel beatings and abuse. The child grows up thinking that this stepparent has abused her. Does that make it so? That person may live with that perception of another person for the rest of her life, but that doesn't make it so. It's the same with ALL subjective evidence. > This doesn't help when you are overcome with a dread feeling and then > discover that night that your best friend was killed at that time. It > doesn't explain why you sometimes know that a friend who hasn't > talked to you in weeks is on the other end when the telephone rings. > It doesn't help when you are rudely shaken up walking through a park and feel > that you are the plants and the trees and flowers growing beside you. > It doesn't explain why you suddenly feel like calling your mother, who > you haven't talked to in weeks and that when you phone her you discover > that her best friend has just told her that she (her friend) has cancer. > It doesn't explain why once (and only once) you have cut a regular deck > of playing cards and named 30 cards correctly. It doesn't explain > why meditation sometimes works on migraine headaches. Nor does it explain the other numerous times when you are overcome with a dread feeling and then nothing happens. Or the times when something does happen that you had no "foreknowledge" of. Or the times that you thought of someone and they DIDN'T call. All these times are just as statistically significant as the times you mention, but somehow they don't counted into the mixture, making the times you mention seem more significant than they are. About meditation working on migraine headaches: I can think of a number of very obvious physical reasons why relaxation of the brain and body might just cause alleviation of pain. But those explanation don't seem to be of interest to you: you are specifically seeking and assuming explanations that are outside the realm because you WANT to believe in such explanations. I won't repeat what that's so often called... > Suppose you keep records and discover that you cannot account for all > that happens by coincidence or chance. Then what? You still have > nothing but subjective evidence which people can deny ever happened -- > but you might want to shop around and see if anybody else has any > explanations of what happened. Suppose your subjective evidence fits > descriptions of somebody else's religious experiences? Suppose you > never even knew the first thing about that religion before you > started having these bizarre things happen in your life. I would > maintain that you had rather strong subjective evidence for the > truth of that religion. What does that mean "cannot account for"? Are you seeking a particular "accounting for" for the experiences? Someone else's subjective evidence matches my experience? Perhaps we were both ingrained with similar notions of what such experience would be like, based on teachings about religion and/or deities. Perhaps it stems from basic human instincts that are part of our brain makeup. Again, these explanations are not of interest to you. Jump right to the "mystical" instead. > But - the evidence is still subjective. And you always could be > mistaken, along with a lot of other people. Or you could be lying. > Your claims will never stand up to a persistent skeptic who is > determined to believe that you are either lying or a victim of > mass hallucination, or mistaken or a victim of your own wishful > thinking. There is no way to avoid this. The best you can aim for > is the understanding from the point of view of the skeptic that you > are sincere. The fact that even the most sincere will not accept the problems with their own methodology of cataloguing the experience and analyzing it. "No, it's not based on those things you say, it's real because I say so and I'm sincere" doesn't cut it. The fact that they refuse to acknowledge the problems with their own "evidence" is a form of "insincerity", though not what I'd call a "malicious" insincerity. -- "Wait a minute. '*WE*' decided??? *MY* best interests????" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/19/85)
>>However, obviously some people do believe in the existence of deities and >>other forms of the so-called supernatural despite the lack of realistic >>evidence. One can only assume that 1) these people have a different set of >>criteria for acceptability of evidence, and/or 2) they have some vested >>interest... > These people are no different from you or me. [ELLIS] So? > As mentioned in another article, you apparently believe in your > own thoughts. They are plainly nonobjective. As are all thoughts and perceptions. The difference between perceptions generated by stringent rules of analysis and perceptions generated by believing in what you wish to believe because you want to is as wide as the Grand Canyon. > Determinism, which cause you have espoused in many previous articles, > is not only a philosophically unjustified leap of faith on your part, > it is also probably unscientific. Probably? Fine, because I don't believe in determinism any more than I believe in free will, because both require (different sets of) determiners, which is itself a leap of faith. As you said. > Yet you BELIEVE. See above. What is it I believe in? >>With that in mind, the only other reason that such people might readily >>accept the notion of the existence of a god (or any other "supernatural" >>entity or form) is precisely because they already believe it to be so: they >>hold the existence of such a thing as an assumption, an axiom, and work ALL >>analysis of the world from there. > For example, determinism. There is a glut of believers in determinism > on this net. At least most Christians and Jews recognize that their > belief is part of a religion; the fanatical believers of determinism > incorrectly claim to have objective scientific support for their dogma. > This makes them very difficult to reason with. I have yet to see anyone who actually believes in a true determinism. (one exception was someone who postulated that we are all determined by the mind of god...) For reasons mentioned above. For the same reasons that people like me reject presumptive wishful thinking notions about free will. >>Thus my question is: why DO you presume the existence of god/the >>supernatural as a given (obviously I and many others simply do not), if not >>because you have some vested interest in believing that it is so, what I >>have endlessly and perhaps monotonously labelled as WISHFUL THINKING? (From >>here on in, please assume that phrases akin to "existence of god" refer to >>"existence of any presumed supernatural phenomena".) > Since you hold so many supernatural beliefs yourself, the > answer to this question should be apparent upon introspection. Which ones were you referring to? I always thought what I was proposing went strictly for the non-presumptive as much as possible---avoiding notions like personal determiners (free will) and universal determiners (gods or deities or overall determining agents of sorts), avoiding such presumptions entirely. SUPERnatural??? -- "It's a lot like life..." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (04/19/85)
You first reject all subjective evidence and then you say that there is no evidence. Same thing. What good does it do you, you ask? None. Because, as you yourself seem to acknowledge, such "evidence" is fraught with fallacy and flaw. The reason for being "rigid" is to ensure that flawed preconceptions do not get "into the mix" that results in an (erroneous) conclusion. It's that But, if we all worked that way, nobody would ever discover anything. Everybody would curl up under a rock because they might make a flawed conclusion. What is so terribly wrong with making mistakes that one must eliminate such large areas of one's life so as to avoid making mistakes? Making mistakes is a terrific way to learn. simple. The evidence, because of its extremely poor quality, is useless in determining the realities of the physical world. I don't think that it is useless. I think it needs a great deal of further study. But this is true of anything which is not understood very well. The nature of an individual human mind, the goings-on inside a particular person's head, yes, such experience is real to them and provides information about them. But what does itsay in relation to the world at large? Let's take a very poor example [Your example of the step-parent here.] This example is only good if you assume that the child is mistaken about the step-parent. If the step-parent is actually beating the child then your analogy washes up. How unfortunate for the child who tries to tell you that they have been beaten up only to be told that they are making it all up. I already know that I have a few flawed perceptions of my childhood (I know I remember things that took months as happening in much less time) but this does not make my recollections useless. It makes certain dogmatic statements I might make open to question, but this is not the same thing as ``useless''. Nor does it explain the other numerous times when you are overcome with a dread feeling and then nothing happens. Or the times when something does happen that you had no "foreknowledge" of. Or the times that you thought of someone and they DIDN'T call. All these times are just as statistically significant as the times you mention, but somehow they don't counted into the mixture, making the times you mention seem more significant than they are. Rich, I am not sure that you are reading what I am writing. I told you I kept notes of these things. I don't get overcome by dread feelings all the time. I know who is on the phone when it rings far too often to be accounted for by chance. I kept records for 5 years about these things, all the while desparately looking for a reason to believe that they were *not* happening - because I was much more comfortable with a world view where such things *didn't* happen. Eventually, I came to the grim conclusion that intellectual honesty required me to acknowledge that these things were happening even though it was going to be uncomfortable to deal with the skeptics, whose position I had a great deal more emotional sympathy with (but were either being intellectually dishoenst in denying that these things were happening (bletch) or who honestly didn't have these things happen to them (how odd - I wonder why?)) and worse, to deal with the religious people I knew whom I quite frankly thought were crazy and whom I quite justifiably feared (the private school I was attending at the time taught that all relgious experiences, even those claimed by the born-again Christians and Charismatics were strictly from the devil and was big on ``corporal punishment as a way of beating the devil out of you''. I was already getting into trouble for being a discipline problem [translation -- questioning the authorities at the time and in general being a shit disturber] and had had my science fiction and D&D articles from Chainmail confiscated and had been publically strapped for playing D&D on school premises.) Plus there were other terrors. I had to face the possibility that I might never get a consistent explanation of the universe and its workings. I might always be stuck with ad-hoc kludge explanations, all of which might have to be abandoned in the light of new experiences which were happening frequently enough to really rock me. I cannot conceive of a situation where it would be more likely for me to want to wishfully deny that these things were happening. Quite frankly, I *still* want to deny that they are happening at times. But this is dishonest, and if I sacrifice intellectual integrity then I have nothing left. [Aside to Christians who are reading this -- yes, I know now that I was exposed to a particularily nasty and perhaps even ``unchristian'' form of Christianity. At the time it was all I knew. I still can't get the bad taste out of my mouth.] About meditation working on migraine headaches: I can think of a number of very obvious physical reasons why relaxation of the brain and body might just cause alleviation of pain. But those explanation don't seem to be of interest to you: you are specifically seeking and assuming explanations that are outside the realm because you WANT to believe in such explanations. You keep harping on this one. I don't know. Is there anything I can say which will disuade you of this notion? I do not see myself as working this way at all. I think that you miss out on some great questions here by assuming that ``there is an obvious physical reason'' which explains this. I am allergic to certain orange colourings that are found in orange foods - especially orange cheeses. I think that stuff that I am alllergic to is called ``achiote'' -- it may be achiote in combination with something else that is put in cheeses, but it *isn't* carotene. Why should meditation help with poisoning? I don't know. My father's specialty (in the days when he could do lab work) is the effects of various chemicals on the brain. He doesn't know either. Have you ever worked in a computer facility where there are thorough but surprisingly dim-witted operators? i have. the people I am talking about do not have any understanding of computer hardware, or operating systems, or even software in general. What they do have is a thick book of operator proceedures -- a list of ``if this goes wrong, do that''. They do it - all uncomprehendingly and mechanically. Quite often I feel that I am in such a position -- I don't have a systemetic and comprehensive understanding of what is going on - just a rather bizarre list of procedures, some of which make a certain amount of sense and a lot of which does not. What is worse, my procedures have been written down by other operators, many of whom I think had a poorer understanding of what is going on than I do. It is all highly unsatisfactory - especially since I harbour strong doubts that I will ever be able to understand more than a small part of it. It may require a better intellect than I or (worse yet) anybody has. I find the notion highly uncomfortable, since I would really like to understand everything - but I have to muddle through anyway with whatever I have. I should dearly love to find a religion (or a non-religion) that has an explanation of the universe and all that it is in it which would give me a consistent model of the universe which I could not find flaws with. So far, I have not found one, and I do not expect to find one. Some, however, come closer than others. So I take what I find useful and file the rest under ``incomprehensible -- check back in a few years'' or ``fundamentally in conflict with X which I think is real -- check back if my beliefs in X undergo a strong change''. If you are true to form you will claim that the above means that I dismiss beliefs that I do not like. All that I can say is that I never do this intentionally. A lot slips by me, of course, but I tend to run into the same problems again and again until I get the message, notice what I am doing, and do more serious thinking. I do not think that it is possible for me to do much better -- or for anyone, for that matter, because the essential problem of unexamined beliefs is that they are, by definition, unexamined. No matter how hard you try to examine everything, you get tired, or lazy, or in a rush or for some reason are not paying enough attention and -- whoops -- another one slips in. I can only hope that the inconsistencies will get to bother me in soon enough time so that I will notice them and thus dispose of another unexamined belief. I may be up against a non-halting problem, though -- the better I pay attention the more beliefs I find that I should examine - either for the first time or again. I believe that I shall be dead before I examine them all unless I can get around the ``sorceror's apprentice'' problem. And I can't think of anything I can do about that, either. What does that mean "cannot account for"? Are you seeking a particular "accounting for" for the experiences? Do you mean ``do I have a set notion and will reject those notions which aren't the one I am looking for''? In that case, no. Do you mean ``Do I have some ability which I use to distinguish a plausible sounding explanation from one I find not plausible?'' In that case, yes. Do you mean ``Do you have an infallible way to tell the truth from a set of plausible explanations?'' -- Oh, how I wish! :-) Someone else's subjective evidence matches my experience? Perhaps we were both ingrained with similar notions of what such experience would be like, based on teachings about religion and/or deities. this doesn't explain why people of dissimilar backgrounds have similar experiences, or why one might have experiences which correspond to religious descriptions that one has never heard of. Perhaps it stems from basic human instincts that are part of our brain makeup. Again, these explanations are not of interest to you. Come again? These explanations are of tremendous interest to me. This, however, opens the great can of worms ``what is `basic human instincts'?'' What you seem to be assuming is that religions have no interest in basic human instincts, which is false. Every religion talks about a model of what the basic human condition is, and has some suggestions on how one should live in order to live better. They are *all* interested in human nature. Jump right to the "mystical" instead. But, what I am talking about has traditionally been called ``mystical''. I don't see the harm in the word. If I attained enlightenment tomorrow and really understood - totally and completely what a mystical experience really is and why there are some in the first place I would still have to explain it to people somehow. Shall I publish a glossary of 100,000 terms i have invented so as to avoid using terms like ``religion'' and ``mystical''? To what purpose? My detractors will apply these words (and other words like ``cult'') to what I write or say anyway. The parapsychologists have been doing this for years - but i find their explanations as unsatisfactory as any I have come across for all that they use scientific language. And what they are doing is called ``mysticism'' anyway. [That the parapsychologists have promised reproducable results, and are even worse at delivering them than certain religious practicioners does not help their cause any - nor does the open hostility with which certain notable parapsychologists view religious believers in general.] The fact that even the most sincere will not accept the problems with their own methodology of cataloguing the experience and analyzing it. "No, it's not based on those things you say, it's real because I say so and I'm sincere" doesn't cut it. The fact that they refuse to acknowledge the problems with their own "evidence" is a form of "insincerity", though not what I'd call a "malicious" insincerity. Rich, this is blatantly false. This is not what happens at all. If, instead, you mean ``the most sincere will not dismiss all subjective things as being unintersting or unuseful because they are subjective'' then you are correct. But the literature abounds with discussion on the problems with the whole thing. You cannot have done a very thorough research job and missed this one. I cannot help but suspect that you have your own preconceived notion as to what mystics actually believe and that you have not bothered to find out whether they actually do believe this. Of course, it is possible that you happen to be associating with a few mystics who actually behave as you insinuate, in which case your mistake is most normal and understandable. However, it is still a mistake to judge that all mystics behave as you seem to believe that they do, because so many of them do not. If you are going to research this any further, I have suggestions on terminology. Mystics run into 3 very definite types of criticism often enough and you phrase things in such a way as to get many of their backs up. The first criticism is ``you are lying''. My canonical response to this is to tell the critic to go to hell. I figure that anything else is a waste of effort. Other people try to demonstrate that they are not lying, though. There are variations on how people say that to people, though. ``It's not real'' and ``that is only wishful thinking'' has been used that way in the past. It saves the critic from actually having to come out and accuse someone of mendacity, but, from the critics point of view exposes the mystic in front of an audience who can reach the ``lying'' conclusion without any help. Variations on this theme are ``you are a fraud'' and ``you are a charlatan''. I do not believe that this is what you have been asserting, but I am warning you that some people will take it that way. The second criticism is ``you need a psychiatrist''. The assumption is not that the mystic is insincere, but that the mystic cannot perceive reality well enough to know what is real from what is unreal. ``It's not real'' gets used by these people as well. I find these people a lot more difficult to deal with than the first sort. My grandmother (who believes in Hellfire and Damnation) used to say ``The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.''. I don't believe in Hellfire, but I find some truth in that saying. An out and out hostile critic is a lot easier to deal with than someone who is ``only interested in your own good, dear''. The thoroughly frustrating thing about this situation is that there is *absolutely* *nothing* that you can say in your defense. Everything you say can, and will, be used against you. I tend to ignore these people and hope that they go away. If they do not go away, then, either I leave, or I get as rude and nasty and sarcastic as I can (which is pretty sarcastic) and try to drive them away. I don't have anything to lose, since they already think I am crazy. The nice thing about this solution is that either you succeed in driving the person off, or you don't -- but by then things are so miserable that you find it is in your best interest to leave yourself, which means that any way you slice it the problem will get dealt with. I would like a better solution, though, since it really bugs me when I have to abandon an otherwise nice situation because of one well meaning person who is driving me up the wall. The third criticism is ``your experiences are real. Your explanation is flawed. I have a better one.'' These people are good to meet and talk to. However, they stop being fun if they have overbearing and dogmatic tendancies, because they don't listen to your criticisms of their explanations. There is a certain type of materialist and a certain type of religious believer who chronically has this problem. I believe that you are one of them. I do not know why it is that you believe that my evidence is so flawed, and I do not know why you think that removing the words ``religion'' ``mystical'' and ``supernatural'' is a giant step in the right direction. I have no problem removing the words, (except that it will mean that I ned to use a different vocabulary when talking to you than when talking to anybody else, which will be inconvenient) but I don't see that your explanation is going to help me figure out more ways of noticing when i am getting a migraine (so I can stop it) or stopping it when I have left the noticing for too long, or any number of things which I want to do. They are all out of the range of materialist explanations. ``Can't happen'' is the standard reply - followed by criticism number one or criticism number two as per above. Of coruse, there are a lot of scientists who do not work this way. Psychology departments are generally not as hostile to discussions. But - as you have undobtably noticed - they, too haven't got their shit together. Between Freud, Jung and Skinner (to pick 3 notables) there is as much room for disagreement as there is back in the religion departments. Psychology is a new and fuzzy science. I would have more respect for it if it was a little harder as a science goes. However, I realise that the nature of the human mind may be such that hardness will forever elude psychology, and that, even if this is not the case, I am likely to be dead long before it hardens up. It is enough to make me sincerely wish that there is truth to reincarnation (though alas, I cannot believe it) because I would dearly love to try out the lifetime experiment in another thousand years -- assuming that we avoid any great ecological disasters that wipes out human life utterly. [I suppose, while I am hoping, I might as well hope big and hope for reincarnation as an extra-terrestrial intelligent life form. No doubt that would provide interesting insights into all sorts of problems.] Laura Creighton utzoo!laura ps - I am moving and losing net access next Thursday. I will resurface someday. I will probably not have time to reply to many (or maybe even any) of the replies that this note generates. [Please don't send me mail asking if this is for real. It is. You will only get bounced mail messages and increase people's phone bills.] It's been fun, people. I have met a lot of super people here, and made some good friends. And I learned some things too - how wonderful! Rest assured that I will give a shout when I get a new uucp address.
barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (04/23/85)
>> = me > = Rich Rosen >If, by "internal (as opposed to external) deity", you mean some sort of >self-determiner evincing free will, the same things really do apply. See >my discussions with Ms. Creighton on the subject. Well, I do believe in free will, but let's deal with one disagreement at a time. My belief in free will and my suggestion of an internally perceived deity are unrelated. All I was suggesting was that the notion of deity can be a useful organizing principle for describing one's perceptions of reality. If it were proved to me that I had no free will (probably impossible - free will, or the lack of same, look like untestable hypotheses, to me) my "internal deity" suggestion would be unaffected. The concept is a difficult one to get across, I know, so I hope you'll be patient with me. What I am trying to suggest is that it is possible to attach concepts like "meaning" or "purpose" to existence, without necessarily concluding there is some conscious entity, external to ourselves, that provides that meaning and purpose; that we could have intuitions about the nature of reality that were true, even if they lacked the support of either strict deductive argument *or* an external divinity. I think we'd agree that concepts like meaning and purpose are constructs that we overlay on the external world, and (probably) have no meaning in the purely objective sense. Where we disagree is in the conclusions we draw from this. You argue, in standard reductionist fashion, that the subjectivity of such notions renders them trivial and purely personal. You also seem to conclude that the rest of us recognize this as true, in that you seem convinced that we must somehow be arguing for the existence of an external deity, or at least a personal will that is unbound by cause-and-effect constraints. But I, at least, am *not* arguing for this. I am instead suggesting that you underrate the personal and subjective, without disagreeing that the matters we are discussing are, indeed, subjective. Our experience of existence is a meld of the subjective and objective. It consists of our minds receiving sense-impressions of an external reality, and creating from this a model of what that external reality is like. I see in my model an order, unity, and purpose that I may even call God (on alternate Tuesdays :-)), since I don't have a good name for it, and "God" is a very flexible term that needs less bending to suit my needs than most other terms would. But what I'm really trying to do is to work *around* the unanswerable question of the existence/nonexistence of an external deity by asking myself, "Why do you want to know?"; "What's the purpose of your question?"; "What are you *really* asking?". In Hegelian terms, I'm looking for a synthesis of the theist/atheist dialectic. What I've concluded is that the central mystery is my *own existence*; what I am, and why I exist (related questions). Scientific materialism does rather well at answering my questions about external reality. But because it must assume an observer external to the object of study, it cannot be trained on the observer, itself. By definition, I cannot study subjective experience objectively. Thus I seek for other ways of understanding it, and am willing to examine religious notions for whatever contribution they can make, just I am willing to examine scientific notions for whatever help they can offer. >> But I think there can be times when we meet reality through the >> lowest possible number of intervening curtains, and it is these experiences >> which we call "mystical". >It would seem just the opposite to me: such experiences would seem to have >even more additional intervening preconceptive curtains, not fewer. An interesting assumption. But perhaps you are confusing mystical *experience*, which is what I am discussing, with the interpretation and communication of that experience. When one attempts to explain such experiences, one inevitably re-engages those analytical and rational faculties which were bypassed in the original experience, and thus subjects the experience to the distorting effects of forcing it into a rational framework which is not large enough to contain it. The resulting explanations have the same flaw as verbal explanations of music: if you've never heard music, you just won't get it. >> If someone, a Deist or >> pantheist perhaps, claimed that there can be no physical evidence for their >> claims, because no claims were being *made* about the workings of physical >> reality, then the lack of objective evidence for their claim is *part* of >> their claim, and does not argue against it. >Nor does it offer support---it merely makes it into nothing BUT a claim. Agreed, but it also means that counterclaims by others about non-testable aspects of reality are nothing but claims. All non-testable claims are simply speculation, even logical positivist claims that reality consists only of testable truths. >They would claim "no physical evidence", yet their own physical bodies (their >brains at least) are affected). By a "mystical source", or by their own >imposition of interpretation on their physical experience? This paragraph is a bit unclear to me, but if I correctly interpret you as asking if mystical experience presupposes a supernatural cause for the experience, my answer is no. A mystical experience just *is*. All explanations come after the fact, and will be incomplete. Purely causal explanations like "brain chemistry", while perhaps correct at the level of explanation they strive for, don't explain, they explain away. >> Well, I, for one, don't assert *anything* supernatural, yet I'd still >> describe some of my ideas as "mystical". And if I choose to believe there are >> meaningful aspects of reality which are beyond my ability to apprehend >> rationally, this is not meant to gainsay materialism, but to augment it. >What does it mean to "augment materialism"? Are you adding things to the >"lists" of things that ARE existing beyond those listed as "material"? Why >weren't they in the list of "material" things? Because we couldn't perceive >them? Be careful what you're leaping into here. I'll try. By "augmenting materialism", I mean to suggest that there are facets of existence which materialism fails to deal with. It is not that material things have been left out, but that some of the relationships which exist between things may have been left out. How, for instance, can I explain the fact of my own self-awareness? Reductionist explanations of it seem to suggest it is an epiphenomenon, an unnecessary assumption for explaining "objective" reality. I could assume that all you other humans out there are mindless automatons (though very complex ones), without the subjective experience of self-awareness, and my picture would be as adequate as anyone's in explaining the behavior of all these biological mechanisms. The only thing it would fail to explain, for me, is my *own* awareness of existence. Materialism is a tool for understanding the objective aspects of existence. It doesn't seem very useful for explaining subjective experience. As I've stated before, it only explains how, not why. All answers to the question, "why", including the answer, "there is no why", are untestable speculation, which science and materialism are of little help in answering. Science can exclude some answers that make falsifiable claims about objective reality; scientific method is a good way for getting the right answer to a lot of questions. But it can be deceptive if we try to use it to help us decide what questions to ask. It will influence us to think that the only meaningful questions are those which it can answer for us (testable claims). So I augment my materialism and arrive at some non-testable hypotheses which seem to have greater explanatory power in understanding subjective experience. However, I recognize the tentative and speculative nature of these suppositions, and realize that they may not be even classifiable as "right" or "wrong", but only as useful (helps me understand my experiences in a holistic way) or not useful. My problem with the points of view you present on these questions is not that they're necessarily wrong, but that they're presented with too much certainty. You try (pretty successfully, I think) to make the minimum number of assumptions necessary for a complete understanding of reality. That's fine. What I think you fail to do, however, is to remember that, while your assumptions are minimal, they are assumptions, nonetheless. I would reject the claim that you seem to make, that your world-view has more support from our knowledge of objective reality than those of all your competitors. I, too, try to make minimal assumptions, but because I may have found more questions worth answering, I may have had to make more assumptions than you. But how do I decide whether my system is excessively elaborate, or yours is incomplete? >> my point >> is that it may not always be clear if claims *are* supernatural. >Good point. Still, we must distinguish between your presumption that those >people are somehow closer (fewer intervening layers) to reality, and mine >(yes, it's a presumption, though I think a far more reasonable one) that they >are further (more layers) because they add in their preconceptions. I partially agree. We all seem to end up presuming things when we total up our experiences, and come to conclusions. But I think it's important to emphasize that, in the case of mystical experiences, at least, the presumptions come after the fact. Having had such experiences (all too rarely :-(), I *know* that I was simply *experiencing* at that time, without attempting to analyze or understand. Maybe calling such experiences closer to reality is too strong, but I would say that they at least are an alternate way of perceiving reality, and can be complementary to our normal analytical approach. Rather than saying that these experiences offer a better look at reality, let me amend my statement to say that the combination of such direct, unfiltered experience *and* the more usual analytical approach, combine to produce a richer, fuller, more complete picture of existence, than either can achieve, alone. The trick is in combining these two modes of perception in such a way that neither contradicts the other. Subjectivity without objectivity leads to mere superstition and (dare I say it?) wishful thinking. But objectivity, alone, leads to a world view confined to the Procrustean bed of the measurable and testable, and asserts completeness only by the circular reasoning of discarding all questions which are not answerable by the only tools that the objectivist will recognize as valid. I believe this is the longest article I've ever posted. My compliments to Rich Rosen, for being stimulating enough to evoke so many words from a normally taciturn fellow like myself, and my apologies to everyone else. I'll try to be more succinct from now on. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USENET: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,hao,menlo70,hplabs}!ames!barry
barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (04/23/85)
>> = me > = Rich Rosen >> I share your dislike >> of those who would defend repression as "God's will", but I find it no more >> attractive when the defense is "historical imperative" or "manifest destiny" >> or "the will of the people". It's all a cop-out. >Yes, it's but one of a number of "techniques" and excuses. You'll find though >that such excuses are more often than not TIGHTLY COUPLED with "god". (Why >is it our manifest destiny? Because God said so!---or go back and read Don >Black if you need further clues) Maybe such people who have inferiority >complex problems that lead them to make such claims about manifest destiny >and such will find some other excuse in the absence of a belief in a god. >Removing this avenue and showing it for what it is will at least remove IT >from the pool of excuses. Without the ability to claim that it's "willed >by god", where would they turn? Probably to politics :-). Honestly, if the only effects of religious belief were to foster this kind of herd mentality, I'd agree with you. But to blame "religion" for the abuses done in its name seems no different to me than blaming "government" for the abuses of the Communists, Nazis, or Corporate America. The anarchist does just that, in fact. However, just as there are many who work for, or otherwise support governments, but who don't want to persecute anyone, so are there people who find much of value in religion who don't want to persecute anyone. Since you apparently see no purpose to religion, it is understandable that you would feel that the best answer to religious intolerance is to dispose of religion, entirely. But to those who see religion as a valid attempt to come to grips with the mysteries of existence, your solution throws out the baby with the bathwater. Worse, actually; the "bathwater" (the ability of people to convince themselves that doing evil can serve a noble purpose) is left behind. Those who need the excuse of higher authority for their evil actions won't be stopped by the elimination of one rationalization among many. The central fact of religious bigots is not their religion, but their bigotry. Take away the religion, and the bigotry will just find new rationalizations. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USENET: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,hao,menlo70,hplabs}!ames!barry
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/28/85)
> You first reject all subjective evidence and then you > say that there is no evidence. > > Same thing. What good does it do you, you ask? None. > Because, as you yourself seem to acknowledge, such "evidence" > is fraught with fallacy and flaw. The reason for being "rigid" > is to ensure that flawed preconceptions do not get "into the > mix" that results in an (erroneous) conclusion. It's that > > But, if we all worked that way, nobody would ever discover anything. Everybody > would curl up under a rock because they might make a flawed conclusion. What > is so terribly wrong with making mistakes that one must eliminate such large > areas of one's life so as to avoid making mistakes? Making mistakes is a > terrific way to learn. First off, when did I say it was bad (or desirable) to avoid making mistakes? We're talking about scientific analysis, not living life, Laura. Sure, scientists may engage in intuitive speculation. As I said once or thrice before, the only intuition that's worthwhil is that which bears fruit: if an intuition results in a valid insight, great. Not all intuition does. It seems that those who do make discoveries are those who seem to know when their intuition is potentially valid and those who aren't afraid to make such intuitive speculations. > The evidence, because of its extremely poor quality, > is useless in determining the realities of the physical world. > > I don't think that it is useless. I think it needs a great deal of further > study. But this is true of anything which is not understood very well. It is useless in attempting to draw conclusions about the world. It is useful, PERHAPS, as a foundation for possible examination. But given the state of that "evidence", and its roots in, not an examination of the world, but an imposition of patterns one would like to see in the world onto observations, it is not at all useful. > The nature of an individual human mind, the goings-on inside a > particular person's head, yes, such experience is real to them > and provides information about them. But what does itsay in > relation to the world at large? Let's take a very poor example > [Your example of the step-parent here.] > > This example is only good if you assume that the child is mistaken about the > step-parent. If the step-parent is actually beating the child then > your analogy washes up. How unfortunate for the child who tries to tell > you that they have been beaten up only to be told that they are making it > all up. I already know that I have a few flawed perceptions of my childhood > (I know I remember things that took months as happening in much less time) > but this does not make my recollections useless. It makes certain dogmatic > statements I might make open to question, but this is not the same thing as > ``useless''. Hey, Laura, don't step on my example!! As the creator, I defined it. And I said that the child WAS mistaken, that the child WAS engaging in self-deception. You may wishful think onto this that it actually happened, but in my example it didn't. I'm showing an example of how a human mind may choose to impose its preconceptions onto experiences and come away from them with a faulty viewpoint, and a faulty basis for making future decisions. Why are you trying to change the story? Leave the "wishful thinking" to the girl in the scenario. > Nor does it explain the other numerous times when you are > overcome with a dread feeling and then nothing happens. Or the > times when something does happen that you had no > "foreknowledge" of. Or the times that you thought of someone > and they DIDN'T call. All these times are just as > statistically significant as the times you mention, but somehow > they don't counted into the mixture, making the times you > mention seem more significant than they are. > > Rich, I am not sure that you are reading what I am writing. I told you I > kept notes of these things. I don't get overcome by dread feelings all > the time. I know who is on the phone when it rings far too often to be > accounted for by chance. I kept records for 5 years about these things, > all the while desparately looking for a reason to believe that they were > *not* happening - because I was much more comfortable with a world view > where such things *didn't* happen. I see no reason to believe that they are "happening" due to causes you would seem to put forth. Why do you? > Eventually, I came to the grim conclusion that intellectual honesty required > me to acknowledge that these things were happening even though it was going > to be uncomfortable to deal with the skeptics, whose position I had a > great deal more emotional sympathy with (but were either being intellectually > dishoenst in denying that these things were happening (bletch) or who > honestly didn't have these things happen to them (how odd - I wonder why?)) > and worse, to deal with the religious people I knew whom I quite frankly > thought were crazy and whom I quite justifiably feared (the private school > I was attending at the time taught that all relgious experiences, even > those claimed by the born-again Christians and Charismatics were strictly > from the devil and was big on ``corporal punishment as a way of beating > the devil out of you''. I was already getting into trouble for being a > discipline problem [translation -- questioning the authorities at the > time and in general being a shit disturber] and had had my science fiction > and D&D articles from Chainmail confiscated and had been publically > strapped for playing D&D on school premises.) I'd say you're offering some perspective there, that might surely have some effect on one's patterns and preconceptions, no? And how one chooses to interpret events? > About meditation > working on migraine headaches: I can think of a number of very > obvious physical reasons why relaxation of the brain and body > might just cause alleviation of pain. But those explanation > don't seem to be of interest to you: you are specifically > seeking and assuming explanations that are outside the realm > because you WANT to believe in such explanations. > > You keep harping on this one. I don't know. Is there anything I can say > which will disuade you of this notion? I do not see myself as working this > way at all. I think that you miss out on some great questions here by > assuming that ``there is an obvious physical reason'' which explains this. Such as? > I am allergic to certain orange colourings that are found in orange foods - > especially orange cheeses. I think that stuff that I am alllergic to is > called ``achiote'' -- it may be achiote in combination with something else > that is put in cheeses, but it *isn't* carotene. Why should meditation > help with poisoning? I don't know. My father's specialty (in the days when > he could do lab work) is the effects of various chemicals on the brain. > He doesn't know either. Thus, it MUST be some PARANORMAL/SUPERNATURAL phenomena. Because *we* don't know... > Have you ever worked in a computer facility where there are thorough but > surprisingly dim-witted operators? i have. the people I am talking about > do not have any understanding of computer hardware, or operating systems, > or even software in general. What they do have is a thick book of operator > proceedures -- a list of ``if this goes wrong, do that''. They do it - all > uncomprehendingly and mechanically. Quite often I feel that I am in such a > position -- I don't have a systemetic and comprehensive understanding of > what is going on - just a rather bizarre list of procedures, some of which > make a certain amount of sense and a lot of which does not. What is worse, > my procedures have been written down by other operators, many of whom I > think had a poorer understanding of what is going on than I do. It is all > highly unsatisfactory - especially since I harbour strong doubts that I > will ever be able to understand more than a small part of it. It may require a > better intellect than I or (worse yet) anybody has. I find the notion > highly uncomfortable, since I would really like to understand everything - > but I have to muddle through anyway with whatever I have. You bet. Just like the rest of us unfortunates, Laura. Learn to live with it. It's going to be with you a long time. > Someone else's subjective evidence matches my experience? Perhaps we > were both ingrained with similar notions of what such > experience would be like, based on teachings about religion > and/or deities. > > this doesn't explain why people of dissimilar backgrounds have similar > experiences, or why one might have experiences which correspond to > religious descriptions that one has never heard of. Gee, aren't all these people human, Laura, with certain ingrained human qualities? Could that possibly be it? Have you spoken to any koala bears who had similar experiences? But, then, I said this in the last article. > The fact that even the most sincere will not accept the > problems with their own methodology of cataloguing the > experience and analyzing it. > "No, it's not based on those > things you say, it's real because I say so and I'm sincere" > doesn't cut it. The fact that they refuse to acknowledge the > problems with their own "evidence" is a form of "insincerity", > though not what I'd call a "malicious" insincerity. > > Rich, this is blatantly false. This is not what happens at all. If, instead, > you mean ``the most sincere will not dismiss all subjective things as being > unintersting or unuseful because they are subjective'' then you are correct. > But the literature abounds with discussion on the problems with the whole > thing. All literature is full of all sorts of stories. > The first criticism is ``you are lying''. My canonical response to this is > to tell the critic to go to hell. The Scott Deerwester method. :-) Sure, go to hell, there's no way you can prove to me that my experience wasn't real, desite your evidence about the human mind to the contrary... > There are variations on how people say that to people, though. ``It's not > real'' and ``that is only wishful thinking'' has been used that way in the > past. It saves the critic from actually having to come out and accuse > someone of mendacity, but, from the critics point of view exposes the > mystic in front of an audience who can reach the ``lying'' conclusion without > any help. Variations on this theme are ``you are a fraud'' and ``you are > a charlatan''. I do not believe that this is what you have been asserting, but > I am warning you that some people will take it that way. And rightfully so. Whether a deliberate charlatan or a misguided believer, the end result is the same. -- Otology recapitulates phonology. Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr