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
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