quote:And yet your experience doesn't comprise a worldview. It is an emotional experience for which you do not have all the words. Fine. But your worldview needs to be more than an appeal to emotion, doesn't it?
The experience doesn't comprise a worldview (assuming we mean the same thing; worldview to me means a general outlook on life). Correct.
However, the experience certainly affects my worldview. Generally speaking, traumatic or powerful events, no matter what they are, may tend to alter one's outlook on life, the universe, and all that. That's pretty normal.
So while I may be able to tell you what I think, I may not be able to perfectly describe why I think that way. I can give you the facts of my experience, and trace those to how I view life now; but it's an imperfect translation because some of the process isn't understood.
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I'm extremely distrustful of any worldview that believes that it can fully describe human experience in clear, declarative sentences. There are inherent limits to this and to scientific investigation that I think preclude this, most specifically, their analytical nature makes it impossible to capture unitive aspects of existence.
There is, to me, a compelling similarity between many religious fundamentalists and many evangelical atheists, besides their shared disdain for actual scientific study of human behavior in preference for their theoretical models. There are many factors, but, as I've said many times, I think probably the biggest one is a lack of tolerance for ambiguity. I think psychology and history have both shown us that there is a great deal to fear in ideological movements who don't admit limits on what they know, who are unwilling to say "I don't know."
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I'm distrustful of that as well. My point is, with Christianity you get both things. You get a clearly defined idea about god and jesus and all the other stuff, with lots of very clearly defined stories and facts, and as proof of all that, you get an emotional appeal, and not something easily expressed. That, to me, is not expectable. Nobody has the answers. To claim to have the answers, and then to obviate that responsibility with an emotional appeal? That's bull****.
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I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that all forms of Christianity are like that. They pretty clearly aren't.
For many people, some form of Christianity seems to fit their experience or how they choose to see the world. Often times, this includes...what's a good word...transcendental experiences.
It would be a mistake to say that their choice of Christianity hangs solely on those transcendental experiences, that there isn't much more to the structure of many Christian faiths, or that all these faiths or people who belong to them lack a tolerance for ambiguity.
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I think the idea that there are fixed answers in the way you seem to be treating them is a problem. In the realm of human experience, most of the questions don't really have one time defined answers. "How should I live?" for example.
To me, looking for a simple, defined answer for that misunderstands the true nature of the question. What is needed is not a set answer, but rather a framework of more or less fixed anchor points that form a basis for one's exploration of life and of the question of how to live it.
The interesting thing for me is that, while there are certainly "bad" frameworks or structures of beliefs, from a practical standpoint, truth/falsity doesn't seem to correspond strongly with whether a given framework is useful or positive (at least in how I would judge it). Truly great things have been accomplished and built around a skeleton of false ideas.
One of life's interesting contradictions to me is that while a lack of tolerance for ambiguity is pretty clearly a bad thing, so is a lack of choice (or often, rather an ability to admit one has made a choice) on a foundation on which to build on.
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quote:I think the idea that there are fixed answers in the way you seem to be treating them is a problem. In the realm of human experience, most of the questions don't really have one time defined answers. "How should I live?" for example.
I'm not sure Orincoro is suggesting that, and I'm not sure anyone who considers themselves atheist except nutcases who also happen to be atheist believes that science answers a question like "how should I live?"
Atheism does not answer those questions, even vaguely. It recognizes there are no set answers to said questions and then it points people towards humanism to get generalized ideas about how we should best approach life.
To suggest that atheists don't know how to say, "I don't know," is problematic.
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Well, for one thing, it's pretty clearly false.
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quote:Truly great things have been accomplished and built around a skeleton of false ideas.
While on one hand I recognize the truth of this statement, the idea that there are entire worldviews structured around "I have no idea if there is any truth to this claim, but it makes people act better if they believe it" is profoundly troublesome to me.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I'm distrustful of that as well. My point is, with Christianity you get both things. You get a clearly defined idea about god and jesus and all the other stuff, with lots of very clearly defined stories and facts, and as proof of all that, you get an emotional appeal, and not something easily expressed. That, to me, is not expectable. Nobody has the answers. To claim to have the answers, and then to obviate that responsibility with an emotional appeal? That's bull****.
This is my exact take on religion. Nice job, dude. I don't need anything better on this subject.
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The idea that some evangelic atheists have a real problem with tolerance of ambiguity is clearly false?
To me, that's been pretty well established by scientific study and is one of the major reasons for the character of the Reign of Terror. So I may be missing where it is so clearly false.
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quote:While on one hand I recognize the truth of this statement, the idea that there are entire worldviews structured around "I have no idea if there is any truth to this claim, but it makes people act better if they believe it" is profoundly troublesome to me.
I think we may have different ideas of what it means for something to be true in this context. No fundamental beliefs can be known to be true. For example, your foundational materialism is true for you, but there's no of actually knowing if it is true in an objective way.
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errr...I think you might get that when you are comparing an inaccurate summary of my statements made by someone else with what I actually said.
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edit: Also, I think you may get more out of this conversation if you approach it with good faith, which I don't think you are doing now.
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I don't think you'll find a single prominent evangelical atheist who will claim to be certain that no supernatural forces exist. You'll find a few who claim to be certain that no specific supernatural forces, as described in one source or another, exist, but I don't think that's evidence of an "intolerance of ambiguity" as much as it's evidence of rationality.
Heck, I'm a materialist, myself, but I don't claim to be certain that I'm not a brain in a jar.
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quote: There is, to me, a compelling similarity between many religious fundamentalists and many evangelical atheists, besides their shared disdain for actual scientific study of human behavior in preference for their theoretical models.
And don't forget an other similarity: sanctimonious and arrogant
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Heck, I'm a materialist, myself, but I don't claim to be certain that I'm not a brain in a jar.
I suppose you might claim to be certain that, rationally, your dealings with the world around you and the experience that has provided you indicate that even if you were a brain in a jar, that would have no bearing on your present actions. Essentially, that the idea that you are a brain in a jar is fine, but has no effect on anything you observe, or your rationale for your own moral choices. Personally I have always suspected that this is not actually different for a lot of religious people, but that they are just uncomfortable with the naked ambiguity of atheism.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: errr...I think you might get that when you are comparing an inaccurate summary of my statements made by someone else with what I actually said.
This is not to pick on any one person. I am just observing a general shift per that one angle.
Tom has the rest of it.
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Weird. I'm totally on Squick's side in this discussion. I'm not sure if that will lead him to change his position ... Posts: 2048 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:No fundamental beliefs can be known to be true.
On reflection, this may be part of our disagreement, Squick. Under what definition of "fundamental" can a religious belief be called "fundamental" without its truth value actually mattering?
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What do you mean by truth value? Is that relative to the person believing it or relative to ultimate reality?
I think that it most likely is very important that it have a high truth value to the person believing it, but to ultimate reality, whatever that may be, I think it matters much less.
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I don't think you get my point about lack of ambiguity tolerance. This is not a characteristic attached to the belief, but rather an underlying trait of the person that is expressed in the way they hold beliefs.
I know you're not going to take my work for it, especially since I don't have to time to go into in depth, but I think this is a vital thing to understand in terms of a lot of Western behavior, and especially in this specific case. I highly recommend looking into the study of it.
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quote:Is that relative to the person believing it or relative to ultimate reality?
I think that it most likely is very important that it have a high truth value to the person believing it, but to ultimate reality, whatever that may be, I think it matters much less.
Do you think it's irrelevant that, for example, some people may be burning in Hell for all eternity based on their behavior? Is that, from an "ultimate reality" standpoint, not likely to matter?
Or, if Hell does not exist at all: is that also irrelevant?
Are you really asserting that the value of religious belief is in its secular cultural product? That it is in fact the opiate of the people?
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Because if we're not caring about religion's instrumental value, then the only other reason to care is its intrinsic value, and if that's the case then it only actually matters if it's actually true.
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quote:Because if we're not caring about religion's instrumental value, then the only other reason to care is its intrinsic value, and if that's the case then it only actually matters if it's actually true.
I don't believe that this is the case. That is, I believe that valid religious belief has intrinsic value largely unrelated to how well it matches ultimate reality.
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That's misleading. I don't believe that this connection is certainly not exclusive to religious activities/belief.
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Your going to have to explain all your terms from the ground up. Right now I honestly do not understand what you're saying.
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It's a lot more complex than this, but think of it this way. We have two possibilities. Either there is some force or entity that fills the sport of the prime mover (e.g. is outside the bounds of space-time and causality) and we have some connection to this "divine" or there isn't.
I believe that there are fundamental differences in those two worlds, the potential of free will - in some capacity - being one of the biggest.
If you grant a second thing, that at some level, our subjective perceptions are of themselves objectively true - that is, at some level, that I perceive something is true, even if what I perceive is not objectively true - then we have, through our potential ability to choose our perceptions, the power to shape objective reality.
Of course, because we can't perceive objective or ultimate reality - whatever that actually means and if such as thing actually exists - whatever reality we create is really an illusion.
I have a lot of affinity to combining the two senses of the concept of maya. It is both the dream stuff that the world is made out of and the illusion that lies in front of ultimate reality.
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I can *guess*, but there's already enough miscommunication in this thread.
Edit: was replying to kmmboots. I'll respond to Squick later, although I suspect Tom will beat me to the punch.
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quote:I believe that there are fundamental differences in those two worlds, the potential of free will - in some capacity - being one of the biggest.
I fail to see why the existence of an entity outside space-time makes free will possible. More relevantly, it seems to me that it matters a great deal to you that such an entity exists; is this not the same thing as asserting the importance of religious truth? After all, if the "divine" does not exist, are you not contending that free will does not exist, and moreover that for some reason the objective possibility of free will matters to you?
quote:If you grant a second thing, that at some level, our subjective perceptions are of themselves objectively true - that is, at some level, that I perceive something is true, even if what I perceive is not objectively true - then we have, through our potential ability to choose our perceptions, the power to shape objective reality.
Why does that logically follow? Or, more to the point, why is that impressive? Note that the objective reality we are shaping here is limited to what it is that we perceive; in other words, we aren't shaping what actually is, but rather simply shaping our subjective awareness of perception. That's as subjective as reality gets, if you ask me; there's nothing even slightly objective about it. Either you're choosing to subjectively interpret a valid perception, or you're subjectively manufacturing an invalid perception; either way, objective reality has only obliquely been touched by your choice.
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quote:More relevantly, it seems to me that it matters a great deal to you that such an entity exists
I'm not sure why you would think that. It matters that I believe it exists, but how is my life any different if it exists or not?
Does it matter that free will does or does not ultimately exist or that I believe that it does?
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quote:Either you're choosing to subjectively interpret a valid perception, or you're subjectively manufacturing an invalid perception; either way, objective reality has only obliquely been touched by your choice.
There's a lot more to this than getting eye chart right or not. In ultimate terms, everything we perceive is wrong.
But, if it exists, the ability to create something new comes from the ability to control one's perspective. Being able to think of things that are not and choose among them is incredibly powerful. Likewise, this is the facility that allows us to construct meaning, which is really what we're talking about, when we're talking about religion and the like.
With both of those, it often isn't a question of accurate or not, but of building some sort of coherent structure. Not in all cases, but in many/most, this seems more important than if it is actually ultimately true, which is also usually impossible to know.
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quote:Likewise, this is the facility that allows us to construct meaning, which is really what we're talking about, when we're talking about religion and the like.
So it doesn't actually matter whether or not someone really gets to be a God in the afterlife, along with his or her family, as long as their constructed meanings are satisfactory?
How is that not the same as saying that religion has no intrinsic value?
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It's called "belief in belief". These people don't actually believe, but they think it's virtuous or beneficial for them to believe, so they pretend to believe, even though they don't really.
No actual believer ever argues that truth doesn't matter. The people who say that only belief matters are the people who've actually already lost their belief, they just hesitate to say so because they're afraid of the (moral/societal/supernatural/whatever) consequences.
"Where it is difficult to believe a thing, it is often much easier to believe that you ought to believe it"
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quote:You *are* unreliable in certain ways. But I base that judgement on my actual experiences with you. You understand science and are an advocate of it, but you also espouse certain modes of thinking that I find counter-productive. But do tell, who were these people who made these assumptions about you, and how did you handle that?
Thank you for proving my point Orincoro.
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Which point was that? That athiests like me judge you without knowing you? Because I know a fair bit about you and the way you think. No, we were talking about people who have just met you- not people like me. I pointed out that you are unreliable- but that doesn't have to be apparent to someone who just met you, right?
Unless of course every single seemingly rational and logical person they had ever met and talked to on this subject who turned out to be religious also turned out to have a fairly wide streak of irrationality to go along with it... then they might fairly mark you as unreliable from the get-go. So what point was it that *you* were making? Other than of the nose-thumbing variety.
And lest your response is a tit-for-tat: I'm well aware most outspoken atheists are rather arrogant and condescending about the fact. They have a right to be, but it's also a defense mechanism. Many people are unreliable for many reasons- it's just with religion you get the name of the problem up front. Hello, my name is Susan, I'm an Irrational Person... are you also a member of a church?
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Orin, You clear don't understand my point. I don't believe you have the slightest interest in understanding my point so I'm no going to try to explain it any more. You are however, doing very good job of illustrating my point. If there is any one out there who did get my point, I'm sure they are enjoying your performance,
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Ok, take your ball and go home then. I'm not the scientist with an existential crisis on my hands.
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I am fully prepared to sell out for a digital subscription to Cataclysm, what does it take to get that out of you?
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"He's no pervert. I'm a pervert and he's never attended any of the meetings."
I think that was from an episode of M*A*S*H, or something close to it. I use it all the time for similar situations.
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quote:So it doesn't actually matter whether or not someone really gets to be a God in the afterlife, along with his or her family, as long as their constructed meanings are satisfactory?
It doesn't matter to what I'm talking about, no.
What happens in the afterlife is unknowable, so it's impossible to really talk about in this context. For all we know, everything people believe about the afterlife is true for them.
But that's irrelevant to what I believe is the "divine" actions of the creative exercise of free will in constructing meaning. In the only objective reality that people have access to, these are true acts of creation and are therefore reflective of absolute reality. In doing this, people are, I believe, either communing with the divine or expressing their nature as an extension of the divine.
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It may help - or it would if you were interested in what I had to say outside of finding ways to attack it - to point out that I'm coming at this from a perspective that regards dynamic actions and not static states as the true expression of what I'm talking about. That is, the act of creating things is much more important than the thing created, although that is important as well.
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And why is belief in the divine relevant to that creative impulse, Squick, except as just one of many possible inspirations?
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quote:I fail to see why the existence of an entity outside space-time makes free will possible.
For me, it isn't the idea of God, specifically, that validates free will, but rather, the idea of consciousness or intelligence being something distinct and eternal, rather than solely a byproduct of the mechanical functions of the brain. Something on par with matter and energy and gravity, rather than on par with smell or touch or reflex.
Humans typically have a difficult time reconciling mechanical cause with moral responsibility. IE, if you can define a mechanical cause leading to someone's behavior, it becomes much harder to ascribe responsibility to them for that behavior. Whenever we DO ascribe responsibility, we usually have to cite the supposition that they COULD have made a different choice, but didn't.
Yet if we are completely mechanical, there is good reason to doubt that this is true. Whatever choice they made really is the only thing they could have done.
One reason I like my own religious views is the fact that we treat consciousness and intelligence as something separate from the mechanics of our brains. Something that is unique, uncreated, and self-defined, which is free to make independent choices. While our brain's processes are still heavily involved in our choices, there is a sense that at the deepest level, there is some determining influence that makes the difference between ME living this life, and "someone else" living the same life with the same brain and the same environment.
That entity can be held responsible for its choices, because it was never created or defined by another entity or process, and thus its decisions are completely self-determined. Even though, with a brain, you can trace back a mechanical chain of causation that created it, with one of these entities, the chain of causation quickly hits a point where it continues eternally into the past without any further causation involved. If a particular entity makes selfish, harmful choices, there is no process to blame besides the entity's own self-defined nature. You can call it evil, without having to qualify that statement with a lot of hemming and hawing about its genetics and upbringing.
Once genetics and upbringing get involved, their influence is not insignificant, of course. But having that kernel of uncaused free will makes a big difference in justifying the placement of responsibility on an individual, rather than on his circumstances.
Anyway. That's a major reason why I like my own religious philosophy. Not why I believe it, necessarily, but why I like it Posts: 2048 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: And why is belief in the divine relevant to that creative impulse, Squick, except as just one of many possible inspirations?
It's not the inspiration. It's the method/medium.
Without something outside of causality, there's no actual creativity, just the response to environment and genetics.
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quote:That entity can be held responsible for its choices, because it was never created or defined by another entity or process, and thus its decisions are completely self-determined.
If I build a machine that, over time, eventually wears out and stops functioning, I do not feel the need to blame the machine; I prevent it from doing further damage and work to repair it. If I build a machine that works well until it's struck by lightning, I don't "blame" the lightning (or the machine's vulnerability to it); I prevent the machine from doing further damage, then work to either find a way to reduce the incidence of lightning strikes or build machines that are not vulnerable to lightning.
I don't see what purpose the concept of "evil" would serve in this scenario. Something can still be bad, still be in need of repair or replacement or disassembly, without needing to be supernaturally wicked in itself.
Edited to add: heck, "evil" in that framework might as well be a diagnosis akin to "malfunctioning." I see no reason why possessing the intent to do net harm might not be considered a symptom of brokenness.
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quote:Without something outside of causality, there's no actual creativity, just the response to environment and genetics.
Why does that matter? As you've pointed out, there's no way for us to tell the difference. If what we have is what we have, does it matter whether it's "actual" creativity or "fake" creativity?
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