On May 19, 4:08 am, Jahnu <
jahnud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 18 May 2013 14:37:23 -0700 (PDT), Immortalist
> Because it makes sense to listen to God, the Supreme Authority?
>
Why does it make sense to do so?
> >Your not very good at
> >presenting an argument, try again but maybe bring something you can
> >support. Why do you believe it?
>
> Because I know who God is, what His name is, where He lives, why and
> how He created the world, who and what the soul is.
>
You have not provided any convincing evidence that you know the god
nor have you provided any evidence at all in support of your theory of
gods.
An important form of the Argument from Religious Experience focuses on
the issue of mysticism — it might be called the Argument from
Professional Religious Experience. What is claimed is that,
throughout time, in various cultures and places, there have existed
particular individuals who have somehow had direct, personal
experiences with God.
Like the general Argument from Religious Experiences, it is claimed
that these experiences should be given the same credence as other
experiential claims and should not be rejected out of hand. But unlike
the general argument, it is observed that mystics spend a lot of time
working on understanding and reaching God — they are professionals, in
a sense, and their observations and conclusions should be treated like
those of other professionals.
How should we respond to this argument? The first thing to note is
that, as with general religious experiences reported by others, there
is a tremendous amount of variety in the reports by religious mystics
over the millennia. Not only are the reports from different religions
mutually incompatible, but not even all the reports in a single
religious tradition are compatible.
This embarrassment of riches is an Achilles’ Heel of the Argument from
Religious Experiences, including mystical reports. If they can’t all
be true, how do we differentiate the incorrect reports from the
correct reports? How can any one mystic give us a good reason to
accept his or her claims over and above the claims made by others?
Another problem with these mystical claims is how the mystical
experiences themselves originated. It is unclear how the religious
experiences of an “average” person originate, but they are not so
intense and spectacular as to require an unusual explanation. Mystical
experiences, however, need a bit more digging.
Fortunately, the mystics themselves often provide the answer because
even though the reports from mystics vary greatly, the road they take
is shared much more closely. The usual recipe for these experiences is
some sort of deprivation — going without food, water, and often sleep,
sitting in the heat of a desert or sweat lodge, isolation from human
contact, the repetition of chants or prayer, and even the use of
drugs.
All of this is unusual — they are not the sorts of things that a
normal person does over the course of a normal life. Is it really so
surprising that going through extremely unusual physical experiences
will produce unusual effects in the brain? Deprivation of food, water,
sleep and human contact will, over time, result in hallucinations.
When you add in certain drugs, visions are even more likely.
Because hallucinations happen in your brain, they are naturally
informed by what you know, what you believe, and what you expect. To
put it another way, when you are looking to have visions, and actually
prepare your brain for them, then you are likely to find just what you
were expecting.
Dr. Michael Persinger in Canada can produce mystical visions in people
with a mechanical device and what people see is heavily influenced
even just by the sort of things he has in his office. When he plays
music with an Eastern theme, people tend to have Buddhist-type
visions. When he hangs crucifixes in the room and plays Christian
chants, people have Christian-type visions.
Because there are possible physical and natural explanations for these
mystical experiences, and because they can actually be produced at
will in very natural ways, it becomes incumbent upon the supporter of
mysticism to help us differentiate between the naturally induced
experiences and those which allegedly have a supernatural origin.
One curious issue with the claim that mystics’ experiences of God
provide good reasons to believe that God really exists is the question
of just how a person can claim to recognize God. What arguments or
evidence, without resorting to question begging, can a person use to
claim that whatever they experienced is necessarily that of the god
they believe in?
Perceptual recognition is something which can merit skepticism even in
mundane matters we encounter in everyday life. Consider how easy it
can be to make an error in recognition when it comes to the voices or
faces or writing styles of people we know very well — but how would we
“know” the voice or face or speaking style of “god”?
Michael Martin offers the example of someone claiming to have spoken
on the phone with a person who seemed to be the strongest man of
County Cork. How on earth could such an identification be made merely
on the basis of a voice? Perhaps if the person was an expert on Irish
accents at least a small part of the claim could be justified — but
only a very small part.
These same problems occur with the claims made that someone has spoken
with God or even just “experienced” God. This claim cannot be taken at
face value: we need to know what part of this experience justifies the
conclusion that it involved “God” — with all of the qualities and
attributes alleged for this god, like omniscience, omnipotence,
omnibenevolence, etc. — and not an experience of something else, even
if it is another supernatural being.
A traditional question based upon this dilemma is, “Are you so sure
that you can’t be fooled and it wasn’t Satan who spoke to you?” You
don’t have to be a believer in God or Satan to recognize the
importance of such a question. The point is, no one has offered a
sound basis for differentiating between an experience of “god” and of
something else entirely.
http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsforgod/a/mysticism.htm
And the general argument from religious experience
http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsforgod/a/religexperience.htm
> Krishna says:
>
Like a weirdo