Question to religious types

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I'm a little confused by the side debate with jmfcst

werent you going to give me a hard coded example?

[Grad Students are the Worst]

I'm a little confused by the side debate with jmfcst

werent you going to give me a hard coded example?

I think the South Africa analogy is pretty hard-coded

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I'm a little confused by the side debate with jmfcst

werent you going to give me a hard coded example?

I think the South Africa analogy is pretty hard-coded

you'll have to quote it for me, cant find it

[Gustaf]

I'm a little confused by the side debate with jmfcst, and I don't see any response to Dibble's paraphrase, so I'm going to cut in back here:

Maybe we just fundamentally disagree here? If I experience apartheid as horrible and someone else experiences it as great, why would I care about their experience?

...Because you can accept both experiences in your decision-making process, while not having to compromise your overall conclusion.  This is a obviously not analogous, though.  Different results using the same methodology indicates one of two things: One, that application of the methodology has some level of subjectivity involved, which is grounds for some agnosticism.  Two, that the input is different, at which point you can evaluate the new information, as long as the source seems legit.  I think your South Africa example falls into the trap of assuming that #2 is impossible or impractical.  Which would make it completely OK to support Hitler on the basis you haven't seen Jews suffer with your own eyes, I guess?  This seems both logically arbitrary and dangerous to me.

(I haven't thought through this argument 100% formally, but I'm quite sure I disagree with your stuff on the modal logic behind empiricism, if you want to call it that.)

Now I'm sort of at a loss again. Of course I can accept that they have that experience without changing my conclusion regarding apartheid. That was exactly my point! Their experience does not necessarily have any impact on my view.

But the rest I feel I can grasp a bit more. The second option you mention is obviously irrelevant to what we're both trying to get at so I'll just ignore that part.

That leaves the first one. Which seems to crash down into the exact same discussion that I think you and I had like 3 years ago or something.

Because to me the experience is "subjective" in the way everything is subjective. If someone were to experience that 2+2 did not equal 4 that still wouldn't really change my view on the issue. (I'm trying to go for poorer and poorer analogies as this discussion progresses).

You seem to think that most people come to most views by objectively assessing facts and you don't understand why religious people use subjective experience to arrive at faith but I disagree on the gulf between the two being that wide. (if this summation is grossly unfair and distorts your position, just correct me...)

[Grad Students are the Worst]

Now I'm sort of at a loss again. Of course I can accept that they have that experience without changing my conclusion regarding apartheid. That was exactly my point! Their experience does not necessarily have any impact on my view.

There is a difference between "not having an impact" and "not being an input."  Do you think it's reasonable to ignore inputs from those with methodologies/heuristics/whatever you see as reasonable, simply because they are not inputs you have directly experienced?  This is a hugely important difference.

But the rest I feel I can grasp a bit more. The second option you mention is obviously irrelevant to what we're both trying to get at so I'll just ignore that part.

I don't see how you can think that's "obviously irrelevant."

That leaves the first one. Which seems to crash down into the exact same discussion that I think you and I had like 3 years ago or something.

Because to me the experience is "subjective" in the way everything is subjective. If someone were to experience that 2+2 did not equal 4 that still wouldn't really change my view on the issue. (I'm trying to go for poorer and poorer analogies as this discussion progresses).

The reason that analogy is poor is because it only works because the idea that someone could experience that differently is absurd.  On the other hand, if you witnessed an event, and 2/3 of the people around you seemed to have different interpretations of what happened, I assume that you'd have some agnosticism about what was going on.  By selecting an analogy that implies an extreme instance of something I'm conceding operates on a spectrum you're ignoring the essential question.

You seem to think that most people come to most views by objectively assessing facts and you don't understand why religious people use subjective experience to arrive at faith but I disagree on the gulf between the two being that wide. (if this summation is grossly unfair and distorts your position, just correct me...)

It's grossly unfair and distorts my position, as above.    In fact, the two things you claim I distinguish not only seem non-wide, but functionally indistinct.

[Gustaf]

Their methodology might be reasonable for themselves but not for me. I mean, if we talk about solving a mathematical problem by using derivation, that's a method that everyone can use. If someone else derived the same function I derived and got a different local maximum, then, yeah, I would question my answer (actually, I'd be more inclined to question the other guy's answer, but I'm arrogant like that). But when we talk about "experiencing" something that's rather different, imo.

What I meant when I said the second point was irrelevant was basically that it's kind of obvious that new information should matter to one's evaluation. If I didn't know there were death camps in Nazi Germany or segregation in apartheid South Africa and someone else did know it isn't surprising that we might reach different conclusions. It doesn't seem like a relevant case for what you're trying to get to (at least not if I understand you correctly). Because I don't think either of us see it as problematic that people might reach different conclusions if they have different facts to begin with. I didn't mean to be insulting or anything - I felt as if you included that as a "oh, maybe you meant this" and I wanted to make clear that I didn't because that would have been stupid of me.

It seems my poor analogy did do some good then. If I understand you correctly you're saying that there is a spectrum of cases - at one end you have my analogy where everyone agrees on what is true - and if someone doesn't that person is insane and can be ignored. On the other end you would presumably have something where many people disagree and where you couldn't ignore somebody's opinion. And you think religion belongs at that end.

I'll just present my tentative view on this and perhaps it will make it easier to see where we disagree.

To me a cognitive process typically starts with some type of input in the form of observing things in the world*. Then we put this together and evaluate it to form an opinion.

The opinion might of course be changed by new information. If I had the opinion that all people were white because I had only seen white people and then I suddenly see a black guy, I'm likely to change my position. And if you could convince me that you saw a black person I might change it as well. But, as I said, that's sort of obvious so it doesn't seem relevant to me in this case.

Then we have what we might call logical inferences involved. This is really where you might be influenced by someone else's opinion. If there are logical leaps or inconsistent beliefs in my belief structure someone else might alert me to this, challenge me and cause me to change my conclusion. Say, if I alert you to how you can logically derive the importance of respect for human rights and the dangers of racism from the atrocities in Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa.

Now, there is still some room for what you might call normative disagreement. We may agree that the Nazis killed a lot of Jews and that they did this because they didn't believe that all humans have rights regardless of race. But maybe you think that's a good thing (you Nazi scumbag!). That might be called an "experience".  Your experience of genocide or racism might be "yay, let's go for it" There is nothing necessarily invalid about the methodology here because there is no methodology. It's just an experience. That you experience it definitely doesn't seem relevant for my experience (at least not necessarily).

But then there are also cases of where there is no (or little in the way of a) logical chain involved. That 2+2=4 is sort of close to that. Most people, when confronted with basic math, simply buy it. It appears self-evident. They, one might say, directly experience the truth of things like identity.

Experiencing the existence (or non-existence) of God seems similar to my mind. Just like experiencing the self-evidence of every human's right to freedom and security.


*Meant very broadly and may well include Platonic inner contemplation

[ilikeverin]

What is your visceral reaction to people who have contradictory experiences of God (compared to yours), or no experience with God?

I'm fascinated by religious belief in general.  Sometimes it's combined with a bit of horror (e.g., jmfcst's), sometimes with admiration (e.g., Quakers').

I can't fathom why anyone would want to be an atheist, but I understand everything up through apatheism.

Do you get a "this seems crazy!" feeling and feel compelled to investigate where such a starkly conflicting perception of the world originates from?

My second degree is going to be in Psych; of course I do   Then I realize I should really focus on what I'm interested in most, so I know I can't really research such questions empirically.

What about people whose experiences just contradict your beliefs -- why do you dismiss them?

I don't?

I dunno, I'm a Liberal Christian (tm); we're taught to treat everyone's personal experience of God as equally valid, just... individual.  And the conclusions that others get from their experiences can be wrong, of course.

Does it give you any cognitive dissonance?  Why or why not?

Everything gives everyone cognitive dissonance, pretty much, in some way.

If your belief is heavily based on personal experience, and other experiences contradict, why are you convinced it's not all a matter of psychology?

I'm not?  That's why my religious beliefs are beliefs, not psychological theories or something.  In any case, I'm not sure why learning the beliefs I hold are matters of psychology makes them any less valid.  A good deal of the reason why I'm a Methodist is just because my family happened to like a Methodist church we visited when I was in 5th grade (and the reason why we probably all liked it was at least in part because my dad liked it, and he may've liked it because he was raised Methodist, etc. etc. with causation), and my belief has just built from there.  But if you had plucked me out of my home and put me with jmfcst's family, maybe I would've tried to be a good little evangelical (though, for various reasons, I may've been slightly miserable in such a household), and if you had put me in North Africa I may've been a Muslim.  That's pretty cool, imo.

On a side note, I don't get why people always say it's bad when things are "just" psychology, or that researching such concepts scientifically somehow reduces them to meaninglessness.  Neurobiologists are making extraordinary findings about a lot of psychological phenomena.  Love, for example, may be "just" vasopressin in males and "just" oxytocin in females (Note: GROSS OVERSIMPLIFICATION), but that doesn't make the experience of being in love any less valid, nor does it cheapen the experience any.  Why, I think it's pretty fantastic that certain patterns of light appearing on our retinas (/sound waves in our cochlea, etc.) eventually lead to the subjective experience of love, don't you?  The fact that our brain can synthesize all these complicated, tiny little molecules in our brain just for one certain person is fascinating.

Anyway, more on topic, finding out about the neuropsychology of religion is something that I think is really interesting and really important.  What happens in my brain that leads me to have the subjective experience of God?  A fascinating question.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

Hello all -- Sorry, we're moving into finals and I've had a new, nasty ongoing insomnia problem.  I don't want to take the risk of making a fallacious argument or because irritable because of this.  I'm getting to it.  Thanks for your responses.

[Gustaf]

Hello all -- Sorry, we're moving into finals and I've had a new, nasty ongoing insomnia problem.  I don't want to take the risk of making a fallacious argument or because irritable because of this.  I'm getting to it.  Thanks for your responses.

Yeah, sounds like you need to calm down and sleep.

Finals>meaning of life, after all.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

[Gustaf]

I kid, I kid.