Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
You seem to have given this a lot of thought and invested a great deal of emotional energy into your plea for me to "properly" (in your opinion) characterize my views. You seem new here and I have no idea how many of my 14,000+ posts you have read. I also have a synthesis that is designed to convey the basis for my views. As with many things there are multiple layers to my views. The science underlying them is solid and settled. The hypotheses I present are speculative but fully consistent with the extant science and the philosophical understanding of it. My BELIEFS are just that . . . beliefs based on personal experiences in meditation. They are only a small part . . . but a crucial part in my certainty about the existence of God.
For each of us . . . the things we personally experience and test in our own subjective ways are the MOST real to us . . . if we are honest about it. My acceptance of Christ results from His matching perfectly the attributes of the consciousness I encounter in deep meditation. His story matches the template I perceive in my extensive evaluation and study of the "spiritual fossil record" of our species attempts to understand God. But as BELIEFS . . . they are still more of a faith-based veneer over what is undeniably a more comprehensive and substantive scientific understanding of reality.
SO . . . to follow your advice and expectations would not be easily done. I suggest you read my synthesis and more of my posts if you are still uncertain which aspects of my views I can legitimately claim to KNOW and NOT KNOW . . . and which are mere beliefs.
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(Boldfaced highlighting added to your above quote by myself)
I can take the time (when I find the time to) to peruse your other referenced posts to be familiar with your larger views and thinking . . . though I am not unfamiliar with Christian thinking at-large, as I am widely read, studied, and traveled and was a Protestant evangelical conservative Christian myself for a portion of my adult years and was a rather accomplished preacher / teacher / apologist for the Christian faith. So such lines-of-thought are not unknown or foreign to me.
My main point or response to your response is as follows:
Personal subjective experience (or better stated as "
purported personal subjective experience") is
not a basis for proclaiming something to be true in a way or manner that compels, obligates or demands that the rest of humanity accept and proclaim as truth said propositions. It is
not enough to say
"Well, it is true for me. I had ‘such and such’ event or experience or personal reflection and it convinced me that <insert whatever the truth claim is here>". Such an event or experience (if said event or experience, in fact, happened at all or some particular event or experience happened but the person misperceived or misinterpreted it, or it was just an event or experience within the person's own mind or imagination)
cannot be a basis for proclaiming
as fact that the implication or evaluation taken from this real or purported event or experience is, in fact, true and therefore to be accepted by all other humans as true . . . because the event or experience is merely “
purported” and was experienced by no other person or party
at the same time other than this singular person and is not replicatable or provable. However, this does
NOT say that therefore this
PROVES that the purported event or experience or the interpretation of the purported event or experience is not true, but what it
instead says is that this alleged or purported event or experience and then the person's interpretation of said event or experience
cannot be validated by the rest of us as being real and true . . . so therefore there is not an obligation by the rest of humanity-at-large to accept it as a truth which applies to us all. Unless you can actually
demonstrate (
not just assert but demonstrate) that you have faculties and powers-of-perception that the rest of us don’t have (i.e., saying to the rest of us, in essence, that
“Well, I can see and know it to be true but you apparently can’t because you are not tuned in or as perceptive or intelligent as I am and I have powers-of-perception and channels to knowledge that are apparently unavailable to you”), the likely truth is that you do not have faculties and powers-of-perception that the rest of us don’t have (or at least those among us who are also highly intelligent, studied, scholarly, open-minded/non-dogmatic, perceptive, critical, analytical, . . . which admittedly not everyone in the population-at-large is, but I most certainly am and many others on this forum likely are as well). In summary, whatever you can perceive and interpret as truth should be accessible and available to
all the rest of us . . . for you are just another mortal human being with human limitations like all the rest of us have (unless you can
demonstrate yourself to truly be
more than the rest of us and not subject to our same human limitations).
(As a sidenote, said in relation to your mention of engaging in
personal meditation or
reflection and then drawing truth conclusions based on those meditations or reflections): And, as I stated in a few other postings of mine in other threads,
LOGICAL TAUTOLOGIES (LOGICAL “PROOFS”), in and of themselves, also do not actually
PROVE that something is true or valid; they merely give us a basis for forming what is called a “hypothesis” or sometimes even a "working theory") upon which we can then explore further to hopefully either validate or invalidate the idea(s) or to at least hopefully point us in a fruitful direction.
In summary,
purported subjective experience is
not a valid
PROOF for claims of any type. . . for if it was, then EVERYBODY'S real or purported personal subjective experiences are just as acceptable and valid (if the only basis we are called to go on is one’s request to accept their claims
at face value because they “personally experienced” such-and-such event or experience). On that premise, we can just as well lend belief to Krishna and Shiva (the Hindu gods), to the Baha’i god, to the Creator Ahura Mazda (of the Zoroastrianism faith), to Allah and his prophet Mohammed (of the Islamic faith), to Scientology, to Mormonism and its prophet Joseph Smith, etc. etc. etc., ad infinitum. We can just as well lend belief to any individuals’ claims of being abducted and impregnated by aliens, to being reincarnated souls, etc. etc. etc., ad infinitum. The most that any alleged or purported subjective experience can do for us is to give us a valid basis for formulating a
hypothesis (e.g., the so-called “God Hypothesis”). If we want to validly and acceptably take it beyond that (i.e., in a way that humanity-at-large can universally agree to accept it as true for and applicable to
all of us), then we
must meet the standard established criteria for what has been called the “rules of evidence” as prevails in courts of law in Britain and America (for instance) and in what can be called the “court of science”. And make no mistake about it: claims that there is a supreme transcendent creator / prime mover / motivating force of the cosmos or the universe and all that occurs within it
IS, in fact, a SCIENTIFIC CLAIM
by its very nature and is therefore subject to the scientific methods of inquiry, investigation, and validation (or invalidation, for that matter).
In the end, I don’t personally say to you nor to others
“You are wrong. There is no God or there is no son-of-God named Jesus Christ” etc. etc.; I
instead say
“I (or we) do not KNOW said claims to be true so therefore I (or we) will not, at present, lend belief to said claims until or unless we are presented with a valid, justifiable basis for doing so that does not depend upon appeals to faith or belief or appeals to emotion or ignorance or fear or that depend on faulty arguments, misinformation, misapplication of concepts, or faulty lines of logic and reasoning.” I personally am only concerned with knowledge, not belief (faith). Some others here may differ in their own stance but that is my personal stance. I don’t otherwise knock or try to take away belief from others as long as they are not imperialistic with myself and others about it but it is just their
personal choice for how to conduct their personal lives and what ideas they will build their lives around and subscribe to. Fair enough? I should think so.
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