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his post isn't about atheism. his post is about "why believers believe."
what he went to great lengths to describe and analyze and provided in depth detailed explanation for is "why believers believe." clearly it is something he wrestles with to the point that he has to explain it in great detail to himself and others.
atheists analyzing the mental state of believers, has nothing to do with atheism. just like believers analyzing in depth the mental state of atheists has nothing to do with any path of religion and spirituality they may choose to follow or practice.
the phrases i bolded from his own post apply to him: He "must have an explanation" why believers believe; he "just wants an explanation that feels right" for him, why believers believe; for him it "relieves the psychological tension" he clearly has around why believers believe; the explanation for him which he must have "is very simple and reassuring" and therefore it is "relatively easy to accept" for him, why believers believe. For him this simple reassuring explanation he provides himself to relieve his psychological tension around why believers believe, allows him to "map a large question" "into a more manageable headspace." And this allows him to "give credence to the plausibility of things" that he "would really very much like or need to be true." what is it that he "would really very much like or need to be true" regarding why believers believe? that believers are "prone to be deceived" and that believers "see that which is not there" and they "don't want proof."
I read and understand the comment a little differently than you do, because as an atheist I too have to wonder how religious people feel, experience and interpret what they do in divine sorts of ways while I don't. Whether we call it the "mental state of believers" or just perspective, there is quite a difference that I too think deserves consideration, and/or appropriate for a thread like this one.
No, but the mirage exists!
One can experience God and know God exists not as a mirage.
That is your belief, and I respect that. But my question is how do you know?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mountainrose
You haven’t had that experience YET, so it’s like trying to describe the color orange to a blind person.
The experience of orange clearly exists for me, but not for a blind person.
(Not saying you are blind —just using that example)
I have had a deep experience, in Afghanistan. I was on my back, looking at the many stars, like jewels in the sky. Then everything went quiet, a rare absolute silence, not one sound could I hear, and there was that short feeling of being connected with the universe.
When I contemplate the complexity of it all, and I do so quite often actually, I feel an exceptional sense of profound admiration about how it all came to be. Most certainly life on earth. I think we feel the same sort of thing, but you choose to assign an intelligence behind it all. I've not seen any evidence of an intelligence behind it all, and I'm not sure about how one "feels" such a thing other than per one's inclinations along those lines.
Some see god in a ray of light coming from behind a cloud. I don't is all...
You nailed it.
Well, mostly — I didn’t “choose” or “assign” an intelligence to it — that would come via thoughts and analyzing.
Experiencing God is experiential— outside of thinking and words.
Someone who has never experienced love could argue there is no proof there’s such a phenomenon as love —it’s merely a product of protein synthesis.
But those of us who’ve EXPERIENCED love can surely say it exists — yes?
When your dog dies and you are left with the hole of grief that springs tears to your eyes — your grief takes you to your capacity to love and the experience is BEYOND words or needing evidence/proof that you loved your dog deeply. It’s experiential…..
Same here, but thankfully the weather is changing.
Which does not get you out of the fact you can (and often do) have false experiences.
This morning I experienced Gata, my Grandfathers cat, sleeping behind the sleeping room curtains, even though I can see it's grave from my office.
I have experienced a shadow of a man behind me, which turned out to be a street lamp; a man hiding that turned out to be a dustbin in a dark alley; and a man and dog that was just a low tree branch.
I know I have experienced these, and probably many more that one simply forgets, but none of them were what I thought they were.
And this is supposed to explain how the God Perception experienced by 4+ out of 5 people in this world is "false"?
For some this is the focal Perception in their life...that they will give substantial percentages of their income to, and many would give their very life.
And these are educated, sophisticated, sane people.
And you claim the Theists/Religious have "bad arguments"!
Again...you are like the blind person telling all the sighted people that they are in error about their ability to see things...and you base this on the pretense that you are unable to see anything, and they are not able to make you able to see.
An excellent article from a former atheist scientist who evolved his belief/understanding in God through his work and discoveries in the miracles of science. Very similar to what I was trying to convey.
This was a symposium through Pew research called Religion and Science: Conflict or Harmony?
There are MANY stories of scientists who reconcile their belief in God THROUGH their love of science and discovery of this amazing universe.
Quote: from former atheist in article
“But how can you be both a believer and a biologist? I’ve certainly been asked that question on numerous occasions by people who find out that I’m a geneticist who studies DNA every day and I’m a Christian. After all, don’t you realize that evolution is incompatible with faith? If you believe in evolution, how can you be a believer? That’s the usual kind of concern.”
rose,
I've considered many such points of view even from scientists, and after reading Francis Collins' take as well, I am again disappointed with the same sort of explanation. It's not all that different from how there are doctors who are COVID-deniers. There are always the outliers, but just because they are professionals or scientists does not mean their arguments are good ones. Take the following from your link for example...
"One obvious one, although maybe it’s not so obvious, is that there is something instead of nothing. There’s no reason there should be anything at all. Wigner’s wonderful phrase “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” also comes to mind — Eugene Wigner, the Nobel laureate in physics, talking about the amazing thing about the whole study of physics is that mathematics makes sense; it can describe the properties of matter and energy in simple, even beautiful, laws. Why should that be? Why should gravity follow an inverse square law? Why should Maxwell’s five equations describe electromagnetism in very simple terms, and they actually turn out to be true? A thoughtful and interesting question."
"The Big Bang, the fact that the universe had a beginning out of nothingness, as far as we can tell — from this unimaginable singularity, the universe came into being and has been flying apart ever since — that cries out for some explanation. Since we have not observed nature to create itself, where did this come from? That seems to ask you to postulate a creator who must not be part of nature or you haven’t solved the problem. In fact, one can also make a pretty good philosophical argument that a creator of this sort must also be outside of time or you haven’t solved the problem."
"Far as we can tell?" We are still in the infancy stage of being able to "tell" how these mysteries can be solved, but that we don't know is not a defecto reason to assume a god. Is it?
To the point about scientists who are religious, I'm reminded of the good advice Neil deGrasse Tyson offered up some years ago. Paraphrasing, he said the issue is not that 85% of scientists don't believe in a god. The question is why the 15% do believe in god. Point is, there are always both, no matter the question at hand, but to this day I've yet to read a good explanation for a god by ANY scientist. I say this because not knowing how to explain something is not what I consider a good explanation for anything.
But do they reconcile their beliefs, because naturalism is the conclusion of science, and has been for over 2000 years. It is never a god did it. Just because many scientists are religious does not mean the science support their religious claims. They may just be presuming a god behind naturalism, as in the question "where do natural forces come from"?
But then that raises the question, where do God's properties come from? If you say they are inherent in God's existence, then we can argue natural forces are inherent in existence itself.
We agree that BOTH views are equivalent and unresolvable by science which is WHY they are preferences we choose, NOT THE DEFAULT! Your presumptive belief that atheism is correct BECAUSE science has not shown otherwise is a preference only, NOT science.
Love how you phrased that! (Bolded)
As I stated upthread, my husband became an angry atheist due to horrible experiences with Catholicism. He couldn’t even say the word God without anger because he couldn’t separate out organized religion from God.
Decades later via some mysterious impulse (LOL ) my husband started going to Advaita Satsangs and developed a powerful meditation practice even doing weeklong silent retreats.
He came back from one retreat where he had the deep ONENESS experience and told me,
“ I believe I experienced what you keep calling God!!”
And now he has no anger or separation when we discuss God or spiritual experiences…..
My door/portal to God opened through a Jesus experience, his through Advaita….
It's unfortunate when negative feelings and experiences affect the otherwise rather straight-forward issues related to understanding all that is going on around us. I have had the good fortune (if I should call it good fortune) to know both a very healthy, happy childhood, college life and all the years leading up to my ripe old age now of 65. I have also known very serious depression. Twice. The second time lasted on the order of three years, and through all the ups and downs, my experiences and emotions never gave rise to notions of any divinity. Why? I can only think it's because I simply lost my inclinations to think that way once I got old enough to learn and decide there was no good reason for me to be religious anymore. I think I came to realize this about the time I became a teenager, and I've never felt a sense of lacking anything or missing anything ever since. I've been more fortunate than I deserve, and all the "good, bad and ugly" is just life happening to me just as it happens to everyone else. In all it's many varied ways.
Good for you and your husband in any case, that some of that negativity gave way to more positivity. Regardless how this came to be.
That is a pity. We have lost an opportunity to know you, Mountainrose. Maybe in another forum or thread you will feel more safe.
Calm down. I think rose merely wrote she wouldn't be sharing her personal experience with NS, because of some irritation between the two, but either way, I hope this fear or feeling of not being safe is not a common one in this forum. Sometimes I really have to wonder about taking these sorts of comments seriously...
Oh don’t worry, I’ll still chime in — thanks for your kind words!
Ah! Good. I thought so...
Some tend to lean toward the dramatic here sometimes. Lots of times. Kind of funny if you ask me.
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) my husband started going to Advaita Satsangs and developed a powerful meditation practice even doing weeklong silent retreats. 
