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Uh...objectively experience? What makes any experience objective? That more that one person can have it? Religion does that. That it seems very real? Religion's done that from time to time. That it makes sense with other things we sense? Religion does that too!
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Ok, so you're go me there. I will admit that science does make a single, improvable assumption: Our senses are the result of a stimulus from reality. they may not describe the entirety of reality, but that which we can experience is real. Like any system of knowledge (e.g. mathematics) science lies on a foundation of axioms. (in this case only one)
If you are to take things to such extremes, then there is only one thing that I can know for sure: "I think therefore I am". I can't tell you WHAT I am, or the manner in which I think, I cannot even fully define "me", but essentially, because I am thinking I must exist. With a very slight stretch we can extrapolate this to I sense things therefore something else exists. After that it is up to us to try and explain these things that we experience. That’s what science does. It explains things.
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Given that we are not totally rational beings, why does it make sense to only allow ourselves to experience life with that part of ourselves?
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I'm all for experiencing the irrational. I mean almost everything we do is irrational. As I mentioned in another thread I have a great love of art and music. They don't appeal to my
rational self, but rather my emotional self. Similarly I strive after happiness, not for strictly rational reasons, but to pander to my emotional self.
However, when it comes to deciding what is real, and what is not, I don't see how emotion (or whatever you wish to call it) can help. When trying to solve the great mystery we must call upon our intellect, not our feelings. It is our intellect that we use in deciding truth from fiction.
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Ever the skeptic, i do have to ask who "they" are, and where you get this. I'd love to read about it. Assuming it's truth for a moment, i'd like to know how that makes God less real that part of our physical brain can produce an abstract reality. That's what the whole thing does... Part of us is physically wired to understand spiritual things, and can be short circuited? What possible challenge to faith does that present?
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"Ever the skeptic" that’s what I like to hear! Respect! Anyway, at the moment I can't actually remember the names of the team who investigated this, but I do remember that they tried to do it to Richard Dawkins, but unfortunately he was among the 25%. That was unfortunate... I would have loved to have seen Richard Dawkins explain what it was like to have a "religious experience". Richard Dawkins is a biologist and is, like myself, a confirmed atheist. He is well known for not hiding his contempt and disappointment with religion (sometimes in manner which I find disagreeable). Anyway, I will do my best to try and find more specific info for you.
As for what my point of bringing this matter up was. I was trying to show that the claims of people having "felt" spiritual things is not beyond explanation.
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I got that. I was very clear on the fact that you don't believe in him. That's why he doesn't exist. Faith does not start out of nothing....and the llama is not grounded in your experiences.
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If faith doesn't start out of nothing, then where does it start from? My explanation would be that it was used by people to explain all of the things that people couldn't answer. Where did we come from? Well it is obvious that we were created. How does the sun move? Well it is obvious that it is pulled across the sky by a god in a chariot. After it was through explaining the observations made by people, it could then be adapted so as to provide comfort. Well, my creator obviously loves me. And wouldn’t let any harm come to me. And is going to let me live forever.
"I was very clear on the fact that you don't believe in him. That's why he doesn't exist. " - He doesn't exist, because I don't believe in him? But what if I DID believe in him?
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Quite confusing to read this. Your thoughts are on a plane of existance that interacts with
"Reality" but are not part of it? How is an idea not real? I don't mean to say that fictional and mythic things are true becuase people believe in them. But when billions of people share ideas on spiritual realities, i say it's as much of a reality as "freedom" or love" are. We can physically describe these things, and can explain away the logic behind them...but that still doesn't change the fact that there is a subjective, non-rational human experience taking place with a reality that is not dependant on outside confirmation.
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Yeah, sorry that came out a bit messed up. What I meant to say was, that even if I did genuinely believe in my invisible purple llama, it wouldn't make him real. He would not exist in any form, tangible or not.
An idea is not real in the sense that it is purely abstract. An "idea" in simply electrons moving about inside of neurons, (or something similar, no precise ideas yet). But whatever process is responsible for "ideas", it is physical, so these ideas exist... as concepts. Whatever... now we’re just tripping over meanings and semantics. At this stage this particular point is pretty much irrelevant.
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Not quite what i was saying...it is not there to provide an asnwer, but allow us to think. I don't expect neat answers from my faith...i've choosen to adhere to a complicated religion with contradications, challenges and problems. Wouldn't have it any other way. I happen to be contradictory, challenges and problematic. Many of us are... Religions are ways for people to chew on difficult questions...and that's why substance is important. Shallow, easy answers would never satisfy...
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It seems to me that you're admitting that religion is self indulgent, pandering to your desires. That may be the case, but I am more concerned about what is real and what is the truth. I would admit that there is nothing satisfying (initially at least) in realising that there is no ultimate point to life.
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Btw:I'm currently reading the fascinating "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong...i HIGHLY reccomend it. She makes a very informed discussion of God with the light that religions are not about the particular truth value of the statements they make, but more about how they point people to realities that words cannot deal with.
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I'll definitely check it out. Right now I have a whole heap of books on my immediate "to-do list", but I'll definitely get around to reading it.
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I don't expect God to tell me why the sky is blue. I don't expect commentary on the how and the what of physical things. Science does a lovely job with that. I turn to non-rational systems when they work. They have taught me about love, patience, trust, and mercy, to name a few.
If your llama really taught you about those things...it too would be a doorway to the reality of God. It's often called animism...and is perhaps the most ancient faith man has held. It's an easy sport to put something mundane in the place of the revered, and i get the point. But my rebuttal is not that you're wrong, but that you're right in a way that you won't like. The llama could work...but it doesn't. We don't worship llamas because they don't tell us about ourselves. We don't believe in cold fusion because we can't get it to work. Efficiacy determines our trust in an idea, both rational and non-rational.
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I don't see what God tells us about ourselves? The teachings of a religion can certainly offer some good solid advice. I mean there is nothing wrong with the basic Christian idea of "everyone should be nice to everyone else". But the value of the concepts behind them, does not lead to the assumption that God is real.
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Fact? The fact is quite unimportant, when you come right down to it. I don't beleive in literal creation in 6 days. I don't have to in order to find meaning in Genesis and what it tells us about our search for our place in the world. Belief does not make objective fact. But it can make a subjective truth. And you don't care for subjective, or non-rational, and that's fine by me. But i've found such things to be a million times better at helping me understand my life and its meaning than rational studies of the mind. Faith does not begin in a vacuum, as your llama example suggests...it begins in experience.
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Well, for me it is ultimately the truth that I am after. When I die, do I simply stop existing? Or am I going to go return to God and go to heaven? Or hell for being a non-believer? Only one can be true. It would certainly make a tangible difference to my life were I to
know that I would go to heaven if I worshiped God.
Anyway, I would like to return to my original point, which is this: Religions are based on irrational thinking. You have accepted this. I guess we are in agreement to a certain extent. Faith is the willingness to accept the irrational. You have faith, and I don't. It comes back to the line "I believe because I believe".