drwex | Calling all mystics

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http://harpers.org/ThroughAGlassDarkly-12838838.html

Harper's has a long and thoughtful essay on the (re)rise of American Fundamentalism - what I've called our home-grown Taliban.

[The new Christ's] followers are not anxiously awaiting his return at the Rapture; he's here right now. They're not envious of the middle class; they are the middle class. They're not looking for a hero to lead them; they're building biblical households, every man endowed with 'headship' over his own family. They don't silence sex; they promise sacred sex to those who couple properly - orgasms more intense for young Christians who wait than those experienced by secular lovers.

I invite readers' comments. Personally I find this sort of things a natural outgrowth of mysticism in general. From where I sit it's a matter of degree, not kind, linking everyone from the newageist Pagans to... well, those guys.

I'm currently failing to find the link so I can properly acknowledge it, but last year someone pointed me to an essay by a person who, when asked why he didn't believe in God said, essentially:

"I don't not-believe in God - I just believe in one fewer gods than you do. If you can explain to me why you don't believe in any of those other gods I probably explain why I don't believe in yours."

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"If you can explain to me why you don't believe in any of those other gods I probably explain why I don't believe in yours."

(nods) I'm aesthetically fond of this approach... it's one of the few things I liked about Letter to a Christian Nation. Even the most devout believer in any monotheist faith has the experience of not believing in God in the face of the devout belief of others, because there's such a surplus of monotheist faiths, and ought to be able to empathize with that non-belief.

That said, the counter to it is easy... it goes, roughly, "I don't believe in the so-called "God" of (faiths X, Y, Z) because their existence is incompatible with the existence of God, which is known to me through faith. Now: why don't you believe in God?" The consistent skeptic really can't make an analogous argument, lacking a competing faith.

I always want to then come back with some variant of "But doesn't it bother you that your counterparts in faith X, Y, and Z feel exactly the same way?!? Doesn't that tell you there's something wrong with your formulation?"

Except that never gets me anywhere... indeed, many of the faithful I've had the conversation with reject the idea that their counterparts feel "the same way", despite what they admit are superficial similarities... after all, they have the true faith, and that's different from having the false faith.

Which I have real trouble empathizing with. When I work hard I can kinda-sorta imagine what the world looks like from that perspective, and it's remarkably comforting, but I simply can't hold onto it for long enough to carry on a useful conversation.

The closest I've ever come to empathizing with that is imagining talking about love to an inexperienced person in the throes of infatuation; I can imagine myself sincerely saying things like "Yes, I know it seems to you like it's the same thing, but it really isn't, and I can't explain the difference in any way that will make sense to you right now, but I assure you that if you ever experienced real love you'd know the difference too."

From:

drwex

Respectfully disagree:

"I don't believe in the so-called "God" of (faiths X, Y, Z) because their existence is incompatible with the existence of God, which is known to me through faith. Now: why don't you believe in God?" The consistent skeptic really can't make an analogous argument, lacking a competing faith.

But the lack of a competing faith is itself the counter-argument. Remember the premise is not that I will convince a faithful that my belief is correct; only that if they can articulate their reasons then then can understand mine. Given the articulation above I respond that I lack faith. Since you've articulated faith as the basis of your belief you should be able to understand how I, lacking faith, don't believe in their god.

I agree that they ought to be able to put themselves in the shoes of adherents of other mysticisms, but rarely can.

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Given the articulation above I respond that I lack faith. Since you've articulated faith as the basis of your belief you should be able to understand how I, lacking faith, don't believe in their god.

Mm... fair enough. Sure, any reasonable person ought to appreciate "I don't believe because I don't have faith" as a legitimate, albeit tautological, argument.

Though I suppose I can imagine being unable to understand what it's like to not have faith at all, in much the same way that I might be unable to understand what it's like to be blind.

All of that said, the reason I'm fond of the original line is because it invites an opportunity to find common ground between the faithful and the faithless... it suggests, at least to me, a somewhat open-handed posture of "Come, let us at least reason together with regards to our common lack of belief in most Gods, even if we can't agree on yours." So I tend to think of the argument as presented here as a failure, since it fails to find such common ground. But that may just be a peculiarity of mine.

From:

drwex

any reasonable person ought to appreciate "I don't believe because I don't have faith" as a legitimate, albeit tautological, argument.

Not always. Pascal certainly believed he could reason his way to belief, absent faith. I'm also willing to accept that some people have had direct experience of their god. I may think they're mistaken about what they experienced but I have to admit their experience as a valid reason for belief. Reading the writeup of Leary's Good Friday experiments was interesting in this light (http://www.csp.org/practices/entheogens/docs/young-good_friday.html).

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(nods) I don't think we disagree here, though I'm apparently not expressing myself very precisely.

That said:
1) it's not clear to me that Pascal believed he could reason his way to belief, merely to worship. Then again I'm hardly an expert on Pascal.

2) people who have (something they interpret as) direct experience of God seem tangential to the issue at hand, no? When the skeptic says, in response to the believer's attribution of belief to faith, that he lacks belief because he lacks faith, it's not clear to me that the existence of other (non-faith-based) causes of belief is relevant to their exchange. The believer isn't (necessarily) denying that other people can have direct experience. (Indeed, he isn't necessarily denying that other people can be brainwashed or deluded into believing what he does, without having true faith.)

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drwex

I agree that we're in basic agreement. We're also off on a wild tangent, so dropping it here.

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pekmez.livejournal.com

(I got here by following

dpolicar's link, btw.)

Hmm. I find it kind of funny that I wind up wanting to take the theist's perspective in all of these, given that I'm mostly an agnostic Jew who likes to participate in a lot and finds certain ideas of my faith's God-image appealing without rationally having a sense of "yes, my faith tells me this is true." I wouldn't mind if I had faith that *did* tell me it was true, but I mostly don't.

But the belief in a theist God that I kinda-sorta-sometimes have isn't that specific about one faith being true and another being false - I can't imagine it ever telling me that there *is* a Jewish God and *is not* a Christian God or Muslim God. It'd be much more that there *is* a God who is probably not exactly any of the Jewish God, Christian God, Muslim God absolutes and probably played a role in the lore and prophecy and development of *all* of those religions, but is perfectly willing to go for the Jews following the rules as laid out to and by them, the Christians doing it as laid out to and by them, and the Muslims living life as laid out to and by them. I think there are other modern theist people who subscribe to one of the major theist religions who think about it that way too. Maybe my perception is just skewed.

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(nods) I share your basic attitude here, which I would roughly summarize as "well, there's something, and we no doubt have all the details wrong anyway, so it's best not to sweat the details."

It took me a lot of time, and a lot of conversations with the faithful, to really viscerally appreciate the fact that, no, a great many subscribers to religious traditions -- even "modern" ones, if I understand what you mean by that word -- don't think or feel this way about divinity at all.

There exist a great many people who think about divinity the way I think about medicine... the details matter, it's not only possible but easy to get the details wrong, and that while Tradition X doesn't necessarily have all the details right it is sufficiently more right than its competitors to be objectively superior to them.

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shoutingboy.livejournal.com

I think C.S. Lewis aptly points this argument the other way, though. To roughly paraphrase what he says in Mere Christianity, a Christian is free to believe that other religions are mostly right--a materialist has to believe that all religions are wrong.

Ask me for my opinions about Islam or Buddhism, and I can tell you a great many things I think they're right about. I think that makes me a bit more open-minded than, say, a Dawkins, who thinks teaching any religion to a child constitutes child abuse...

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(nods) Yeah, I'm familiar with the argument, though I've never found it compelling.

(I should add, tangentially, that Mere Christianity was one of the first books that I actually found accessible back when I first started trying to wrap my brain around what you Christians are all about, so I do have a soft spot in my heart about it, despite not finding this argument compelling.)

My problem with it is that it's not entirely clear to me what "mostly" means in this sentence, or that it means anything useful.

I mean, you and Dawkins agree about a great many things too, it's just that none of those things have to do with Jesus Christ, intelligences intrinsic the nature of reality, or the ways in which living, not-yet-living, and once-living humans can interact usefully with those intelligences. So Dawkins can say that he's free to believe that you're mostly right about the way the world is, you're just wrong about God. It's not clear to me that this is a sensible thing for him to say, but it's not clear to me that it's meaningfully different from what Lewis is saying.

It seems to me that the question is not what percentage of your beliefs do you share (with a Dawkins or a Buddhist or a Wiccan or a militant agnostic or a liberal Democrat), or how many beliefs do you share, but how important are the shared and diverging beliefs to how you live your lives.

A materialist is free to consider his points of divergence with a Christian to not be very important, and thus conclude that they're mostly right and the points where they're wrong don't matter much. A Christian is free to do the same only if the divinity of Jesus Christ isn't very important to that Christian. In both cases, it seems to me that I'm being disengenuous... to the extent that one doesn't consider a basic tenet of Xism important, it seems misleading to the point of deception to describe one as an Xist.

From:

drwex

I also think this trends back towards my main point, which is that once you open the door to theism you don't have a logical stopping point until you're well past the Taliban. If I wish to deny the mystic impulse (and to sympathize with Dawkins' overstatement) it's because I can see where it leads. Heck, we're LIVING in where it can lead.

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Sure, and then one responds by pointing to nominally materialistic, atheistic nations like the former Soviet Union and highlighting how bad that was, and then you respond by explaining that their materialistic atheism wasn't sufficient or necessary to explain their badness, and they respond by explaining that the Taliban's mysticism isn't sufficient or necessary to explain their badness, and round and round we go.

Reasoning from "There exist people who believe X and do bad things related to that belief" to anything reliable about the badness of X is tricky.

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roozle.livejournal.com

I think

sunspiral, who is no friend of religion, once likened religion to Mrs PiggyWiggle's magic "EverSoMuchMoreSo" which makes people be themselves just MORE so. I find that the vast majority of people use religion to justify their own view of the world: the fearful person sees a fearsome, vengeful god; the generous person sees an open-handed god, and so forth. It brings out the great in human beings, and the terrible in them as well.

The statement that "once you open the door to theism you don't have a logical stopping point until you're well past the Taliban" begs the question that ANY belief, taken to extremes, can be twisted into a damaging form.

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Re: the everSoMuchMoreSo notion... I think there's something to that, though I don't think it's quite true as stated.

I posted a take on something similar-but-different here; I point to it rather than attempt to restate it 'cuz I'm a lazy bugger.

(Rereading it now I'm struck both by how incredibly clumsily written it is, and by all the important related things I gloss over. It appears my thinking on this subject actually has improved somewhat in the last three years.)

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shoutingboy.livejournal.com

Yeah, it's true that there's some slipperiness there. I think CSL's point was that almost all religions agree that there's something more than just what we see and touch, and that moral truths are in some sense transcendant and independant of us--and that materialism necessarily denies this. And because CSL (and I) think that that point-of-agreement-between-religions is very important, we tend to say "If you're religions, you agree with almost all other religions about a whole lot, and the materialists disagree with us about all the important stuff."

And certain kinds of materialists--like the Dawkinses--would tend to agree with us, and say, "Yes, you're right. All those religions tend to agree about really important stuff, and they're all dead wrong about it." Which is why Dawkins (and Harris and the like) feel like it's bad to try to draw distinctions between the mellow, moderate religions and the fanatical ones, since even the moderate ones are letting that transcendant camel's nose into the mundane tent.

But other materialists could very well say "No, actually, I think the important stuff is thus-and-so, and it turns out I do agree with this-and-that religion about those things, and disagree with other religions about it."

I guess I'd step back from what I said, and give a qualified agreement to your first point:

"If you can explain to me why you don't believe in any of those other gods I probably explain why I don't believe in yours."

And I'd say that if a religious believer (or anyone defending any position) uses arguments of type X, he should respect arguments of type X when they're made against him. If I say "I believe in Christianity because I trust and respect the people who taught it to me", he is obliged to respect similar arguments from a Hindu or atheist. If he says "I reject Islam because I feel like it has such-and-such a flaw", he should respect similar arguments against Christianity. If he says "I just know in my heart it's true", he has no argument against the person who says "I just know in my heart it ain't".

But if you're saying that every argument against Islam or Shintoism has an exactly parallel argument against Christianity, I think you're mistaken. And that seems to me to be the implication of your challenge/boast--you seem to be saying "any argument against religion X can be trivially transformed into an argument against religion Y." And I just don't think that's so. Different religions have different flaws. (To take one trivial example, I reject Mormonism because the religion is based on accounts of a civilization which has left no archaeological remnants whatsoever--no ruins, no coins, no pottery. Christianity may be hard to prove, but it's in much stronger shape than LDS--we can prove that those civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia that the Bible talks about really were there. So my argument against LDS can't be mapped into a corresponding argument against Christianity.)

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(nods) Agreed with the thrust of your first few paragraphs.

That said, I'd like to clarify something here, before I potentially get the wrong idea: are you actually saying that you feel you have more ideological commonality with, say, someone who strongly identifies as an Orthodox Jew or Mormon or Wiccan than you do with, say, someone raised Greek Orthodox but who has no faith in an intelligent Deity concerned with human affairs in the first place? (It's fine with me either way, just want to be clear.)

But if you're saying that every argument against Islam or Shintoism has an exactly parallel argument against Christianity, I think you're mistaken.

Hm. I don't think I'm saying that. I can sorta see where you're getting it from, but I think it's just sloppiness on my part. That said, if you think the implication is central to what I'm saying, I invite you to stress it some more, as it may reveal a flaw in my reasoning that I'm glossing over. I certainly agree that to assert that would be a mistake for any reasonable reading of "exactly parallel argument".

And I'm going to let the whole issue of the existence of Egypt, etc, go without comment, since in and of itself it's tangential to the main point here, and I don't think you intended it to be a compelling argument for believing in Christianity.

I certainly am saying that, despite your Christianity and my lack of it, we share a common status as non-believers in approximately every religious tradition there is, ever was, or ever will be, and that [u]perhaps[/u] our common skepticism towards unfounded religious beliefs could usefully be considered more important than your faith in the one you consider true and I don't.

From:

shoutingboy.livejournal.com

[

drwex: I hope you don't mind us hijacking your journal?

dpolicar linked here, and I followed.]

'That said, I'd like to clarify something here, before I potentially get the wrong idea: are you actually saying that you feel you have more ideological commonality with, say, someone who strongly identifies as an Orthodox Jew or Mormon or Wiccan than you do with, say, someone raised Greek Orthodox but who has no faith in an intelligent Deity concerned with human affairs in the first place?'

Yeah, I think I'd say that. Press me on specific cases, and I might back away from it. But overall, and by and large, and taking one thing with another, I think believers in a religious tradition[*] have something important in common with each other which we do not have in common with materialists.

'That said, if you think the implication is central to what I'm saying, I invite you to stress it some more, as it may reveal a flaw in my reasoning that I'm glossing over.'

I read you as saying, "Any person who disbelieves in religion X, and expresses that disbelief, has provided a corresponding argument against whatever religion he might hold". If that's not what you meant, then in what sense would you say that "If you can explain to me why you don't believe in any of those other gods I probably explain why I don't believe in yours"?

Though as it happens, my argument against Islam is one which you could trivially turn against Christianity. That is, my argument against Islam amounts to: "A. I am convinced of the truth of the core doctrines of Christianity, for other reasons; B. Islam disagrees with core doctrines of Christianity; therefore C. Islam is mistaken". You can trivially turn that into an argument against Christianity, by swapping nouns: You are convinced that there is no God, Christianity says there is a God, therefore Christianity is mistaken. In both cases, the argument naturally provokes the response, "Okay, what are those 'other reasons' you mentioned in premise A?"

Which is a fine and wholesome discussion to have, and I'm always happy to have it.

But that's why the Dawkinsish argument cited above--"You don't believe in Zeus, well, I don't believe in Christ"--doesn't really succeed against any actual religious believer. The Christian says "I don't believe in Zeus because I believe in Christ, and the teachings of Christ include the tenet that there is no other god."[**] So when Dawkins says, "Well, that's why I don't believe in Christ!", it's merely silly--the Christian says "What, you don't believe in Christ because you do believe in Christ?"

Which comes back to my biggest gripe about the current crop of ill-tempered atheist writers: They make a big show about how they're trying to engage with religious believers (right down to the title of Harris's book), but they're doing no such thing. They're preaching to the choir. They make arguments which would be utterly ineffective against the well-read theist, but which let ill-read materialists bask in the smug satisfaction of thinking their prejudices are proven by the laws of Logic and Science.

(It's a pity, really. I was a huge fan of Dawkins back in the day--I loved The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. He was a very gifted writer of popular science, and that's an important job. But he's decided he'd rather spend his time as the cranky village atheist, and I can't see he accomplishes much for good or ill that way.)

[*] And "religious tradition" might let out Wiccans. Though many Wiccans I meet turn out to be pantheists who express themselves with neopagan terminology, and I'd definitely count pantheism as a "religious tradition" for these purposes.

[**] Though actually, that doesn't exclude the possibility of a very powerful being named Zeus--an angel or djinn or somesuch. Really, I'm agnostic on the question "is there a randy immortal living on top of Mt. Olympus". I just believe that if there is such a being, he's a creation of God, just like I am.

From:

drwex

Hijack away. I wouldn't have left it open to posting if I hadn't been willing to accept a hijack.

That said, I agree with you that "believers in a religious tradition[*] have something important in common with each other which we do not have in common with materialists."

I'm reminded of an epigram here that I've heard said two ways:
"Reality bats last" (unknown) or
"Nature cannot be fooled" (Feynman)
Both of which are saying that at the end there's a material check on whatever you're up to. I'd suppose that a mystic would argue that God bats last.

From:

shoutingboy.livejournal.com

I think we'd agree that reality bats last, we'd just say there's a lot more "reality" than materialists are aware of. If God is real, then, well, He's part of Reality. (In fact, He's most of it.)

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gentlescholar.livejournal.com

I beg to differ. I'm at least something of a mystic and I don't believe in any gods. I believe that there is something more than the mundane world, because I have directly perceived it on multiple occasions. But none of those perceptions involved detecting a consciousness or deity or what have you, and I try not to over-extrapolate from my tiny data set.

I'm fond of "reality bats last."

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Related is "'Real' is what you cannot safely ignore," which I'm no doubt misquoting.

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If that's not what you meant, then in what sense would you say that "If you can explain to me why you don't believe in any of those other gods I probably explain why I don't believe in yours"?

So, I invite you to reread the whole series of posts around that statement, above, but will quote the relevant section of my response:

I'm aesthetically fond of this approach... it's one of the few things I liked about Letter to a Christian Nation. Even the most devout believer in any monotheist faith has the experience of not believing in God in the face of the devout belief of others, because there's such a surplus of monotheist faiths, and ought to be able to empathize with that non-belief. That said, the counter to it is easy... and proceed to recapitulate what I think is your argument here as well.

I think you may be confusing some of the speakers in this exchange with one another, which is entirely understandable. If not, then I'm probably still missing a flaw in my thinking, though perhaps it would be better to move that discussion to my LJ?

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shoutingboy.livejournal.com

'I certainly am saying that, despite your Christianity and my lack of it, we share a common status as non-believers in approximately every religious tradition there is, ever was, or ever will be, and that perhaps our common skepticism towards unfounded religious beliefs could usefully be considered more important than your faith in the one you consider true and I don't.'

The trouble there is, I don't see how this commonality of belief can amount to anything narrower than "I, like you, believe some statements are true and others are false". Which is something we do have in common, but it's something we have in common with everyone who ever lived. (Okay, some postmodernists would claim they don't believe it, but they're BSing us...)

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Which is something we do have in common, but it's something we have in common with everyone who ever lived.

And this is bad why?

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To expand on this a little... perhaps one of the important things I ought to say out loud is that what's important to me in discussions between the faithful and the faithless and all their various permutations is to find some way for them to live and work together productively in peace and fellowship.

Finding ways to convince one group or the other that they are wrong is interesting insofar as it might achieve that goal, but frankly I find it an unpromising direction.

That might help clarify the direction of a lot of my reasoning.

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gentlescholar.livejournal.com

Actually, I think I would say that, depending on how nitpicky you want to be about "exactly parallel". I'm sure you can point out a spot where the Koran says factually false thing X and the Bible doesn't, for example. I expect there are places where the Bible says factually false thing Y and the Koran doesn't.

Maybe you can find an example where an exact parallel eludes me--I'm not a religious scholar. But I find it quite likely that somewhere some religious scholar could find that parallel, or something very close to it.

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almost all religions agree that there's something more than just what we see and touch...

I believe this as well, as does everybody else I know.

But I expect you mean "see and touch" metaphorically, rather than literally... that is, I suspect that believing, say, in carbon monoxide or electrons or Pluto aren't examples of agreeing on what you and Lewis mean here.

Which is fine, and I'm not trying to spoof you here or anything... but it's a tricky metaphor to expand unambiguously. So we might agree on what you mean here. We might not. It's not clear to me which it is, or even how I'd go about determining which it is.

...and that moral truths are in some sense transcendant and independant of us

For any reasonable reading of "in some sense" I probably disagree with this, but I also don't consider it an important assertion. I suppose it might be true, and you're free to think that it is true and it really doesn't affect me at all.

(When you suggest that materialism necessarily denies these positions, I'm not sure what to say. Perhaps I'm not a materialist, which is OK with me. Perhaps I've misunderstood what you mean by these positions. Perhaps I'm asserting a hidden contradiction somewhere.

Elsewhere, when I asked you a question about someone "who has no faith in an intelligent Deity concerned with human affairs in the first place" you responded with an answer about "materialists"... so I assumed that the former was an interesting example of the latter.

In thinking about it now I suspect we don't actually share an understanding of what "materialist" refers to in more than a vague, handwavy way.)

However, there's a series of unspoken, related assertions that I think are important, such as:
* "...and that humans can become aware of these transcendent, independent moral truths..."
* "...and that the doctrines of my religious tradition captures these moral truths more closely than other doctrines."

I reject those assertions, both with regards to my own religious tradition, and also with regards to yours.

If you reject, or are neutral with respect to, those assertions -- that is, if you merely assert that there exist transcendent, independent moral truths but do not assert that you have more accurate beliefs about what they are than (for example) I do, and do not assert that Christians as a class have more accurate beliefs about what they are than (for example) Mormons do -- then I'm inclined (with respect to what we've said so far) to say you and I agree on the important stuff.

If you assert those assertions, then we disagree on something important (and you and a Mormon probably disagree on the same important thing as applied to Christianity, although the Mormon might believe something parallel but importantly different about Mormonism).

Only tangentially related to the above: are you actually saying that you don't consider beliefs about Christ to fall into the category of "important stuff" as defined here? Or are you saying that somehow you share those beliefs with an Orthodox Jew?

From:

thatwesguy.livejournal.com

A preamble:

To expand on this a little... perhaps one of the important things I ought to say out loud is that what's important to me in discussions between the faithful and the faithless and all their various permutations is to find some way for them to live and work together productively in peace and fellowship.

Finding ways to convince one group or the other that they are wrong is interesting insofar as it might achieve that goal, but frankly I find it an unpromising direction.

This too, is my underlying bent. Onward:

Yeah, it's true that there's some slipperiness there. I think CSL's point was that almost all religions agree that there's something more than just what we see and touch, and that moral truths are in some sense transcendant and independant of us--and that materialism necessarily denies this.

I disbelieve the assertion attributed here to CSL, and would like to try to convince you that it has clear potential both to be incorrect, and also to be harmful to the goal of "all of us just getting along."

My understanding is that materialism "holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions." (wikipedia) I will adopt this position for this post (and in fact it is consonant with my actual beliefs).

I believe that thought exists. However, I also hold that only that only matter exists. I do not believe that thought is composed of matter. Is my belief system self-contradictory?

Well, let's say that I believe that humans are made exclusively of matter. Let's say that I believe that physical neurons embody an abstractable system. Already I skirt with trouble: abstractable implies that something immaterial can exist. Okay, then let's back out a level:

Can a materialist accept that the number "2" exists?

I certainly hope that the answer is yes, but the definitions we've accepted so far say otherwise.

Oh dear. I'm in trouble before I've even finished warming up.

Let's assume for the moment that someone rescues me and allows me to accept the existence of "2" without giving up my "materialist" membership card.

...Perhaps I don't even need to finish this argument to give you the flavor of my belief that complexity and abstraction alone are sufficient to give the materialist access both to belief in "more than we can see and touch" and to belief in "moral truths (that are) independent of us."

But I'm happy to if you think it necessary.

From:

finagler.livejournal.com

That quote was probably Richard Dawkins -- he said much the same thing on the Colbert Report during his recent The God Delusion book tour.

The lovely part of of the argument is that it's something of a Judo throw -- he can say "OK, you don't believe in Thor, I just happen to think of Yahweh the same way" and the person he's talking to is left with the choice of feeling insulted but bigoted against Thor-worshipers, or not insulted and thus without reason to argue.

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It might be dawkins, although Harris makes essentially the same point a lot.

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keyne.livejournal.com

No. "...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

It's always attributed to a Stephen Roberts, though sources differ on whether it's a net personage (and noted atheist) named Stephen F. Roberts or a historian (who died in 1971) named Stephen Henry Roberts. I suspect the former.

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taura-g.livejournal.com

Huh. That's humorous because it sounds a lot like 17thC New England Puritanism.

Personally I find this sort of things a natural outgrowth of mysticism in general. From where I sit it's a matter of degree, not kind, linking everyone from the newageist Pagans to... well, those guys.

A matter of degree or a matter of point-of-view? The various forms of beliefs, IMO, are based on what a particular group sees as The Truth(tm). To paraphrase Obi-wan: The truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

From:

drwex

It's a matter of degree. I don't see a qualitative difference between women being screamed at and beaten for daring to go out in public without "proper" body covering and women being screamed and doctors being shot for performing abortions.

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(nods)
The question (for me) is, do you see a qualitative difference between believing, for whatever reason, that women should be "properly" clothed and not have abortions (on the one hand) and screaming at them, beating them, or shooting them or their doctors (on the other)?

It seems to me the mysticism apologist would want to say here that mysticism can give you a belief about something, but the willingness to go out and make a nuisance of yourself over it cannot be fully attributed to mysticism. There are plenty of quiet mystics who cause no trouble.

From:

arc-stormcrow.livejournal.com

((Sorry I'm late to the discussion.))

But what you're describing is, well, more aptly termed fundamenalism or fanatacism than mysticism.

Certainly, mystics aren't exempt from fundamental, strict, or even aescetic beliefs/activities - and aren't limited to being individuals or small groups (qv Pentacostal snake-dancers, etc.) In general, mystics tend more towards a "extra-religious" worldview, where their mystical experiences (aka UPG - Unverified Personal Gnosis) supplants certain teachings of their respective religion. This can lead to fundamentalism and violence, but is also just as likely to lead them to (according to the views of their more mainstream co-religionists) heresy.

I mean, sure, there's people who get violent over abortion and "modesty" - but when's the last time you heard of a New Ager beating someone to death because they didn't believe in Tarot cards? A somewhat absurd example, certainly, but enough to make me question that extra-physical/surpernatural worldviews present a danger.

From:

feste-sylvain.livejournal.com

This is nothing new. Ask any (European) Dark Ages historian: this kind of shit used to happen all the time. The Jim Jones cult was by no means an historical aberration.

Remember: the Vatican had to declare suicide to be an "Unforgivable Sin" because too many converts would accept Jesus, have all of their sins thus forgiven, and then commit suicide so they could enter heaven with a clean slate. Whacko behavior has always been around.

Islam has something like 60 significant sects; Christianity has fewer, but may develop more as the African and Asian churches take deeper root. (Judaism has four, by the same measure, but their numbers worldwide are sufficient to account for this relative lack of diversity.) As various sects explore their boundaries, weird corner cases are bound to gain some traction.

Fundamentalists of every stripe are more susceptible to this, precisely because they have opted out of thinking. Once that happens, extrapolations that never entered into the original authors' heads can be derived (Cathars, Gnostics, Wahabbi, etc.).

Mysticism is not necessary for these to occur. Faith is.

From:

drwex

I don't think I'm missing the lack of novelty. As I said it's the re-rise of American fanaticism. I do think it's a direct outgrowth of the mystical impulse.

From:

feste-sylvain.livejournal.com

Hmmm. We may be talking past each other. Where you use the catch-all term "mysticism", I may be using my term "faith".

For clarity's sake, I provide my definition now:

faith: n Acceptance without proof

To me, faith is always (by definition) stupid. Literally.

Mysticism, on the other hand, is the derivation of meaning from diverse perceived patterns. I can get useful personal insights from tarot readings without attributing magickal properties to the cards; rather, the insights come from my own internal pattern perceiver. If I was of another bent, I could do the same with tea leaves (again, without attributing magickal properties to the leaves).

"American fanaticism" used to be much worse. Many of the preachers stoking the Whiskey Rebellion were literally trying to rebuild Jerusalem in the Allegheny mountains; Herman Husband (in particular) drew his meticulous contour maps of western Pennsylvania based on quotes from the book of Daniel. One of the main reasons for the 1st Amendment's prohibition against an Established church was to prevent the kind of sectarian violence which Iraq is going thru.

From:

faith: n Acceptance without proof
To me, faith is always (by definition) stupid. Literally.

I always have trouble with this sort of assertion, though much of the slipperiness tends to center on what the speaker considers proof.

To be concrete for a second: what would you accept as sufficient proof that someone loves me that my accepting that they love me isn't evidence of my stupidity?

From:

feste-sylvain.livejournal.com

To be concrete for a second: what would you accept as sufficient proof that someone loves me that my accepting that they love me isn't evidence of my stupidity?

Oh, I'd say that observing how they treat you and behave around you would comprise sufficient proof, one way or the other. It's an inductive proof, to be sure. Perhaps some future neurologist will find a definitive "love test", but that's not necessary for you to plan your life (or perhaps just this evening) with that person now.

But the analogy for our discussion here is not whether that person loves you; the analogy here is what I'd accept as sufficient proof that YHWH loves you. First, I'd require proof of YHWH.

From:

Sure, sure. I didn't mean to raise it as an analogy to religious faith, I meant to raise it in an attempt to clarify your definition of faith.

But I will say that if "well, I've observed the system, and based on my observations I'm comfortable concluding so-and-so's love even though of course I can't really prove it" qualifies as sufficient proof to not be "faith", I'm not entirely convinced your definition of faith helps clarify the religious situation much.

I mean, OK, the Christian who accepts your definition says "well, OK, I stand corrected. I don't believe in God on faith, I believe in God on the strength of my observations of the system." And I say "Well, wait... your observations don't justify your conclusions!" And they say "sure they do!" And I say "Prove it!" And they say "well, prove your boyfriend loves you!"

And we're back where we started.

From:

drwex

Aha, yes, we're working from different starting points. Let's see if I can be clear about mine:

Faith: belief, not necessarily dependent on proof, and often in the face of apparently contradictory evidence.

(Thus one might have faith in the literal nature of the Bible, despite apparent proof of the geological age of the Earth - contradictory evidence. One might also have faith in the existence of a divine being, despite any proof one way or the other.)

Mysticism: the system of/tendency to attributing extra-physical causes to observations, independent of pattern.

So mysticism encompasses things like belief in "energy" of inanimate objects despite the inability of any scientific procedure known to measure such "energy". Mysticism includes things like attributing predictive power to symbol systems like Tarot, as opposed to a non-mystical view of Tarot as a means of stimulating self-observation and insight without having any extra predictive power.

Transubstantiation is mysticism; adherence to the notion of virgin birth is faith.

A mystic may have/usually has faith (usually in something) as part of mystical explanation. On the other hand the two seem to be very loosely connected, since I'm pretty sure that many people who believe in the predictive power of astrology also believe in a God whose tenets would technically label that sort of thing heresy or witchcraft and definitely outside the faith.

From:

thatwesguy.livejournal.com

I find myself thinking along a tangent -- forgive me if tangents offend inherently by distracting from the primary point -- and wondering: does the following parallel seem significant?

* Neurons give rise via some poorly-explained intermediary (such as by clustering, perhaps, into Minsky's "agents") to the workings and perception of consciousness, which I'll define as "awareness of self and of self's ability to be aware" if a definition is required.

* People give rise via some poorly-explained intermediary (such as by clustering, perhaps, into "teams" with shared experiences or tendencies) to the perception, and indeed even workings, of a deity, which I'll define as "awareness of effects outside self and inexplicable by self or by any other analogue to self yet encountered" if a definition is required.

From:

drwex

It's not clear to me that mysticism is necessarily an emergent phenomenon, as any lone person might need the ability to explain the unknown to himself.

From:

thatwesguy.livejournal.com

Hm. I seem to have failed to post my last comment. I will try to post this test comment now, and on success, will attempt to recreate my last.

From:

weegoddess.livejournal.com

[doesn't really have anything new or pithy to say but is reading along]

From:

feste-sylvain.livejournal.com

From the original link:

Those of us not engaged personally or emotionally in the biggest political and cultural movement of our times—those on the sidelines of history—keep trying to come up with theories with which to discredit the evident allure of this punishing yet oddly comforting idea of a deity, this strange god.

Um, no. Not even.

Take a step back and look again.

More Americans are "unchurched" now than at any time in U.S. history. The biggest cultural movement along these lines is the rampant rise of secularism.

More faithless people like me are looking for spiritual foundations in completely churchless environments; even more aren't even bothering.

And a huge number of people still believe in God (and probably don't even know His name) but don't see why that should require them to participate weekly in a religious service. Most of these people haven't even thought much about it.

Atheists disturb Americans for the same reason that Pentacostalists do: we don't like strident jackasses getting in our faces.

But the strident are the ones actually making noise about the subject.

From:

Hear, hear!

You might enjoy reading this: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_1.html#dennett

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