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Not that friendly and interesting discussions shouldn't continue, but your question about how this discussion should continue seems to imply that you're not happy with leaving it as is. He understands your position. You understand his. He's happy with his world-view. You're happy with yours. As far as I can tell, he's not harming anyone with his world-view and you're not harming anyone with yours.
Seems like a good place to leave things.
Thanks, Daniel for the discussion.
Perhaps a profitable direction to take this discussion next would be to ask why expanding one's personal criteria for evidence to include the spiritual experiences would even be necessary or desirable.
I suggest that one reason for doing so would be to find answers to questions that reasoning and science alone cannot address, such as the great questions of the the human condition. Viz., What is the purpose of life, is there a life after death, etc.
There is no possible next step.
That person has expanded their list of things they accept based on faith (call them axioms or however you make axiom plural) to include their personal subjective experience. From thereon anything you say can be reduced to:
<ol>
<li>Your statement is a scientific hypothesis</li>
<li>If your statement is true, then this (deduced) list of statements is true</li>
<li>One of those statements contradicts my subjective experience</li>
<li>My subjective experience is true, because it's an axiom.</li>
<li>Ergo by negative example your statement is false</li>
</ol>
I'll show you what I mean:
<ol>
<li>A person cannot walk on water because he is heavier than water. Hmm... Let's see.</li>
<li>If a person cannot walk on water, and Jesus was a person, then that means Jesus did not walk on water. Then the description of Jesus walking on water is wrong, hence the New Testament is wrong.</li>
<li>My subjective experience is that the New Testament is true, and you're claiming that the new testament is false.</li>
<li>Based on the axiom that the new statement is true, the deduced statement that the New Testament is wrong is itself wrong.</li>
<li>Ergo by negative example your hypothesis is wrong</li>
</ol>
2 points if you can detect the steps I've skipped in the proof. I hope you can see how that argument and any argument like it will be pointless.
-- Arik
Here is the structure of his argument:
The evidence is that he he had the spiritual experience. You and I can accept that he had this experience.
His conclusion that this experience was caused by God. What are the steps that lead to that conclusion? These need to be enumerated.
I think his argument falls apart on the basis that the personal experience has an external cause. It this is true, then you can expand his logic to allowing the spectral evidence at the Salem Witch Trials. Disproved via reduxio absurdum?
Occams' razor states that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." I think a literal translation of this is best applied here: The most likely explanation for the spiritual experience is a mechanical cause from one's own body. One entity. to say that there is an external cause for the experience interjects a second entity, who's only proof of existence is the experience it is injected to explain. Circular reasoning.
I do not believe in God, Allah or the Easter Bunny. Yet I am a computer forensics expert and I also believe strongly in scientific evidence. The purported God, Allah and the Easter Bunny owe their existence primarily to spoken and written references about those characters. Most religious persons always take the 'faith' argument to try to avoid confronting the simple truth that their faith is based on writings and tales told a long time ago by story tellers who knew how to spin a yarn to keep the interest of their audiences.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Bible of Judah, the Koran and the very Bible upon which many Christian religions are based can simply be compared to the collective writings of Ian Fleming, who wrote volumes on a fictional character named James Bond. Some even claim that Iam Fleming based his James Bond character on a real person.
Now. Let us say that I take all the books that were written about James Bond and carefully wrapped them all in environment proof packaging and sealed them away for their safety in some cave. I then seal up the cave to double protect them from theft or damage from the environment ( floods, fires, insects, sun, etc ).
And now... let us say that a massive environmental disaster, floods or a nuclear holocaust envelopes the land and destroys everything - people, buildings, other books and most traces of mans time on earth.
Leap forward in time a hundred years after this great catastrophe and a spaceship lands on this desolate and void planet. The spacemen have used the technology of their time to discover the cave where the James Bond book collection were safely stored. Space archaelogist conduct an excavation and dig up all those James Bond books.
What do you think their reaction would be as they decode the written English language of the books and learn about this person called James Bond, who fought the bad guys and always won, who was like an instant magnet for attracting lovely ladies, who always dressed impecably and drank Martini's stirred but not shaken and had superpowers and a gun and amazing weapons to defeat bad guys.
A new religion would be born. Future spacemen would be gathering on Sunday's in their tuxedos, hanging around roulette tables, sipping Martini's stirred but not shaken and discussing how good always triumphs over evil.
Even if a future expeditions discovered the tales of Mohamed, Jesus, the Buddha or the Easter Bunny would pale in comparison to James Bond.
Let us just hope that the James Bondians never let any cults like the Mohamedians or the Allahians or the Jesusians reach the fanatical stage where their false beliefs lead them to take arms against the James Bondians.
For we all know that the James Bondians will be triumphant over all bad guys. Good always wins over evil according to James Bonds biographer Ian Fleming
Hi Daniel,
You realize your friend is defining his experience as of god. The question is... is that a valid way of defining his mystic experiences? If that experience could be demonstratively applied by not-god would he still analyse his previous experiences the same? He (and yourself) might want to examine this: http://richarddawkins.net/article,1720,n,n</p>
Or you could just accept him as is and let the discussion drop. There is a reason Nietzsche's Zarathrustra didn't give his gift for man to the Saint. (http://philosophy.eserver.org/nietzsche-zarathu... , section 2 is the relevant part so I'm not being cryptic.)
Reading this post was scary! I'm also a Mormon PhD candidate (biomedical sciences), and lately I've been thinking about this very topic. This post echoed almost exactly my own thoughts as they've developed over the past few months. I thought my ideas were fairly unique; now I wonder if they aren't common among Mormon scientists.
@ Daniel,
Are scientific observations capable of supporting the existence of God?
-=T=-
Yes, if Jesus comes back and is observed by thousands of scientists performing miracles then that supports the existence of God. It doesn't prove it, but it goes a long way toward it by illustrating that their current theories of what is and is not possible were incorrect.
Yes, many human experiences are unverifiable by scientific analysis.
But we don't base our core beliefs about life, identity, society, morality, eternal destiny, etc. on those experiences.
If your friend lives his life in obedience to a feeling, and believes that it is just for his eternal destiny to be determined by nothing more than warm fuzzies, does he apply that same standard to the lesser decisions in life?
Does he also believe that others should believe in god based on his experiences? For example, if I never "feel" god, does that mean that god doesn't exist for me?
What standard is your friend using to determine what is and is not legitimate evidence? Just because he believes that feelings are a legitimate epistemological source does not mean that they are.
There are so many problems with this that I'm not really sure why you take it seriously.
I think you should collaborate on a musical together. If you write the lyrics and mail them to me I can provide the musical score within four/five weeks. While I'm doing this it would be helpful if you could secure investors for the project. We can then split the proceeds four ways. One part to the investors and the remaining three shares divided equally between the three of us. I see this as an off-Broadway production possibly moving on to London and Sydney at some later date. If we can get film rights - I know a guy who can set this up - this could go global. I'm really excited already. Get writing guys, this could be big.
Your Mormon friend seems like a rational guy and the way he practices his religion probably isn't a threat to society. His reasoning, however, has an obvious flaw.
The flaw is that if you believe in the scientific method, then "extending your epistemological criteria" to allow magical personal experiences is either meaningless or wrong.
Your considers the scientific method to be "the best means available for acquiring knowledge". So when he believes he has acquired a piece of knowledge from his own personal experience, he must subject it to scientific scrutiny, and will reach one of the following three outcomes:
<ol>
<li>
The scientific method confirms it (e.g. he gets a revelation that the sky is blue). A personal revelation of this kind is indistinguishable from a rational thought.
</li><li>
The scientific method reveals that it is wrong (e.g. he gets a revelation that the Earth is 6000 years old). This is where most of Mormonism falls, if taken literally.
</li><li>
The scientific method has no say about it (e.g. he gets a revelation with no other content than to make him believe that "some sort of God exists"). But hypotheses which no evidence can confirm or deny are meaningless, because their truth or falsehood can't ever have any effect on the physical world (for if you could describe its effect, you could test for it, at least in theory).
</li></ol>
If your friend believes in revelations of the #2 variety, then in his mind the scientific method is entirely subordinate to some other epistemological framework, in which case he is no scientist in my book.
If your friend believes in revelations of the #3 variety, then those revelations must not have any meaningful implications to his worldview. Ask him to name one of his special non-scientific hypothesis, and confirm that it can't be proved or disproved even in theory. Then ask him why he finds meaning in a hypothesis whose effects are indistinguishable from the effects of its logical negation.
Why make the state of mystical somehow aberrant? Isn't EVERYTHING mystical, in which case it drops out of the equation. Cancels out it does.
Instead of forcing God into some sort of tiny magical mystical lamp (ala Aladdin) and making up data, just redefine the problem. Expand your definition of God.
The notion that God has to be some sort of bearded entity who casts judgment or controls destiny with a bony finger, meddling in the affairs of cancer aflicted humans etc, has to be left behind as with children's fairy tales.
But don't throw it out entirely, just let it grow up, let you notion expand to include love. Let prayer blossom from magic to making manifest your dreams or the dreams of others. Let faith be a commitment to justice and love even when the outcome is uncertain. Know that you are the answer to someone's prayer. Your faithfulness to that end is your commitment to God.
You see? This is easy stuff. All the other orthodoxy stuff is just a coat of paint.
Hey Dan ~
His internal experience is meaningless unless it can be measured in meaningful ways. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Experiencing something odd and giving it more significance than it deserves is one of the most common experiences in the human condition.
If he's used the method to "discover god" as others have to discover ghosts witches and aliens then certainly there is a problem here.
If these experiences convinced him god exists, ask him at what time he was certain god did not exist; or if they are just a new way of trying to accept god despite his increasing intelligence but continued lack of evidence.
God use to speak to me after eating beans. At first I was confused about what was causing the braaaaaaaaap noises from my bowels.
At first I too think that God was trying to communicate to me in a personal way and prove his existence.
Afterall, many others have suffered the embarassment of farting in social settings, in elevators with fellow workers and in the privacy of your bathtub.
I later found out that it was not God and that a good anti-acid tablet brought an end to the communications.
I have been an active Mormon all my life. The problem I have with them (and this probably goes for most religion) is that they are superstitious and live with a great amount of cognitive dissonance. I'm familiar with many Mormons like your friend. He places weight on his personal experience to prove that his faith and beliefs are correct, but Mormons don't stop there, they go on missions and believe their faith is correct for the whole world - the whole universe even. This despite the fact that other religious people experience the same "spirit", "burning bosom", "enlightened mind", etc. Daniel, you even showed a youtube video on here that demonstrated this. Unlike your Mormon friend, I have since discounted all of my spiritual experiences and now require more tangible, duplicable and universal evidence. I accept there are things I don't/can't know and have stopped trying to predict the future.