Food for thought for Christians

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Could you perhaps start again please?

Firstly maybe you could describe the experience?

Certainly.
My experience starts with Sagans Cosmos and particular his idea of a cosmic community.
Very shortly after this I was given CS Lewis mere Christianity and recognised that the cosmic enthusiasm mediated through watching Sagan was a sense of the numinous.
Lewis also talks about God.God of course was for nutters and weak people or was it? That was something I had picked up unquestioningly picked up from my secular humanist roots.
God was now part of the numinous and something tied up to the Cosmos. Further reading of Lewis about God being in the dock. Awareness that God is also involved in morality. Phrase which chimes ! If you put God in the dock you find its you in the dock.
The Bible previously an old book strangely begins to become comprehensible.
Augustine's experience read, ringing words....make me a Christian but not yet.
Huge interest in what actually is the truth...Ringing words Pontius Pilate on truth.
Realisation that there is something behind Lewises and Christian writings.

Reading the bible. words that ring. Follow me and and behold I stand at the door freeze when realise that is true. Walk around in a focus on this which dissociates me from surroundings. Get a mental image of eating a pudding with no flavour as a metaphor for rejecting Christ.
Tell Jesus to take it all. Dissociation vanishes and feel great joy.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Vlad,

Nice sounds like a journey, a realisation.

Gonnagle.

[bluehillside Retd.]

So now we know that Trollboy had a funny feeling one day that, by a remarkable co-incidence, he thinks was caused by the very same god he'd read about and not by one of the gods he'd have read about instead had he been around at a different time and place, and moreover that wasn't caused by one of the may corporeal (but much less thrilling) possible alternative explanations for it.

Sweet.

Coming soon: Trollboy finally attempts an argument of get him from his his "funny feeling, true for me only" god to a god that's real for the rest of us too (without flat out lying about the arguments that undo him).

I'll get the Vimto and Twiglets in - can't wait!

[Leonard James]

So now we know that Trollboy had a funny feeling one day that, by a remarkable co-incidence, he thinks was caused by the very same god he'd read about and not by one of the gods he'd have read about instead had he been around at a different time and place, and moreover that wasn't caused by one of the may corporeal (but much less thrilling) possible alternative explanations for it.

Sweet.

Coming soon: Trollboy finally attempts an argument of get him from his his "funny feeling, true for me only" god to a god that's real for the rest of us too (without flat out lying about the arguments that undo him).

I'll get the Vimto and Twiglets in - can't wait!

It's quite astonishing how much gullibility still exists despite the advances in science and education of today's world.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gonners,

Nice sounds like a journey, a realisation.

Or a basic mistake in reasoning that's landed him in a place he has no argument for but that he's too scared to acknowledge may well be wholly wrong.

However likely the latter is to be the case, that of course is a matter only for him. His problem though is in insisting that his "funny feeling" god (albeit that he gussies that up with the term "numinous") is also a god for the rest of us because he has no coherent argument to that effect to examine, so instead just keeps lying about the arguments he doesn't like but can't rebut.

Would JC be proud of him for that do you think?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Dear Vlad,

Nice sounds like a journey, a realisation.

Gonnagle.

Yes you are right, most people respect an explanation but you still get the odd ignoramus who wants to diminish it into " having an odd feeling one day".

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Thank you for sharing that. As Gonnagle says it sounds like a good personal experience.

I can also very much associate with the part where you say the you "Walk around in a focus on this which dissociates me from surroundings". As part of my recovery from depression I have learnt some existing and developed my own techniques where I can go to another place far from to existing materials surroundings.

As I have always said I don't deny you your experience as I am sure you wouldn't deny me mine.

The issue though is:

Reading the bible. words that ring. Follow me and behold I stand at the door freeze when realise that is true.

How do we know the experience is true in the sense that it is true for everyone else i.e. objectively true?

[Rhiannon]

Certainly.
My experience starts with Sagans Cosmos and particular his idea of a cosmic community.
Very shortly after this I was given CS Lewis mere Christianity and recognised that the cosmic enthusiasm mediated through watching Sagan was a sense of the numinous.
Lewis also talks about God.God of course was for nutters and weak people or was it? That was something I had picked up unquestioningly picked up from my secular humanist roots.
God was now part of the numinous and something tied up to the Cosmos. Further reading of Lewis about God being in the dock. Awareness that God is also involved in morality. Phrase which chimes ! If you put God in the dock you find its you in the dock.
The Bible previously an old book strangely begins to become comprehensible.
Augustine's experience read, ringing words....make me a Christian but not yet.
Huge interest in what actually is the truth...Ringing words Pontius Pilate on truth.
Realisation that there is something behind Lewises and Christian writings.

Reading the bible. words that ring. Follow me and and behold I stand at the door freeze when realise that is true. Walk around in a focus on this which dissociates me from surroundings. Get a mental image of eating a pudding with no flavour as a metaphor for rejecting Christ.
Tell Jesus to take it all. Dissociation vanishes and feel great joy.

That's a very nice and no doubt to you a profound experience. But it is yours. Only yours.

Try accepting that it isn't so for us. That our lives are rich rather than flavourless (getting dangerously into Praise Be! territory with that metaphor by the way Vlad). That - and here's where I think you might struggle - we aren't inferior people leading inferior lives because we don't experience what you do.

[jeremyp]

For me though a materialist ontology has problems since full and honest commitment to it is impossible as the experience of the Vienna group of Logical positivist so teaches us. Neither is scientism a satisfactory philosophical formula.

You don't have a clue what all that means, do you.

Throughout history the definitions of material have changed which leaves us with a naturalism which is increasingly centred and defined not by nature but by being anti God for the sake of it.

Rubbish.

The scepticism about the idea that God is real is a consequence of naturalism, not the definition of it.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Stephen,

As I have always said I don't deny you your experience as I am sure you wouldn't deny me mine.

No-one denies that all sorts of people have all sorts of "experiences". The problem though comes with the cause to which some attribute that experience, especially when they overreach and assert that the cause was the god with which they happen to be most familiar, and therefore that that particular god must be real for rest of us too.

How do we know the experience is true in the sense that it is true for everyone else i.e. objectively true?

The experience(s) are "true" in that lots of people have episodes they think to be profound and moving - they can be stimulated artificially in the lab, Derren Brown can make the most hardened of atheists have them etc. What's almost certainly not true though are the bewildering variety of gods, spooks and ghouls some reach for as explanations for their experiences in preference to less thrilling corporeal ones.

And that's the point at which Trollboy either starts whistling and sliding out of the room, or instead just lies about or misrepresents the position of those of us who find his assertions to be undefined, un-argued, un-evidenced and frankly daft.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Thank you for sharing that. As Gonnagle says it sounds like a good personal experience.

I can also very much associate with the part where you say the you "Walk around in a focus on this which dissociates me from surroundings". As part of my recovery from depression I have learnt some existing and developed my own techniques where I can go to another place far from to existing materials surroundings.

As I have always said I don't deny you your experience as I am sure you wouldn't deny me mine.

The issue though is:

How do we know the experience is true in the sense that it is true for everyone else i.e. objectively true?

I think the point is that Jesus was knocking as it were throughout the experience and the definition becomes in the hearing of it and the the opening of the door to it.

For me though as I have said it was accompanied with an increasing sense of community with those who experience the numinous and those who experience Christ. Please see my references to Augustine, Lewis, Pilate, Matthew etc.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Of course none of this, "I like belonging to a club that believes in something, therefore the thing the club believes in must be true" daftness matters a jot normally. Trainspotters, stamp collectors or model railway enthusiasts are as free to carry on as they wish as are the members of the club that thinks Jesus is real. The problem though is that only one of them overreaches and insists that - in some unexplained way - their personal convictions should inform the lives of the rest of us: "the bible says X, therefore that should be your morality too" type nonsense.

Looks like the Vimto and Twiglets will have to be put away for another day and another poster then...

...shame!

[Gonnagle]

Dear Blue,

Basic mistake in reasoning, are you a Vulcan!

Dear Stephen,

It is always subjective, there are many paths to God.

Dear Rhiannon,

That's a very nice and no doubt to you a profound experience. But it is yours. Only yours.

Of course it is his, who else's would it be.

I haven't a clue about Lewis, it was only a couple of years ago I learned that Lewis was a Christian, but I can relate to Vlads post, the odd feeling that Blue talks about grows, it leads you down all sorts of roads, some you take, others you discard, hell! maybe one of those roads is atheism or Paganism, now Paganism I can just about get my head around but atheism, maybe it is another step in evolution, we all become Spocks.

Gonnagle.

[Rhiannon]

But the trouble is, Gonners, that Vlad offers his experience like it's something we all could have - all should have in fact, and the only reason we don't is that we are God dodging'. And that's simply not the case.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Of course none of this, "I like belonging to a club that believes in something, therefore the thing the club believes in must be true" daftness matters a jot normally. Trainspotters, stamp collectors or model railway enthusiasts are as free to carry on as they wish as are the members of the club that thinks Jesus is real. The problem though is that only one of them overreaches and insists that - in some unexplained way - their personal convictions should inform the lives of the rest of us: "the bible says X, therefore that should be your morality too" type nonsense.

Looks like the Vimto and Twiglets will have to be put away for another day and another poster then...

...shame!

Well to be honest the good news came as a bit of bad news to the ego to begin with and since I came from secular humanism that was the comfortable option.
Also I was not a member of a church.

The reason I bring it up though is that there is an anti theist myth doing the rounds that there is no commonality in Christian experience and it is indeed a purely personal thing. That of course is an atheist fiddle.

If I want to be in a comfortable club it would be self righteous humanist Englander.
Who would be a Christian unless there was something in it that was more compelling?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But the trouble is, Gonners, that Vlad offers his experience like it's something we all could have - all should have in fact, and the only reason we don't is that we are God dodging'. And that's simply not the case.

I offer it because I was requested.
I am not exhorting you to my experience of God but your own.Al experiences of Christ involve some journey from a to b.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Rhiannon,

But the trouble is, Gonners, that Vlad offers his experience like it's something we all could have - all should have in fact, and the only reason we don't is that we are God dodging'. And that's simply not the case.

Well that is Vlad for you, I did once try to decipher one of his posts, I got as far as greed, he hates greed, something we can all relate to, what I also know, he has a brilliant sense of humour but then so has old Blue and Shaker and in my sweet innocence I will leave it at that

Gonnagle.

[Leonard James]

Dear Rhiannon,

Well that is Vlad for you, I did once try to decipher one of his posts, I got as far as greed, he hates greed, something we can all relate to, what I also know, he has a brilliant sense of humour but then so has old Blue and Shaker and in my sweet innocence I will leave it at that

Gonnagle.

Sweet you may be Gonners, but innocent?

Ni hablar/en absoluto/qué va, y un cuerno, as they say in Spanish! 

[Rhiannon]

I offer it because I was requested.
I am not exhorting you to my experience of God but your own.Al experiences of Christ involve some journey from a to b.

But I have my own experience of God, one which I've recounted on here in detail, and my journey took me very firmly (and against my will initially) from belief to non belief, and to a place where I feel more peace and more contentment.

But you won't accept that; you want me to keep trying to believe as you do and you think I'm avoiding god if I don't. And that simply isn't true.

[Shaker]

But I have my own experience of God, one which I've recounted on here in detail, and my journey took me very firmly (and against my will initially) from belief to non belief, and to a place where I feel more peace and more contentment.

But you won't accept that; you want me to keep trying to believe as you do and you think I'm avoiding god if I don't. And that simply isn't true.

He's extrapolating from his own experience - "Me = everybody else" - no less than Spud did in extrapolating from one experience with a gay man to all gay people being mentally ill, which is not merely extraordinarily offensive but simply wrong.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Mods,

Ni hablar/en absoluto/qué va, y un cuerno,

Translation please, and if our Leonard is having a pop, suspend his ass, not literally of course, Leonard might enjoy his ass being suspended

Gonnagle.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hi Gonners,

Basic mistake in reasoning, are you a Vulcan!

No, but nor do you need to be to be able to spot bad thinking. To be fair, it's not that Trollboy's reasoning to take him from his "funny feeling, true for me" god to an objectively true god is bad; rather that he doesn't bother with an argument for it of any kind: "I feel really, really strongly that Jesus was in touch, therefore Jesus was in touch and could be for the rest of you too" isn't an argument, it's just an assertion. You could substitute "Jesus" for Baal, or for Colin the Leprechaun for that matter for all the epistemic force it has.

And that's a problem for the "true for you too" merchant. He wants his opinion to be taken seriously, but he provides no reason for it to be taken seriously. The best he could do I suppose is to say something like, "I really think my god is your god too but I have no argument for that of any kind, so I'll keep it to myself and wouldn't dream of expecting anyone else to agree with me", trainspotter club styley.

If only it were so! 

[Owlswing]

Dear Mods,

Translation please, and if our Leonard is having a pop, suspend his ass, not literally of course, Leonard might enjoy his ass being suspended

Gonnagle.

All Len is telling you Gonners is No Way - Even with the Horn!

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Dear Stephen,

It is always subjective, there are many paths to God.

But Vlad and others insist it is an objective truth for me to. That is the problem.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Stephen,

No-one denies that all sorts of people have all sorts of "experiences". The problem though comes with the cause to which some attribute that experience, especially when they overreach and assert that the cause was the god with which they happen to be most familiar, and therefore that that particular god must be real for rest of us too.

The experience(s) are "true" in that lots of people have episodes they think to be profound and moving - they can be stimulated artificially in the lab, Derren Brown can make the most hardened of atheists have them etc. What's almost certainly not true though are the bewildering variety of gods, spooks and ghouls some reach for as explanations for their experiences in preference to less thrilling corporeal ones.

And that's the point at which Trollboy either starts whistling and sliding out of the room, or instead just lies about or misrepresents the position of those of us who find his assertions to be undefined, un-argued, un-evidenced and frankly daft.

I don't see where we disagree. Or am I missing something?