Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!laura From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: what does it mean to talk to God [a brief attempt at an answer] Message-ID: <5316@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Thu, 21-Mar-85 08:24:39 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.5316 Posted: Thu Mar 21 08:24:39 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 21-Mar-85 08:24:39 EST References: <893@topaz.ARPA> <2635@mcnc.UUCP> <660@pyuxd.UUCP> <4048@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <711@pyuxd.UUCP> <5297@utzooRe: what does it mean to talThu, 21-Mar-85 08:24:39 EST Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 157 First off, we're talking about the people on this net who have claimed that their subjective experience was not based on known phenomena such as imposing preconceived patterns onto the experience, but was "real". Rich, you are making a serious mistake here. The question is ``was the experience real''. Later we get to ``was the interpretation of the experience true''. I am not arguing that what everybody says is the ``true meaning of my religious experience'' is actually correct -- indeed, I will go so far as to say that any claim we be in part untrue, since some of the experience is lost and distorted in the act of conceptualising it, and more is lost in expressing it in words, and so on. Both the refusal to accept the fact that their brains do such things AND the fact that such people would deny similar experiences in others (similar but different in image and meaning, according to them) are at issue here. Rich, when have you ever heard me deny that my brain does such a thing? When have I ever denied that such experiences happen to others? This is the first time you have brought it up in connection with this note. What I want to know is *have* *you* *read* *any* *mystical* *writings* *at* *all*? And if so, which ones. Mystrical writings are often full of warnings about the sorts of things that brains can do. There are whole shelves of books on Eastern and Western mystical similarities, compiled by Easterners, Westerners, and colaborations. Yet you seem to deny their existence. Second, the fact that it's unexpressable doesn't make it "mystical". And third, I thought we talked in private letter about the "you need to do some reading" tone. I didn't say that the fact that it is unexpressible made it mystical. I said that the fact that it was mystical means that it is unexpressible. Are you reversing antecedant and consequent again? I still think that you need to do some reading. You keep making grossly false ort innacurrate statements. But then, you misrepresent me as well. Perhaps a library wouldn't help. Why do we seem to be skipping over the question "Were these 'religious' or 'mystical' experiences?" so quickly here. The fact that they have things in common is not surprising, since a lot of human perception is held in common (e.g., non-color-blind people all recognize blue as blue...) Please give me a distinction between ``religious'' and ``mystical''. I have no idea how you use these terms. > There is no way that you can prove that a mystic experience is only > wishful thinking. It is definitely one theory. I tend to reject it, though. It seems more like you tend to jump to the conclusion of the mysticality first and then reject the theory because it contradicts the conclusion you've jumped to. Rich, GO TAKE A VERY LONG WALK OFF A SHORT PIER. There is absolutely no way you can tell what is more likely without having some knowledge of my life. You are dead, dead, dead wrong. I spent years looking for purely mechanical, purely material explanation of what was happening. I was a very smug atheist before these bizarre things kept happening to me. I found exactly one explanation -- that I am insane, and all of this is a delusion. It does not do me much good to assume that I am insane, no. However, I don't think that there is more evidence that I am insane than there is evidence that I am sane. > Too many people have ended up having mystic experiences when > they were not really seeking for them. I hardly think that's a criterion for determining mysticality (unless you already assume it to be so). The way the events are interpreted afterwards, whatever may have taken place, seem tinged with preconception. Not really wishful thinking in an active sense, but wishfully believing certain preconceptions afterwards. Rich, what does that have to do with anything? I already told you that in conceptualising and remembering information is lost and distorted, but that does not seem to be your point. Oh -- will it help you to understand if I say people have certain experiences, write them down, and then later discover that they are common mystical experiences but that they had simply never heard of them before? This happens too. > Why do you reject subjective experiences out of hand like that? More > importantly, why do you ``hunt them down and kill them'' :-) rather than just > ignoring them as having no relevance to you? 1) Because the nature of the experience is hopelessly unreliable. Take the example I often give, of seeing someone you know on the street and then suddenly realizing it wasn't them at all (and asking yourself "What could have made me think that that was so-and-so? It doesn't even look like him/her..."). (Perhaps because some pattern of movement/image matched a pattern you associate with that person in your brain???) Would you go up to such a person that you thought you recognized and INSIST that he/she was (a few seconds ago) the person you know? Of course not. The same chain of faulty patterning occurs all the time. So how can one take such an experience as anything but fraught with flaws? Rich, the mystic who does not know anything about doubt is in need of an advisor or a library. I have a better one for you. You have once mistaken someone at a train station for someone you knew, but now realise was not that person at all. Do you stop using your eyes because you now have evidence that you can make a mistake? No? The why should all the mystics stop either? 2) As I've said before, when a certain group of people would like to see a certain moral code imposed on other people, and when such people are gaining strength precisely because they feed on the preconceptions, the wishful thinking, the indoctrinated expectations of the general public, it is more than necessary to show such things for what they are, lest we all get our brains shut off by those who would have it that way. So mysticism is intrisically linked with a desire to impose a moral code on people? Strange, that sure is news to Tim and me! By the way, I must ask: your last question (and much of your other recent writing) seems to be very defensive. Why do you ask that question, which you never seemed to ask before when I asked it of the Christians and others who offered the notion of such things as viable evidence? Is it because now I'm examining your own assumptions and preconceptions? As I said to Tim, just because you're not Christian doesn't automatically make you somehow immune from having your beliefs examined with equal fervor, even if that means we find that you're making similar flaws in reasoning. Because you have never questioned that a Christian's experience was *real* before, before you have questioned whether the *interpretation* was *true*. I do not think that any mystical experience can be used to prove the truth of any one religion (as opposed to the falsehood of any other one.) As I have told you before, I don't think that a religion should be judged on whether it is *truthful*, but on whether it is *useful*. I think that all religions are false, and all religions are potentially useful. Which religion (or no religion) is most useful for you depends on where you want to go. The Christians also have defined that it is your business -- in that they think that you should become a Christian and that they have a moral obligation to proselytise. I can see why they might be your business. I do not see why dismissing subjective evidence as being unreal is a useful step, though -- just not very convincing of the truth of any belief. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura