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,net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Logic based on ... (start again again...) (CONCLUSION) Message-ID: <5505@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 17:52:38 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.5505 Posted: Thu Apr 18 17:52:38 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 18-Apr-85 17:52:38 EST References: <886@pyuxd.UUCP> <5457@utzoo.UUCP>, <899@pyuxd.UUCP> <5473@utzoo.UUCP>, <906@pyuxd.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 311 You first reject all subjective evidence and then you say that there is no evidence. Same thing. What good does it do you, you ask? None. Because, as you yourself seem to acknowledge, such "evidence" is fraught with fallacy and flaw. The reason for being "rigid" is to ensure that flawed preconceptions do not get "into the mix" that results in an (erroneous) conclusion. It's that But, if we all worked that way, nobody would ever discover anything. Everybody would curl up under a rock because they might make a flawed conclusion. What is so terribly wrong with making mistakes that one must eliminate such large areas of one's life so as to avoid making mistakes? Making mistakes is a terrific way to learn. simple. The evidence, because of its extremely poor quality, is useless in determining the realities of the physical world. I don't think that it is useless. I think it needs a great deal of further study. But this is true of anything which is not understood very well. The nature of an individual human mind, the goings-on inside a particular person's head, yes, such experience is real to them and provides information about them. But what does itsay in relation to the world at large? Let's take a very poor example [Your example of the step-parent here.] This example is only good if you assume that the child is mistaken about the step-parent. If the step-parent is actually beating the child then your analogy washes up. How unfortunate for the child who tries to tell you that they have been beaten up only to be told that they are making it all up. I already know that I have a few flawed perceptions of my childhood (I know I remember things that took months as happening in much less time) but this does not make my recollections useless. It makes certain dogmatic statements I might make open to question, but this is not the same thing as ``useless''. Nor does it explain the other numerous times when you are overcome with a dread feeling and then nothing happens. Or the times when something does happen that you had no "foreknowledge" of. Or the times that you thought of someone and they DIDN'T call. All these times are just as statistically significant as the times you mention, but somehow they don't counted into the mixture, making the times you mention seem more significant than they are. Rich, I am not sure that you are reading what I am writing. I told you I kept notes of these things. I don't get overcome by dread feelings all the time. I know who is on the phone when it rings far too often to be accounted for by chance. I kept records for 5 years about these things, all the while desparately looking for a reason to believe that they were *not* happening - because I was much more comfortable with a world view where such things *didn't* happen. Eventually, I came to the grim conclusion that intellectual honesty required me to acknowledge that these things were happening even though it was going to be uncomfortable to deal with the skeptics, whose position I had a great deal more emotional sympathy with (but were either being intellectually dishoenst in denying that these things were happening (bletch) or who honestly didn't have these things happen to them (how odd - I wonder why?)) and worse, to deal with the religious people I knew whom I quite frankly thought were crazy and whom I quite justifiably feared (the private school I was attending at the time taught that all relgious experiences, even those claimed by the born-again Christians and Charismatics were strictly from the devil and was big on ``corporal punishment as a way of beating the devil out of you''. I was already getting into trouble for being a discipline problem [translation -- questioning the authorities at the time and in general being a shit disturber] and had had my science fiction and D&D articles from Chainmail confiscated and had been publically strapped for playing D&D on school premises.) Plus there were other terrors. I had to face the possibility that I might never get a consistent explanation of the universe and its workings. I might always be stuck with ad-hoc kludge explanations, all of which might have to be abandoned in the light of new experiences which were happening frequently enough to really rock me. I cannot conceive of a situation where it would be more likely for me to want to wishfully deny that these things were happening. Quite frankly, I *still* want to deny that they are happening at times. But this is dishonest, and if I sacrifice intellectual integrity then I have nothing left. [Aside to Christians who are reading this -- yes, I know now that I was exposed to a particularily nasty and perhaps even ``unchristian'' form of Christianity. At the time it was all I knew. I still can't get the bad taste out of my mouth.] About meditation working on migraine headaches: I can think of a number of very obvious physical reasons why relaxation of the brain and body might just cause alleviation of pain. But those explanation don't seem to be of interest to you: you are specifically seeking and assuming explanations that are outside the realm because you WANT to believe in such explanations. You keep harping on this one. I don't know. Is there anything I can say which will disuade you of this notion? I do not see myself as working this way at all. I think that you miss out on some great questions here by assuming that ``there is an obvious physical reason'' which explains this. I am allergic to certain orange colourings that are found in orange foods - especially orange cheeses. I think that stuff that I am alllergic to is called ``achiote'' -- it may be achiote in combination with something else that is put in cheeses, but it *isn't* carotene. Why should meditation help with poisoning? I don't know. My father's specialty (in the days when he could do lab work) is the effects of various chemicals on the brain. He doesn't know either. Have you ever worked in a computer facility where there are thorough but surprisingly dim-witted operators? i have. the people I am talking about do not have any understanding of computer hardware, or operating systems, or even software in general. What they do have is a thick book of operator proceedures -- a list of ``if this goes wrong, do that''. They do it - all uncomprehendingly and mechanically. Quite often I feel that I am in such a position -- I don't have a systemetic and comprehensive understanding of what is going on - just a rather bizarre list of procedures, some of which make a certain amount of sense and a lot of which does not. What is worse, my procedures have been written down by other operators, many of whom I think had a poorer understanding of what is going on than I do. It is all highly unsatisfactory - especially since I harbour strong doubts that I will ever be able to understand more than a small part of it. It may require a better intellect than I or (worse yet) anybody has. I find the notion highly uncomfortable, since I would really like to understand everything - but I have to muddle through anyway with whatever I have. I should dearly love to find a religion (or a non-religion) that has an explanation of the universe and all that it is in it which would give me a consistent model of the universe which I could not find flaws with. So far, I have not found one, and I do not expect to find one. Some, however, come closer than others. So I take what I find useful and file the rest under ``incomprehensible -- check back in a few years'' or ``fundamentally in conflict with X which I think is real -- check back if my beliefs in X undergo a strong change''. If you are true to form you will claim that the above means that I dismiss beliefs that I do not like. All that I can say is that I never do this intentionally. A lot slips by me, of course, but I tend to run into the same problems again and again until I get the message, notice what I am doing, and do more serious thinking. I do not think that it is possible for me to do much better -- or for anyone, for that matter, because the essential problem of unexamined beliefs is that they are, by definition, unexamined. No matter how hard you try to examine everything, you get tired, or lazy, or in a rush or for some reason are not paying enough attention and -- whoops -- another one slips in. I can only hope that the inconsistencies will get to bother me in soon enough time so that I will notice them and thus dispose of another unexamined belief. I may be up against a non-halting problem, though -- the better I pay attention the more beliefs I find that I should examine - either for the first time or again. I believe that I shall be dead before I examine them all unless I can get around the ``sorceror's apprentice'' problem. And I can't think of anything I can do about that, either. What does that mean "cannot account for"? Are you seeking a particular "accounting for" for the experiences? Do you mean ``do I have a set notion and will reject those notions which aren't the one I am looking for''? In that case, no. Do you mean ``Do I have some ability which I use to distinguish a plausible sounding explanation from one I find not plausible?'' In that case, yes. Do you mean ``Do you have an infallible way to tell the truth from a set of plausible explanations?'' -- Oh, how I wish! :-) Someone else's subjective evidence matches my experience? Perhaps we were both ingrained with similar notions of what such experience would be like, based on teachings about religion and/or deities. this doesn't explain why people of dissimilar backgrounds have similar experiences, or why one might have experiences which correspond to religious descriptions that one has never heard of. Perhaps it stems from basic human instincts that are part of our brain makeup. Again, these explanations are not of interest to you. Come again? These explanations are of tremendous interest to me. This, however, opens the great can of worms ``what is `basic human instincts'?'' What you seem to be assuming is that religions have no interest in basic human instincts, which is false. Every religion talks about a model of what the basic human condition is, and has some suggestions on how one should live in order to live better. They are *all* interested in human nature. Jump right to the "mystical" instead. But, what I am talking about has traditionally been called ``mystical''. I don't see the harm in the word. If I attained enlightenment tomorrow and really understood - totally and completely what a mystical experience really is and why there are some in the first place I would still have to explain it to people somehow. Shall I publish a glossary of 100,000 terms i have invented so as to avoid using terms like ``religion'' and ``mystical''? To what purpose? My detractors will apply these words (and other words like ``cult'') to what I write or say anyway. The parapsychologists have been doing this for years - but i find their explanations as unsatisfactory as any I have come across for all that they use scientific language. And what they are doing is called ``mysticism'' anyway. [That the parapsychologists have promised reproducable results, and are even worse at delivering them than certain religious practicioners does not help their cause any - nor does the open hostility with which certain notable parapsychologists view religious believers in general.] The fact that even the most sincere will not accept the problems with their own methodology of cataloguing the experience and analyzing it. "No, it's not based on those things you say, it's real because I say so and I'm sincere" doesn't cut it. The fact that they refuse to acknowledge the problems with their own "evidence" is a form of "insincerity", though not what I'd call a "malicious" insincerity. Rich, this is blatantly false. This is not what happens at all. If, instead, you mean ``the most sincere will not dismiss all subjective things as being unintersting or unuseful because they are subjective'' then you are correct. But the literature abounds with discussion on the problems with the whole thing. You cannot have done a very thorough research job and missed this one. I cannot help but suspect that you have your own preconceived notion as to what mystics actually believe and that you have not bothered to find out whether they actually do believe this. Of course, it is possible that you happen to be associating with a few mystics who actually behave as you insinuate, in which case your mistake is most normal and understandable. However, it is still a mistake to judge that all mystics behave as you seem to believe that they do, because so many of them do not. If you are going to research this any further, I have suggestions on terminology. Mystics run into 3 very definite types of criticism often enough and you phrase things in such a way as to get many of their backs up. The first criticism is ``you are lying''. My canonical response to this is to tell the critic to go to hell. I figure that anything else is a waste of effort. Other people try to demonstrate that they are not lying, though. There are variations on how people say that to people, though. ``It's not real'' and ``that is only wishful thinking'' has been used that way in the past. It saves the critic from actually having to come out and accuse someone of mendacity, but, from the critics point of view exposes the mystic in front of an audience who can reach the ``lying'' conclusion without any help. Variations on this theme are ``you are a fraud'' and ``you are a charlatan''. I do not believe that this is what you have been asserting, but I am warning you that some people will take it that way. The second criticism is ``you need a psychiatrist''. The assumption is not that the mystic is insincere, but that the mystic cannot perceive reality well enough to know what is real from what is unreal. ``It's not real'' gets used by these people as well. I find these people a lot more difficult to deal with than the first sort. My grandmother (who believes in Hellfire and Damnation) used to say ``The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.''. I don't believe in Hellfire, but I find some truth in that saying. An out and out hostile critic is a lot easier to deal with than someone who is ``only interested in your own good, dear''. The thoroughly frustrating thing about this situation is that there is *absolutely* *nothing* that you can say in your defense. Everything you say can, and will, be used against you. I tend to ignore these people and hope that they go away. If they do not go away, then, either I leave, or I get as rude and nasty and sarcastic as I can (which is pretty sarcastic) and try to drive them away. I don't have anything to lose, since they already think I am crazy. The nice thing about this solution is that either you succeed in driving the person off, or you don't -- but by then things are so miserable that you find it is in your best interest to leave yourself, which means that any way you slice it the problem will get dealt with. I would like a better solution, though, since it really bugs me when I have to abandon an otherwise nice situation because of one well meaning person who is driving me up the wall. The third criticism is ``your experiences are real. Your explanation is flawed. I have a better one.'' These people are good to meet and talk to. However, they stop being fun if they have overbearing and dogmatic tendancies, because they don't listen to your criticisms of their explanations. There is a certain type of materialist and a certain type of religious believer who chronically has this problem. I believe that you are one of them. I do not know why it is that you believe that my evidence is so flawed, and I do not know why you think that removing the words ``religion'' ``mystical'' and ``supernatural'' is a giant step in the right direction. I have no problem removing the words, (except that it will mean that I ned to use a different vocabulary when talking to you than when talking to anybody else, which will be inconvenient) but I don't see that your explanation is going to help me figure out more ways of noticing when i am getting a migraine (so I can stop it) or stopping it when I have left the noticing for too long, or any number of things which I want to do. They are all out of the range of materialist explanations. ``Can't happen'' is the standard reply - followed by criticism number one or criticism number two as per above. Of coruse, there are a lot of scientists who do not work this way. Psychology departments are generally not as hostile to discussions. But - as you have undobtably noticed - they, too haven't got their shit together. Between Freud, Jung and Skinner (to pick 3 notables) there is as much room for disagreement as there is back in the religion departments. Psychology is a new and fuzzy science. I would have more respect for it if it was a little harder as a science goes. However, I realise that the nature of the human mind may be such that hardness will forever elude psychology, and that, even if this is not the case, I am likely to be dead long before it hardens up. It is enough to make me sincerely wish that there is truth to reincarnation (though alas, I cannot believe it) because I would dearly love to try out the lifetime experiment in another thousand years -- assuming that we avoid any great ecological disasters that wipes out human life utterly. [I suppose, while I am hoping, I might as well hope big and hope for reincarnation as an extra-terrestrial intelligent life form. No doubt that would provide interesting insights into all sorts of problems.] Laura Creighton utzoo!laura ps - I am moving and losing net access next Thursday. I will resurface someday. I will probably not have time to reply to many (or maybe even any) of the replies that this note generates. [Please don't send me mail asking if this is for real. It is. You will only get bounced mail messages and increase people's phone bills.] It's been fun, people. I have met a lot of super people here, and made some good friends. And I learned some things too - how wonderful! Rest assured that I will give a shout when I get a new uucp address.