# Can you learn Faith **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 8, 2001, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-learn-faith/61259 "2001-04-08T15:37:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-learn-faith/61259/41 "2001-04-15T10:47:18Z")
Manny: > [@](#): > > On your train analogy: I would assert that neither person would take it the speed of the ball as axiomatic; axioms are simpler than that, to me. But much more importantly, if the two were to meet up at the depot and exchange stories, if one or both had taken the speed as axiomatic, they would abandon it following the conversation. Again, this goes to my theme of shared experiences being part of seeing an objective reality. Yes, you’re right. While the train and ball was a reasonable example of reference frames, it was a weak example of axioms. Let me give you another, more abstract example. Mr. Flatlander takes as axiomatic, owing to his experience, that parallel lines never interesect. Mr. Spherelander, on the other hand, takes as axiomatic that they always intersect. Each is right in his own reference frame. Regarding shared experiences, leave aside for the moment the fact that small, possibly accumulative, nuances of difference in our experiences preclude us from ever sharing an experience in identical ways. Whatever reality we see is merely “there”. Suppose, for example, we are huddled together in a closet during a hurricane. Objectively, our experience is about as common as it could get (again, leaving aside the nuance that you occupy coordinate set {X}, and that I occupy coordinate set {Y} in space-time, though {X} and {Y} are as close as our electromagnetic fields will allow). When our closet is ripped apart, chaos will take over and leave one of us, say you, hanging from a tree and the other buried under the ruble of our neighbor’s former home. Yes, we have a shared experience that a hurricane was “there”, but apart from that meaningless event (there are hurricanes on Jupiter all the time), our experiences are very different. In fact, even if we both stay arm in arm and are tossed to the same (roughly) place, such that our coordinate sets {X} and {Y} are now {X with respect to A} and {Y with respect to A}, where A is the new median coordinate between us, our experiences of this event can very considerably given our _past_ experiences. For example, one of us might say, “Good Lord, that was one rough ride,” and the other of us might say, “Man, that was nothing compared to the hurricane we had last week while you were in California.” In other words, whatever objective reality there might be (giving you, for the sake of argument, that atoms are real), the inferences of experience among consciousnesses in that reality cannot ever be the same. Thus, we might get glimpses of each other’s experience, but we will always be looking through a dark and dirty glass, seeing only what we can best approximate. > [@](#): > > I hate to keep harping on that, but I really do think of that as what binds us as a species and makes us special. One might loosely call that my religion. Alone, each of us is useless for objective or subjective purposes. I’m not sure I follow you there. Two cows share experiences in the same way two humans do, don’t they? They have sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. For that matter, if you had been huddled with a cow in the closet during the hurricane, you could have experienced it together: two different species sharing an experience. I believe that the best we can do is empathize with one another. I have heard the argument from some homosexuals that men give better blow jobs than women because only men can really know what it’s like; i.e., men can empathize with other men. That might be true. (Leave aside that among men, some prefer direct glans stimulation, some find it too sensitive, and so on.) Yet men can certainly enjoy blow jobs from women to the point of experiencing mind blowing orgasms. There is, in the experience, a subjective disjunction, such that the man’s consciousness allows that the blow job from the woman is quite “good enough”. Never in the time cone is anything the same as anything else. > [@](#): > > Which point leads directly to my next one, about our consciousness being a closed frame of reference. I hope I’m misunderstanding you again. Because while in a certain limited sense you are right, I happen to believe that in a larger, more glorious sense, you are exactly wrong. Given a common means of communication and a (fairly small) set of shared experiences, I believe that we can and do routinely share what lives up there. I can imagine no sadder fate than to be unable to experience what one’s neighbor feels or to communicate one’s own. I understand. And I can imagine no sadder fate than that, at the end of a trivial existence spanning a trivial amount of time, a man draws his last breath and ceases to exist. Yet my yearning in and of itself is insufficient to make the reality otherwise. Only if there exists objectively an Eternal Life will the existence of an earth organism have any meaningful significance. We do communicate with one another in an attempt to “share what lives up there”. I can tell you about the trophy I won in the chess tournament, and you can go, “Oh wow, that’s great!” And you can feel happy for me. But _it is your happiness, and not mine, that you feel._ Even if you are able to produce your own trophy and go, “Oh wow, I know _exactly_ how you feel,” our experiences are quite different if you were a master and I were an A-player. And even if we were both A-players, you might be able to go, “Oh wow, I also won a tournament. I know exactly how you feel.” Ah, but did you win against Lev Alburt with a queen sacrifice? And so on. You might be satisfied that experiences are, while not identical, substantially similar, enough so that mutual comprehension is possible. Agreed. But comprehension of what? Nothing of consequence, I say. > [@](#): > > By way of example, when a traditional believer of God tells me of his beliefs, I think I can understand exactly what they are talking about, even if I cannot share the belief that leads to the state of their consciousness. I know what you mean, and I agree. You can have an intellectual understanding of what they are talking about along these lines: “There is a God Thing. They worship Him. They are happy. They seem like decent people. I can understand how they were led to their state of consciousness.” _But it is the state itself that you cannot experience._ You can love it, hate it, envy it, and even describe what it looks like from your own reference frame much in the way a scientist would describe what he sees going on in a petri dish. But do you really call that a sharing of experience? > [@](#): > > That’s as good a place to leave off for now. Even though I do not share your belief in the events being commemorated this weekend, I hope you have the most joyous of Easters. Thanks, Manny. It is also our first wedding anniversary! ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2001, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-learn-faith/61259/42 "2001-04-16T14:05:05Z")
**Lib** By “if…then” form of axiom, I thought you understood. The “A” part of the “if A then B” was to point out that one does not have to assert that “A” is true always to get to “B”, just that _if_ A were true, then B would also be true. This is how I see things as opposed to “believing” in axioms (usually). Again, I am left wondering at personal experience, and why you feel that, in an objective universe, subjective experience trumps it, especially since you’ve already said one cannot validate his own existence. What am I missing here? **phil** So, are you saying that fail is something that can be learned, or is it more of a default position of existing? Calling faith trust seems to me to put it heavily on the “default position” side. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-learn-faith/61259.md?page=2)