Just to clear something up: Personal experience is objective truth.
If my foot hurts and I say my foot hurts I can in no way prove to you that my foot hurts but this doesnt mean that my foot doesnt hurt.
If mswas and the person in reference of this thread had an experience that experience could be objective truth, even if they can not show evidence for this experience.
Im not saying we should straight up believe them, that would be anti-skeptic, but I think we can be open to the possibility.
And anyone who thinks that skepticism and atheism goes hand in hand need to look back into the history of philosophy and note that some of the early philosophical skeptics were also theists.
Yes, assumption assertions don’t really fall under the definition of skeptic. There is a difference between doubt and certainty. Agnostic and atheist. Even strong or weak atheist. I would say** Der Trihs** is a strong atheist.** Der Trihs** do you disagree?
Here’s where I disagree. It’s precisely because there is no proof one way or the other that both positions are valid. When you make an assertion on a debate board that you “know” a certain thing then it’s reasonable for others to ask you for proof. You admit you can’t prove it. In that case it’s useless to keep asserting “knowledge” that you can’t prove. If an atheist says my belief is invalid because I can’t prove it I disagree. My own subjective experience is enough for me to to decide what I do or do not believe. Since it is subjective I do not try to push my belief onto others as fact. I share my beliefs and insights in the hope that an exchange of ideas will be helpful for those participating.
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Do you accept that you also are not qualified to say Mr. Wright is delusional or not. The OP invited people to share their opinion. They did just that. What’s the problem?
I don’t begrudge anyone their individuality. I celebrate it. I do listen to what people give lip service to and compare that to their actions. Your recent posts have been erratic and irrational.
Perhaps you could take your own advice when reading others posts.
An eye for an eye until the whole world is blind?
I doubt you have the ability on a message board to actually infringe on anyone’s rights. My wish would be thaqt you stop filling up the threads with the same kind of nonsesne you complain about. It’s a varied community here on SDMB. Sometimes rational and reasonable and sometimes not. If you want intellectual honesty try leading by example. When someone is so interested in asserting themselves that they stop listening to the points of others them attempts at communication seem to be a waste of energy and bandwidth.
Whoever is best equipped to judge in that particular matter. That’s why I don’t, for example, argue with Siege when she says religion makes her feel better; she is obviously the best judge of her own emotions. When someone starts making claims about objective reality, then those who are educated in the relevant facts are the ones qualified to judge. A drunk who wanders in the snow may feel warm, but the people who pull him out of it know better - he’ll freeze. Feelings are wrong all the time.
Well lets say God appeared to me last night, and it was God. Of course you would argue that I must be halucinating ect ect, because you havwe already cast out any idea of a God. But I could be convinced that I had seen God, and since it was a personal experience I could objectively had seen God but I would never be able to offer you the evidence of this encounter with God.
Thats similair to this discussion, I am not saying that this guy had an encounter with God, only that since we are incapable of being in the same experience as he was we can not cast out such an Idea.
It’s clear that **mswas ** had some sort of mystical experience. I don’t think anyone is denying that. What we question is his INTERPRETATION that mystical experience – whether it represented an actual supernatural intervention, or was merely the result of brain chemistry.
Considering that we have no empirical evidence that God exists, and we DO have empirical evidence that mystical experiences can be induced in a non-religious context, I would suggest that the latter explanation is the more likely one.
That still doesn’t mean you saw an actual God; it just means you saw God ( the image, not the underlying reality, if there was one ). It’s still subjective.
The fact that a vast number of people share your belief is meaningless. The vast number of people also have their eyesight. And yet I can still explain “red” to a blind man. According to you atheists are blind to God. We don’t know him, we can’t perceive him, even though he is obvious to you. If God is really the all-pervasive force you seem to think he is, you should be able to construct an argument for his existence that is convincing to a blind man like me. The fact that you can’t suggests that you may be mistaken about the nature of God.
I exist without knowing God. Clearly existence without knowing God is possible. So the questions are not equivalent.
I disagree with the term supernatural. Read the Supernatural thread Voyager started as to why.
“Merely” brain chemistry is a perjorative way of explaining it. Just because I have effects in my brain doesn’t make it cease to be a religious experience.
Psilocybe I have smoked DMT and drank Ayahuasca. I have extensive entheogenic experiences. They are just as mystical as any other mystical experience. I have had multiple near death experiences due to a heart condition. I have also meditated to transcendental states. I have run a whole range of mystical experiences. The physical/aesthetic representation of the mystical experience does not change the fact that it is a mystical experience.
I disagree with the term supernatural. Read the Supernatural thread Voyager started as to why.
“Merely” brain chemistry is a perjorative way of explaining it. Just because I have effects in my brain doesn’t make it cease to be a religious experience.
Psilocybe I have smoked DMT and drank Ayahuasca. I have extensive entheogenic experiences. They are just as mystical as any other mystical experience. I have had multiple near death experiences due to a heart condition. I have also meditated to transcendental states. I have run a whole range of mystical experiences. The physical/aesthetic representation of the mystical experience does not change the fact that it is a mystical experience.
Tevildo You must read a different Der Trihs than I do. The Der Trihs I read makes pat assertions and won’t ever provide a cite when you try to get one out of him. He states his opinions as statements of fact consistantly, yet complains when others do the same. Somehow I am being held to a higher standard of skepticism than Der Trihs, when I never claimed to be a skeptic and he does so all the time.
The whole point of what im saying is that you do not have the ability to say that, it is not within your knowledge to be able to make the above statement. You could say I dont believe you saw God, but you cannot say with all assurance that I didnt not see God.
I dont see how it would be subjective, I could objectively see God just like my foot objectively hurts even though I cannot explain to you so that you would understand.
I am open to the possibility that this man saw God, Im not saying he did see God, I tend to believe that he didnt see God, but it is still a possibility that he did.
He may never appreciate “red” in the fullness that I as a sighted person do. But I can still explain it sufficiently to convince him that “red” isn’t a figment of my imagination!
I don’t mean anything pejorative with the “merely”. Either the experience was the result of your brain alone, or it was the result of your brain being influenced by some additional force. Am I correct in thinking you believe the latter?
That’s not skepticism; that’s delusions of grandeur; extreme relativism at it’s best. I’m not a “real skeptic” by your definition, because I don’t consider myself a god.
Okay, I can work with this. I don’t think anyone is claiming that mystical experiences don’t exist, or that because the brain causes them they are any less relevant. I just don’t understand where God plays a role in this if we can accept its caused by the brain.
These entheogenic experiences did not require God, nor did they prove his existance. Why do natural experiences need to? Whats the difference?
Not delusions of grandeur just stating a simple fact, that the world I perceive radiates out from a center point called ‘Erek Tinker’. That’s hardly delusions of grandeur, it’s called knowing one’s place in the universe.
God created the entheogens, the ground they grew in, the scientists who synthesized them, the dealers who put them in my grasp, me, the hands that held the pipe, the consciousness that experienced the trip, God even dropped by to say hi while I was going through it.
Let’s put it this way, I am more certain that God exists than I am certain that you exist. You I am far more willing to believe are a figment of my imagination, an useful cognitive tool placed there to help me reflect myself back at me, but of course that would be solipsistic of me to believe, but perhaps solipsism is the actual correct answer. In fact I believe that solipsism is correct, but I do not think that you are an illusion, you are quite very real, but you are still an extension of me, via the one who is called “I am.”
I am here, I am talking to you. I am trying to explain myself so that you will understand me. You are there talking back to me trying to examine me, trying to figure out what it is I am trying to say, trying to relate your experiences.
The above paragraph is equally true for both of us. We are both “I”, and we are connected via physical forces and metaphysical consciousness.
And the root word in entheogenic is enTHEOgenic.
My experiences may not have proven something to YOU but they most certainly proved something to ME.
And you cannot explain red to a blind person in a way that they can verify. They might take your word for it and accept that there are people who can see even though they cannot based upon the overwhelming consensus that they are missing out on something.
Its hard/impossible to argue with a definition of God like that. What about the bad trips? Suddenly you are no longer experiencing God, but instead locked in a deep spiral of recursive mindfuck which makes no sense. You’re communicating with aliens and you literally think you’ll be in this state forever, only lucky if you get your old life back. Its all easily more bizarre than anything which can be imagined. The concept of “God” never even crosses your mind, instead you’re at a loss of what to do and you don’t even know who you are. You’ve lost your place in the universe. You’re not even sure any of this is real.
Is that God? Wheres the line between a “hallucination” and “insight”? Locked deep in a mushroom trip, one may be convinced of many things. Its not until afterwards that you realize you were just plain out wrong about many of them. What if I never regained the ability to tell that I was wrong? I can see that its physical - I don’t decide what I consider right or wrong, its up to my brain. My whole view of reality is up to my brain. This type of reasoning is what has me entrenched in the “its our brains” belief. Drugs just make it obvious.