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I don't understand how shared assumptions being the basis of logical argument constitutes a flaw. Could you explain this further? We argue about experiences in

I don't understand how shared assumptions being the basis of logical argument constitutes a flaw. Could you explain this further? We argue about experiences in science all the time. We do this by documenting steps regarding how we rendered our experience so that other people may also experience what we did and perform measurements and comparisons and analyzations, et cetera, and once we've done that, we can apply other intellectual tools we have, like logic. How do I render a religious experience for myself?

ltbarcly 18y ago
Steps to produce a religious experience: 1. Be indoctrinated from birth to find any questioning of religion (yours) strange and disrespectful, and any beliefs other than yours highly odd and absurd. Alternate Method: 1. Be somehow vulnerable (depressed, lonely, etc) and feel like something is 'missing' 2. Be invited to join in some sort of religious gathering 3. Be invited in and experience lots of social approval for each step you complete toward full membership 4. Conflate the positive sensation from the social approval, friendship, etc that are part of all religion (why do you think every religion makes you go to meetings all the time?) with the various magical incantations and chants and so forth. Congratulations! You have had a religious experience. Now, let me be a bit more specific. All religions have some sort of mandatory meeting you must attend. That meeting will follow the same form week after week. Many of the same phrases and songs will be repeated endlessly. Before, after, and between mandatory recitals, you are encouraged to talk to others, and then given some sort of inspirational talk that is also generally devoid of any advice or practical facts of information OR a talk that is meant to scare you into better compliance with some arbitrary set of rules. This is really just conditioning you to have certain emotional responses to the triggers that are presented week after week. Then when you have those responses, and there is no clear reason for them, you will attribute them to some kind of magical being (it helps that you are constantly told to do so and presented with testimony from others that this is what they feel).
dhbradshaw 18y ago
Thanks for replying to my comment. I was a bit surprised that no one did for a little while. Although I said "weakness in logic," I didn't mean to say that logic is weak or flawed. I really meant that it is insufficient to use logic in the absence of shared assumptions. As you point out, sharing of assumptions can come through communicated and shared experiences. I think that your description of how learning comes about in science is a powerful one. I believe that some aspects of it should apply to religion. In my particular religion, the process of gaining faith, and then of moving from faith to knowledge is framed almost as a science experiment. You apply particular principles and see what the outcomes are. As you see the outcomes your faith grows. (See Alma 32:26-36 in the Book of Mormon--available online through LDS.org.) Faith is a word for something less than knowledge that becomes knowledge only through experience. You might look at it from a Bayesian perspective and say that with more data uncertainty grows smaller. "How do I render a religious experience for myself?" This question strikes me as a little bit odd, and that may be because of a weakness in the metaphor between science and religion. Science studies things. Religion studies the Divine. What I mean is that religious experience may be more of a conversation than a solitary experience. Conversations happen by mutual agreement. However, it is still a good question because it shows progress from worrying about a tool that processes information to worrying about how to seek new information. Here is a simple religious experiment: pray to God and ask if He can hear you. Document your frame of mind when you prayed. Did you actually want an answer? Were you willing to accept the possibility of no answer? Document any answer or lack of answer you experience. In science, we generally come to knowledge only slowly, over time--although sometimes things progress more quickly than other times. It is the same in religion. The most likely answer to such a prayer is a gradual one, something spoken quietly to the heart. Such an answer is partial, at best. Maybe you manufactured it mentally. Maybe you didn't even hear anything. It was so quiet. Was anything really there? But something was there. At least enough to follow up on. And you move forward from there, performing experiments, seeking answers, asking questions and listening and acting. Just like a signal, over time, can appear out of noise, so religious truth, over time, arises out of uncertainty. You talk with others and compare notes. But in the end, for something this important, you really want to know for yourself. You have to perform the experiments, you have to have the experiences, you have to gain the knowledge for yourself. Besides, it's not like physics. With religion, everybody seems to be saying different things than everybody else. So it becomes up to you. LDS missionaries seek to guide one person at a time through experiences that lead to enough personal knowledge of the gospel to warrant baptism. As far as I know, this is the only way that they can be effective.

ltbarcly 18y ago

Steps to produce a religious experience: 1. Be indoctrinated from birth to find any questioning of religion (yours) strange and disrespectful, and any beliefs other than yours highly odd and absurd. Alternate Method: 1. Be somehow vulnerable (depressed, lonely, etc) and feel like something is 'missing' 2. Be invited to join in some sort of religious gathering 3. Be invited in and experience lots of social approval for each step you complete toward full membership 4. Conflate the positive sensation from the social approval, friendship, etc that are part of all religion (why do you think every religion makes you go to meetings all the time?) with the various magical incantations and chants and so forth. Congratulations! You have had a religious experience. Now, let me be a bit more specific. All religions have some sort of mandatory meeting you must attend. That meeting will follow the same form week after week. Many of the same phrases and songs will be repeated endlessly. Before, after, and between mandatory recitals, you are encouraged to talk to others, and then given some sort of inspirational talk that is also generally devoid of any advice or practical facts of information OR a talk that is meant to scare you into better compliance with some arbitrary set of rules. This is really just conditioning you to have certain emotional responses to the triggers that are presented week after week. Then when you have those responses, and there is no clear reason for them, you will attribute them to some kind of magical being (it helps that you are constantly told to do so and presented with testimony from others that this is what they feel).

dhbradshaw 18y ago

Thanks for replying to my comment. I was a bit surprised that no one did for a little while. Although I said "weakness in logic," I didn't mean to say that logic is weak or flawed. I really meant that it is insufficient to use logic in the absence of shared assumptions. As you point out, sharing of assumptions can come through communicated and shared experiences. I think that your description of how learning comes about in science is a powerful one. I believe that some aspects of it should apply to religion. In my particular religion, the process of gaining faith, and then of moving from faith to knowledge is framed almost as a science experiment. You apply particular principles and see what the outcomes are. As you see the outcomes your faith grows. (See Alma 32:26-36 in the Book of Mormon--available online through LDS.org.) Faith is a word for something less than knowledge that becomes knowledge only through experience. You might look at it from a Bayesian perspective and say that with more data uncertainty grows smaller. "How do I render a religious experience for myself?" This question strikes me as a little bit odd, and that may be because of a weakness in the metaphor between science and religion. Science studies things. Religion studies the Divine. What I mean is that religious experience may be more of a conversation than a solitary experience. Conversations happen by mutual agreement. However, it is still a good question because it shows progress from worrying about a tool that processes information to worrying about how to seek new information. Here is a simple religious experiment: pray to God and ask if He can hear you. Document your frame of mind when you prayed. Did you actually want an answer? Were you willing to accept the possibility of no answer? Document any answer or lack of answer you experience. In science, we generally come to knowledge only slowly, over time--although sometimes things progress more quickly than other times. It is the same in religion. The most likely answer to such a prayer is a gradual one, something spoken quietly to the heart. Such an answer is partial, at best. Maybe you manufactured it mentally. Maybe you didn't even hear anything. It was so quiet. Was anything really there? But something was there. At least enough to follow up on. And you move forward from there, performing experiments, seeking answers, asking questions and listening and acting. Just like a signal, over time, can appear out of noise, so religious truth, over time, arises out of uncertainty. You talk with others and compare notes. But in the end, for something this important, you really want to know for yourself. You have to perform the experiments, you have to have the experiences, you have to gain the knowledge for yourself. Besides, it's not like physics. With religion, everybody seems to be saying different things than everybody else. So it becomes up to you. LDS missionaries seek to guide one person at a time through experiences that lead to enough personal knowledge of the gospel to warrant baptism. As far as I know, this is the only way that they can be effective.