(December 11, 2016 at 6:54 pm)Chas Wrote:

(December 11, 2016 at 5:54 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: Okay, so let's parse it like this: Some claims about God purport to be true (God exists) but not factual in the sense of verification; others more specifically claim to be both (God came to earth, say, in the form a politician). Do you agree with me that an atheist is mistaken, perhaps naively so, to reply to the theist who is asserting God as a truth (nay, THE truth) in "necessarily abstract" terms (rather than as "a fact") with the statement that "claims demand evidence"?

No, I would not.  Any claim about the nature of a thing is meaningless without evidence of the existence of that thing.

Talk of the attributes of any god is meaningless drivel.

Yeah, it's like Tracey Harris pointed out on The Atheist Experience, about the nature and the habits of the yeti. It's all just wankery unless you actually produce a yeti.

(December 11, 2016 at 7:33 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Is not reason the experience of mental coherence?  Is there any component of reason which you consider to be more than that?

I'm inclined to think that reason represents something more fundamental, more universal.  If reason is the "experience of mental coherence," would you say that the discovery of, say, irrational numbers, was a discovery only about mental coherence?  What could account for the universal applicability of this "mental coherence" to phenomena far beyond the grasps of primates wandering around the Sahara?  I wonder if reason might reflect a pattern or regularity -- basically, information -- intrinsic to the nature of material existence itself, if not ultimately, at least at a very deep level.

Quote:This is an example of the kind of knowledge I was talking about, which can be said to be true, but only in context... In an absolute context, I don't know that at all.  Nor is it really an inference-- I don't think you can go from any amount of personal experience to arrive at an objective truth like that.  It has to be a pragmatic assumption, based on a hunch... The problem comes if I use what I "know" (i.e. assume) with truth, and use it as the foundation for subsequent truths.  All those truths are local-- they are true only in the context allowed by my assumptions.

Complete global skepticism is self-defeating.  We can KNOW that.

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(December 11, 2016 at 6:54 pm)Chas Wrote: No, I would not.  Any claim about the nature of a thing is meaningless without evidence of the existence of that thing.

Is your claim outside of the domain of these "things"?  Because your claim, that I should only accept its truth after conceding the validity of the evidence provided about the meaningfulness of its nature -- apparently (though paradoxically?) involving the property that it is a properly basic belief and does not require such evidence -- seemed to be conveniently lacking said evidence.

(December 11, 2016 at 11:43 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: I'm inclined to think that reason represents something more fundamental, more universal.  If reason is the "experience of mental coherence," would you say that the discovery of, say, irrational numbers, was a discovery only about mental coherence?

Yes. All experiences, and nothing provably more than that. Absolutely. All that goes with a discovery-- hearing people talk about it, writing numbers on a paper, looking things up on the internet, 100% of it-- it's all experience. Inferences beyond that may be judged on their pragmatic value, but it must be understand that theories of material are really theories of experience.

Quote:
Complete global skepticism is self-defeating.  We can KNOW that.

What's this "we" stuff, figment-of-my-experience?

I was thinking about religious indoctrination and why it's so difficult to shift and I realised it's because it's a coherent context like I was talking about before. A context is just a web of interrelated ideas/features. So a work of fiction is a coherent context in the sense that it has a lot of interrelated details that revolve around one or more central ideas. It is consistent within its own little world and that's all it needs to be to sustain itself. It doesn't have to be realistic it just has to fit together as it were because all they are are neurons providing input to other neurons and feedback loops/pockets of self-referential support. I was just thinking about it because I have a lot of religious indoctrination that still causes doubts sometimes and it doesn't have the right to do that because all that 'knowledge' about God... all that quantity over quality interconnected detail... did not come through evidence or with my informed consent; it was indoctrinated. It's just so frustrating that it is even given the time of day by my mind as potentially true, due only to the size of the context making it experience-able as 'real' in the same way a dream, book, or hypnosis is.. Islam for instance, is something I know absolutely nothing about... I don't know any of the details of it... there is no large, coherent context for it, and so it doesn't even figure into the equation. Same with any other religion other than the one I was indoctrinated into... Christianity. I just wish I could figure out how to 'unlearn' a context that didn't have the right to be there in the first place, but it has fingers in every pie (that's almost the definition of a context) so there's no central place to attack it that would entirely remove it. How do you get rid of a web of ideas? Unfortunately I'm not sure you can

I'm really sorry the indoctrination is still causing you such distress

I think it might be worth seeking some professional help regarding this. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some techniques for battling this kind of thing. Even CBT could probably help; and maybe there are more specialized approaches.

It's a fucking evil thing. More so because it deals with the intangible, so is harder to wrestle with. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know It's designed to provoke emotional responses, and the antidote is calm, rational, logical thought. But when the emotion is powerful enough, it can swat the logic aside. Religion relies on this.

(December 12, 2016 at 3:46 pm)robvalue Wrote: I'm really sorry the indoctrination is still causing you such distress

I think it might be worth seeking some professional help regarding this. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some techniques for battling this kind of thing. Even CBT could probably help; and maybe there are more specialized approaches.

It's a fucking evil thing. More so because it deals with the intangible, so is harder to wrestle with. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know It's designed to provoke emotional responses, and the antidote is calm, rational, logical thought. But when the emotion is powerful enough, it can swat the logic aside. Religion relies on this.

Thanks Rob for your concern But it's not that bad. I was just thinking about something you said the other day about some ex-Christians not being able to shift the idea of hell, and that's the case with me... I give it more consideration than I should, just by virtue of these context dynamics. Some of the time at least. And I was just thinking about how unfair it was to be even giving it the time of day, whereas something like purgatory I can write off just as fast as you can because it's not part of the Christianity I grew up with. Basically I can never be the way you are with regards to Christianity but I can be regarding every other religion.

I was just thinking 'there's gotta be a way to deprogram this shit' so I looked that up on amazon, and it came up all cults and what have you... and it is a cult in a sense... but then I realised I already know what it is and how to approach it (if not solve it... yet at least)... a coherent context. That's all it is... that's the only thing that gives it power... that it exists in such detail. So I think that was a valuable realisation to have; that the fact that subjectively I see Christianity as much more plausible than any other religion has nothing to do with its evidence... nothing to do with its quality... only its quantity. In other words its plausibility (to me) is only an illusion... it was never 'proved' to me in any other way that many interconnecting details being learned, and that in itself being enough to sustain its activation as a coherent context.

And how to beat it... how to deprogram it? I don't know for sure but at least I've got a framework to look at it from; I know how neural contexts work... what sustains them and what shuts them down. A context gets its power/resilience from 'bi-directional feedback'. At a basic level they are sustained through stereotypes... their common features allow them to form a solid core of activation that can persist even in the absence of continued input because they form a self-supporting feedback loop. And the other thing about them is that they are quick to activate... a process called bootstrapping, again reliant on the dynamics of bidirectional feedback. So anyway what I'm saying is it's difficult to let a context die out once it's established because it is very easily 'topped up'... one minor input can send activation cascading through the network, and top the whole thing up because of the feedback support. So in order to let it die out one approach is to mindfully divert attention whenever any detail... no matter how big or small... comes to mind... so that it cannot top it up. An interesting example of this (imo)
is say you're learning to drive (as I was) and you have to stop for health reasons but you plan to go back to it. As long as you're still planning to go back to it, you retain all that knowledge... you could get back into a car months down the line and remember most of it... but as soon as you decide that you're not going to go back, you forget it all. In my opinion that's an example of this; that the will to return to it is the small input required to bootstrap the context and keep it active but choosing to put it behind you is what allows it to shut down and you to forget it. But back to the Christianity context I think Min's on the right track... call it out as bullshit at every opportunity (an alternative to mindfully diverting attention ) no matter how small the detail, because even small details have the ability to bootstrap it and bring it back up to full strength.

(December 12, 2016 at 12:11 pm)Emjay Wrote: I was thinking about religious indoctrination and why it's so difficult to shift and I realised it's because it's a coherent context like I was talking about before. A context is just a web of interrelated ideas/features. So a work of fiction is a coherent context in the sense that it has a lot of interrelated details that revolve around one or more central ideas. It is consistent within its own little world and that's all it needs to be to sustain itself. It doesn't have to be realistic it just has to fit together as it were because all they are are neurons providing input to other neurons and feedback loops/pockets of self-referential support. I was just thinking about it because I have a lot of religious indoctrination that still causes doubts sometimes and it doesn't have the right to do that because all that 'knowledge' about God... all that quantity over quality interconnected detail... did not come through evidence or with my informed consent; it was indoctrinated. It's just so frustrating that it is even given the time of day by my mind as potentially true, due only to the size of the context making it experience-able as 'real' in the same way a dream, book, or hypnosis is.. Islam for instance, is something I know absolutely nothing about... I don't know any of the details of it... there is no large, coherent context for it, and so it doesn't even figure into the equation. Same with any other religion other than the one I was indoctrinated into... Christianity. I just wish I could figure out how to 'unlearn' a context that didn't have the right to be there in the first place, but it has fingers in every pie (that's almost the definition of a context) so there's no central place to attack it that would entirely remove it. How do you get rid of a web of ideas? Unfortunately I'm not sure you can

How long has it been since you began doubting in ways that you found inconsistent with remaining a believer? Because I once felt this way but the more I read and the more I became involved in the lives of those who left their ideas in print, the less emotionally and even intellectually bound did I feel to my former baggage. I'm to the point now that I have no belief and no inclination to believe in Christianity left in me, and furthermore I don't feel any worse off for it either -- just the opposite in fact. And if I were to be wrong about its being false, I don't see that it would make much of a difference; I would simply belong to the majority lot of human beings whom have existed.

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(December 12, 2016 at 6:33 am)bennyboy Wrote: Yes.  All experiences, and nothing provably more than that.  Absolutely.  All that goes with a discovery-- hearing people talk about it, writing numbers on a paper, looking things up on the internet, 100% of it-- it's all experience.  Inferences beyond that may be judged on their pragmatic value, but it must be understand that theories of material are really theories of experience.

While I do not necessarily disagree, does not the "pragmatic" assumption of objectivity allow that impersonal descriptions of the world may be given, and adjudged to be objectively true or false, regardless of any single individual's experience? Would you consider these to be "theories of experience," though said individual experience need not be included in the description? Or does this miss the point?

Quote:What's this "we" stuff, figment-of-my-experience?

Nay, what's this "my" stuff, figment-of-connected-experiences!

(December 11, 2016 at 2:54 am)Mudhammam Wrote:

(December 11, 2016 at 2:47 am)Cato Wrote: Precisely, which is why your assertion that those asking for evidence of claims of existence are mistaken is, well, mistaken.

Well, that's granting that a claim can only be justified by evidence. But that itself is a claim that I don't think meets its own criteria, which is the point of this whole thread.  Unless I am misunderstanding what you mean by justification or evidence.

I think you're making a category error by considering all claims to be equivalent relative to evidence requirements regardless of what's being claimed. I honestly thought this thread had already pushed through that and am quite surprised that you are making the error, unless of course you are intentionally being coy.

If you are struggling with the difference, in terms of evidence requirements, between "my favorite color is red" and "the god of The Bible exists", there's probably not a lot of room for discussion here.

(December 12, 2016 at 6:51 pm)Mudhammam Wrote:

(December 12, 2016 at 12:11 pm)Emjay Wrote: I was thinking about religious indoctrination and why it's so difficult to shift and I realised it's because it's a coherent context like I was talking about before. A context is just a web of interrelated ideas/features. So a work of fiction is a coherent context in the sense that it has a lot of interrelated details that revolve around one or more central ideas. It is consistent within its own little world and that's all it needs to be to sustain itself. It doesn't have to be realistic it just has to fit together as it were because all they are are neurons providing input to other neurons and feedback loops/pockets of self-referential support. I was just thinking about it because I have a lot of religious indoctrination that still causes doubts sometimes and it doesn't have the right to do that because all that 'knowledge' about God... all that quantity over quality interconnected detail... did not come through evidence or with my informed consent; it was indoctrinated. It's just so frustrating that it is even given the time of day by my mind as potentially true, due only to the size of the context making it experience-able as 'real' in the same way a dream, book, or hypnosis is.. Islam for instance, is something I know absolutely nothing about... I don't know any of the details of it... there is no large, coherent context for it, and so it doesn't even figure into the equation. Same with any other religion other than the one I was indoctrinated into... Christianity. I just wish I could figure out how to 'unlearn' a context that didn't have the right to be there in the first place, but it has fingers in every pie (that's almost the definition of a context) so there's no central place to attack it that would entirely remove it. How do you get rid of a web of ideas? Unfortunately I'm not sure you can

How long has it been since you began doubting in ways that you found inconsistent with remaining a believer?  Because I once felt this way but the more I read and the more I became involved in the lives of those who left their ideas in print, the less emotionally and even intellectually bound did I feel to my former baggage.  I'm to the point now that I have no belief and no inclination to believe in Christianity left in me, and furthermore I don't feel any worse off for it either -- just the opposite in fact.  And if I were to be wrong about its being false, I don't see that it would make much of a difference; I would simply belong to the majority lot of human beings whom have existed.

Well it's been about eighteen years since it clicked 'there is no god', but in the time since, my confidence in atheism has grown mainly by learning and developing other much more plausible ideas about reality from science, psychology, neuroscience etc, rather than debunking Christianity. That's where I've gone wrong I think. To put it the terms of contexts, an unrelated (to Christianity) context of science/physchology/neuroscience has taken the forefront in my mind but the old Christianity context was never truly addressed, and thus never allowed to die. In my opinion only (I have no wish to misrepresent his intentions in any way... it's me that's thinking in terms of contexts, not him... I'm just saying how imo his behaviour would fit in practically with this model but not that that is his intention) it seems that Min addresses it all the time, leaving its tendrils no opportunity to get a foothold and top up the context, and it sounds like you've done the same thing but in a different way, by reading and getting involved in presumably debunking Christianity (as opposed to learning more about unrelated subjects)? I think you guys are on the right track... you can't expect to let something go unless you debunk it and cease to feed it. I don't mean I've deliberately fed it at any point, but by not challenging/dismissing every single thought about it that comes up, I essentially give it implicit authorisation to carry on doing what it's doing, which is maintaining and bootstrapping the context. That was my mistake... so now I think I'm gonna take the minimalist approach maybe not out loud but definitely in my head... any time a Christian thought comes up I've gotta say 'that's bullshit' or otherwise dismiss it

As to the doubt itself it's a kind of negative/no-man's-land kind of doubt rather than anything positive; I can't think of a single thing about Christianity that makes me think 'ah, that's plausible/possible' so it's not the case that there's anything positive pulling me towards it as it were. No man's land in the sense that if I knew nothing about it right now, nothing would convince me or tempt me to believe in it... just the same as I am with any other religion... I'm way too skeptical for that. So all it is is a negative kind of doubt that exists only because of unfinished business... because of emotional baggage that hasn't really been addressed.

(December 12, 2016 at 7:31 pm)Cato Wrote: I think you're making a category error by considering all claims to be equivalent relative to evidence requirements regardless of what's being claimed. I honestly thought this thread had already pushed through that and am quite surprised that you are making the error, unless of course you are intentionally being coy.

Oh no, I've been defending that very conclusion. I'm just curious as to why atheists who make the claim that you're attempting to make don't believe theists are entitled to the same presumption about other possible truths, namely what they consider to be logical deductions that point to some ultimate being.

(December 12, 2016 at 7:31 pm)Cato Wrote: If you are struggling with the difference, in terms of evidence requirements, between "my favorite color is red" and "the god of The Bible exists", there's probably not a lot of room for discussion here.

But those aren't at all the sorts of claims that would be exempt from a demand for evidence, since neither involve strictly metaphorical concepts or epistemological principles that only reason can justify. I'm surprised that I have to point that out to you, quite frankly.

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(December 12, 2016 at 8:34 pm)Emjay Wrote:

(December 12, 2016 at 6:51 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: How long has it been since you began doubting in ways that you found inconsistent with remaining a believer?  Because I once felt this way but the more I read and the more I became involved in the lives of those who left their ideas in print, the less emotionally and even intellectually bound did I feel to my former baggage.  I'm to the point now that I have no belief and no inclination to believe in Christianity left in me, and furthermore I don't feel any worse off for it either -- just the opposite in fact.  And if I were to be wrong about its being false, I don't see that it would make much of a difference; I would simply belong to the majority lot of human beings whom have existed.

Well it's been about eighteen years since it clicked 'there is no god', but in the time since, my confidence in atheism has grown mainly by learning and developing other much more plausible ideas about reality from science, psychology, neuroscience etc, rather than debunking Christianity. That's where I've gone wrong I think. To put it the terms of contexts, an unrelated (to Christianity) context of science/physchology/neuroscience has taken the forefront in my mind but the old Christianity context was never truly addressed, and thus never allowed to die. In my opinion only (I have no wish to misrepresent his intentions in any way... it's me that's thinking in terms of contexts, not him... I'm just saying how imo his behaviour would fit in practically with this model but not that that is his intention) it seems that Min addresses it all the time, leaving its tendrils no opportunity to get a foothold and top up the context, and it sounds like you've done the same thing but in a different way, by reading and getting involved in presumably debunking Christianity (as opposed to learning more about unrelated subjects)? I think you guys are on the right track... you can't expect to let something go unless you debunk it and cease to feed it. I don't mean I've deliberately fed it at any point, but by not challenging/dismissing every single thought about it that comes up, I essentially give it implicit authorisation to carry on doing what it's doing, which is maintaining and bootstrapping the context. That was my mistake... so now I think I'm gonna take the minimalist approach maybe not out loud but definitely in my head... any time a Christian thought comes up I've gotta say 'that's bullshit' or otherwise dismiss it

I think a good dose of the Socratic method as you find in Plato's dialogues is helpful for de-programming from dogmatism. It really helped me to read the Classics, a variety of Greek and Roman authors, and even those more ancient works like The Epic of Gilgamesh, to put into context the sensationalized triviality of the New Testament, i.e. the recycled themes and ideas that the earliest Christians borrowed from preceding traditions -- which were often articulated far more coherently, and (in my view) aesthetically more "divine," so to speak -- and then packaged specifically for the most gullible of the masses; which, by the way, is *still* observed to be what pretty much every moderately successful religion does. All you can do is be honest with yourself. You don't choose to believe what you in fact believe. Remain open-minded and at the end of day, you'll continue to forge your own beliefs, exactly as human beings were designed to do.