Are all forms of religious faith indicative of insanity? (My counter example.)

[Whateverist]

A sensible medium is certainly best.  Like you I find no role for gods.  But I do allow for a layer of mystery which underlies consciousness.  Or maybe the 'mystery' is only extreme complexity resulting from the same processes which produce 'me' also producing 'the world'.  Contamination may be inevitable when the part of the world we try to understand is the part known as 'me'.  In that task especially, observer expectancy may inevitably produce a hall of mirrors.  Perhaps god is simply the shadow of subjectivity clinging to the 'world' which consciousness presents us with.  At its best, religious experience may be the acceptance of 'god' as the projection of the mystery which underlies our selves for the sake of understanding ourselves and the world better.  Of course I'd respect a theist more who could articulate this strategy rather than going literal.

Be aware that there are suspected neurological underpinnings for religious experiences, too.  That's not to say that the ineffable doesn't exist -- there are certainly depths of emotion and experience in us that do not submit to rational linguistic analysis. But if there is an intracranial explanation for things like feelings of oneness, or feeling the presence of a deity, then it seems to me possible that mystery is where consciousness loses track of a portion of the brain for a time. This view appears to comport, in a way, with what you've written in the quote above.

I'm not sure I quite follow. Can you say more about what you mean in the part I bolded? "Losing track of one's self" is often a very desirable experience when you are in the grip of a good book or caught up in a play or movie. Likewise when you are engaged in a creative or challenging physical endeavor. The study of neurology through studying the effects of brain trauma has revealed that there is a layering of experience. That our experience can go on even if we lose the capacity to self-censor, or identify faces, make appropriate associations, or recall words, or .. so many other things we take for granted otherwise. So one can imagine that various conditions other than brain trauma can impact which layers are able to be present, as in the interval between sleep and wakening or as a result of certain drugs. Perhaps drugs represent a kind of transient brain trauma? But I definitely believe all religious experience is intracranial, and I don't mean that to be dismissive. I assume all experience is intracranial. Leastwise that certainly seems to be the organ that filters sensation and add cognition.

I completely agree with what you wrote in your first post in this thread about thought and rationality being appropriate to answer certain questions and feeling/emotion being more central to answering others. As information processing bags of chemicals with selective self-awaredness, we are quite the puzzle.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm not sure I quite follow.  Can you say more about what you mean in the part I bolded? 

Well, I can't remember, but I think it was Nicholas Humphries who posited that consciousness is an artifact of differing parts of the brain observing other parts of the brain at work in a series of recursive loops that are pretty tangled up. As a theory of mind, it makes sense to me, though I know little about the topic other than what I've read in a couple of books.  Anyway, I tend to use that as a model for consciousness. And I suspect that subconcious activity in the brain arises when a part of the brain is quietly at work with no other part of the brain overseeing or observing it.

So it seems to me that if the parietal lobe is at work with some serotonin coming through it, and is not being monitored by (say) the cerebral cortex, then the religious experience would feel organic and natural, and very difficult to understand outside of the framework one has be programmed with as a child.

Again, I'm not very well-educated on this subject, so take this with a salt-shaker or two.

[abaris]

But if there is an intracranial explanation for things like feelings of oneness, or feeling the presence of a deity, then it seems to me possible that mystery is where consciousness loses track of a portion of the brain for a time. This view appears to comport, in a way, with what you've written in the quote above.

Don't underestimate the group experience also. The need to belong to a group is probably one of our oldest needs as a social species. And it can go a long way towards feeling protected.

[Whateverist]

A new idea for me. I'll have to think about and sleep on that a while. (God forbid maybe even read something new. I so prefer coasting.)

[robvalue]

We had an ultra-ultra sceptic on the forum a few months ago. He started out seeming like a reasonable guy then starting calling absolutely everything a conspiracy including all of education. 

[Thumpalumpacus]

But if there is an intracranial explanation for things like feelings of oneness, or feeling the presence of a deity, then it seems to me possible that mystery is where consciousness loses track of a portion of the brain for a time. This view appears to comport, in a way, with what you've written in the quote above.

Don't underestimate the group experience also. The need to belong to a group is probably one of our oldest needs as a social species. And it can go a long way towards feeling protected.

Absolutely. And the experience of attending church regularly not only provides group support, it also provides a set of peers who will generally attempt to reinforce group values through emotional pressure.

[Jenny A]

I do not see this as an either/or between irrational faith and rational disbelieving. I also see rational faith and irrational disbelief.

Somehow, I think the word rational got lost in translation.

---

There is no easy choice which is neutral and unquestioningly rational and reasonable.  If you think there is an obvious balance to strike between faith and skepticism, I think you're taking the easy way out.  Radical skeptics need to explain to me why they accept the existence of other minds and the existence of a 'real world' that is not a subjective construct.  "Well obviously" hides an undefended compromise short of consistent skepticism.  No stance requires defense more than another.  Everyone needs to think.

Anyone who can reflect on and discuss their stance without hysteria and recognize the reasonableness of others taking a different stance are essentially reasonable.  Am I wrong?

I agree that we do have to make assumptions that can't be supported rationally just to get by day to day.  At some point you have to at least generally believe your senses.  The thing is that it hurtw when you bump into walls if you don't.  I think most of us can remember pondering as a child whether we are the only "real" person and everyone else is robotic or exclusionary.  The thing is that acting as if that were so would lead to grave personal difficulties.  So if it's an illusion, it's a very solid, consistent illusion. Autistics who have trouble imagining the mind of another person have difficulties dealing with other people. There is at least indirect evidence of other minds in that dealing with others works better if you make that assumption and act on it. 

The thing is that some stances are reasonable and other aren't, even where emotions are involved.  My husband/child/friend/sibling loves me is a statement that's hard to substantiate especially if you are going to consider what consciousness is or isn't and to try to work out a rational definition of love.  But if you take the leap and assume that actions mean something then the idea is not unreasonable even if it can't be proven rationally or scientifically.  But some ideas are not rationally held.  Angels coming in through the window is much harder to explain. So is that the father who first beat then abandoned you loves you. That one flies in the face of the evidence.

 

[Exian]

I don't think it matters if we exist or not, because the same rules would apply. And at that point, we're just arguing semantics. If we were somehow able to test our existence, and find that nothing is real, we'd just rename it, and keep studying the cosmos with our unchanged rules of fake-ality.

Side note: Alfred Korzybski is my jam. The Manhood of Humanity is a great, if not a little premature/optimistic, post-WWI examination of the nature of humanity. Dishes a few religious digs, while he's at it, too.

[Pyrrho]

...  Radical skeptics need to explain to me why they accept the existence of other minds and the existence of a 'real world' that is not a subjective construct. ...

Whether other minds really exist or not is unimportant, and whether there is a 'real world' or not is also unimportant.

Let's look at these one at a time.  Let's suppose that everyone else in the world is really an automaton, and has no mind at all.  You are the only person with a mind.  But everyone else always acts as though they have a mind.  Now, what would you do differently in such a world?  There is no reason to do anything differently, because you interact with other people all the same, regardless of whether they really have minds or not.  The question is completely irrelevant to any choice you need to make.

This reminds me a bit of an argument I had with someone some years ago, about whether someone "really" loves you, or just always pretends to do so (around everyone, all of the time, with no exceptions ever).  I say, someone always acting like they love you is indistinguishable from them loving you, and so we would all say, the person loves you.

In real life, when someone pretends, to be pretend, it involves them sometimes not pretending in some circumstance.  Otherwise, it is not called "pretend."


As for whether there is a 'real world' that exists or not, that, too, is completely unimportant.  If you are a disembodied mind, whose experience is identical to a person in a real world, your options are precisely the same.  If you stick your imaginary hand into the imaginary fire, and you feel the burn, and you later on have to deal with the perception of having a burnt hand, you still will be well-advised to keep from putting your imaginary hand into the imaginary fire, just the same as a man in a real would would be well-advised to not stick his real hand into a real fire.  The experience is identical, and so it makes no difference whatsoever for how you should live your life.


In other words, it makes no difference whether you accept the real existence of other minds or not, and it makes no difference whether there is a real world or not.  It is all irrelevant to every decision you ever make.  You can, of course, spend your time thinking about it and arguing about it, but the thinking and arguing are the same whether there are other minds or not, and whether there is a real world or not.


All of this reminds me of this quote:

"Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them."  

— Gwendolen, in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.

[robvalue]

Whether or not I am real, my experience feels real and that's all that matters.

As for other people/animals, I don't think there's any way I could ever be sure that they aren't feeling something as real as me. So I wouldn't ever take the chance of disregarding their wellbeing.