Friendly Atheism

[vulcanlogician]

I think that theism is rational insofar as one has himself had a direct experience of "something divine." 

I don't think mystics make very sound truth claims. But I think that the mystic's claim of God (or whatever) is--at minimum-- a possibly valid one. The "believer" or "doctrinal adherent's" claim is (conversely) unfounded/irrational or at the very least, lacking any rational basis whatsoever.

Hmm would you say then that rationality is not transferable? That if a belief is rational for you because of experience, it cannot be rational for me if I believe you?

I think that rationality is "transferable." But empirical claims rely on experience. If I want to make the claim that objects of higher weight fall at the same rate as objects of lower weight, I can conduct an experiment or make an observation of nature wherein objects of different weight fall. Either way, both claims rely upon an assumption that sensually experienced events can be a foundation for truth claims. If experience is to be a foundation for truth claims, what separates mystical experiences from ordinary ones?

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Yes, that is an example I'd thought of too. Of course, using that as itself evidence for God's existence (or other gods, mystical realities etc.) is problematic at best.

I didn't know we were talking about evidence for a god's existence. I thought we were considering the question: "Can god belief be rational?" Are mystical experiences evidence for God? No. But is an experience of God justification for believing in God? Possibly.

I do understand how compelling such an experience must be for the person who has it though (I've met some who claim to have had them). Such visions in general though are to me dubious, given that they conflict and can be induced artificially.

Theoretically, the mundane experiences of our everyday life could be produced artificially. Does that invalidate them?

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And as far as this relates to "friendly atheism"...

The freedom to 'believe what we will' you apply to the case of some patent superstition; and the faith you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy when he said, "Faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true." I can only repeat that this is misapprehension. In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider. When I look at the religious question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all the possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and courage, and wait—acting of course meanwhile more or less as if religion were not true[4]—till {30} doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have raked in evidence enough,—this command, I say, seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we will,—I hope you do not think that I am denying that,—but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In either case we act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26659/266...6659-h.htm