(September 20, 2012 at 2:57 pm)Faith No More Wrote: True, it could be an emotional state, but no, I was referring to being able to perceive personal experiences as valid or not. For example, a poster came by here once claiming that he had become unsure of god's existence and was having doubts about his faith, however, he still went to church. One day he was surrounded by church members who started praying for him, and he felt an overwhelming warm presence that he concluded must be god. I believe he even said he was knocked to his feet by it. Any attempt to explain to him that his brain was a highly flawed organ and it was most likely a flawed experience was dismissed.
Nearly every theist eventually will stop arguing their religion from a point of logic and claim that god is present in their lives, and that his how he/she knows god exists. It is they that rely too highly on their cognitive faculties.
That's my point. Is that "personal experience" a part of the cognitive faculties? Or is it the point where you analyze the experience that cognition comes in.
cog·ni·tion
Noun:
The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
Experience - pure experience - is not prima facie knowledge unless it has been processed and analyzed by our mind. The personal experience your theist felt was the result a complicated social situation and represented just a warm feeling and a presence. Using his cognitive faculties would have required him to analyze that experience. But he skipped that part and took it as the prima facie evidence of god.
I'm saying that when theists say that they feel the presence of god, they are not using their cognitive abilities. The feeling itself may very well be a result of their cognitive abilities - such as the subconscious processing the information - but since they didn't use their cognitive faculties and jumped straight to the conclusion, that is not where the fault lies.
