RE: Are all forms of religious faith indicative of insanity? (My counter example.)
May 9, 2015 at 11:31 am
(May 9, 2015 at 9:03 am)whateverist Wrote: 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.
