Some things being above reason

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Religious faith is having the belief that some twits 2,000-4,000 years ago were smarter than you are today and that their ethnocentric religious Middle East fairy tales are 100 per cent true even though you should know better. For all intents and purposes such people should be living in caves with Neanderthals because they are not taking advantage of living in 21st Century America.

[Chas]

No - that would be argument from ignorance.

Ordinary conscious states are those of ignorance compared to the perspective of mystical insight.

Mystical insight? Please define it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Have you experienced extra-ordinary conscious states? Do you find that mystical insight pales in the face of super-mystical insight?

[Whateverist]

Ordinary conscious states are those of ignorance compared to the perspective of mystical insight.

Mystical insight? Please define it.

I think that must be the instant when your eyes roll back in your head during sex.

Seriously there are obviously altered states to our usual consciousness. Some are even interesting. But I don't think any of them trump all others. Don't forget that you never escape being an electro-chemical being with emotional and feeling states as well as cognitive ones. Your esteem for mystical insight is surely informed by all of these. Also, assuming you are not currently in such a state, all you have now is your remembrance of the event - and that isn't the same thing at all.

[g0sU]

I can´t think of anything that I would consider stripped of reason. There are many things too complicated, for the time being, to be explained in a reasonable manner.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...there are obviously altered states to our usual consciousness...But I don't think any of them trump all others.

Yes mystical/visionary states are only one part of the overall human experience. They do all contribute to the overall health and well being of the person, e. g. if you don't get enough sleep it affects you mood. Sleep or wakefulness are both necessity. One can oversleep. One can stay awake too late. Visionary states profoundly affect those who have them but they are rare and apparently not everyone is fortunate enough to have experienced them. I find that very sad.

Don't forget that you never escape being an electro-chemical being with emotional and feeling states as well as cognitive ones...

I would dispute, on both experiential and philosophical grounds that physical reduction does not capture the fullness of what it means to be human.

...all you have now is your remembrance of the event - and that isn't the same thing at all.

Nor do we remember dreams with the salience they had while we slept, but they can contribute to our waking lives even as our waking lives intrude into our dreams.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't know if we could confidently state that "mystical experiences" contribute to the overall health and wellbeing of a person. I doubt it would be difficult for either of us to find some pretty hilarious examples of "mystical experiences" gone awry, eh? But, if the comparison to sleep holds, what does my lack of "mystical experiences" cause in me? Care to make some predictions as to what sorts of symptoms I might experience due to "under-mystical-experiencing"? Is mystical experience a necessity somehow? Necessary for what?

[Whateverist]

Don't forget that you never escape being an electro-chemical being with emotional and feeling states as well as cognitive ones...

I would dispute, on both experiential and philosophical grounds that physical reduction does not capture the fullness of what it means to be human.

I don't see how the incompleteness of a physical account of human experience suggests the existence of a non-physical existence. Emergent properties of physical substance would seem to sufficient. The leap to bogey men seems unwarranted.

...all you have now is your remembrance of the event - and that isn't the same thing at all.

Nor do we remember dreams with the salience they had while we slept, but they can contribute to our waking lives even as our waking lives intrude into our dreams.

You'll get no argument from me on that score. I think dreams and altered states can keep the mind open and interested. But I would have to stop short of declaring anything conclusive regarding any of it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I don't see how the incompleteness of a physical account of human experience suggests the existence of a non-physical existence. Emergent properties of physical substance would seem to sufficient. The leap to bogey men seems unwarranted.

Falling back on emergent properties? Might as well invoke magic; it has the same explanatory capacity.

[Whateverist]

Admittedly it is little more than a buzzword and doesn't require a lot of thought. But my point still stands with or without the fancy labeling. Just because we experience things which are different in kind from chemicals and electrical charges doesn't mean that there is anything else to account for the those experiences. We are bags of chemicals and we have experiences which we can't reduce to any of our chemicals. So what? Do you think rocks wonder where their irreducible experiences come from?