The Need to Evolve

[Belacqua]

Well obviously I can consult a dictionary myself, but since the other poster made an assertion, I wanted them to explain what they meant, and how they knew it existed. If we are going to claim abstract ideas "exist" then Superman and Spiderman et all exist, this doesn't seem helpful in advancing our understanding of reality. 

According to the definition I gave, spirituality is deep feelings and beliefs. I think the existence of those feelings and beliefs is very well attested. As you said, subjective states may be evidenced by objective results, and I think the history of culture is full of such evidence. 

Your new analogy makes the same false equivalence your first did, since my criteria is that sufficient objective evidence be demonstrated, and I explained previously objectivity and subjectivity are on a scale, they are not a binary condition, one or the other, thus evidence can be said to be sufficiently objective quite apart from whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant credulity.

I believe that all the cathedrals of Europe and all the temples of Japan attest objectively to the existence of spirituality, when we're using the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

we can objectively measure how well depressed people do on the drug, again simple double blind clinical trials where the test group involves a placebo spring to mind.

Again, how can we objectively measure this? Even if we have a control group, simply having two groups doesn't make their subjective feelings into objectively demonstrated evidence. You're dealing with knock-on effects which may or may not have strong correlation to moods. But you don't have objective access to the moods themselves. 

we know physiological changes can be cause by drugs, and objectively testing them is easy, I have explained how> 

I don't think you have explained it. Emotions are slippery, and people react differently, and may tell the researcher what he wants to hear, etc.etc. 

Emotions are real, and subjective, and our objective perceptions of other people's remain unreliable. 

Paradoxically I know of no way to objectively verify that religious beliefs making the adherent happy, objectively evidences that belief? Given they've had limitless resources and millenia to do so, I can only remain dubious. 

Yes, I agree. We have no objective way of determining this. We can, however, use pretty much the objective follow-on effects that we'd use for drugs. Do they jump off bridges? Do they have the energy to leave the house? If these objective measures apply to drugs, why not to religion? 

It wouldn't prove that the religious beliefs are true; only that holding the beliefs, or having what they interpret as religious experiences, have certain results. 

whilst all claims carry a burden of proof, they do not carry an equal burden of proof, and that claims involving phenomena we already objectively know are possible, must be deemed to carry a lesser burden of proof than those we have no objective evidence are possible. 

Yes, that's the heart of it. We interpret all evidence within frameworks of things that we already feel confident about. If you feel far more confident about the kind of objective quantifiable empirical repeatable framework of facts that science deals with, then claims which fit easily within that framework will seem more likely to be true. To you. 

what objective evidence if any, can that person demonstrate that anything "spiritual" exists.

As I said, if we define spirituality as a condition or state of mind that people can be in, and then look for evidence of what they do when they are in that condition, then I believe there is a lot of evidence. 

Perhaps the issue here is that you are associating "spiritual" with "supernatural." Is that right? I have never seen anything indicative of the supernatural, but I have reason to believe that spiritual states exist in people who are disposed to that kind of thing, or who have trained for it. Rather than "supernatural," I would probably say they are states of mind which are rare, or simply "outside of quotidian experience." Practitioners have described them as very affecting. 

The part where you'll probably disagree with me is where I say that these states may in fact tell us important things about the world which science never can. 

FYI we know emotions relate to brain states, and these can be indicated on an MRI scan. 

Happiness in an MRI

Heh. I worked for over ten years with a group of scientists at Hiroshima University research hospital doing fMRI research. I'm no scientist, but they needed to read papers in English and publish their results in English, so I had to sit down with them every couple of weeks and go over their writing in detail. 

The claims made for MRIs in the popular press are wildly exaggerated, and the scientists working in the field know it.

[Belacqua]

And I don't want to beg the question by dismissing anything for which we don't have a certain kind of objective evidence.

Does that apply to the Greek gods as well?

It's true, there is no objective evidence for the Greek gods that I know of. 

Perhaps I've been unclear here. I have never argued for the existence of supernatural beings who run around and do things and change their minds, etc.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't see the problem in positing that religious thinking or spiritual experiences make people feel happy, personally.  OFC, we're going to hem and haw and deny that correlation as soon as we point out that by the same mechanism, religious thinking and spiritual experiences might also cause them to oppress their fellow human beings and blow themselves up in crowded places.

I wonder what the approval process would be for a drug that might make you happy or murderous.

[Sheldon]

Well obviously I can consult a dictionary myself, but since the other poster made an assertion, I wanted them to explain what they meant, and how they knew it existed. If we are going to claim abstract ideas "exist" then Superman and Spiderman et all exist, this doesn't seem helpful in advancing our understanding of reality. 

According to the definition I gave, spirituality is deep feelings and beliefs. I think the existence of those feelings and beliefs is very well attested. As you said, subjective states may be evidenced by objective results, and I think the history of culture is full of such evidence. 

Since the text from my post that you quoted addresses this already, I have no clue why you're still repeating this? That religious beliefs produce emotions is not and never has been disputed, however this does not in any way objectively evidence those religious beliefs, and furthermore since they can be the result of wildly differing religious beliefs and deities, they seem demonstrably unreliable in doing so. 

Nor is this definition the only one, which is why I asked the poster what they meant, to avoid speculating as you're doing. 

Your new analogy makes the same false equivalence your first did, since my criteria is that sufficient objective evidence be demonstrated, and I explained previously objectivity and subjectivity are on a scale, they are not a binary condition, one or the other, thus evidence can be said to be sufficiently objective quite apart from whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant credulity.

I believe that all the cathedrals of Europe and all the temples of Japan attest objectively to the existence of spirituality, when we're using the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

You can believe the moon is made of cheese if it makes you happy, but this is utterly irrelevant to what you quoted from my post? Do you have any thoughts on what I actually said there, or the false equivalence you used? 

we can objectively measure how well depressed people do on the drug, again simple double blind clinical trials where the test group involves a placebo spring to mind.

Again, how can we objectively measure this? 

Exactly as I described, by using strict protocols, and measuring objective markers for human emotions like happiness, we can even identify it on an MRI if we needed to, as I explained. 

we know physiological changes can be cause by drugs, and objectively testing them is easy, I have explained how> 

I don't think you have explained it.

Obviously I don't see it that way. 

Paradoxically I know of no way to objectively verify that religious beliefs making the adherent happy, objectively evidences that belief? Given they've had limitless resources and millenia to do so, I can only remain dubious. 

Yes, I agree. We have no objective way of determining this. We can, however, use pretty much the objective follow-on effects that we'd use for drugs. Do they jump off bridges? Do they have the energy to leave the house? If these objective measures apply to drugs, why not to religion?

Straw man fallacy, since the claim religion can make someone happy isn't what is disputed. If one read a Superman comic and it makes you happy, does this in any way evidence Superman as real? Lets try bullet points:

1. Is a deity objectively possible?
2. Is Superman objectively possible?
3. Are mood altering pharmaceuticals objectively possible?
4. Should the fact belief in the first two can make someone happy, change your answer? 

whilst all claims carry a burden of proof, they do not carry an equal burden of proof, and that claims involving phenomena we already objectively know are possible, must be deemed to carry a lesser burden of proof than those we have no objective evidence are possible. 

Yes, that's the heart of it. We interpret all evidence within frameworks of things that we already feel confident about. If you feel far more confident about the kind of objective quantifiable empirical repeatable framework of facts that science deals with, then claims which fit easily within that framework will seem more likely to be true. To you.  

No, not at all, what has subjective perception of an objective fact, or a belief that is demonstrably wrong, to do with the objective truth? People are confident the earth is flat, others are confident that it is round, do you really imagine it's confidence that remotely determines truth? That's just asinine sorry. And none of that remotely addresses my point at all, even more bizarre? You seem to be quoting my post now, but posting non-sequiturs to express what you believe?

what objective evidence if any, can that person demonstrate that anything "spiritual" exists.

As I said, if we define spirituality as a condition or state of mind that people can be in, and then look for evidence of what they do when they are in that condition, then I believe there is a lot of evidence. 

Not we, you, it took seconds to find an online dictionary that defined it quite differently. However if one were defining spirituality as only an emotional state, then this of course tells us precisely nothing about the beliefs people claim produce it, unlike a tablet ingested to alter emotional states, as we know that is physiologically possible, and we can test it objectively. So we are right back at your original false equivalence. 

Perhaps the issue here is that you are associating "spiritual" with "supernatural." 

I withheld judgement and asked the poster who used the word what they meant, I have as yet not received an answer, and don't care to speculate on what someone may have meant. 

The part where you'll probably disagree with me is where I say that these states may in fact tell us important things about the world which science never can. 

Well that's a bare claim, firstly what do you imagine it tells us and why, what objective evidence supports your claim, and secondly you now seem to be implying that this emotional state you are describing as spiritual is a supernatural state. Were it purely natural, then there is no good reason to believe it can't be studied by science?

The claims made for MRIs in the popular press are wildly exaggerated, and the scientists working in the field know it.

Was the link I provided from the popular press, or any press? As long as the original research is from a valid source I think your objection seems a little like handwaving. 

I found this:
"A number of studies have used functional MRI to see what our brain looks like as we recall pleasant memories, watch scary movies or listen to sad music. Scientists have even had some success telling which of these stimuli a subject is experiencing by looking at his or her scans."

"In a study reported in the June 2016 issue of Cerebral Cortex, Heini Saarimäki of Aalto University in Finland and her colleagues observed volunteers in a brain scanner who were being prompted to recall memories they associated with words drawn from six emotional categories or to reflect on a movie clip selected to provoke certain emotions. The participants also completed a questionnaire about how closely linked different emotions were—rating, for instance, whether “anxiety” is closer to “fear” than to “happiness.” The researchers found that pattern-recognition software could detect which category of emotion a person had been prompted with. In addition, the more closely he or she linked words in the questionnaire, the more his or her brain scans for those emotions resembled one another."

Do you consider Scientific America to be popular press, do you think they are exaggerating the findings in the research from the Finnish scientists?

[Belacqua]

Yes, that's the heart of it. We interpret all evidence within frameworks of things that we already feel confident about. If you feel far more confident about the kind of objective quantifiable empirical repeatable framework of facts that science deals with, then claims which fit easily within that framework will seem more likely to be true. To you.  

No, not at all, what has subjective perception of an objective fact, or a belief that is demonstrably wrong, to do with the objective truth? People are confident the earth is flat, others are confident that it is round, do you really imagine it's confidence that remotely determines truth? That's just asinine sorry. And none of that remotely addresses my point at all, even more bizarre? You seem to be quoting my post now, but posting non-sequiturs to express what you believe?

Well, there's obviously a whole lot going on here. I think I'll just address the above and then let the rest drop. We're clearly coming at this from very different perspectives.

I said that we interpret evidence based on frameworks or theories about what we already hold to be true. If you are confident in your interpretive framework then the conclusions it helps you draw will seem reliable to you. But no one comes to a claim just raw, with no background or prior belief. 

So what a person takes to be objective evidence is always already embedded in a web of priors. We need yardsticks which we have confidence in if we're going to say that one bit of evidence is objective and one bit isn't. 

It's true that some are confident the earth is flat, and others are confident that it isn't. How did they get their confidence? They listened to what people told them and then evaluated it based on some criteria, for example, which authorities seem reliable to them, which structures and institutions they find trustworthy. I suppose some people have tested it for themselves, and recreated the experiments which show the earth is round. Not many people do that, but it's possible. And of course this shows that they have confidence in that type of experiment. 

My larger point is that what we consider objective evidence doesn't just drop from the sky marked "objective." We judge it to be objective, based on criteria which we find trustworthy. It may or may not be trustworthy in the long run, but we do the best we can. 

We are inevitably embedded in a place and time. And that means our beliefs, our frameworks for understanding, and our interpretations of evidence are the ones that are possible in our own place and time. History shows that these things change. 

Apparently I'm not doing a good job of explaining myself, and I think this is partly because we are trying to talk about different things. Just for the record, I am not arguing in favor of belief in the supernatural, or for the credibility of any particular religion. 

I'm sorry I can't do better, but I thank you for replying to me, because it does help me clarify my own beliefs to myself.

[Sheldon]

No, not at all, what has subjective perception of an objective fact, or a belief that is demonstrably wrong, to do with the objective truth? People are confident the earth is flat, others are confident that it is round, do you really imagine it's confidence that remotely determines truth? That's just asinine sorry. And none of that remotely addresses my point at all, even more bizarre? You seem to be quoting my post now, but posting non-sequiturs to express what you believe?

My larger point is that what we consider objective evidence doesn't just drop from the sky marked "objective." We judge it to be objective, based on criteria which we find trustworthy. It may or may not be trustworthy in the long run, but we do the best we can. 

The criteria we set for credulity is of course a subjective choice, but the criteria itself need not be so, that all beliefs are to some extent subjective, does not mean they are equally subjective, if you think objective evidence is more reliable than subjective then it follows the more objective the evidence the more reliable it is. 

Testing which is more reliable is easy, as luckily all the heavy lifting has been done, the successes amassed in a very short time by science demonstrate it is by far the most reliable method (so far) for understanding objective reality, it's not the only method, it is the most successful and therefore the most reliable. It follows then that if less reliable or successful methods are at odds with what is quantifiably the best, and we care that what we believe is true, then we would use that best or most reliable method. 

Beyond that we can see that those methods (science) are designed to remove as much subjectivity as is possible, so again it follows that the more objective the evidence is, the more reliable it is. 

So lets recap:

1. Someone made a claim about spirituality.
2. I asked that person to define what they meant by spiritual, and what objective evidence if any, they could demonstrate that it existed, outside of the human mind. 
3. You cited human emotions (happiness for example) as existing and suggested we cannot objectively evidence this. 
4. Since there is no objective evidence that emotions can exist outside the human mind, this isn't really relevant. Though it's worth noting most people instantly understand what we mean by happy, whereas spiritual means many different things to different people, it is vague poorly defined, and thus objective markers would be much harder to pin down, all else aside. 
5. I already accept that abstract ideas exist in the human mind. 
6. I also accept that people hold subjective religious beliefs, and that they gain succour from them, and are emotionally invested in them. I have little reason to doubt that the emotions produced are real, but have no objective reason to believe this tells me anything about the veracity of the beliefs. 

One last word, some beliefs better reflect objective reality, they are demonstrably more reliable than others, it follows then, that beliefs can vary along a scale from purely subjective(the least reliable) to objective irrefutable fact (the most reliable), none of that of course was meant to suggest anything is or can be immutable, that is a claim I have seen made by religions and the religious many times, to me it indicates only a closed mind, to say one holds a belief that cannot ever be changed or be wrong. 

To admit that an irrefutable fact must remain tentative in the light of new evidence is merely to say one  is open minded, as science does, it does not in any way suggest the fact is unreliable or even remotely likely to change.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a simple play. When the facts look bad, suggest there are none.