How to Authentically Experience God

[athoughtfulman]

So would metaphysics likely to be able to, either now or in the near future, explain why some people have religious or supernatural experiences?

[fr0d0]

Nicely put thoughtful. I was wondering if love would be a good example of something similar to the religious feeling people experience. How do you scientifically quantify love? & how does that differ from a description of faith, in evidential terms.

There are hopefully two people reciprocating with love, but then maybe that's love x 2. Love is personal to the giver surely, and unquantifiable to the receiver. You can offer gifts and service, but you do that with religion too. You may be fooling yourself and are therefore delusional. It's possible.

Dunno. Just trying to figure it out.

If you rationally dismiss faith, do you have to dismiss love too? If not, on what grounds?

I as a Christian obviously look at it very differently to a non Christian. For instance I see Christianity as completely positive and constructive. Yes it's had the opposite effect but then that's only when people corrupt it. For a non Christian the idea of faith is ridiculous, because you don't accept that the object of faith exists. I'm sure there's something lacking in stripping out parts of human experience as invalid when there are a lot of people who get positive benefit from it. A bit like the 1984 thought police it's seems a step too far.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Nicely put thoughtful. I was wondering if love would be a good example of something similar to the religious feeling people experience. How do you scientifically quantify love? & how does that differ from a description of faith, in evidential terms.

Don't know but it is naive to say that we know nothing evidentially of love (emotions can be measured even if they can't be fully explained as yet), and it is ultra-naive to imply we will never be able to explain it.

We (our thoughts, personalities and so on) are based on electro-chemical reactions so I'd wager that one day they (scientists or people working in associated fields) will be able to drop a pill in your hand and say, "Swallow it for a religious experience!" LOL!

Kyu

[fr0d0]

Is love just emotion then? I'm sure you could measure the emotion a person of faith goes through to see something happening there.

Sadly that pill won't be available in our lifetimes I bet!

[Edwardo Piet]

So it would seem. I believe that makes much more sense than any other explanation, if there even is one. It just doesn't seem realistic to me to think that so many people around the world are delusional. Sure, some of them, maybe even most of them. But all of them?

Because personal experience is not evidence of the supernatural.

in The God Delusion Dawkins speaks of the incident when reportedly over 70,000 people claimed to see the sun crash to the earth in Portugal, Fatmima. Did it really happen? Did the sun really crash to the earth? No.

The ubiquity of belief in God is not a fraction of evidence.

If anything it is an indication of our mind as evolved apes I think - albeit 'higher' apes. We are not perfect in our beliefs - certainly not. There are many people who believe superstitious things and religion, belief in God - is a common one. We are not perfect - and I believe even if in the future religion begins to decrease there will always be superstitious people and people with delusional beliefs, whether its still belief in some form of God or some future equivalent. Although I believe a belief in a supernatural 'being', or 'Father' or 'Mother'...a 'God' is a very common delusional belief to have because of the evolved psychological make-up, the psyche, we are born with.

If the whole world believed in the FSM...about 6 billion people...would that mean the FSM was more likely to exist? I think not!!

EvF

P.S: @ Kyu....A future pill that you can take and it will give you a religious experience? Haven't we already got them? They've called hallucinogens aren't they?

Reading the bible while listening to religious music and then watching religious videos and God TV...followed by a hallucinogen, wouldn't that do the trick?
All you'd need was a harmless and legal version wouldn't you? Although it depends how strikingly intense and 'hypnotically believable' the hallucinations are doesn't it? If the answer is VERY or VERY very, or extremely then I bet that could lead to complications anyway!

[Kyuuketsuki]

Is love just emotion then? I'm sure you could measure the emotion a person of faith goes through to see something happening there.

There is nothing to indicate there is anything other than an mental component to love or any other emotion.

Sadly that pill won't be available in our lifetimes I bet!

I wouldn't bet on it (especially with the rapid advances in AI)

Kyu

[fr0d0]

Is love just emotion then? I'm sure you could measure the emotion a person of faith goes through to see something happening there.

There is nothing to indicate there is anything other than an mental component to love or any other emotion.

Of course, I don't think there needs to be. I think common to all religious experience is the heightened emotional response. I'm, very rational about stuff I think, and completely anti superstition. Yet I've experienced strong emotions too. Personally I think this is why religion is so much more attractive to women, they attribute more importance to that perhaps. With the women I know it's also the hard adherence to the moral line as well.

[athoughtfulman]

I've been reading a book and it described it very well.

It explains the 'religious experiences' people have using Freudian psychology. The idea is that religion is nothing but an illusion and derives it's strength because it falls in with our instinctual desires.

"Voices in the head, spectral lights, and all the other elements that go to make up the religious experience are all felt through the senses which are, in essence, the outward manifestations of the brain as it experiences and attempts to make sense of the outside world".

No one is experiencing god or anything supernatural after all. As the brain interprets information provided by the senses, it makes judgements about it and "attempts to make sense of the outside world". So religious experience is simply misinterpreted information, misconstrued due to emotional immaturity at best, insanity at worst. Belief in god is a response to human helplessness. In childhood, we are are made to feel helpless, arousing the need for protection; protection provided in love by a father. Along with that was the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life, forcing a person to cling to the existence of the father, but this time, the big daddy of fathers

Romain Rolland, a French author and musicologist who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1915 coined the term 'oceanic feeling' in a letter to Freud. He used it to describe the mystical, cosmic emotion that is the true source of religious experience. Freud's view however was that religious emotions are regressive; that is, they lend their feeling to the stage when an infant is feeding at the breast, unable to distinguish its ego from the natural world.

Interesting stuff and a much more reasonable explanation of these 'religious experiences'.

[Edwardo Piet]

No one is experiencing god or anything supernatural after all.

Oh really? I thought as much LOL.

[fr0d0]

Nice 'spin' there thoughtful. Adding in all that you missed makes perfect sense too.