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Do you ever feel like you are speaking a different language?


mercyngrace

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To me nationalism and religion are cut from the same cloth.

An interesting belief. How do you prove that is true? After all, it is not a statement about anything "external" is it?

I disagree. How do we show who is right?

What kind of experience led you to this belief?

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Read what I said. I think you don't understand what I am saying. Did I say "I don't believe in an objective outside reality"?

There is no reality outside of what we can experience. Please show me any other kind.

What we call "outside reality" is only spoken about in third-person statements. But that is not the only kind there is.

All we have is experience and language to talk about our experiences. If that is all we speak about, we will be able to speak clearly.

Your argument presupposes a mind-body dualism. For those of us who reject that idea, there is no "outside". Our minds are part and parcel of the physical world. Our experience must reflect a reality of the physical world, because there is no other option.

And to repeat, someone might have what they perceive to be a metaphysical experience or some other interpretation of the "outside", but there is no outside. The experience happens inside their head. It is complex interaction of events, chemicals and physical input that is given social construction based on experience.

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An interesting belief. How do you prove that is true? After all, it is not a statement about anything "external" is it?

I disagree. How do we show who is right?

What kind of experience led you to this belief?

I think you are just being silly. If you really want to know why I think nationalism and religion are cousins, you can start a new thread, but you seem to be descending into a solipsistic denial of all empirical knowledge.

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And to repeat, someone might have what they perceive to be a metaphysical experience or some other interpretation of the "outside", but there is no outside. The experience happens inside their head. It is complex interaction of events, chemicals and physical input that is given social construction based on experience.

So basically, religious experiences are delusions, is that right? We're so deep in the Matrix that we don't even recognize how superficial and self-generated our experiences are?

And this assessment is based on what, John? The absence of evidence. In fact, you can't provide evidence that my experiences don't exist outside my mind - all you can provide is your very subjective view that you aren't experiencing them.

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How can we determine if someone is feeling pain?

...

Or even that they see "red" the same way you do?

We agree "the car is blue" because we both experience the same thing. We do not agree that "I am hungry", because there is no way for you to know if I am lying or not.

I was about twelve when I first realised that my two eyes do not see the same colours. One sees things like grass as almost bluish; the other sees them with a warm yellowish hue. It drove me crazy for a couple of days because I wanted to know which eye was seeing correctly. Which of the two greens I was seeing was the real green that everyone else saw? Then it struck me that, if my two eyes could see two very different versions of green, it was entirely possible that other people's eyes saw yet again another version of green. When two people point to grass and say, 'Green,' their objective agreement on an external reality doesn't necessarily indicate a shared experience.

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Your argument presupposes a mind-body dualism. For those of us who reject that idea, there is no "outside". Our minds are part and parcel of the physical world. Our experience must reflect a reality of the physical world, because there is no other option.

And to repeat, someone might have what they perceive to be a metaphysical experience or some other interpretation of the "outside", but there is no outside. The experience happens inside their head. It is complex interaction of events, chemicals and physical input that is given social construction based on experience.

With as much due respect as I can muster, I would suggest that you are 100 percent wrong. It is you who insist on the dualism of the "physical world".

I do not believe in a mind-body dualism, or any dualism. There is no world other than the way we experience it. We experience some things as physical, and some things as "mental", but there is only experience.

ALL EXPERIENCES HAPPEN INSIDE YOUR HEAD. TO PROVE IT, I SUGGEST YOU SPEAK TO A HEADLESS PERSON AND SEE HOW MUCH HE EXPERIENCES. I will avoid the obvious snarky comment.

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I think you are just being silly. If you really want to know why I think nationalism and religion are cousins, you can start a new thread, but you seem to be descending into a solipsistic denial of all empirical knowledge.

You are avoiding the issue.

No, I am a radical empiricist. I am in no way a solipsist. If you had read my posts you would know that.

Please show me something which is real and which cannot be experienced. Your "physical world" may be in that category.

You cannot observe anything that your eyes and brain have not organized into an experience. In fact, your optic nerve is actually part of your brain.

You are so prejudiced into thinking that I am saying one thing, that you are not even listening to what I am in fact saying.

I will say it another way. I am a Pragmatist ala Dewey and James and Whitehead. With your extensive knowledge of philosophy, you know that none of these were dualists, and all were radical empiricists.

None of these believe in a "correspondence" theory of truth, which you apparantly do. THAT position is dualistic. It says that there is a "physical world" which we reproduce in our brains somehow magically. Truth on that view is correspondence between a statement and that physical reality.

I do not subscribe to that view.

This position fits perfectly with the Mormon notion of experience and its importance in religious matters.

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I was about twelve when I first realised that my two eyes do not see the same colours. One sees things like grass as almost bluish; the other sees them with a warm yellowish hue. It drove me crazy for a couple of days because I wanted to know which eye was seeing correctly. Which of the two greens I was seeing was the real green that everyone else saw? Then it struck me that, if my two eyes could see two very different versions of green, it was entirely possible that other people's eyes saw yet again another version of green. When two people point to grass and say, 'Green,' their objective agreement on an external reality doesn't necessarily indicate a shared experience.

Thanks for this!

Absolutely! That could be a life-changing gift to understand.

And which of all our "greens" is the right one?

I had an artificial lens implanted in one of my eyes which enabled me to see more ultraviolet light much more brightly than in the other eye. We would go to Disney land or other places where "black light" was used, and others could not perceive it was even being used- to me, it was so bright it was almost painful.

What would it be like to be able to "see" radio waves? How different would "reality" be? Or what if we could "hear" radio without an electronic machine?

Even if our sense of smell was like that of a dog, how would our reality change? Dramatically!

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If you don't believe in an objective outside reality, why are you a Mormon? Or are you just playing a game?

For those of us who reject that idea, there is no "outside". Our minds are part and parcel of the physical world. Our experience must reflect a reality of the physical world, because there is no other option.

And to repeat, someone might have what they perceive to be a metaphysical experience or some other interpretation of the "outside", but there is no outside. The experience happens inside their head. It is complex interaction of events, chemicals and physical input that is given social construction based on experience.

Ok I am starting to get your position.

So this discussion of the outside world was just because you thought I believed in it, I guess. Why would you think that?

I believe that experience is "real", and that includes religious experience. So why then, if you are not a dualist, believe that religous experience is NOT "real", when all we have is experience?

You appear to be an "experience dualist". Apparently some experiences are "real" and some are not? How does one determine which experience is or isn't?

I think you are on thin ice. This had better be a pretty good explanation. I think your confusion is about what the "physical" world is. You think experience is physical, I think it is mental, but we both agree that experience is all we have. Fine.

So let's use the word "valid". Why are individual experiences not "valid" to you?

Do you ever "know" you are hungry?

How is that different from "knowing" you have had a spiritual experience?

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John, if you had a 'dream' one night, and, in the dream, an 'angel' showed you where an ancient record lay buried, would you trust that your dream was a reflection of external reality?

Would it affect your understanding of the dream if the next day you found the spot you remembered from the dream, dug down, and actually found an ancient record?

If the same 'angel' appeared to you again later, would you be more or less likely to trust that he was speaking 'truth'?

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But I am surprised you speak of "external truth". I would like to know more about what that is.

I don't believe I did. I was being very particular in using the phrase - "shared sense of reality" to express the area of overlap in what you describe.

edited to add - I noticed where I used it at the beginning of my response. Chalk it up to an error in thinking this thread had taken on the responsibility of discussing the external realities of spiritual experiences as something verifiable in some universal sense.

As I see, this is not going to be the case as we delve whole-heartedly into "experiential reality". There is one odd issue with this view, IMO. That being that since there is no reality other than what we experience, yet the reality we must live within includes the need to interact with others and their experiential reality. Therefore, in some sense our shared realities force us to form something that is not uniquely based on our own experience - except to say it depends on how we experience the experiences of others.

Therefore, the more exposure one has to the many experiential realities of others one experiences creates a broader, more encompassing reality that is closer to what may actually be the elusive external reality. If there is such a thing.

And this is where we end up back in this thread's subject. That being that I feel one is closer to "reality" when one comes to accept the experiences of others - at the face value of their own experiences without imposing one's own experience onto it. And by imposing an LDS view of how others experiences of God are, in truth if you are being honest, inferior to the one available to the believing mormon one loses the chance to broaden one's understanding.

Your experience and choice here (and mine) defines what you can experience, therefore defining you access to "reality". (hallow be its name, if there is such a thing...)

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That position alone goes right to the heart of the OP and shows just how great the gulf is between us. My spiritual experiences have rarely if ever explained the unexplainable.

If we could, I'd like to explore this further. Not from a critical attempt to debunk your view, but I am curious what you mean. If your religious belief doesn't give meaning to your life, what does it actually do?

Most members of the many faiths I associate with (including LDS) have cited the meaning their faith gives to their life as a major benefit of belief. So you are unique in this sense to me and I hope to understand you better through this discussion.

Thanks,

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John, if you had a 'dream' one night, and, in the dream, an 'angel' showed you where an ancient record lay buried, would you trust that your dream was a reflection of external reality?

Would it affect your understanding of the dream if the next day you found the spot you remembered from the dream, dug down, and actually found an ancient record?

If the same 'angel' appeared to you again later, would you be more or less likely to trust that he was speaking 'truth'?

I don't believe my dreams have supernatural abilities. Do you?

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We don't know for sure until we do, and then we do. If you are not sure, you are not sure. Most here are not sure.

The issue is certainty. And that is pretty subjective. I think that is why it is called "faith".

Absolutely, it's about faith. Certitude is another matter - one that I find unpleasant in it's most common manifestations in people regardless of what they have this certitude towards. Believers in the LDS faith and those whose beliefs lie elsewhere - all of us, when we are filled with certitude and exhibit this with callous disregard of any alternative position seem to be at less than our best.

And I find that interesting.

I'm a bit bothered with the phrase I quoted first, though, as it is both self-evident and therefore redundant while also not exactly explaining anything.

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I don't believe my dreams have supernatural abilities. Do you?

I have no way of knowing anything about your dreams, John, but I notice that you failed to answer my question. Would your attitude toward dreams change if you indeed found a buried ancient record exactly where a 'dream' told you you would. Or would your a priori dismissal of 'supernatural abilities' prevent you from even looking?

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An interesting belief. How do you prove that is true? After all, it is not a statement about anything "external" is it?

I disagree. How do we show who is right?

What kind of experience led you to this belief?

If you haven't read it, the book, "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer is an insightful piece on this subject. Paradigm shifting, I would say.

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If we could, I'd like to explore this further. Not from a critical attempt to debunk your view, but I am curious what you mean. If your religious belief doesn't give meaning to your life, what does it actually do?

Most members of the many faiths I associate with (including LDS) have cited the meaning their faith gives to their life as a major benefit of belief. So you are unique in this sense to me and I hope to understand you better through this discussion.

Thanks,

Honorentheos,

We need to make a distinction between "religious belief" and "spiritual experiences". My religious belief does give meaning to my life. My spiritual experiences confirm that meaning on occasion but also offer much more.

MnG

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Can you name one?

I found this article interesting. Spiritual Confirmation of Adoption

I think that one challenge to this idea that other religions do not use the same test as LDS is that one is comparing the method, described by the church, that then also provides an interpretation of an experience that otherwise is ambiguous.

Different method, different interpretation, but similar experience? That should say something.

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Honorentheos,

We need to make a distinction between "religious belief" and "spiritual experiences". My religious belief does give meaning to my life. My spiritual experiences confirm that meaning on occasion but also offer much more.

MnG

Fair. Thank you for clarifying this.

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I found this article interesting. Spiritual Confirmation of Adoption

I think that one challenge to this idea that other religions do not use the same test as LDS is that one is comparing the method, described by the church, that then also provides an interpretation of an experience that otherwise is ambiguous.

Different method, different interpretation, but similar experience? That should say something.

Possibly similar, but I am not buying that it is the "same". "The spirit will teach you the truth of all things" is different from reading scripture and knowing that you are saved. According to our beliefs, we believe that the spirit can teach you where to go and what to do on a daily basis and tell you if you are on the right course in your life, what person to speak to to get the job, etc.

That is different than simply knowing if you are saved. But I won't argue the point too vigorously. No question that others feel the spirit, But I have never seen anything anywhere like a challenge to read a book and that the spirit will confirm it's truth to you.

People don't even say that about the bible, though imo it would be appropriate. I mean how can you know that you are "saved" when the whole question of salvation is presented in the bible? If the bible is not in some sense a true source for knowledge about salvation, how does anyone know about it? And yet there is no praying about if the bible is true. To me that is a major inconsistency.

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I don't believe I did. I was being very particular in using the phrase - "shared sense of reality" to express the area of overlap in what you describe.

edited to add - I noticed where I used it at the beginning of my response. Chalk it up to an error in thinking this thread had taken on the responsibility of discussing the external realities of spiritual experiences as something verifiable in some universal sense.

As I see, this is not going to be the case as we delve whole-heartedly into "experiential reality". There is one odd issue with this view, IMO. That being that since there is no reality other than what we experience, yet the reality we must live within includes the need to interact with others and their experiential reality. Therefore, in some sense our shared realities force us to form something that is not uniquely based on our own experience - except to say it depends on how we experience the experiences of others.

Therefore, the more exposure one has to the many experiential realities of others one experiences creates a broader, more encompassing reality that is closer to what may actually be the elusive external reality. If there is such a thing.

Let me just say this directly ok?

I don't think you are getting the importance of these distinctions yet. Yes we interact with others, and we have experience of that don't we?

This doesn't entail solipsism in any way shape or form. We don't experience solipsism. The first time the doctor gives you a swat on the bum, you know there is some one else in this universe! That is your first social experience. Welcome to the world! Swat! Bright, cold and full of people willing to give you pain! That's the world alright!

Every statement you type think, or say, is either about

1-your internal states ("I'm hungry- I think this-- I don't think that, I love you, My toe hurts etc)which no one else can verify

2-your internal states which agree with what others tell you about their internal states (see that red car? yes) or "My instruments show that the speed of light is xyz" (assuming you have the instruments to verify that) OR

3- what other people tell you they have experienced as internal states: "When our research team went to Antarctica, they found ice and penguins"

This last section is a "social reality" which we find in books and magazines, scientific journals, websites etc.

I have never been to Antarctica but I believe it exists because others have told me about their internal states. "When I turned on the spectrometer, it showed that the sample did xyz, and so I conclude the sample is made of abc."

But even your "subjective" statements like "I believe the moon is made of green cheese" or "I love you" or "I am hungry" can be true or false.

So "I see a red car" TO ME can be as indistinguishable as the statement "I see an angel". Both can be true.

You have not seen the angel, but that does not mean I am lying. The statement is as true as the statement "I am hungry" (when I am actually hungry)

But all experience, social or not, is experience and it is all mental states of one type or another.

And you cannot infer causality either way. Suppose chemical x is in the whatsis of the brain when I see a red car, or an angel.

Does the car or angel cause the chemical, or does the chemical cause the red car or angel?

You cannot prove it either way. It is the old problem of causality which goes back at least to Hume.

That was fast, but I have to take off. I hope it helped.

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I have no way of knowing anything about your dreams, John, but I notice that you failed to answer my question. Would your attitude toward dreams change if you indeed found a buried ancient record exactly where a 'dream' told you you would. Or would your a priori dismissal of 'supernatural abilities' prevent you from even looking?

For me to believe that dreams are a conduit for supernatural communication I would need to receive some sort of evidence outside of the dream. I already know that my dreams are largely nonsense. To accept my dream on its own authority seems to be folly of the highest order.

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For me to believe that dreams are a conduit for supernatural communication I would need to receive some sort of evidence outside of the dream. I already know that my dreams are largely nonsense. To accept my dream on its own authority seems to be folly of the highest order.

I agree with you, John. Please notice my actual questions. If an 'angel' in a 'dream' showed you where to find a buried record, would you actually go check? What would be your response if you actually found the record where you had been told you would? Would it be sufficient to satisfy your need for 'some sort of evidence outside of the dream'? Would this experience colour your response to future such 'dreams'?

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I agree with you, John. Please notice my actual questions. If an 'angel' in a 'dream' showed you where to find a buried record, would you actually go check? What would be your response if you actually found the record where you had been told you would? Would it be sufficient to satisfy your need for 'some sort of evidence outside of the dream'? Would this experience colour your response to future such 'dreams'?

No, I wouldn't go check. Even if it were true, whatever God or angel was communicating with me through this medium is clearly irresponsible and not worth my attention.

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