Spiritual Intelligence and Secular Religion- How Close Are We?

[hope_for_things]

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Confirmation bias in favor of what?

What is the objective standard which we should NOT be biased in favor of, and who makes that decision?  Where is the objective standard of what is right for an individual??

I'm not strong on philosophy, and i know you have that training, so you'll have to dumb things down for a person trained in finance. 

My thought is that society at some level has a role in determining right and wrong.  In the example where people are convinced that God inspired them to kill other people, I believe society would agree that their decision was wrong.  Perhaps using the term objective isn't the right term in this case.  I imagine every value judgement is a subjective one.  The standard for determining right and wrong decisions perhaps lies in what the majority of reasonable individuals would agree is right or wrong.  

Are you saying there is no standard by which we can measure right and wrong, and in essence isn't this 100% moral relativism?  

[mfbukowski]

On 5/6/2016 at 8:08 AM, hope_for_things said:

Wow, interesting.  Did you just say there are no objectively better decisions a person can make in life? Its all in your mind, what you think is right is correct because it aligns with your internal values.  Does this mean there are no objective value judgments about ethics or morality, its all relative at the end of the day?  

My point I was trying to make about spiritual experiences is that these experiences are heavily influenced by a person's environment.  Actually, I think its possible that they are 100% influenced by a person's upbringing and cultural surroundings. 

I don't think a person should ignore their internal values or go to the extreme of choosing the opposite.  But I also don't think a person should ignore the reality that their spiritual feelings are heavily influences by these things.  You seemed to indicate earlier that spiritual experiences are key to making the most important life decisions.  Well, wouldn't it be important to understand how spiritual experiences actually work in our minds and how we are influenced by our environment?  

The metaphysics of my Mormon religious upbringing has taught me that the holy spirit is a personage that is external to my mind, a divine entity that has omniscience, and through communion with this entity I can make decisions that will be objectively more profitable for me and my family.  There is no discussion about how spiritual experiences are influenced by my upbringing and learning, and culturally influenced biases.  

Think of the Spencer Kimball story about the priesthood ban, he said he was willing to go to his grave defending this practice if that is what the Lord wanted.  From my vantage, it took a lot of things happening to get him to open his mind enough to overcome cultural biases he had already built in that were biasing him to believe that the priesthood ban was ordained of God.  

There are other kinds of truth other than objective truth

That is what the material on spiritual intelligence is teaching.

I was too harsh on you and apologize.  You are confusing spiritual intelligence with objective intelligence.

There are moral sentences which are always true but they cannot be verified by objective means, only bu spiritual means.  Truth is true within contexts or spheres, section 93: 30

Understanding the scientific basis for psychology has no relevance for understanding the truth of the contents of the message any more than seeing true information on the internet changes its truth because it is delivered "artifically" rather than through the words of another.

It's ok, I probably should not have started this thread, what I wanted to say is rather esoteric.

The mechanism by which information is delivered (human psychology, and its causes) has no bearing on the truth of the message. 

There are moral principles which are always true. (Golden Rule)  This principle is not objective and cannot be proven by science. A true sentence is a sentence which works to achieve a specific goal, and need not be objectively verifiable to be true.

 

[mfbukowski]

An interesting take on pragmatism applied to Islam

http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/muhammad-iqbals-conception-of-god.html

[mfbukowski]

This guy gets it totally

Quote

 

The Systematic Problem

But would systematizing LDS theology really solve any doctrinal or devotional problems? This is the deeper question. One might think that theology is a consistent body of fact and theory that grows over time, with the current generation building on the work of preceding generations of theologians and the overall body of theology (or a particular denomination’s theology) becoming an increasingly accurate model of the phenomena that theology attempts to explain. Familiar terms like christology, ecclesiology, and soteriology would be chapters in this growing tome of Christian theology or, in our case, LDS theology. The first reason to reject this view is that systematic theologies are generally produced by individual theologians, not by denominations, and each systematic theologian differs from the other on certain issues, even if they work from within the same tradition. There are systematic theologies, not a systematic theology. That’s not a problem LDS theology presently faces given how little of it we have produced, but it is relevant to the larger enterprise.

A second reason to reject this view of systematic theology is that it is not clear what the relation is between the theological system or model and whatever it is the system or model is trying to describe. This general problem of reference has occupied philosophy for a couple of centuries now. It is tricky enough to give a credible account of the connections between objects in the real world, our observations of those objects via sense perception, and the thoughts and ideas in our heads (because there are real-world object that we don’t see but we nevertheless accept, and thoughts in our heads that do not correspond to real-world objects). Building a larger model describing how the world works, its causes and effects, is even more problematic: we don’t observe causes, we only observe events. We then infer causes or relations between events. Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature effectively critiques scientific models as fully adequate descriptions of a real world to which the model supposedly corresponds; Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions effectively critiques the view of science as a consistent body of fact and theory that grows incrementally over time. Both works have generated a huge amount of response and commentary, some of which rejects the claims of Rorty and Kuhn but most of which largely accepts their critiques and attempts to reformulate the general approach to acquiring knowledge: If theories are not adequate representations of a real world “out there,” what exactly are they and what is it that theorists and practitioners in various fields are doing if they aren’t building models that correspond to the real world? A similar critique emerged from postmodern philosophy under the banner “rejection of grand narratives.” If these critiques apply to science and philosophy, they certainly apply more broadly, including to theology.

 

Note the problem with the correspondence theory.

http://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2013/01/what-mormon-theology-looks-like/

[hope_for_things]

14 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

There are other kinds of truth other than objective truth

That is what the material on spiritual intelligence is teaching.

I was too harsh on you and apologize.  You are confusing spiritual intelligence with objective intelligence.

There are moral sentences which are always true but they cannot be verified by objective means, only bu spiritual means.  Truth is true within contexts or spheres, section 93: 30

Understanding the scientific basis for psychology has no relevance for understanding the truth of the contents of the message any more than seeing true information on the internet changes its truth because it is delivered "artifically" rather than through the words of another.

It's ok, I probably should not have started this thread, what I wanted to say is rather esoteric.

The mechanism by which information is delivered (human psychology, and its causes) has no bearing on the truth of the message. 

There are moral principles which are always true. (Golden Rule)  This principle is not objective and cannot be proven by science. A true sentence is a sentence which works to achieve a specific goal, and need not be objectively verifiable to be true.

 

No need to apologize.  I do want to understand what you're saying better, although I'm woefully uneducated on philosophy.  

I don't grasp what you mean when you say that truth can be verified by spiritual means, because to me you are saying that a person's emotions and biases are the mechanisms by which a person is to discern truth.  This makes truth completely relative to each individual, and that is the part that I can't wrap my mind around.

My interpretation of your model is telling me that terrorists, moon landing deniers, alien abduction believers, and religious believers are all on an equal playing field for discerning spiritual truth.  How does your model for spiritual intelligence not validate all of the crazy beliefs across this diverse globe?   

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

No need to apologize.  I do want to understand what you're saying better, although I'm woefully uneducated on philosophy.  

I don't grasp what you mean when you say that truth can be verified by spiritual means, because to me you are saying that a person's emotions and biases are the mechanisms by which a person is to discern truth.  This makes truth completely relative to each individual, and that is the part that I can't wrap my mind around.

My interpretation of your model is telling me that terrorists, moon landing deniers, alien abduction believers, and religious believers are all on an equal playing field for discerning spiritual truth.  How does your model for spiritual intelligence not validate all of the crazy beliefs across this diverse globe?   

Fair enough!

What you are not understanding are philosophical principles which I am not equipped right now to spend the necessary time to bring you "up to speed" on- IF you are interested.

Most are not interested, and if a post goes over 5 lines and has no pictures or emojis, people will not read them

Virtually all academic philosophers at major secular universities believe the following, with some variations.  People for Bible colleges and any church university are excluded because they often must follow the "party line" or have to explain themselves to clerics with no philosophical training.  For that reason, I personally seldom read their stuff.  We all need to work for a living, and I appreciate that they cannot in effect do "real" philosophy.

Here is a quick summary of the vast majority of what secular university profs think about "truth":

There is no one way to define the word "truth" that applies to all situations.  That does not mean that "anything goes" - it just means that "truth" is a VERY hard term to define because it means so many things to so many people.

There are practices and rules of behavior which everyone should believe- and of course that applies to atheists as much as anybody and they do, in large, accept rules of behavior like the "Golden Rule".  Does that mean that rule can be defined as "true"?  That depends!

Is quantum theory "true"?  In some sense of course- yet it lacks details, and is constantly be adjusted.  Is the statement "Pluto is a Planet" true or false?  Look it up if you want to- it's status keeps changing.

Certainly in a court proceeding and when we look at statements like "The keys are on the dresser" truth and falsity is pretty plain and clear.  The keys are either on the dresser or they are not.  The accused either stabbed the victim or he did not.  Same thing.  But statements like "God is an immaterial substance" are not so clear, quite obviously

So if we say "Truth is relative" then people conclude that terrorism is just fine.  If we say "truth is absolute" then you must be burned at the stake for believing that God is not an immaterial substance because you have "false beliefs" and are there fore an apostate and everyone knows that apostates are dangerous and for society's welfare, must be burned at the stake, for their false and therefore dangerous beliefs.

After all they might be terrorists, or worse, Captialists or Imperialists of Communists or worst of all- Christians!

Obviously, truth is not either entirely relative NOR entirely absolute- the answer in most cases is "it depends"!

In short- the world "true" is not a very useful word - it usually just confuses the issue when we are talking about abstract matters.  One definition for all possible uses of the term- philosophers after thousands of years have concluded-- is impossible.

So here is a somewhat academic treatise- written for philosophy students.  It does presume some knowledge of philosophy, though, but it is the way I view the use of the word "truth"

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

[hope_for_things]

53 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

So here is a somewhat academic treatise- written for philosophy students.  It does presume some knowledge of philosophy, though, but it is the way I view the use of the word "truth"

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

Ok, thanks. I'm trying to learn a little at a time.  I'll read through this. 

 

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Ok, thanks. I'm trying to learn a little at a time.  I'll read through this. 

 

Hey wait a second- just read the first part- the rest gets technical pretty fast, with abbreviations and logical notation etc. Been a while since I read it

Maybe first go to wikipedia general article on truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth

Concentrate on the correspondence theory there at wikipedia

Then notice this quote from above which I repeat here

Quote

 

A second reason to reject this view of systematic theology is that it is not clear what the relation is between the theological system or model and whatever it is the system or model is trying to describe. This general problem of reference has occupied philosophy for a couple of centuries now. It is tricky enough to give a credible account of the connections between objects in the real world, our observations of those objects via sense perception, and the thoughts and ideas in our heads (because there are real-world object that we don’t see but we nevertheless accept, and thoughts in our heads that do not correspond to real-world objects). Building a larger model describing how the world works, its causes and effects, is even more problematic: we don’t observe causes, we only observe events. We then infer causes or relations between events. Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature effectively critiques scientific models as fully adequate descriptions of a real world to which the model supposedly corresponds; Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions effectively critiques the view of science as a consistent body of fact and theory that grows incrementally over time. Both works have generated a huge amount of response and commentary, some of which rejects the claims of Rorty and Kuhn but most of which largely accepts their critiques and attempts to reformulate the general approach to acquiring knowledge: If theories are not adequate representations of a real world “out there,” what exactly are they and what is it that theorists and practitioners in various fields are doing if they aren’t building models that correspond to the real world? A similar critique emerged from postmodern philosophy under the banner “rejection of grand narratives.” If these critiques apply to science and philosophy, they certainly apply more broadly, including to theology.

 

http://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2013/01/what-mormon-theology-looks-like/

No, I am not making this stuff up and I am not the only LDS saying these things.

 

 

Edited May 10, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Ahab]

On 5/9/2016 at 2:19 PM, mfbukowski said:

Fair enough!

What you are not understanding are philosophical principles which I am not equipped right now to spend the necessary time to bring you "up to speed" on- IF you are interested.

Most are not interested, and if a post goes over 5 lines and has no pictures or emojis, people will not read them

Virtually all academic philosophers at major secular universities believe the following, with some variations.  People for Bible colleges and any church university are excluded because they often must follow the "party line" or have to explain themselves to clerics with no philosophical training.  For that reason, I personally seldom read their stuff.  We all need to work for a living, and I appreciate that they cannot in effect do "real" philosophy.

Here is a quick summary of the vast majority of what secular university profs think about "truth":

There is no one way to define the word "truth" that applies to all situations.  That does not mean that "anything goes" - it just means that "truth" is a VERY hard term to define because it means so many things to so many people.

There are practices and rules of behavior which everyone should believe- and of course that applies to atheists as much as anybody and they do, in large, accept rules of behavior like the "Golden Rule".  Does that mean that rule can be defined as "true"?  That depends!

Is quantum theory "true"?  In some sense of course- yet it lacks details, and is constantly be adjusted.  Is the statement "Pluto is a Planet" true or false?  Look it up if you want to- it's status keeps changing.

Certainly in a court proceeding and when we look at statements like "The keys are on the dresser" truth and falsity is pretty plain and clear.  The keys are either on the dresser or they are not.  The accused either stabbed the victim or he did not.  Same thing.  But statements like "God is an immaterial substance" are not so clear, quite obviously

So if we say "Truth is relative" then people conclude that terrorism is just fine.  If we say "truth is absolute" then you must be burned at the stake for believing that God is not an immaterial substance because you have "false beliefs" and are there fore an apostate and everyone knows that apostates are dangerous and for society's welfare, must be burned at the stake, for their false and therefore dangerous beliefs.

After all they might be terrorists, or worse, Captialists or Imperialists of Communists or worst of all- Christians!

Obviously, truth is not either entirely relative NOR entirely absolute- the answer in most cases is "it depends"!

In short- the world "true" is not a very useful word - it usually just confuses the issue when we are talking about abstract matters.  One definition for all possible uses of the term- philosophers after thousands of years have concluded-- is impossible.

So here is a somewhat academic treatise- written for philosophy students.  It does presume some knowledge of philosophy, though, but it is the way I view the use of the word "truth"

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

I think the "it depends" understanding applies to most if not all words,  though, since words generally have more than one meaning or definition. So the key is in understanding what someone means with the words they use,  which can be tricky but is not impossible.  Therefore there is no need to reduce words down to only one meaning, or to understand on only one level. 

So what was your point again?

Ah yes, just talking about good it can be to use a little common sense or "spiritual intelligence" to try to understand things, including other people.

[flameburns623]

On 5/8/2016 at 6:44 PM, mfbukowski said:

There are other kinds of truth other than objective truth

That is what the material on spiritual intelligence is teaching.

I was too harsh on you and apologize.  You are confusing spiritual intelligence with objective intelligence.

There are moral sentences which are always true but they cannot be verified by objective means, only bu spiritual means.  Truth is true within contexts or spheres, section 93: 30

Understanding the scientific basis for psychology has no relevance for understanding the truth of the contents of the message any more than seeing true information on the internet changes its truth because it is delivered "artifically" rather than through the words of another.

It's ok, I probably should not have started this thread, what I wanted to say is rather esoteric.

The mechanism by which information is delivered (human psychology, and its causes) has no bearing on the truth of the message. 

There are moral principles which are always true. (Golden Rule)  This principle is not objective and cannot be proven by science. A true sentence is a sentence which works to achieve a specific goal, and need not be objectively verifiable to be true.

 

MFBUKOWSKI:

Please note the bolded portion.

I wanted to thank you for starting this thread. It is this sort of discussion which keeps me coming back to this site.

Taffy-pulling apostle threads aren't so much the draw. Even if I am more likely to opine in those threads, and merely lurk on threads such as this.

[salgare]

On 5/5/2016 at 9:37 AM, mfbukowski said:

The way I see it they are not talking about what we call "revelation" as much as a kind of "spiritual IQ" which helps us define what is "religious" to human beings to enable us to see others - even atheists and agnostics- as "religious" because of the benefits that their beliefs about religion provide them.  So it is more intelligence about religion rather than spiritual information received through revelation.
 

Typically one is born with an IQ right?  Or perhaps "spiritual wisdom" might be better, assuming one gain ground over time.  I only mention this as the quoted blog statement of "teaching this to children" struck me as a bit strange for the concept.

 

[mfbukowski]

For the record the IQ stuff was only a bad analogy suggested on my part.  

I am not sure anyone actually read the article.

"One aim of education is to help people grow in spiritual and emotional intelligence. Being "spiritually and emotionally intelligent" is best understood as a skill or capacity rather than a trait. The 12 principles of spiritual intelligence identified by Dinah Zohar (see below) along with the work in emotional intelligence done by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence provide helpful paramaters for thinking about emotional/spiritual intelligence.  This kind of intelligence is creative, compassionate, practical, and wise: enabling a person to reframe ideas in new ways, face adversity with courage, sense connections, and to love others as they love themselves. Such intelligence is tremendously important in our troubled time; happily, it is available to people who are religious and non-religious, and to the vast majority who are somewhere in between.  It can be and should an aim of education both formal and informal, secular and religious. The purpose of this page is to encourage people to consider spiritual/emotional intelligence as a subject of further exploration by offering reflections and resources toward that end."

Edited May 11, 2016 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Note it says nothing about IQ or receiving revelation or listening to the spirit. Those ideas are LDS vocabularies not what the article is talking about.

If we want to start over, fine but please comment on the article, not on what you think the article mighjt be about from an LDS assessment of the title.

[salgare]

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Note it says nothing about IQ or receiving revelation or listening to the spirit. Those ideas are LDS vocabularies not what the article is talking about.

If we want to start over, fine but please comment on the article, not on what you think the article might be about from an LDS assessment of the title.

That's my thing about this whole, humanistic movement in Mormonism  (yea yea there is no movement).

You are mapping Mormonism to Humanism, where you do not find Humanism mapping to Mormonism.  In other words, Humanism is the base, it is the standard and you are saying look how well Mormonism meets the Humanistic standard.  Does this not make Mormonism redundant, possibly losing/changing the standard in the mapping?  Why not just go to the source and avoid the mapping all together?