sock puppet wrote:RayAgostini wrote:A "burning in the bosom", particularly if it was a one-off experience, would leave a lot of room for "alternative explanations".
Yep.
I have found that drinking 4 beers in a 2 hour period on an empty stomach will pretty much induce the same experience, time and time again. Is that proof the Mormonism is true? Maybe there is an alternative explanation.
Alma 32 neatly dissects faith into hoping for something, without evidence. That doesn't make the something real outside the realm of self-induced emotion. What it means is that the 'faithful' have identified an emotional need. A need for a powerful, benevolent being to watch over them, protect them, and right the wrongs done to them. This is due to basic human insecurity and a varying sense of what is 'unjust' in our world. Hoping there could be some such being comforts (another emotion) the one who hopes for such.
Emotions are real, in that we each experience them many times each day. This emotional need varies between us. Some need this emotional reassurance so deeply, they will allow others who co-op this being for their own advantage to tell us what this 'being' wants us to do, such as hand over part of our hard-earned money to them. To this extent, there is a physical world exhibit of this emotional need and emotional fulfillment.
Does that emotional need and fulfillment evidence the existence of that being in the physical realm? Does that emotional need and fulfillment make the existence of that being in the physical realm any more likely? No. "Spriritual" is merely an imprecise term for the less vague, "emotional".
That there is no evidence, but only wishful interpretations, for god does not alleviate the emotional needs driven by insecurity and injustice. For some, the lack of evidence intensifies the very feelings of insecurity and injustice that in turn drives, to that same intensity, the yearning for such a being. Ironically, it is the very lack of evidence that they call evidence, i.e. faith or 'spiritual' evidence. All the more ironic, this 'spiritual' being will provide physical security and justice in the physical realm, or at least that is their hope, a hope that is only allowed by the very fact that there is an absence of affirmative evidence, i.e. an evidentiary void.
For others, this evidentiary void suggests that god does not or at least might not exist, and makes god irrelevant to living this life, one that is no doubt physical and emotional, until something new is learned or observed that might suggest the existence of such a being.
Religions are constructs of belief and organizations, both formed by mankind, in particular those particularly struck with insecurity and a feeling of injustice and whom have and follow furtive enough imaginations to so construct such a belief system and establish an organization around it. A following develops among those that find the belief system to be satisfying of their emotional need of insecurity, and of their need for a promise of a future righting of the current wrongs.
As these followings grow in size, some like weeds in a garden begin to grow unchecked and seize the opportunity to use the religious organization as a tool of leverage over the others, to gain security and be treated 'justly'. For example, regardless of how meager the net assets on the balance sheet of any of FP/12, do you think they have any real concerns that their physical needs will not be met? Do you think that society has not given them their due, in the way say it has not Darrick?
Some of these 'leaders' seem clueless. They would have likely gotten to the same upper echelon levels in IBM as in LDS Inc. Others seem to be as calculating as Machiavelli recommended.
Some of the faithful feel so emboldened by this hope, freed from feelings of insecurity and injustice, that they believe they can go on with life on their own. Their attitudes towards government are that it is unnecessary, burdensome. For the charitable religions, like Christianity, this is a paradox. The very teachings that make them more self-confident, suggests that they need to be more thoughtful and helpful of others too, that making their way through life (for them, back to live with the protectorate being for which they hope) is a group effort.
Others feed their individualistic tendencies so that they grow, uninhibited by group. For them, the emotional attraction of an after-life is judgment day, where each will be judged separately. For them, charity here is just a rote act undertaken to earn some bonus points for the be judgment day.
Those who stop believing do not by reason of it find comfort (emotional fulfillment). Feelings of insecurity and injustice yet nag, but they no longer indulge them to the point of believing in a protectorate being for which there is no evidence. Without that emotional salve, many turn to community for the security that comes from not being on one's own, and participate in the governmental process, to infuse into it whatever degree of his or her sense of justice is possible, here and now.