Real Open-mindedness and Skepticism

[_Some Schmo]

-> This <- short educational video is probably the best synopsis of open-mindedness and skepticism I've ever seen. This is what every religious/supernaturalist person should watch (and I wish would understand). I think some do understand, but soooo many don't.

_

[_Dr. Shades]

You're right; it's certainly the best primer I've ever seen, BY FAR.

It should be required viewing for everyone.

[_CaliforniaKid]

I liked this, as well.

[_cinepro]

Interesting video. It was like the exact opposite of listening to a conference talk on "faith".

[_Chap]

Since we are (once more, contrary to our worst fears) favored on this board by the presence of a seasoned LDS intellectual, I wonder if he feels like commenting on just where the maker of this video misdirects himself?

After all, the attitudes articulated in it are fundamental to the "secular anti-Mormonism" which is said to cause so much damage, are they not? And some of the young and impressionable who read this board may already have watched that video, so that its corrosive effects are already beginning to gnaw away at their tender young souls ... someone should do something to undo the damage, surely?

[_EAllusion]

Chap -

I'd gather the response would be similar to something like a Carl Sagan work. While the points it is getting at are generally spot on and most people's thinking would be drastically improved if they took this to heart, there also is some philosophical naïveté here and there. Certain wise people might stick to attacking that in hopes others confuse that with not being generally spot on and not being a drastic improvement in their own thinking about things we call "supernatural."

[_The Nehor]

The problem with my religious faith is that while faith itself is built on evidence it is not transferable evidence. I cannot present it to someone else. If there is a test to Mormonism (and I think there is) it is not one that can be tested and the results published. Instead I individually test it and can individually use the evidence to make a conclusion.

[_Some Schmo]

...there also is some philosophical naïveté here and there.

Like?

[_EAllusion]

Not that this has much to do with the video Nehor, but let's follow this a bit further.

You are arguing that the evidence you have is essentially nonpublic in nature. There are routine forms of nonpublic evidence that we understand are perfectly rational to follow. If I'm the only one who saw a rat steal a sandwich, I'm justified in thinking a rat stole the sandwich even if no one else is absent my testimony. That's not controversial. It's because I have prior reason to believe these events are plausible and that my senses generally are reliable in this circumstance. If it was a private experience of being abducted by aliens, that probably won't be the case.

But let's peel that back further. You are also saying that you have a host of experiences that are ineffable, cannot be transferred, and yet support a series of religious assertions that are perfectly describle. You talked about these experiences as providing confirmation of a test.

Now how does one go about translating ineffable experiences into shared content with others? After all, in order to get together with others and agree that you've had similar experiences that support a mutually understood religion, you are making an appeal to publicly accessible experience. The way you talk about it, it's no different than scientists conducting repeatable experiments to confirm a theoretical framework. It might be esoteric, but hypothetical observers are all able to mutually access the same phenomenon. Seeing a tree is a private experience for each individual person, but talking amongst ourselves about it does require it to be a public experience. If we all can peer through the same glass darkly and get reliable results, that is public. To use your own term, it is transferable. Further, how can the experience(s) be truly ineffable if you know that they confirm expectations you have of a test? They must be expressible to the extent that you know that they are what you would most reasonably expect if certain religious propositions are true.

In short, what you talking about doesn't seem to be nonpublic/nontransferable at all. Or, more specifically, it is only nonpublic in the trivial sense that we all only experience what we do through our own frame of reference. The real difference here is that what you are actually talking about really isn't like the other ways in which people talk about their subjective experiences to construct an mutually understood reality. It seems more like a defensive shell game to me, not unlike one an alien abductee might play.

[_Chap]

...there also is some philosophical naïveté here and there.

Like?

To a certain extent, I echo this CFR. But to be frank I am not really very interested in hearing the kind of annotations that a dutiful supervisor might write at the end of an undergraduate philosophy essay that made the points in this video. I think I can probably do that as well as anybody else.

What this video managed to be was an excellent attempt at addressing in plain language, without the use of technicalities, the problem of how one might reasonably answer calls for "open-mindedness" by someone who alleges they have evidence of the supernatural, and who accuses those who try to observe minimum evidential standards in judging such claims of being "closed minded".

Is there anybody out there who feels that they can provide a counter to it in the same terms and at the same level of clarity?

I am glad to see that EAllusion has posted a response to The Nehor on the matter of "private evidence". It's evidence, but not as we know it ...