Euthyphro wrote:My questions were an attempt to learn whether after choosing to believe something like say, a god and a gospel described by Mormon scripture, all of the requisite elements literally spring into being in order to serve your purposes. It would seem from your comments that you think this is so.
In your example when you die you expect to find an afterlife in which your journey to godhood continues according to Mormon tradition. Yet once there you consider the possibility of encountering the fraudulent architect of all that and abandon it all in favor of the next best thing. What literally happens then to that place which only exists because you believe it, or rather did believe it until talking with the ghost of Joseph Smith? Does it despawn and then you are whisked away to some ethereal plane while you figure out whether you prefer catholicism or buddhism? And why is it necessary to accept some belief system wholesale? Surely if reality is that malleable you can choose your beliefs a la carte, like a belief buffet.
I understand that I must have some part of what you said wrong because in a later post you imply your belief in an objective reality. How do these pieces fit together?
I did not come FROM Mormonism to my philosophical beliefs, I came TO Mormonism FROM my philosophical beliefs.
I was a committed humanist, atheistic philosophy student for 15 years before I had even heard of Mormonism, basing my philosophy in William James, John Dewey, German philosophers like Hegel, Nietsche etc all of whom directly or tangentially place human experience ahead of metaphysical issues and all of whom believe that it makes no sense to believe in any metaphysical realm beyond human experience. So anything which is "objective" which is based on a metaphysical reality outside of experience is unknowable. THAT is what I meant by placing the emphasis on the "subjective"-- what is subjective and objective then becomes part of the good old mind/body problem-- Nagel's bat, Dennet, Searle and the boys.
The problem is that I kept having these spiritual experiences which taught me things which I didn't know before which I kept on finding were true later, like factual pieces of information like that a certain person was in trouble or about to be, and it would then turn out to be true.
It also seemed like my life was being directed to do certain things which I would have not considered doing on my own, or so it seemed to me. I knew about William James and his Varieties of Religious Experience which is a book written by a guy exactly like me, having the same kind of experiences I was having, and being at a loss to explain it.
About this time, I discovered Mormonism which I instantly recognized as explaining my little "problem" as well as being harmonious with the above epistemological view and even fitting well with Wittgenstein's view of the "unspeakable".
Most of what I am talking about doesn't even belong on this thread unless you have read the guys I am talking about, so part of me wonders why I am here in the first place-- so I have to switch language games around quite a lot- and sometimes the mix just doesn't make sense I guess.
But to answer your question, if I am wrong there would be no ghost of Joseph Smith to talk to so after I die I will either instantly know I was right or wrong or I won't know anything. Those are the only possibilities I suppose. Having the conversation and then becoming a Buddhist was a story to explain it to the "peanut gallery"
I know you are into political theory and are an anarchist which I nice I guess-- I was into that for a while but it no longer interests me. I think we had that conversation before. And I also know that you think that politics is the only thing which IS important- which is probably true for an atheist--so we have big differences.