The religious experience vs. the experience of reality

[_mfbukowski]

MFB, I am very interested in any answer you may have to my question to Simon. Is my subjective experience that the church is infantile and silly equally valid to your view otherwise?

Well you knew I was going to ask this didn't you? What does "valid" mean?

Suppose someone said "Beethoven's Fifth is infantile and silly" and someone else said "No it's not!"

Would both be "valid"?

The "truth" of subjective experience lies in how it affects your life- the proof is in the pudding.

I think that God leads and directs us to the path which is best for us, but ultimately there is only one path. We are trying to get to the Amazon River from the ocean and we find stream after stream as part of the delta. Some streams will die out, others will cause you to run aground etc.

There may be many ways to get there but eventually all who truly seek will be on the same river assuming they keep going upstream.

But if you think the church is infantile, I think you don't know enough about it. I don't care if you had been a member 92 years- if you think that, there are some important things you never learned.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Well you knew I was going to ask this didn't you? What does "valid" mean?

Suppose someone said "Beethoven's Fifth is infantile and silly" and someone else said "No it's not!"

Would both be "valid"?

Yes, I think we have a workable usage here. Great!

The "truth" of subjective experience lies in how it affects your life- the proof is in the pudding.

Great! I am much happier as an apostate. It has been very positive in many ways.

I think that God leads and directs us to the path which is best for us, but ultimately there is only one path. We are trying to get to the Amazon River from the ocean and we find stream after stream as part of the delta. Some streams will die out, others will cause you to run aground etc.

There may be many ways to get there but eventually all who truly seek will be on the same river assuming they keep going upstream.

Sure, why not? We can each swim our own way.

But if you think the church is infantile, I think you don't know enough about it. I don't care if you had been a member 92 years- if you think that, there are some important things you never learned.

And it is equally true that Mormonism is infantile. Maybe your experience works for you, but as you say my own is equally valid. The church is infantile to me, and there is nothing you could say to inform anything herein. I think you are on to something here. I can find Joseph Smith to be a manipulative liar, bedding women for the sake of control, you can find him to be blameless and pure. We have nothing to argue about, that is unless one us of were to presume their experience more equal than the other's.

[_mfbukowski]

MFB's post makes a good point against the OP actually - it is in taking the box to the biologist that moves the "experience" out of the subjective and into the "objective". One needs to be willing to challenge one's theories. Otherwise, they are just unsubstantiated biases.

It really does not make any point against the OP. I was simply describing the difference between objective and subjective. If our pink elephants are not observable by anyone else, we can still be certain we saw them, and be correct.

[_EAllusion]

Radical skepticism doesn't rationally free you to believe in anything you choose. It allows you to rationally believe in nothing.

Fortunately, for those whose knowledge of philosophy extends beyond hitting a bong, we probably do have tools to think some ostensible interpretations of experiences are veridical while others are illusions, misperceptions, hallucinations, and so on. I'm personally fond of a version of coherentism that involves "cross-checking" perceptions against one another, but there are a variety of approaches and few if anyone thinks we are hopeless to think some perceptions aren't veridical.

[Rikiti]

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[_EAllusion]

mfb -

Part of the problem with your argument is that Mormonism claims that its version of religious experiences is intersubjective. That is to say, I'm supposed to use my spiritual senses like I do my normal ones and be able to "see" God, the truth of Mormonism, etc just the same as I can use my senses to gather evidence of Antarctica. Indeed, you can't build up a religion, with a whole enormous network of beliefs built upon shared experience, without being able to communicate your experiences and provide some roadmap to others obtaining them. This is no more a private affair than me telling you there is a cactus over there is. And if I say there is a cactus over there and cannot obtain some intersubjective verifiability to it, that calls into question my perception of that cactus. People should be able to see it, because it's supposed to be a mutually accessible thing.

You might try to counter that it is a mutually accessible thing, but others can't see it because they are blinded for some reason. The most popular argument to this end is that "sin" corrupts your spiritual faculties. I think this is laughably ad hoc when you think about the distribution of sin relative to who's having mystical experiences, of what, and why, but I'm all ears if you want to try that.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

I think the problem with Mo Po Mo-ism is the term relativistic absolutism.

[_mfbukowski]

And it is equally true that Mormonism is infantile. Maybe your experience works for you, but as you say my own is equally valid. The church is infantile to me, and there is nothing you could say to inform anything herein. I think you are on to something here. I can find Joseph Smith to be a manipulative liar, bedding women for the sake of control, you can find him to be blameless and pure. We have nothing to argue about, that is unless one us of were to presume their experience more equal than the other's.

Not exactly.

We never mentioned the word "true" in our definition of "valid", which we never finished defining. An argument can be "valid" for example without being "true", and we have not even really defined "valid" yet-

I can be thoroughly certain as I wave goodbye to you as our paths diverge on the way to the Amazon, that your path is not as "true" as mine and be right, or the other way around.

In my overall world view, I can and do believe that one can postulate that certain paths are more or less true than others in an ultimate sense. If your stream, or my stream, never leads to the Amazon, it will show itself to be "false" eventually.

But this thread is not about what is "true", it is about the nature of subjective and objective experience.

But I am not looking for an out here- I think that God could conceivably lead someone from the church if being in the church was hindering their progress toward the truth.

A constant obsession with a leader's failure could cause that. An abusive authoritarian parent who forced blind obedience and church attendance could do that. We can have the church so "ruined" for us by others or even our own blindness, that I think for some, leaving might be an inspired choice.

But in my opinion, on the other side, we will see that for what it was.

[_EAllusion]

perceptions aren't veridical.

I should note that my comments here are only really appropriate for something like hearing whispers that feel like they are coming from someone that you're convinced is God talking to you or something of that nature. There is a fair amount of spiritual experiences that get interpreted in a Mormon framework but are not ostensibly revelations from God or whathaveyou. If you don't eat for a few days while praying intently, then experience a sense of transcendent "oneness" with the world, while that's certainly a mystical experience of some sort, it does not follow that the source is the reality of Mormon mythology even if you are inclined to interpret it that way. You had to do some heavy inference-making that goes beyond the simple surface interpretation that goes on in cases like "I heard a voice," or "I saw an ghostly being with an aura."

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Sorry but this makes no sense. Why is your view truer than mine unless you accept both an objective reality AND some means to feel it out. This is not the subjective experience the OP is calling upon.