I believe that God is an aspect of personal experience.
Which is not saying that God does not exist, or is a delusion.
The evidence for the existence of God is comparable to the evidence for the existence of, say, fun. Many people claim to have personal experience of God or being close to God, just as most people claim to have personal experience of having fun. Those experiences of God are associated with certain activities, behaviors, and measurable mental states, as are experiences of fun. Vast industries exist that claim (with varying success rates) to help provide experiences of God, just as in the present day even vaster industries claim (with varying success rates) to help provide experiences of fun. People who have experiences of God believe that those experiences improve the quality of their lives, as do people who have experiences of fun.
Yet you can sift through every molecule of the earth and every atom of the universe, and not find a single particle of fun. (Unless you really enjoy sifting...) While you're at it, you can look for God too, but I don't think you'll find that either. So does fun exist? Is it a delusion?
Big surprise: it turns out God isn't really a guy with a beard and a crown on a throne in the sky. Just as pain isn't really invisible demons poking your body with invisible pointy sticks (causing, recursively, pain), and dreams aren't really astral journeys into a spirit world, and creativity isn't really an invisible flying woman whispering ideas into your ear. Pain, dreams, creativity, and God exist nonetheless.
Believing as I do, why do I call myself a Christian? For the same reason I call myself an English speaker. In both cases, it's a language I'm reasonably proficient in and is effective at getting the ideas across. The reason I'm proficient in it is that I learned it (its narratives, practices, and experiences) an an early age. I'm fully aware that had I been raised a Muslim, Jew, or Buddhist I would describe my religious practices and experiences in those terms instead, just as I could easily imagine myself describing those experiences in Arabic, Hebrew, or Chinese instead of English. My use of English does not, therefore, constitute proselytizing English as the One True Language. That is exactly why, in past discussions where I've discussed my experiences in Christianity, I have refrained from proselytizing Christianity.
Many will be unsatisfied with that. "Do you or do you not believe that Jesus lived on Earth as an incarnation of God and gave us all access to eternal life by dying on the cross?" you will want to know.
That is a narrative. I know the narrative. I understand the narrative. The narrative relates to my experiences in a deep though abstract way (not literally; I've never been tortured to death for my beliefs, though many others have), so in a comparably deep way, I accept the narrative. That, in my view, is more important than literally believing. But to answer directly: I do not believe that particular narrative is literally true in all respects, especially those respects that appear physically impossible. I am agnostic about other aspects of it.
On that basis you can go ahead and call me a Universalist, or a mystic, or an agnostic, or an atheist in denial, if you must. I won't argue because the label is irrelevant. In the balance, I consider myself and call myself a Christian, because for me, practices and experiences outweigh narratives.
Experiences and practices, by the way, are what ruin the analogy between God and Harry Potter. Both are entities with well-known narratives written about them. On that basis, focusing only on narrative, atheists claim that they are equivalent. But do people who meditate deeply, or are near death, or whose brains are affected by fasting or drugs or injury or Persinger's electromagnetic stimulation, tend to experience Harry Potter, as often as they experience the presence of a universal "all" or a comforting divine presence? Do many people experience a feeling of being "called" in life to aid house elves or support persecuted half-breed wizards or oppose Lord Voldemort or any of Harry Potter's other causes? I would say not, despite isolated examples.
The big question, the question I care about, is, "do experiences of God mean anything, beyond their possible (good and bad) effects on the perceived quality of people's lives?" Experiences of fun, for example, do seem to have a meaning beyond the subjective: they are associated with, and apparently help motivate, certain kinds of learning which during recent evolutionary epochs (those that involved mammalian brains) have been valuable to survival.
There are possibilities that experiences of God serve a similar function (promoting social cohesion, or acceptance of mortality, or some comparable advantage). But given the kinds of circumstances in which experiences of God tend to occur, it also seems plausible that experiences of God are directly associated with subjective experience itself. Either as some kind of inevitable side effect, or as a contributing cause. Awareness remains a deep mystery to me, despite being able to visualize every functional component of a system that would act as self-aware. (The ability to generate a narrative from memory appears to be the key; self-awareness is then simply the presence of the self in that narrative.) I can't see how that would create a subjective experience of awareness. so I wonder if that property might actually, in a sense, be inherited from an unknown property of the universe.
That is of course a "god of the gaps" argument. But it is a very large gap, much larger than those filled in by meteorology or evolution. Without awareness, the entire universe becomes a gigantic Russell's Teapot, undetectable (because there is no one to detect it), and therefore not only useless, but more reasonably assumed not to exist at all.
Respectfully,
Myriad
Which is not saying that God does not exist, or is a delusion.
The evidence for the existence of God is comparable to the evidence for the existence of, say, fun. Many people claim to have personal experience of God or being close to God, just as most people claim to have personal experience of having fun. Those experiences of God are associated with certain activities, behaviors, and measurable mental states, as are experiences of fun. Vast industries exist that claim (with varying success rates) to help provide experiences of God, just as in the present day even vaster industries claim (with varying success rates) to help provide experiences of fun. People who have experiences of God believe that those experiences improve the quality of their lives, as do people who have experiences of fun.
Yet you can sift through every molecule of the earth and every atom of the universe, and not find a single particle of fun. (Unless you really enjoy sifting...) While you're at it, you can look for God too, but I don't think you'll find that either. So does fun exist? Is it a delusion?
Big surprise: it turns out God isn't really a guy with a beard and a crown on a throne in the sky. Just as pain isn't really invisible demons poking your body with invisible pointy sticks (causing, recursively, pain), and dreams aren't really astral journeys into a spirit world, and creativity isn't really an invisible flying woman whispering ideas into your ear. Pain, dreams, creativity, and God exist nonetheless.
Believing as I do, why do I call myself a Christian? For the same reason I call myself an English speaker. In both cases, it's a language I'm reasonably proficient in and is effective at getting the ideas across. The reason I'm proficient in it is that I learned it (its narratives, practices, and experiences) an an early age. I'm fully aware that had I been raised a Muslim, Jew, or Buddhist I would describe my religious practices and experiences in those terms instead, just as I could easily imagine myself describing those experiences in Arabic, Hebrew, or Chinese instead of English. My use of English does not, therefore, constitute proselytizing English as the One True Language. That is exactly why, in past discussions where I've discussed my experiences in Christianity, I have refrained from proselytizing Christianity.
Many will be unsatisfied with that. "Do you or do you not believe that Jesus lived on Earth as an incarnation of God and gave us all access to eternal life by dying on the cross?" you will want to know.
That is a narrative. I know the narrative. I understand the narrative. The narrative relates to my experiences in a deep though abstract way (not literally; I've never been tortured to death for my beliefs, though many others have), so in a comparably deep way, I accept the narrative. That, in my view, is more important than literally believing. But to answer directly: I do not believe that particular narrative is literally true in all respects, especially those respects that appear physically impossible. I am agnostic about other aspects of it.
On that basis you can go ahead and call me a Universalist, or a mystic, or an agnostic, or an atheist in denial, if you must. I won't argue because the label is irrelevant. In the balance, I consider myself and call myself a Christian, because for me, practices and experiences outweigh narratives.
Experiences and practices, by the way, are what ruin the analogy between God and Harry Potter. Both are entities with well-known narratives written about them. On that basis, focusing only on narrative, atheists claim that they are equivalent. But do people who meditate deeply, or are near death, or whose brains are affected by fasting or drugs or injury or Persinger's electromagnetic stimulation, tend to experience Harry Potter, as often as they experience the presence of a universal "all" or a comforting divine presence? Do many people experience a feeling of being "called" in life to aid house elves or support persecuted half-breed wizards or oppose Lord Voldemort or any of Harry Potter's other causes? I would say not, despite isolated examples.
The big question, the question I care about, is, "do experiences of God mean anything, beyond their possible (good and bad) effects on the perceived quality of people's lives?" Experiences of fun, for example, do seem to have a meaning beyond the subjective: they are associated with, and apparently help motivate, certain kinds of learning which during recent evolutionary epochs (those that involved mammalian brains) have been valuable to survival.
There are possibilities that experiences of God serve a similar function (promoting social cohesion, or acceptance of mortality, or some comparable advantage). But given the kinds of circumstances in which experiences of God tend to occur, it also seems plausible that experiences of God are directly associated with subjective experience itself. Either as some kind of inevitable side effect, or as a contributing cause. Awareness remains a deep mystery to me, despite being able to visualize every functional component of a system that would act as self-aware. (The ability to generate a narrative from memory appears to be the key; self-awareness is then simply the presence of the self in that narrative.) I can't see how that would create a subjective experience of awareness. so I wonder if that property might actually, in a sense, be inherited from an unknown property of the universe.
That is of course a "god of the gaps" argument. But it is a very large gap, much larger than those filled in by meteorology or evolution. Without awareness, the entire universe becomes a gigantic Russell's Teapot, undetectable (because there is no one to detect it), and therefore not only useless, but more reasonably assumed not to exist at all.
Respectfully,
Myriad
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