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What actually do JREF religious believers believe?

kerikiwi said:
No, there is not much that can prove it.
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Very true.

kerikiwi said:
But the likelihood of its being true can be assessed.
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I disagree really, even if you prove that I was in New York at the time, and that there was a McDonalds near where I was, and that I liked McDonalds, it still doesn't make it true if it's not. Yes it's plausable, but that's as far as one can get without belief in what is said, you can't assess how plausable it is, at least not without adding in your own biases.

Resume said:
Why would such a mundane claim need corroboration?

NYC exists, as does McDonalds.
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You missed the point, totally.

kerikiwi said:
No, there is not much that can prove it.
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It's not about NYC existing, McDonalds existing, me being in NYC, or even that corroboration is needed for the claim, it's about the fact that it's impossible to actually prove such an experience, even a mundane one.

Since I can't prove whether or not I ate lunch at a McDonalds in NYC in Nov of 2008 (which I actually didn't, it was in early October 2008) how can one prove something that is even more of a personal experience?

The answer is, they can't, and to demand corroborating evidence of an event that occured to someone before you believe them simply because you don't think their experience is mundane enough, is as stupid as asking for evidence for something that is totally mundane, but for which there is going to no more evidence. A personal experience is a personal experience whether it is mundane or not. The evidence that it occured will be the same either way.

Now that doesn't mean you have to believe what they tell you, but just because it hasn't happened to you and it doesn't match your expectations, it doesn't give you the right to mock their experiences either.
 
PhantomWolf said:
The problem is that we're talking about things that simply aren't measurable in any way, shape, or form. I've had lots of people try and explain the one I gave, my sister's voice, basically it came down to them claiming it either never happened, or that my brain made it up afterwards so I only think it happened. The idea that it actually did happen is something that they were unwilling to accept and certainly could not explain rationally, so therefore, despite not being there, nor experiencing it, they determined as it was impossible, it can't have happened, case closed. This of course ignores the fact of what the witness, me, tells them.
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I think that most may tend to dismiss individual anecdotes. I have changed my mind over the years and have learned to accept that -- with few exceptions -- what people describe is real enough to them.


And how do you provide evidence of an experience? It's not like I was wandering down the road with a tape recorder. (and even if I had been and it had captured the voice, how would it be evidence anyway?) 99% of the things that lead me to believe there is something beyond us are through things I have seen or experienced that simply cannot be recorded or proven to anyone else, they can't be analysed scientifically, taken apart and studied.

Now those are my experiences, other have had experiences that are more recordable, being healed of a disease or sickness for instance, but we all know that those are written off, even if they weren't on medication at the time.

So what sort of corroborating evidence would you actually accept that something occured?
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It's difficult, to be sure, but you've listed things which could be acceptable. I think ultimately it depends on what the conclusions are that are trying to be reached.



And yet that doesn't happen, I have heard stories where people have wanted their experience to be anything but an accepting that there is more out there than they believed, but in the end had no other way to explain what occured to them and accepted it because nothing else fitted. That certainly isn't fitting a conclusion to a predetermined belief.
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Alright, I can amend my statement to say that because some event is claimed to have happened, does not mean that the conclusion is therefore true.

An example:
"I saw the virgin Mary who appeared to me in a flash of light!"
Experience -- a flash of light
Conclusion -- the virgin Mary is able to appear in flashes of light

"I felt a calmness and sense of peace permeate my every pore and the world around me. This is the true spirit of God touching my soul."
Experience -- a feeling of calmness and sense of peace
Conclusion -- it's a result of God being in contact with my soul

So, yeah, those sorts of claims and conclusions are not easily evidenced. As an observer or neutral party, I can certainly accept your experience and yet reject your conclusion. Of course, a person could just as well say something like, "yeah, I saw what looked like a flash of light. I don't know what it could have been" and leave it at that. One does not need to draw conclusions to every event that happens or appears to happen to a person.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Very true.



I disagree really, even if you prove that I was in New York at the time, and that there was a McDonalds near where I was, and that I liked McDonalds, it still doesn't make it true if it's not. Yes it's plausable, but that's as far as one can get without belief in what is said, you can't assess how plausable it is, at least not without adding in your own biases.



You missed the point, totally.



It's not about NYC existing, McDonalds existing, me being in NYC, or even that corroboration is needed for the claim, it's about the fact that it's impossible to actually prove such an experience, even a mundane one.

Since I can't prove whether or not I ate lunch at a McDonalds in NYC in Nov of 2008 (which I actually didn't, it was in early October 2008) how can one prove something that is even more of a personal experience?

The answer is, they can't, and to demand corroborating evidence of an event that occured to someone before you believe them simply because you don't think their experience is mundane enough, is as stupid as asking for evidence for something that is totally mundane, but for which there is going to no more evidence. A personal experience is a personal experience whether it is mundane or not. The evidence that it occured will be the same either way.

Now that doesn't mean you have to believe what they tell you, but just because it hasn't happened to you and it doesn't match your expectations, it doesn't give you the right to mock their experiences either.
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I think the point is that when people say, "I ate at McDonald's in New York City in October 2008" there's nothing really to respond to -- there's no conclusion there. It's when someone says, "I ate at McDonald's in New York City in October 2008 so therefore aliens exist" that people start questioning the anecdote and the evidence in which to support that rather incredible conclusion.
 
RoseMontague said:
I can't believe that nobody in all these threads in this section has answered this question. Perhaps the answers were just not satisfactory to you?
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Thank you very much for your interesting post ... and I have read through the subsequent posts before responding.
I didn't just mean here, I was thinking of other forums (BBC for instance) where I've read and posted. I may well have forgotten of course, but I think your reply here is the most thoughtful because you have actually explained why you believe! Mostly it seems that people, by the time the question reaches their brain, have heard a slightly different question an, therefore, avoid a direct answer. So I much admire your posts here.
The alternatives of randomness and luck just don't feel right to me. And fifth, I can't imagine death is the end.
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Would you say, then, that your response is an emotional one, rather than one which takes account of all the latest scientific information, brain research, etc?

When I was young and it was the height of bad manners to question people about religious beliefs, I would have agreed with you, but age, vastly increased access to information changed that quite a long time ago.
I am at an age now (76, well not far off 77 actually:)) when we, my contemporaries and I, joke about the time we have left since it's a total waste of time to go around with a gloomy face about it:) and there are very few of us who actually believe in an after-life/something-or-other.
 
Phantom Wolf

Because I have seen, experienced, and met people to whom too many things have happened that simply can't be rationalised away.
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Well, I cannot dispute that some people rationalize or dismiss reports of things which are difficult or disturbing for them to analyze. The more substantive controversy about credible reports of unusual events, however, is often not whether something happened, but about the correct interpretation of what happened.

For instance, I clearly heard my sister yelling at me to watch out for a car, something that prevented me being hit by it, except she was over 10km away visiting my Grandmother at the time.
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Fine. I believe that what you just wrote really happened. I think it's routine, in fact. But I don't think your sister had anything to do with it. As you say, she was 10 km away from where you and the car were. You, on the other hand, were right there. If I were to look for an intelligent agent who might both apprehend the situation and effectively communicate its urgency to you, then I'd be looking inside your skull.

What I believe is that your concscious awareness was not attending to the threat. Some part of your cognitive apparatus became aware of the threat, and of the need to bring the matter to your conscious attention promptly. The thought adopted the form of a crisp instruction spoken in a familiar friendly voice. You then experienced your thought as a sensory event. That has happened often enough to other people (me, for example), so why not you?

However, when it actually occurs to you and you're left sitting, or standing, there realising that what you just experienced is not possible based on the current scientific understanding of the laws of the Universe, ...
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What you say happened is a staple of "the current scientific understanding of the laws of the Universe," if your scruples allow psychology to be called a science. It's your interpretation of what happened that apparently diverges from other understandings.

I would differ from Norseman in not requiring further evidence. This is a one-time event with one witness. We've heard from that witness, so we already have pretty much all the evidence we shall ever have. Nor do I have any lively doubt about your report anyway. I especially couldn't care less that there's a New York McDonald's restaurant involved. It neither bears on whether anything happened, nor on the interpretation of what happened.

Your report is accepted, as quoted, into my best estimate of the complete true history of the world. That would be without the qualifier "true for you." I do propose, however, an alternative hypothesis which both fits the evidence and does no violence to anyone's scientific understanding. I also do so without speculating why you adopt your hypothesis.

I don't even ask you to consider the merits of mine. It is simply an explanation of why, if (when) something like that actually occurs to me and I'm left sitting, or standing there realising something, then what I realize is how completely consistent the experience is with what I think the psyche is like, marvelous wetware, fully capable of surprising itself, sometimes usefully, in traffic, for instance.
 
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Minarvia said:
True. Until the hypothesis and premises are clearly defined for the sake of discussion, it won't go far. It seems that everyone who believes in a god or gods doesn't agree on them even when it comes to the same god or gods.

But here, Rose is sticking around. If she can tell us precisely what she believes and nail down how it works, then this will get really interesting! I have always wanted to know how a believer thinks things began, exactly, and also where the idea of "outside space and time" or "before the Universe began" came from.

I personally can't wrap my head around those concepts; they elude me utterly. But when I try and think on them I can't see any explanation of where said deities came from. What created them and was that thing destroyed, dispersed into said deities, or... what?
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Well, it is my very subjective impression that most people don't actually put much thought into exactly what they believe and don't have all that much of an idea exactly what they believe in. They believe it's true, but they don't know what it is. Which is weird IMHO.

E.g., what is a soul? Is it basically life? Well, a lot of people even among the theists can easily imagine something living without a soul (e.g., undead or animals; even people who somehow lost theirs or stored it somwhere else or whatever are common literary characters.) E.g., is it consciousness? Well, ditto.

I even talked to someone who really didn't argue more than that there is some unspecified "energy" that you have when alive, and it must go somewhere when you die, because the 2nd law of thermodynamics says so. But at that point that energy doesn't have to be conscious or anything -- and in fact energy never is -- and his afterlife doesn't have to be more than an energy sink. Heck, even heating the universe a little would qualify.

And that goes double when people (not Rose so far, but we are talking more general theist beliefs) make nonsense statements like "God is love" or "Jesus is the Truth" or C.S.Lewis's "God is goodness" or such. I haven't found anyone who can explain or seems to have the foggiest idea of how a being can be a state or property.

Or take John's having the Logos incarnate as a human and die on the cross. Given that Logos was the reason that keeps the universe working, or akin to what we call physics these days, how would that even work? And wouldn't the universe stop working while the Logos was dead?

The RCC had two millennia to think this kind of stuff up, and even they routinely retreat behind 'it's a mystery' when asked to explain it.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I took "God simply is and is at any point in time" out because it didn't make any sense to me. I wasn't sure what you were trying to say.
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Time in physics is a tricky thing. It is generally accepted that time requires entropy. Think of it in terms of what you have seen represented in movies when time is stopped. People are not moving, the clock is not ticking, and if you are outside of the boundaries of time you can move around them. Most theories have time beginning with the Big Bang, the universe was static and not moving at that point, and time itself had not begun. The arrow of time is a popular concept, except physics, especially quantum physics, tells us that the arrow moves both ways, into both the past and future. It is only by observing that we see it only moving into the future. It may be that is the only thing we are capable of observing. Some recent theories, one from Hawking for example, has time starting at some point after the Big Bang, hard to say how long after, as time did not exist at that point.
 
Errr, no. Time is just another dimension, and doesn't need entropy any more than your shoe size needs a cat.

And quantum physics says time moves both ways? REALLY? Can you please point out exactly which theory says that?

Time starting some time after big bang? Do you even realize how much of a nonsense that is? If there wasn't time how can you have "some time" there? It's as much nonsense as saying I had some computers before computers existed. Or at some point on WHAT axis, to have an "after"? And please do point out exactly where he says that, if you want to name drop him.

Look, seriously, if you want a comforting belief about what happens after you die, you're entitled to it as far as I'm concerned. But when you start doing pseudo-science BS about physics to support your beliefs, that's the kind of thing that starts rubbing me the wrong way. Science and especially physics is why you even have a computer to write that nonsense on, or the free time to do so. Please do show some respect and not pollute it with whatever nonsense you can invent to support your delusions.
 
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PhantomWolf said:
The problem is that we're talking about things that simply aren't measurable in any way, shape, or form. I've had lots of people try and explain the one I gave, my sister's voice, basically it came down to them claiming it either never happened, or that my brain made it up afterwards so I only think it happened. The idea that it actually did happen is something that they were unwilling to accept and certainly could not explain rationally, so therefore, despite not being there, nor experiencing it, they determined as it was impossible, it can't have happened, case closed. This of course ignores the fact of what the witness, me, tells them.



And how do you provide evidence of an experience? It's not like I was wandering down the road with a tape recorder. (and even if I had been and it had captured the voice, how would it be evidence anyway?) 99% of the things that lead me to believe there is something beyond us are through things I have seen or experienced that simply cannot be recorded or proven to anyone else, they can't be analysed scientifically, taken apart and studied.

Now those are my experiences, other have had experiences that are more recordable, being healed of a disease or sickness for instance, but we all know that those are written off, even if they weren't on medication at the time.

So what sort of corroborating evidence would you actually accept that something occured?



And yet that doesn't happen, I have heard stories where people have wanted their experience to be anything but an accepting that there is more out there than they believed, but in the end had no other way to explain what occured to them and accepted it because nothing else fitted. That certainly isn't fitting a conclusion to a predetermined belief.
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You have a personal experience, refuse to entertain any rational explanation for it and then conclude that the world is irrational.
 
HansMustermann said:
Errr, no. Time is just another dimension, and doesn't need entropy any more than your shoe size needs a cat.

And quantum physics says time moves both ways? REALLY? Can you please point out exactly which theory says that?

Time starting some time after big bang? Do you even realize how much of a nonsense that is? If there wasn't time how can you have "some time" there? It's as much nonsense as saying I had some computers before computers existed. Or at some point on WHAT axis, to have an "after"? And please do point out exactly where he says that, if you want to name drop him.

Look, seriously, if you want a comforting belief about what happens after you die, you're entitled to it as far as I'm concerned. But when you start doing pseudo-science BS about physics to support your beliefs, that's the kind of thing that starts rubbing me the wrong way. Science and especially physics is why you even have a computer to write that nonsense on, or the free time to do so. Please do show some respect and not pollute it with whatever nonsense you can invent to support your delusions.
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Hans, do the research if you do not believe me. Google is your friend.
 
tsig said:
Why are you seeking confirmation of your religious faith using science? You've already said it's a personal matter and not subject to external evidence so looking at science now seems contradictory.
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Oh no. My posts point to a common ground creation between science and spirituality. I am arguing for some cross training between the two fields of study. This is because I think the nature of the universe is a dual one made up of both the physical and the spiritual. Any attempt to explain one without the other is doomed, imo.
 
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HansMustermann said:
And that goes double when people (not Rose so far, but we are talking more general theist beliefs) make nonsense statements like "God is love" or "Jesus is the Truth" or C.S.Lewis's "God is goodness" or such. I haven't found anyone who can explain or seems to have the foggiest idea of how a being can be a state or property.

Or take John's having the Logos incarnate as a human and die on the cross. Given that Logos was the reason that keeps the universe working, or akin to what we call physics these days, how would that even work? And wouldn't the universe stop working while the Logos was dead?

The RCC had two millennia to think this kind of stuff up, and even they routinely retreat behind 'it's a mystery' when asked to explain it.
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I think that a Christian answer to your question would be that Jesus was the incarnate Logos, that is, that he on earth manifested one aspect of God. God's reason or Word or Logos was not exhausted in him, so it could carry on while he was humanly dead.

The idea that aspects of God, such as Logos or Wisdom or glory or just Presence can take on actual, perhaps even personified, roles, was a common one in biblical Judaism. The later Old Testament writings as well as the Pseudepigrapha and other intertestamental writings frequently seem to personify 'Lady Wisdom', for instance and occasionally even to imagine her as incarnate. And you pointed to Philo as a Jewish writer who personified God's Logos or reason. There is considerable debate in the scholarship over to what extent these writers actually thought that such aspects of God were really 'hypostasized' or became actual spiritual (even, at times, human) beings distinct from God himself, and also what ramifications this has for the development of the Christian belief that the human Jesus manifested some aspects of the divine, notably Wisdom and Logos (the earliest Christians being Jews of their time, of course).

Just one small correction to a point you made earlier: while Philo indeed has a Logos concept that looks remarkably similar to John's and came a few decades earlier, most scholars would consider it not proven at best that John actually took his ideas from Philo. The concept of the Logos was a commonplace within neo-Platonic philosophy of the time, and it seems that it was the Stoics who first used it to mean the reason which animated and controlled the universe. John probably got to it independently, and probably via a Jewish source, Judaism of the time having long accepted many Greek ideas. I think most scholars today would agree that he got there via the Jewish concept of Wisdom, which similarly meant the creative animating principle of the universe and which was being applied to Jesus Christ very early on (cf 1 Cor 1: 24, which is one of the oldest bits of the New Testament). Jewish writers seem to have segued naturally from (Jewish) Wisdom to (Greek-inflected) Logos.
 
sleepy_lioness said:
I think that a Christian answer to your question would be that Jesus was the incarnate Logos, that is, that he on earth manifested one aspect of God. God's reason or Word or Logos was not exhausted in him, so it could carry on while he was humanly dead.

The idea that aspects of God, such as Logos or Wisdom or glory or just Presence can take on actual, perhaps even personified, roles, was a common one in biblical Judaism. The later Old Testament writings as well as the Pseudepigrapha and other intertestamental writings frequently seem to personify 'Lady Wisdom', for instance and occasionally even to imagine her as incarnate. And you pointed to Philo as a Jewish writer who personified God's Logos or reason. There is considerable debate in the scholarship over to what extent these writers actually thought that such aspects of God were really 'hypostasized' or became actual spiritual (even, at times, human) beings distinct from God himself, and also what ramifications this has for the development of the Christian belief that the human Jesus manifested some aspects of the divine, notably Wisdom and Logos (the earliest Christians being Jews of their time, of course).

Just one small correction to a point you made earlier: while Philo indeed has a Logos concept that looks remarkably similar to John's and came a few decades earlier, most scholars would consider it not proven at best that John actually took his ideas from Philo. The concept of the Logos was a commonplace within neo-Platonic philosophy of the time, and it seems that it was the Stoics who first used it to mean the reason which animated and controlled the universe. John probably got to it independently, and probably via a Jewish source, Judaism of the time having long accepted many Greek ideas. I think most scholars today would agree that he got there via the Jewish concept of Wisdom, which similarly meant the creative animating principle of the universe and which was being applied to Jesus Christ very early on (cf 1 Cor 1: 24, which is one of the oldest bits of the New Testament). Jewish writers seem to have segued naturally from (Jewish) Wisdom to (Greek-inflected) Logos.
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Interesting. I like the creative animating part. True name that contains that somethings true nature spoken in the language of God creating that something. One word maybe for the entire universe? Got to be some Word.
 
PhantomWolf said:
The problem is that we're talking about things that simply aren't measurable in any way, shape, or form. I've had lots of people try and explain the one I gave, my sister's voice, basically it came down to them claiming it either never happened, or that my brain made it up afterwards so I only think it happened. The idea that it actually did happen is something that they were unwilling to accept and certainly could not explain rationally, so therefore, despite not being there, nor experiencing it, they determined as it was impossible, it can't have happened, case closed. This of course ignores the fact of what the witness, me, tells them.
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You've been given a rational explanation and you've refused to accept it. Next time your at a gathering of family of friends, do a little memory test about a shared event; if the details recalled aren't dis-similar in a number of ways, well, I'd find that paranormal.
 
RoseMontague said:
Interesting. I like the creative animating part. True name that contains that somethings true nature spoken in the language of God creating that something. One word maybe for the entire universe? Got to be some Word.
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Yes, so do I. John 1 ('in the beginning was the Word ... in him was light') is a midrash, or Jewish interpretation, of Genesis 1 ('in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ... and God said, let there be light ...'). IIRC, Philo also says that the Logos is the light. For John, Jesus is a manifestation of God's Wisdom, Word, and Light, through which he created and sustains the world.
 
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