Religion III: Skeptical Evangelism, Psychedelic Shamanism, and other Religions of Us Hairless Apes

[Weeping Sore]

"What outcomes can you predict using religious belief?"

You can predict outcomes involving the behavior of religious persons.

[Stubby]

You can predict outcomes involving the behavior of religious persons.

Not the question at hand.

[Weeping Sore]

Not the question at hand.

It is the question you asked. I think you mean I took your question out of context, which of course I did.

[Jo498]

Who ever claimed that religious belief was for predicting outputs? (of experiments or what?)

This is obviously a misunderstanding religion and belief. Probably from the lemma that in former times religion was something like science is today. But this is highly doubtful. At least since classical antiquity people usually differentiated between religion and what we would call science. Although of course there were often closely related. Aristotle was not a priest, but Pythagoras may have been something like a cult leader who supposedly worked miracles, or at least he was turned into one posthumously by his followers.)

In more religious times like the middle ages people did not use religion, but what they took for science (often it was pseudoscience) like astrology for predicting things.

[Stubby]

If you guys went back a few pages you'll see where this was what rmm was actually suggesting.

[Weeping Sore]

If you guys went back a few pages you'll see where this was what rmm was actually suggesting.

I'm not too motivated to make RMM's point for him, but there is a point to be made that science requires assumptions to allow any framework of understanding to be built. Deductive reasoning necessarilly starts with a hypothesis to be supported or disproven, but in time the hypothesis may calcify into something dogmatic.

Despite this, I'd still reject calling the assumptions of science tantamount to religion, as the scientific worldview accepts the necessity of near-constant revision.

[Sci-2]

I believe in DMT

You can predict outcomes involving the behavior of religious persons.

Dear Guardians - A Burning Man Short Film

"Life is moment to celebrate, to enjoy. Make it fun, a celebration, and then you will enter the Temple."

-Osho

Since 2002, the Guardians have held an integral role at the Temple of Burning Man. They have remained largely invisible, holding space from the shadows. Until now.

[Sci-2]

Despite this, I'd still reject calling the assumptions of science tantamount to religion, as the scientific worldview accepts the necessity of near-constant revision.

Don Salmon has some interesting thoughts related to this subject:

SHAVING SCIENCE WITH OCKHAM'S RAZOR: What, if anything, does science tell us about reality?

PREMISE: There are no scientific findings which preclude considering consciousness as a causal factor in the universe. Nor are there findings in any area of science—including quantum physics, parapsychology or near-death experience research—which require the consideration of consciousness as a causal factor (both of these statements are in regard to current scientific methodology).

[Weeping Sore]

Don Salmon has some interesting thoughts related to this subject:

SHAVING SCIENCE WITH OCKHAM'S RAZOR: What, if anything, does science tell us about reality?

It's unrealistic to expect most scientists to recognize their own adherence to materialism as a potential flaw in scientific logic. It seems that most scientists willing to expound on how phenomena could be explained via dualism or idealism have had some exposure to these ideas from outside the field. Which makes them (potential idealists/dualists) open to criticism that they are trying to make science dance to the tune of their spirituality. Also worth mentioning is the materialist's view of any non-materialist "answer" to a quantum conundrum as being "too easy", like answering a murder mystery with "God did it". What the materialist misses here is that consciousness, even if non-material, does not have to be ascientific. Instead it opens a vast new territory of scientific inquiry, for which new tools might be necessary.

ETA: And by "new tools" I don't mean every bit of woolly spiritual speculation gets to be called science now.

[Sci-2]

Heh, don't sell Don short - he's a pretty smart cookie and has some upcoming plans to further elucidate why science should be divorced from any particular metaphysics.

Anyway, I'm not sure science is as adverse to Idealism - or at least anti-realism - as you suggest. (See here + here.)

As for dualism, I think the Mind-Body Interaction problem is a big hurdle though the materialist Lycan isn't as convinced. (See point 3 of this post for his paper Giving Dualism Its Due + Feser's comments.)

=-=-=

More on the fascinating religion of Spiritualism:

Mediumship & Folk Models of Mind and Matter

(Excerpt from Talking with the Spirits: Ethnographies from between the Worlds)

This chapter explores the role of experiences with trance and physical mediumship in the development of folk models of mind and matter, at a non-denominational spiritualist home-circle called the Bristol Spirit Lodge. Mediums and sitters often claim that mediumship has led them to understand the world differently, and to appreciate that the standard materialistic view of science is inadequate as an all encompassing model of reality. Certain key themes and concepts have emerged from my informants’ experiences with mediumship that hint at alternative models of understanding the relationship between mind and matter, including the idea that bodies are permeable, that matter is essentially non-physical, that consciousness is far more expansive than our normal waking state would lead us to believe, and that persons are multiple, can survive death, and may be influenced by external spiritual entities.

To begin, we will briefly examine the anthropological debate over spirit possession, taking a quick tour through the various theoretical models developed to account for the existence of this human phenomenon. This will be followed by an introduction to the history of Spiritualism, and in particular to physical mediumship, in order to give an idea of the kind of spirit mediumship that forms the basis for discussion in this chapter. The chapter will conclude with an analysis of extracts from ethnographic interviews with members of the Bristol Spirit Lodge.

[Sci-2]

Margot Adler: Pioneering Pagan Activist, NPR Journalist Dies At 68

I never read Drawing Down the Moon in its entirety, but I recall the importance it had in some pagan circles. Adler had an interesting article about being a pagan priestess and member of the Unitarian Universalist Church:

Vibrant, Juicy, Contemporary: or, Why I Am a UU Pagan

Why has this movement taken on such force? Why are there hundreds of books being published on goddess spirituality? Why are so many women finding themselves attracted to it? What is going on here? I think the main reason women are coming to Paganism is that, in many denominations, they've been left out. They've been robbed of their chance for ministry. There are so many frustrated would-be Catholic priests in the goddess spirituality movement, it's amazing.

But the history of the women's spirituality movement goes back to the women's consciousness-raising groups of the 1960s and early 1970s. Think about what happened there. In the group I belonged to, we sat in a circle and spoke on a topic that was decided the week before--things like high school, my first menstruation, my mother, sexuality. Ten, twelve women sat around a circle. Each one spoke for, let's say, seven or eight minutes, and no one interrupted--that was very important because twenty-five years ago a woman couldn't sit on a park bench and read a book or sit in a restaurant alone and not be interrupted.

So this was the first time many of these women could actually speak from the inner self without being interrupted. The big idea that came out of the consciousness-raising groups was that the personal was political--that from your personal experience--with high school, your mother, the men in your life--came an understanding of the world and politics.

When that point had been made, women started doing other things. They said, "Well, if the personal is political, maybe the personal is spiritual, too," and so women started spiritual groups, where they talked about their dreams in the same way they'd been talking about politics, and they asked: "Why are women always called witches? Why are they always seen as evil?" They looked into the history of midwife persecution and the devaluation of women's wisdom and healing. They said, "Well, maybe because these people were on the outs with society and were independent-minded, they got called witches, but really they were just doing their own things in their own way. Maybe that's what we are, and maybe if I just say, 'I'm a witch, I 'm a witch, I'm a witch' three times, I'm really a witch and that's all it means." So the first women's witch covens started.

[Jo498]

I am not familiar with ethnographic research on animism or spiritualism. But I think "folk models" of minds, souls or spirits are very different from Cartesian Dualism. Their prevalence in folklore is probably why even (semi-)educated critics of Descartes come up with nonsense like ektoplasm or something like that.

The folk model is in many ways "pseudo-naturalist" and does not recognize an interaction problem: spirits may be able to walk through walls, but they can also act as poltergeists, can be placated by material gifts (food, blood, whatever). The whole idea behind "sympathetic magic" is that things that are somewhat similar to each other can be used for magical purposes and will influence each other over distances: one needs matter of the body of a victim to make a material voodoo doll which is than punctured or burned (again materially interacted with) to hurt or kill the victim.

All this is much closer to a "magical naturalism" that simply implies a lot more causal influences and interactions than there are according to science, but all or most of them are more or less modelled either after naive physics (pushing and pulling forces) or postulate influences according to vague or traditional analogies (like the planet mercury and the element mercury etc).

[Sci-2]

I agree that the classical theist account of souls seems very different from the modern ectoplasmic conception...though it's interesting that, as noted in a previous post, Lycan confesses that even the ectoplasmic version isn't philosophically untenable.

On the subject of causality & magick, IIRC the occult metaphysics presupposes additional, possibly more fundamental rules for reality. (Sympathy, Contagion, Part stands for Whole...)

=-=-=

Naughty Nuns, Flatulent Monks, and Other Surprises of Sacred Medieval Manuscripts

Flipping through an illustrated manuscript from the 13th century, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Jesus loved a good fart joke. That’s because the margins of these handmade devotional books were filled with imagery depicting everything from scatological humor to mythical beasts to sexually explicit satire. Though we may still get a kick out of poop jokes, we aren’t used to seeing them visualized in such lurid detail, and certainly not in holy books. But in medieval Europe, before books were mass-produced and reading became a pastime for plebes, these lavish manuscripts were all the rage—if you could afford them. The educated elite hired artisans to craft these exquisitely detailed religious texts surrounded by all manner of illustrated commentary, known today as marginalia.

Kaitlin Manning, an associate at B & L Rootenberg Rare Books and Manuscripts, says part of the reason why modern viewers are so captivated by marginalia is because we expect this era to be conservative when compared to our own society. For example, few Monty Python fans realize that the comedy group’s silly animations are direct references to artwork in illuminated manuscripts. (Illuminated simply means decorated with gold or silver foil.) “I think it’s such a shock when you have this idea in your head of what medieval society was like,” says Manning, “and then you see these bizarre images that make you question your assumptions.” The wild mixture of illustrations challenges our contemporary need to compartmentalize topics like sex, religion, humor, and mythology.

[Sci-2]

Where's God?

To change the analogy slightly, it’s as if the New Atheist on the one hand and his “theistic pesonalist” and “design inference” opponents on the other are playing a pseudo-theological variant of Where’s Waldo? (also known as Where’s Wally?) The New Atheist thinks that the problem is that too many people refuse to admit that Waldo is nowhere to be found in the picture. The theistic personalist and the ID theorist think the problem is that the New Atheists refuse to see how strong is the evidence that Waldo is at such-and-such a place in the picture (hiding behind a bacterial flagellum, perhaps). The classical theist knows that the real problem is that these guys are all wasting enormous amounts of time and energy playing Where’s Waldo instead of talking about God.

While I do agree that Intelligent Design does not get one to God that could be a moral authority or offer resurrection, it seems to me that it's equally clear that classical theism only gets one to a God that most wouldn't bother worshiping. It seems less like a being with a personality and more like the undifferentiated Awareness that grounds reality in certain versions of Idealism. AFAIK the Greeks didn't seem to worry much about what the philosophical conception of God thought about their society.

Nothing there to really build a religion on, until you add on some other stuff?

[Gears of the Beast]

To change the analogy slightly, it’s as if the New Atheist on the one hand and his “theistic pesonalist” and “design inference” opponents on the other are playing a pseudo-theological variant of Where’s Waldo? (also known as Where’s Wally?) The New Atheist thinks that the problem is that too many people refuse to admit that Waldo is nowhere to be found in the picture. The theistic personalist and the ID theorist think the problem is that the New Atheists refuse to see how strong is the evidence that Waldo is at such-and-such a place in the picture (hiding behind a bacterial flagellum, perhaps). The classical theist knows that the real problem is that these guys are all wasting enormous amounts of time and energy playing Where’s Waldo instead of talking about God.

What an empty and vapid argument, his use of the term "new atheist" also makes it even more pretentious than it may have been. Atheists are atheists, that stupid term serves no purpose. Back to his vapid point, which I don't even really understand (or rather hope I don't even understand), is he saying "why waste time trying to establish whether or not there's a reason to believe a god exists when we could just assume". Surely this person cares whether or not his beliefs are actually true? Maybe I'm not just well versed enough in this kind of pseudo-intellectual drivel.

edit: I have much more respect for theists who seem to be actually have reasons (albeit bad reason) to believe in God rather than just presupposing a god's existence and calling everyone else an idiot for not doing the same.

[Weeping Sore]

Heh, don't sell Don short - he's a pretty smart cookie and has some upcoming plans to further elucidate why science should be divorced from any particular metaphysics.

Anyway, I'm not sure science is as adverse to Idealism - or at least anti-realism - as you suggest. (See here + here.)

I wasn't specifically dissing Don Salmon here, just saying that the majority (90% + I daresay) of scientists have an atheist/ materialist (though hopefully given current science, not deterministic) worldview, and they will not easily shift to a dualist or idealist conceptual frame.

The fact that I actually am convinced that the fundament of reality is consciousness does not give me the illusion that it will be easy to convince most scientists of that.

[Sci-2]

Gears, I'm not really sure what you're even going on about.

His point is that the arguments for God - as in the big-G, Preserver of the Universe - have to come from philosophy. All ID and other God o' Gaps arguments get you - at best, since those are probability arguments - is some kind of spirit or collection of spirits that helped make the world what it is.

ID doesn't even really get you to gods necessarily. You can substitute explanations from parapsychology or posit aliens of some sort. (You can then ask how the aliens evolved, but just having them in the picture seriously undermines most religious cosmologies.)

My point was that the God of philosophers is far removed from scriptural deities, barring some Eastern and South Asian concepts of a Sublime Awareness or Source Consciousness which, in turn, are far cries from what most people think of as deities worthy of worship.

I wasn't specifically dissing Don Salmon here, just saying that the majority (90% + I daresay) of scientists have an atheist/ materialist (though hopefully given current science, not deterministic) worldview, and they will not easily shift to a dualist or idealist conceptual frame.

The fact that I actually am convinced that the fundament of reality is consciousness does not give me the illusion that it will be easy to convince most scientists of that.

Oh, I was just joking - didn't think you were dissing the Don. I don't know what surveys have been done on who believes what, so can't speak to that.

As for the underlying ontology, I prefer Borges' take:

"...it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is..."

[Gears of the Beast]

Gears, I'm not really sure what you're even going on about.

His point is that the arguments for God - as in the big-G, Preserver of the Universe - have to come from philosophy. All ID and other God o' Gaps arguments get you - at best, since those are probability arguments - is some kind of spirit or collection of spirits that helped make the world what it is.

ID doesn't even really get you to gods necessarily. You can substitute explanations from parapsychology or posit aliens of some sort. (You can then ask how the aliens evolved, but just having them in the picture seriously undermines most religious cosmologies.)

My point was that the God of philosophers is far removed from scriptural deities, barring some Eastern and South Asian concepts of a Sublime Awareness or Source Consciousness which, in turn, are far cries from what most people think of as deities worthy of worship.

Yes, he's saying these arguments for God aren't sufficient and from that whole Wally analogy he seems to think trying to establish evidence for the existence of god is futile. He says we should be "talking about god" instead of discussing the actual evidence that such a god exists. Sounds a lot like he's presupposing god to me. What am I missing?

[Sci-2]

Yes, he's saying these arguments for God aren't sufficient and from that whole Wally analogy he seems to think trying to establish evidence for the existence of god is futile. He says we should be "talking about god" instead of discussing the actual evidence that such a god exists. Sounds a lot like he's presupposing god to me. What am I missing?

Because classical theism still has to get to the big-G God. You have to first start with the premises that underlie the arguments for God's existence.

It's a long row to hoe, and it involves metaphysical rather than empirical work, but it's not a presupposition.

Now whether this can get one to the desired conclusion - which in Feser's case is the God of Christianity - is also in question. Cartwright and Nagel argue that teleology of an Aristotlean sort is necessary but neither has been converted from atheism. (In Cartwright's case her atheism is why she thinks this sort of metaphysics is necessary.)

The atheist philosopher Anthony Flew, as recounted in There is a God, converted to believing in God due to Aristotlean arguments but still denied the reality of an afterlife.

[Gears of the Beast]

Yeah I don't really see that much of a difference between that guy's theism and someone like William Lane Craig's theism other than a little word salad and mental masturbation. We still have: cosmological argument ∴ god // the bible ∴ the god of the bible. I don't see any justification for how condescending he's being towards the other theists.