Okay this is long and pretty out of place in the "comments" section. But it's still a response to the comments in the post previous this:
I know this discussion feels like beating a dead horse, but there's a true disagreement between us, isn't there? So either I'm just not getting something or you're not getting something, or maybe we're both not getting something. But conversation is the best way to sort this out, where we're both able to give our sides in hopes of establishing our position as true. Because only one of our sides can be true, and learning truth is very important isn't it? So allowme, please, to beat this dead horse a little longer (longer with big red).
Regarding the issue of "falling in love." I agree with you that "falling in love" with another person may be a perfectly understandable, legitimate act. Science is still in the process of understanding the mind, but maybe there really is, say, a pattern of chemicals in our own brain that somehow matches with the other persons or something like that, something that's very real and can catalogue this emotional act we call, "falling in love." When you extend this to the spiritual realm, there's a couple problems though. The first I see is this: when was the last time you heard a chemist say, "You need to respect my beliefs about chemistry. They were revealed to me through something like falling in love." Or a doctor say, "Please respect my beliefs about how I practice medicine. They aren't verified by experiment, but if you'd gone thru what I've gone thru, you'd see what I mean." We don't respect conclusions people come to just by sitting in their own mind, we evaluate reasons.
The second problem I see springboards off this: These "spiritual," if I may lump them into that category, experiences may be useful in describing the human experience - how we observe the world - but they are not useful in explaining the true nature of the world, if not coupled with empirical evidence. Our sensory perception is fallible, and our emotional perception is exponentially more fallible. Take a look at
this for a demonstration on the fallibility of just our eyes. People have imaginary friends that they think are to more or less a degree real, depending on their particular mental state - but make no mistake, many people's mental and emotional experience is just as authentic as your "falling in love," yet it's toward Allah or
Sathya Sai Baba. Let me here quote Sam Harris again (in speaking about spiritual experiences): "What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate."
So just to reiterate what he's saying: yes those "falling in love" experiences are useful in telling us things about our own mind - but are not useful in telling us things about the world. So however great your reasons for falling in love are, and however big your emotions are - they are slightly more than useless in telling us whether a statement like "God exists" or "Jesus ascended bodily into heaven" are true.
And Julie, I apologize if I was unclear. My question wasn't "why would someone choose to seek out God." I think I understand that to some degree, as I did it myself for about 20 years. My question, instead was HOW is it possible to determine which God or "religion" is true, if you've forsaken reason in your "leap of faith." As long as we're defining leap of faith in the Kierkegaardian way as a deciding to believe something without empircal evidence that it's true. My question, really, is this: In looking at all these religions, as you did, when it comes down to it, you're looking at a set of propositions which, basically, are not convincing in their own right. All of these are religions that REQUIRE you to stop thinking about logic and reason, and just DECIDE that one of them is true, right? That's what I understand when someone says "faith comes first." Obviously they're not convincing from a logical point of view, or you wouldn't NEED faith to come first - it would be just as convincing as 2+2=4 or believing there's really a chair underneath you. So, if there is a road of logic that leads to a chasm. On the other side of the chasm you see Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Jehovahs witnesses, and leading away from all of those is their own road of "logic (the logic of the Bible that God reveals to you AFTER your leap of faith)," how do you decide which one to jump to?, if you "logic" map likewise has a blank spot there?
I think it's also important to point out is the false dilemma I think people push themselves into during these encounters. As you said, "I became knowledgable on J.W., Mormons, evolution, Christianity and New Age." As though, if you found all but New Age to not make sense, you would default to New Age...or none of them make sense except evolution, so you default to evolution. We have to give ourselves the license to say "I don't know." There is so much confusion, I think, in people thinking that poking holes in evolution makes the doctrine of creationism and christianity on iota more likely. It doesn't. If evolution is false (which the evidence points heavily to it not being false, but that's not this argument), it is a perfectly respectable position for an atheist to simply be an atheist - not knowing how the life around us came to be. We need not believe ANYTHING on insufficient evidence. We would, in most cases do well to side with the position that is most likely - has the most evidence on its side - but if I, for some strange reason, had to say I'd die rather than say that the big bang theory may be overturned in the future, I'd plead ignorance rather than arrogance.
And just one more thing, Julie, regarding yours. I don't understand why you would, at the same time both attempt to undermine the foundation of science, in saying that it requires faith, while using science to try and legitimize the Bible. You've admonished me twice now on how much the bible and science have in common. In fact, right now, with the uncertainty principle in quantum theory as well as more "recent" discoveries like "action at a distance," if science bolsters any one faith system it's new age or eastern philosophy, hands down. You can point to some things in the Bible like the the water cycle in Job or the circulation of the atmosphere in Ecclesiasties, but when we come to parts like Leviticus 11:6 "And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you." (hares don't chew the cud) Or Job 9:6, "Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble." (the earth does not stand on pillars, though many ancient cultures said similar things) Or 1 Kings 7:23 - "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it." (Notice anything wrong? In this verse, pi=3), people will say that many of these verses in the bible are "figurative" or "the bible isn't a science book" or that there was somehow a miracle that made the animals bred in front of the striped sticks turn out all stripey. This makes the argument very convenient - either it's science, or a miracle, and therefore everything, both benign and strange, in the Bible, is easily accounted for. I'd just like to point out that Harry Potter is a true story as well, as long as everything in it is science, a miracle, figurative language, or just "rounding off." You can choose a few a FEW verses in the bible that support science.
This website catalogues some. Many of them literally made me laugh out loud in how far they're stretching. "Jeremiah 33:22 “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendants of David My servant and the Levites who minister to Me.” Yes, the bible says there are a lot of stars. I don't think it's surprising that a culture that hadn't discovered Zero yet couldn't count them all. Is this really a convincing argument that it was inspired by God?
The question comes down to, what is more likely? Is it more likely that this book is the literal truth which the only true God revealed to people 2-6 thousand years ago in which he developed a system where he would forever after reveal himself to people only in a falling in love type experience and those peoples acceptance of that experience, and the acceptance of several empirical truth statements (jesus was born of a virgin, enoch went into heaven in a fiery chariot) that are joined to it, would determine the salvation or damnation of these people for eternity? - or, is it more likely that this book is the mythology of a group or "race" of people, similar to the mythologies of the people around them, joined with turn of the millenium writings on doctrine, similar to philosophy written by others around that time, about a cult with a central figure that performed miracles and made claims, similar to claims and miracles made before that time, during that time, and all throughout history? Is it more likely that Christianity is unique in its non-empirically supported claims, or like every other group that has developed non-empirically supported religious claims? Should we accept any of these claims because of ancient mythology and mountain top experience? I think you know my answer.
Every facet of our universe is touched by this. We move from a view based on tradition to a view based on discovery and learning, and expanding. Our definitions have changed, anthropologists even have a difficult time defining what exactly sets us apart as "humans." It used to be activity, like tool making, but gorillas were found to do that, even birds and insects have been found to do that. We're so much a part of this world and we are so lucky to be living in a time where we're beginning, at such an accelerated rate, to see what we are, and what this universe is.
