Wanting to Believe

Nosyned,Consider this analogy. You hear that's there's this great looking gal in town, looking for a guy like you for company. And, you're handy, free, etc. Now, if you are a homosexual, you couldn't care less, and she's not going to do anything to meet you. If you want to meet her, to exploit her in some way, again, any efforts you may make to meet her, she will, if she can, foil. If you want to meet her, to deal honorably and respectfully with her, she will see to it that you get evidence confirming that she's in town, and her number.So, someone comes along and talks about her presence in town, wondering whether it's true or not. Epistemologically, you present the data you have. But, the validity of the data you have will depend on what you want, or don't want, from her. If you're intentions are dishonorable, you may have to report, as some here are inclined to say about God, "there is no evidence that's she's real." As long as she's in charge of the evidence, for you there never will be any evidence that she is real. She hopes she never meets you. This may not be the case in our analogy, but it certainly is the case with God.So, epistemologically, to know objectively the truth about God, you might well have to have certain desires and intentions, relative to Him and what you want or don't want from Him. A true truth seeker, wanting to learn the truth about persons, thus has to learn how to control their desires. You can only get the truth about certain persons if your desires are appropriate.I suggest an agnostic prayer, along the lines of, "Jehovah, if You are out there, make me want to relate to You in a way, that makes You want to reveal Yourself to me. Change the way I feel, what I want, what my standards of behavior are, so that I would be pleasing to you, and someone you want to be with. If, after I find out the truth about You, I do not want to be with You, I trust you will honor my prayer at that time to be given feelings appropriate to that way of life. Without any surprising needed change of heart in answer to this prayer, I will consider it your fault that I remain agnostic or atheistic."Feelings and desires have a role to play in applied epistemology. It is important to learn how to control them. Self-talk is good, but, in my experience, prayer words best.Stephen

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cos am prayin' for Sherlock tonight

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So Columbo is praying for Sherlock? I guess detectives have to stick together.

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Certainly I would have been Budhist if I lived over there.

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Not that I am trying to convert you (as I myself am not a Buddhist), but feel I should point out that you can be a buddhist over here too. You don't even have to give up on your faith in Christ's teachings. Not sure what they say about having to believe whether he is the son of God or not.Do some sleuthing... and ask just one more question before you break the case wide open.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Originally posted by Stephen

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I suggest an agnostic prayer . . .

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Stephen, I don't know about Ned's background, but I hope you don't think that all the millions of atheists and agnostics that came out of strong religious environments were simply too dense to understand the points you made in your post.Far from not understanding the essence of religious doctrine, most of us were simply unwilling to pretend there was any answer.Namaste'Amlodhi

Hehe - good one Holmes: Infact is Budhism the religion were you meditate and leave wordly goods behind?
I think I qualify accidentally . Lol Tee hee, you must have seen the programs, I feel a new topic coming on........"Columbo or Holmes, who was the best?"

That's the funniest thing I've ever heard you say.

Stephen, I know that women exist because I can physically interact with them, despite what my sexual preference may or may not be. Your analogy is lacking. Perhaps instead of a hot girl there is a Leprachaun who is giving out free wishes if he deems a person to be a trustworthy and respectable. I don't believe in Leprachauns because I have never physically interacted with one nor have evidence of one, so perhaps this would be a better test.[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 02-03-2004]

Hehe, it was a rib tickler, phone Budda.

AmlodhiYou note, In other words, "If it's true, I am unwilling to find out." That's what free will is all about! To those of us who believe, it's further confirmation of His amazing love, to give a created being the right to make such a choice. Praise the Lord!Stephen

Loudmouth,I agree that the analogy does not speak to the problem of prior credibility of the hypothesis, only to the problem of what sorts of materials and methods will be required to test it. Leprachauns being of such limited distribution and abundance, they are pretty chancy to experiment with. However, belief in and reported experiences with the God Jehovah, and with His fallen angel, Satan, are very widespread. Unless one has a really good reason to think they are very, very much wiser than the bulk of humanity (that says they have had contact with these beings), the prior plausibility of Jehovah, etc, is actually fairly high.Stephen

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However, belief in and reported experiences with the God Jehovah, and with His fallen angel, Satan, are very widespread. Unless one has a really good reason to think they are very, very much wiser than the bulk of humanity (that says they have had contact with these beings), the prior plausibility of Jehovah, etc, is actually fairly high.

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The messenger who ran to Marathon stopped along the way and talked to the god Pan. The Dahli Lama is supposed the reincarnation of a great holy man. Hindus have interacted with Vishnu. I could go on, but you get the point. Christians are hardly the only religion to claim interaction with dieties. I just believe that they all have the same level of credibility, between extremely thin to highly improbable. You seem to pick one out of many and proclaim it as right. I see no way to do this, and I have tried. I am not looking to convert, nor do I feel the need to. Perhaps we can simply let this lie and move on knowing that we are both very comfortable in our personal philosophies.

Oh dear God, you believe in Leprachauns too.Is their anything claimed as supernatural that you believe is actually made up?The amount of people who believe in the existence of or believe they have even had contact with God is not reason to conclude in the existence of that God, merely reason to conclude a compelling predisposition of humans to believe in a God. Such beliefs vary from Aboriginal Dreamtime scenarios to more contemporary Scientology beliefs and rebut any claim of one particular God.We believe in a God or Gods to deal with the reality of mortality. It may even be an evolutionary advantage.As Kryton said in The BBC series Red Dwarf, you humans believe in God to stop yourselves going mad.Well, in some cases.

Loudmouth,I agree. We are getting distracted from the challenge of designing and running some prayer experiments.S.

Running out of time today, but in the near future. I now have some more thoughts on that, not specific to methodology but in the philosophy. Anyway, talk later.

Far from not understanding the essence of religious doctrine, most of us were simply unwilling to pretend there was any answer.

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Response by Stephen ben Yeshua:

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In other words, "If it's true, I am unwilling to find out."

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What????? C'mon Stephen, your reading comprehension skills are better than that.Please do not malign my statements in the future.Namaste'Amlodhi

G.Responding to your comments, Don't be silly. When someone describes mythological Leprachauns to me, I attempt to assign an a priori plausibility to some idea that explains why anyone would "make up" such an idea. Same with UFO's. There are many explanations, so I end up with a suite of hypotheses, each with their own prior plausibility. From each of these, I try to deduce predictions, some of which concern historical anecdotes, others artistic renditions. Then, through reading or considering art, I confirm or not these predictions. Thus, my estimate of the plausibility of the various ideas concerning Leprachauns, etc changes.As things now stand in my mind, the Most Plausible Explanation for the imagining of Leprachauns is that demons exist, and manifest themselves in various forms (serpents, leprachauns, UFO's, etc.) in order to distract and manipulate humans from the more sensible mission of figuring out what the Bible is all about. Demons are widely considered to be persons, with names associated with their purpose or agendas. They are so widely experienced and discussed, compared to Leprachauns, that it makes sense to me to treat the latter as a manifestation of the former, and not a separate species.I of course have lots of questions to be answered when I get to heaven. The capacity to "make up" something from scratch, I try to avoid in my explanations. This stems from my long experience as a naturalist and an evolutionist, though. I see no reason for such an ability to evolve, or be adaptive. Every idea or imagination is a model for an attempt to understand something that is "really" out there, and what would be adaptive would be an effort, like the H-D method, which refines those models to make them correspond more exactly to what is "out there." Demons, malignant spiritual beings that lie a lot, complicate and frustrate this process, so that some "made up" stuff is really a reaction to a deception and fraud. The idea of "one true God" in the midst of a pantheon of basically demons, with various degrees of malignancy, begins as mostly hopeful. Symbiosis is fairly common in nature, but nowhere near as common as predation and parasitism. But, if all we have are malignant (or neutral) spiritual beings in our ecosystem, we're screwed. Our only hope for a real, free life, is for there to be a "one true God." Now, I play bridge. When the only way I can win a hand is to hope for a curious distribution of outlying cards, that's what I play for. I play assuming that that unlikely lie of the cards is in fact true. If I win, it was true. If it's not true, I lose. Thus, I play for the presence of a "one true God" to be symbiotically linked to us ecologically, as a shepherd is to their sheep. And I keep winning, as long as I make this assumption. Objectively winning, I might add. I've spent a lot of time around drug addicts and alcoholics, who will tell me that they are winning, and subjectively believe it. But the data do not confirm. Even their own reports of ecstasy/happiness vs misery/depression are unbalanced to the negative. So, for myself, I keep objective records and get outside confirmation that I am really happier, winning, when I play for the one true God.But there are other evidences as well. Bible Codes for example, and prayer studies, Theomatics. Did you get, by the way, my thanks for the lead to Panin's Panic? A useful analysis, but I still am predicting that a study of the number of found patterns will exceed those predicted by the null-hypothesis. McKay's argument is very similar to the evolutionist's argument. Since a null hypothesis could produce the results, it did.I'm wandering. If this is true, then atheists have gone mad, and can be discounted in any debate. And, actually, I think that it is true. Madness in humans I believe is similar to madness in dogs and cows, due to a parasite or pathogen, but a spiritual (similar to dark matter) pathogen. This accounts for the morality of God killing so many people. His goes about this the way we go about killing whole herds of cattle; to save the species. You'd think, being all powerful, He could cure instead of kill. Actually, I believe that He can. But, free will being what it is, He doesn't unless asked to, correctly. When this is clearly not going to happen, He gets rid of the mad human disease by killing those infected.Stephen