The first part about the Gospels, I'm going to ignore it because the Bible is little more than a fiction book like Don Quixote or Harry Potter, so I couldn't care less about how they describe their fictional characters (and I too believe J. K. Rowling is better at that than the several old ages people/translators who are responsible for the mishmash of texts that is the modern-day Bible but w/e).
First of all, the Bible originates from an oral tradition handed down for many generations before being committed to writing, then being translated and re-translated, etc. Which makes it fundamentally different from a work of fiction written by a single author, or even a group of authors; it tells the tale of a people as seen from within their community, whereas a work of fiction springs from the author's personal imagination. And we can see the people in the Bible move from warrior to mythic over the course of the story, in accordance with early humanity's development.
Second of all, the first part of my post relates only incidentally to the Gospels. My point stands regardless of what's in the Bible, so that fact that it can also be seen in the Gospel story is in no way a legitimate reason to gloss over it! One's personal opinion of the Bible is fully irrelevant to my point.
Also philosophy =! evidence.
This is irrelevant to anything I've presented. My statements are not based on philosophy: they do not start with an assumption and then draw conclusions, but rather start with experiential data; I am starting with observation and drawing conclusions based upon experience and logical inference.
Have you heard about Russell's teapot?
All we can say
with certainty is that the existence of the teapot seems unlikely, but is possible. That's the nature of scientific inquiry.
But yet again, we have a fundamental difference between your argument and mine. The teapot is solely a hypothetical example; people don't actually report seeing or believing in it, either now or at any point in history. Spirit however, is essentially universal to human experience throughout the ages.
As far as I'm aware, the materialistic scientific worldview is currently the only one that has ever denied the existence of a Divine by default. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with this; the rational denial of Spirit has more depth than a mythic affirmation. But we would do well to come to terms with the fact that new and deeper ways of understanding the world have unfolded, and to take note that the Divine is often embraced by those who hold these worldviews.
And I have a problem with is the assertion made by Phantom that
all assertions of God's existence are prerational, which you also appear to be supporting. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is especially offensive when I have presented a well-reasoned, post-metaphysical approach to understanding God, and I am labeled as ignorant.
- If you can't give any POSITIVE proof of your being, you can't expect anybody else to refute your non-existing evidence.
Which holds no bearing here, as I have presented evidence, which you have attempted to refute. In addition, if your neighbor has looked out the window and seen that it isn't raining, while you have not gone and looked, what grounds do you have to draw
any conclusions, positive or negative, about her assertions?
That is sounds like rain outside? That the weatherman said it would rain? That it rains all the time here, so it's more likely than not that it's raining? That dry weather seems to just be something that people make up to get some relief from all the damp???
You must take the
injunction to have the
experience, after which comes
verification or refutation from others
who have also taken the injunction. Just like looking into a microscope in order to observe the structure of a plant, just like jogging every day for three months to see if it impacts your health, and just like engaging in regular transpersonal practices to see if you are indeed one with everything.
If this process is not followed, then one can do nothing more than abstractly reason out a conclusion, and point to circumstantial evidence that supports that conclusion, which is philosophy by any other name. If this process is not followed,
we are engaging in more of the same metaphysics that you seem to disapprove of!
- If your evidence is merely philosophical, or just faith-based (I believe there must be something like this), then it makes no difference to reality whether your statement is true or false. I can believe unicorns exist but they are just invisible or something. That doesn't add to our knowledge. That doesn't affect anybody's life. Whether the unicorns you believe in exist or not is, simply, irrelevant.
Again, I have not presented philosophical or belief-based arguments. The four quadrants of reality (interiors and exteriors of individuals and collectives), as well as the levels of development, are not philosophical assumptions. They are present in your direct and immediate awareness, and you don't even need special tools to verify that.
IIIIIIIII think you have misunderstood the result of the experiment. It does not prove God exists. It proves humans- well, you said it.
Pretty much! We can prove humans can go on a special state of concentration, maybe what can be considered "a trance" when they focus internally. It's not like it's something new, since there are many other religions (including several spiritual-based godless ones) that use the same ability, and even a relaxation course my mom attends every Thursday in which they are played relaxing, chant-like monotonous sounds and are taught to concentrate to "turn off" the brain from regular stress.
Of course, that tells us about the ability of the human mind to go on a special state of concentration... but using that to say "therefore God" is cheating, since that state can be attained without invoking any god whatsoever. Tsk tsk.
Let's examine the fallacies here. Relaxation is not the same thing as meditation - and if it were, then relaxation practice would, in fact, be a way to know Spirit/Mystery/God.
Psychologically speaking, what happens in mindfulness-type meditation is that one ceases to identify with anything that arises. Put differently, one's awareness becomes transpersonal because it is no longer restricted to the individual bodymind.
With enough regular practice, one reaches a Witnessing state in which one is solely identified with the transpersonal Emptiness in which existence is arising moment-to-moment, and eventually the Witness itself collapses when it is seen, finally and concretely, that the Witness is not separate from existence: the two arise together or not at all, just as the moon will not cast its reflection in a still pond unless both the moon and pond are present.
And once again, this Emptiness, the Witness, is not some philosophical speculation. It is the inner experience that is
consistently reported by longtime meditators.
Injunction, data, verification. No metaphysics involved!
And as to whether I've misunderstood the study, let me elaborate on how I reached my conclusion. When someone says "I feel fear," and we observe a physiological fight-or-flight response, we accept the fear as valid. When someone says "I feel happy," and we observe dopamine release and a change in demeanor, we accept the happiness as valid.
When someone says "I am speaking to God, and I hear her voice," we can observe activation of the language and concentration centers of the brain. When someone says "I feel one with everything," we can observe hemispheric synchronization, and specific brainwave patterns associated with meditative states. Why then would we conclude anything other than that the experience of God is valid?
As far as I can tell, that conclusion is based on nothing more than an assumption that God does not (or can not, or perhaps should not) exist, and that all interior states are merely inconsequential byproducts of chemical processes. This is scientific materialism at its "finest", and the irony here is that it is this materialistic view that is
actually based on metaphysical assumptions.
