@nferyn,
As earlier, I'm actually not given to recycled and protracted arguments for the sake of it; but for the present would oblige you this once.
Your reply actually strengthens the point I intended to make.
Not one bit.
When you talk about your personal experience of healing as a manifestation and evidence of the holy spirit, you actually use anecdote and assertion (e.g. that experience is a manifestation of the holy spirit) to make your point. It does absolutely nothing to substantiate the validity of your worldview. Only normalised data, either coming from controlled experiments or from rigorous statistical analysis can do such a thing.
This gentleman does not even know the rubrics of a good argument. Why should
experience be ruled out of the question of this debate? Whether controlled or otherwise, I have offered you the same challenge to go out and apply the same rule you devise and obtain the same results. Then, and only then, can you have a genuine basis for a good argument; in which case, it no longer becomes
my personal experience - but yours as well.
Do you deny that personal experiences are nothing more than anecdotal evidence for your position? If not, your point is mute. It doesn't matter a bit whether or not I experience it as well, the same rule applies to my experiences and they are equally anecdotal and thus carry insufficient weight.
Your attempt to contrain issues of this sort to only normalised data is naive. How many experiences in life have you applied such data to predict 'rigorous statistical analysis' with the same results every single time??
Only normalised data can rise above the subjective status of personal experience
In other words, I first need to accept the validity of your holy spirit before we can discuss it's validity or what it actually means? Isn't that a wee bit circular?
No; if at all it may be, then it weighs heavily against your arguments.
How so?
You are trying to subject terms associated with spirituality to the constrained vocabulary of naturalism.
In what way is the vocabulary of naturalism constrained?
If you cannot accept the definitions used in issues outside naturalism, then you have no justification for rejecting outright what you neither have experienced nor can explicate.
If only such definitions were clarifying the issues at all, but they rather blur them. How could you possibly know that the holy spirit you experience is the same phenomenon as what e.g. your neighbour claims to be the same holy spirit? Outside the confines of
methodological naturalism, there is absolutely no way of knowing.
I'm not denying those spiritual experiences per se (in many cases, they can actually even be measured), but rather the explanations that are given to them
They map the spiritual experiences they have to the interpretative framework they know: a Christian may call it holy spirit, a Buddhist will call it something else. To validate your interpretation over others, the very validity of your conceptual framework needs to be established first. If not the whole discussion is only semantics
Your semantics is rather circular. Do naturalists not do the very same thing that you fail to appreciate in other worldviews - 'map
their experiences to the very interpretative framework they know'?
Methodological naturalism is a framework we all know and live by most of the time. It's that which is shared accross all cultures, continents and regions. The predicatability and lawfulness of most of our experiences attest to that. Formalised methodological naturalism, as expressed in the scientific method, has ellucidated so many phenomena that were in the past ascribed to supernatural agency and brought them firmly into the realm of natural law.
Implying supernatural agency actually shelters those phenomena from explanation. These implications are rather assertions that are not backed up by any evidence, statements of faith.
Buddists do not speak of the Holy Spirit by another nomenclature, because it is not in their theology in the frst place. To interject this allusion is not providing an open, honest basis for discussion.
I wasn't referring to theology (a queer concept in the case of buddhism, as they do not believe in a god at all), but to the spiritual
experiences, which are very similar in neurological terms and, given the current state of our knowledge of cognitive mechanisms, interact with specific, already existing memeplexes in the brain. You can even induce these experiences by giving specific direct neurological stimuli: e.g. you can make Christians
feel the holy spirit in a strictly pavlovian way.
I do find a lot of doctrinary differences between these religions. I don't see any fundamental difference in the spiritual experiences of their practitioners, though.
There are indeed differences in spiritual experiences, as well as doctrinal, philosophical and cultural leanings in all religions. One cannot equate them with a broad stroke of the brush the way many people often do.
I only equated the experiences (similar brain patterns) and ascribed the different interpretations given to them to the specific cultural/religious background of those people.
I do not make those kind of claims, so why would I have to show you that I have any healing powers when I explicitely claim not to have these powers
That is why you cannot interpret these expriences with any degree of certainty as merely "anecdotes and assertions".
In the absence of objective evidence, that's all I can do. You are the one making huge leaps of faith here.
In this regard, I offered you to take the same "anecotes and assertions" to the field, test them out and report back to the Forum that people got healed in exactly the same way that I calimed in my experience. What you do not have cannot be interpreted merely to interjections.
Once more, I do not deny the experience, but rather the validity of the explantions given to them
Me, naive? You clearly ascribe positive events to something that cannot, in principle, be investigated and then you call me naive. The irony Wink
Right, I guess that 'naive' was rather too strong a word - and in good sense I take it back. However, how are you sure that religious experiences cannot, in principle, be investigated?
Not exactly the experiences but rather the interpretations if based on a subjective, self-referential framework.
Is it rather not ironic that you can draw this inference already without having first taken the challenges offered to go out and face the reality of the claims?
I don't get your point here. What challenges?
Actual knowledge is obtained through the application of the scientific method. Either explicitely or implicitely. There is no other knowledge that can stand any test of intersubjectivity. Claims that cannot be tested are hollow.
You therefore make the rascally claim that science answers every single question of reality in the universe, not so?
I don't. Reality and knowledge are not exactly the same concepts. Objective knowledge is only obtained through the scienctific method (again, implicitely or explicitely)
I'll humbly request your answers to this: how has science implicitly or explicitly provided knowledge on paranormal phenomena, the bizaar, and the philosophical?
You need to ellaborate a little more on these points they're such broad statements that they are impossible to answer. Many
paranormal phenomena have been investigated through the scientific method. Science has had an enormous impact on philosophy, but these are different areas of discourse. Some fields of philosophy (e.g. metaphysics) are outside the bound of sciences, others (e.g. epistemology) are strongly influenced by the scientific method and others still (e.g. cosmology) are basically taken over by science.
To do such a thing I would first need to accept the premisse that demons actually exist, something I don't.
You may not believe that they do exist; but your own disavowal does not negate their existence.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We're still waiting for any evidence for the existence of demons.
Yes and your experience isn't influenced by your perceptive an interpretative neurological framework? I know mine is, that's why controlled tests and/or statistical analysis are necessary to interprete these kind of experiences.
How many have you actually tested out in the same construct being discussed?
Meaning?
No I don't, but you use those reformed criminals as evidence for the power of Christ. I use the equally irrelevant fact that there are proportionally far less atheists in prison to show that your test of that power isn't a test at all
Then you would have to explain the phenomenon of people whose lives have been transformed by coming to a living faith in Jesus Christ. If you are pitting atheism against Christianity on the same pedestal, then you assume that everyone who is not a Christian must be atheist, no? You're making broad references that you cannot sustain in its logical ends.
I'm not pitting atheism against christianity. I'm merely using this statement of fact to show that your reasoning doesn't hold water. The (positive) consequences of a belief have no bearing on the validity of that belief.
If I believe I have a fabulous treasure of gold burried in my garden, that belief may very well make me happy, but that doesn't mean there's any treasure at all.
Now that wouyld really be a sad thing. I still hold on to the belief that most Christians are actually moral people, but contrary to what they think, their morality does not originate in their belief. If that were the case, all those non-christians should be on a constant rampage.
Let me assure you, a true Christian derives his morality from the Bible.
But only those verses that still hold true in today's world. I guess few Christians would quote Deuteronomy as the source of their morality, wouldn't they? What exactly is the arbiter in that selection?
As for non-christians constantly being on the rampage, it would not take away from the affirmation that Christians values, as far as morality goes, are established in belief.
Maybe solidified would be a better word. Established seems to be wishful thinking on behalf of those Christians.
Nonetheless, that is not to suggest that non-Christians do not have values and morals; but it is wrong to suppose that the morality of Christians do not originate in their belief.
What then is the source of these morals if the Christians claim their morals to be based on the Bible?
Atheism is actually very simple: it's only and merely a lack of belief in (a) god(s). Only when theists try to frame the debate are they turning it into something else.
Please, let's just be real here. You're recycling this weathered excuse that you left as an unfinished business in your debate to
4get_me's well articulated discourse in this thread:
Refuting Monotheism: God Does Not Exist. Atheism proper is NOT a lack of belief in (a) god(s) - it is the active claim that there is NO god(s), usually configured by
atheists themselves in the terse quip: "God does NOT exist." Even in that thread, you nferyn, had admitted the same
atheistic definition; and your inference here is untennable.
I won't rehash that debate here. It's a common tactic of theists to turn atheism in a positive claim for the non existence of God to shift the burden of proof. Most atheists do not ascribe to that position. I don't remember exactly why I didn't follow up on that debate, but the main thing
4get_me elloquently and courteously did in his last reply was playing a very skillful semantic game. Fact is that all atheists lack a belief in god(s), some positively deny the existence of god(s), others don't. Limiting the atheist position to that of a minority among them is dishonest.
For Christians on the other hand, the matter is not that simple, as the bitter doctrinal disputes among the various nominations and sects only amplify. Some here would even go as far as saying that Catholics aren't really Christians, hence the "self-professed" adjective.
Doctrinal or philosophical disputes do not negate any particular worldview - rather, that is what accentuates them; though one never has to celebrate or applauds disputes.
No they don't, but it's still far more difficult to define what a true Christian is than to define what an atheist is.
Many people who see themselves as atheists have not always shared the same views on atheistic issues or positions,
That's mainly because atheism isn't a worldview, just as theism isn't a worldview. Christianity and Secular Humanism could be considered worldviews, but not theism or atheism.
and you only have to read again how this was pointed out in the link above to 4get_me's discourse.
I am yet to hear the first intra-atheist debate on what true atheism is. It's really a non issue among atheists.
The plural of anecdote does not equal data and definitely does not equal evidence. Your point of view cannot objectively be shown to be more valid than that of Muslims, Buddhist, Hindus, Jews, etc.
When you test
experience against your supposed "data", then you find that your proposal of a
naturalistic perspective is not any more valid than the objectivity you decry in others.
I don't really understand your statement here. Can you rephrase?
Only a methodologically naturalistic point of view can cross that divide
I knew you could not resist the urge to preach
your own worldview -
naturalism.
You misunderstood my point: methodological naturalism (which is not a worldview, contrary to metaphycisal naturalism), is the only method that provides a common language to cross the subjective divides of the different religions.
The only problem is that your worldview is still limp in the face of the many questions it has yet to answer.
Which worldview are you talking about?
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