RE: The Time My LSD Trip Suddenly Ended, and What I Learned About GOD
So would you say you have an experiential epistemology? What you experience determines your justified belief and truth? What if your experiences fool you? What if your memories of those experiences (which change when we access them) fool you? What if we don't fully understand the human body well enough to understand how it will react every time given various substances at various times? What weight do you give to what we know of the human mind and its desire to give meaning to everything, even when it shouldn't?
You might enjoy the topics discussed here: http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/a_belief.htm
Also, the books Thinking, Fast and Slow and Predictably Irrational. Stay on the journey of truth and improving your epistemology. That, I think, leaves to long-term well-being.
I knew I could count on you for some thought provoking questions. :)
I won't claim that my epistemology is air-tight, and I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong, but I'd say I rely on revelation, reason and experience. I would not say I have an experiential epistemology, as I don't believe experience can be fully trusted. Experience should confirm what we believe to be reality, or it can awaken us to truth, but faith should be rooted in reason, and ultimately revelation. Taking an existential leap of faith without an objective basis of belief to me seems unwise because yes, experiences can fool you. Ultimately though, if there really is a God, then revelation is the only means by which we can truly know him.
Would you agree though that it's impossible to escape our presuppositions when determining our epistemology? It seems to me that it's impossible to decide how we arrive at ultimate truth without first establishing a certain starting point. For example, if you presuppose that there is no God and we can only gain knowledge through observation, then revealed truth from God through a "sixth sense" will never form part of your epistemology. If I on the other hand reason that there is a God, and that he speaks, then it would naturally lead to a trust in divine revelation. That may sound to you like circular reasoning but I've never known anyone who could approach these questions without first taking up certain presuppositions that lead naturally to certain conclusions.
Thoughts?
How do you define revelation? What separates it from an "experience" of the physical world and labeled a "revelation" by your brain?
Discussing presuppositions gets into much deeper philosophical territory. I personally try to go with humility, skepticism, logic, reason, empirical evidence, and the scientific method... at least, that's my goal. Why? Isn't that all subjective? Well... yeah, maybe. But, so far, in my 37 years or life, that mix seems to work best and is (IMO) better than what I was previously doing. I'm open to adjusting it at any time, and I do recognize my own measuring is also flawed. I boil it down to building a world I and the people I love want to live in. That involves increasing human well being (both my own and others). Aspects of religion help with this quite a bit, but I think psychology, neuroscience, science, etc can help us know a little more about why aspects of religions are so helpful and why other aspects are so destructive.
We share the same desire - to build a world I and the people I love want to live in. I'm completely open to insights from psychology, neuroscience and science in general as I believe they can help us better understand the processes through which God works. And yes it's disappointing that religion (which I would sometimes differentiate from truth) sometimes makes people act in ways that are counter productive in bringing about positive societal change (escapism, abuse of influence, etc.)
Regarding revelation as a basis for my epistemology, my starting point is that we are spiritual beings and more than "matter in motion." As spiritual being we have an ability to "hear" God's voice and to "see" him in a spiritual sense. How is this different than an experience of the physical world? It's not, except that there's a measure of faith required. Not a blind leap of faith but one based on a reasonable decision to trust that the eye witness accounts of Christ's resurrection are trustworthy. This brings up another question but I'll ask on your post where you tell your story of changing your world view.
Thanks for the stimulating dialogue.
Thanks Jason!
My study of the reliability of eye-witness accounts really impacted my views there. Humans are provably really bad at this. If that's the extraordinary evidence we have for the extraordinary claims made, we should probably get some better evidence (IMO).
Also, I think faith is separate from trust (though many put them together). For me, trust is based on experience and empirical evidence, demonstrated consistently over time.
If your answer to accepting a revelation-based epistemology is "We're spiritual beings", how do you know you're not begging the question?
I'm not a fan of this language because few I've ever met who follow God claim to physically "hear" him. It's incorrect language which prevents our logic and reason from kicking in effectively. Same goes for "seeing" God. Our eyes are not involved in that process. To me, it would be more accurate to describe these events as experiences, often emotional ones, which get interpreted by our brains and labeled. Which labels are used depends greatly on where you are born (Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, etc).