Prerequisites for Spiritual Knowledge

[Prince_James]

LightGigantic produces an argument which, when considered, is actually rather intriguing:

Before one can deal with any issue, one must become socialized in the culture that produces such answers and of course, must go through the processes. Accordingly, in order to speak of electrons and neutrons one must be encultured into the broader scientific community and engage in the discipline of science in a scientific manner to achieve one's results. When taken to religion, this might imply work - such as meditation, prayer, et cetera - in order to gain results. Accordingly, one cannot out right refute a religion dependent on such things without having gone through them.

On the other hand...I'd strongly disagree that this extends to philosophic principles, as opposed to what might be considered experiential/mystic. For philosophic principles fundamentally rest on something we all have equal access to, namely, reason. Accordingly, no one - including a slave boy, as Socrates demonstrated - is alien to the process of reason. Hence, there can be no special knowledge or process needed to verify any of the overall claims of a religion, such as the problem of evil, the nature of God, et cetera, et cetera...

 

[spidergoat]

Nonsense. Scientific truths can be demonstrated clearly to the uninitiated. Science is based on reason.

 

[(Q)]

LG argument isn't that intriguing considering that electrons and neutrons can be demonstrated regardless of whoever is observing, while nothing he argues in favor of religion can be demonstrated.

And besides, there are a number of people here who've engaged in their religions at great lengths and found nothing.

 

[Prince_James]

Spidergoat:

Scioentific truths are not based on reason - they are based on empirical analysis. Moreover, they require a set of axioms to work on which are not self-evident, such as the reliability of the senses, the doctrine of repeatability, the exclusion of extraneous entities, et cetera, et cetera. Moreover, if proper procedure, tools, et cetera, are not used, science cannot function. Attempt to show a cell to someone who won't look in the microscope and you'll see why.

Q:

Very true. Many peoplre receive no results. Accordingly, we can classify those as ineffective methods for all people. However, in order to verify the claims of a religion one has to, at least in part, buy into the method prescribed to attain it for at least a period of reasonable time. One cannot expect to become a yogic master without mastering yoga.

 

[spidergoat]

Looking in a microscope is hardly an esoteric procedure, requiring the acceptance of a culture.

 

[(Q)]

Very true. Many peoplre receive no results. Accordingly, we can classify those as ineffective methods for all people. However, in order to verify the claims of a religion one has to, at least in part, buy into the method prescribed to attain it for at least a period of reasonable time. One cannot expect to become a yogic master without mastering yoga.

Fair enough. But, what exactly does one master with religion? It would appear the only "requirement" to master a religion is a suspension of disbelief. The rest is ritual.

 

[S.A.M.]

Fair enough. But, what exactly does one master with religion? It would appear the only "requirement" to master a religion is a suspension of disbelief. The rest is ritual.

So is a ritual not a learning process? Ultimately all knowledge is based on symbolic representation.

One masters language and communication, also by ritual; habits, decision making, exercise, craft, art, abilities, meditation, training are all garnered by ritual practices. Knowledge itself is gained by ritual habits like reading and writing which in the long run lead to increase in abilities of concept formation, comprehension and enhanced cognition.

Whats wrong with ritual?

 

[SkinWalker]

There are people that claim to be "experts" in all manner of nonsense. There are people who teach "classes" in one apparently non-existent idea after another:

ESP, Remote Viewing, Psychic Dreaming

Astrology & Horoscopes

Tarot Cards

Homeopathy

UFOs

You can even become a certified "White Noise Technician"

There are thousands of different religious organizations that claim to offer "religious knowledge" in the same way. No difference.

If the believer uses the right language, adds the right obfuscation to inquiry and reasoned challenges, then he/she might be able to lay claim to the title "expert" in their load of crap as well.

Simply put, the notion that there are those who are "uniquely qualified" to discuss theistic mumbo-jumbo is a lie perpetuated by those that don't want their mumbo-jumbo questioned and criticized by those that aren't willing to buy into it. LG and others use deception to obfuscate and cloud the issue at hand, hoping that the quantity of their words will be enough, regardless of the quality of them.

If anyone is uniquely qualified to comment on theism, theology and religion in general, its sociologists and anthropologists, not the self-assigned "theologists."

 

[IceAgeCivilizations]

Nothing wrong with rituals, as long as they signify truths, but performing rituals never provides enlightenment, in and of themselves, they are merely remembrances essentially.

 

[S.A.M.]

Nothing wrong with rituals, as long as they signify truths, but performing rituals never provides enlightenment, in and of themselves, they are merely remembrances essentially.

Rituals play a significant part in reinforcement which in turn contribute to learning. "Truth" is subjective since it usually designates what you choose to believe, the relative validity of different points of view. Where there is no falsifiability, objectivity is an assumption, not a self evident fact. Reason can only be applied where there is falsifiability, however the significance of abstract thought and symbolism and its contribution to the growth and development of human beings is not an insignificant part of life, as we know it.

Meditation, yoga, prayer are all different rituals that aid in spiritual health. That is why most religions have some combination of ritual or the other.

 

[spidergoat]

So is a ritual not a learning process?

Ritual is a drug, as opposed to a rational process of finding things out. It's intoxicating, and teaches by positive reinforcement of a (possibly irrational) message with pleasure. Religious ritual is a type of conditioning.

 

[SkinWalker]

So is a ritual not a learning process? Ultimately all knowledge is based on symbolic representation.

One masters language and communication, also by ritual; habits, decision making, exercise, craft, art, abilities, meditation, training are all garnered by ritual practices. Knowledge itself is gained by ritual habits like reading and writing which in the long run lead to increase in abilities of concept formation, comprehension and enhanced cognition.

Whats wrong with ritual?

Yes, but ritual processes can be learned by anyone. I've participated in many ritual processes of religions that vary from Catholic to Crow. I was able to attend Mass with Catholics and even had the "rights" to pour a sweat in the Crow tradition. I poured many. But I've no delusion that either of these rituals provided any line of communication to anyone but myself. Through each of these (as well as other religious rituals), I was able to find something out about my self. Nothing mystical. Nothing magical. Nothing theological.

What LG is claiming, however, is that there is some "special knowledge" that adherents obtain in their religious belief that non-believers "can't know" (ostensibly because they don't believe). This is his convenient and deceptive cop-out to criticism by non-believers that offer question the legitimacy of theology.

 

[S.A.M.]

Ritual is a drug, as opposed to a rational process of finding things out. It's intoxicating, and teaches by positive reinforcement of a (possibly irrational) message with pleasure. Religious ritual is a type of conditioning.

The rational process itself follows a ritual since it is based on the assumption that subjective perception of phenomena constitute objective reality.

IOW, if from birth you were locked in a dark room with no light and no stimuli, then released at adulthood, what rational reasoning process would you possess? Could you identify a color, an animal, a flower? Would you know what money, house, family or friends mean? Could you add one plus one to get two ? Would you understand what "more" and "less" means? We accept the symbolism of everyday life because we have grown up conditioned with it.

 

[spidergoat]

You would not know the meaning of many of those things, but you would soon learn to recognize patterns.

The rational process does not teach us to accept things on faith, but to test our assumptions with experiment. Science does not depend on assuming subjective perceptions constitute objective reality, because through experimentation, we have discovered that solid objects are mostly space, nothing really touches anything else, and reality depends on one's point of view.

How science deals with that is to say that assuming such and such is true, we can extrapolate such and such a pattern. That is all. Within scientific statements is a definition of the limitations of our particular inquiry.

 

[S.A.M.]

This is his convenient and deceptive cop-out to criticism by non-believers that offer question the legitimacy of theology.

Yes but you question the legitimacy of theology based on your views of what you assume theology should represent; what most atheists fail to recognise is that culture and religion are inextricably linked and all manifested rituals of religion are expressions of an underlying belief in a structured universe. By dint of definition, all theists believe in a natural order of things, which they then ritualise and internalise in their culture. Regardless of what changes occur in the rituals and the culture, these rituals/culture are representations of the belief, much as language is the representation of a transfer in thought process.

 

[Sauna]

For philosophic principles fundamentally rest on something we all have equal access to, namely, reason.

Reason is trained, conditioned, an imposition, a requirement, not a free lunch.

 

[S.A.M.]

You would not know the meaning of many of those things, but you would soon learn to recognize patterns.

The rational process does not teach us to accept things on faith, but to test our assumptions with experiment. Science does not depend on assuming subjective perceptions constitute objective reality, because through experimentation, we have discovered that solid objects are mostly space, nothing really touches anything else, and reality depends on one's point of view.

How science deals with that is to say that assuming such and such is true, we can extrapolate such and such a pattern. That is all. Within scientific statements is a definition of the limitations of our particular inquiry.

Yes but the pattern formation is itself an assumption based on the extent of our perception.

e.g. is the sky blue?

are we "up" or "down"?

are relative objectivities and even after we recognise them as such (scientifically) we still maintain the assumption of our subjective perception as an objective reality.

Scientific enquiry itself is nothing but a translation of perception into assumptions on which we draw conclusions. What we cannot falsify we assume as a representation of reality within the confines of knowledge and ability. Further inferences are made from these conclusions leading to more inferences. At its very base though, if we simplify everything to its least common denominator the simplest questions of science are inexplicable and unanswerable.

e.g. if you break down all things in the universe to the smallest base unit that it is comprised of, can we answer the question "what is life?" Even if we reproduce in a petridish, we are still faced with the fact that we are more than the sum of our parts. And we do not question these "realities" because they surround us, they are what we perceive all the time. We know the sky is blue, we know that rocks are hard but skin is soft, we transfer our thoughts, work out problems, build technology. But at our base we are compositions of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen sulphur, the same inanimate things that surround us and with which we replenish and renew ourselves.

Science can answer the what and to a very limited extent it can answer the how (which of course builds with every advance we make) but it can never really answer the why.

And seeing as we are dissatisfied with incomplete equations, we can never be satisfied with a world where the why is incomplete. That is because we are as humans geared to finding patterns and structure, and we seek completion.

 

[SkinWalker]

I'd have to agree with just about everything Sam is saying, but I still don't see why there should be any "special knowledge" that exists as LG points out. Sam said, "all theists believe in a natural order of things," but I would add, "except where they believe in a supernatural order of things," which is frequent in theistic dogma and doctrine. At this point, the natural order of things no longer matters and the supernatural -that which cannot be demonstrated or evidenced- becomes that bit of "special knowledge" that LG and others profess exists but refuse to explain how they come about it beyond implying that "you have to believe first."

 

[IceAgeCivilizations]

In the Talmud, it is admitted that Jesus performed miracles.

 

[S.A.M.]

I'd have to agree with just about everything Sam is saying, but I still don't see why there should be any "special knowledge" that exists as LG points out. Sam said, "all theists believe in a natural order of things," but I would add, "except where they believe in a supernatural order of things," which is frequent in theistic dogma and doctrine. At this point, the natural order of things no longer matters and the supernatural -that which cannot be demonstrated or evidenced- becomes that bit of "special knowledge" that LG and others profess exists but refuse to explain how they come about it beyond implying that "you have to believe first."

The supernatural as one puts it is a cultural representation of the missing pieces of the puzzle. In the natural order of things, and believing all of the universe to be possessed of a system of natural order which governs its functioning, we (theists) are aware at some subconscious level, that change occurs. This change we manifest as time, a symbolic representation of change. We create time to represent change. And once we recognise the existence of time, it automatically gives rise to the supposition that all change must begin somewhere. The further back you go in your thoughts (more representations of conditioned concepts), the less obvious our understanding of time, space and order becomes. Ultimately we reach a point beyond which our concepts fail to make sense because we cannot grasp what they mean (inferences based on assumptions based on inferences based on assumptions). At that point, we crave structure and we create representations that enable us to form a subjective reality that we can grasp and comprehend as objective. That is religion. Once ritualised it fulfills its purpose of creating a pattern and structure that defines reality as we theists know it. Perhaps atheists do not recognise these patterns? Or have different conceptions of the universe and their place in it? I don't know.