Allright.
How do you distinguish between reality and wishful thinking?
What are your criteria for making this distinction?
I am taking this distinction for granted. Which is good enough for a part of everyday life; but is disasterously insufficient when it comes to seeking to figure out the purpose of my life, for example.
So I want to find something better, more reliable.
OK. I wasn't quite sure if it was a genuine interest in determining something or a way of getting answers to take shots at. I think to get a very good, solid answer to this - and even this might not be satisfying - would take the kind of work I don't think of as internet forum work, like thesis level carefulness and re-editing. The issue is relevent to everyone who believes in anything, but tends to get focused on theists or anyone who has a 'superstitious' belief.
One of the main reasons that I'm wondering about these things is this:
Many theists level charges and accusations against non-theists, such as, "you are being dishonest", "you are lying to yourselves", "the Truth is obvious, but you just refuse to accept it".
And since they do this so readily, I am presuming that the whole thing is really easy for them. So I'd like to know how they resolved the problem of distinguishing between reality and imagination.
I wouldn't and don't say those things. I think there are even monotheists who would avoid that kind of stuff. I do not think it easy, at all, for most of us. I think we have all undergone a lot of bad training. We are trained to believe things because of authority, tradition, family, because it says so in a book - the Bible, the Origin of the Species, whatever book. Of course some people actually chew their way through available research or deep religious experiences - meditation, whatever - and arrive at a more complete, solid belief, but I think these people are rare both on the rationalist side and the theist side. To undo training takes effort and courage. I think on the side of what are called supernatural phenomena we have been heavily trained not to notice, not to trust, not to think we could be special enough to experience them, that it is irrational or sinful to make claims, even in the privacy of our own heads, that we have heard or seen something out of what we are trained to see as the norm. We have a slightly different experience and the so called rational part of the mind rushes in and tries to explain it away. It was really _________. Messages of guilt and shame are also called up. Who do you think you are? Why would you experience this? Or if you are coming from a more fundmentalist background you might start thinking you are possessed, that it is Satan, because really you should get your religious ideas through the priest or reverend.
I am oversimplifying, but my main point is that as a person in this day and age we have been trained heavily both by rationalists and by religious people that we are silly, evil, crazy etc. if we take certain perceptions seriously.
For more than a thousand years the religious people have included torture, excommunication and death in the ways they have trained us not to have certain experiences. In the last few hundred years there has been a counter-trend that while physically vastly more restrained - except in communist coutries - has very effectively psychologically used shame and anger against people who have experiences outside the norm.
And the effects of this training are so fast - I cannot emphasize this enough - that anomalous experiences are dismissed by our well trained minds often before our conscious minds notice them. We may not even focus on how the mind explains away something. It happens so fast.
So I do not think it is easy or obvious given the state we are in. I am not a monotheist and I have a lot of problems with their churches and traditions and ideas about who we are and what we should be, etc. So you will obviously get very different responses from them.
But if there is only One True God, only One True Faith, then they are blameless, impossible to criticize, don't you think?
Well, I don't buy the premise so the conclusion just ain't the way I see things.
Like I said above, I realize I take things for granted. I'm sure this will earn me the scorn of many and even worse.
But for the life of me, there isn't a thing I would be sure of, there isn't a stance I couldn't find persuasive arguments both for and against.
I could have said that at certain times in my life and I feel that way at various times. You know, often when people ask me what I believe or if I believe in a certain thing, I tend to push them on this idea of belief. I think a lot of people confuse their official position with what they believe. If they really feel and experience their own beliefs I think they will notice they shift over time, there are periods of doubt and so on. I think I have come to some core beliefs, ones that slowly built up over time, but it is not this monolithic structure: I BELIEVE. If you have a kind of fascist self-control, which a lot of training can give you, and you don't notice and don't want to notice how complex your reactions, feelings, opinions, can be, well then I guess it is easier to lie and make absolute proclamations about one's own belief.
I don't understand - how is this an example of someone else's belief?
Well, you said 'a person' so I thought it was hypothetical. Maybe I was wrong. Let me know.
Sure, I agree. But what you're saying above is also consistent with the phenomenon of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If the reality vs. imagination distinction is valid, then in the case of belief in God, it should be possible to distinguish between the belief that has been arrived at by direct knowledge of God, and the belief that is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the latter being true, the other one false.
I'm afraid you're not going to like the answer: you have to trust you gut. I can guess an objection. You see people who trust their guts or claim to or seem to and they seem to believe in a God you don't like. Or you think they believe, actually for other reasons. Or they believe Jews are Satanic. Or gays should be killed. Or the Moon is made of cheese. And you don't want to be like them. So you have a judgement about this trusting your gut. It seems to lead to all sorts of bad things and how can one know if in your case it will or has led to a bad thing. Here's the thing. You already trust your gut, but about less (at least seemingly) charged or controversial things.
You read a paragraph in a book. You understand what you read. So you go on to the next paragraph. But wait a minute. Your brother read this same book and you remember that what he said happened and what it was about now seem clearly loopy. He misinterpreted things. He missed the whole scene with the duck. When you started asking him about it he got mad. He said he KNEW there was no duck in the book. He was sure. So how can you be sure you read the last paragraph correctly. Maybe you deluded yourself like he did. Skipped some key words. Etc.
But the fact is some people are better readers. And the fact is your gut feeling that you read that paragraph well is generally right.
I hope this metaphor is clear. Just because some people have poor intuitions and self-insight does not mean that you do. If the voice you mentioned tells you to get an Uzi and kill people with hats, my intuition tells me that you will not do this. It will scare you. We build up trust in our intuitions over time, but to actually get out of the corner we have been painted into, we must start allowing the time we open to certain perceptions to become longer. If you get scared that you have gone to far, are starting to delude yourself, well spend time with that feeling. You might find that you can connect that fear to things that happened to you in the past. You can begin to connect the feelings not to the perceptions but to what I have been calling training, something that can include things so subtle as your father tightening his jaw when certain questions are asked.
It CAN be a self-fulfilling prophecy in some cases. But if we all stopped acknowledging the skills we have because of what is possible no one would have any talents. And an enormous % of what we do and what we are good at includes leaps based on intuition and self-trust.
Yeah, I can sympathize. And I bet people who worry about such things are vastly more likely to enjoy Donnie Darko. And my intuition tells me that your intuition will get what I mean by this.
You know there are voices in the head that are bad too. Unfortunately religions (even secular ones) have called this voice the voice of reason or conscience.
That voice often says - or even worse quickly implies - things about who we are, as individuals - that are crippling. Then freeze us, shock us, wind us down in sequences of 'if that is true, then that might be true, and if that might be true.......' and on an on. Bits of truth tossed in to make sure the knife goes deep.
And I think part of the reason we listen to that voice is because we are so afraid of what we might do, think, notice, and especially feel if we trusted ourselves. And this is because of the past and what happened before that we think must happen again.
Pehaps this will seem rather oblique or unclear, but I am trying to answer your questions as directly as I can.
Just because other people's clarity and certainty has been so aweful does not mean that yours will be when you slowly and carefully allow yourself to be more and more certain and clear.
