I don't disagree, but I would question how many evangelicals subscribe to ID per se, which, as I pointed out, is largely shorn of theological doctrine. I think most evangelicals would as a group hold more of a literalistic "Goddidit" set of beliefs, with an explicit appeal to the Judeo-Christian-style creator of Genesis.

Young-Earth Creationism, for instance, is not really compatible with ID as most commonly presented (though, at least some proponents of ID, e.g. Paul Nelson, are YEC's). — Arkady

A pertinent distinction can be made between current popular "ID" and the more academic and centuries-old "argument from design."

In current popular ID, the "Designer" is code for "God." God as current ID evangelical proponents conceive of him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

As I wonder what on Earth could actually be the argument for that--how is he quantifying complexity exactly? How is he determining how complex something has to be to create something of a particular complexity? Etc.

It's probably too much to type out a summary of whatever Dawkins' argument is, but is there maybe someplace online that I could read it? Even just on Google Books or via Amazon's "Look Inside" or something? — Terrapin Station

Dawkins expressed the argument in The Blind Watchmaker.

His primary argument is the positive one that natural selection can explain the complex adaptations of organisms, and he does this in great detail.

Then, as WIKI says:

After arguing that evolution is capable of explaining the origin of complexity, near the end of the book Dawkins uses this to argue against the existence of God: "a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution ... must already have been vastly complex in the first place ..."

He's just dismissing the ID argument by showing that by using the same reasoning about what counts as "complex" they used, he can postulate that a designer of their complexity must be "complex."

Note that the title The Blind Watchmaker alludes to the old watchmaker argument, but it is exactly this argument that ID revived in principle, and often used word-for-word in their presentations because of its commonsense appeal. Dawkins specifically addressed fundamentalist Christian ID in debates, some of which are probably still available online.

ID is a relatively theologically stripped-down version of creationism, at least with regard to its published theories. Though I don't have any polling data on this readily at hand, I would think that evangelicals lean more towards Young- or Old Earth Creationism than ID. — Arkady

Yes, ID transparently is repackaged Creationism. When several court decisions about the teaching of "Creation Science" in U.S. public schools came down against Creationism as a legitimate science, evangelicals repackaged it. ID was a rhetorical ploy to avoid mentioning God so as to appear to be a legitimate alternative scientific theory that should be taught in the schools along with evolution. "Teach the Controversy" was one of their slogans. But ID, too, was defeated in the courts. Scratch an evangelical and find a creationist, ID smokescreen notwithstanding.

I might also disagree that fundamentalists are just a subset of evangelicals, especially if we broaden the scope to include non-Christians. Not all religions are inherently evangelical (e.g. Judaism), and yet some non-evangelical religions have followers who can reasonably be called fundamentalists (e.g. the Ultra-Orthodox Jews).

Sure. The term "fundamentalist" is somewhat plastic. There are fundamentalists in many religions. As a group across religions, we can identify certain common characteristics.

And fundamentalists across religions may well subscribe to ID. But the ID arguments Dawkins was responding to was a widely circulated Protestant Christian fundamentalist argument.

@Arkady, @Wayfarer, @John

Just want to note that Dawkins' argument that an intelligence capable of designing and implementing something as complex as the universe would have to be more complex than the complexity it allegedly explains, is specifically a response to the widespread fundamentalist assertion that the complexity of the universe entails a "designer"--wink-wink: God as they conceive of him.

And also note that, contra John's assertion a ways back, these fundamentalists exist in the tens of millions. The 2011 Pew Forum study on global Christianity puts the evangelical population at 285,480,000, over 94 million of which are in the U.S. Strictly speaking, fundamentalists are a subset of evangelicals, but, as evangelicals themselves note, the differences are more differences of style than doctrinal substance, and fundamentalists are more literalist. In any case, evangelicals unanimously assert that the Bible is inerrant, and overwhelmingly subscribe to ID.

... But the point I'm making is simply to dismiss the accounts of religious experience as hallucinatory or delusional, is to undermine the foundational role of religious ideas in cultures. And this is something that is visibly happening in Western culture, leading to widespread feeings of alientation, anomie, nihilism, and the like. This is what Nietszche foresaw as the 'rise of nihilism' - something which he was both responsible for and a victim of. Many people who turn up on these forums post threads along the lines of the notion that life has no meaning and no value, we're all the products of a meaningless universe, and so on. This can have real consequences.

Many of the atheists who preach against religion, will often themselves admit that their beliefs undermine social values. Daniel Dennett, one of the 'new atheists', has himself admitted that, and said that 'the people' need to be able to 'believe' in their illusory gods (even if the intelligentsia, such as himself, realise that it's all brain-chemistry). Dawkins will say that Darwinism is a terrible basis for a social philosophy, without seeming to realise that he has devoted considerable vitriol to attempting to undermine the alternatives. But that's just typical of the confusion of modern culture. — Wayfarer

Indeed, beliefs have consequences--both positive and negative.

But it is a logical fallacy to accept or reject a proposition because we like or don't like the consequences of people's belief or disbelief in the proposition.

When I say 'fundamental to the world's cultures', I'm not engaging in hyperbole. Western culture was founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition; it used to be called 'Christendom'. Midde-eastern cultures were founded on Islam, Indian on Vedic religion, China on Taoism and Buddhism, and so on. So here I'm referring to the foundational role of religious revelation in cultural history. I'm not saying that this proves anything about the validity of this or that individual claim. But what I am saying is that if you dismiss religious claims generally - and many do! - then you're actually dismissing a foundational element of culture itself, and also saying that to that extent, world cultures were founded on hallucinations or delusions. (I'm sure Dawkins' ideas entail this, even if he would not be prepared to admit it.) And that is something that is actually happening, on a very large scale, in Western culture. There are literally libraries of books written on that topic. As you know, my major pre-occupation on this and other forums is arguing against materialism, on the basis that scientific materialism has morphed into a kind of pseudo-religious attitude to life. — Wayfarer

Culture is not "founded" on religion any more than it's founded on social relationships and power structures and food production and law and economics and technology and tribal allegiance and interaction with other cultures. Religion is a integral aspect of culture that arises with and evolves along with and influences and is influenced by other aspects. It arises in and evolves with the culture.

If as is often argued, the particular beings who populate the various religious experiences across different cultures are just the way people in a given culture understand the spiritual, then you have admitted that these people's brains filled in all those details with notions they were already familiar with, but you hang on to the claim that the source of the experiences is spiritual rather than the brain doing exactly the kind of thing we know brains do--generating narratives.

I don't agree, I think we ask others to corroborate, and this is the epistemic gold standard. I realize that in common experience there is a tendency to claim that I know it because I experienced it, but I think that this is hasty sloppiness in relation to true epistemic principles. Justification requires that the correctness of the belief be demonstrated, and justification is essential to knowledge under most epistemologies. This is the power of communication. If we can describe our experiences in a way which makes sense to others, we can justify our beliefs concerning these experiences. If others are unaccepting, there is no justification for those beliefs. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, if what we want, as in science, etc. are reliability and predictiveness, we have come to understand that independent intersubjective corroboration is the gold standard.

What I meant, though, and should have said, is that as far as most people are converned, their own personal experience is the gold standard--"Seeing is believing." It is notoriously difficult, to the point of impossible, to change some people's minds about certain beliefs, particularly of the kind that are not repeatable, even if others who witnessed the incident contradict the belief. Disoutes about remembered events are a common example.

Agreement among a favored group also us a powerful fact in both creating and sustaining belief--as in creationism, for instance--in the face of complete lack of supporting data, mountains of contrary data, and complete lack of corroboration by the informed judgment of scientists.

I think people use "know" for beliefs they're convinced of., and they're convinced because the belief has satisfied whatever intuitive or explicit epistemic standard they deem sufficient for the belief at issue.

And personal, first-hand experience is the epistemic gold standard--"I KNOW what I experienced."

Only problem is that there is much reason to be skeptical about certain kinds of beliefs, even if they are based on personal, first-hand experience. The uncontroversial fact that brains routinely generate convincing, realistic-seeming dreams demonstrates that brains are capable of generating fictional experiences, so generating an experience starring a being we already believe in, or are familiar with, is a piece of cake.

The reality-check centers of the brain that normally moderate thought content are known to be inactive during dreaming, which is how it is that the normal laws of reality can be violated in dreams. Seems to me that if these areas of the brain were suppressed while we're awake, then we would readily be convinced of the truth of a narrative involving some supernatural agent or other making contact with us from some other realm.

Are space aliens purportedly empirical entities? — John

Certainly not the ones who've done anal probes.

Well, Colin apparently has issues. I, for one, am willing to cut him a lot of slack.

What precludes that there might be a plurality of spiritual beings, or that the reality of those beings might be linked to the different spirits of different cultures? — John

Even space aliens who do anal probes?

One of the most common ways to deal with cognitive dissonance is to ignore questions that cause it.

But the problem is the bare noumenon hypothesis doesn't actually explain our experience at all, but rather it says that we can never know (discursively at least) the source of that experience. — John

The notion of the noumenon is reecognition of a limit about what it is possible for us to to know about our experiences.

Brain, I think the mistake you are making lies in thinking of the 'entities' encountered in mystical experiences in terms such that they must be either determinate quasi-empirical beings or else merely imaginary. I can tell you that for the person who experiences such presences, this either/ or question completely misses the mark. It is simply irrelevant to the question of their belief for the person who has first hand experiences of this kind. You are attempting to project your own kinds of worries and concerns onto another for whom such worries and concerns have no significance or importance at all.

You are in effect, saying, "you should be worried about, consumed by, these kinds of epistemic issues like I am". The question is: why should they be concerned with such issues, when such issues no longer matter to them at all? What do you actually think these people are losing? Not everyone is obsessed with the idea of avoiding being 'hoodwinked'; if you are like that then you will likely never have such an experience to be in the position to feel and assess firsthand its power to convince you. You will remain forever on the outside looking in, so to speak. — John

I have repeatedly acknowledged the fact that such experiences are compelling, and intractably convincing to the person who's had one. As far as they are concerned it's: "I KNOW what I experienced, case closed."

And I have explained why we have much reason to be highly skeptical of such experiences, whether our own or others'.

Surely you are skeptical of uncountable reports of such experiences--those, for instance that don't feature your own favorite supernatural characters?

Without identifying what has been claimed to have been experienced, how can you have sufficient reason to reject the claim?

Here's the difficulty. We have only the person's words to refer to in order to make that identification. The person said "I had an experience which makes me know that God exists". The experience has been identified as the experience which has resulted in me knowing that God exists. The person has only given us, as a description, or identifying features, that the said experience makes him know that God exists. All we have is the outcome of the experience, the result, the effect, we have absolutely no description of the experience itself. It is impossible that we have sufficient reason to reject the description of the experience, because we have no description of the experience. What we have is a description of the effects of the experience.

The effects of the experience are described as "I know that God exists". The only way that we have sufficient reason to reject the claim that an experience could cause one to know that God exists, is if we know that God does not exist, or if God's existence is something which cannot be known from experience. Then we could say that no possible experience could cause one to know that God exists. Therefore we could reject the identified experience, the one which results in the individual knowing that God exists, as impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I haven't said that "we have sufficient reason to reject the claim that an experience could cause one to know that God exists." Clearly there have been innumerable cases of people having experiences that caused them to believe that God exists. As well as Jesus, Mary, Satan, witches, demons, angels, Krishna, their deceased spouse, aliens who perform anal probes, or a cat named Mr. Paws

Rather, I have offered an alternative explanation for the experience, in which people's brains are producing the experience and casting it with beings they already believe in.

We have, as I argued in some detail a post or two ago, much reason to be highly skeptical of such claims.

It's a speculative metaphysical hypothesis, John--a way of explaining our experiences.

Just as alternative ways of explaining our experiences include that they are all there is (idealism), or our experiences are accurate, essentially mirrored, reflections of the way the world out there independently of us really is (naive realism), or are generated in us by the evil demon or by God or by the Matrix

So, for you there is nothing at all, in the sense of nothing real beyond the phenomenal, then? — John

???

I specifically said that the noumenon is a realist hypothesis.

It is proposed as the reality on which our phenomenal experiences are grounded. But since all we actually have access to are our phenomenal experiences, which are specific to the kind of creature we are, the kind of processing our particular systems produce in our interaction with the noumenon, we can say nothing about the noumenon except that it is the source or ground for those experiences. We have no way even in principle of telling what the noumenon is like--in itself--independently of our processing.

Emotions are intuitive, automatic, non-reflective value judgments that something is good or bad for us. Because they are non-conscious heuristics, though--fast and efficient, as wuliheron points out--they sometimes just plain get it wrong, and in many situations are insufficient, not accounting for relevant info that can be provided only via the slower, deliberative processes of rational cognition.

So, is "our particular kind of processing system" itself noumenal or phenomenal? Because if you say it is phenomenal and that we have no warrant for saying that the phenomenal reflects the noumenal at all, then it would seem that we could have no warrant to say that the phenomenal interacts with the noumenal as you have said it does.

On the other hand, if you say it is noumenal, then you again contradict the idea that we have no warrant to speak of the nature of the noumenal. So, either way your position seems to be mired in incoherence. — John

The way I think of it is this: "our particular kind of processing system" is phemomemal--a conceptualization, a mental construct--based on certain phenomena which are grounded in the noumenon/ And the noumenon also is a mental construct, one inferred from phenomenal experience as a realist hypothesis to explain the source or ground of phenomenal experience.

So it is a foil, or mirror of our evolutionarily inherited traits? — Punshhh

Well, I think we cannot say much if anything meaningful about what the noumenon "is" in any sense other than that it is what we interact with via our particular evolved capabilities, and this interaction produces our particular creature experiences, by which we megotiate our way in the world.

If Colin's own experience is not the best foundation for his beliefs then what is? The opinions of others who don't even know the nature of his experience? The opinions of the majority or "common sense"? There's mediocrity and its intellectual mediocracy in operation right there! — John

Little, if anything is more compelling than first-hand personal experience. Tenacious conviction of the truth of our own experiences (and memories) is universal, whether the experience is routine and uncontroversial, or radically divergent from normalcy and highly controversial--we are intractably convinced that we KNOW what we saw, heard, felt, etc.

But, though automatically and non-reflectively trusting our own experiences clearly works sufficiently well in everyday life, we also have much reason to be highly skeptical about certain experiences--our own or others'--that are outside the normal. And we know fully-well that brains sometimes radically misinterpret interactions with the world, can be tricked (for example by animals' protective coloration, as well as by stage magic and perception experiments), generate false memories, generate realistic dreams, and generate outlandish delusional beliefs (including, but not limited to those of paranoid psychotics). Additionally, we know that the tendency for the brain to generate abnormal experiences correlates with emotional stress, as well as with certain other contextual conditions, such as religious rituals, mucic, dance, and trance-inducing contexts.

We also know, as I've noted, that the content of such religious experiences correlates almost perfectly with the particular culture the person is embedded in. So, either the beings who populate all such experiences just happen to contact people who already believe in them, or people's brains are producing the experience and casting it with beings they already believe in.

Again, the point is that, irrespective of how compelling they are, we have much reason to be skeptical of claims and beliefs in certain kinds of experiences, whether they're our own or others'.

I think of the noumenon as the raw input that our particular human kind of processing system interacts with.

We are entirely oblivious to the great majority of it--no awareness whatsoever,

Our systems respond to certain aspects of the noumenon for processing as raw material for sensory input,

Our system's standard operating practice is to filter out or ignore most of the raw material that we are capable of processing, according to what we happen to be attending to at the moment

Our experiences are the result of what our particular kind of systems generate from processing the raw material from our interaction with the noumena.

So, since we know that our experiences of things and the predicates we ascribe to them are highly processed, transduced, filtered, augmented, suppressed, organized and reorganized--essentially constructed--we have reason to infer that our experiences no more reflect what the things in themselves independently of our procesdsing are like, or even that they are individuated into discrete things, than we have to believe that the magnetic patterns in a hard drive are reflected pictures of the text, videos, etc..

ss

The point being, that in the case of Colin's op there was no sufficient reason for rejection, only a bias concerning the nature of the thing which Colin referred to as "God". — Metaphysician Undercover

You've said both (1) that unless there's internal inconsistency or blatant contradiction in what a person claims, the experience can be assumed to be no other than the description of it, and we have no grounds for saying it's false, AND (2) that we can reject a person's claim if we think we have "sufficient reason" to reject it.

So which is it?

Note that when I suggested an alternative explanation--since we know full well that brains are prone to generate just such kinds of experiences, (especially in certain situations, such as emotional stress) and that the particulars the brain constructs the narrative with are those it's familiar with from its own particular social context (God or Jesus or Krishna or Mary or Athena or the Great Witch, etc.)--you insisted that we have no grounds for rejecting the claim, but rather, since we have no access to their experience, we must accept what the person has told us.

Your argument strikes me as ad hoc. Seems to be that if the report is about God in some sense, then we accept it, and have no grounds other (than the obviousd one of internal contradiction) for rejecting it. But for reports other than about God we can propose "sufficient reason" to reject it.

In this case, Granny has offered us some specifics. Mister Paws was on her bed. But we might know Mister Paws was buried in the ground, dead, with a cement block on top. So with a few other premises we can deductively conclude that for some reason granny is not giving us accurate information. — Metaphysician Undercover

But remember way back a post or two, when you said;

When the description is a description of one's own personal inner experience, how are you, as another, able to identify that experience in order to verify what is being said about it? The only access which you have, to enable identification, is through the means of the other's description. You can only identify that experience through the other's description of it. The described experience can be assumed to be no other than the description of it, without an accusation of lying. So how could you say that the description is false unless it contained inconsistency, or blatant contradiction?

And you surely realize that Granny was talking about a risen-from-the-dead supernauiral visiting-from- the-great-beyond version of Mr. Paws, right? So your attempted dodge about Mr. Paws being buried and covered with a cement block on top is irrelevant. Not to mention tjat since it was a cement truck that did him in, it's in plain bad taste to allege that's how they'd covered his grave.

What you've demonstrated here is that you really think that if we think we have sufficient eason to reject a person's claims about contact from the supernatural, then we reject their claim, and explain what they say they experienced according to our own alternative explanation.

But we have to first identify what is being referred to by the explanation, or description, before we can make any judgements about the truth or falsity of the description. When the description is a description of one's own personal inner experience, how are you, as another, able to identify that experience in order to verify what is being said about it? The only access which you have, to enable identification, is through the means of the other's description. You can only identify that experience through the other's description of it. The described experience can be assumed to be no other than the description of it, without an accusation of lying. So how could you say that the description is false unless it contained inconsistency, or blatant contradiction? But Colin is careful not to go there. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I said to Colin, no one is challenging his claim to have had a powerful experience. What we are able to address in such instances, though, is the propositional content of what a person has put on the table.

Consider this less contentious analogue: Grandma reports to us that she awoke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom last might, and her cat, Mister Paws, was waiting for her on the bed when she got back. He purred and snuggled her, and somehow communicated to her that he was doing fine, and didn't hold a grudge against the guy who flattened him with the cement truck last week.

Do we believe that Mr. Paws is alive and well in the great beyond and broke through and made contact with Granny, who is intransigently convinced, or do we think the more likely explanation for Granny's experience is that Granny's grieving brain generated the whole incident?

The widely preached fundamentalist Chridstian ID reasoning is that the complexity we observe in the world cannot possibly exist unless if was intended--designed, comprehended in its infinite details, created, and actively sustained by an intelligence capable of doing such a thing. By which they mean God as they conceive of him.

Dawkins is responding to these widespread notions of "Intelligent Design," and couches his response to them in the language and concepts of their widely preached and published notions of God.

Dawkins is responding to the widespread fundamentalist christian notions of "Intelligent Design" and couching his critique consistent with their widely preached notions of God.

Complexity can indeed excede the complexity of the causal agent, as, for example, when a vast and intricate ecosystem is caused by a beaver damming a stream, but nobody has said the beaver intended, designed, created out of nothing, and comprehended it in every infinite detail and inter-relationship.

Dawkins' inference is simply that surely an intelligence that could in every infinite detail and interrelationship intend, design, comprehend, know how to create, and manage the universe would be more complex than the complexities we limited humans are able to observe.

Nobody disputes that you've had some kind of powerful experience.

What is debatable, though, is your assertion that your experience involved a supernatural being--God--connecting with you, and that this therefore entails that God exists, and atheism is false.

So, your experience is yours, and you are free to interpret it any way you please, but your propositions are on the forum table open for discussion.

One counter to your assertion, for example, is that your own brain generated the experience, and therefore, you have not shown that atheism is false.

LOL.

This statement betrays a slight scientific bent. The term "equal" is inapplicable here, it is derived from a scientific reductionism which intends to reduce all qualities to quantities. When we compare one description, or explanation, to another, we cannot start with any assumptions of equality. Even that a plurality of descriptions might be differing descriptions of the same thing, is something which must be determined, i.e. that they are referring to the same thing. If we enter this process of determination with any premise of equality, such that we assume that two explanations are of the same thing for example, then we allow the possibility of mistake. So we dismiss equality altogether, and move to your second suggestion, which is purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

Pretty soapboxy.

And mistaken.

All I meant by "not equal" was, as I said, that different explanations have, for example, different purposes, different consequences, different degrees of confirmability. There are many other differences, of course (including explanatory power, predictiveness, logical coherence with other knowledge, falsifiability, etc.) Not only was I not priveleging scientific explanations, I was, in fact, acknowledging the legitimacy of explanations based on presuppositions and concepts different from those of science.

Also, you might note that the mentioned different purposes and different consequences do not entail reducing qualities to quantities, as you mistakenly insist. And though the reliableness of propositions can be measured quantitatively, even reliability is routinely judged qualitatively instead.

Purpose necessitates inequality in a number of different ways. What is relevant here, is that one's intended purpose influences the aspects of the observable object which, that individual has interest in, thereby influencing one's attention, consequently influencing one's description, explanation, or observation. "Purpose" is highly influenced by, but if you allow free will, not dictated by, social and historical context. The limits to the influence of social and historical context are the extent to which we follow conventions. Of course we must allow that conventions are themselves "becoming", coming into existence and evolving. This is the manifestation of free will, how we are, in actuality unconstrained by conventions. Conventions are the means by which the free willing being constrains the physical world, not vise versa.

Nothing I've said is inconsistent with this.

If you understand` what I described in the last paragraph you will see that we must allow as "very real", the expressions of individuals which are completely non-conventional. It is only by allowing the merit of the non-conventional that we allow the constraints of conventions to be transcended, and the evolutionary process to proceed. But the interesting thing here, which you have just pointed to, and which Wayfarer is highly in tune with, is that once we transcend the conventions of the particular culture which we exist within, we approach another layer of much more general conventions which seem to be proper to all of humanity.

There appears to be a true separation between these two layers. This I believe is due to the separation between what is important to us here and now, within an individual's life within a particular culture, and what is important in the very long term, important to life in general. So one set of conventions focuses the attention according to the intentions of here and now, very short term, while the other looks to the most long term intentions, I'll call this the timeless. This creates the separation, as the intermediary intentions become negligible, unimportant.

Well, people's expressions may be "very real," but that doesn't entail that we must accept that what they say is true, or even intelligible, just because they've expressed it, whether what they assert is conventional or not.

And if what someone else happens to care about is pragmatic applicability, or demonstrable predictiveness, or rigorous logical coherence with the rest of what he construes as knowledge, or empirical corroboration, or possible at least in principle to falsify, for example, and the very real expression at issue does not deliver these, then one would reject such expressions at least as irrelevant. On the other hand if, rather than these concerns, what someone cares mostly about is something else, such as, for example, a metaphysical explanation based on different concepts and presuppositions, and unencumbered by requirements of demonstrable predictiveness, falsifiability, etc. then this person will not judge certain of the very real expressions to be irrelevant, but rather as constituting important knowledge.

Gotta stop here, for now at least.

As I said, the issue here is one of convention. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, didn't mean to ignore what you've said, MU, just trying to see how it fits into my understanding.

I surely agree that there's much convention involved in the matter, starting with the particular ccontent of what people report about their experiences. This is pretty much what I meant by the historical and social context. People express their experiences in terms of the conventions of their particular social context.

Indeed, as you've noted, we express our various explanationsdof phenomena in the terms and framework of some set of conventions or other. But not all explanations are equal. Different explanations fulfill different purposes and have different consequences, reliableness, and degrees of confirmability.

But there's also a more general convention at play jere across history and cultures--namely that such experiences are of some kind of breakthrough from some other realm of reality. The particulars of this realm are often understood in terms that reflect the conventions of the particular social context, but the pattern of realm crossover is virtually universal. This, and other patterns that are found across cultures, are taken by some people as evidence of the existence of some other actual realm that's non-physical, and perhaps timeless. But that's just one category of explanation. The various sciences, increasingly the cognitive and evolution sciences, offer alternative, naturalistic explanations for the ubiquity of such patterns.

What 'science' deals with that? How do you go about it 'scientifically'? I mentioned before, although apparently I need not have bothered, that I have studied these exact questions through comparative relgion and anthropology, which in regards to this subject, are pretty close to what could be called scientific. — Wayfarer

Your point?

Do you assume that I haven't studied the same subjects, and read the books you mentioned?

But again, if you're claiming that the variety of religious experiences 'really are' able to be understood through sociological, cultural, psychological, or other such perspectives, then you're implicitly rejecting the idea that there is any valid object of religious cognition.

So - are you?

What I claim is that there are various ways of looking at, ways of understanding and explaining the phenomena at issue, and it is perfectly legitimate to do this from perspectives outside the perspective "from within"--which you privelege as the only legitimate one. Explanations from other perspectives are based on very different presuppositions and concepts than those used in the ones you characterize as "from within," and, in fact, we have advvanced our understanding of innumerable phenomena throughout history by adopting perspectives from outside the prevailing one.

And since you ask, I am perfectly willing to claim that sociological, cultural, psychological, and other such perspectives also provide much additional understanding about religious belief, behavior, and experience.

But when science is applied to subjects where it has no jurisdiction is precisely when it morphs into 'scientism'. And that is no more so than when it is applied to subjects rather than objects. And please spare the faithful the 'angry thunder god' hypothesis, it is patronising in the extreme. Certainly there are religious superstitions, but to equate religion and supersition is the essence of scientism. — Wayfarer

No jurisdiction?

If there are observable phenomena (the assertions people make about their experiences), and empirical data (the content of their explanations), then it is entirely within the "jurisdiction" of science to propose explanations.

Note that what you call "the angry thunder god hypothesis" quite pointedly reveals that legitimate--not to mention demonstrably reliable--explanations need not be based on the same premises and presuppositions and concepts as explanations "from within"--which is the whole point I was making. I was not equating religion and superstition. (Though now I do have the impression that you want to reject the innunerable superstitious aspects of religion as "not true religion.")

Because it is reductionistic, i.e. provides an explanation in terms other than those in which the reports are presented. — Wayfarer

First, note that the terms in which the reports are presented differ substantively from person to person, and demonstrably are terms from their own particular historical and social contexts.

Second, explanations from perspectives based on premises and concepts other than those used by the people reporting and interpreting their experiences are neither illegitimate nor necessarily reductionist. This is exactly how science hss advanced our understanding of the world, such as when it proposes explanations contrary to the shaman's, that the child's sickness is caused by microbes, rather than by the evil eye from the old lady who lives alone down by the river, and that seizures are caused by neurological malfunction rather than by demon possession.

I agree with you that the OP doesn't constitute any kind of argument. That was actually the first thing I said in this thread. But subsequently it has provided the opportunity to write about a subject of interest, so here we are.

In respect of the 'plastic divinity' - nice expression, by the way! - it's simply that if one were to accept the claims of all of those who say 'ours alone is the truth', then it is very easy to argue that if they all say that, then they all cancel each other out, there is no truth to be had - which is another common Dawkins style of argument.

So I am referring to the idea of an underlying truth, a philosophia perennis, of which the various specific traditions are instances. I know that claim is contestable, but in a pluralistic society I prefer it to the alternative. — Wayfarer

If it's legitimate to propose that people's reports of their alleged religious experiences are not really about the particular supernatural beings and events they say they are, but rather are evidence of some kind of "underlying truth, a philosophia perennis, of which the various specific traditions are instances." then why is it not legitimate to simply observe that the actual content they report is a function fo their social and historical context?

Furthermore, given our understanding of the brain's irrepressible tendency to automatically and largely non-consdciously construct some kind of meaningful explanatory narrative for our experiences--often a complete confabulation--I propose that the particular content the brain uses in these constructions would be drawn from the person's own context, and that the "underlying truth" about such reports is that they are fictions generated by brains doing exactly the kind of thing we know brains do.

Geez--all these years, and I never realized ModBot was female.

If you mean, the point of that post, I'm afraid I don't. What I am saying is that to explain religion in historical or sociological terms, rather than its own terms, is reductionist. It is of course true that Christians will describe the Divinity in terms of the Biblical tradition, and Hindus in line with the Vedas; that I regard as a manifestation of what can be called 'archetypal psychology' (pace Jung and Mircea Eliade) — Wayfarer

It is entirely legitimate to explain anything in whatever way such explanation provides insight.

The OP assertion can be expressed as "I experienced God, therefore God exists."

It is this that I've challenged. One of my challenges is that if we accept this argument as sufficient for rational others to subscribe to the existence of God, then we should subscribe to belief in the existence of various other deities and supernatural beings and happenings as similarly reported throughout history and across cultures. And we know that the particular deities, beings and events that people report are a function of their particular context.

Also, note that the OP and the vast majority of reported encounters with the supernatural specify a particular being, not some plastic "Divinity." They encountered Yahweh, or the God of Christianity, or Mary, or the risen Jesus of Nazareth, or Saint X or the Angel Y, or Lord Krishna, etc. Dismissing what they actually report, and saying that they're all really just encounters with the same amorphous "Divinity" is a claim from your theology, not theirs.

@John

It is uncontroversially true that the content of the vast majority of reported religious experiences from people throughout history and across the world is a function of their historical and social context. No coincidence that Moses got the Ten Commandments from Yahweh rather than Lord Krishna or Osiris or Jesus or Athena or Uranus or Ishtar or Bigfoot or the wee faeries ...

Note that I never said that what people report as religious experiences is "nothing more than functions of the cultures i which they occur." But it is clear that people draw on content from their own context to explain their experiences. And if we are to take them at their word, then their experiences would justify us in believing in whatever supernatural beings they report encountering. Or, we can accept that they had some kind of powerful experience, but understand their interpretations of them as dependent on their particular historical and social context.