Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If I had an experience like Neil's and convinced myself that it was veridical, I would be busting my butt investigating similar experiences by others in order to learn more about this fairly common phenomenon.

George,

I know of one former Objectivist who is busting his butt investigating this stuff, but I don't know what kind of religious experiences he has had: Michael Prescott.

He doesn't think much of Rand's works anymore, but he has mellowed over time. He was quite angry in the beginning of his eschewing of Objectivism. He certainly wrote some critical things about it. I know for a fact that he was irritated at all the time he wasted in snarky discussions rather than writing the bestsellers he later wrote because he told me that personally. (We emailed a bit for a while.) So I think that was the major reason for the anger. (Not the only one, of course.)

Once in a while I visit his blog to see what he is up to, although I am not an in-depth reader of it. His focus from my perspective seems to be on finding proof of some kind of afterlife.

Michael

[J Neil Schulman]

George, I find the categorization of what I had a "religious" experience as curious, since I reject religion as a source of knowledge. I also reject accepting anything as true on faith.

"Religious experience" is a generic term that denotes any direct contact with a god. Many people who claim to have had religious experiences have, like you, repudiated conventional religions.

I seriously don't give a rat's ass what offended Deists. Complaining that God doesn't make himself universally available strikes me as a claim of a property right, and makes God a slave. If I'm not obligated to answer my phone, or accept all Facebook friend requests, why should God be regarded as unreal if he were to be picky about who he finds interesting enough to chat up?

Do you really think that God finds you one of the most interesting people in the history of humankind? What do you suppose he learned from his chat with you that he didn't already know? Or do you think he was bored and just wanted to hang out with a science fiction writer for a while?

I agree that God is not morally obligated to answer his phone or respond to Facebook requests. If, however, God has important information he would like people to know, he could surely find a better method of communication than chatting up a few people here and there.

Maybe his invisibility is nothing more than he values his privacy. For a living, conscious being, why isn't that a reasonable explanation? What basis for anyone demanding he make personal appearances is there? Surely you of all people don't regard the Book of Revelation as a contract binding on God, if he exists?

This exchange is getting progressively weirder.

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Ghs

"'Religious experience' is a generic term that denotes any direct contact with a god."

That definition carries a connotation that anyone who asserts contact with a god does so within the dogma or traditions of one religion or another. My process is the reverse of the religious person, who tests their experience by whether it conforms to a tradition or set of religious precepts. I test religious writings and traditions by whether I find anything in them congruent with my experience.

"Do you really think that God finds you one of the most interesting people in the history of humankind? What do you suppose he learned from his chat with you that he didn't already know? Or do you think he was bored and just wanted to hang out with a science fiction writer for a while?"

Is that envy, George? :-)

Look, I was an author whose books were published by major publishers, and which had won awards and other accolades, and was a screenwriter whose "script"-ure had been produced on CBS's prime-time broadcast network television. I had aspirations to direct and produce movies as well as write more books. I was widely published as arguing for atheism -- against Heinlein, no less. I'd recently published a non-fiction book endorsed by Charlton Heston. One of my novels had been endorsed by Nathaniel Branden. I was a science-fiction writer so I had a mind capable of understanding complex ontologies and cosmologies. I'd read almost all of Ayn Rand including Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and was hostile to almost all religious traditions and dogmas. And I was a friend of Barbara Branden, George H. Smith, and other well-known atheist authors.

If nothing else, these professional assets made me worth ringing up more than the assistant supermarket manager Larry Gelbart invented for God to use as his publicist in the movie adaptation of Avery Corman's novel, Oh God.

Then there was one more thing -- aside from my being available -- that might have pushed my name up the phone list. I'd asked Dennis Prager, "If you could ask God anything about himself, what would it be?" Dennis -- who thinks of God solely for what God can do for the Jews -- said, "Nothing."

If the first basis of friendship is having someone personally interested in who you are, rather than what you can do for them, that personal interest if not unique in me is certainly rare.

"This exchange is getting progressively weirder."

No shit, Sherlock. Welcome to my life.

Edited December 17, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman

[George H. Smith]

"'Religious experience' is a generic term that denotes any direct contact with a god."

That definition carries a connotation that anyone who asserts contact with a god does so within the dogma or traditions of one religion or another.

It doesn't carry this connotation at all. These opening lines from the Wiki article on "Religious Experience" give the same description that you will find in virtually any other source:

Religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience where an individual reports contact with a transcendent reality, an encounter or union with the divine.

A religious experience is most commonly known as an occurrence that is uncommon in the sense that it doesn’t fit in with the norm of everyday activities and life experiences, and its connection is with the individual’s perception of the divine.

My process is the reverse of the religious person, who tests their experience by whether it conforms to a tradition or set of religious precepts. I test religious writings and traditions by whether I find anything in them congruent with my experience.

You couldn't be more wrong about this. Generally speaking, mystics (i.e., those who claim to have experienced direct contact with God) have been heterodox in their religious beliefs, preferring to be guided by their own experiences instead of orthodox credos. This is why the Catholic Church was historically hostile to mysticism. After all, a person who speaks directly to God doesn't need the intermediary of an ecclesiastical hierarchy to tell him what God wants.

After the Protestant Reformation, mysticism spread like a weed on steroids, as God decided to chat with thousands of different people while frequently conveying contradictory information.

Ghs

[J Neil Schulman]

This exchange is getting progressively weirder.

It has to or you guys will run out of things to say to each other.

--Brant

I've been suggesting various ways in which a person might go about critically evaluating experiences of the sort Neil had. But Neil is not interested in the similar experiences of other people, nor in formulating criteria that would enable him to distinguish between true and false revelations.

If I had an experience like Neil's and convinced myself that it was veridical, I would be busting my butt investigating similar experiences by others in order to learn more about this fairly common phenomenon. But Neil is convinced that he chatted with an invisible man-god, and that, apparently, is all he needs to know.

Unfortunately, I haven't had any invisible friends since I was five.

Ghs

Untrue on both counts. But inasmuch as authors of scripture tend to be untraceable -- and likewise historical figures tend not to have Facebook accounts or email addresses much less listed phone numbers I can use to follow up if I find something of interest -- I've focused on searching for other living people. I've had a standing Google search on the phrase "I met God" for at least five years. I have yet to read anything that this search has found that even remotely approaches the "mind meld" I had, the specific features of which are being given the ability to look at other people in four dimensions and the "identity" conflation in which God was inside my body as much as I was. Most people's "God" contacts amount to nothing more than a momentary flash of ecstasy or a single insight. My experience went on at high intensity for eight hours straight, and has had recurrences since. Just as one example, I read the first few volumes of Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God books until I concluded that it was just horseshit. The first failed test that indicated to me it wasn't a real God contact was (first of all) that he initiated the contact. I felt I was being relentlessly pursued; beginning as an atheist it wasn't a contact I'd set out to make. Next, Walsch has God referring to "you people" as if God was some sort of alien, when the most emphatic part of my "Conversation with God" was God thinking that he was one of us.

Finally, I would propose that God is no more invisible than you are, George. At the core of my "revelation" is that all of us are invisible except during those times when we're living inside a human body. On February 18, 1997, for about a third of a day, God was visible, inside mine. Where he hangs out the rest of the time is not information I walked away with.

[George H. Smith]

"Do you really think that God finds you one of the most interesting people in the history of humankind? What do you suppose he learned from his chat with you that he didn't already know? Or do you think he was bored and just wanted to hang out with a science fiction writer for a while?"

Is that envy, George? :-)

Look, I was an author whose books were published by major publishers, and which had won awards and other accolades, and was a screenwriter whose "script"-ure had been produced on CBS's prime-time broadcast network television. I had aspirations to direct and produce movies as well as write more books. I was widely published as arguing for atheism -- against Heinlein, no less. I'd recently published a non-fiction book endorsed by Charlton Heston. One of my novels had been endorsed by Nathaniel Branden. I was a science-fiction writer so I had a mind capable of understanding complex ontologies and cosmologies. I'd read almost all of Ayn Rand including Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and was hostile to almost all religious traditions and dogmas. And I was a friend of Barbara Branden, George H. Smith, and other well-known atheist authors.

If nothing else, these professional assets made me worth ringing up more than the assistant supermarket manager Larry Gelbart invented for God to use as his publicist in the movie adaptation of Avery Corman's novel, Oh God.

I wrote one of the most popular and influential books on atheism published in the 20th century. If God wanted a potentially valuable convert, I'm surprised he didn't also pay me a visit. My own refutation of ATCAG would surely have garnered a lot of attention. There is still time, however. I assume God knows where I live. Do I need to take a number?

Ghs

[J Neil Schulman]

"'Religious experience' is a generic term that denotes any direct contact with a god."

That definition carries a connotation that anyone who asserts contact with a god does so within the dogma or traditions of one religion or another.

It doesn't carry this connotation at all. These opening lines from the Wiki article on "Religious Experience" give the same description that you will find in virtually any other source:

Religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience where an individual reports contact with a transcendent reality, an encounter or union with the divine.

A religious experience is most commonly known as an occurrence that is uncommon in the sense that it doesn’t fit in with the norm of everyday activities and life experiences, and its connection is with the individual’s perception of the divine.

My process is the reverse of the religious person, who tests their experience by whether it conforms to a tradition or set of religious precepts. I test religious writings and traditions by whether I find anything in them congruent with my experience.

You couldn't be more wrong about this. Generally speaking, mystics (i.e., those who claim to have experienced direct contact with God) have been heterodox in their religious beliefs, preferring to be guided by their own experiences instead of orthodox credos. This is why the Catholic Church was historically hostile to mysticism. After all, a person who speaks directly to God doesn't need the intermediary of an ecclesiastical hierarchy to tell him what God wants.

After the Protestant Reformation, mysticism spread like a weed on steroids, as God decided to chat with thousands of different people while frequently conveying contradictory information.

Ghs

George, you regard all such contacts as unreal inasmuch as you don't believe God exists to be a party to a communication. I believe most such contacts are either entirely unreal, or are unreal by the point at which someone tries to explain them, inasmuch as a multi-dimensional cognitive experience does not translate easily into language presupposing singular body identities, three-dimensional perception, linear time, and other data challenging for the average human brain system software to interpret. Most people can't even remember their dreams, much less learn to navigate an out-of-body experience well enough to read signs and landmarks to verify the experience. Most people are incapable of the epistemological rigor to make sense out of symbolic communication systems which use imagery that seems both absurd and uncanny when first encountered.

You can't have a conversation with someone you don't believe exists, George. I'm willing to assert that as a truism.

[J Neil Schulman]

"Do you really think that God finds you one of the most interesting people in the history of humankind? What do you suppose he learned from his chat with you that he didn't already know? Or do you think he was bored and just wanted to hang out with a science fiction writer for a while?"

Is that envy, George? :-)

Look, I was an author whose books were published by major publishers, and which had won awards and other accolades, and was a screenwriter whose "script"-ure had been produced on CBS's prime-time broadcast network television. I had aspirations to direct and produce movies as well as write more books. I was widely published as arguing for atheism -- against Heinlein, no less. I'd recently published a non-fiction book endorsed by Charlton Heston. One of my novels had been endorsed by Nathaniel Branden. I was a science-fiction writer so I had a mind capable of understanding complex ontologies and cosmologies. I'd read almost all of Ayn Rand including Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and was hostile to almost all religious traditions and dogmas. And I was a friend of Barbara Branden, George H. Smith, and other well-known atheist authors.

If nothing else, these professional assets made me worth ringing up more than the assistant supermarket manager Larry Gelbart invented for God to use as his publicist in the movie adaptation of Avery Corman's novel, Oh God.

I wrote one of the most popular and influential books on atheism published in the 20th century. If God wanted a potentially valuable convert, I'm surprised he didn't also pay me a visit. My own refutation of ATCAG would surely have garnered a lot of attention. There is still time, however. I assume God knows where I live. Do I need to take a number?

Ghs

Be careful what you pray for, George. God has a real rough sense of humor ... and that sounds to me like an invitation.

Edited December 17, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman

[George H. Smith]

Untrue on both counts. But inasmuch as authors of scripture tend to be untraceable -- and likewise historical figures tend not to have Facebook accounts or email addresses much less listed phone numbers I can use to follow up if I find something of interest -- I've focused on searching for other living people. I've had a standing Google search on the phrase "I met God" for at least five years. I have yet to read anything that this search has found that even remotely approaches the "mind meld" I had, the specific features of which are being given the ability to look at other people in four dimensions and the "identity" conflation in which God was inside my body as much as I was.

Your experience was actually quite typical of mystical experiences reported by others. As William James wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience (Modern Library ed, p. 410):

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring state.....

Similarly, in Mysticism and Philosophy (p. 101), W.T. Stace writes:

Eckhart and St. Teresa...both speak of "union with God," and this is common to all Christian mystics. It is part of their common tradition....If one can imagine Eckhart and St. Teresa meeting across the centuries and comparing notes, it would surely be very surprising to find that in speaking of "union with God" they meant quite different things....It is quite evident that all [Christian mystics] suppose that there is some one supremely important great experience which they refer to as "union with God," and which they all believe themselves to share with one another --although perhaps in different degrees.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

George, you regard all such contacts as unreal inasmuch as you don't believe God exists to be a party to a communication. I believe most such contacts are either entirely unreal, or are unreal by the point at which someone tries to explain them, inasmuch as a multi-dimensional cognitive experience does not translate easily into language presupposing singular body identities, three-dimensional perception, linear time, and other data challenging for the average human brain system software to interpret. Most people can't even remember their dreams, much less learn to navigate an out-of-body experience well enough to read signs and landmarks to verify the experience. Most people are incapable of the epistemological rigor to make sense out of symbolic communication systems which use imagery that seems both absurd and uncanny when first encountered.

You can't have a conversation with someone you don't believe exists, George. I'm willing to assert that as a truism.

Okay, so give me some evidence that God exists; then I might take your claim to have talked to God more seriously.

Your other comments once again reveal that you don't know much about the mystical tradition. The problem of verbalizing and explaining mystical experiences has traditionally been attributed to the "ineffability" of such experiences. William James specified two essential characteristics of mystical experiences. The first is "ineffability":

The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others...(p. 371).

The other characteristic of mystical experiences is their "noetic quality":

Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance...(p. 371).

As far as I can tell, your experiences fulfill both of these criteria.

Ghs

[Xray]

Thank you Mr. Schulman for your detailed answer (in # 37) to the questions I had asked you, and for the link to the full text of your book. I have not read it yet but will do so as soon as I can.

(bolding mine)

I was making living my life conditional on demands I was making through prayers and attempts at psychic control. God wanted me to stop doing that, and telling me "I can take you now" was his way of shaking me loose from my demands.

So you were already, shortly before your 'encounter with God', in a situation where you prayed to a God, i. e. you were no longer an atheist denying the existence of a God?

On the other hand, you also wrote:

In 1975 when we first met I was a firm atheist and would say I was until late 1983, when I'd say I became an agnostic about four years. I wouldn't say I was a theist until 1988. To tell you the truth, I think the best description of me is that I'm an atheist still -- except that I've met God and regard the experience as real.

But how can you be an atheist while at the same time regarding your God experience as real? This is like saying A is non-A.

George, I haven't had anything I'd classify as a "religious" experience.

You claim to have had an encounter with God but at the same time deny that this was a religious experience?

From your interview with Gary York: http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/libertarianprophet.html

GARY YORK: I've heard you claim that God is a libertarian. On the face of it, this seems absurd; what do you believe that makes this seem true to you?

J. NEIL SCHULMAN: God gave up being the only person who existed so he could live forever after as a less-than-omnipotent person within an existence containing other individual persons. And those he created with the power to disagree with him. How fucking libertarian is that?

"God gave up being the only person who existed" (Neil Schulman)

Your God encounter led you to think of God as a person?

"so he could live forever after as a less-than-omnipotent person within an existence containing other individual persons. And those he created with the power to disagree with him. How fucking libertarian is that?" (Neil Schulman)

This God looks more like an "altruist" (in the Objectivist sense) to me.

For giving up splendid solitude in exchange for an existence in a messed-up world may well be regarded (by Objectivists) as exchanging a higher for a lower value.

But considering the premise which conceives of God as a person, then conceiving of God as a group animal, a group person, is only 'logical'. ;)

"Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God?" is the title of this thread.

"Absolutely", is the answer. For one can logically justify anything which is correctly derived from a premise.

Example:

Major premise: All bears belong to the class "fish"

Minor premise: I saw a bear in the zoo.

Conclusion: This bear belongs ings t the class is a fish

Am I 'logically' justified in belieiving in my conclusion?

Absolutely. For logical conclusions can be derived from any premise, regardless of its truth value.

Therefore let's check premises, folks. This joint venture will unite all those of us (regardless of where we philosophically stand) thirsting for water from the fountain of truth.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Xray

[PDS]

Thank you Mr. Schulman for your detailed answer (in # 37) to the questions I had asked you, and for the link to the full text of your book. I have not read it yet but will do so as soon as I can.

(bolding mine)

I was making living my life conditional on demands I was making through prayers and attempts at psychic control. God wanted me to stop doing that, and telling me "I can take you now" was his way of shaking me loose from my demands.

So you were already, shortly before your 'encounter with God', in a situation where you prayed to a god, i. e. you were no longer an atheist denying the existence of a God?

On the other hand, you also wrote:

In 1975 when we first met I was a firm atheist and would say I was until late 1983, when I'd say I became an agnostic about four years. I wouldn't say I was a theist until 1988. To tell you the truth, I think the best description of me is that I'm an atheist still -- except that I've met God and regard the experience as real.

But how can you be an atheist while at the same time regarding your God experience as real? This is like saying A is non-A.

George, I haven't had anything I'd classify as a "religious" experience.

You claim to have had an encounter with God but at the same time deny that this was a religious experience?

From your interview with Gary York: http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/libertarianprophet.html

GARY YORK: I've heard you claim that God is a libertarian. On the face of it, this seems absurd; what do you believe that makes this seem true to you?

J. NEIL SCHULMAN: God gave up being the only person who existed so he could live forever after as a less-than-omnipotent person within an existence containing other individual persons. And those he created with the power to disagree with him. How fucking libertarian is that?

"God gave up being the only person who existed" (Neil Schulman)

Your encounter led to to think of God as a person?

"so he could live forever after as a less-than-omnipotent person within an existence containing other individual persons. And those he created with the power to disagree with him. How fucking libertarian is that?" (Neil Schulman)

This God looks more like an "altruist".

For giving up splendid solitude in exchange for an existence in a messed-up world may well be regarded (by Objectivists) as exchanging a higher for a lower value. ;)

But considering the premise which conceives of god as as a person, then conceiviog of god as a group animal, a group person is only logical.

"Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God?" is the title of the thread.

"Absolutely" is the answer. For one can logically justify anything which is correctly derived from a premise.

If you don't check the premise itself, that is.

Example:

Major premise: All bears belong to the class "fish"

Minor premise: I saw a bear in the zoo.

Conclusion: This bear belongs ings t the class is a fish

Am I 'logically' justified in belieiving in the truth of my conclusion.

Absolutely. For logical conclusions can be derived from false premises.

Therefore let's check premises, folks. This joint venture will unite all those of us (regardless of where they philosophically stand) thirsting for the fountain of truth.

Xray: you might want to read the book. It doesn't take that long.

[Xray]

Xray: you might want to read the book. It doesn't take that long.

I will read the book, actually said so in my reply to Neil Schulman. The question is whether reading the book will really offer an answer to the points raised, as in:

One can logically justify anything which is correctly derived from a premise.

(If you don't check the premise itself, that is).

Example:

Major premise: All bears belong to the class "fish"

Minor premise: I saw a bear in the zoo.

Conclusion: This bear belongs to the class "fish".

Am I 'logically' justified in believing in my conclusion?

Absolutely. For logical conclusions can be derived from false premises.

You can't have a conversation with someone you don't believe exists, George. I'm willing to assert that as a truism.

Okay, so give me some evidence that God exists; then I might take your claim to have talked to God more seriously.

You are quite obviously trying to back Neil Schulman into an epistemological corner and to keep him there with a "no escape" sign. For of course nobody can give evidence that God exists.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Xray

[BaalChatzaf]

Xray: you might want to read the book. It doesn't take that long.

I will read the book, actually said so in my reply to Neil Schulman. The question is whether reading the book will really offer an answer to the points raised, as in:

One can logically justify anything which is correctly derived from a premise.

(If you don't check the premise itself, that is).

Example:

Major premise: All bears belong to the class "fish"

Minor premise: I saw a bear in the zoo.

Conclusion: This bear belongs to the class "fish".

Am I 'logically' justified in believing in my conclusion?

Absolutely. For logical conclusions can be derived from false premises.

That is not a valid syllogism. The middle term bear should not appear in the conclusion. A better syllogism is:

All bears are fish.

I saw a bear

therefore I saw a fish

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Starbuckle]

GHS wrote: "Here as elsewhere Nozick was too clever by half. To suggest that an omniscient and omnipotent deity could not figure out a way to reveal himself to the entire world in a convincing manner is absurd. God could, for example, announce in an omnipresent voice that he is going to cure all cancer on the spot, and then do it. And if that didn't do the trick, he could announce that he is going to make the missing limbs of every amputee in the world grow back instantaneously, and then do it. And if these demonstrations were not convincing enough, he could give every person in the world the ability to fly for one day, or he could resurrect one dead relative of every person while permitting us to choose the relative, or God could give every dog and cat the power of intelligent speech, while again announcing all these miracles in advance. Or, if all else failed, he could make Xray write a string of posts praising Ayn Rand. The possibilities are endless."

Oh, Borg nanites could accomplish any of this.

A god worthy of the name is an entity either capable of violating the nature of things, and hence impossible to exist to begin with, or just another part of that nature and hence not a god, just sort of something with a sort of super-nature, like Barbara Cartland or Vasiliy Alekseyev. Neil tries to fudge the problem in various ways, but he can't get around the fact that the supernatural as mystically enlisted by believers is not merely a kind of especially robust, frequently cloaked and/or hiccuping and prickly version of the natural, but rather an unintelligible contradiction of it. It's much more likely that either a stoked subconscious was speaking to Neil or an arch nemesis had planted a microphone in his skull while he was asleep than that the entity who communicated with him in the exact mode of any fiction writer brainstorming with himself was supernatural, i.e., non-existent. It is supremely unlikely for non-existent things to exist if only because they don't exist. Lack of existence is, in fact, one of the most glaring features of all non-existent things. Any close examination of flagrantly non-existent things will support this conclusion readily.

BTW, I don't mean by my disagreement with the bad conclusions of Neil's memoir to imply that it is anything but a very engaging and interesting book. It is a compelling recounting, as well as testament to the friendship of Brad Linaweaver (the interviewer) and L. Neil Schulman.

[George H. Smith]

Following are some passages from The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, by Ernst Troeltsch. First published in German in 1911, this two-volume work is one of the great masterpieces of historical sociology. Some of Troeltsch's distinctions, that as that between the "church-type" and the "sect-type" of Christian organizations, are still widely used today.

These passages relate to a point I mentioned earlier, namely, the tendency of mysticism to cut against the grain of orthodox religious beliefs and institutions. I am posting these passages because I find them interesting, not for any polemical purposes.

The active energies in mysticism...can become independent in principle, contrasted with concrete religion; they then break away from it and set up a theory of their own which takes the place of the concrete religion and of its mythos or doctrine; this may take place either by means of open denial, or through an allegorical change in interpretation. When this takes place, however, mysticism realizes that it is an independent religious principle; it sees itself as the real universal heart of all religion, of which the various myth forms are merely the outer garment. It regards itself as the means of restoring an immediate union with God; it feels independent of all institutional religion, and possesses an entire inward certainty, which makes it indifferent towards every kind of religious fellowship. This is its fundamental attitude; it does not vary whether the mystic adheres externally to the religious community or not. (Harper Torchbooks ed., vol.II, p. 734.)

Troeltsch compares Christian mystics to early Baptists as follows:

For the Baptists the decisive element is the Law of Christ, the Sermon on the Mount, and the absolute Law of Nature which agrees with it. The "spiritual reformers," on the other hand, know nothing but the Spirit, its freedom and inward impulse. They are "Antinomians" and obey the light of conscience which has been unveiled by the Indwelling Christ. The Anabaptists laid passionate stress on Adult Baptism as the external sign of the covenant with God. To the "spiritual reformers" Baptism was a matter of supreme indifference. They recognized solely the "Baptism of the Spirit," and they taught that only those who were spiritually gifted were able to recognize those who belong to the true, pure, Spiritual Church, or fellowship of the Spirit of Christ. The Anabaptists had external organizations and ceremonies: the Lord's Supper, the feet-washing, a constitution. The "spiritual reformers" would admit nothing but the worship of God in spirit and in truth; they recognized no external united Christian body, and, at bottom, they had no use for sacraments. The Anabaptists obeyed the external Word as their literal rule of life and their external authority. The "spiritual reformers" depended upon the Inward Word, the Logos, the Divine Seed, or the Divine Spark, through whose impulses alone they were able to understand the external Word, which they (who also held firmly to the doctrine of inspiration) interpreted in an allegorical manner.... (Vol. II, p. 742.)

Mysticism is a radical individualism, very different from that of the sect....It regards the historical, authoritative, and ritual elements in religion merely as methods of quickening the religious sense with which, in case of need, it can dispense altogether. "Spiritual religion," in particular, in its intense emphasis upon "first-hand experience,," actually tends to sweep away the historical element altogether, and in so doing it eliminates the only center around which a Christian cult can be formed. Thus this kind of religion becomes non-historical, formless, and purely individualistic, although certainly in varying degrees of consistency.

My interest in mysticism is tied, in part, to my interest in the history of religious toleration. Christian mystics were among the earliest proponents of religious toleration in Europe.

Ghs

[Starbuckle]

GHS wrote: "Following are some passages from The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, by Ernst Troeltsch...."

I found no etext of this book. In addition to the used copies from Amazon starting at about $20, however, books.google.com enables reading of large portions of the book online.

[George H. Smith]

GHS wrote: "Following are some passages from The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, by Ernst Troeltsch...."

I found no etext of this book. In addition to the used copies from Amazon starting at about $20, however, books.google.com enables reading of large portions of the book online.

If I had to pare down my current library of 5000+ volumes to a core library of 100 books, the two-volume work by Troeltsch is definitely one of the books I would keep. It is that good.

You can find less expensive copies of the volumes, sometimes sold separately, here .

Ghs

[PDS]

GHS wrote: "Following are some passages from The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, by Ernst Troeltsch...."

I found no etext of this book. In addition to the used copies from Amazon starting at about $20, however, books.google.com enables reading of large portions of the book online.

If I had to pare down my current library of 5000+ volumes to a core library of 100 books, the two-volume work by Troeltsch is definitely one of the books I would keep. It is that good.

You can find less expensive copies of the volumes, sometimes sold separately, here .

Ghs

George: some day when you are extremely bored and prone to self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind, I would love to hear some of the other entries that would make your Top 100. Fascinating that this work makes your list.

[George H. Smith]

GHS wrote: "Following are some passages from The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, by Ernst Troeltsch...."

I found no etext of this book. In addition to the used copies from Amazon starting at about $20, however, books.google.com enables reading of large portions of the book online.

If I had to pare down my current library of 5000+ volumes to a core library of 100 books, the two-volume work by Troeltsch is definitely one of the books I would keep. It is that good.

You can find less expensive copies of the volumes, sometimes sold separately, here .

Ghs

George: some day when you are extremely bored and prone to self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind, I would love to hear some of the other entries that would make your Top 100. Fascinating that this work makes your list.

The 100 books I would keep for a core library wouldn't necessarily include all my favorite books. For example, I wouldn't keep much by Rand because I already know the material well. (Plus I could easily replace them.) Given my interests, many of the books would be substantial volumes on the history of ideas, such as (in addition to Troeltsch) Rustow's Freedom and Domination, Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, Pribram's History of Economic Reasoning, Lecler's Toleration and the Reformation (2 vols), Alder's The Idea of Freedom (2 vols), Berman's Law and Revolution, Skinner's Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vols), and all the thick volumes in the Cambridge History of Political Thought series.

These are not the type of books that a student of intellectual history will read once and then put away. They can be consulted time and again as needed. They are my basic reference works, in effect.

Ghs

[Xray]

I was irked by AristotlesAdvance because he was in the wrong location. If he was truly burning with zeal to correct the evul evolutionist Darwinian liars and fools, then he was entering the arena only to hang out on the lower mezzanine, far from the real action. If he had been really challenging himself and others with the acuity of Intelligent Design he would have been in other forums devoted to these issues. Not that we are stupid or uninformed on OL, but ID refutation is not a specialty skill here.

AA laid it on thick in his first posts, but when it came to show his colors (i. e. his premises), he balked. Although one could infer that someone who attacks the Theory of Evolution so ferventy must be a Creationist, it interested me whether he was going to say so directly, which is why I asked him several times "Are you a believer in transcendence? Are you a Creationist?"

He never replied. AA's not giving an answer to a question to which a simple "Yes" or "No" would have sufficed struck me as significant, especially since he did address in detail other points I raised.

Imo AA did not want to be labeled by his debate opponntes as a "believer" because his goal was a more ambitious one: He thought he could get the others, via the exchange, to arrive cognitively at a conclusion matching his own belief: that mind came before matter.

Such impossible venture was bound to land AA in epistemological quicksand though, from which as far as I can see, he has not emerged since.

As for combining Dianetics + Objectivism , I am curious to see how long it may be before we discover how that works out.

There is ever irrationalism in human affairs. What is somewhat discomfiting is that the sun has gone down on certain questions for Objectivists small o and large, and for most rational thinkers, yet here they are again. Whether ID or Dianetics or straight-up "Vulcan Mind Meld with God," I wonder at the reception.

It's quite interesting to observe the current emergence of believers (in whatever religion) posting here. Now wouldn't that give Objectivists the opportunity to demonstrate the efficacy of their philosophy by going for the believers' premises? But for some reason this does not seem to happen. Why?

Imo what could make it diffcult for the Objectivsts are assertions by several of the believers that their belief can be reconciled with the principles of Objectivism. Now that's quite something, given the fact that atheism is one of the pillars Objectivism rests on. It is one of its root premises actually.

Now if Objectivists don't even try to challenge the believers by pointing out the incompatibility of such contradictory premises, they are not checking premises. Instead they are abandoning premises. Their philosphy's very own.

A better syllogism is:

All bears are fish.

I saw a bear

therefore I saw a fish

That's a better syllogism, yes. It perfectly illustrates the crucial importance of checking premises.

Perhaps pantheism can bridge the gap. Make God reality itself, in all its manifestations.

--Brant

anyway, I don't like "atheist" as any kind of word at all

Then why call it God?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Imo Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate (aka Occam's Razor) is onf the best (if not the best) argument atheists can offer. For why add an element ("god") which is unnecessary in this context?

I'd LOVE to have a transcendent experience.

Judith

I had one. It did not increase my income that much. In fact it did not increase my income at all.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You confirmed atheist had a transcendent experience? ;)

Edited December 18, 2010 by Xray

[J Neil Schulman]

Untrue on both counts. But inasmuch as authors of scripture tend to be untraceable -- and likewise historical figures tend not to have Facebook accounts or email addresses much less listed phone numbers I can use to follow up if I find something of interest -- I've focused on searching for other living people. I've had a standing Google search on the phrase "I met God" for at least five years. I have yet to read anything that this search has found that even remotely approaches the "mind meld" I had, the specific features of which are being given the ability to look at other people in four dimensions and the "identity" conflation in which God was inside my body as much as I was.

Your experience was actually quite typical of mystical experiences reported by others. As William James wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience (Modern Library ed, p. 410):

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring state.....

Similarly, in Mysticism and Philosophy (p. 101), W.T. Stace writes:

Eckhart and St. Teresa...both speak of "union with God," and this is common to all Christian mystics. It is part of their common tradition....If one can imagine Eckhart and St. Teresa meeting across the centuries and comparing notes, it would surely be very surprising to find that in speaking of "union with God" they meant quite different things....It is quite evident that all [Christian mystics] suppose that there is some one supremely important great experience which they refer to as "union with God," and which they all believe themselves to share with one another --although perhaps in different degrees.

Ghs

George, let's say for a moment that people tell you about their "flight." One person describes a voyage in a hot air balloon. Another describes recreational sky-diving. Another tells of his experience as a bombadier dropping bombs over Dresden. Still others tell of their experiences going through airport screenings, piloting a Piper Cub, being a passenger on a jetliner landed on the Hudson River, hang gliding, being a traffic reporter over L.A. in a news chopper, getting a ride in the Goodyear Blimp, being shot down over North Vietnam.

The nature of the experience I had -- having God merge his identity and multidimensional view of human psyches, sharing information with me via "mindmeld," -- is as different from other descriptions of "mystical" contacts with God as between falling off a ladder and three orbits around the earth.

Edited December 18, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman

[J Neil Schulman]

Starbuckle wrote above: "(Why does he simply not reveal himself to all in a wholly unequivocal and undeniable way? Too easy and perhaps not very interesting and amusing. God is a kind of happy-go-lucky jester, perhaps.)"

Our friend Robert Nozick (he is/was an Objectivst's friend, is he not?), wrote something on this topic in The Examined Life which I have always considered quite interesting (I am paraphrasing): it is not all that obvious how even God himself could provide a convincing proof of his own existence. Thus, the failure of people to do so is not all that surprising. Assume a booming voice from the sky announced God's existence, or some other type of signal with equal clarity. Wouldn't we just assume trickery/misinterpretation/hallucinations anyway? (p.49-50) Nozick, in his cleverly Nozkickean manner, shows how even the Sun itself could be a "proof" of God but still subject to much dispute.

The reality (pun intended) is that Neil's special revelation--by definition quite personal to him--is the only way an individual is ever really convinced of the existence of God, as opposed to having the existence of God "proven" to him. Neil is willing to share his personal revelation, but I don't sense that he expects anybody to accept that revelation, on faith, as proof of God. If I had ever had or have in the future such a revelation, I would probably share it too.

Quite right. You can go from what you sense to what I affirm, which is that I expect no one to accept the reality of my experience on faith. I could hope that people who know me well, and trust me, accept my statements that these extraordinary experiences are as real to me as any other experiences in my life, and perhaps -- if they think well of my honesty, powers of introspection, determination to rely on reason as a primary tool of knowledge, and commitment to libertarian values -- at least consider that I might be an honest reporter of something real, and the stories I tell are possibly newsworthy to others.

[BaalChatzaf]

You confirmed atheist had a transcendent experience? ;)

I have had several transcendent or "strange" experiences. I do not regard them as indicating the supernatural. As to being an atheist, I am more of a skeptic. I talk to God, but I do not expect any replies. If God exists He is hiding and if there is no God, then why worry about it? I cannot say for certain that a being we would regard as a god does not exist. I sometimes entertain the notion that the founding fathers of the Israelites (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses) had contact with Others. The description in the Book of Judges of Sampson's parents being given the good news about the impending birth of their to-be famous son read exactly like a Star Trek beam down and beam up. Who knows what happened, if it really happened. Or Ezikiel's description of the strange vehicle. Interpreted in one way it sounds like a landing craft from a vehicle in orbit. Sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrials would appear to bronze age primitive folks exactly like gods.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[J Neil Schulman]

Starbuckle wrote above: "(Why does he simply not reveal himself to all in a wholly unequivocal and undeniable way? Too easy and perhaps not very interesting and amusing. God is a kind of happy-go-lucky jester, perhaps.)"

Our friend Robert Nozick (he is/was an Objectivst's friend, is he not?), wrote something on this topic in The Examined Life which I have always considered quite interesting (I am paraphrasing): it is not all that obvious how even God himself could provide a convincing proof of his own existence. Thus, the failure of people to do so is not all that surprising. Assume a booming voice from the sky announced God's existence, or some other type of signal with equal clarity. Wouldn't we just assume trickery/misinterpretation/hallucinations anyway? (p.49-50) Nozick, in his cleverly Nozkickean manner, shows how even the Sun itself could be a "proof" of God but still subject to much dispute.

Here as elsewhere Nozick was too clever by half. To suggest that an omniscient and omnipotent deity could not figure out a way to reveal himself to the entire world in a convincing manner is absurd. God could, for example, announce in an omnipresent voice that he is going to cure all cancer on the spot, and then do it. And if that didn't do the trick, he could announce that he is going to make the missing limbs of every amputee in the world grow back instantaneously, and then do it. And if these demonstrations were not convincing enough, he could give every person in the world the ability to fly for one day, or he could resurrect one dead relative of every person while permitting us to choose the relative, or God could give every dog and cat the power of intelligent speech, while again announcing all these miracles in advance. Or, if all else failed, he could make Xray write a string of posts praising Ayn Rand. The possibilities are endless.

Ghs

I had to solve this problem as a literary device in my 2002 novel, Escape from Heaven. Jesus is returning to earth in a Second Coming. How can his identity be confirmed to everyone?

I don't want to post a plot spoiler here. But for you or anyone who wants to read Escape from Heaven, I posted the entire novel at http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com/2010/02/escape-from-heaven/. The specific scene of how Jesus solves this problem is in Chapter 21.

Edited December 18, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman

[J Neil Schulman]

George, you regard all such contacts as unreal inasmuch as you don't believe God exists to be a party to a communication. I believe most such contacts are either entirely unreal, or are unreal by the point at which someone tries to explain them, inasmuch as a multi-dimensional cognitive experience does not translate easily into language presupposing singular body identities, three-dimensional perception, linear time, and other data challenging for the average human brain system software to interpret. Most people can't even remember their dreams, much less learn to navigate an out-of-body experience well enough to read signs and landmarks to verify the experience. Most people are incapable of the epistemological rigor to make sense out of symbolic communication systems which use imagery that seems both absurd and uncanny when first encountered.

You can't have a conversation with someone you don't believe exists, George. I'm willing to assert that as a truism.

Okay, so give me some evidence that God exists; then I might take your claim to have talked to God more seriously.

Your other comments once again reveal that you don't know much about the mystical tradition. The problem of verbalizing and explaining mystical experiences has traditionally been attributed to the "ineffability" of such experiences. William James specified two essential characteristics of mystical experiences. The first is "ineffability":

The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others...(p. 371).

The other characteristic of mystical experiences is their "noetic quality":

Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance...(p. 371).

As far as I can tell, your experiences fulfill both of these criteria.

Ghs

There was nothing about my contact with God that was ineffable to me.

George, I've read a lot about various sorts of psychic experiences, as well as having had my own, as well as other members of my family recounting their experiences to me. I wasn't particularly interested in "prophetic" and "religious" experiences for the first three decades of my life, since I was an atheist and the subject wasn't of more than casual literary concern to me. I've read most of the prophetic accounts in the old and new testaments, and since my own experience I've discussed them with friends who are more studied than I am.

Now. I can't perform or invoke miracles on demand. I'm a beginner at controlling any "psychic powers," still stumbling my way around through trial and error. I don't have any particular reason to believe that God would act favorably upon any suggestions I'd make to him about revealing himself to others. I likely don't know any intellectual proofs for the existence of God that haven't already failed to convince you. It's like saying that I met Ambrose Bierce last week, and he's still alive and well over a century old and still thriving. Let's say I even managed to set up a meeting. He's not going to have a driver's license or social security ID that shows his true age. He could be an actor and an expert who has studied Bierce and the period. Do you have a source for Ambrose Bierce's DNA to check this guy against?

At least you believe that Bierce existed. And that would be a hard assertion to prove. For someone you don't even believe is possible, the problem is amplified several orders of magnitude.

So given I can't bring God to a dinner party and introduce him around, how, precisely, would you expect me to prove to you that God exists?

Edited December 18, 2010 by J. Neil Schulman