In a previous thread I made the following comment:

"I don't think there are any strong arguments in that I think a rational skeptic should be an atheist."

What I meant by this is that I don't think there are any valid arguments with uncontroversially true premises which establish that God exists. (I consider a skeptical approach to be taking the view that there is no more evidence for a proposition's truth than for it's negation and vice versa).

A rational skeptic approaching the question of God's existence is not going to find any satisfactory empirical evidence one way or the other, in my view. Whether that's because there just isn't any or whether such a thing is impossible in principle is not really relevant (though I happen to think it's impossible in principle). Given the lack of empirical evidence and the lack of a sound argument the skeptic should remain an atheist*.

The reason I am not in this position is solely due to personal, subjective, spiritual experience - amongst the most unreliable and weakest form of evidence we have but nonetheless evidence of some sort. My inclination was to reject the experience as not good enough evidence - the fact of the matter is that the experience was sufficient to engender a belief in God. I discovered I was a theist rather than making any choice (I don't think belief is solely about choice, I think it's a psychological state which we can influence but not totally).

In the face of this experience I am forced to respond in some way (whether that be ignore it, await further developments, rush off and be baptised or whatever). At this point, I consider my choice to be irrational but necessarily so. I can't 'choose' a religion on any rational grounds and I don't think there's any rational argument for 'doing nothing and seeing what happens next' either - it may seem reasonable (as it did to me) but I don't think there's any reason why that is better. My solution was to read around a bit and eventually develop my own peculiar theological views - all of which I freely acknowledge are irrational at heart and unlikely to be true. I don't really consider statements like "God loves us all" to be a statement of fact - I consider it to be more akin to a poetic attempt to encapsulate my experience. The value of religion, imo, is a subjective one and it has no business answering questions about the world. Even things like "God made the world" are more akin to poetry than science, at least when I say them.

This is a bit of a hodge podge as I have recently made a similar thread. Feel free to ask anything specific if you like. Ultimately though, I will agree that my religious views are irrational - I think that is inevitable. Whether or not theism itself is rational is another matter. My position when I joined SMP was that it was, provided one remembers where it comes from and the weakness of the evidence supporting the view (ie that any scientifically derived belief is more likely to be correct than a religiously derived one). Now I'm not so sure - this may be an irrational view I hold** or it may be that, once I understand the irrationality, it will disappear.

Luckyme has described my position as analagous to a self-aware sufferer of Capgras syndrome. Original Position as an alcoholic who knows he should give up but isn't strong willed enough. These are both helpful and I may ultimately come to see it in a similar way. However, I am still currently of the view that subjective, spiritual experience is a rational basis for forming beliefs - similarly I trust my intuition, my senses, my rational faculties, my memory, expert consensus, etcetera. All of these sources of beliefs are reasonable grounds for forming beliefs, even though sometimes they will lead me astray. I could probably rank them something like:

spiritual experience - intuition - memory - senses - rational faculties - expert consensus

I don't mind basing a belief on any of these, but anything to the right trumps anything to its left, in the case of conflict. I don't think there is some line to be drawn as to what is acceptable evidence, rather I think beliefs are a network - those supported by the right hand end of the 'evidence spectrum' will win out in the end and be elevated to the status of knowledge, those supported by the left hand end are more likely to turn out to be incorrect.

* In fact I think it's reasonable for an atheist to adopt the premise that "Things which exist leave empirical evidence of their existence" and to therefore be a strong atheist, however I realise this premise is not without problems.

** Another perhaps controversial view I have is that everyone has irrational beliefs. I am of the view that intelligent life exists outside of our solar system, for example. Yet there isn't any good rational grounds for thinking that at this stage - we just don't have enough evidence to know the relevant probabilities. That opinion doesn't make by belief in alien intelligence disappear, however.

After reading this I think I am even more baffled now than I was before. You seem to evaluate everything correctly, but just believe anyway. I think Original Position's comment nails it on the head.

I have to ask you to explain your "experience" that lead you to god, but I strongly suspect it will be something extremely unconvincing like "one of my family members was saved when they had a small probability of survival."

No nothing like that. It's an experience of togetherness, communication and comfort - the best analogy I've found being silently sharing a whiskey with a friend. It's different than drinking alone even if neither of you speak. The only effect this prayer experience has is on my mind. Let me follow up by saying I also agree with you that it is unconvincing to anyone else in case that wasn't clear. I don't think anyone should place any store in reports of 'communing with god' since so many alternate explanations present themselves.

Isn't that just a feeling that social creatures are destined to have? I can feel a strong sense of group and feel connected with the world and the universe without god.

If you eat psilocybin mushrooms you tend to become spiritual and feel extremely connected to those around you and to nature itself. If this is possible from eating a simple mushroom, I think it highly likely we can have those feelings on our own, whether we will them or induce them - if only because we like them. The point is we are social creatures, we like being connected and having a sense of purpose together. I get it. But, where is "god"? You seem to just like the idea.

Quite the reverse in fact, I find atheism intellectually neater and spent a good ten years or so denying there was anything supernatural about my experiences. There are a plethora of potential explanations for my experiences and I certainly don't dismiss the possibility (likelihood even) of theism being false. I don't know that it matters really - I'm not in the habit of answering scientific questions by reference to holy books, I acknowledge that my religious views are only of importance or relevance to me, I don't even think religion has anything to say about morality - the theist has to choose which interpretation of "god's will" he's going to try and follow - using precisely the same moral faculties and reasoning of an atheist. I don't find it difficult (though perhaps it's due to an atheist upbringing) to allow for the possibility that my religion is totally incorrect. I think the danger in religion arises when people have certainty as to the truth or unchallengable views. I explicitly acknowledged in the first post that religion was the weakest, most unreliable source of beliefs so I can't see what harm I'm doing. I'd quite like to be an atheist again, I guess but fleeting moments aside, it seems unlikely.

I don't really know what you're looking for here. You seem to be asking why i decided to call myself a theist or why i don't "overrule"my psychological state and stop believing. I didn't face a moment of choice, it was one of discovery. Despite my skepticism, I had come to believe there really was someone else there. I can analyze the reasons for it (to some extent at least) and acknowledge they are both flimsy and conveniently inaccessible to anyone else. So what though? The belief persists and I can no more dismiss it than you can dismiss some belief you hold to be true, quality of evidence notwithstanding.

Seems to me that intellectually you are an atheist but emotionally you are a theist.

That might be another way of putting it. I do consider belief to be something other than a purely intellectual exercise.

Thanks bunny I genuinely enjoy talking to you

Cheers. I enjoy the discussions too. Your uncompromising critique is challenging but usually thought provoking and appreciated.

Bunny. He will destroy you and feast on your soul.

We only differ by 1 on the actual number included in "anyone".

Nah, I don't place any store in reports either.

I just need to be more Dickensian in my descriptions. If I could describe it properly you would place store in it. If I could make you taste the new veggie, if I could make you sense my exhilaration at the new rollercoaster ride, then you would have the same, or close enough, familiarity with it to feel very storeful.
We do it with endless other emotions/experiences, each man is not a unique bag of experiences that are not anger, love, hate, envy, satisfaction, sweet, bitter, sugary, sour, pity, remorse, excitement, disappointment, etc.

I'm claiming that we each report to ourselves and endlessly, boringly to others, it's not that difficult. Humans quite easily can grasp the experience of others, it's what sales gothic novels and deoderant. It's why psychologists can deal with people with unusual mental states they've never experienced themselves.

We do believe or reject our own experiences as real or fantasy all the time and we do it on the basis of the report we get from them or from ourselves.

As I commented to OP in another thread. You are doing here what NR does in the Hillier discussion. You argue against the validity of his approach there, you take his approach here.

bunny, I agree with rizeagainst that you're on a very high intellectual level combined with a lot of eloquence which makes reading your posts enjoyable.
Too bad you're a theist, you talk like an atheist. =)

It kind of depends who I'm talking to. I consider RGT to be a predominantly atheist forum - with the odd exception, that's certainly who I'm most interested in engaging with. Consequently, I try to speak in a way you can at least respond meaningfully to. I'm not so analytical/critical of my own beliefs at church (unless I'm talking to our priests privately).

I was also brought up by ardent, passionate and vocal atheists. I was well into adult life before I became a theist. You should have heard my parents when I finally confessed to them I was a believer, they took it rather badly. Despite it previously being a big topic of discussion (and ridicule) at family gatherings previously, we haven't spoken about religion again ever (and it was almost ten years ago that I finally told them).

I think people who haven't had spiritual experiences underestimate how powerful they are (and in a way that can't be explained).

But bunny, memory is too high up there. Well, depending on what you mean by "memory" I suppose.

Do you think it is trumped by intuition or spiritual experience? It's the lowest on my scale, other than those two.

What I mean is that if I have a hunch that there's a post office in the local shopping centre, but I remember being there and there not actually being one - it's rational to believe there isn't. Memory is trumped by the others (here's where my example is poor... :/):

senses - I'm parked outside and I can see one which I don't remember being there before
rational analysis - I've received a letter telling me to go to the post office at that centre
expert consensus - everyone I'm with, who all shop there regularly, tell me I'm wrong

EDIT: Hopefully it's clear I think that scale is a general guide - I don't think it's always true that this ranking will hold, nor do I think there are many beliefs only supported by one category.

Oh, I got your scale backwards. That makes more sense. Obviously I didn't actually read the post.

So, I agree with your ranking. But I notice something as a result of my mistake - even though I think your ranking is the most accurate, I find that the exact reverse ranking fits my subjective certainty. Spiritual experience feels more reliable than intuition, which feels more reliable than memory, and so on.

I don't know that I'd be able to doubt potent spiritual experience if it led me in a particular direction. I have to "suspend my disbelief" in spiritual realities even when I have vague and general spiritual experiences, because it seems "more real than reality." Intuition I can resist, but it's a struggle. On the other hand, expert consensus is easy for me to wave away (if I decide to do so), and rational support without corresponding intuition to back it up seems surreal and suspicious to me.

It's almost like I'm wired to believe untruths instead of truths. Or maybe I'm wired to accept "mystical" truths over "worldly" truths, but that view is too optimistic for me.

I didn't think about certainty. Considering the same categories, in my case the scale is all jumbled up. Spiritual experiences feel real but I have no confidence in their veracity. Intuitive leaps are so rare in my case that I can't even evaluate how true they feel. I over-rate the accuracy of my memory. I think I trust rational analysis over expert consensus. Something like this I guess (least certain to most, left to right):

Intuition (?) - Spiritual experience - Memory - Expert Consensus - Rational analysis

We may be using different meanings of "intuition." The meaning I'm using includes looking at something like "2+2=4." Rational analysis I would think of as looking at a complex theorem.

I understand intuitively that 2+2=4, but it's only through careful analysis that I can verify the theorem.

Possibly, or we just disagree on how we learn maths. I think people puzzle out that 2+2=4, I don't think we intuitively know it when the concepts are first presented to us.

Happy Birthday, by the way.

Well, maybe not intuitive when first presented, but I think it becomes intuitive when we look at it for awhile. There's a "flash" and suddenly we "fully grasp" it. I think that's the point at which it becomes intuitive and the point at which we generally cease to doubt.

Thanks.

Your views are very similar to mine, other than wanting to be an Atheist. The only thing that I think of that makes me believe other than what you describe as personal experiences is something I'm sure I'll be flamed for.

Near death experiences and Mediums. I'm assuming this has been talked about on this forum but can all the people that have had near death experiences where they have been pronouced dead and come back be wrong? They all see something and describe something that was happening to them when they die.

Also, is every single one of the Mediums a fraud? Of course, they certainly could be but I've had multiple friends go to multiple different mediums (what I would deem intelligent friends which I'm sure means nothing to you guys) and come back in disbelief at what they knew or what they could talk about concerning family members and friends that have passed. Are they all just REALLY good guessers?

Anyone with a bit of people-smarts can be a good medium. It has nothing to do with guessing in any coinflip sort of way.