Religion. Discuss ( or should that be argue )

Ill take that. In fact, i'll give you odds.

"There's probably a million people who say they're Jesus and most of them are in asylums. But one of us has to be."

well i'm convinced. where do i sign?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWuc5kar3Y

end of the world today..hmm nearly missed it..

Anyone seen Kymatica?

Kymatica (2009) - YouTube

It's obviously very easy to run rings (she's almost eristic in her approach) around people with naïve beliefs like 'heaven exists', even if they don't mean it as literally as they say it.

However, it's not as easy as saying things like 'faith is believing things without any evidence'. Yes, there are a lot of people who profess religious beliefs who in actual fact have just gone down that route--whether from ideas inculcated in childhood or some other way--, but the fact is that people have, and have always had, genuine religious experiences which defy explanation by anything other than faith.

Experiences like that don't mean that from then on faith is set in stone and invariable. In fact, I think it's good (and often-repeated) advice not to trust people who are absolutely certain of their 'religious' beliefs. As is documented in a vast amount of theological literature, faith is often uncertain and often a struggle, with crises of faith very common.

I personally don't find 'debates' about 'religion' between people with apparently very confident and entrenched positions very interesting. My gut instinct would be to think that they're probably both wrong about something.

Debating society >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Could you start by expanding what you mean by "genuine religious experiences"?

Does going to a place of worship count?

he sees dead people

I don't mean the sort of Lourdes nonsense (there have obviously been a lot of delusional experiences, which are still interesting in their own right), but religious feelings in the face of the sublime.

I think that as a matter of principle we can't have absolutely objective knowledge (i.e., science can't get us there, either), and that causes (more or less strong, depending on the person) feelings of alternately helplessness, awe, depair, solace, and others. Very conflicting, and of course the transcendent object of the potentially resultant faith can't be 'proven'.

I follow Kant in a lot of aspects of his philosophy of religion. This is an on-line summary:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/

I've only skimmed this, so I don't necessarily agree with it, but at a cursory glance it seems like a good page. I haven't read much on this topic for a while, though, so don't take my word for it.

Kant's main work on this is 'Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason*' *("Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft"), but there are relevant discussions elsewhere in his work.Obviously, there are manyother interesting sources that you could look at.

Does going to a place of worship count?

Assuming you mean a gathering-place, it can be very powerful to worship together with others, but the communal experience alone does not guarantee actual worship, of course. You can go to a football match and have a powerful communal experience. I would suspect that it's possible to feel a specific difference brought on by the religious context, but I don't know.

I certainly don't think that a place of worship in itself is guaranteed to make you feel religious. It can happen, but it'll depend on lots of factors other than it being a 'place of worship'.

I certainly don't think that a place of worship in itself is guaranteed to make you feel religious. It can happen, but it'll depend on lots of factors other than it being a 'place of worship'.

Places of worship are generally kitted out to make you feel religious, or at least reinforce the sense of being part of the communal group through all the various rituals that are usually involved (Mass, tefillin etc).

I did once read something that divided the religious experience into two broad groups; one was the large-scale group where people would do the same regular, not-very-dramatic rituals daily / weekly with a bunch of other people (the big three, or mostly what we think of as 'religion' in general), and the other was the small-scale stuff where you'd have much smaller groups of people who would every so often do a massive blow-out ritual thing as a dramatic life event, usually only within a sub-group of other believers who had reached the same life stage as you (so think Shamanistic or coming-of-age rituals in small groups).

Anyway, the suggestion was basically that both setups are designed to inspire religious experiences, but the large-scale one uses continual, tiny reinforcement through regular rituals to top it up, so to speak, and the other uses once-in-a-lifetime, high drama experiences to reinforce the religious experience with much less frequency. Following from that you're less likely to have a major religious experience with one of the big three because the structure of the ritual system isn't really kitted out for it.

CSB

Still not sure what a 'religious experience' is though.

I think it's supposed to be a personal thing so not really solidly definable as such. As I understand it it's basically analogous to transcendence in the mystical sense, but if you want anything more concrete than that you're looking at the wrong non-believer :/

I was told to SHHHHHHHH by a nun in the duomo in Cefalu. I told her I was praying out loud but I don't think she bought it.

She should have kept her clothes on then.

From all of the above, I'd (simplistically) infer that "since someone doesn't understand something, that must mean there's a mystical (read: theistic) reason."

OR:

From all of the above, I'd (simplistically) infer that "since someone doesn't understand something, that must mean there's a mystical (read: theistic) reason."

No, that's obviously not it at all.

trollolololetc. - but there are obviously certain vaguenesses™ in these arguments that are prone to being pounced upon.

did this ever happen?

yup. this is it.

normally quiet during the week.

peace be with you

you forgot the Ahmen

Brother Pemulis!

the amen was implied. pass the communion wine, hic...

anyone seen my communion wine?