From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: And over to you, Steve...
Date: 4 Jan 93 16:41:01 -0400
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <adams.725843387@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
> hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:
> 
>>In article <adams.725740367@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
> 
>>> Re: accepting Jesus (ie "stop saying 'no'")
> 
>>>No. Yes.  I don't think I could will myself into disbelief, and were I to
>>>do so, I'd still have that nagging cognitive dissonance.
>>
>>Do you have this sense of dissonance now, considering all the things we've
>>talked about, the atheist arguments on the net, etc? If not,
>>this leads to an interesting point. I'm still trying to work this out
>>in my head, but I'm thinking more and more that intellectual concerns
>>are largely irrelevant to the question of belief/unbelief.
>
> I'd have to say yes, that sense of dissonance actually started from our
> major conversation last fall...;-)  In any event, in thinking, 'belief'
> often counters intellect.  In this case, I'd have to say that I suffer from
> some form of psychological blinders...most likely mindset or thought habit.
> Both errors in logic generally cause the mind to reject evidence
> contradictory to belief.  [Damn logic class I took!]  How's that for
> self-analysis? ;-)

heh heh! Not bad! BTW, have you been following the Orwell thread? I'm thinking
this is a matter of motivation, i.e. that if your motivation to suppress
your intellectual sense of "rightness" is stronger than your motivation
to recognize it, than you can maintain belief in spite of contrary
evidence. In other words, you are a practitioner of "doublethink." 
You both recognize that your belief has no rational basis, and retain
a rational conviction in that belief. You are a skeptic, and a blind believer,
at the same time. You are having your cake and eating it, too. Nice trick! :)

> So I'd have to agree with you that intellectual concerns are hardly relevant
> to belief.

Ultimately, they are perhaps only one factor among many. And not the
strongest factor, either, eh?
 
>>You know at least as much as I do about the historical data regarding
>>Xianity.  
> Sean...personal request...please don't use this form (ie 'X')...

My apologies...I just do that for the sake of brevity. I _do_ think
its kind of funny (and in a way, kind of accurate! "X" is a variable,
after all, symbol of the unknown factor in an equation), but if it
offends, I shall desist. Behold, I am vile....

>>But we give differing amounts of weight to the same 
>>pieces of evidence, and you know, I think the reasons are not
>>rational. Emerson called temperament the "iron string" upon which the
>>beads of experience are strung. Hmmm...
>
> This goes to some other types of psychological blinders: attitudes,
> sterotypes, and identification.  Identification is paterning ones life
> after some admired person or ideal without considering the ramifications.
> To some extent, both of us suffer from a bit of both, at least in examining
> evidence.  You seem a lot closer to a clear, objective view, though.

I am fortunate in that I have nothing to defend, in this arena. The existence
of God is ultimately irrelevant from the point of view of human
happiness, and of ultimate truth. And I have no real axe to grind with 
Christianity anymore...if I thought God was real, I'd have no
qualms at all about submitting to his will. 

As for how we examine evidence, I admit that I find the scientific materialist
account of the origin of life, of the history of the universe, much more
intellectually satisfying than the Christian one, or the Babylonian one,
etc. etc.  Behavioural sciences, psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary
biology, have all made profound progress in explaining what we are 
and what we do. It's all so amazing...I find creationist explanations
just plain BORING. :)   It's so cheap to invoke an omnipotent deity to
explain everything. Yawn. It stinks, intellectually, I think, to invoke 
undetectable omnipotent entities to explain phenomena (such as the
events of the NT) when you don't have to. It's dull as ditchwater,
because it's so phony and artificial, and it has virtually no 
predictive power. It's cheating, I think. Dixi! 

And now, let's hear from the other camp....:)

>>>>You know, you _conceded_ back then that free will was a myth. Have you
>>>>changed your mind?
>>>
>>> I don't know.  I haven't come upon anything I like better, and
>>> predestination is worse...;-)  Stuck between a rock and a hard place.
>>
>>To my mind, this is a sign that the dilemma is a false one. That is, there
>>is a third option which resolves this contradiction, i.e. the doctrine is
>>false.  It does not check out with reality in either case -- free will
>>is a myth, as we agreed, and predestination is inconsistent with your
>>perception of what you call "God." 
>
> In general, if a dilemma is false if there exists another option that
> removes the dilemma. 

In this case the other option is: Paul had an epileptic seizure of the
temporal lobes on the road to Damascus, and not a visitation from the creator
of this infinite universe.
 
> If the doctrine is false, then clearly there must be
> some other answer, selected from that set of solutions that fit all of the
> evidence.  

See above...:)
 
> Since the Bible clearly states that some people will go to hell, then 
> Iranaeus can't be right (ie everyone goes to heaven).  Since the Bible 
> also clearly says that some people will go to heaven, then the alternative 
> that all are damned must be rejected.
> 
> That leaves either free-will, predestination, or (!) no salvation (at least
> as Christians know it).

And we _know_ free will is out. Uh oh....

>> In order to do what
>>God wants I'd have to act in "bad faith," I'd have to suppress my
>>sense of intellectual integrity.  Why would God create a person who
>>was _incapable_ of doing what was required for salvation?  
>
> To quote the Paulist party line, 'bad faith' is no faith...you have to
> truly and completely accept Christ, his resurection and his divinity.
> Anything less is no good.  In other words, you're screwed.

So God created a being (me) that is incapable of doing what it has to do
to be saved. Come on, Steve, baby...we're talking predestination here...:)

>>As I'm sure you're sensing, this is starting to look like predestination
>>again, isn't it?  I ask out of curiosity: is there _really_ no escape
>>from this rather bleak point of view?
>
> I sure hope so!  You know that.  Unfortunately, greater minds than I have
> come to the conclusion that there isn't.  Bleh.

It's the only logical conclusion of the Paulist salvation doctrine. 
We are _not_ little "first causes," generating decisions _ex nihilo._
All of our choices are outgrowths of urges we cannot control, because
the urge to control them is another urge!  A human being is not
a thing which "makes decisions," but a _process_ of conflicting and competing
drives, desires, fears, etc, which resolve themselves on their own. 
After the fact, we may call that a decision, and say "we" made it, but
the truth is, it just happened. 

Now, either God directs (or set in motion) these processes, or they
are just the workings of nature. If God -- predestination. 
  
>>Re: psychoanalyzing Steve :)
>
> Why not?  It's free and probably more accurate than the local headshrinker!

Did you get the bill in the mail yet? :)

>>I guess this explains why you keep coming back for more of my abuse...;)
>
> Abuse?  Heck no...a strong challenge...I been able to dispatch most people
> fairly quickly...you're a tougher nut to crack...but before you get the
> wrong idea, I'm not here to convert you or evangelize...I'll leave that to
> some other poor soul.

There are always lots of volunteers for that sort of project, true enough.

> 
>>discomfort that goes along with "bad faith" that drives you to try and find
>>a way of resolving this tension in yourself?  You want to find a way
>>to bring your intellect into line with your convictions?  Just making
>
>>a quasi-educated guess. 
> I'd like to formulate something that made my convictions and my intellect
> happy with each other.  Plain and simply.  Yield a bit on both, and
> formulate a belief system that doesn't contradict my knowled

I think you may be out of luck on that point, but what do I know? 
 
>>My guess would be that belief seems to offer you a relief from 
>>existential anxiety, that is to say, the reaction of the rational mind to the 
>>dual incomprehensibilities of Life and Death.
>>
>>Just rephrasing your comment really.
> Accurately, too.

What people never seem to realize is that abandoning one's ideas
about life is not the _end_ of the line, but the _beginning._  
It's a starting point, not an end.

>> Re: The delusional nature of sincere belief
> 
>>>That's true...my positions don't constrain me...nor do they prevent my
>>>examining positions other than my own to test them against my own personal
>>>hypothesis.  I'm not scared of contradictory ideas...
>>
>>Actually, that response is a great example of what I mean. You thought
>>I meant _intellectually_ constrained. I meant _experientially_
>>constrained. In other words, I found that having my experience narrowed
>>so intensely into the imaginative realm (as Xianity requires) was
>>an unbearable mode of life -- it wasn't worth living. 
> Oh, I don't know...experience wise, well, let's say I've done just about
> everything...not quite, but darn near...that I would ever want to.  I'm
> sure that there are some things that I haven't experienced that I might
> enjoy, but can't think of any that I'm constrained from by my belief.

Boy o boy, this is a hard one to explain. Not your fault. Let me try again:
living in my imagination was unbearable for me. I had to stop. 
I've tried to be about 4 different kinds of ideologue in the last 5 or
6 years -- until I discovered that my problem was not a specific
ideology, but the fact that I _had_ an ideology. Then I realized I
could _stop_ having an ideology if I wanted. Hurray! Now I have no 
ideals to live up to, no goals to acheive, nowhere to go, no one 
to be. I am Nothing, no one at all. I am a wanderer in a world I
don't understand. I have no ideas of right and wrong, I have no guidance,
and nowhere I want to be guided to.  Freedom is non-existence, being
dead while you're still alive. 

> Or are you getting at something even deeper?

  The virgin, the vivacious, the beautiful today --
  Will it break for us, with drunken wing, 
  This hard, forgotten lake that haunts, under the frost,
  The transparent ice of flights that were never flown!
  
  -- Stephane Mallarme

Sean Hartigan
hartigan@ac.dal.ca

"As private parts are we to the Gods: they play with us for their sport!"
 -- Blackadder

Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:25167 alt.pagan:14959 talk.bizarre:43564 soc.singles:35356