From: darice@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Fred Rice)
Subject: Re: Strong atheism ought to explain theism (Was: Re: Atheism is dogmatic.
Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 09:34:40 GMT

In <11194@vice.ICO.TEK.COM> bobbe@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Robert Beauchaine) writes:

>In article <1993Jan22.091314.23002@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> darice@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Fred Rice) writes:
>>
>>Now, many religious people, notably mystics, claim to have "experienced"
>>God.  It is certainly possible that their experience of God was just as
>>real as our present experience of our respective computer terminals.
>>This then puts a belief in God for this particular person on a par with
>>the vast majority of people's belief in the real existence of the
>>material world.
>>

>  I personally know of no one who makes the claim that their
>  experience of god is on the same sensual level as their day to day
>  perception of the world around them (well, maybe one, Jarek
>  Dabrowski, but that's another topic).  Most claims of believer-god
>  interaction are extraordinarily vague or mystical, with phrases
>  like "felt lead to", "had a vision", "had a feeling", etc.

>  It's this distinction that allows me to summarily reject these
>  claims as unconvincing evidence of god's existence.  To elevate
>  these experiences to the same level as normal perception would
>  require me to believe that drunks, addicts, and schizophrenics all
>  have useful information about parts of the universe that are
>  apparently unopened to me.  Not that it's impossible, just not
>  very likely.

>>Thus, a true "experience" of God may be a very rational reason for that
>>particular person to believe in God.  Definitely as rational as the reason
>>the vast majority of people have for believing in the existence of the
>>material world.

>  If any of the theists in this group have had encounters of this
>  kind with their god, please post them.  I for one have never heard
>  of such a thing.

In my posting, I had in mind mainly mystics, sometimes also known as
gnostics.  Personally, as far as mystic traditions go, I am most
familiar with the literature of Sufism.  The whole point of Sufism, and
indeed all mysticism, is a direct experience of God.  This experience is
claimed to be as real, or even more real, than our experience of the
material world.  So some theists, namely mystics, do claim to have such
an experience.  Note, however, that mystics often undergo many years of
progression and practice before they obtain the ultimate goal of
"annihilation" in God, where they lose all sense of the self, of the "I",
and become in a sense at one with, or annihilated in, God.  Thus, your
average Christian, Muslim, or whoever, is definitely *not* a true mystic
or gnostic in the sense with which I am using the word. 

As for me personally, I am not a mystic or Sufi, but I have spent a
reasonable amount of my time the past few years reading about Sufism and
reading the writings of Sufis.  So I have not had such an experience,
but there are people who do claim to have had such an experience.  This
type of experience of God, is *most definitely* more concrete and real
than being just "warm and fuzzy."

 Fred Rice
 darice@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au