From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Subject: Re: THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
Distribution: world,public
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 20:06:32 GMT

Again, I've deleted all but the first-level quotes. Well, almost.

In article <1993Jan8.210120.16162@ra.royalroads.ca> mlee@post.RoyalRoads.ca (Malcolm Lee) writes:
>
> You are punishing God by rejecting Him. A father would be pained if his son
> rejected him. Same with God.

But surely these are very qualitatively different things. For your analogy
here to work, the child genuinely and after considerable reflection believes
that the father *does* *not* *exist*. There's no rejection of a relationship
with an acknowledged being, in the sense caught exquisitely by Rowan Atkinson,
playing the father of the bride addressing the groom's family: "I spurn you
as I would spurn a rabid dog".

There is no spurning going on here, and you seem, along with many of your
fellow travellers, quite unable to see the difference. Hence all the stuff
about atheists `choosing to reject God' and `Why are you punishing God for
[the misery supposedly resulting from your unbelief]' and all the rest of it.

This is about the fourth time in as many days that I have pointed out to you
that as far as I'm concerned, choice neither is, nor should be, involved in
forming opinions on matters of objective fact. I know now that you're way past
having your mind changed, but please at least have the courtesy not to keep
implying that I believe that your God exists but consciously choose to reject
a relationship. I do not believe, even a wee tiny smidgeonette, that he exists,
and thus I am in no position either to accept or to reject a relationship with
him.

Anyway, back to the analogy. If the father in your analogy is pained, it is
because the child doesn't *realise* that the father exists.

In which case, what would the father be expected to do? Why, find the child
and reveal, as in some stomach-turning soap opera, that he is in fact the
long-lost father who the child didn't even realise existed. Then they live
happily ever after.

Back in the wonderful world of your religion, however, the father blames the
*child* for not figuring out the father's existence, and at least cuts the
child out of his will if not literally spit-roasts the child for eternity.

Very damn poor performance on the part of the father, but then (if I may
be so bold as to guess at your response) the father is a mere mortal with
human morals (in which case his attitude seems unjust to us) whereas the
*real* God (yikes! the analogy is implicitly conceded to be worthless)
isn't human and doesn't have human morals! And -- wait for it -- Who Can
Know The Mind Of God? Forgive me if this seems a little facetious, but then
it is.


> When I refer to God giving some painful lessons, these lessons are received 
> while we are on earth and there is still opportunity to repent. These
> lessons are no more so than any caring parent would give his/her child.
> As to the eternal torment of Hell (which I assume you are referring to),
> that torment comes as a result of the total abscence of God. In each and
> every one of us, there resides a small part of God. Some would refer to
> it as their conscience. In Hell, God is not present. Even that small part
> of Him would no longer be there. Ones who are in Hell are in torment
> because there is no God for them.

For the sake of argument *only*, I'll take this as given and use some
of that flowery language I so despise. Why is there a need for unsaved
souls (gakk!) to exist in such torment at all? This continuing existence
is a policy decision made by God, which you have admitted is *not* for
one's own good and seems to me to achieve nothing but suffering, whether
softened to absence_of_God or maintained as the pre-revisionist eternal
flames. Nothing, that is, other than providing a means of social control,
(read `terror') and of assuring the pious that those who, unlike them,
are having fun right now will get their just desserts.


>>> I've never been omnipotent. How would I know what God wants?

Just thought I'd leave that in from your last post for purposes of reflection.


> Reason cannot explain everything. I am safe in saying that Mankind does not
> know everything and has not been able to reason everything out. What are the
> reasons for emotions? I know for sure what I have experienced. I have felt
> God's touch and I've glimpsed what visions He would have me see. These things
> are not so easily explained but they are nonetheless, real. I've never taken
> drugs and I haven't touched a drop of alcohol for the 6 years since becoming
> a Christian, so my experiences were not delusions.

No, mankind does not know everything and has not been able to reason
everything out. Happily, though, this claim has never been made as far
as I am aware. The question is whether emotional reaction is an appropriate
epistemic metric for evaluating claims relating to matters of objective fact.

You say "I know for sure what I have experienced." Right enough, but in
fact you *only* know for sure what you have experienced, as do any of us.
Experiences are all that any of us has to work from. Your conclusion that
your experiences actually indicate contact with a God, however, is just
that -- it's a conclusion, *drawn* *from* the evidence of those experiences.
You do not seem to appreciate the difference. I have had what might be
termed religious experiences myself, such as the Buddhist temple business
I mentioned recently, and I fully intend to have more. The difference between
us is in our *interpretation* of these experiences. I insist that reason is
the only way to come to reliable interpretations of these experiences *if*
the interpretation concerns objective fact, although emotional reaction
is fine in the subjective realm, and is how I come to plenty of my
conclusions in matters subjective.

Let me play that part of your post back to you: "I know for sure what I have
experienced. I have felt God's touch and I've glimpsed what visions He would
have me see." You have felt and `seen' something, and these are your
experiences. You have *interpreted* them as `God's touch' and visions of
divinity respectively. The difference is absolutely *vital*, and I abjectly
beg you to see it. You say that "these things ... are nonetheless, real."
Yes, the experiences *are* real, even *if* they are delusory (by `delusory',
I mean that the individual's *interpretations* of them are objectively false).


> I've stood up in public proclaiming the good news of the Word of God.
> This is something I would not have been capable of before. Where does
> this power come from? I tell you, it is the power of God's Spirit.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It came from whomever *you* heard the Word of God from.

Did you read the stuff I burbled the other day about the memetic virus view
of religious belief transmission? This actually answers your question rather
neatly, if I may be so smug. The relevant section:

# Incorporation of a meme which expresses the imperative of evangelism ("you
# must spread the Word to your fellow man") is one of the great success stories
# of memetic viral evolution, because it vastly increases the reproductive
# fitness of a religious virus over its non-evangelical counterparts and
# enables it to spread like wildfire when the conditions are right, as they
# sadly seem to be in particularly the United States and parts of Asia right
# now for evangelical Christianity.

The reason that you are now capable of public preaching is that the meme
complex which you carry contains memes which express themselves as the
imperative to do just that. The reason for those memes being present in
the complex in the first place is that they were present in the complex
transmitted to you by the person or persons to whom, but for only the
realisation, you owe probably the least gratitude.

> God be with you.

I suspect he ben't.

Cheers

Simon
-- 
Simon Clippingdale                simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science    Tel (+44) 203 523296
University of Warwick             FAX (+44) 203 525714
Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K.
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA