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Beliefs & “Logic”
Anthony from Antaesthetic wrote me a really interesting question:
Throughout all of your research up to this point, and your apparent grasp of logic and clear criticism of many religious themes– where do your spiritual/religious beliefs now stand? Do you believe in God, a force, any particular religion? Have you begun to disbelieve paranormal/spiritual things in your personal history? Have you gained any new beliefs? I was rather curious, because it seems like logical philosophy vs. spirituality often ends in complete atheism.
Great question, although I guess I’m sort of surprised that anybody sees what I’m doing as logical. I’m not really sure I see it as that. Although maybe it’s logic (or a kind of logic) used in service to something else that’s openly illogical. Or maybe using logic against itself. If that makes any sense. Does anybody else see what I’m doing like this? I’m kind of curious.
Shoot, I find these questions to be really hard to answer. The farther I get with all this, the more I change. I can say that much with certainty. I’m certainly not closer to atheism though. If anything, the farther I go the more I “believe”. But it’s not that I believe in any one particular thing, or in any one particular entity or philosophy. I am definitely trying to put together a working methodology for myself though, and figure out the principles that will let me explore the fullest while still staying true to my heart. I guess the reason I can’t answer the question of what do I believe is that I don’t really worry about believing in or not believing in anything anymore. It’s more like there are things that I see as being valuable and things that I can’t figure out their value - but they are constantly shifting (with some exceptions).
Aside from religion though, in terms of straight paranormal stuff (if there’s really any division), I absolutely find myself believing in that more and more. Although I’m not closer to having a real explanation for it. But then, I’ve experienced a lot of things of that nature first hand, and it’s terribly easy to believe in that case. Not a challenge at all. But the more I open myself up to that stuff, the more I find it coming into my life.
Anyway, I’d love to open up Anthony’s questions to everybody else here and see what your own responses to them would be. Has a rigorous study of spirituality made you more of an atheist or brought you somewhere else entirely?
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July 12th, 2005 at 12:50 pm
well, the way i see it, the rules of ‘logic’ are attempts at codifying a means of questioning/investigation that someone with common sense would know innately. so i don’t necessarily see a lot of formal logic in what you do, but a lot of common sense, which is the basis for formal logic.
as to whether my rigorous study altered my belief, absolutely! but, i think it’s cause i started as a seeker and the path that i found was the gnostic path, which encourages further seeking!
July 12th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
certainly logic forces one to stop where the facts are.therefore, and i tread lightly here, one has to stop, logically, before we get to the idea of god. having said that there is some logic in realising that this existance is awesome in it`s scope. it is a thrill ride of exponential proportions. the word “therefore” traps us into a cause and effect modality with regard to everything we look at.maybe the answer is to stop thinking………………….no, that`s not going to work. um,er……..logic is going to force the atheist position. but i think we should be happy for no reason. that`s the core of my personal philosophy. it may not be a deeply thought out position but it works every time you do the practice. maybe i`m a mystic and an athiest too. who needs a god to make all this go anyway?
July 12th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
For the most part, I’ve stopped believing in any religious founder as the absolute “real deal”. Even the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and the Baha’i’s have questionable shit in their backgrounds. I am still a seeker of sorts–of a mystic/magick/gnostic bent–and I believe that there are definitely folks out there with lots of concrete knowledge and techniques that one can use to be a happier, stronger and more “awake” individual, but I don’t believe for a moment that they are an abundant commodity, nor do I believe that they are to be trusted without proof and the use of reason (unless intuition is overwhelmingly against over analyzing or intellectualizing a specific action). I don’t know if religious or mystic or atheist are even remotely accurate terms, though, once you just come to the conclusion that there be some real strange, complex and powerful shit, good, bad and indifferent, goin’ on all the time and that it sometimes looks to be done by an Invisible Something and defining what that Something is (god, impersonal laws of physics, Rue McClanahan from the Golden Girls) cannot begin to encompass it.
July 12th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
My primary approach to all of this is to try and be a ‘radical collector of witness testimony’. Unless someone can give very, very good reasons why a certain person telling a certain story isn’t credible (something that the professional debunker/skeptic types almost never do, despite their claims), then I want to bring those experiences into the fold, and let the hypothesizing and theorizing reshape themselves to accomodate anything new or surprising, or even weird… let the universe dictate to you, in other words, instead of you dictating to it. This approach, inevitably, is going to lead you to take the spiritual and the paranormal seriously, because an awful lot of folks have reported an awful lot of mind-bending and/or paradigm busting stuff. Interestingly, according to Will Durant in his classic The Story of Philosophy, this was pretty much the way that the “founding father” of modern science, Francis Bacon, felt the scientific method should work. He was apparently in favor of a kind of hyper-inductiveness - just keep collecting the data and collecting the data until it piles up so deep that the answers pretty much hit you over the head with their obviousness. This was also the advice that Thomas Kuhn of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions fame gave to John Mack in a discussion of his researches, he advised Mack to just listen to all the stories without judgement, and go wherever they might eventually take him.
As to the reality of the paranormal, the imaginal realms, the spiritual dimensions, and so on, there is one simple idea that seems very powerful and persuasive to me. Even if 99% of a certain phenomena or widely shared experience could be explained away through prosaic and conventional ways, if just 1% can’t be, then that is all you really need. In fact, in many cases, if only ONE of the stories you hear is factual, even if just one person is telling the truth about what they’ve seen or experienced, without any misinterpreting or hallucination, then you’ve stumbled upon something important that shouldn’t be dismissed. For the materialist skeptics, the picture is just the opposite… there can’t be ANY exceptions to their blanket dismissals. So if you ask which is more likely, that at least some of what you hear in these areas is true, or that absolutely none of it is, the answer seems very obvious, to me at any rate. And of course, many, if not most of us, have our own individual experiences to fall back on, even if we did what the skeptics wanted and threw all the rest of it away.
July 12th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Awesome! This is exactly what I’ve been trying to do lately in my investigations of conspiracy theory. I’ve been trying to just hear the stories and listen to where they tell me to go, and to follow them to places that other people haven’t. Whether it’s real or not isn’t so much the point - the point is that it gives me a framework with which I can understand reality, and with which I can learn and grow and explore. If it changes, or if I outgrow it, or if I find out it’s not true, that doesn’t matter. The theories and interpretations are just tools to pick up and put down as needed.
July 13th, 2005 at 7:00 am
if you`ve lived long enough and paid attention during that time and not been more interested in going to the mall or playing x-box then some things tend to pile up. i think that debunkers, at the cultural level, are agents of some insidious sort. especially james randi. there is something just plain wrong with that guy. there are some people who are impervious to overwhelming proof, and i suppose randi is one of them. i guess that`s why some call him amazing. like unhapy people of all stripes, he refuses to smile.
July 13th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
An impressed ‘thanks’ on my part. In some ways I was trying to make sense of my own way of practice. When I was younger I always wanted to go around and just talk to everyone and find out their weird stories about seemingly unexplainable things. I’m definitely still interested in doing that, but I often find myself saying things like “no, that’s… nutty. And how many of those people are going to willingly tell you anything true?” But, regardless, I find stories popping up in conversation all the time. The more I get to know friends, the more stories come out. People claiming to have seen angels, ghosts, UFOs, having out of body experiences, etc; as well as having plenty of my own personal experiences that I’ve never quite been able to explain without “going there.” I’m sure some of my friends think I must be a complete liar, because I’m finding myself sharing a lot.
As for the original question about study vs. final beliefs; It seems like I’m becoming less religious AND less atheist. Basically, moving away from both extremes and somehow accepting that everything has a sense of validity, particularly those things that are personal experiences. I mean, how can I argue with my own father about whether or not he really had an out of body experience when he fell off of a ladder in the 80s? And how can I tell a close friend that she’s nuts for claiming to have seen an angel? I certainly have no “solid proof” to give anyone about anything that’s ever happened to me, and I can never really be sure I’m not insane myself. It’s bad enough trying to explain my history of lucid dreaming to people without getting the whole “but dreaming is random and meaningless, you can’t be conscious in your dreams” schpeal.
Ah, well that’s rambley old me right there. I have a lot of questions brewing, so you probably haven’t seen the last of me. Thanks again.
July 13th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
I completely understand and agree with everything you said, Ant. I had such trouble answering the question because I’m like you said less religious and less atheist. Well, okay, I was never religious. But I just basically accept things more. There doesn’t have to be as much of an artifice between me and it - whatever it is.
In any event, from personal experience, I say talk to everybody. Engage them in conversation. Recognize the authority of personal experience. Encourage their expertise, and you’ll be absolutely FLOORED by the things some people will share with you, from just being open and accepting. It’s amazing