1. Do they really think the earth is flat?

Comment #224343 by mossie23 on August 4, 2008 at 1:36 pm

about these guys being more sophisticated than creationists....

i've had some discussions with creationists where i was primarily asking questions to see how deep their belief system went, but i had the feeling they had an answer for just about everything.

i found none of it convincing, but could see how their belief system was airtight for them.

2. People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists

Comment #188659 by mossie23 on June 4, 2008 at 10:52 am

"people who've experienced god, KNOW god exist."

don't think so. but i can't deny that human beings sometimes have experiences that can draw them to conclude 'something out there' exists. comment #29 by chato tells us about such experiences.

there are many ways to induce these type of experiences. fasting, the use of psychedelic drugs, sleep deprivation, meditation, etc. and, as abraham maslow argues in his beautiful little book 'religions, values and peak-experiences', everybody is capable of having them.

as i see it though, these experiences are just containers. the content of them is drawn from memory, expectations, surroundings, etc., very much like in dreams. what you bring to the experience could be called 'set' and the surroundings could be called 'setting'.

that set and setting have a big influence on what the contents will be, has been shown in numerous experiments. a famous one is walter pahnke's 'good friday' experiment (1962). in this 10 theological students were given a psychedelic substance, and 90% reported a genuine mystical experience.

also, consider why hindus rarely have visions of the virgin mary, and why christians rarely meet their forefathers, like native americans do. that's because these experiences are very related to what you bring to the experience.

so, it's kinda funny when somebody reads the bible a lot, has one of these overwhelming experiences where he has visions of things in the bible, and then concludes that the bible must be true. that's about as circular as it can get. but the believer can't see that his 'knowledge' is coming from being conditioned by his belief.

and that's exactly why i'm still an atheist after numerous of these experiences. i can see how i influence, up to a certain level, what i will experience. and yes, sometimes the experiences are so personal, clear and otherwordly that it's hard to believe that it's just a fabrication of the brain. but yet nothing has convinced me of 'something out there'. the brain is a strange and beautiful thing.

i think that the scientific study of these 'altered states of consciousness', can give us tremendous insight into why and what people believe. personally, i think it's very sad that researchers can't use psycho-active drugs to do this, as was normal until the seventies. once again, it's just one way of inducing these experiences, but it's definitely more convenient than having people fast for 2 weeks in a lab. so it's a shame that hardly any country allows this type of research.

for those of you who think i'm a total dopehead, i can only say i take psychedelic substances about twice a year. and the majority of my experiences have been induced in non-drug ways.

3. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #175824 by mossie23 on May 6, 2008 at 6:01 am

apart from the claims sam harris makes, i totally fail to understand why geert wilders gets so much credit for what he does. here in holland he's considered by most educated people to be a complete nut.

and that's not because of what he says, but mainly because of how he says it. his message can also be found in the stuff dawkins, harris, hitchens, etc. write and say. but whereas they manage to appeal to reason and make a good case for what they say, wilders does more damage than good to the argument, by mainly appealing to emotion.

for me, fitna clearly illustrates this, by being very much like the cheap copy-and-paste stuff creationists do to prove evolution is wrong. all he does is shouting that islam is bad.

he's giving people conclusions, not thoughts to reach their own conclusions. maybe that's why educated people don't even listen to him anymore in the netherlands, even if he might have a point.