Personal relationship with God

[Resha Caner]

Science is a mechanism first and foremost.

Sorry, but no it's not. You just keep appropriating words and distorting definitions to make things fit with your claim. I already told you this wouldn't work, so continuing to do it won't help.

Science is not a "mechanism". It is a "method" - a method executed by conscious, intelligent agents. And I used the phrase "information transfer" because you used it (see below). If the term doesn't describe what you mean, don't use it.

In our case, the genetic and epigenetic paths of such information transfer and retention is inadequate, hence we've developed a memetic one for more complex concepts.

In my case, belief would be a prerequisite.

Do I have to be a member?
No. Baptism is open to all who believe and wish to be baptized in the name of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, whether you are a member of First Lutheran Church or not.

...

It's possible that there are enough opinions on the subject withing Lutheran church itself and yours is the right one.

Are you (a non-Lutheran) going to argue with me (a Lutheran) about what Lutherans mean so you can be right? Or will you accept my explanation?

Baptism (and all sacraments) are efficacious regardless of whether the recipient believes. The stipulation you quoted above is simply a note of caution in line with 1 Corinthians 11. If one partakes in a sacrament with the intent of abusing it, the result will not be good. Secondly, the church does not want to convey the idea that baptism magically bestows wisdom or creates a "once saved always saved" state, which are some of the other misconceptions (Matthew 13:1-17). In essence the church is asking if you intend to stay and learn. The same question is asked of the parents and sponsors in an infant baptism.

 

[Resha Caner]

Ah OK. Now you've explained, I can see what you're getting at.

Good.

The results they did get were significant enough to show ...

Nope. Drawing conclusions from confounded results is never valid.

But - as I understand it - to Christians, Jesus is not so much an historical agent (isn't he supposed to be 'still with us', and will return in person at some point?) than a divine agent (both God and man). In any case, it seems to me that, for believers, Jesus isn't just another historical agent, he's very much a unique case.

Jesus is unique, yes. That wasn't my original suggestion. The original suggestion was to ask about Caesar, etc. My hypothesis is that the results for historical agents such as Caesar would be the same as for "supernatural agents" (still don't like that term). But your suggestion does offer even a 4th possibility - celebrities. What does George Clooney believe? So, another confounding variable.

No; any system that modifies its responses according to the results of previous responses has learnt.

No, it hasn't. It's simply an example of an analogy migrating into direct usage, and it's the reason people are always so confused about what is meant by the particular use of a word. The same has happened with artificial neural nets, etc. I fought this kind of thing all the time as an engineer. Engineers would refer to the "damping" in a system when it wasn't damping, but rather absorption or even nonlinear jumping. If words don't retain their distinctiveness, we lose the ability to describe.

But, whatever. I give up.

So what, exactly about the sacramental is evidence of the physicality of God? (if you've already explained it to devolved, just point me to the post ).

First, it's what you mean by "evidence" that concerns me. The fluidity of such terms just kills. If you're expecting to capture God and put him in a bottle, that's not going to happen. So, for example, taking a sample of the baptismal water and looking for something unusual won't show anything. Do you recall our discussion of the fundamental?

So, if you're looking for "evidence" you have to engage in the lives of those who partake in the sacraments.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

No, it hasn't. It's simply an example of an analogy migrating into direct usage...

Meaning follows usage, as Wittgenstein said, and usage changes over time. But now you know what I and many scientists mean by learning.

First, it's what you mean by "evidence" that concerns me. The fluidity of such terms just kills. If you're expecting to capture God and put him in a bottle, that's not going to happen. So, for example, taking a sample of the baptismal water and looking for something unusual won't show anything.

As I said, calling something 'physical' has clear and specific implications, whether you intend them or not. One implication is that it interacts with the physical world and this is how we know it exists. You say God is physical and refer me to a 'sacrament'. All I'm asking is what physical interaction is involved in the sacrament that assures you that God is physical, and how did you detect it - what physically changed?

Do you recall our discussion of the fundamental.

I remember having difficulty understanding your usage and meaning, but little more than that now. If it's relevant, please explain how.

So, if you're looking for "evidence" you have to engage in the lives of those who partake in the sacraments.

How? what should I be looking for? what should I expect to find?

I'm wondering why you seem so reticent or evasive on this simple question.

 

[devolved]

Sorry, but no it's not. You just keep appropriating words and distorting definitions to make things fit with your claim. I already told you this wouldn't work, so continuing to do it won't help.

Definitions only work in scope of reality of these definitions and that's the primary problem of religious mindset. It can be largely detached from reality of any meaning in terms of what and how these translate into or work in reality.

When you are talking about a "method" you are detaching it from what it actually means in physical reality. There isn't a thing called method. When we translate what method really is into the "Machine code" of reality, then all you see is an arrangement that performs a function.

Saying method is a method... is meaningless tautology, but that's what you are doing when you detach the process from the mechanical reality responsible for that process that defines that process to begin with.

I'll give you a semantic drilling example that few people really do, and I tend to do it for fun:

Method - a particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one.

Procedure - a series of actions conducted in a certain order or manner.

Order - the arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular sequence


So, let's combine the definition by actually removing the abstract substitution of certain complex words:

Method (unpacked) - a particular series of actions conducted [by agents in accordance] with certain arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular sequence.


Now, let's deconstruct mechanism as a term in this particular context:

Mechanism - a natural or established process by which something takes place or is brought about

Process - a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.

Mechanism (unpacked) - a natural or established series of actions or steps taken by which something takes place or is brought about

So, compare it with method:

Method (unpacked) - a particular series of actions conducted [by agents in accordance] with certain arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular sequence.


Method is a type of process, and thus a type of mechanism. I'm not sure how you can protest or object to this point when I'm actually using a dictionary definition of both.

 

[devolved]

Science is not a "mechanism". It is a "method" - a method executed by conscious, intelligent agents. And I used the phrase "information transfer" because you used it (see below). If the term doesn't describe what you mean, don't use it.

I just gave you a semantic deconstruction of both words, method and mechanism. Method is a type of mechanism.

When we describe the "scientific method" as a concept, we essentially describing a mechanism that's able to asses the environment more reliably than other mechanisms that don't operate in the same manner.

Terms do describe what I mean, and that's what I'm trying to point out to you.

 

[devolved]

Are you (a non-Lutheran) going to argue with me (a Lutheran) about what Lutherans mean so you can be right? Or will you accept my explanation?

Listen, I really don't want to sound dismissive, but it really seems like you are asking me to play religious game that I've already played before. My research that I provide is not to show you up on my Lutheran knowledge, but simply to show you that there's a certain paradigm of expectation that's not that different from other churches. If you are Baptized, you are obviously expected to study, right? Likewise, you are expected to study with purpose that you hopefully accept certain teachings and concepts.

Saying that I seemingly didn't do it right, because it was a typical "non-Lutheran" experience don't really change the fact that I've played the game enough to see that the game largely depends on learning a worldview and then interpreting everything in accordance to that worldview, including the vagueness of God's mysterious acts through various sacriments like Baptism.

If you go to SDA church, they will tell you a different story, for example. They will tell you that they and they only have the "Spirit of Prophesy", and that's the sign of a true Church, etc. Every person of subjective take of Christianity that groups to some denominational claims will claim that.

Hence, I'm asking you as to why should that matter at all?

What better explains this paradigm?

1) That God is mysteriously hiding and revealing itself through a very narrow experience initiated through some rite of passage?

2) Or that there's nothing more to it than a subjective projection on people who create some egregore-type of entity by contributing to its function?

I'm not saying that there are more than 2 possibilities. I merely asking which one fits the reality better?

Baptism (and all sacraments) are efficacious regardless of whether the recipient believes. The stipulation you quoted above is simply a note of caution in line with 1 Corinthians 11. If one partakes in a sacrament with the intent of abusing it, the result will not be good. Secondly, the church does not want to convey the idea that baptism magically bestows wisdom or creates a "once saved always saved" state, which are some of the other misconceptions (Matthew 13:1-17). In essence the church is asking if you intend to stay and learn. The same question is asked of the parents and sponsors in an infant baptism.

1 Cor 11 contextually doesn't deal with Baptism at all. Baptism historically and from Biblical narrative is an initiation rite of a believer.

You are essentially saying that one doesn't need to believe to do any of these things, hence you are inviting me back into experience that you are accusing me in the first place .

I If I don't yet believe in God, and get Baptized and approach everything academically, then what's the point? I'm already doing just that. I'm not exactly sure what is your point in all of this.

 

[Resha Caner]

How? what should I be looking for? what should I expect to find?

I'm wondering why you seem so reticent or evasive on this simple question.

I didn't think I was being evasive, but rather honest. The study you presented is a perfect example of the complexity involved, and the failure of the researchers in that particular case to address it. If you continue to think the results were perfectly valid, then I don't know what else to do. Further, it foreshadows that I won't be able to tell you what to look for in a sacrament.

If part of the problem is my inability, I'm willing to accept that. But if you saddle me with full responsibility and therefore pursue it no further, I think you have made a mistake. As I've tried to explain through multiple analogies, this is not something you can do through intellect alone. You have to experience it. As such, the only resource I have to offer you is to actually go to an LCMS church and engage them - not as an outsider; engage them.

My wife loves me, and I am convinced of that. But if a stranger were to ask if he can learn about love by experiencing my wife, I would object (pardon the crude allusion). He has to have his own experience. If he then asked me how he could know that his wife loves him, I would be hard-pressed to answer. There are thousands of ways to show love. How am I supposed to know which one will be chosen by a complete stranger? I would have to get to know him and his wife - engage in their life. I don't know another way to do it. IMO, making comments about how she will be committed and value his needs is just throw-away, pseudo-psychological babble that lets me escape the conversation without putting any skin in the game.

What do I get from my baptism? Or from the Eucharist? Assurance. Peace. Joy. A conviction to listen to the Word. Are the sacraments the only reason people have those things? No, of course not. Does everyone have the same experience? No. That's my experience. So how do I know it comes from the sacrament? Because if I take the sacrament it happens. If I don't, it doesn't happen. I don't get the same assurance, peace, joy, and conviction from other things ... and I've tried.

Do I expect that to convince you? No, not at all. You need to engage in the life of a practicing LCMS congregation, build trusting relationships, and experience it for yourself. But I'm quite sure you won't unless you have a friend whom you enjoy spending time with, and he is an LCMS member who golfs with you, goes to the bar with you, watches your dog for you while you run some errands, helps you fix a broken shelf, etc. Someone you trust - not a stranger on the Internet.

 

[Resha Caner]

Listen, I really don't want to sound dismissive, but it really seems like you are asking me to play religious game that I've already played before.

OK.

 

[devolved]

this is not something you can do through intellect alone. You have to experience it.

You wouldn't agree that human experience is a form of intellectual experience? Otherwise you are talking about experience that's beyond our understanding, in which case what makes such a viable experience?

You seem to make a distinction between intellectual and other experience. Can you point me to a part of conscious experience that wouldn't be a part of our intellectual experience, in which you find such God experience?

That's what I find most confusing. Perhaps we can shift our conversation to that part?

 

[devolved]

My wife loves me, and I am convinced of that. But if a stranger were to ask if he can learn about love by experiencing my wife, I would object (pardon the crude allusion).

Wouldn't it also mean that we don't learn about your wife through experience of love? Hence, that's where these categories of concepts gets one confused IMO.

We either can experience your wife or we don't in some consistent manner. Otherwise it would be very difficult to know what you are talking about when you say "my wife". If one person says "She lives in my house", and the other says "No, she's actually married to me", and we get conflicting subjective experiences, then it's rather difficult to say which one is which, and whether such person even exists apart from someone's imagination of something entirely different.

What do I get from my baptism? Or from the Eucharist? Assurance. Peace. Joy. A conviction to listen to the Word. Are the sacraments the only reason people have those things? No, of course not. Does everyone have the same experience? No. That's my experience. So how do I know it comes from the sacrament? Because if I take the sacrament it happens. If I don't, it doesn't happen. I don't get the same assurance, peace, joy, and conviction from other things ... and I've tried.

What if the experience of the other people would be substantially different from yours. For example, let's say that they could claim that their personal take on it all is that God gives one peace through testing the God's word and passing the snakes around without being bitten, or things like these... and it gives them Joy and Peace, or so they would claim.

How would we know the difference?

Essentially, you seem to imply that the subjective conviction that God does something is more important and will trump objective consensus in this area.

 

[Resha Caner]

You wouldn't agree that human experience is a form of intellectual experience?

No.

Otherwise you are talking about experience that's beyond our understanding, in which case what makes such a viable experience?

No. This isn't new to the conversation, but points back to what I said in post #52. Many can't seem to separate intellectual activity from other activity. I don't need to understand pain intellectually to know it hurts.

Wouldn't it also mean that we don't learn about your wife through experience of love?

No. As I said, there are many kinds of love. You could love her as a friend, just not as a wife. Different experiences - same person. But that doesn't mean everyone gets to define her differently, where one says she's a Buddhist and another says she's Muslim. She is not a contradiction.

(And I'm regretting this analogy already; it's getting weird.)

 

[devolved]

No. This isn't new to the conversation, but points back to what I said in post #52. Many can't seem to separate intellectual activity from other activity. I don't need to understand pain intellectually to know it hurts.

To Know it hurts?

Again, it seems like you are separating mental function into unwarranted categories with the above semantics.

We have subconscious experiences that inform conscious ones, but to know something you have to first intellectually asses it. Otherwise you are doing something entirely different than knowing.

 

[Resha Caner]

To Know it hurts?

Yes.

Again, it seems like you are separating mental function into unwarranted categories with the above semantics.

Shrug. You have your "scientific mechanisms". I have my "knowing".

 

[devolved]

Yes.

I guess I find it difficult as to who you would be doing that, when knowledge is defined as intellectual assessment of any given experience.

I guess we are speaking different semantic language, and you'd have to explain what you mean by both knowledge and intellect.

 

[Resha Caner]

I guess I find it difficult as to who you would be doing that, when knowledge is defined as intellectual assessment of any given experience.

I guess we are speaking different semantic language, and you'd have to explain what you mean by both knowledge and intellect.

I guess we are, but "to know" is not always defined as you state: know. Of the 7 definitions listed, only 1 explicitly mentions mind. You could say mind is implied in the others, but that is not the case. In fact, #7 is explicitly about a sensory experience.

 

[devolved]

I guess we are, but "to know" is not always defined as you state: know. Of the 7 definitions listed, only 1 explicitly mentions mind. You could say mind is implied in the others, but that is not the case. In fact, #7 is explicitly about a sensory experience.

How would you experience anything without implicating mind? Awareness implies mind, right? Mind implies intellect.

I guess you have to explain the dynamics of knowing something or being aware of something without implicating mind, hence mind is where our experience resides.

 

[Resha Caner]

How would you experience anything without implicating mind? Awareness implies mind, right? Mind implies intellect.

No. Mind is only a part of the nervous system, not all of it. IIRC some studies have shown that the body will react to certain situations before the mind is consciously aware.

 

[devolved]

No. Mind is only a part of the nervous system, not all of it. IIRC some studies have shown that the body will react to certain situations before the mind is consciously aware.

You realize that there is a subconscious mind, right?

 

[Resha Caner]

You realize that there is a subconscious mind, right?

IIRC the study didn't associate the effects with a subconscious mind. Do you realize psychology is far from settled on whether such a thing really exists and what it might be?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/focus-forgiveness/201307/conscious-the-unconscious

The title of the article invokes the oxymoronic nature of a subconscious mind. It approaches a "mind of the gaps" argument.

Where it might have some application is in the area of repressed memories, but that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. If the body does things that occur apart from the conscious mind, why do we have to equate them with some other mysterious type of "mind". Just call it what it is - a reaction of the nervous system.

 

[devolved]

IIRC the study didn't associate the effects with a subconscious mind. Do you realize psychology is far from settled on whether such a thing really exists and what it might be?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/focus-forgiveness/201307/conscious-the-unconscious

The title of the article invokes the oxymoronic nature of a subconscious mind. It approaches a "mind of the gaps" argument.

Sure, the op-ed in a magazine does . What's your point?

Mind, from perspective of neurophysiology's is a neural process, or more accurately, a collection of competing neural processes... a very large number of them.

Mind ,from a perspective of psychology, is a model in context of behavior resultant from certain functions of mind (as a neural process). Psychology mostly concerned with resultant behavior as opposed to the actual physiology behind the mechanism of the mind.

Psychology deals with mind as abstract concept. Neurophysiology deals with mind as a physical process of nervous system.

Hence.... saying that...

Just call it what it is - a reaction of the nervous system.

doesn't really makes sense without begging the question. What we call mind is a process of the nervous system that consists of various competing reactions, and complex nature of these reactions drive the complex nature of our experience.

You are seemingly attempt to detach mind from the activity of our nervous system and treat it as something "external" to it and thus separate, but there little viable evidence that it's case, and there's plentiful evidence that it's not the case.