Why "spiritual knowledge beyond logic" does not exist

[juvenissun]

Statements can't be valid or invalid. Arguments can be valid or invalid. I never claimed that statement 1 was true, I was only giving an example of how "spiritual knowledge" can be analyzed as a logical syllogism.

You can not. You demonstrated it. It is NOT logic.

 

[zippy2006]

In other words, it doesn't seem like access to the qualitative aspect of these experiences is required in order to evaluate these experiences. That seems to be the important point here.

Of course it would depend on the experience. In some cases a description might suffice to convey the experience, but I don't think this is true for all cases. The quality of the experience is obviously important for determining implications, and insofar as the experience cannot be communicated the implications cannot be drawn out by a 3rd party. Inevitably the sort of experiences we are talking about are more exalted and unique than mundane, everyday experiences.

Without falling into the categories of Reformed theologians, there are certain experiences that are more properly basic than others. For example, the experience of the presence of another person is a significantly basic experience. It takes some hefty phenomenology to even attempt to analyze such a thing. Properly basic beliefs are incommunicable (at least by syllogistic means). Beliefs that approximate such basic beliefs also approximate incommunicability, and thus elude the sort of "objective" analysis you seek. That's not to say that all religious beliefs or experiences fall into this category, but there are at least some.

I am somewhat familiar with the idea of properly basic beliefs, but I'm not sure that those are the sorts of cases I'm talking about here. However, it is worth nothing that much has been written defending the idea of properly basic beliefs. As such, it at least seems that logic is useful in defending the rationality of holding such beliefs.

Right. And yet the fact remains that the rational justification proposed is external to the subject. The person holding the belief can have absolutely no concept of properly basic beliefs or even philosophy in general, and still be rationally justified in holding their belief.

I'm referring primarily, however, to the sorts of experiences you responded to above.

I would just reiterate the point that even if the experiences noted above are not properly basic beliefs, they do approximate these beliefs insofar as they are incommunicable.

Oftentimes there is a reasoning process involved with such supernatural claims, but unless the reasoning process is invalid or the premises are available to the interlocutor--either by being communicated to them or by their own experience--the reasoning will not be subject to criticism.

 

[Joshua260]

I still think I would agree with the OP. Going back to the OP, I read:

"I often hear the claim on this board that a person has spiritual knowledge through personal experience that is entirely independent on any logic."

I don't think this is the same as someone claiming that one has spiritual knowledge entirely independent of any evidence (and I mean evidence that can be presented to an unbeliever).

The example below was given:
I. If experience E occured, god must exist
II. E occured
Conclusion: God must exist

...and it seems to me that I could rewrite p1 as “If there is a witness of the Holy Spirit, then Christianity is true.”

 

[UndercoverElephant]

This does seem to be the reasoning behind the divine revelation claim, so I want to work through this. Let's say Smith says to Jones "I had divine experience E, and the most likely explanation is that it is from god, therefore god exists," or something to that effect. Even if Jones were to grant that Smith did in fact have experience E, it still seems as though the premise that god is the most likely explanation can be played out in the public arena. It's possible that I'm not considering something about certain types of experiences, but Smith were to have had a vision or a dream or just a set of coincidences play out in his life, it seems as though Smith could convey those experiences to Jones at least well enough for Jones to understand them and evaluate what the most likely cause was, just as Smith can. In other words, it doesn't seem like access to the qualitative aspect of these experiences is required in order to evaluate these experiences. That seems to be the important point here.

I think Jones has no hope of being able to understand Smith's experiences, regardless of how well they were explained.

This is particularly problematic if Jones is a skeptic. Skeptics don't believe in things like synchronicity, so regardless of how profound, or how unlikely, or how meaningful, those co-incidence are, the skeptic will always...and I mean always...evaluate that Smith has an over-active imagination, is making connections where there aren't any, or if the evidence is so strong that these explanations won't cut it, the skeptic will simply say that sometimes incredibly unlikely things do happen, and it isn't evidence for synchronicity.

The "evidence" doesn't matter. The bar will always be raised sufficiently high to make sure no evidence ever gets over it.

Another way to put this: because the skeptic is convinced such things aren't real, when presented with evidence of a standard he'd normally accept (probabilistically), he will say "but this is an extra-ordinary claim, and extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence." But who gets to decide what is an extra-ordinary claim? It only seems extra-ordinary to the skeptic.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

It's possible that I'm not considering something about certain types of experiences, but Smith were to have...a set of coincidences play out in his life, it seems as though Smith could convey those experiences to Jones at least well enough for Jones to understand them and evaluate what the most likely cause was, just as Smith can. In other words, it doesn't seem like access to the qualitative aspect of these experiences is required in order to evaluate these experiences. That seems to be the important point here.

OK. I'm Smith, you're Jones and this is real, not a hypothetical example.

I used to be a skeptic, until a period of intense and transformative experiences about 13 years ago, after which I am best described as a mystic of no specific religion. I'm reluctant to say "I'm a theist", because everybody has different ideas about what the word "God" means, but I'm definitely a supernaturalist. The central theme of those experiences was synchronicity. Big ones.

I'm getting married in three weeks. When I met my fiancee, at the end of 2012, she was entirely agnostic regarding such things. She had no strong religious beliefs and no strong atheism/skepticism either. I talked to her about what had happened to me, and at the end I said to her "just watch out for synchronicity."

Then something happened on my birthday in September 2013. I don't really do birthdays - I've spent years telling people not to send me cards. Only my mother persisted in sending them, so it was normal for me to recieve only one card. But my fiancee also decided to give me a card - which she drew by hand a few days before my birthday. On the day of my birthday I got a card in the post from my mother. It had some mice on it, preparing for a party, and a cat, and a balloon. I put it on the mantelpiece. When my fiancee (then girlfriend) got home from work, still having not yet seen my mother's card, she gave me hers. She'd made me some pickle and some jam as presents, and inside the card it said "you're the pickle on my cheese, the jam on my scone" and on the front was a picture of pickle going on cheese, and jam going on scone. I put it on the mantelpiece next to the other one, but the wrong way round (the picture was sideways). She told me to put it the right way up, so I moved it through 90 degrees.

A few minutes later, as I sat on the sofa drinking a glass of wine, I noticed something strange about the pictures. Firstly it was obvious that in both cases there was a lump of cheese in the bottom left corner. A slight co-incidence - how often do you get two birthday cards with a lump of cheese in the same corner, especially when you only got two cards in total? But I had now also noticed that in both cases, in the top right hand corner there was a red circle with something dangling down from it. 2 co-incidences on the cards? I pointed this out to my girlfriend, and just as she was saying "oh, that's a bit strange, isn't it" she stopped in mid-sentence and said "Geoff, look in the top left corner!" The body of the cat on my mother's card was drawn from behind, as a circle. And it was a tabby cat (I have a tabby cat), so it was multi-coloured, with black lines curving round on a grey background. And on my girlfriend's card? In the same corner was the pickle, which just happened to be a grey circle with black blobs in it, sort of going round in a circular effect. By now you'll have guessed how the story ends. There was only one corner left. In the bottom right hand corner of my girlfriend's card was a scone. And on my mother's card? A cake.

At this point my girlfriend was completely freaked out, although not in a frightening way. She knew she hadn't "cheated" - it was her who drew the card, after all, and she had no way of knowing what card my mother was going to send. For her, it was conclusive proof that I was for real, and I think it was probably a turning point when she decided she wanted to stay with me - that I was the one. It was also conclusive proof in the reality of synchronicity. She says it is the strangest thing that has ever happened to her. It's a long way short of the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, but it's in the same category.

Now...assuming I am not just lying to you, and that my girlfriend wasn't lying to me....that these co-incidences are real...is it enough to convince you?

Because I've posted this on a skeptics' website, and I can tell you that a grand total of zero skeptics believed there was anything even remotely spooky about this. In fact, for them it was just evidence that people will believe any old tripe. And yet when I look at those cards, it is as obvious to me as the day it happened that this was synchronicity - or "mind reading" - at work. It's an almost perfect example, and as good an example as you could hope for to test your own theory out.