Thoughts on non-overlapping magesteria (NOM)

[Ecurb]

I'm not really sure how your following paragraph argued that it was dubious... it rather seemed to have supported the notion.
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Well, yes. I said "The extent to which religion is merely a primitive or naïve science, however, is dubious." Then I outlined some examples of how religion is (or seems like) primitive science.

In addition, when it comes to the Laws of Nature (I said "natural law", but that's unclear because that phrase has another, idiomatic meaning), my thinking is a little unclear. Did humans "invent" or "discover" the laws of nature? I'd suggest that by thinking we merely "discover" them, we are suggesting some Cosmic Clockmaker, who established them in the first place. If nature is purposeless, then the planets proceed on their cosmic dance because of "gravity", not because of "the law of gravity". The law of gravity is a cultural construct we have developed to describe how the planets (and other things) move. It's a minor disinction, but a reasonable one.

I'm skeptical that people can't have the same experiences the religious have outside of religion. The overwhelming, emotional, transcendental experiences I've had with select pieces of music, literature, and film strike me as the things that the religious would attribute to their being in contact somehow with God. Similarly, reading romantic poetry makes one think that these poets had similar experiences/feelings about nature (MH Abrahms has a book called Natural Supernaturalism about this very thing).

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You seem perilously close to advocating for the airhead actresses whom AuntShecky and JHG deplore in the other thread for calling herself, "Not religious, but spiritual." We literary types do have transcendent, overwhelming and emotional experiences triggered by art. Such expereinces mght also be triggered by falling in love, or breaking up with our lovers. But why should that make us pooh-pooh religious experiences? I'll grant that facile religious experiences (from reading the Bible, perhaps) may be similar to experiences derived from reading other books. However, to think your experience of art comparable to that of the Buddhist monk who practices meditation for thirty years and then crawls across the Himalayas on his hands and knees on a spiritual pilgrimage smacks of hubris. Religions have, over the years, developed sophisticated techniques for facilitating mystical, transcendent experiences. The saint who practices these techniques daily for decades, flagellating himself all the while (OK, I just put that in for humor) can surely experience something that you and I cannot. The reason the air-head actress who claims to be "spiritual" is objectionable is that she hasn't studied or practiced the techniques of spirituality. She's a dilettante, and I'll grant, Morpheus, that you are just as spiritual as she is. However, the notion that a non-religious person can be just as spiritual as the Saint (without the practice, faith, or talent for it) is ludicrous. It's like suggesting that an illiterate person can be just as good a poet as Walt Whitman.

Christians think that FAITH (and the transcendent experience that accompanies it) is a gift from God,and that only by asking for His help can one become the new and differant person who can achieve salvation. Even if God is no more than a culural construct, it is certainly possible that there is a great deal of truth to this belief. Why couldn't there be? Why can't careful study of culturally constructed concepts be enlightening?

[MorpheusSandman]

Well, yes. I said "The extent to which religion is merely a primitive or naïve science, however, is dubious." Then I outlined some examples of how religion is (or seems like) primitive science.

My bad, I missed the "merely" qualifier.

However, the notion that a non-religious person can be just as spiritual as the Saint (without the practice, faith, or talent for it) is ludicrous. It's like suggesting that an illiterate person can be just as good a poet as Walt Whitman.

For a naturalistic atheist like myself, "spirituality" is nothing but what we call the ill-understand processes of the brain that produce certain thoughts and emotions; so, to me, the notion that religious people have some kind of special ownership/possession of what they call "religious experiences" is far more ludicrous than secularized people saying they've had the same experience with non-religious, non-supernatural things. You can no more measure or gauge my feeling during Isolde's Liebestod than you can the Buddhist Monk who crawled across the Himalayas, so who or you (or anyone) to definitively say whose experience is more profound?

To me, all you've written about such people "developing sophisticated techniques for facilitating mystical experiences" seems almost laughable; is this similar to the "sophisticated techniques" developed for alchemy? I mean, for Pete's sake, we're talking about subjective experiences here; I have no idea why you think it takes more hubris for me to claim my experiences with art are equal to most religious experiences as it does for you to claim they're not. If anything, I'm far harder to impress than most believers are.

Even if God is no more than a culural construct, it is certainly possible that there is a great deal of truth to this belief. Why couldn't there be? Why can't careful study of culturally constructed concepts be enlightening?

Certainly it can be enlightening; I don't know what made you think I implied it couldn't. But it need not be the only culturally constructed concept of God we explore either: Jung saw God as being one with the collective unconsciousness, Blake saw it as being the creator in man, Stevens saw God as embodying all of man's ideals; these are "Gods" I can get behind and believe in, and if I believe in Blake's God, and have, indeed, spent much of my life pondering that idea, who are you to say my experiences aren't every bit as spiritual as those that believe in the Judeo-Christian external deity?

[Ecurb]

For a naturalistic atheist like myself, "spirituality" is nothing but what we call the ill-understand processes of the brain that produce certain thoughts and emotions; so, to me, the notion that religious people have some kind of special ownership/possession of what they call "religious experiences" is far more ludicrous than secularized people saying they've had the same experience with non-religious, non-supernatural things. You can no more measure or gauge my feeling during Isolde's Liebestod than you can the Buddhist Monk who crawled across the Himalayas, so who or you (or anyone) to definitively say whose experience is more profound?

To me, all you've written about such people "developing sophisticated techniques for facilitating mystical experiences" seems almost laughable; is this similar to the "sophisticated techniques" developed for alchemy? I mean, for Pete's sake, we're talking about subjective experiences here; I have no idea why you think it takes more hubris for me to claim my experiences with art are equal to most religious experiences as it does for you to claim they're not. If anything, I'm far harder to impress than most believers are.

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I didn't mean to suggest anything about your personal ability to be moved by art in what seems a "spiritual" way. Nonetheless, I continue to believe that sophisticated techniques for facillitating experiences (which we call "spiritual") can indeed facillitate experiences that differ considerably from those of atheists and laymen. Why wouldn't they? Suppose, instead of spiritual experiences, we were to discuss other experiences that produce particular "thoughts and emotions". A mathematician, for example, may have mental experiences when lost in developing a complicated proof that the layperson doesn't quite understand. It's not that the layperson can't have other experiences that are similar in some ways. However, the level of mental involvement, intellectual complexity, and degree of understanding for the trained mathematician MIGHT (there's no way of knowing for sure) be different in degree (and possibly even in kind) from those of the sophomore geometry student.

If we look around the world at techniques that have been developed to facillitate spiritual experiences, they include: social isolation; fasting; torture; complicated breathing and meditation techniques developed through years of practice; hallucinagenic drugs -- and more. We read about great mystics who have visions, strange dreams, etc. Would Teresa of Avila have experienced her highly sexualized love for Jesus if she hadn't been an abstinent nun? Perhaps, or perhaps her supposed visions were no more "spiritual" than the thoughts of other, non-religious writers. There are dozens of other examples.

I agree with you that there are any number of culturally constituted approaches to the divine (obviously, since there are many religions). What I'm suggesting is that those (whatever their religion) who study diligently, who incorporate their faith wholeheartedly, and who apply the learned, time-tested techniques rigorously are likely to have different mental experiences than those who do not. The same is true for math, art, or music (I imagine). One difference, however, is that the religious mystic or Saint MIGHT give himself more completely to his spiritual quest than the mathematician, the artist, or the musician. I suppose there might be artists who cloister themselves, or deny themselves human company or sexual contact because they think it makes them more single-minded in their quest for artistic enlightenment. From my experience with artists, however, this is rare. Training and technique can change the "thoughts and emotions" of mathematicians and artists. Religious mystics testify to spiritual experiences that differ from those of laymen. I see no reason (even from a naturalistic point of view) to disbelieve them.

[MorpheusSandman]

I didn't mean to suggest anything about your personal ability to be moved by art in what seems a "spiritual" way. Nonetheless, I continue to believe that sophisticated techniques for facillitating experiences (which we call "spiritual") can indeed facillitate experiences that differ considerably from those of atheists and laymen. Why wouldn't they? Suppose, instead of spiritual experiences, we were to discuss other experiences that produce particular "thoughts and emotions". A mathematician, for example, may have mental experiences when lost in developing a complicated proof that the layperson doesn't quite understand. It's not that the layperson can't have other experiences that are similar in some ways. However, the level of mental involvement, intellectual complexity, and degree of understanding for the trained mathematician MIGHT (there's no way of knowing for sure) be different in degree (and possibly even in kind) from those of the sophomore geometry student.

That's more reasonable than saying/suggesting that believers have a kind of ownership on such experiences that others can't have in any similar way. That said, I must point out that we're only speculating at this point because we have no objective means of gauging any of these experiences comparatively. I can think of one reason to the question "Why wouldn't they (be different)?" and that's because all brains are far more similar than they are different. Our noticing and exaggerating differences is, in itself, a tendency of the brain, where two things may differ by only 1%, but we'll make that 1% difference all we focus on (skin color may be one such example).

So, even though every brain is wired slightly different, and even though believers and high-level mathematicians may be somewhat different, I'm skeptical that they're different enough to produce experiences that are, for the most part, off-limit to others. Afterall, Einstein listened to music to facilitate the creativity he found necessary to do math. The Bible itself is a work of art. Is a teenager putting up a poster of Britney Spears and wanting to be like her really come from a completely different impulse than the believer putting up an alter to Jesus and wanting to be like him? These are all products of social idealism, and even if they differ in many relevant ways, the primal drive is likely identical and likely constitutes the majority of our feelings associated with each.

[Gideonthenomad]

No, Yudkowsky says quite explicitly here that: "Not only did religion used to make claims about factual and scientific matters, religion used to make claims about everything. Religion laid down a code of law - before legislative bodies; religion laid down history - before historians and archaeologists; religion laid down the sexual morals - before Women's Lib; religion described the forms of government - before constitutions; and religion answered scientific questions from biological taxonomy to the formation of stars. The Old Testament doesn't talk about a sense of wonder at the complexity of the universe - it was busy laying down the death penalty for women who wore men's clothing, which was solid and satisfying religious content of that era. The modern concept of religion as purely ethical derives from every other area having been taken over by better institutions. Ethics is what's left."

But this is my point. He says religion does "everything" but then he qualifies that by saying it doesn't talk about wonder and so forth. His argument that the factual claims of religion should be challenged is valid, his assertion that that all it does is lay down the law, as it were, is not.

And the idea of religion in personal, subjective terms is an ancient, not a modern concept. Mystics, shamans, visionaries and what have you, have been around forever. The bible is full of expressions of praise, ecstasy, etc, etc. It's also not a matter of using "god" to explain them. It's that you cant really explain them with science. You can only describe the physical (neural, whatever) correlates of the experience. But you can't scientifically describe subjective experience, as it is by it's nature unobservable. Hence NOM.

The rest of your post doesn't actually say anything I disagree with. The mere fact of subjective experience doesn't imply that the experience gives you authority, that would be a sort of is-ought fallacy, wouldn't it?

[Gideonthenomad]

That's more reasonable than saying/suggesting that believers have a kind of ownership on such experiences that others can't have in any similar way. That said, I must point out that we're only speculating at this point because we have no objective means of gauging any of these experiences comparatively. I can think of one reason to the question "Why wouldn't they (be different)?" and that's because all brains are far more similar than they are different. Our noticing and exaggerating differences is, in itself, a tendency of the brain, where two things may differ by only 1%, but we'll make that 1% difference all we focus on (skin color may be one such example).

So, even though every brain is wired slightly different, and even though believers and high-level mathematicians may be somewhat different, I'm skeptical that they're different enough to produce experiences that are, for the most part, off-limit to others. Afterall, Einstein listened to music to facilitate the creativity he found necessary to do math. The Bible itself is a work of art. Is a teenager putting up a poster of Britney Spears and wanting to be like her really come from a completely different impulse than the believer putting up an alter to Jesus and wanting to be like him? These are all products of social idealism, and even if they differ in many relevant ways, the primal drive is likely identical and likely constitutes the majority of our feelings associated with each.

I suspect one quality of "religious experience" is a feeling of self-transcendence, not necessarily social idealism. There does seem to be a difference between the two. Though somewhat dated, an excellent book on the topic is "The varieties of Religious experience" by William James. I'd recommend it, if you haven't read it.

[MorpheusSandman]

And the idea of religion in personal, subjective terms is an ancient, not a modern concept. Mystics, shamans, visionaries and what have you, have been around forever. The bible is full of expressions of praise, ecstasy, etc, etc.

I don't think anyone would deny that personal experiences have always been a part of religion, yet, as Yudkowsky points out, most ancient religious stories don't JUST involve the personal, subjective, and unprovable but, indeed, the social, objective, and falsifiable. The vast majority of the OT is involved in cataclysmic, world-wide events that, even when they involve a personal element, like God speaking to Noah about the impending flood, ends in a huge event that affects everyone. So while I wouldn't say that the personal is absent from ancient religion, I would agree that the notion that it is only or primarily personal, subjective, and unprovable is recent because, as you suggest, religion on that level is one that hasn't completely been replaced by better institutions like science.

It's also not a matter of using "god" to explain them. It's that you cant really explain them with science. You can only describe the physical (neural, whatever) correlates of the experience. But you can't scientifically describe subjective experience, as it is by it's nature unobservable. Hence NOM.

As long as one isn't using NOM to say that all aspects of religion and science are unrelated then I don't mind it so much, but I think it tends to obscure the major point that so many aspects of religious belief (and the religious method of coming to knowledge) do "overlap" with science can be used to analyze such claims. As for science describing subjective experience, let me put it like this: science can describe physically and biologically most everything that's happening during sex, but such objective description can't replicate the subjective feeling of the experience. But where we have to make a distinction is between the subjective feeling of the experience, and our attempts to explain it. Any time we go from "I felt this" to "this is why I felt this," we are in the realm of science, of explaining the reasons behind phenomena. So when someone says "I had this experience because of God," I do think there's an onus for us to question and analyze the supposed stated clause. That science in its descriptions doesn't replicate our experience shouldn't, in any way, be confused with it being wrong or inadequate. I see no conflict between accepting the purely natural explanations behind why we enjoy sex, while still continuing to enjoy sex without having to attribute it to being a gift from God or a little blind boy shooting arrows.

I suspect one quality of "religious experience" is a feeling of self-transcendence, not necessarily social idealism. There does seem to be a difference between the two. Though somewhat dated, an excellent book on the topic is "The varieties of Religious experience" by William James. I'd recommend it, if you haven't read it.

I know of William James but haven't read that book, so thanks for the rec. Anyway, I do think "social idealism" can lead to feeling of "self-transcendence" precisely because one feels that they are a part of the social ideal itself and not just an isolated individual self. The social ideal is USUALLY seen as transcending the self because it's cultural, collective, not just dependent on the individual for its existence.