Erebus
Well-Known Member
@serp777 If you're not arguing that personal experience is useless, I got the wrong impression and I apologise for that. I still feel that much of what I wrote is valid here though.
To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm inclined to agree with you that a divine experience probably hasn't revealed cosmic truths to a person. You can probably gather that I'm of the opinion that humans in general are in a poor position to declare knowledge of cosmic truths.
Furthermore, I agree that not all experiences are worthy of equal consideration. However, I probably interpret that a little differently to you. My toast example isn't particularly worthy of consideration since the reality or unreality of it hinges in a "brain in a jar" scenario. That's something that I personally feel we just have to shrug our shoulders and accept our limitations with. Similarly, to me personally, somebody telling me that God spoke to them and declared all the gays to be damned isn't worthy of my time.
See how I sort things into real or not real without all that much investigation myself?
Here's the part where we're probably going to disagree. To the person who believes god spoke to them, that experience almost certainly is worthy of consideration. As an outsider to that experience, I'm just not in a position to tell them what they ought to believe about it. I can certainly make up my own mind about their experience and I can oppose them if they were to try and act on their belief, perhaps by attempting to deny gay people their rights. I can think what I like about them and their experience.
What I can't do is decide on the validity of that experience for them. To use my earlier analogy, I'm just another cave fish trying to make sense of things as best I can.
To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm inclined to agree with you that a divine experience probably hasn't revealed cosmic truths to a person. You can probably gather that I'm of the opinion that humans in general are in a poor position to declare knowledge of cosmic truths.
Furthermore, I agree that not all experiences are worthy of equal consideration. However, I probably interpret that a little differently to you. My toast example isn't particularly worthy of consideration since the reality or unreality of it hinges in a "brain in a jar" scenario. That's something that I personally feel we just have to shrug our shoulders and accept our limitations with. Similarly, to me personally, somebody telling me that God spoke to them and declared all the gays to be damned isn't worthy of my time.
See how I sort things into real or not real without all that much investigation myself?
Here's the part where we're probably going to disagree. To the person who believes god spoke to them, that experience almost certainly is worthy of consideration. As an outsider to that experience, I'm just not in a position to tell them what they ought to believe about it. I can certainly make up my own mind about their experience and I can oppose them if they were to try and act on their belief, perhaps by attempting to deny gay people their rights. I can think what I like about them and their experience.
What I can't do is decide on the validity of that experience for them. To use my earlier analogy, I'm just another cave fish trying to make sense of things as best I can.
