On 9 Jul 2003, Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
I was trying to write from the 'neutral agnostic'
position, while acknowledging that I in fact am a
person who has had "numinous experiences." But I
cannot prove that scientifically to someone who has
not experienced such a moment.
You can tell people that you had the experience: that constitutes a
report. That report, that gathering of information, can be as
scientific as any other gathering of information. The *implications*
of the experience are a different matter.
Like atoms, the implications are invisible to the unaided eye and
silent to the unaided ear. But just as people came to accept the
existence of atoms by figuring out what their or other entities'
existence implied, and then investigated as best they could, so the
implications of numinous experiences can be figured out by studying
reported occurrences, which are many.
> Numinous experiences do occur. I don't know anyone who denies
> that. It is the same with apparitions and stigmata. They
> occur, too.
Yet some people will state that such experiences are
"delusional," or the products of a weak mind; ...
Yes, of course. There is a question here: what do you mean by the
word "delusional"? Do you mean that the reports of people having
numinous experiences are false and that the people making those
reports or repeating them, like me, are (perhaps inadvertently) lying?
Or do you mean that the reports are truthful, in that they accurately
record people's experiences? Is the question whether reports of
numinous experiences are like reports of the voices heard by some
schizophrenics: in our culture, almost everyone agrees that such the
reports tell us a about the minds and bodies of the people who hear
voices, but not too much about the subject matters about which the
voices talk.
> The issue is not whether some people have such experiences, but
> how they are interpreted. Within a single culture, there is no
> question. Everyone interprets the experience the same. But
> people in different cultures interpret apparitions, stigmata,
> and numinous experiences differently.
Yes; but some people do not (cannot?) have these
experiences at all, so they think of others - or
themselves - as 'delusional' or 'defective.'
Well, there are people who say I could not have traveled once around
the world, because the world is flat. If I had tried, I would have
fallen off the edge. To them, my round the world trip must indicate I
am 'delusional' or 'defective'.
Pretty clearly, there is a question of your or my judgement here: do
you judge such people as right or wrong? Who is 'delusional' or
'defective', those who say that your reports of your experience
indicate you are 'delusional' or 'defective', or those who say that
your reports indicate a widespread human capability?
You could argue that that capability is as important as having a
sufficiently efficient metabolism so as to survive on little food,
which many say is why grandmothers were supported in paleolithic
times, and thus were able to pass on cultural rather than genetic
learning.
> It also goes without saying that numinous experiences can and do
> confirm statements of liturgy that are unfalsifiable in other
> ways.
But for those who cannot believe in such experiences,
there is no "scientific proof" to replace the faith of
the believer/experiencer.
I don't understand you. A numinous experience is undeniably
convincing to the person who has the experience. But is it true that
such experiences mean that Confucius was right? Do such experiences,
by Hindus, tell us that the Hindu pantheon is a correct statement
about the nature of the universe? Somehow, I doubt you are arguing
that numinous experiences, however convincing they have been to
Confucians or Hindus, prove that Christianity is wrong.
But I doubt you are arguing that Christianity is wrong. Moreover, I
suspect that you agree that Confucians and Hindus as well as
Christians and others have had numinous experiences. Then the
question becomes, what can we figure out from this experience that
humans so frequently report?
> As the late anthropologist, Roy Rappaport, pointed out, numinous
> experiences transform "the dubious, the arbitrary, and the
> conventional into the correct, the necessary, and the natural."
> This is important because members of a paleolithic band must
> cooperate, which is to say, members must behave often enough in
> what everyone thinks of as a `correct, necessary, and natural'
> manner, else the band will die.
Yes, spirituality must have been a 'centripetal' force
in such bands, although in huge masses as we have
grown into now, it has become a force that too often
flings apart...
Definitely true. As Alan Page Fiske, another anthropologist points
out (in "Structures of Social Life"), in addition to three other ways
of relating, people tend to establish criteria into which some people
fit and others do not.
For example, if you are permitted into a museum, when it is open, you
have a right to walk through the public galleries. Group membership
comes with a bundle of rights, one of which is walking through the
public galleries. Indeed, that right is so `obvious' and everyday,
almost no one thinks of it.
But if you are not permitted into the museum, perhaps because it is
closed late at night, then if you are caught walking through a public
gallery, you may well be arrested as a potential thief.
Similarly, if you spoke a foreign language, then (in, among other
groups, some native or indigenous American cultures), your death under
torture was considered virtuous entertainment for your killers.
One of the characteristics of the modern era is the increase in the
`width' or range of people considered inside the Western `in-group'.
Americans, for example, think of New Zealanders as being a part of
approximately the same culture.
One of the great political struggles of our age is the determination
of who is `in' and who is `out'. Thus, those who speak of the `common
law nations' try to inspire people to think that others, such as the
French, are out. Those who speak of `Western civilization' try to
inspire others to think of them as in. Those who speak of `our common
humanity' want you to include people from central Asia as well.
Some science fiction readers ask whether a sapient artificial
intelligence, with the intelligence, the emotions, and the wisdom of a
human, but not his looks, are out because they are not built in God's
image, or whether they are in. (I once had a long discussion with an
Iranian on just this question; when I returned to the US, I mentioned
the discussion to a friend. He wondered whether among Christians such
as himself any entity that did not appear overtly as God's image could
be considered `in'.)
Daniel Defoe satirized this kind of distinction making by describing a
war between those who broke the pointed end of an egg and those broke
the more gently rounded end. Everyone agrees that major decisions
should not be based on the choice of which end of an egg to break.
However, with few exceptions, almost everyone agrees that major
decisions need to be made over who gets to eat an egg and who dies of
starvation because they cannot find eggs or other food.
Thus, for example, a great many people argue that the recent US
invasion of Iraq was to ensure supplies of oil that are necessary to
grow chickens who lay eggs. Others have said that the purpose was to
destroy chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons that would endanger
the US. (As I have said before, I think the US purpose was to
intimidate other Arab dictatorships, and that gains in oil or the
destruction of enemy weapons was a hoped-for, but not necessary, side
effect.)
Thus, it becomes important to decide whether numinous experiences
indicate that Christians are all wrong, because the numinous
experiences that confirm the Wahabis are correct; or whether the
numinous experiences that confirm Catholics should tell us that
Protestants should be killed; or whether there is some other
explanation.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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