--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I think you have a knack for isolating a pretty clean version of > experience sans belief. It took me quite a few years to understand > it. (assuming that I actually do!) But for most people who have > these experiences, they quickly do make statements about what it > means and then they are subject to the "WTF" line of > epistemological questioning just like everybody else.
The thing is, Curtis, I don't see the skeptics merely criticizing the "what I think this exper- ience means" thing in people who believe things they don't. I see a lot of them trying to chal- lenge the experiences *themselves*. They seem almost compelled to come up with ration- alizations to "explain away" the person's exper- iences. And those rationalizations may be valid. Then again, they might not be. To claim that a person's experiences aren't what he thinks they are just because you can think of a theory that paints them in a different light strikes me as the height of hubris. Why is the skeptic's theory any more "valid" than the believer's theory? It seems to me that what's going on is just a dick-size contest: "My theory has a longer dick than yours." > I think this is Sam Harris's main point. That we don't have to > give a person a pass on claims just because they came from an > inner source once they cross the threshold of talking about > their meaning. And I don't perceive the "threshold" the same way you do. I don't think that a person *talking about* their experience and saying, "This was just my experience; make what you want of it" has crossed any "threshold" that demands that you must challenge it. The "threshold," for me, is when the believer talks about his beliefs and casts them as Truth, as The Way Things Are, You Betcha. Or when the believer tries to sell you his beliefs. When a person does this, then you might have the right to come after them with a stiff dick. But if they just say, "Hey...this is what my experience is, and what I make of it, YMMV," I don't see what the big issue is.
