Taking a Break due to Personal Tragedy.

I will be off line for a while due to personal tragedy. Read about it on Metacrock's blog.

so it's not a hate group hu?: Atheists defend their right to hate

 What was the reaction to the information that blasphemy is hate? Rather an say "I don't hate anyone" they actually began defending their hate. They also expressed a confusion about the distinction between critical thinking and mocking. Apparently many atheists actually think that mocking and reducible are on a par with intellectual commentary and critical thinking. That tells me they don't know what those things are.

First I show that blasphemy is hate. In in the previous post I quoted Websters who defines blaspheny as showing contempt. Contempt is a form of hate. If we look for the definition of contempt we find it means "the act of despising : the state of mind of one who despises : disdain" (Websters online). Their first reaction was to deny that despise means to hate. Now of course I can well imagine there is a fine distinction between the two, but what kind of mind tries to rationalize his hate by saying "it's not really hate it's despising?"

Originally Posted by MikeWC

Why do Christians always identify themselves with God?

Someone insults God, and Christians act as if they themselves have been insulted. What's up with that?

Nobody here is spray painting pentagrams on churches or firing Christians.

Get over yourself, Meta.

In other words, silly little victim thinking this about you. I responded to this by saying:

If you met me I said "your father is an idiot and jer and he's totally dishonest and I don't beileve he exists." wouldn't you feel a bit insured? you would feel some connection with it right?

Answer (by MarkUK): "He can prove his father exists; you haven't. He can also prove that his father would take offence at your comments; you haven't." If you are talking about something they don't think exists then you feelings aren't important. You should just shouldn't feel like it defines you. If they are not willing to allow your sacred beliefs to define you, guess who is trying to define you?We don't call it "totalitarian" for nothing.

Aussieguy:

Why should religion get a free pass? Much of it is very stupid and very dangerous?

Is it hate speech for me to say that Muslims who called for the death of the author of the recent "Innocence of Islam" video stupid and barbaric? I say they are stupid and barbaric. Am I wrong to say this?

Again why should we allow the victim to decide what's important to him. We will tell you who we think you are and what's important to you. If we dont' think it's important then our hatred is fine as long as its what we want. Then he rationalizes this fascistic mentality by comparing religious victims of his hate with Muslims who did the attack in Libya. So if you are a victim of hated toward religion and yu fight back then you are on a par with the guys who blew up the world trade center.

reverrendog: 

i have no hate, i find your claims to be without merit and instead of bothering to look at why, you assume i hate you or your ideas. you take the internet waaaaaaaay too seriously and despite being on here for years, can't grasp that no one really cares enough about your ideas to hate anything about them.
lol dude i don't hate anyone on the internet, i save that for people who deserve it.

So it's just a little game. No need to take it seroiusly. All the guys who kill themselves due to cybre bullying they are just losers we need to write them off. Notice what this same guy says about it below.
In the same thread I said:  "mocking and ridicule are not fair, they are not intellectual they not based on thinking they are based on bully stuff. " This same reverendog who says he has no hate says:

when was life ever fair meta? you whining about bullying is hilarious, you bully people all the time, and mostly for no other reason than someone disagreed with your nonsense!

They put up thread after thread about how evil and mean the God of the OT is. How he's commanding the murders of whole nations and wiping out everyone in a flood. When it comes the hurt they cause the hate they fume and spew over victims of their stupidity, then it's just that they are losers. Life is unfair get used tot. He has no hate but if he did it wouldn't matter because that's just life. Then he goes eve further and reaches new heights in blaming the victim.

you don't get to cry about bullies until you fix your own problems. also we have freedom of speech in this country, and people can say what they want. i mean it shows more about you if you get so easily butthurt over words meta.

You don't get to cry until you fix your problems? In other words it's your fault. If some hateful fascist beats you up it's your fault, you are a loser you are marked out for victim hood becuase you haven't fix what's wrong with you. Why do these paragons of know-all-ness get to the the one's who do the fixing? Why do they get to be the mockers? Just becuase they are crass enough and hateful enough to ditch civilized behavior and do it. What would they say if we all (the majority who believe in god) got together and took them out and shot them. Would they say "I deserves this because I didn't' fix y problems?" Of course they are not hurting anyone, just using emotional blackmail to make them deny who they are and settle for eternal damnation in order to be victimized by bullying, so what if we just beat them up a bit will that be ok. Now of cousre I'll get a flood of angry adolescence saying 'how dare you advocate violence toward atheists." I don't I''m not he one excusing hurting people on the premise that they deserve it because they haven't fixed their problems yet.

Of cousre he can't distinguish between free speech and license to hurt people by ridicule. So for him there's no middle ground. Just as they can't distinguish bewteen critical thinking and ridicule. If freedom comes with responsibly these guys don't deserve freedom. They can't distinguish between rights to free speech and license to maim.

Then there's this billiant gem:

Leyman:  "How does one "bully" a religious belief, Meta? When we blaspheme your God beliefs we are not "bullying" you personally in any way, shape, form, or fashion." I guess no one is being ridiculed then because you can't ridicule an idea. Of course it's not about hte people holding it is it. In another exchange with Aussieguy he expressed indignation because I suggested that it would be ok to ridicule and insult Aborigines for their dream time and other "ridiculous beliefs." He immediately graps the idea that if you ridicule their beliefs you are ridiculing them. He expressed indignation at insulting dream time as stupid because you are also insulting the people, their self definition as to who they are is wrapped up in their lore. Then of course he can't grasp the idea that Christians identify with Jesus and the cross and the empty tomb. Those are stupid ideas that deserve to be mocked, hey it's just he internet. If you make fund of Aborigonies then somethings really wrong with you.

The other answers for two whole threads are the same. They to decide everything, if they mock and ridicule you it's your own fault you are just a loser for believing stupid things. They don't hate anyone but if they did it would be ok becasue there's freedom of speech and hate is just an intellectual exercise in critical thinking. Don't you think the Brown shirts made similar kinds of rationalizations every time they beat up a Jew? I'm sure they said "Its just politics it can't really hurt anyone."

atheist desperation

they have no answer for temporal beginning argument. That's reason enough to believe.

The have no answer to the Thomas Reid argument. The same criteria that enable us to trust our experiences tells us that God is real. They have to keep pretending that th fortress of facts disproves is so they must invest more and more in the fortress and to do that they have to ignore valid theological issues in order to pretend that have no bearing on the case really matter.

For example Trolala's argument that knowledge is expanding. the truth of it is they dont' believe in knowledge except in one area, scinece. They abhor philosophy, they abhor poetry, they refuse to think that literature has any place aside from entertainment, because things all support belief in God.

the expansion of most knowledge has nothing at all to do with belief. In scinece itself there is no tension bewteen belief in scinece and belief in God. it's not as though the growth of technological production somehow agaisnt belief in God.

they had to totally and compete undermine the basis for theology to the point of lying about it and making it out to be the most stupid hideously ridiculous thing ever, without knowing anythings bout it. Any attempt to show it is full of intelligent people was met with the analogy of fine stitching of invisible cloying.As though all theologians ever do is sit around and talk about things in heaven.

they still don't know what theology is like becuase they refuse to read a single page of it.

they did not overcome the nutrition analogy argument. They had no basis for dealing with that. We can match the kind of indirect proof for God they can produce for neutrinos.

There is no basis for the fortress of facts or any such notion that knowledge not theological is in any way disproving belief in God.

they can't answer god arguments. the only kinds of answers they can give against the M scale are to screw with the issues around the frame work rather than deal with the thing itself because it better validated that mot studies in almost any field.

struck an atheist nerve

teabag is alarmed by my cogent understanding of atheism in relation to ideology


Originally Posted by Metacrock

Being a lack of belief doesn't mean that it doesn't have an ideology and that it's not a truth regime. the lack of belief functions as a positive element. But atheists fill that gap with positive assertions, especially scientism.

Atheism as an entity is not an ideology per se but the movement of new atheism is a different matter. that is an entity and it reaches into other movements to fill the gap.

 Teabag Salad:

Are you really so determined to hate atheists that you repeatedly attempt to use this strawman of what atheism actually is?

 What makes it a straw man? Just because it's my analysis of their deal? I was part of their deal. I know how they think and what they say. I use their own words to demonstrate. How is it a straw man?


In response to my assertion that I struck a nerve he says:

Teabag:

 Nope, you've not struck a nerve at all. If anything I find it funny that you spend all the time you do running a blog ranting against atheism. I, on the other hand, am quite happy to let Christians believe and do pretty much what they want.

How many hours have you wasted writing entries ranting about how bad and evil atheists are?

Funny you should bring that up. The original post on the thread was an assertion that atheist can't have an ideology becuase it's just a lack of belief, and my comments explains why that comment doesn't answer the issue about ideology. The real issue is that look at how many athiests come to carm just mock and ridiucle? almost every one they do it every day all day long on through the night and it's on site after site. There are almost no Christian sties dedicated to mocking atheism.I was the first one to seriously put up a site trying to analyze the nature of the hate segement of New atheism and I was the first one to say it was a hate group. I was the first one to start talking about atheist ideology. Look at what we are up against? A vast array of thousands of peolpe who morning noon and night never stop talking about how deeply they hate Christians.

Commentary on My debate with Occam

Last time I put up a link to the debate I had with Occam on CARM. I showed a few high lights. Now I'm going to give commentary on Occies last speech and show why he's wrong and why I won. That's around sounding, but I want to laud Occam for his efforts. He was a fine opponent, he made good arguments and he was a gentleman.


First speech in the debate here.


his final speech: here

0ccam

The first thing I want to point out in assessing Metacrock's case is his evidence. To paraphrase Kant, if a complex system rests on a feeble base of evidence, we can dismiss the system without bothering to go through all of its intricacies, because there cannot possibly be anything to the intricacies in that case. Now, the only evidence Metacrock has presented in this debate is the Hood survey, which, I think it is obvious, cannot possibly serve as sufficient evidence for God's existence. So, I would say I've clearly won.

That whole performance is missing the boat completely. First of all the Hood studies, which are immensely respected in their field, and empirically first rate and the strongest validated of any such scale in the world, is only secondary line of evidence. Those studies are used to back up the assertion that religious experience fit the criteria (regular, consistent, shared, navigational). The "system" of the argument is quite simple. It's not hardly a complex system, it rests upon a epistemology that is long established since early modern times, that of Descartes, Locke, Kant. The two opposing camps of rationalists and empiricists being synthesized in Kant.

The basic Cartesian principles being backed empirical studies. Then the result being understood as a reflection of the categories. But the basic argument itself is very simple, we have criteria, or desiderata, that  mark for us the basis of an epistemology. It is on that basis that we accept our experiences as valid. Certain kinds of religious experiences fit that criteria and thus we can trust hem. That's really pretty simple.

In other to prove that we must know a religious experience form a hole in the ground. That's what the m scale does by validating Stace's theory then we can know we are real mystical experiences. Though that we can know that such experiences fit the criteria. We have to know what we are studying first that's what the studies do for us. The M scale has more validation than any other such scale. I already quoted several authorities in the debate saying this.

"Factor Analysis of the mystical experience Questionnaire: A study of experiences occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion PDF 
http://www.heffter.org/docs/2013pdf/Mystical%20experience%20questionnaire.pdf

"Beginning with Hood (1975), the modern empirical study of mysticism has focused on char-

acterizing mystical experiences that individuals have had across their lifetime. Hood’s Mysticism

Scale ...developed according to Stace’s (1960) framework, is the most widely used quantitative mea-sure of mystical experience. The Mysticism Scale has generally been shown to be a reliable

and cross-culturally valid measure of lifetime experiences."

I show six counties in which various studies have validated Stace by use of the M scale proving that the M Scale is a valid measurement and that Stace's theory matches what people are experiencing.


 Occam

 Metacrock claims that I haven't dealt with his claim that the belief in God meets the criteria we use to determine whether or not the external world exists. This is just false, since I've been attacking the analogy between the external world and God since the beginning of the debate. Metacrock may think that I've ignored some important details of his argument, but at best that is due to his own failure to make it clear which parts of his convoluted arguments he considers important.

But he actually misconstrued the analogy. He's ignored the improtant details that the studies show that msytical expreince is regular, consistant, shared and navigational. In short the fact that the experiences fit the criteria of epistemic judgement is proved by empirical science.




 Occam

I note that Metacrock tacitly concedes that my attack on Plantinga is successful, just as he tacitly conceded that my attack on Swinburne was successful. His concession that the two most highly regarded theistic philosophers of religion cannot defend theism is seriously damaging to the credibility of theism, as well as to the plausibility of his claim that his highly similar arguments are successful.

 He tries to evoke properly basic by asserting that I don'tk now what it is. I proved I know what it is. My argument was that this whole appraoch to attacking Plantinga and insisting that God belief must be PB (so it comes under Plantigna's arguments and thus share in his attack) is a red herring to get me off the arguments I advanced. It has nothing at all to do with my arguments and thus is not a negation of the resolution as I interpret it. He is attacking arguments I did not make so he's not participating in the debate as long as he does that. I am not obligated to defend thing that I did not put forth.



Occam

Next, Metacrock objects to my argument that religious experience should be rejected as inconsistent with our scientific knowledge on ...[following] grounds:



Meta

he never shows that religious belief is any kind of contradiction to scientific knowledge. for that to be the case scientific knowledge would have to disprove god we all know there is no such disproof. The only kind of alleged "disproof" any atheist has is absence of proof not an actual disproof.

Occam:This is seriously mistaken. I have only claimed that science has shown that religious experience is an unreliable source of knowledge, which it has, by demonstrating that the experiences of different religions contradict each other and by giving neuroscientific explanations of religious experience. Metacrock has never successfully addressed either of these points.

I answered this, fist if contradicts the above where he says RE is inconsistent with scientific knowledge but he never showed any inconsistency. Since the M scale and other such studies are scientific and they prove the validation of RE then there's no inconsistency. Now he claims he only showed that RE is unreliable, he had no such evidence. The studies show that is reliable since it is regular and consistent.

Next, Metacrock asserts that if the criteria of epistemic judgment are met by religious experience, then we are justified in accepting religious experience as a source of knowledge. But the criteria are not met, since religious experiences are neither shared, regular, nor consistent, as I have shown.

He has shown nothing of the kind. I showed they are regular and consistent becuase that's the M scale shows. They are same experiences the world over just take out the names and the doctrine the experience, what happens in it is always the same. that evidence is given in the McNamara book which I linked to. article on M scale by Hood himself that shows universal reactions.
In P, McNamar (Ed.), Where God and science meet, Vol. 3, pp. 119-138. Westport, CT: Praeger. scroll to page 119.

then comes the block on the universality argument:

Occam
He then makes the following attempts to defend his universality argument:

Meta

that obviousliy is a poor answer:

(1) not everyone has it. We all have human brain structure but we dont' all have those experiences. So they can't be the result of having a human brain structure.

(2) if just having the brain structure was the case we should expect to find that we all have the same culture and speak the same langue. we have the same brain structure. We should all have the same experiences.

(3) the aspects that are universal are aspects that are cultural and not genetic, such as cultural symbols. Arche types, such as the journey of hte hero. That's not a gene that's a cultural symbol. no link to brain structure.

(4) religion is not genetic. even Stephen Pincker says that. there is no evidence of a religious gene therefor there is no basis for the answer of human brain structure.

(5) that's deponent upon the ideology of sociobiology or it's repacked form as evolutionary psychology. social sciences dont' buy it.

 Occam

The problem with this is that it consists entirely of false claims and non sequiturs. It does not follow from the claim that we have similar brain structure that we must have similar culture and all have similar religious experiences, because I'm not positing complete similarity.

Yes it does. His claim is that similar religious experiences are due to similar brain structure. If that is the case why would the similarity end with religious experience and not extend to all experience? If it did to all experience we should have the same experiences across the board. How can it just be limited to religion? Certain religion is culture than we should we should have the same culture. Language is the basis of culture we should have the same language. If that's why we have the same religious experiences.

religion is cultural and not genetic. Because it is cultural it is not just a matter of brain structure and the experiences that pertain to it cannot be due merely to brain structure.

proof of the cultural basis for religious experience:

religion is cultural:

RELIGION, although inherent in man, borrows its expressions from the setting or milieu in which man appears. The forms through which man expresses the supernatural are all drawn from the cultural heritage and the environment known to him, and are structured according to his dominant patterns of experience.In a hunting culture this means that the main target of observation, the animal, is the ferment of suggestive influence on representations of the supernatural. This must not be interpreted as meaning that all ideas of the supernatural necessarily take animal form. First of all, spirits do appear also as human beings, although generally less frequently; the high-god, for instance, if he exists, is often thought of as a being of human appearance. Second, although spirits may manifest themselves as animals they may evince a human character and often also human modes of action.[Ake Hultkrantz, “Attitudes Toward Animals in Shashoni Indian Religion,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Spring, 1970) © World Wisdom, Inc. no page listed,online archive, URL: http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/browse_g.aspx?ID=131, accessed 3/21/13]

No gene for religion:

Atheist guru P.Z. Myers (who is a big named biologist) rejects it on the grounds that VMAT2 is just  "...a pump. A teeny-tiny pump responsible for packaging a neurotransmitter for export during brain activity. Yes, it's important, and it may even be active and necessary during higher order processing, like religious thought. But one thing it isn't is a 'god gene.^" "No god, and no 'god gene', either". Pharyngula.(2005-02-13) Retrieved 2012-01-29.
http://web.archive.org/web/20090512101759/http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/no_god_and_no_god_gene_either/

Occam

I am just saying that the best explanation for the observation that lots of people have similar religious experiences is similarities in brain structure close enough to give them similar experiences. This is the only interpretation of the evidence that is not a God of the gaps argument.

Religious experience is cultural and is  not related to a gene so they can't ascribe it to universal human brain structure. He also totally drops the argument that not everyone has RE thus it can't be result universality of the human brain.

Overall two massive reasons he loses: I made two arguments and backed both up with empirical data, he has no empirical data is totally mistaken about mine.

My Debate with Occam On CARM

Occam is an atheist posting on CARM not hte original William of Occam. We recently had a 1x1 debate over the issue: resolved that belief in God is rationally warraned. I made my favorite God argument, my own argument from epistemic judgement (aka the Thomas Reid argument). I'll just hit the highlights. The fill debate can be found here.

I want to point out I am not putting this up to show that I won or how I'm so much smarter. Occam is not someone I would make fun of, he's a sharp thinker and one of the atheists I respect the most over there.


My argument was:


(1) No empirical evidence can prove the existence of the external world, other minds, or the reality of history, or other such basic things.

(2) We do not find this epistemological dilemma debilitating on a daily basis because we assume that if our experiences are consistent and regular than we can navigate in "reality" whether it is ultimately illusory of not.

(3) Consistency and regularity of personal experience is the key.

(4) religious experience can also be regular and consistent, perhaps not to the same degree, but in the same way.

(5) Inter-subjective

RE of this type has a commonality shared by believers all over the world, in different times and different places, just as the external world seems to be perceived the same by everyone.

(6) Real and Lasting effects.


(7) therefore, we have as much justification for assuming religious belief based upon experience as for assuming the reality of the external world or the existence of other minds.


So we habitually compare our experiences to a criteria that we set for reality. If they stack up we assume they are real and valid. Religious experience fits that set of criteria and thus we can trust it. That makes it a good reason to assume that God exists. Because he is given in a certain set of experiences which affect us in ways we would expected to be affected by the divine.

The real argument is the long term positive effects of the experiences. These are the experiences known as "mystical" and that conform to those set by W.T. Stace for his theory. Moreover,the acuity of these judgements about the experiences can be known in a more accurate way now due to the work of Ralph Hood on the M scale and other researchers working in the Vain of people like James and Stace.


I also brought up a second argument in the next speech that was the univeral arguement, based upon the one above. The argument says that all the mystical experinces around the world are the same once we take out specific names and doctrines, that implies that there is objective reality behing experinced.


We each made three speeches. This is excerpts form the last speech I made.


part 1 of speech 3



Occam

... Metacrock says that the experience of God is analogous to our experience of the external world. The problem with this claim is that it's plainly false. People do not have reasonable disagreements about whether or not the external world exists, and there are no major social movements based on the belief that there is no external world. You don't have to be crazy to disbelieve in God like you have to be crazy to disbelieve in the external world. So, the claim that the two are analogous is wildly implausible. 

Metacrock:
Here he's just equivocating between a difference sense of what was meant. I said the criteria by which we decide the reality of our experiences is met by religious experience. thus it is believable and trust worthy. It's false to say that there are not questions about experience and reality. we have them allt he time. ON a trivial level we say stuff like "Is it hot in here." we we may not think about it when we say that are asking "is this subjective or objective,. is it part of reality or just my illusion that I'm hot?"

then of cousre there are instances where people have strange experiences that they don't understand. True documented story, two women driving on a highway at night. They see what they think is an old man who might be seeking help, a long haired hippe types, they pull over to him and almost stop and looking closer and see it's an animal when it stands up to it's full stature is huge and is covered in hair all over its body but a human like face. so one screams and they drive off real fast. One says "did you see that?" they don't know what they say but the are conferring. why are they conferring why don't they just say "we didn't see that because science types say it doesn't exist so we must not have?" Because they thought they did see it. that's why they have to check it. they check by accessing the shared nature, the regularity and the consistency of it.

when the skeptic says "It was just a bear that they misidentified" then he's really saying "they didn't get the criteria right. it was really regular thing that people see but they mis identified it." He's using the criteria too.

There's a lot of lea way between those two examples, feeling hot in a room and seeing a Bigfoot, there's a lot of middle ground there where we check our perceptions all the time. So that criteria is used it is important. The battle field, crimes scenes, strange situations, when being robbed, all kinds of times when we need to check reality.

Occam wants us to think that epistemological issues are unimportant becuase there are no social movements that question reality; all social movements question reality. The issue here is epistemology is important for a thinker even if there's no social movement to redefine the nature of the real. If we are asking questions about the reality of God are asking about the roots of reality. we asking about the basis of the nature of things. God is not just another fragment in reality God is th basis of all reality. To consider the existence of God is to consider the basis of metaphysics and epistemology.



Occam:

Next, Metacrock objects that I am undermining theism as a properly basic belief by pulling on other beliefs. There is actually nothing illegitimate about this procedure, and I'm not sure why Metacrock would think otherwise. If someone holds a belief in the basic way, it is legitimate to undermine it by showing that it is inconsistent with other beliefs he holds, rendering it no longer properly basic for him.

 

Metacrock:

No first of all I didn't even argue that. he has misunderstood my basic thrust. I said I don't accept PB as a paradigm I argue for Prima facie so if I make a prima facie case I've met by goal. He says nothing about that. I have made a prima facie case. it's his burden of proof now to show that my PF case isn't enough.

more importantly, he's obfuscated between the original issue which was that he expects a theist to argue or PB nature of God beilef, now he's turning it around and saying it's legitimate to undermine God belief by showing that it's inconsistent with other beliefs he holds. That was not his arguemnt. he is shifting argumetns. Shift because the original argument merely used the other beliefs as a means of defining properly basic. PB means it's not dependent other beliefs. Now suddenly he puts it in terms of contradicting other beliefs. he has not said that before. So that's a shift it's not kosher in debate.




Occam:

Metacrock objects that we cannot get outside of our experience to check it in any case. But I am not objecting to religious experience on the grounds that we cannot get outside religious experience to check it, I am objecting to religious experience on the grounds that it is inconsistent with our scientific knowledge and, indeed, with the very spirit of science. Religious experience can be shown to be unreliable on independent grounds, so I'm not just perversely asserting that it might be wrong with no evidence.

Metacrock:




(1) he never shows that religious belief is any kind of contradiction to scientific knowledge. for that to be the case scientific knowledge would have to disprove god we all know there is no such disproof. The only kind of alleged "disproof" any atheist has is absence of proof not an actual disproof.

(2) he totally misconstrued my argument. I said we can't get outside of our perceptions to check them becasue he said:

Occam (last time)

The second problem with this position is that in the age of science, we have learned not to trust in basic beliefs that were not arrived at by a reliable methodology. The methodology that the theist relies upon to form a basic belief in a god will invariably be religious experience or the testimony of Scripture, both of which have been discredited as sources of information.

Metacrock
I am saying you can't establish this methodology since the issue more primitive and more epistemological than scinece can handle. you have to do scinece through your perceptions. science can't enable you to get outside your own perceptions.

that's why I call th argument "epistemic judgement." we have to make a judgement at the level of epistemology we can't assert a scientific answer. We have to make a judgment and we use that criteria (regular, consistent, shared) to make the judgment call. that's at a more basic level than science.

(3) when scinece comes into it we have a scientific methodology that's better validated than any other in the field the M scale. that enables us to understand when we are dealing a real mystical experience. that enables us to compare experiences.

In terms of science we meet his criteria. but the issues are more in depth than science. They are philosophical at the core.




part 2 of speech 3



Occam

Metacrock appeals to Hood's surveys to show that religious experiences are veridical. I think it's just obvious that a survey cannot prove that God exists. Sorry my argument does not turn on Hood proving God. 

Metacrock
Please try to follow along. If you are actually wiling to read the whole debate then you might as well get the issues correct. The turning point of the argument its the criteria. tha'ts what makes it valid and that's wakes it "proof" to the extent that it proves a warrant. It warrants beilef because the fitting of the criteria makes it a good reason to believe that God is real. it fits the criteria we use to prove reality.


what did I say he study does? look up there and see. It enables us to know the unified nature of the experiences and that they fit the criteria. you can't say this type of experience fits a criteria if you don't know what type that is. so the studies show that. the M scale is a way to say "this si that type of thing."

once we can say "this is that type of thing" then we can say "it fits the criteria." Because he does not answer that he's not answering the argument. he's made up his own straw man argument that he got form listing to the people who dont' read all the posts. you are listening to the people who don't read the posts they quite after the first line so you are not getting the question issue.

Occam

Even if all of the people taking the survey are telling the truth, which is not guaranteed, people could have experiences of God with profound transformative effects without God actually existing. The inference is a simple non sequitur. 

 

 

Metacrock

that is a statement not in evidence. he has no way of knowing if that is true. He can't prove it, but there's a good reason to think its' not true. He there is no evidence of any kind that shows an untruth that is unexpected leading to long term transfomative effects. why don't delusions do it? they don't. mental illness id debilitating over time.

The only thing that comes close to answer is placebo. there is no evidence that placebo is long term, and it has to be expected. In half the cases mystical experience is not expected.

(a) it's a conversion experience a large portion of the time.

(b) contradicts cherished doctrines

(c) it's in childhood half the time when there no doctrinal attachment.

it's can't be a placebo. therefore it can't be that unreality leads to long term transformation.


I leave it to the reader as to who won.

Prelimenaries for debate: The atehist tread mill and 200 studies.

 This is all going to be important because it forms the background to my 1x1 debate with Occam. Occam is an atheist (stole a Christian name) on CARM. He was until recently one of the few atheists for whom I had great respect. I still respect him enough to debate him one on one. The see saw arguments bewteen them and me over the 200 Studies on religious experience have been bane of my life on the net. They are the fuel that keeps the fire going for my time on CARM. They will figure into the 1x1 debate. I will keep my readership posted about this 1x1 debate. I'll more about that on Monday.

I have provided them with the sources of all 200 studies I have bib on Religious A prori that lists all thew sources. They will not look one up. It's crazy. No debater in the country is asked carry ever original of every quote he uses he would have to tote a library with him. They really talk like they are helpless in a library when I suggest they actually go look up the studies.

Priceless, they go through the same ideological fire drill over and over again: This is a summary of the collective argument made by the CARM atheists on the 200 studies of religoius experience that I talk about, and have been talking about for years.

Atheists: you can't show us the studies.

I can't show most of them becasue they are not on the net. a good many of them were in articles in journals in the 70s, 80s, 90s, when most of that materiel was not on the net. Most journals weren't putting their articles on the net in teh 90s and the net wasn't goign good enough in 70s and 80s. I'm not sure there was a net in the 70s. I think it was in Bill Gates's garage or something.

I show a study that says "half the shrinks have had mystical experience the other half mostly think it's ok" I say "this shows that shrink don't think mystical experince is bad for you." they go "that doesn't say what you want it to.

it says "shrinks don't hate mystical and that's what I said it says. they are totally convinced "it doesn't say what you want it to." They can't get it out of their heads that I don't want it say "official finding God exists." That's their conception of the possible use a study could have in relation to God arguments. They can't concieve of building an argument from smaller arguments or using data from different studies to document a constructed idea. They are such intellectual giants they don't know how arguments work. That's always the hallmark of intellectually superior people they don't know how to argue. They can't get it out of their heads that what they want me to say and what I said are two different things.

Bottom line they would rather whine about how the studies aren't on the net and I can't show them all 200 then go look one up. This way they get to make it sound like I'm lying. They other why, if they look them up, they have to find out I'm right.So they are too helpless to work a library, they wont answer the arguments I give and they wont read the material I provide.

The chapter 11 in Hood's book, has everythihng you need to know to know the studies and how they are done and how the m scale works. I put it up 149 times (I've put it up twice more since the last count) not one of them has read it. But they still want you to think I'm not providing the information. They still talk as though I'm not willing provide anything.

it's back on Google books so you could read a condensed version of it now if you will.


I have a bibliography that shows most of the studies about 150 the other 50 are on Hood's CV. They wont look one of them up. It's up here on the board many many times, they just wont get them.




Hood's chapter in the McNamara book where he documents the stats on the universality argument.
this has been up time and time again they will not read it. You need to scroll to page 119 or use the link in the index.


They wont read any of this. the one's they read are the ones that I told them are not important and tangential but they use them becuase they find thing to twist out of shape and try to make into counter arguments. then they ignore what I aid about "these are not the good ones" and say stuff like 'see his best sutdis are no good." or "the good one's must be bad too."


Deist says seven studies have been seen here (put up on carm, but actually links to them) and don't say what I want them to. He wont name them.

(1) a study that was not part of the 200 but confirmed a study in the 200 the 200. The study that it confirmed was by Dale Caird. It says it confirms Hood's M scale. of course he's pretending that it doesn't confirm it but it did (and it wasn't one of the 200 anyway).

(2) Spanos and Moretti which Royce brought up and we argued about so long, through about 10 threads. None of them even reemmber why I used Spanos. It doesn't say God is real or anything and I never said it does. I used it because it answers the hypnotizablity argument and its says there's no pathology among people who have postive msytical expreinces. The sutdy does say that and those are the two reasons I use them.

He goes on telling the untruth that they don't say waht I said they say.

(3) Allman study says half the shrinks have had not of them think it's good for you and that's exactly what I said they say and they ay it.

he cant' name the other four.

It's just a big dumb game. These 200 studies blow away whole atheist world. if you take them seriously there need not be any atheists. they have to destroy them because they whole game is at steak.

Lat Stupid Atheist Tricks of 2013: glimpses of atheist ideology at work

 Just a few anecdotes I was saving at the end of the year.


Originally Posted by Whateverman

This is exactly what a God of the Gaps argument is. Just because you claim there's no logical candidate for universe creation DOES NOT justify the conclusion that God created it.

Meta:

no it's the opposite. try to think now. why do they call it 'gap?' the argument is based upon a gap in knowledge. but I don't have a gap in knowledge. I know for a fact there can be no change where there is no time. that's not a gap it's a fact.

all three examples are like that. Read the words next time!




ironically he says next:

Whateverman:

"I stopped reading after this point." !!!

 Meta:

that's why you always get it wrong. you stop reading before the answer.

I think you do that because you are scared to death to see the answer.


Whateverman:

ps. note the implication above: God fits into places logic can't. Sure doesn't say much for the supposed logical arguments for God's existence... 

Meta:

where did I say God fits where logic can't? I never said that. I said process of elimination God is the only logical answer.

'

I stopped reading at this point.



another one: addition that he hates supernatural

Mark UK

I thought my contempt for the word "spiritual" couldn't get any more intense, but it does - every single time I read or hear it.

It's an utterly meaningless, soggy cabbage of a word, a placeholder for "I don't know".

Notice he can't read the word without feeling hate. what does say about brain washing?


third one is from Backup on CARM. They are attacking Danny for usnig a Quote suppossedly by James Madison but several historians have been unale to find it in Madison's papers.

Originally Posted by backup

It is uncited on the Evangelical disinformation site leaderu.com.

Notice, he tells us Leadership.com does disinformation. So that means if it was cited it would be one of thier lies. So does that support it that it's not cited? Clearly that's an indicument too. So damned if you damned if you don't.

Is American Beleif in God in Decline? Half Americans don't believe with Certinty and 1/4 are agnostic or atheist?

 



this is dated 1/4/14. that will be important latter when we have 15 articles on Religious A priori:Bogus Atheist Social Sciences dealing with different levels of poll results.


 Here we go with more distortion of the stats on God belief. It is so important to atheists to believe that they really are secretly the majority becuase they do believe in appeal to popularity. How do they cope with the fact that they are unpopular? They pretend they are not. They do everything they can to forge statistics. I've seen them claim all Hindus are atheist. I've seen them claim all other religions are atheists that are not Christian. I've them claim that Christianity is so divided that it's an amalgam of one billion smaller religions and thus atheism outnumbers each one individually. That's right. that's about as lame as you can get. Talk about living in denial.

An article in something called "liberty voice"[1] half of Americans don't believe in God "with certainty," and a quarter are atheist or agnostic.[2] So 2% could be atheist the rest of the quarter agnostic. They could count as agnostic people who believe in God. The article doesn't say "half don't bleieve in God at all" It says "with certainty." So depending upon how certain certain is they  could be calling the Southern Baptist Convention "uncertain," because they haven't gone into the arena to fight lions yet. While this article uses a couple of good sources that are important to observe (Harris poll and NPR) it's primarily catering to an atheist audience to get ratings. That in itself tells us something, that there is a strong enough niche for atheist thinking that it can be used as a market. It also tells us that the article itself is merely propaganda. The general point of the article is that belief in God is declining in Ameirca. Several categories have gone down 5-8% such as certinty about God or belief in Chrsitmas as religious holiday.

The newest poll, released earlier this week, supports previous research, including a study done by PEW which showed that a third of young people were not affiliated with any specific religion. PEW also released a new study this week showing that half of all Americans do not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday.

In general, belief in the supernatural of all kinds declined significantly over the last eight years. The drop off in such beliefs were as follows: The Devil (four percent drop), resurrection of Jesus (five percent drop), virgin birth (three percent drop), miracles (seven percent drop), survival of soul after death (five percent drop), Jesus being the son of God (four percent drop), creationism (three percent drop), witches (five percent drop) angels (six percent drop) and heaven (seven percent drop). Belief in God overall dropped eight percent since 2005. There were two areas of supernatural belief that rose one percent each: belief in UFOs and belief in ghosts.[3]

Atheists are really making a big thing out of the rise of the 'nones.' The None category means no affiliation  with an established religious institution they are treating it like it's the rise of atheism itself. The Pew study of recent vintage shows that the atheist segment of none is still less than 5%, more like 2 or 3% and has not risen significantly in the last several years.[4] The segments that have risen include believers in God. About of them are believers in God, the rest are don't know (agnostic).[5]


The article uses two serious sources, Harris poll and NPR, and three Joke sources, or what I consider to be jokes but which are put over as serious, Huff post, which has become a shameless wasteland of propaganda for atheism, and The Blaze. I'll deal with the Joke sources, then the serious ones.

Joke sources

The source she sites from Huffington is on the Religion page by

Jaweed Kaleem Become a fan

jaweed.kaleem@huffingtonpost.com

 

The article is mainly about the secular attitude toward Christmas taken by half of Americans who know longer see it as a religious holiday. Their source is Pew study. [6] The pie chart for the report shows 92% do Christmas. Of that 51% find it a religious holiday, 32% cultural, 9% both/other. We have a bit of a math problem here. Not only does that not make 100% but it doesn't come close to half who think Christmas is not a religious holiday. It's also pretty Ambiguous as to how important the changing Mazeways are regarding Christmas. Is the dropping off of Christmas a big religious holiday, if it's even happening, really indicative of loss of faith in God? While the atheist cheer leaders are jumping up and down going "Yes! Yes!" I don't think so. Not to the extent atheist hope. There was a time when Christmas was regarded as less important than the Holiday for various saints.

Granted this, taken with the rise non affiliated young people is important and does definitely single changes it's far from certain what the changes mean. It's a shifting of the Maze ways. Changing of the Mazeways is not necessarily bad even for belief. The theory of the Mazeways was by Anthony Wallace (b 1923--), one of America's major anthropologists at one time. The developed a theory of social change and political and religious change and social revitalization around the concept of maseways. Mazeways are "mental maps that join personalities with cultures and therey illustrate how individuals embrace their culture, conduct everyday life and cope with illness and other forms of sever personal or cultural stress." [7]

The Blaze article is shameless propaganda. They even use the Monty Python image of God form the Holy Grail movie. They sight the Harris poll as saying belief in God is down to 75% from 82% a few years ago.

then they just sight a list of beliefs that are "down."

Belief in miracles, heaven and other religious teachings also declined in the latest poll, as follows:

–72 percent believe in miracles, down from 79 percent in 2005;

–68 percent believe in heaven, down from 75 percent;
–68 percent believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God, down from 72 percent;

–65 percent believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, down from 70 percent;

–64 percent believe in the survival of the soul after death, down from 69 percent;

–58 percent believe in the devil and hell, down from 62 percent;

–57 percent believe in the Virgin birth, down from 60 percent.[8]

 No analysis. all from the Harris poll. These article show us how the material reverberates around the net uncritically with no analysis, used by various entities to gain readership and plays into the hands of atheists for propaganda.

The serious sources


Harris poll. Both of the Joke sources used the Harris poll

New York, N.Y. - December 16, 2013 - A new Harris Poll finds that while a strong majority (74%) of U.S. adults do believe in God, this belief is in decline when compared to previous years as just over four in five (82%) expressed a belief in God in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Also, while majorities also believe in miracles (72%, down from 79% in 2005), heaven (68%, down from 75%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (68%, down from 72%), the resurrection of Jesus Christ (65%, down from 70%), the survival of the soul after death (64%, down from 69%), the devil, hell (both at 58%, down from 62%) and the Virgin birth (57%, down from 60%), these are all down from previous Harris Polls.
Belief in Darwin's theory of evolution, however, while well below levels recorded for belief in God, miracles and heaven, is up in comparison to 2005 findings (47%, up from 42%).[9]

 Evolution is not a contradiction to belief in God so that does not correlate with a lose in belief. What is the methodology of the Poll?


Methodology

This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States November 13 and 18, 2013 among 2,250 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.
Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
These statements conform to the principles of disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

While representation of the poll is scientifically determined, while some times the shift to using computer sources means a more acute poll (shift to cell phones as opposed to  ground lines) but that doesn't mean that a poll done entirely on line is representative. If one atheist knew about it they could probably get an army of atheists to answer it. Harris interactive is a market reserach firm:

1. Harris Interactive, headquartered in Rochester, New York, is a market research firm, known for the Harris Poll. Harris works in a wide range of industries, across countries and territories through North America, Europe, and Asia. ...[10]
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris_Interactive

you can write our own questions. We don't know who wrote the questions for survey that makes a big difference. how you ask a question on a survey will determine the way people answer. Just being market research makes it suspect. I was in Market research for a number of years. It's not scientific. they do have a from of science but when you intorudce profit motive science goes out the window.

The Harris poll is contradited by Gallup:

"PRINCETON, NJ -- More than 9 in 10 Americans still say 'yes' when asked the basic question "Do you believe in God?"; this is down only slightly from the 1940s, when Gallup first asked this question." 

Despite the many changes that have rippled through American society over the last 6 ½ decades, belief in God as measured in this direct way has remained high and relatively stable. Gallup initially used this question wording in November 1944, when 96% said "yes." That percentage dropped to 94% in 1947, but increased to 98% in several Gallup surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. Gallup stopped using this question format in the 1960s, before including it again in Gallup's May 5-8 survey this year.[11]

The chart shows 92% still say "yes" to the question do you believe in God? [12] The poll was done in 2011. It's doubtful that it dropped that much in two years. As the quote tells us it's down from the 40s. That means back in the God fearing 1940s fewer Americans believed in God than they did in the sinful postmodern 90s, or the scary Godless oughts. That means it fluctuates and some changing is not a sign of decline. It could well be that the difference is accounted for in the inaccuracy of representation by doing it form market reserach panels and on line.

The Gallup source states that when alternatives such as expression of doubt, qualification of confidence, or other kinds of belief are compared the belief for God goes down a bit. For example when asked do you believe in God or a universal power or spirit 80% say God 12% say universal spirit. At the same time only 6% say neither. 1% say other 1% say no opinion. That shows how the way the question is ask matters and it makes me think the Harris question was not asked directly in terms of "do you bleieve in God?" It also shows the atheist segment is still down around 6% which is the liberal end of my estimate.[13]

Pew study on the rise of the "nones" (see fn 3-4 below) also disproves it:

In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%)[14]

It says atheists are "nearly" 6% but the chart they provide shows they are not up to 5% and may not be be up to 4%. That's a far cry from the exaggerations made by Blaze and Huff post. It's less than Harris polls would predict. I think the differences in questions is a good explanation. When Gallup asked "do you bleieve in God" they got a higher answer for "yes" then they broke up the notion into alternatives such as "God or a higher spirit of some kind." This tell us that there is a segment that is willing to call their transcendental signifier something other than God but it's close enough that they wil accept calling it God if they have no other alternative.

There is a pew study done in conjunction with PBS and religious ethics weekly that finds 68% of the nones believe in God (2/3) 37% classify themselves as "spiritual but not religious."[15] Overwhelming this group says they are not looking for a religion they don't like organized religion. Clearly the mazeways of modern society are changing and producing formations undreamed of by our ancestors. Yet bleief in God is not declining. The notion of "higher power" is getting at the concept of God. See my essay on how atheists have to cover up this fact but it's pretty well proved. When people say "higher power" they mean God. The alternatives people are offered such "some form of spirit" is really another way of saying "God."[16]


One thing we must always be careful with is the media will always pawn off no affiliation with not believing in God. When I Google "what percentage believe in God in U.S." I get the rise of the nones article and other articles taht rae based upon it. They all talk like "none" means none believe in God. It does not.


See Metacrock's blog on Wednesday for analysis of the None's and the changing of the mazeways.



sources

[1] Liberty Voice was formerly a the Las Vegas, Nevada-based Liberty Voice was The Guardian Express.This leads me to conclude that this article is a publicity stunt to get circulation. not affiliated with the famous Guardian in New York.

[2] Rebecca Savastio, "Nearly Half of Americans Do not Believe in God 'With Certianty'--a Quarter Are Atheist or Agnostic.

[3] Ibid

[4] Staff, "Nones on the rise," PewResearch Religion and Public Life Project. Octo 9 (2012). Online reseource: http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/  accessed 1/6/14.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jaweed Kaleem "Chrsitmas, a non religious holiday for half of Americans, Pew Survey finds." Huffington Post, Religoin section. (Jan 5, 2014). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/christmas-non-religious_n_4453828.html?utm_hp_ref=religion accessed 1/5/14.
the Pew study sited in that Dec 8, 2013.

[7] Ilias Sabbir, "Theory of Revitalization Movement by Anthony Wallace." Academia.edu.
on resource http://www.academia.edu/839547/Theory_of_Revitalization_Movement_by_Anthony_F._C._Wallace accessed 1/4/14.


[8] Staff Writer, "Poll American's Belief in God is on the Decline." the Blaze, December 17 (2013).
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/12/17/poll-americans-belief-in-god-is-on-the-decline/  accessed 1/4/14.

[9] Staff, "Americans Belief in God, Miracles, and Heaven, Declines--belief in Darwin's theory of evolution rises." Harris Interactive. Harris Polls (Dec. 16, 2013). On line resource.
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/1353/Default.aspx  accessed 1/5/14.

[10] https://www.google.com/#q=what+is+harris+interatcive%3F

[11] Frank Newport "more than 9 out of 10 Americans Continue to believe in God." June 3 (2011).
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147887/americans-continue-believe-god.aspx

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Pew Study "Rise of the Nones" (above fn 4).

[15] Ibid.

[16] Metacrock, "Atheists Try to Deny That 'Higher power' refers to God." Atheistwatch (June 25, 2012). http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-carm-more-stupid-atheist-tricks-post.html accessed 1/6/14.

God Arguments May Encourage Atehist Not to Believe

God arguments make atheists more resolved not to believe. This is how it works. They have an argent in which they get their asses kicked. they get them kicked bad. they have nothing to say to this argument that even half way slows it down. The next they are doing a victory dance and acting like they saying "we beat that" then form then it's "your arguemnt are no good,t hey have all beaten."

It's so obvious when atheists are losing and they know it. Certain things happen and I've gone through this so many times I can predict when it will come. here's what happens:

(1) they start getting real beligerant

(2) they begin attacking my spelling

(3) they start attacking things I've done in the past.

at that point I know they know they got their you know what's kicked they are seeking some recompense.

Why? Because they don't care what's true. they don't look at the logic of an argument as being meaningful. They only look at it as a survival test. they say something this: "I got through this one if I can turn this down no argument will ever convince me."

God arguments just become a way of inoculating them against belief.Arguments are really for the believer. The help sort out the nature of God and they help clearify certain theological issues, they ground us in a logical justification for belief so it's not all subjective.

They will probably never covert atheists atheist just don't at the argumentation process, or indeed logical thought itself, as a means of understanding truth. Atheist are paradigmatic.

It's the paradigm that has to be gone after becuase that's what they relate to.

Atheist Propagadna and Religious Experience

 

 

 

 

Perhaps nothing scares atheists like feelings. They scared to death of religious experience arguments. Nothing raises their hatred like talking about religious experiences. Daren Brown is some sort of British stage magician who has a new stage act supposedly inducing religious experiences. Atheists waste no time in arguing that this is proof that such experiences are just accidents that mean nothing. He states "I examined the Placebo effect and proved just how powerful fear and faith can be." Of course he assumes that because there is a psychological process that produces faith that then there's no object of faith beyond that process that has any real bearing on life. This is really no different than the one's who claim to stimulate parts of the brain to induce religoius experiences.

In calling it "placebo" he's trying to set up the suggestion that it's unreal, it's unnecessary, God is the great cosmic sugar pill. Then he totally ignores the nature of real placebo. It's only for medicine, there's no evidence that such suggestive keys can manipulate us apart from expectation. All the things that he does in relation to evoking the psychological process are manipulative means of setting up the association. Yet most religious experience of the sort called "mystical" is not expected. In about half the time it's experienced in childhood, and much of the time mystical experiences contradict the doctrine of the experincer. If it was a real placebo it should confirm expectations. Placebo work by expectation. They don't work by challenging expectations. Calling it a placebo is wrong and improper and it's probably only done to evoke the concept and prepare the atheist to inoculated against emotion by making her suspicious of religious feelings.

He sets up several incidents before the main show (the phony atheist conversion) that are intended to get across the idea that suggestion works powerfully and most such feelings as one associates with the supernatural are also just manipulation. He makes people feel afraid by putting them in a room alone after reading to them some satanic right supposedly form the eleventh century. People are turned on by a sense of dark mysterious and ancient.  He gave people a fake drug which is no more than a sugar pill and by getting them to believe in it I got them to make dramatic changes in their lives. Of course he doesn't follow them in their lives or do a longitudinal study to determine if the changes are really transformational (dramatic, positive, and long term). He has no real control and no real way of determining if he's given anyone a real experience. Empirical study has demonstrated that religious experience is real, that's transformational, and that there is a way to determine real experiences from phony ones. No there is no proof direly that it's caused by God but this can be argued successfully by paying attention to what can be proved and using it with logic. It is the M scale that provides us with that means of verification for religious experience and it's been validated by a half dozen studies around the world.

His psychological explanation for the process is typically convoluted and not well throughout. He does an experiment that shows people in private when not watched lie about their mistakes. The idea is tp show that there's a presence in the room no one cheats. If people are given a idea of supernatural presence they act more moral. It is asserted that there are evolutionary reasons why we developed the idea of a supernatural presence. Don't want to be outcast form the tribe so we can reproduce. divine presence would ensure the sense of being cought out. God is made up to make us be moral. In other words like Foucault's take on the Panopticon the prisoners are learning to watch themselves. The problem here is he's convoluted several different reasons in to one.

First of all, if we feel a sense of presence that in itself is reason to assume we feel it. It doesn't have to be the result of needing a moral campus and inviting an invisible God. the illustration itself shows cave men ostracize a guy because he lied. So the fact of how people treated each other would be the reason for moral behavior and the fear of being rejected by the tribe and not being allowed to make would be enforcement enough, why make up an internal watch dog to do the job as well? If one has not felt experiences one doesn't know what they are. why invent a psychological process to evoke them then try to explain them. The fact that one has had such experience itself the reason to believe in the reality of such experiences, then the need to explain it comes out of having the need. The idea of ancient cave men trying to produce a sophisticated psychological technique for evoking some experience they haven't had is ridiculous and if they had it, it has its own reality.If they had it prior to producing the process of evoking it then it is real.

 Brown is certain that the experience explained by psychology. He asserts that these kinds of experiences come from big religious rallies with hyper suggestibility but there's no basis for that assumption. He's not using M scale studies to determine what percentage of religious experience is privately induced and percentage comes out of the big hyper rallies. Here's a clue, with half coming in childhood they are not coming form big rallies.

Then he goes through an elaborate production to produce a fake conversion in an atheist woman. He dose this indirectly without mentioning God. He uses several techniques such as tapping his fingers while they talk about her father to make her associate emotions the sound of the tapping with feelings of fatherly love. In several ways he evokes feelings of powerful father figure to bring atheist to believe. Establishes rapport. learns about her father. The woman is unconsciously processing, core religious belief evoked that God has plan for us and pulls strings to help us. No direct mention of God was made the woman made the connection to God herself through feelings of the father figure (tap tap tap). Brown says things that imply a grand plan, talk about things going wrong for a reason. sense of awe and wonder. Talks about the stars and space, evokes being cherished with awe. The woman describes her experience as "all the love in the world had been thrown at me. I pushed it away by not letting it into my life." Now she sees it's so stupid and she sees through it.

He says "I feel douty bound to make sure you understand that the postive stuff you got through this is not religious belief." This is what he tells her latter after they brought back befoer the audiecne. She's already been debriefed. He says explicitly "it certainly didn't come form God." The result of this elaborate dog and pony show is that we are supposed to come away with the grand feeling religion has been totally exposed and deconstructed and unraveled we see close up who fake it is there's no need for it. Of course the Brit media is opporating from the assumption that atheism is the standard, the grounding for society, the status quoe. The Audience is pre slected to reflect this idea. So one's going to challenge it.

It is a dog and pony show, he has no longitudinal study, no double blind, no control, he has no scale to measure the nature, depth, or effect of experience. He has no theory of religious experience to play it off of. That is all very crucial without that he's proved nothing. He can't guarantee that what she experienced is even a religious experience. One clue to that question is she says nothing about undifferentiated unity. she didn't say that she felt an all pervasive presence. She felt there's a plan and a purpose and she's cared for but that doesn't prove that it's the same religious experience that W.T. Stace talked about (see my link above on M scale).

The real problem is without a control there's no way to know if he isn't just evoking the we are given by God to be able to find him. The fact that he's evoking some of them doesn't prove that they are merely a matter of manipulation. There was no guy tapping when I got saved. Any associations that were evoked alone in my living room had to be coincidental or accidental rather than arranged. To say that there's a psychological process that enables to internalize the value of belief in God is hardly a denunciation of the reality of validity of that process. So there is a psychological process and we can manipulate it. I also had a need for a father figure, and guess what, I had a father. Saying that having a psychosocial need disproves the reality of the solution is just foolish.

That's like saying you have proved that love is just a psychological trick becuase when you when you do  things to make them think they are loved they respond emotionally. He's giving all the ques that God would give us to guide into a relationship with him, thus they respond becuase it's put in them to respond. The only real test of the validity of such feelings is the long term change and production of positive experiences and behaviors resulting from it. Plenty of studies establish that this is the case with mystical experience. It's not been proved that it is the case with phony evoked experiences.

 Essentially there is a psychological process to conversion. it make sense that there would be becuase if God wants us to have  a personal relationship with him then there must be affects which would draw us into a psychological state that is conducive to that relationship. Those affects are not hard to find because we all know  about them, the they things that motivate us and turn us on. So he merely found them and induced them in cleaver ways.