[MD] Christendom's place in the MOQ

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Platt,

On Jan 10, 2009, at 8:15 PM, Platt Holden wrote:
> That's all fine and dandy, but rejects out of hand direct experiences 
> that
> many people have of God and/or Jesus Christ which prompts them to 
> become
> "born again" Christians. Seens to me a radical empiricist should 
> explain
> why he accepts some direct experiences as valid but "will not allow"
> others.

Steve:
I think the following by Sam Harris is a great answer to your question:

"I recently spent an afternoon on the northwestern shore of the Sea of 
Galilee, atop the mount where Jesus is believed to have preached his 
most famous sermon. It was an infernally hot day, and the sanctuary was 
crowded with Christian pilgrims from many continents. Some gathered 
silently in the shade, while others staggered in the noonday sun, 
taking photographs.

As I sat and gazed upon the surrounding hills gently sloping to an 
inland sea, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful 
stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being 
a separate self—an “I” or a “me”—vanished. Everything was as it had 
been—the cloudless sky, the pilgrims clutching their bottles of 
water—but I no longer felt like I was separate from the scene, peering 
out at the world from behind my eyes. Only the world remained.

The experience lasted just a few moments, but returned many times as I 
gazed out over the land where Jesus is believed to have walked, 
gathered his apostles, and worked many of his miracles. If I were a 
Christian, I would undoubtedly interpret this experience in Christian 
terms. I might believe that I had glimpsed the oneness of God, or felt 
the descent of the Holy Spirit.But I am not a Christian.

If I were a Hindu, I might talk about “Brahman,” the eternal Self, of 
which all individual minds are thought to be a mere modification. But I 
am not a Hindu. If I were a Buddhist, I might talk about the 
"dharmakaya of emptiness" in which all apparent things manifest. But I 
am not a Buddhist.

As someone who is simply making his best effort to be a rational human 
being, I am very slow to draw metaphysical conclusions from experiences 
of this sort. The truth is, I experience what I would call the 
“selflessness of consciousness” rather often, wherever I happen to 
meditate—be it in a Buddhist monastery, a Hindu temple, or while having 
my teeth cleaned. Consequently, the fact that I also had this 
experience at a Christian holy site does not lend an ounce of 
credibility to the doctrine of Christianity.

There is no question that people have “spiritual” experiences (I use 
words like “spiritual” and “mystical” in scare quotes, because they 
come to us trailing a long tail of metaphysical debris). Every culture 
has produced people who have gone off into caves for months or years 
and discovered that certain deliberate uses of attention—introspection, 
meditation, prayer—can radically transform a person’s moment to moment 
perception of the world."

I am sure DMB would never deny such experiences. But when I hear 
Christian's describe similar experiences, I don't hear them describing 
anything that supports any particular religion or any dogma whatsoever, 
though they often see such experiences as somehow being proof of 
"facts" like the virgin birth, the historical veracity of the bodily 
resurrection of Jesus, etc.

Regards,
Steve