Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Thursday, October 29, 2009, 22:34 (5503 days ago) @ dhw

'My agnostic position is that I don't believe there is a God and I don't believe there isn't a God. I see no "incoherence" in this or in the fact that I'm unable to believe in either explanation of life (design/accident).'-Okay. I know what you're saying.-Re, near death experiences. I believe they invoke a similar state of mind experienced in mystical union. This is what happens when the human brain is pushed to extremes. It doesn't mean that there is no foundation to the experience, but our later interpretation of the significance of the experience could be mistaken. For example, if someone says she saw the "afterlife" in a near death experience, this could be an interpretation that would have to be backed up by an entire philosophical exposition of what is meant by the "afterlife." I think it's extremely difficult to come up with a coherent, much less a desirable view of living beyond death. But it's a worthy pursuit.-"I think faith has to come before theology, but I become sceptical when, for instance, scientists twist their discoveries to fit in with their existing theism or atheism," -When they do that, they're not acting as scientists, are they?-"...and so I wonder if you aren't doing the same with your theology."-Historically, that's not what happened in my case. Before I started having these experiences, I had reached a stage of profound agnosticism. For years I'd had severe doubts about my childhood religious beliefs, to the point where their contradiction with the findings of modern science caused me to reject almost everything about them. But I couldn't account for the surpreme experiences I received from listening to certain works of classical music. They seemed to elicit "divine" realms, which I "knew" were illusions, and these conclusions that I came to that there was nothing behind these profound experiences of joy just threw me into fits of profound depression. Eventually I came even to doubt my doubts and reach a point where I didn't believe anything.-That's when the experiences of mystical union started occurring, the first one a complete emersion in whatever it was I was experiencing. This was a return to "faith," although compared to what I had now, what I had in my childhood (through the age of 19), I had mere belief then, not faith. I was now grasped by something infinitely beyond myself. I was "stuck" with it, and had to try to make sense of it. At first this "faith" had no object, no rationalization, and I was tempted to apply it to some of the primitive beliefs of my childhood, but those speculations were soon abandoned, as not holding water. I decided I need to study the history and philosophy of religion and psychology to get anywhere, and I did that for about 20 years before much started firming up.-So faith definitely came first with me, and it took me ages before I knew what to make of it. All I know is that this unobjectified faith gave me a sense of profound peace and satisfaction with life -- and a reconciliation with death, I might add, even though I couldn't buy into any of the conventional views of immortality. I didn't know exactly what it meant, but death no longer seemed dreadful to me. -In any case, "the meaning of it all" took me about 20 years to begin to put together a coherent framework. I guess a Zen Buddhist would just have been content with the raw feelings of security and bliss, without "worrying" about what it all meant. Hence Buddhism's a-theism. But I was too much of a philosopher to be content with just wallowing in it, even though I clearing understood that the faith itself was much more important than the intellectual framework I gradually wrapped around it.-Well, this will do for a start.