Re: Deconversion

Paul Dean wrote:

Why not just reply directly to my post?

Er, because the above was related to something I was saying
to Eric, and because it had nothing to do with anything you've
said other than by coincidence. (I was thinking of people like
Cupitt and Spong, not of you.)

Can't I get away with thinking the world revolves around me for just
one post? Please?

Oh, all right. But only because I say so, mind. :-)

Always possible, but so far what you've offered me is the
suggestion that I should define God into existence. That
doesn't appear to me to be helpful. I assume (since I know
you're far from stupid) that when you propose that you're
trying to get at something deeper that you've experienced
or understood, or that you think you've experienced or
understood; but what you've said isn't helping me to grasp
what that is.

I'm sorry about that. Maybe I'm just not capable of helping - after
all if it was possible then I'd have heard others saying it when I
needed to hear it. That's the nature of a revelation - it can't be
necessarily argued; but it's still data.

Certainly: the fact that some people -- lots of people,
and lots of very sensible and intelligent people --
believe themselves to have encountered God, or to
experience his reality throughout every moment of
their lives, or [... a full list would be very long ...],
is certainly data; it's even evidence in favour of what
they say they've encountered / experienced / been told.
I don't say that it's very *much* evidence for that,
mind, but evidence it certainly is.

I can describe my
experience, but if that's not enough then perhaps nothing will. I
thought that as a mathematician you would understand more, than the
other atheists we've had on ukrc, how true theorems are often
beautifully proved by apparent shifts in reality; they're not shifts
in reality - "Don't try to bend the spoon - that's impossible; it is
not the spoon that bends but yourself". The number of theorems which
cannot be proved unless you shift the "universe" in which the theorem
exists and then shift it back. More things are arbitrary than people
commonly realise - in a proof the origin causes a discontinuity,
so... move the origin, no problem; perform your local transformation
and then move the origin back. I'm not saying that's a parallel with
what I was able to do with God, but the general idea about an elegant
"twist", to prove a beautiful theorem gracefully, being a positive
thing rather than a "cheat".

Nice analogy. Unfortunately, without having had any such
revelation myself its application isn't clear to me (unless
you really *are* just suggesting defining God into existence,
which I think unlikely). One of the nice things about
mathematics is that even if you're[1] invincibly unable to
get the right intuitions about something into your head,
you can still follow the proofs step by step. At least
in principle :-).

[1] Generic, of course.

I usually just get bewilderment when I explain this to atheists
because they're coming wanting things explained *within their current
universe* (like with their current origin unmoved). When I say to
them, in effect, that if they want to understand they'll have to move
their origin or enter a slightly different mental universe or change
their assumptions/framework, they're not interested on some deep
level. On that deep level I believe they don't want to be convinced.
When it happened to me it was terrifying because every single idea
I'd ever had would have to be thrown away and that is scary when it's
an imminent prospect and I can understand people (subconsciously) not
wanting to face that.

Understood. I don't think that's my situation, but of course
human capacity for self-deception is well nigh boundless.

As it was, when I've said it before; previously you've not really
addressed it though because I was aiming it at other atheists. But
then you'd already made your choice (of definitions), which I didn't
know would be disastrous to your conclusions, or perhaps I ignored
such feelings in the same way you did. The aggression seeping
through is why I don't argue with atheists - because (what looks for
all the world to me like) their blindness annoys me! :-( All
together now - "I'm not blind, the sun /is/ dark!"

I do apologize if I annoy you.

It's interesting, because your posts also seem much more aggressive
than they used to be - kind of obvious since you are now on the other
side of the antagonism (in the sense of struggle).

I suspect that much of the apparent aggression (both ways)
is just because we're disagreeing with one another. I'm not
aware of either being or feeling more aggressive; if I am,
then I apologize unreservedly to you and to anyone else
who may have been hurt or annoyed by it.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

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