Even if I am not setting out trying to disparage a spiritual person’s spiritual experiences—even if I am trying to be as charitable to them as possible—it is difficult to see how I could have a conversation with them about information (their own subjective spiritual experiences) that is not publicly accessible to me. It boils down to them telling me about their private experience and me replying, “Cool story bro.” Once again, not because I WANT to sound flippant or dismissive...but what else can I say about it? I’m glad they had their experience.
Usually spiritual people start with their story, and then they proceed with a conclusion that, “Because I had this experience, you should believe X and do Y.” I don’t see how that follows, especially when the story sounds implausible.
It is a little different if someone said to me, “I saw a rabid dog across the street, so don’t go over there or else you gonna get bit.” A rabid dog sounds plausible based on what I have previously concluded about the world. I could go and check for myself that the dog is there (it is, in theory, publicly-accessible information), or I could take the person’s word for it if they seem like a trustworthy person with a good handle on reality. But most spiritual beliefs are much more implausible than this. Naturally, I would want to check for myself. But spiritual people are usually not able to explain to me how I could check for myself. “You just gotta believe” is not an operation that I can execute. It’s not that I don’t want to believe. I might very well want to believe, especially if their story sounds convenient or fortunate to me (such as, “We all go to heaven when we die.”) But I really don’t know how to just “believe” something.
Maybe some children are raised with the skill of “just believe this...”
(For example: https://youtu.be/KPFUr1Nnk4k )
but for me (and my Unitarian background), it DOES NOT COMPUTE.
The situation is different with drug-induced experiences. In those cases, someone can tell me, “I had this profound experience. As of now, it is known only to me, but it is in theory publicly-accessible to you too IF you follow this well-defined set of steps: measure out 3 grams of psilocybin mushrooms...etc.” Then I could have the experience, or at least AN experience, and we could move beyond just “Cool story bro.” If my experience ended up being very similar to theirs...well, then I would naturally start to search for explanations to explain the correlation. Maybe their report of their experience before I had mine primed my brain for having a similar experience. For me to consider my experience to be evidence in favor of some supernatural reality, it would have to be very similar to theirs AND independently-arrived at. So, if they had an experience, wrote down a description of it (maybe with winning lottery numbers communicated to them by Poseidon), and then I had the exact same experience as them after following their instructions, but without having heard anything specific about their experience beforehand (and especially if I had been given the same winning lottery numbers that I independently wrote down immediately afterwards before talking to my friend), then WOW, that would be outstanding evidence in favor of some underlying spiritual reality of practical use.
If a spiritual person could tell me, “If you kneel and face Mecca 5 times a day and cry out, “Allah Ackbar!” you will achieve great contentment in life.”, that is an operational instruction that I understand and could execute. Now, I’m pretty skeptical that it would work, and in order for me to expend the trivial inconvenience and social embarrassment involved with actually trying it, I would have to be pretty desperate for a feeling of contentment in my life...but in theory it is something that I could try.
But just telling me, “Pray to God with ALL YOUR HEART and you will find the strength to do X, Y, Z...”, that’s still too fuzzy for me. Me: “Am I praying will all my heart?” Friend: “You will KNOW when you are praying with all your heart.” Me: “Okay, I must not be praying with all my heart. How do I pray with all my heart?” Friend: “Think of the thing in the world that you want or cherish the most. Think of that intense yearning. Apply that feeling to your desire to connect with God.” Me: “Okay...hmmmm...I’m sorry, I’m having trouble applying that feeling to something that just feels silly, I can’t help it.” Friend: “Stop thinking it is silly, you have to really try and believe!” Me: “I know, I’m trying, but it’s just not working.”
It’s not just prayer. I have the same problems with meditation. Maybe it is just me, personally, but I don’t find most recipes for making people’s private spiritual experiences publicly-accessible to me to be very specific or comprehensible or operational. Is this typical-mind fallacy, or do others feel the same way?
Note that I’m not demanding that the experiences themselves be easily describable. I understand that the experiences themselves might not be the sorts of things that can be put into words. For example, people’s mushroom experiences might be ecstatic and ineffable. But at least they could give me a clear recipe of how to get there so I could see for myself.
What’s impressive is, the mushroom recipe would not require FAITH WITH ALL MY HEART. I could be thinking, going into it, “Man, this is all a bunch of hippy-dippy BS. I ain’t gonna feel a thing.” And then, BAM! That’s impressive.
It’s not just prayer. I have the same problems with meditation.
The only meditation I can do is body-scan meditation. It is not particularly spiritual, just body awareness. If you are looking for the calming benefits of meditation, you might check it out.
Maybe it is just me, personally, but I don’t find most recipes for making people’s private spiritual experiences publicly-accessible to me to be very specific or comprehensible or operational. Is this typical-mind fallacy, or do others feel the same way?
I feel this way. I usually assume it’s someone else’s typical mind fallacy keeping them from explaining, or else certain word sounds are connected to different meanings, or else I am neurodivergent such that the explainer is used to people who don’t need to have it explained better, or something to do with signalling that went over my head.
Yeah, the faith thing has always seemed kinda weird to me too. But you have to understand that this is just one of many mechanisms by which spiritual experiences can be induced. It works for some people, not for others. There’s a lot of individual variation in people’s responses to pharmaceuticals too.
Even if I am not setting out trying to disparage a spiritual person’s spiritual experiences—even if I am trying to be as charitable to them as possible—it is difficult to see how I could have a conversation with them about information (their own subjective spiritual experiences) that is not publicly accessible to me. It boils down to them telling me about their private experience and me replying, “Cool story bro.” Once again, not because I WANT to sound flippant or dismissive...but what else can I say about it? I’m glad they had their experience.
Usually spiritual people start with their story, and then they proceed with a conclusion that, “Because I had this experience, you should believe X and do Y.” I don’t see how that follows, especially when the story sounds implausible.
It is a little different if someone said to me, “I saw a rabid dog across the street, so don’t go over there or else you gonna get bit.” A rabid dog sounds plausible based on what I have previously concluded about the world. I could go and check for myself that the dog is there (it is, in theory, publicly-accessible information), or I could take the person’s word for it if they seem like a trustworthy person with a good handle on reality. But most spiritual beliefs are much more implausible than this. Naturally, I would want to check for myself. But spiritual people are usually not able to explain to me how I could check for myself. “You just gotta believe” is not an operation that I can execute. It’s not that I don’t want to believe. I might very well want to believe, especially if their story sounds convenient or fortunate to me (such as, “We all go to heaven when we die.”) But I really don’t know how to just “believe” something.
Maybe some children are raised with the skill of “just believe this...” (For example: https://youtu.be/KPFUr1Nnk4k ) but for me (and my Unitarian background), it DOES NOT COMPUTE.
The situation is different with drug-induced experiences. In those cases, someone can tell me, “I had this profound experience. As of now, it is known only to me, but it is in theory publicly-accessible to you too IF you follow this well-defined set of steps: measure out 3 grams of psilocybin mushrooms...etc.” Then I could have the experience, or at least AN experience, and we could move beyond just “Cool story bro.” If my experience ended up being very similar to theirs...well, then I would naturally start to search for explanations to explain the correlation. Maybe their report of their experience before I had mine primed my brain for having a similar experience. For me to consider my experience to be evidence in favor of some supernatural reality, it would have to be very similar to theirs AND independently-arrived at. So, if they had an experience, wrote down a description of it (maybe with winning lottery numbers communicated to them by Poseidon), and then I had the exact same experience as them after following their instructions, but without having heard anything specific about their experience beforehand (and especially if I had been given the same winning lottery numbers that I independently wrote down immediately afterwards before talking to my friend), then WOW, that would be outstanding evidence in favor of some underlying spiritual reality of practical use.
If a spiritual person could tell me, “If you kneel and face Mecca 5 times a day and cry out, “Allah Ackbar!” you will achieve great contentment in life.”, that is an operational instruction that I understand and could execute. Now, I’m pretty skeptical that it would work, and in order for me to expend the trivial inconvenience and social embarrassment involved with actually trying it, I would have to be pretty desperate for a feeling of contentment in my life...but in theory it is something that I could try.
But just telling me, “Pray to God with ALL YOUR HEART and you will find the strength to do X, Y, Z...”, that’s still too fuzzy for me.
Me: “Am I praying will all my heart?”
Friend: “You will KNOW when you are praying with all your heart.”
Me: “Okay, I must not be praying with all my heart. How do I pray with all my heart?”
Friend: “Think of the thing in the world that you want or cherish the most. Think of that intense yearning. Apply that feeling to your desire to connect with God.”
Me: “Okay...hmmmm...I’m sorry, I’m having trouble applying that feeling to something that just feels silly, I can’t help it.”
Friend: “Stop thinking it is silly, you have to really try and believe!”
Me: “I know, I’m trying, but it’s just not working.”
It’s not just prayer. I have the same problems with meditation. Maybe it is just me, personally, but I don’t find most recipes for making people’s private spiritual experiences publicly-accessible to me to be very specific or comprehensible or operational. Is this typical-mind fallacy, or do others feel the same way?
Note that I’m not demanding that the experiences themselves be easily describable. I understand that the experiences themselves might not be the sorts of things that can be put into words. For example, people’s mushroom experiences might be ecstatic and ineffable. But at least they could give me a clear recipe of how to get there so I could see for myself.
What’s impressive is, the mushroom recipe would not require FAITH WITH ALL MY HEART. I could be thinking, going into it, “Man, this is all a bunch of hippy-dippy BS. I ain’t gonna feel a thing.” And then, BAM! That’s impressive.
The only meditation I can do is body-scan meditation. It is not particularly spiritual, just body awareness. If you are looking for the calming benefits of meditation, you might check it out.
I feel this way. I usually assume it’s someone else’s typical mind fallacy keeping them from explaining, or else certain word sounds are connected to different meanings, or else I am neurodivergent such that the explainer is used to people who don’t need to have it explained better, or something to do with signalling that went over my head.
Yeah, the faith thing has always seemed kinda weird to me too. But you have to understand that this is just one of many mechanisms by which spiritual experiences can be induced. It works for some people, not for others. There’s a lot of individual variation in people’s responses to pharmaceuticals too.