Reality of gods vs reality of experience

[Briton]

IMO, all gods are made up. That doesn't make them or the relationships the followers have with them any less real.

Sorry I don't understand. How is a relationship with something real if the 'something' isn't? Also, whilst you believe all gods are made up, I have not nearly enough experience with them all.

Munin-Hugin, is the state of paganism today, then, that nobody actually believes in anything supernatural, that they just accept they pretend to as a placebo? Otherwise I'm not sure what you are getting at. I think, though, that your description of my view is a fair assessment. I tried being Christian, in the belief that it was true, but over ten years there was not a single substantial correlation between my prayers and real life. If I had remained Christian, you couldn't even call it mere superstition. At least there is correlation in superstition. I would have had as much success praying to my own backside. That, to me, is an utterly fictitious god.

[MaskedOne]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

The state of Paganism is an extremely varied thing ranging from various forms of pantheism and panentheism to sot polytheism to hard polytheism to atheists with a belief in non-divine supernatural phenomena to atheists who acknowledge no supernatural phenomena to various sections I don't know about and am too lazy to go looking for. In Thal's words, it's a polythetic term. I have another description for it but to call my description flippant is just slightly understating things.

[Munin-Hugin]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

Munin-Hugin, is the state of paganism today, then, that nobody actually believes in anything supernatural, that they just accept they pretend to as a placebo? Otherwise I'm not sure what you are getting at. I think, though, that your description of my view is a fair assessment. I tried being Christian, in the belief that it was true, but over ten years there was not a single substantial correlation between my prayers and real life. If I had remained Christian, you couldn't even call it mere superstition. At least there is correlation in superstition. I would have had as much success praying to my own backside. That, to me, is an utterly fictitious god.

Please don't take what I had posted as my actual belief system or the way I feel about it all. That is a purely social scientific concept of deification of natural processes that those witnessing it for the first time could not explain. In truth, science is just as much a religion as any other theological idea, and in fact the two cross paths more often than many would admit. They once believed that little tiny, invisible demons would enter into your body and cause disease and illness. To treat these demons, "mystical" compounds of certain herbs would be applied to open wounds or ingested, specific chants and prayers would be said over the afflicted, and prayer was encouraged to heal the person. Now, we "know" that there are microscopic creatures such as viruses and bacteria that can get into a person's body that will make them sick. To treat it, salves and medicines are mixed up to apply to the wound of be swallowed, machinery is used that emits specific levels of vibration or energy to the afflicted area, and patients are told to try to remain positive as there is a sure link between your health and your mental state. Basically, the same thing, isn't it?

As for believing in the supernatural, I know that millions of people out there, myself included, do so. In fact, a large portion of the population of Iceland has been polled and reported to believe in at least the possibility of the existence of hudrufolk and elves. And those aren't just the pagans. Perhaps the reason why you had issues with being Christian is that it just wasn't right for you, and no matter how hard you may have tried to make it work, it didn't. Because of that, the divine could see your "true" lack of belief and therefore did not answer. The thing is, you can't just "try" to be something in a religious sense, because to quote Yoda, it's "do or do not, there is no try". I know this from personal experience, and with Christianity. What may be fictitious to you, may not be to someone else.

[thalassa]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

Sorry I don't understand. How is a relationship with something real if the 'something' isn't? Also, whilst you believe all gods are made up, I have not nearly enough experience with them all.

Personal anecdotes are not evidence. If they were, I'd tell you that dozens of gods were real all day long.

I've talked about this before, so I'm gonna copy pasta from a couple of other posts, but...

Anatomically modern humans begin to appear in the fossil record 190-200,000 years ago. While limited evidence of "religious behavior" (religious behavior=rituals and taboos) has been interpreted as occuring before this time period, and also to a limited degree in species other than Homo sapiens, conclusive (though still debatable) evidence of "religious behavior" doesn't occur until much later (for the sake of arguement, I'll go with the more generous 60-80,000 years ago). If we look at the development of religion as a function of time and human evolution (biological and cultural), its likely a natural phenomenon. Natural as in, the conditions are such that it arose naturally as a result of our specific neurology, how our culture works as a species, and our interactions with the environment. And once present, religion evolved with the cultures of their respective peoples.

We humans developed the ability to attribute agency to (or *perhaps* to sense the agency of *something* that we still lack the technology to detect empirically) other objects and other life-forms--the sky, bears, trees, the mountains, the ocean, the forest, the river, the home, the field, the orchard, etc...whatever it was that was in our local ecosystem. We carried the identities that we attributed agency to with us as we migrated, and they evolved with our respective cultures, changed over time as our cultures and environment changed, and adopted new deities and practices as as we encontered other cultures. This is why the earliest forms of organized religions have sky gods (among the proto-Indo-Europeans) and hearth goddesses, why (before Posideon) the deity of the Mediterranean was Thalassa, literally the Greek word for sea. And (though I like to blame Plato for perpetuating this fraudulent idea) many peoples have independently developled some mystical version of what is essentially for form of Essentialism--an idea that there is an idealized *whatever*...that bears have an overarching Bear Spirit...really, what are gods but better versions of humans?

We humans are notoriously bad at sensing patterns where there are none (and thinking things are random when they aren't), sensing things that aren't there, missing things that aren't there, seeing what we want to see, and ignoring things that don't fit our preconceptions... I could offload dozens of studies by numerous researchers if anyone is interested, but basically, our brains are amazing...but quirky.

Perception is reality.

Is Tinker Bell real? Probably sure that most of all of us would have the automatic response of "no"...but that automatic response is only correct on one level. Tinker Bell, as I think we all know, is a fairy from Peter Pan. Peter Pan was first a carachter in a book by J.M. Barrie, and then the subject (and title) of a play (1904) and finally a novel (1911) (and later a movie in 1924 and the Disney animated classic in1953). Today she's the subject of her own series of children's books and animated children's movies all on the themeof being true to yourself and on being a good friend. I think that we will all agree that the physical existence of an actual individual tiny twinkly fix-it fairy by thename of Tinker Bell, flying between London and Neverland, is not factual (where a fact is defined as a discrete piece of information of a thing or occurrence that can be objectively observed). However, I think we can all agree that the fairy named Tinker Bell does indeed exist, though that existence is confined to literature, film, art, Disneyworld, and theimagination of millions of children.

And because Tinker Bell exists, even though that existence is not physical, I'm pretty sure most of us can agree that she is experienced. For example, my daughter has most of the Never-fairies (dolls), a good stack of their books, all of their movies, and even a few of their costumes--she has spent many an hour as a fairy, talking to fairies, building fairy houses, watching fairies do fairy things, and even making her own fairy habitat field guide. The relationship that a reader, a watcher, a Disney lover, or a child develops with the carachter of Tinker Bell is real...Chickadee and Tinker Bell are as much friends as Chickadee and her schoolmate Anya. The impact of Tinker Bell (or any literary/movie/virtual carachter) in the development of a child is often just as real as the impact of a physical friend (and often is more important) in the development of a child (or an adult for that matter). You could rewrite these entire paragraphs^ and exchange the name "Tinker Bell" to Hercules or Gilgamesh or Cu Chullain and it would still hold true (minus my daughter having a Gilgamesh doll, though she has a stuffed dog named Cu Chullain).

Somewhere in human development (as a species) we gained the capacity for imagination. We attributed agency to the world around us. MIndividual perception is individual reality. Individual realities inform a shared, consensus reality. The shared, consensus reality that gets passed on over time informs the next individual's perception of the reality...and the cycle begins anew. Religion is created by people. The personalities that we call gods are are is created by people inspired by their numinous experiences with the agency they attribute to the world around them. The experiences that work are the experiences that get passed down, and thus religion and the religious experience is ever fluid...whether its the experience of the god of Abraham or the gods of any other culture.


Let me tell you the tale of Caveman Bob...

Caveman Bob, who was looking for a new place for the family to live (they were nigh on starving), had a dream about a beautiful woman with come hither eyes pointing to a bend in the river and saying *ugh-aht* (which means "there" in Caveman Bob) turning into a tree. The next day, he saw a tree by the bend in a river that had a graceful look to it, and made camp, and caught enough fish to feed his family for a season in the first night there...well, it must have been because the tree is really a "woman" (not because Caveman Bob saw what he wanted to see because he missed all the details that *didn't* match his dream), and because Caveman Bob's wife can't turn into a tree, this dream lady must be a very special...maybe unworldy...woman intent on protecting them and helping them.

Caveman Bob comes to the conclusion that tree cannot be cut down (it would offend the Lady) and maybe Caveman Bob family should give stuff to it because of all that it has given them... Hey, they've started a religion!

Over time, Bob's family and desendents find better ways to worship the Lady in the Tree by the River--she really likes the color blue, because after someone brought her shrine blue flowers and sang a new song the unusually rainy rains that had caused the river to flood (more than usual) and threatened their (now expanded) village stopped and there was a rainbow, which became the start of the Blue Flower and Singing Festival and ritual performed by the whole village every spring, to prevent their town from being threatened by the spring floods.

And over more time Lady in the Tree by the River goes through some linguistic evolution* to become Lateira, Goddess of the Bobbites of Boblandia, patroness of fishermen, trees, rivers, and travelers. (little does Caveman Bob or his decendents know, but the real reason for the lotsa fish when he and his family decided to stay is an unusually high amount of benthic macroinvertebrates due to increased nutrient levels as a result of the unique geological features of this particular area of the river)

At the end of the day, the gods are invisible, intangible, subjective and abstract agents--they are no more real, except in our individual perceptions and beliefs, than Batman (or Tinkerbell, Santa Claus, etc). They endure not because they (or the religions they inspire) are necessairly based in an actual reality of physics in the Universe (though we might find that it is and we just haven't figured the mechanics out yet), but because it is a survivial mechanism, individually and collectively (and I would even posit that skepticism remains because too much religion. When it comes down to human survival (and evolution) we don't do so as a species, but as individual populations...religions offer a way to tie people together that wouldn't ordinairly do so, since they come from different backgrounds, families, etc.

Think about this in (incredibly over-simplified) proto-human terms...Savanah Sally and her baby are part of Early hominid group A living in an area with lots of food (she married into the group), but her mom and brother live in an area where the's been a food shortage due to a fire. Mom and brother have family ties, and come to visit Sally and her new clan and are welcomed because of the family bond. But Up-River Rita and her tribe live several weeks journey from Down-River Ron and his tribe...they aren't related, and in the past they've occasionally been hostile. But, due to lack of rain for a few seasons, the waters are too shallow to catch enough fish to feed everyone and they migrate down the river. The URR and DRR tribes meet...and while a war could have broken out (there are no kinship ties between them), it seems our two peoples both worship the river...so they have something in common to bond. Add some common enmity to this (maybe a third group trying to enroach on the river territory with not even a river god in common), and you have two groups able to survive without any common tie, other than the fact that they both gave agency to a body of running water.



*An example of linguistic evolution: "Up until about 400 years ago, pease referred to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people mistakenly assumed that the word pease was the plural form of pea, and a new word was born" (source) Also, there are natural shifts in pronunciation, etc that occur over time...


Where you can find information about where these ideas come from:

Supernatural Selection by Matthew Rossano
Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints by Bryan Hayden
The Belief Instinct by Jesse Bering
Anything by David Mc Raney (a much better read than the studies that explain the phenomen he discusses)
Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade
After the Ice, The Singing Neanderthals, and The Prehistory of the Mindby Steven Mithen
The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
Ancestral Journies by Jean Manco
The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochrane
Europe between the Oceans by Barry Cunliffe
The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis Williams (Corbin, this one might interest you! Its about consciousness and the origins of art)
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond
The Gap by Thomas Suddendorf

[DavidMcCann]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

Personal anecdotes are not evidence.

In the contrary, all evidence is some-one's personal account of a personal experience.

I've talked about this before, so I'm gonna copy pasta from a couple of other posts, but...

No matter how many time you post this, it remains your opinion.

Is Tinker Bell real? Probably sure that most of all of us would have the automatic response of "no". ... However, I think we can all agree that the fairy named Tinker Bell does indeed exist, though that existence is confined to literature, film, art, Disneyworld, and the imagination of millions of children. And because Tinker Bell exists, even though that existence is not physical, I'm pretty sure most of us can agree that she is experienced.

But "experienced" in a very special sense. Obviously your daughter's experience of Tinker Bell is not the same sort of thing as her experience of you! The Gods are experienced by people in the sense that she experiences you, not in the sense that she experiences Tinker Bell.

This is the crux of our disagreement. For you all explanation must be based on physics and anything intangible must be subjective. But that is opinion, and an opinion for which there is no evidence.

Yes, you can always dismiss religious experience out of hand, or find some hypothetical explanation. But how does that differ from the approach of those who dismiss evolution or climate change?

[thalassa]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

In the contrary, all evidence is some-one's personal account of a personal experience.


No matter how many time you post this, it remains your opinion.

Considering that I wrote it, I certainly hope so. And as such, it my opinion based upon decades of practice and inquiry. And lots of journal articles.

We can certainly play the semantic game here that you appear inclined to begin, but I'm pretty sure that here we are all intelligent enough to understand what "evidence" is from a scientific point of view, and how it differs from "evidence" that one might hold as personal vindication for personal opinions.

But "experienced" in a very special sense. Obviously your daughter's experience of Tinker Bell is not the same sort of thing as her experience of you! The Gods are experienced by people in the sense that she experiences you, not in the sense that she experiences Tinker Bell.

If this were the case, atheists would not exist. It is a simple fact that not everyone experiences the gods as, say, they experience a tree or water or a mother. If the gods were trees, water, or a person, there would be far less variability in our experience of them.

This is the crux of our disagreement. For you all explanation must be based on physics and anything intangible must be subjective. But that is opinion, and an opinion for which there is no evidence.

Actually, the definition of subjective relies on something being personally experienced and interpreted. Something which is objective would be something that can be measured and weighed and independently verified. A subjective experience, is, by its very definition, an opinion. The idea that something is "intangible" is abstract, as opposed to "concrete". Religion is both subjective and abstract--it is intangible and it is personally experienced and interpreted.

But beyond that, yes, an non-universal (or nealry so) experience that cannot be replicated and observed independently is by its very definition not evidence.

Yes, you can always dismiss religious experience out of hand, or find some hypothetical explanation. But how does that differ from the approach of those who dismiss evolution or climate change?

I'm not sure where you get the opinion that I "dismiss religious experiences out of hand"... I'm Pagan. I'm not an atheist. I am a practicing Pagan. I have numinous experiences. I talk to the gods and they talk back. I practice magic. I beleve in ghosts. I believe in a divine Universe and in gods that are a product of its unfolding. I practice divination and witchcraft. I ask plants for permission before I harvest them. I thank my food for its death when I eat meat. I use crystals and herbs. My kids have spell bears and dream catchers. I fully acknowledge that my experience of the gods and other phenomenon are real as an experience.

But I'm also a scientist. I make lifelong health quality and life and death decisions on the safety and health of people on fairly regular basis, that are based on empirical data. I look at research on a daily bais, I understand and can account for the limitations of a poorly designed experiment or conclusions. I understand many of the the limitations of the human experience, because if I didn't I'd not be very good at my job.

This means that I understand that personal experiences are just that--they are personal. The brain and the manner in which we use it has many flaws. It rediculously easy to implant false memories, to remeber things that aren't there, to not see things that are, to see connections were there are none, to miss connections that are, to be programmed to think in a certain way, to have the filter of your experiences be interpreted according to your preconceptions, and I could go on...its a long, long list.

Knowing this, and calling my experiences "objective" or "concrete" is a lie, to myself and to others. My experience, your experience, the experiences of any theist, may actually be based in an objective and physical (or some other phenomenon) reality that we have not yet percieved. But there is no objective or concrete evidence of this in 200,000 years and billions of individuals' lives that go beyond or disprove the parsimonious explainations of how and why religious experiences arise.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

In the contrary, all evidence is some-one's personal account of a personal experience.

Verifiable observations get extra credit.

No matter how many time you post this, it remains your opinion.

But she maybe doesn't have to type it over and over every time the subject comes up.

This is the crux of our disagreement. For you all explanation must be based on physics and anything intangible must be subjective. But that is opinion, and an opinion for which there is no evidence.

That which is external and verifiable is objective. That which is internal and not verifiable is subjective. That is not opinion, it is the definition of each word.

Yes, you can always dismiss religious experience out of hand, or find some hypothetical explanation. But how does that differ from the approach of those who dismiss evolution or climate change?

The former rejects anecdotal accounts as being reliable evidence, the later rejects verifiable observations as evidence.

Apply all the sloppy logic you want, there is a difference between observation and anecdote.

[Herbert]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

Is Tinker Bell real?

Hey, some people believe that ephemeral concepts gain validation as metaphysical constructs (spirits) through widespread portrayal!

Responding to the original question, I'm fairly certain that I'm okay with most appropriation, so long as it isn't done mockingly, and doesn't detract from the original formatting. That might be influenced by my status as Eclectic, and my belief that if someone does a ritual without expecting anything from it they make said ritual more powerful for a short time, but still.

[Rae'ya]

Re: Pagan cultural appropriation

But "experienced" in a very special sense. Obviously your daughter's experience of Tinker Bell is not the same sort of thing as her experience of you! The Gods are experienced by people in the sense that she experiences you, not in the sense that she experiences Tinker Bell.

Firstly, I'm a hardcore polytheist, so I actually do believe that all the gods are real, distinct entities (who 'physically' exist in their respective Otherworlds). BUT... I agree 100% with Thalassa here. And I DON'T believe that all people experience all gods as 'real'... I don't think that soft polytheist pantheists are experiencing the same 'Nornir' that I am.

The experiences that we have are filtered through our own internal frame of reference. They are not limited to the physical senses of our physical bodies. That means that no one is qualified to make a categorical statement about anyone else's experiences. To say that "the gods are experienced by people in the sense that she experiences you" is patently personal opinion, not fact. That may be how YOU experience the gods, but that's not necessarily how everyone else does it.

This is the crux of our disagreement. For you all explanation must be based on physics and anything intangible must be subjective. But that is opinion, and an opinion for which there is no evidence.

I challenge you to prove there is no evidence for Thalassa's definition of 'subjective'.

'Subjective' and 'objective' are two terms with distinct definitions. It's not that all explanation must be based on physics... it's that the difference between 'fact' and 'subjective experience' is science. Thalassa is being quite open about the fact that she has subjective beliefs... she just doesn't call anything 'fact' unless it is measurable and repeatable. This is the core of the 'intellectual agnostic who is in praxis a polytheist'. It doesn't matter what you BELIEVE... you just can't claim it as objective fact unless you can back that up with measurable, quantifiable, repeatable results. And you can't quantify personal experiences that can't be measured via external methodology.

Which is NOT to say that experiences aren't real. They are patently 'real'. So even if the thing which is being experienced isn't objectively measurable, the experience of it is still 'real'.

Yes, you can always dismiss religious experience out of hand, or find some hypothetical explanation. But how does that differ from the approach of those who dismiss evolution or climate change?

It differs in that we have objective, measurable evidence for evolution (climate change is a slightly different matter). We don't have objective, measurable evidence for deities. We have subjective experiences and personal belief (and remember, I'm a literal polytheist... I don't need objective evidence to believe they exist, but I am the first to tell you that I can't prove they exist outside of my head and it's entirely possible that I'm wrong).

[Medusa]

Re: Reality of gods vs reality of experience

You know I try to read these kind of threads. And I'm not a theist of any sort. So I'm completely lost with all the back and forth. Anyone want to do a working gal a solid and give me some sort of roster tldr version of what's going on here?

[MaskedOne]

Re: Reality of gods vs reality of experience

You know I try to read these kind of threads. And I'm not a theist of any sort. So I'm completely lost with all the back and forth. Anyone want to do a working gal a solid and give me some sort of roster tldr version of what's going on here?

To give a highly condensed and overly flippant summary before I go to sleep

Party A: I met a soul-eating horror on the road one day. It called itself a soul eating horror and fits descriptions of soul eating horrors. Soul eating horrors are real, run for your lives!!!

Party B: I met something calling itself a soul eating horror that fits classical descriptions of soul eating horrors on the road one day. No physical evidence or reliable first hand testimony corroborrates the existence of soul eating horrors. I might have misinterpreted something, I might have been hallucinating or I might have actually met a soul eating horror. Regardless, it was an interesting experience.

Party C: I met a soul eating horror on the road one day. No there isn't direct evidence of soul eating horrors but there also aren't any telltales that convince me I was hallucinating and I got a very good look at it eating some poor bastard's soul. I might be wrong but until provided further evidence, I'm gonna trust what my eyes tell me.

Replace soul eating horror with god(s).

[Medusa]

Re: Reality of gods vs reality of experience

Ah. Ok I can play.

*steps up to mic
'I never met a god'


am I wrong?

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Reality of gods vs reality of experience

Ah. Ok I can play.

*steps up to mic
'I never met a god'

am I wrong?

Not at all. But he might have met you!

[Gleb]

Re: Reality of gods vs reality of experience

Not at all. But he might have met you!

I think he has. Because... I AM god! The god of feline fabulousness!

[anunitu]

Re: Reality of gods vs reality of experience

I met God,and truth be told he had little positive to say about humans..But you know I "Might" have been on acid at the time...it was back in my younger wilder times...