Answeing Jeff Lowder, part 1: Demograsphics of Salvation

When I was a kid growing up in the Church of Christ in Dallas Texas I was always told you have to follow Jesus and be a Christian to be saved. That meant being baptized (which entailed total immersion in water) and it had to be in a Church of Christ, or you would go to hell. Even as a small child I would ask "what about the people born in China who never hear of the Church of Christ, would they go to hell? That issue alarmed me as early as I can remember. When that issue came up they would say "God is merciful he will take that into account." That's what we want ot hear. I still always wondered if it meant he would really let them off the hook. They weren't willing to thin it through to that extent. Still, when I went back to God and was born again at age3v23, after having been an atheist for about seven or eight years that seed was there and has formed the foundation if my adult apologetic and theological answer. Now the guys at the Secular Outpost have an argument (ala Jeff Lowder) [1] it's really against William Lane Craig,' in the comment section the troops are all enthused. They think they have a dynamite argument Christians can't answer. I think I did answer it but they just aren't listening. So I'm going to have to spell it out. The argument is not exactly about this issue but it does have a bearing. I think my answer to the issue also answers Lowder's argument.



The demographic aspects are not very prominent, they made more of a splash in the comment section. I still find it more logical to deal with that stuff first. The major part of the article is about are there sincere people who never accept Jesus but aren't resisting the Gospel. Of course most Christians say yes, believing there are not true atheists. Atheists of course claim otherwise and are offended by the idea that they are lying or self deluded. Before I deal with that it makes more sense to me to deal with the question "what happens to people who die never having had a chance to hear of Jesus?" I am going to do the wired thing and deal with that issue first then in part 2 deal with the main brunt of the article. Lowder mentions the possibility of isolated non Christians and their eternal fate as a final subpoint to his major point three in which he sights Schellberg:

The prima facie evidence of isolated nontheists. Schellenberg defines these individuals as “those who have never been in a position to resist God because they have never so much as had the idea of an all-knowing and all-powerful spiritual being who is separate from a created universe but related to it in love squarely before their minds–individuals who are entirely formed by, and unavoidably live their whole lives within, what must, if God exists, be a fundamentally misleading meaning system” (238). [2]

I wont quibble we know it's possible that some people have never heard of Jesus so te question is still valid. I find it hard to believe that anyone would not have heard of "God" in some sense. American atheist like to say that Buddhism is atheistic, it is not. Buddhists from Asia don't think that way. They don't have a "God" per se but they do have the Buddha mind which is much like Tillich's notion of the ground of Being (the Christian concept of God ala Platonic Christianity of the 5th century. Be That as it may I ill Just deal with the Gospel. Before getting on with thatI have a disclaimer. Nothing I say should be taken assaying that we don't need Jesus to be saved or that we can worship Krishna as Jesus or anything of that nature. I believe Jesus is Lord and if anyone is saved it's Jesus who saves them.

Having said that I don't believe that all people need to know it's Jesus who is saving them to be saved. Cyprian said there is no salvation outside the church, he said that in about 300A.S., hat they believe before that? There is nothing in the Hebrew scriptures to the effect that if you are not a Jew you are going to hell. Now it's true that the Bible lambasts the worship of idols but the OT had no concept of hell. This is widely known in most seminaries., Every thing translated as "hell" in OT is using the term "Sheol" meaning the grave. This explains Paul's words to the Greeks on Mars Hill (Acts 17--I'll get to it).

I have been assuming that experience of God is at a subliminal level. Since we all experience it that way we can experience it and not even know. Thus to talk about the inklings of ideas of God that we get and about any actual known experiences we have, we must filter that through cultural constructs. The reason is obvious, because culture is langue and it's through the constructs of culture that we interpret the world. God is beyond our understanding. Even those who experience God directly and so powerfully that they know it is real, are still confronted with a phenomenon of which they cannot speak directly. To make sense of it and to communicate it to others we must filter it through constructs. That means that our understanding of God is largely metaphor (at least our intellectual understanding).

Given this framework I've come to a slow conclusion over the last couple of decades that the same reality stands behind all faiths. That doesn't mean that I see Krishna or Bhudda as Jesus, but it does mean that I see God as the motivating instigator of religion as a whole and of belief in God in particular. I see God as working in all cultures. I see God as having interaction with all faiths, but not filling the blanks as other gods. I see a basis for this in the Bible.

Paul said

To those who through persistance seek glory, honor and immortality he will give eternal life.But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the good and follow evil there will be wrath and anger...first for the Jew and then for the gentile; but glory honor and peace for everyone who does good. For God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will perish apart form the law and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.Indeed when Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirement of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences bearing witness and their hearts now accusing, now even defending them..." (Romans 2:7-15).[3]

 New American Standard and other translations say "their hearts accusing, now excusing them..." Most Christians are afraid of this conclusion and they down play this verse. Often Evangelicals will come back and say "he makes it clear in the next passage that no one can really follow the law on their hearts." Well, if they can't, than they can't. But if they can, and do, than God will excuse them. God knows the heart, we do not. The verse clearly opens the door to the possibility of salvation (although by Jesus) thorugh a de facto arrangement in which one is seeking the good without knowing the object one is seeking (Jesus). In other words, it is possible that people in other cultures who follow the moral law written on the heart know Jesus de facto even if they don't know him overtly. Paul backs up this conclusion in Acts 17:22-30 [2] Paul goes to Athens as is asked by the Athenian philosophers to explain his ideas to them.

These were pagan followers of another religion. Paul stood up and said to them, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious for as I walked around and observed your objects of worship I even found an alter with this inscription 'TO AN UNKOWN GOD' Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you."He basically says that they are worshiping God, they just don't know who he is. That's why he says "I will make it known to you." He doesn't say "you have the wrong idea completely." Most Evangelicals dismiss this as a neat rhetorical trick. But if we assume that Paul would not lie or distort his beliefs for the sake of cheap tricks, we must consider that he did not say "you are all a bunch of pagans and you are going to hell!" He essentially told them, "God is working in your culture, you do know God, but you don't know who God is. You seek him, without knowing the one you seek. He goes on,(v27)"God did this [created humanity and scattered them into different cultures] so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him though he is not far form each one of us." This implies that God not only wants to work in other cultures, but that it is actually his paln to do things in this way. Perhaps through a diversity of insights we might come to know God better. Perhaps it means that through spreading the Gospel people would come to contemplate better the meaning of God's love.

In any case, it does mean that God is working in other cultures, and that God is in the hearts of all people drawing them to himself. Of their worship of idols, Paul said "in past times God overlooked such ignorance but now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (v30). Now what can this mean? God never overlooks idolatry or paganism, in the OT he's always commanding the Israelite to wipe them out and expressly forbidding idolatry. It means that on an individual basis when God judges the hearts of people, he looks at their desire to seek him, to seek the good. That their status as individuals in a pagan culture does not negate the good they have done, and their ignorance of idolotry does not discount their desire to seek the good or the truth. IT means that they are following Jesus if they live in the moral life, even though they follow him as something unknown to them. IT also means that all of us should come into the truth, we should seek to know God fully, and when we do that we find that it is Jesus all along.

One thing this might change is our understanding of the chruch. It was the theologian Cyprian (200-258) who said there is no salvation outside the chruch. This doctrine is called extra ecclesiam. He was born in Carthage around 200. He was made Bishop of Carthage in 248, died in 258. In his most important work, "De unitate ecclesiae."  he states: "He can no longer have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother; . . . he who gathereth elsewhere than in the Church scatters the Church of Christ" (vi.); "nor is there any other home to believers but the one Church" (ix.).[4] Cyprian should not come across as a bad guy even though he makes this exclusivity statement. For one thing he favored reinstating (after suitable intervals of probation and penance) those who fell away under persecution recognizing the extreme hardship they were under. He also faced sickness in order to stay in the city and care for plague victims. He was falsely accused and put to death by the very church which he so ardently defended.[5]

This is in the third century. Christianity had been going for a long time before this formal declaration that there is no salvation outside the chruch. Of course this doesn't mean they had not been saying it here and there all along. Yet they were pretty far removed from the understanding of Paul who way back there in the late 50s of the first century was telling the Greeks they already knew God but needed to know more about him. Not only had a lot happened, Christianity became a religion prosecuted religion of martyrdom, but also thoroughly gentile so that the perspective of Judaism was forgotten. Jews reject idols but they did not see pagans as damned merely for being who they were. Modern Jews still largely hold to that preservative.

One problem with extra ecclesiam is I'm a protestant! That began as a Catholic doctrine, when the split came with the east the Roman Catholics continued the idea, it's a Roman catholic notions. Though many protestants passionately accept the Father's as gospel the teachings of the Apostolic fathers became the teachings of the Catholics and are acted upon as though they exclude protestants. At least before Vatican II. While I am passionately defending extra ecclesiam a bunch of Catholics are looking at me and saying "but you are outside the church yourself!" So I have to re think this business of the nature of the church. First of all I have to see the church as the tool, not the point of the mission. It is Christ's mission not the church's mission. As Motlmann says "The Mission has a church."[6]  Meaning, the Gospel, being the light of the world, is the mission of Christ, the church is a tool belonging to that mission. I also no longer see the church as the agent of salvation. Christianity has tended to make the Church the point, and membership in it and Christ became a tool of the church.Membership in the church is not what saves us. It maybe valid, it may be necessary but it's not the saving agent. Christ's atoning sacrifice is what creates the ground upon which forgiveness is possible. The church just preaches the message.

Finally, the great commission ("go ye therefore into all the world and preach the Gospel, Baptizing everyone (or 'all nations')" that is not a command. It is not in the imperative. It really should be where you are going preach the gospel. It's not in the imperative mood so it's "go ye!" but "where you are going." More on all of this in comment section.

A poster in the comment section of Lowder's article says:

In addition to the excellent points made in the article, I think that there is very strong evidence against the Sincerity Denial Hypothesis in the form of facts about the distribution of non-belief, as well as from facts about human psychology (particularly, the fact that most people prefer not to be tortured forever).For example, belief in Christianity spread throughout the world in a way that is perfectly consistent with Naturalism but slightly baffling on Craig's views. There are no known Native American Christians prior to the arrival of European settlers. But on Craig's view the Native Americans MUST have been, on some level, willfully rejecting the belief in Christ, which one CANNOT do unless one is on some level aware that Christ is a thing that can be accepted or rejected.

Of course that assumes conscious joining of the Church as a man made institution. If as Paul suggests anyone following the moral law upon the heart is seeking Christ defacto then there is no inconsistency. If as Paul says the Athenians guessed right that there is an unknown God they need to get to know then the spirits and great spirit of the native American points to the creator, then they weren't all necessarily lost nor where they all guilty of rejecting nor where they necessarily not following Christ without knowing it was Jesus they followed. All gods point to God! They are not all God but they point to God.

That same poster goes on:

Rival belief systems like Islam seem to correlate with certain areas in ways that suggest the surrounding culture was a significant contributing factor in the propagation of those beliefs. But on Craig's view one's rejection of Christ is entirely independent of one's culture, so it's a sheer coincidence that the really stubborn people who happen to find Islam more convincing, tend to be found in Islamic cultures. For whatever reason sincere believers all seem to live in the same places and those places are much less likely to be places where the dominant culture is Islamic and absolutely never places to which Christianity has yet to spread through naturalistic means at all.

Christians don't live where Christianity has not spread, that's a  tautology. But it's all over the world now. It's becoming major in China, Africa, and Japan. Did you know it's been in India since the Time of Christa? No the spread of Christianity is not not in line with what naturalism would predict. Naturalism would predict it would ie out shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Additionally, Craig is committed to a fairly traditional conception of Hell and one in which a consequence of not accepting Jesus is eternal torment. Now, Lord knows there are some stubborn atheists out there but is it plausible to believe that not only all atheists but all non-Christians in the history of the world are so stubborn that they would prefer to be tortured in a lake of fire for eternity than believe something that Craig thinks is the most wonderful, life-changing thing that anyone can believe in?

That could cut both ays because it does not prove their denial is due purely to intellectual matters.



Sources


[1] Jeffery Jay Lowder, "WLC Denies That Anyone Has Ever Died a Sincere Seeker Without Finding God" Secular Out Post, January 2, 2016 (blog URL)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/01/02/wlc-denies-that-anyone-has-ever-died-a-sincere-seeker-without-finding-god/  Accessed 1/10/16


[2] Jeff Lowde  paraphrasing John Schellenberg (in his recent book The Wisdom to Doubt - See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/01/02/wlc-denies-that-anyone-has-ever-died-a-sincere-seeker-without-finding-god/#sthash.h28GcHgr.dpuf

[3] Romans 2:6-14/Acts 17:22-30

[4] "Cyprian," Wikipedia,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian accessed 5/13/14.

[5] James E. Keifer, "Cyprian of Carthage, Bishop and Martyr." Bibliographical sketches of Memorable Christians of the Past. Online source: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/242.html
accessed 5/13/14.

[6] Jurgen Motlmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ As the Foundation of Criticism of Christian Theology. Fortress Press; 1st Fortress Press ed edition (September 1, 1993) 105.

Mission is rooted in the identity of God himself. God is on a mission, and Jesus is the embodiment of that mission. Jesus identifies himself as being sent more than forty times in the gospel of John. Then, near the end of the gospel of John, he says, ‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you’ (John 20:21). The church is sent on mission by Jesus. It’s not that the church has a mission, but rather that the mission has a church. We join Jesus on his mission.

 

Was Paul Tillich Ant-Supernatural?

It's also important to read my essay on the SN


.......A certain group of atheists on CARM atheist board are trying to create the impression that I can't understand the things I read and that Paul Tillich is not only  not Christian but not positive toward the supernatural. The problem is mainly due to their lack of knowledge of the background that made up Tillich's thinking. They are reading Tillich as though he's an uninformed atheist cut off from the vast Knowledge that he had of theology coming out of European Lutheran background. I can't really blame them too much because if one is aware of the tradition of liberal European Christianity one might actually think the things he said are much different than he meant. The issue revolves around statements that he made to the effect hat he was anti-supernatural and didn't believe in miracles and didn't' believe in a God as a conscious being with a will. If the reader has read any of things I've written about Tillich over the years the reader will know that these allegations are more than half true,but not completely and not in the way they think.

skylurker:

"Look he in Tillich's own words.

"You approach something here that is fundamental to all my thinking — the antisupernaturalistic attitude" - Tillich (Ultimate concern - Tillich in Dialog).

I have diligently provided a series of Tillich's quotes and a series of assessments from scholars and you evade the topic and claim elsewhere to kick *** on this topic. That is your style to lose horribly and then come back and claim you wiped the floor.

He doesn't document it properly, the only real words of Tillich in that "quote" are  in quotation marks at the time. This makes laughable his claim to diligence.
.......My contention is that yes Tillich is opposed to something he calls "supernaturalism" but it's not the concept of the supernatural as it was originally introduced into Christianity by the thinker Tillich admired, Pseudo-Dionysus the areiopagite. It's the counterfeit notion of the supernatural that the enlightenment foisted upon the chruch as a straw man argument to disprove a way of thinking it didn't understand. Tillich does say radical things that are opposed to the modern evangelical Christianity, he was a liberal. He was a European nineteenth century German liberal with Hegelian influence who followed Schleiermacher. I've never denied that I've always known it. What I deny is that one can't take the major gist of Tillich view of God (being itself) and hold to it with a view that the ground of being is the origin of consciousness and that healing and other effects of supernatural (SN) are the result of God's working in the world. These are not contradictioanry positions even though they go further than Tillich back toward positons he didn't like. I do not have to the prophest of Tillich. I can disagree with him and I do disagree with him on certian things.
......In this essay  I stick to just the view of the supernatural and the working of miracles. Let's go to the source to the source where Skylurker bot this quote: a book called Ultimate Concern, Tillich in Dialogue by D.M. Brown.(1) Here is the original quotation in it's context:

Dr. Tillich: Now you touch on a problem which underlies everything, the problem of natural and supernatural. It has innumerable implications and is very difficult to simplify. In this special case, I do not deny the visionary experience and the whole scene, but if the inner voice Paul heard is called a "voice from Heaven," what does it mean? Did the earth stand in a certain relationship to the sun, in a particular position at that moment? Was the voice carried on a blinding ray? All these questions, if taken literally, are nonsense and have little to do with the meaning of the reality of that visionary experience. For the visionary experience was a certain reality. And I even speak of "breaking in," which has a supernatural sound but is not supernaturalism. You approach something here that is fundamental to all my thinking — the antisupernaturalistic attitude. If you would like to prepare yourself, I recommend the one section about reason and revelation in the first volume of my Systematic Theology, where I deal extensively with miracle, inspiration, ecstasy, and all these concepts, and try to interpret them in a nonsupernaturalistic — and that would mean also a nonsuperstitious — way.

 We see here the first indication that leads these bad readers astray. I call them bad readers because they don't do any study to find the background or the perspective he's coming to it from. They don't study theology they think they can just pick up one quote and know the world it comes out of without knowing anything about it. The last part there where he says he's going to do it in a "non-superstitious" way. So of course they assume O belief in God is superstition so that means he doesn't' believe in god. They further assume miracles is supernatural (is it?) and it's superstitious so he must mean he doesn't' believe it mean he doesn't believe in miracles becuase he does not believe  in the supernatural. That's all.In reality those three things, supernatural, miracle and superstition must be separated from each other. He does believe in supernatural, but in a certain reading of it, the original version not hte counterfeit. The counter is superstitious. His disbelief in miracles depends upon the understanding of miracles, because a certain kind of understanding is fine and other kind is what he's against. Not in this quote he says in speaking of Paul's voice from heaven that if it's literally from heaven "All these questions, if taken literally, are nonsense and have little to do with the meaning of the reality of that visionary experience" He says he values something he calls the visionary experience. He says the reality of it. It's real it's something he believes in. That's because the valid version of the SN is mystical experience. That's what Dionysus said. That was born out in the essay I did on Mathis Joseph Scheeben and the reading of him by Eugene R. Fairweather. That is very important to read because that lays out exactly what my view is. I don't have evidence that Tillich read Scheeben (2) but I see similar points he makes and similar phraseology he uses. For example the reference to "breaking in" above. Tillich says that "And I even speak of "breaking in," which has a supernatural sound but is not supernaturalism." That's exactly what Scheeben said, that supernatural is not "breaking into nature" but harmoniously working with nature. Read the essay please. It makes perfect sense for Tillich to say breaking in is not supernatrualism if one assumes he agrees with Scheeben, It makes no sense if he's some kind of sheep skin atheist because for the counterfeit version of SN that's what it is, it is breaking in and disrupting natural law. It appears to me then that this is what Tillich is really against, not the idea that the divine is causing some effect in the world but that that effect be understood in the right way. As I wrote the essay I link to above:

 Supernature is working in nature. It’s not breaking in unwelcome but is drawing the workings of nature to a higher level. Fairweather describes it as the “ground and end of nature.” In other words is the basis upon which nature comes to be and the goal toward which nature moves. Now it’s true that science removes the teleological from nature it doesn’t see it as moving toward a goal but that’s because it can’t consider anything beyond its own domain. Science is supposed to be empirical consideration of the natural realm and is supposed to keep its nose out of the business of commentary on metaphysics. Of course modern science does the opposite it become a form of metaphysics by infusing itself with philosophical assumptions and then declaring there is nothing beyond the natural/material realm.

 .......In the Dialogue book when the Moderator says he doesn't doesn't seem to believe in Christ's miracles Tillich get's into a dispute about the meaning of the term miracle.

Student: Well, in catechism in Sunday school, we learned that miracles imply a "suspension of the laws of nature." I suppose that is as good a definition as any.
Dr. Tillich: Where did you learn this? It is very interesting. Because this is precisely the idea which I fiercely combat in all my work, whenever I speak of these things. Was that really taught in your catechism, or by the Sunday-school teacher, who could not do better because she had learned it from another Sunday-school teacher who also could not do better?

 Note: he does not say "what I'm against is any idea of the SN." He says what he's against is what the student just said "suspension of the laws of nature." That is exactly what Scheeben and Fairweather are saying.SN is not opposing natural it's leading it and working with it. It makes perfect sense that Tillich would know that even if he didn't read Scheeben (I would bet he did) becuase he read Dionysus and the latter was a major influence upon him. It's any and all notions of the SN that he's oppossing but the phony version worked up in the enlightenment as a straw man against what they perceived as scholasticism.
......This leads to a very important moment in the dialogue where is sounds like Tillich is saying that he's oppossed to any idea that God would have an effect in the world, but he's not saying that at all:

Dr. Tillich: Now if you define a miracle like this, then I would simply say that this is a demonic distortion of the meaning of miracle in the New Testament. And it is distorted because it means that God has to destroy his creation in order to produce his salvation. And I call this demonic, because God is then split in himself and is unable to express himself through his creative power. In truth, of course, there are many things that are miraculous, literally "things to be astonished about," from mirari in Latin, to be astonished. And if you refrain from defining miracles in this distorted, actually demonic, way, we can begin to talk intelligently about them.

 .....The unwary might take that and say "O he's against anything to do with an effect of God in the world because  he calls it demonic. What he calls demonic is the idea that God must hang up the natural process of  cause and effect and natural law in order to have an effect. His whole idea of miracles hinges upon this concept. That God has to destroy creation to produce salvation is what he's calling the demonic idea. Not the idea that God has an effect in the world. We know form System 2 that what God has an effect upon in the world is "new creation" and that goes along with valuing the presence of God and the experience of God. So for Tillich salvation doesn't disrupt nature but completes it or makes it new, repairs it. That's the very concept of Scheeben is talking about. He could not have represented Scheeben better if he had read him (and I bet he did). I said in my essay:

Scheeben deals with the distinction between natural and supernatural faith. Throughout his writings we see this typified in terms of the tendency of the power of God to elevate humanity to a higher spiritual level. This means consciousness as well as habit. He speaks of “supernatural effects,” the effect that the pull of the supernatural has upon the natural. This is why it’s valid to think of the supernatural as an ontology, it’s a description of reality, or what is. Empirically that description tends toward the realization of human consciousness reaching to a higher level as a result of certain kinds of experiences. Scheeben expresses this in terms of “higher nature.” Super nature is the higher nature to which human nature is being elevated.

Not breaking in  or destroying nature but elevating it (in the form of the human nature) to a higher level. To Quote Fairweather:

If the lower nature is raised in all of these respects to the level of a higher nature, and especially if this nature modifies the lower nature so deeply and affects it so powerfully that the limits of possibility are reached; if God, purest light and mightiest fire, wishes through to permeate his creature with his energy, to flood it with brightness and warmth to transform it into his own splendor, to make the creature like the father of spirits and impart to it the fullness of his own divine life, if I say, the entire being of the soul is altered in the deepest recesses and in all its ramifications to the very last, not by annihilation, but by exaltation and transfiguration. Then we can affirm that a new higher nature has come to the lower nature, because it has been granted a participation in the essence of him to whom the higher nature properly belongs.(3)

.......One possible bridge bewteen Scheeben and  Tillich might be Frederich Schleiemacher. He is known as the "father of liberal theology." He was most famous for his concept of the feeling of utter dependence. Also known for his ethical theory. He was a big influence upon Tillich. Now Schleiermacher had an idea that was similar to those of Scheeben in certain ways, even though he was a protestant and Scheeben was a Catholic. In The History of Christian Thought in writing about Schleiermacher Tillich says that "I can tell you autobiographically that one of  my first scientific inquiries into theology... dealt with the concept of naturalism and super naturalism in the period before Schleiermacher. Out of this study I gained insight into the intricacies of the concept of nature in these discussions which has influenced my thinking."(4) That study almost certainly had to include Scheeben but if it did not then it did include Schleiermacher. This is almost a guarantee that he he at the works of the one of the two and that he thought in those terms. In his discretion the latter he refers to him as ant-supernaturlist. He says that Supernaturlsitic theology tried to save the tradition with the same tools which naturalism used in trying to destroy it. (5) What he's calling "supernaturalist theology" is not Dionysus although it may include Schebeen but it may not. He's talking about the counterfeit, or what i I call the counterfeit..  The tools naturalism used to destroy the tradition were reason, logic, scinece. The point is the tools he wants them to use he might call by different names but they amount to mystical experience, phenomenology and existentialism.Now he develops a crucial idea that of two concepts of nature: material and formal. Material is what we call "nature" rocks, trees, biology, formal is human nature. (6) 

.......Humanity belongs to both forms of nature, the material and the formal. He sees us has having a mind and a spirit. (7) He can't be totally against any verion of the SN if he believes in a spirit. Now here is the kicker that demonstrates he has this third way between naturism which rejects God and the phony superanturslim (although he never calls it "phony" but it's not the original version in Dionysus) which turns God into a big man in the sky and miracles into a destruction of the natural realm. The premise that must be granted and bracketed for now is that he is pro Schliemermacher and Pro Hegel. That wont be hard to prove if challenged. He says how can we have this realm that is above the human level of nature. "Does God interfere and if so in what sense?"(8) He says these are problems with which all theology has to deal. They were the problems of Hegel and Schleiermacher both of whom both of whom tried to develop a theology which transcended naturalism and supernatrualism."(9) He says modern theology has to deal with it too. Now if one reads this bit of the work  one will see him speaking of the Enlightenment concept of Harmony. Being a liberal he's fond of the enlightenment. He doesn't' see the enlightenment as a bad thing, neither do I. I speak of the "counterfeit SN" and Tillich speaks of that a "supernaturalism." He does not put all enlgithement thinknig in that category. For him as for Schleiermacher and Hegel the answer is a harmony between nature and Sueprnature and it's all harmonized in God who created the whole and is being itself. We are all harmoniously related to this eternal necessary aspect of being and deriving our being from it. As such it effects new creation, it repairs creation it doesn't suspend or destroy it.

......Any quotes the atheists quote by Tillich form the Dialogue book or any other has to be understood in this light. So he is not saying away with all concepts of the supernatural and God can never have any influence on the world. He makes that quite clear in the Dialogue book:

In truth, of course, there are many things that are miraculous, literally "things to be astonished about," from mirari in Latin, to be astonished. And if you refrain from defining miracles in this distorted, actually demonic, way, we can begin to talk intelligently about them....The first thing I want to state here is that only in a correlative relationship between the subjective and the objective sides of the experience can we speak of a miracle. This is the reason why Jesus declined when the Pharisees and the scribes asked him to perform a "show" miracle — the kind of magic trick we might watch at country fairs. They asked him to do this, and he refused. This expresses the fact that miracles, in the sense in which he was involved in them, are events which have a particular significance to the person who experiences them. That is the one fundamental statement. Miracles are subjective-objective, subject-object-oriented, always in correlation, and never comprehensible in any other way. Not merely subjective, they are not merely objective, either.(10)

He's clearly not denying miracles per se. He's denying a certain aspect of them or a view of them. Now I am not obligated to agree with Tillich on everything he says. I think we was working under limitations that kept him form seeing these things they way I do. For one thing the good Lourdes rules were only about 40 years old when he went to the conference with Einstein and that really shaped his thinking about scinece. For another thing he didn't have the charismatic movement or the M scale of W.T. Stace's theories (he may or may not have known about they were written i the 50s) but he never know of Ralph Hood's empirical work in confirming Stace. So we don't know what he would think about any of that..I use the Rembrandt paiting of Christ being taken down from the cross because it timepieces what Tillich would agree with about the harmony of nature and super nature. The incarnation is a symbol of God's immanence and transcendence thus his harmony with nature. God in human flesh is a good symbol of the way Tillich saw God working in and with nature not against it. That is the epitome of the supernatural becuase the whole idea that is God though harmony with (formeral--human) nature raising the human nature to the higher. The resurrection which follows is the perfect symbol of human nature being raised to the higher level.

Please read my essay on the SN

.....

(1)  Ultimate Concern, Tillich in Dialogue by D.M. Brown.
(2)  Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009 (paperback) originally unpublished  1856.
for Fairweather's article on Scheeben:  Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” in New Theology no.1.  New York: Macmillian, Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman ed. 1964. 235-256.
My essay on that article
(3) Fairweather, quoting Scheeben, op cit. 30
(4) Paul Tillich, History of Christian Thought, 330.
(5) ibid
(6) ibid, 331
(7) ibid
(8) ibid, 332
(9) ibid 
(10) Brown  op cit.

The M Scale and Universal Nature of Mystical Experience

Ralph Hood Jr. The University 
of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Empirical Supernature

The M scale is very important in my book The Trace of God by Joseph Hinman

please click here, go to my book trailer and watch it so it will move higher up the ladder on You tube, so it will  be seen by more people.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tGmDnyI7Aw

            Why should we assume that such experiences are experiences of the divine? The first reason is because the content of the experience is largely that of the divine. Even when the experience is interpreted by the receiver not be about God the receiver has been known to act in way consistently with belief in God, and the experience described is the same experience as those described by those who say ‘this was God.’ Ergo it’s just a matter of interpretation. The vast majority of those who have these experiences do believe they are about God.[1] Secondly, there is a voluminous and ancient tradition of writing about experiences by people from all over the world, and the brunt of this tradition is that it’s an experience of the divine. Literary and philosophical works such as Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill,[2] The works of W.T. Stace[3] and many other such writings which catalogue the writings of these experiences, and many more works of the experiences of individual mystics by the mystics themselves. Thirdly, grounded in empirical evidence, the universal nature of such experiences implies the experience of a source external to the human mind encountered by all who have such experiences. When I say “external” I mean it originates externally but is experienced internally. This includes human brain structure and brain chemistry as a conduit not that it circumvents natural processes.

            The works of W.T. Stace are very influential. He shows that, as Ralph Hood Jr. put it, “within and eventually outside of the great faith traditions mysticism has flourished.”[4]  Stace offers five characteristics that demonstrate the commonalities to mystical experience; these are characteristics that are found universally in all cultures and in all forms of mystical experience:

The contemporary interest in the empirical research of mysticism can be traced to Stace’s (Stace, 1960) demarcation of the phenomenological characteristics of mystical experiences (Hood, 1975). In Stace’s conceptualization, mystical experiences had five characteristics (Hood, 1985, p.176):

               

1.      The mystical experience is noetic. The person having the experience perceives it as a valid source of knowledge and not just a subjective experience.

2.      The mystical experience is ineffable, it cannot simply be described in words.

3.      The mystical experience is holy. While this is the religious aspect of the experience it is not necessarily expressed in any particular theological terms.

4.      The mystical experience is profound yet enjoyable and characterized by positive affect.

5.      The mystical experience is paradoxical. It defies logic. Further analysis of reported mystical experiences suggests that the one essential feature of mysticism is an experience of unity (Hood, 1985). The experience of unity involves a process of ego loss and is generally expressed in one of three ways (Hood, 1 976a). The ego is absorbed into that which transcends it, or an inward process by which the ego gains pure awareness of self, or a combination of the two.[5]

            In speaking of “mystical experience” we are not talking about visions or voices. We are not talking about miracles or God speaking to people. We are talking about “the sense of the numinous,” a sense of presence, a sense of undifferentiated unity of all things. The claim is often made that this is an unmediated experience of reality. The veil is taken back on the thing behind the façade and reality is experienced directly. The notion of an unmediated experience is debatable and not essential to an understanding of the experience. A couple of examples might be helpful. It’s helpful to understand that mystical experiences come in two forms, introvertive and extrovertive. Intorovertive experiences are without time and space; they are not keyed to any external landmark or visual que. They seem to be beyond word, thought, or image. Extrovertive experiences are often keyed to a land mark and seem like projecting a sense onto the image of nature. For example the sense that God is pervading the physical space in nature around which one views a scene in nature. Or a sense that all the natural landscape around forms some sort of whole that’s meaningful and indicative as an understanding of all reality.

Common Core Vs. Perennial Philosophy

            Hood takes these kinds of statements as phenomenological and descriptive of a personal experience. The true nature of that experience as unmediated is not important. The issue is that its universality, since it should be culturally constructed is indicative of more than just a trick of brain chemistry or cultural constructs. Ralph Hood Jr. argues for what is called “the common core hypothesis.” This is not a perennial philosophy one often finds discussed as part of mystical experience. The distinction is hat perennial almost construct a separate religion out of mystical experience and puts it over against faith traditions. The common core hypothesis merely recognizes that there is a common core experience that is universal to mystical experience, and thus it can be argued that it’s an experience of some reality external to just human brain structure. Yet it doesn’t try to collapse faith traditions into a particular theological formulation. Moreover, the common core hypothesis just takes the common core as a phenomenological reality not a theological or ontological demand about reality. Yet mystical experience “promotes a special type of human experience that is at once unitive and nondiscursive, at once self fulfilling and self-effacing.”[6] Introvertive mystical has been identified as “pure consciousness.” This kind of experience lacks content and can’t be tied to a cultural construct or personal influence.[7] While it is the case that these kinds of experiences are interpreted in various ways, and it is the case that various theological explanations tailored to a given tradition are advanced for these, as many as there are mystics to have the, the real diversity comes not from the experience but from the explanations attached to the experiences.[8] Much of the discussion about common core is tied to the texts of a given literature. There various bodies of mystical literature, the important once for our purposes is the empirical. This is a measurement based empirical scientific literature such as the work of Hood.[9]

            Many names loom large in that body of literature; Greeley, Maslow, Wuthnow, Nobel, Lukoff and Lu, none more prolific or significant than Hood. Hood entered the field in the early 70s when he was a young man. Since that time he has done a huge a mount of research and is best known for developing what is called ‘the Mysticism scale,” or “M scale.” This is a 32 item questionnaire that is scored in a particular way and is calculated to test the veracity of Stace’s theories. In other words, if actual modern mystics around the world experience the things Stace thought they do, in the way Stace thought they experienced them (see the five point list above) they would answer certain questions in a certain way.[10] Hood’s work in the M scale is becoming the standard operating procedure for study of mystical and religious experiences. It hasn’t yet been understood by everyone so we find that people evoking religious experience by manipulating stimulation of the brain don’t use the M scale for research and thus can’t prove they are evoking real mystical experiences.[11]  Dale Caird said that “research into mystical experience has been greatly facilitated”[12] by Hood’s M scale. Caird did one of the studies that validated the M scale. Burris (1999) has shown that the M scale is the most commonly used measurement for the study of mysticism.[13]

            The M scale enables us to determine the validity of a mystical experience among contemporary people. In other words, did someone have a “real mystical experience” or are they just carried by the idea of having one?[14] There are two major versions of the M scale, what is called “two factor” solution and a three factor solution. The two factors are items assessing an experience of unity (questions such as “have you had an experience of unity?”) and items refereeing to religious and knowledge claims. In other words questions such as “did you experience God’s presence?” Or did you experience God’s love?” In each section there are two positively worded and two negatively worded items.[15] The problem with the two factor analysis is that it tried to be neutral with Langue, according to Hood himself. It spoke of “experience of ultimate reality” but with no indication that ultimate reality means reality of God. As Hood puts it, “no langue is neutral.”[16] One group might want ultimate reality defined as “Christ” while others who are not in a Christian tradition might eschew such a move. In response to this problem Hood and Williamson, around 2000, developed what they termed “the three factor solution.” They made two additional versions of the scale one made reference where appropriate to “God” or “Christ.” They had a “God” version and a “Chrsit” version and both were given to Christian relevant samples. The scales were “factor analyzed” that just means they weighed each difference as a factor such as it’s mention of God or mention of Christ. In this factor analysis, where the scale referred to “God,” “Christ” or simply “reality” the “factor structures were identical.” This means the respondents saw “God,” “Christ” and “ultimate reality” as coterminous, or as the same things. That means Christians who have mystical experience understand God, Christ, and Reality as reffering to the same things.[17]

            For all three versions matched Stace’s phenomenologically derived theory. “For all three intervertive, extrovertive and interpirative factors emerged.”[18] That means respondents were answering in ways indicative of having both types of mystical experience and deriving interpretive experiences from it, they understood their experiences in light of theological understanding. The only exception was that the introvertive factors contained the emergence of ineffability because there was no content to analyze. Of course where the scale has been validated the same technique was used and tailored to the tradition of the respondent. Buddhists got a version appreciate to Buddhists and Muslims got one appropriate to Islam, and so on. The same kinds of factors emerged. This demonstrates that mystical experiences are the same minus the details of the tradition, such as specific references to names. In other words Buddhists recognize Buddha mind as ultimate reality, while Vedantists recognize Brahmin as ultimate reality, Christian recognize Jesus as Ultimate reality, Muslims recognize Allah as ultimate reality, but all say they experience ultimate reality. This is a good indication that the same basic reality stands behind this experience, or to say it another way they are all experiences of the same reality.

            Hood wrote a Text book with Bernard Spilka[19]

Hood and Spilka point three major assumptions of the common core theory that flow out of Stace’s work:

(1) Mystical experience is universal and identical in phenomenological terms.

(2) Core Categories are not always essential in every experince, there are borderline cases.

(3) Interovertive and extrovertive are distinct forms, the former is an experience of unity devoid of content, the latter is unity in diversity with content.

The M scale reflects these observations and in so doing validate Stace’s findings. Hood and Spilka (et al) then go on to argue that empirical research supports a common core/perinnialist conceptualization of mysticism and it’s interpretation.

The three factor solution, stated above, allows a greater range of interpretation of experience, either religious or not religious. This greater range supports Stace’s finding that a single experience may be interpreted in different ways.[20] The three factor solution thus fit Stace’s common core theory. One of the persistent problems of the M scale is the neutrality of language, especially with respect to religious language. For example the scale asks about union with “ultimate reality” not “union with God.” Thus there’s a problem in understanding that ultimate reality really means God, or unify two different descriptions one about God and one about reality.[21] There is really no such thing as “neutral” language. In the attempt to be neutral non neutral people will be offended. On the one had the common core idea will be seen as “new age” on the other identification with a particular tradition will be off putting for secularists and people of other traditions. Measurement scales must sort out the distinctions. Individuals demand interpretation of experiences, so the issue will be forced despite the best attempts to avoid it. In dealing with William James and his interpreters it seems clear that some form of transformation will be reflected in the discussion of experiences. In other words the experiences have to be filtered through cultural constructs and human assumptions of religious and other kinds of thought traditions in order to communicate them to people. Nevertheless experiences may share the same functionality in description. Christians may want the experiences they have that would otherwise be term “ultimate reality” to be identified with Christ, while Muslims identify with Allah and atheist with “void.” The expressed is important as the “social construction of experience” but differently expressed experiences can have similar structures. Hood and Williamson designed the three factor analysis to avoid these problems of language.[22] This is a passage from my own work, The Trace of God[23]:

In a series of empirical measurement based studies employing the Mysticism scale introvertive mysticism emerges both as a distinct factor in exploratory analytic studies[24] and also as a confirming factor analysis in cultures as diverse as the United States and Iran; not only in exploratory factor analytic studies (Hood & Williamson, 2000) but also in confirmatory factor analyses in such diverse cultures as the United States and Iran (Hood, Ghornbani, Watson, Ghramaleki, Bing, Davison, Morris, & Williamson. (2001).[25] In other words, the form of mysticism that is usually said to be beyond description and beyond images, as opposed to that found in connection with images of the natural world, is seen through reflection of data derived form the M scale and as supporting factors in other relations. Scholars supporting the unity thesis (the mystical sense of undifferentiated unity—everything is “one”) have conducted interviews with mystics in other traditions about the nature of their introvertive mystical experiences. These discussions reveal that differences in expression that might be taken as linguistics culturally constructed are essentially indicative of the same experiences. The mystics recognize their experiences even in the expression of other traditions and other cultures. These parishioners represent different forms of Zen and Yoga.[26] Scholars conducting literature searches independently of other studies, who sought common experience between different traditions, have found commonalities. Brainaid, found commonality between cultures as diverse as Advanita-Vendanta Hinduism, and Madhmika Buddhism, and Nicene Christianity; Brainaid’s work supports conclusions by Loy with respect to the types of Hinduism and Buddhism.[27]

            The upshot of this work by Hood is two fold: on the one had it means there is a pragmatic way to control for the understanding of what is a mystical experience and what is not. Using Stace as a guide we find that modern experiences around the world are having Stace-like experiences. Thus Stace’s view makes a good indication of what is and what is not a mystical experience. That means we can study the effects of having it. Now other scales have been attempted and none of them had the kind of verification that the M scale does, but taken together the whole body of work for the last fifty years or so (since Abraham Maslow) shows that religious experience of the “mystical” sort is very good for us. People who have such experiences tend to find positive, dramatic, transformation in terms of outlook, mental health and even physical health.

Over the years numerous claims have been made about the nature of spiritual/mystical and Maslow's “peak experiences”, and about their consequences. Wuthnow (1978) set out to explore findings regarding peak experiences from a systematic random sample of 1000 persons and found that peak experiences are common to a wide cross-section of people, and that one in two has experienced contact with the holy or sacred, more than eight in ten have been moved deeply by the beauty of nature and four in ten have experienced being in harmony with the universe. Of these, more than half in each have had peak experiences which have had deep and lasting effects on their lives. Peakers are more likely also, to say they value working for social change, helping to solve social problems, and helping people in need. Wuthnow stressed the therapeutic value of these experiences and also the need to study the social significance of these experiences in bringing about a world in which problems such as social disintegration, prejudice and poverty can be eradicated. Savage et al., (1995) provided clinical evidence to suggest that peakers produce greater feelings of self-confidence and a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Mogar's (1965) research also tended to confirm these findings.[28]

The body of work I refer to here consists of about 200 studies (one could say 300 but let’s be conservative). A huge part of that (about 50) is taken up with the prolific work of Ralph Hood. Not all of these studies use the M scale but it has become standard since the 90s. The body of work here discussed stretches back to the 1960s and the studies of Abraham Maslow. The study of mental health aspects has grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of decades. Since the deployment of the three part solution of the M scale the studies have been more empirical and better controlled. The effects and their transformative qualities could be understood as rational warrant for belief in God, I have so argued in my former work The Trace of God.[29] Skeptical critics have tended to speak as though I don’t realize that I haven’t proven God exists. I never argued that I could prove God exists. The concept of proving God exists is passé and outmoded. That’s not even a valid issue anymore and as we realize there is no way to prove anything exists—and Tillich argued the language of “existence” is not applicable to necessary being. God is not contingent so speaking non contingent things as ‘existing’ is a misnomer. The issue is not proving God exists but providing prima face justification for assuming the reality of God. So we may rationally equate the co-determinate of the experiences as divine. In The Trace of God I made make several arguments for this I’ll only give two of them a brief summary:

            First is the argument of the co-determinate. This is the reason I called that work “trace.” It’s the Derridian concept of a trace, track or foot print that is testimony to the absence of something that must have been present. In other words, we see a footprint in the snow, something must have made it. We know something was there. It may be a Bigfoot or it may be a Bigfoot hoaxer but something made the track. When this “something” is constantly associated with the sign it forms a co-determinate. Thus the presence of the sign informs us of the presence of the co-determinate; like finger prints match the finger of the person who made the print. The association between the divine and mystical experience is solid; religious experience forms the basic reason for the existence of religion in the first place, and is bound up with the nature of the experience itself. The sense of the numinous is a deep all pervasive since of love. What is doing the loving? The basic assumption made by those who have the experience is overwhelmingly that it is God. Secondly, there is the argument from epistemic judgment. I used a Thomas Reid style epistemology[30] to advance criteria that I think is habitually applied by humans in sorting out which experiences to trust and which to discord: Regular, consistent, inter-subjective, and promotes navigation in the world. When our experiences match these criteria we assume they are valid and accurate as a representation of reality. I then show that the studies indicates that mystical experience fits this criteria so we should trust it.

            The other aspect of importance to this work is the universality argument. The universality argument could be taken as a warrant for belief, but I use it here to show that there’s a reason to equate these experiences with Supernature. When Hood took out the name specific to a religious tradition (from the M scale) and just ask general questions about experience, the experiences described were the same. This indicates that what is being experienced is the same for all the people having religious experiences. This actually the same as saying Stace’s theory was validated. If it wasn’t validated the would not describe the same experiences. The indication is that they there an objective thing they all experience. The reason is because religion is a cultural construct. If they were just describing a constructed set of expectations resulting form culture, the experiences would be conditions by culture not transcending it. So that mans Iranian Muslims experience that they think of as “Allah” and Baptists in Cleveland experience what they think of as “Jesus” in the same way. This is should not be the case if they are merely experiencing culturally conditioned constructs. The implication is that they may be experiencing an objective reality that both understand through culturally constructed filters. This is not the only argument that

            The answer atheist most often give to this argument is that the experiences have a commonality because they are all produced by human brain structure. In other words the names from the various religions are the constructs but the experiences that unite the subjects and that transcend the individual cultural filters are the same because they are products of a shared structure that of the human brain. On the surface this may seem like a good argument but it’s really not. The problem with this argument is even though we all have human brain structure we don’t all have the same kinds of experiences. We can’t assume that universal experiences come from brain structure alone. First, not everyone has mystical experience. Even though the incidence rates are high they are not 100%. We have all human brain structure but all have these experiences. Secondly, even among those who do there are varying degrees of the experience. William James saw it as a continuum and Robert Wuthnow, one of the early researchers who did a modern scientific study on the phenomenon also theorized [31]that there is a continuum upon which degree of experience varies. If the brain structure argument was true then we should expect to always have the same experience; we should have the same culture. We have differing experiences and even our perceptions of the same phenomena vary. Yet the experience of mystical phenomena is not identical since it is filtered through cultural constructs and translated into the doctrinal understanding of traditions that the experiencers identify as their own.

            The brain Structure argument is based upon the same premises reductionists take to the topic of consciousness and brain/mind. They are assuming that any subjective experience is ultimately the result of brain chemistry. There really no reason to assume this other than the fact that brain chemistry plays a role in our perceptions. There’s no basis, as we have seen in earlier chapters, for the assumption that any mental phenomena must originate in brain chemistry alone. I have had this argument with various skeptics on blogs and message boards many times. At this point skeptics have tended to evoke brain chemistry and the assumptions of Dennett and reductionism; since religious experience is linked to brain chemistry it must be the result of brain chemistry, thus there’s no reason to assume it’s inductive of any sort of supernatural. In those arguments a sense usually emerges that any involvement with the natural cancels the supernatural. I suggest that this is the ersatz version of supernature. The alien realm, juxtaposed to the natural realm and brought in as a counter to naturalism, this is the false concept I spoke about above. The original concept of supernature is that of the ground and end of the natural. Thus it would involved with nature. The ground end of nature is the ontology of supernature and pragmatic working out of the phenomenon would be the power of God to lift human nature to a higher level, as discussed above. How can human nature be elevated without supernature being involved with the realm of nature? Thus, the fact that supernature works through evolutionary processes and physiological realities such as brain chemistry is hardly surprising. See my chapter on Brain chemistry in The Trace of God.[32]

            If supernature manifests itself in the natural realm through brain chemistry then the conclusion that this is somehow indicative of the divine could go either way. We can’t rule out the divine or supernatural just because it involves the natural realm. What then is the real distinguishing feature that tells us this is inductive of something other than nature? That’s where I introduce the notion of “tie breakers.” There are aspects of the situation that indicate the effects of having the experience could not be produced by nature by itself:

(1)  The transformative effects

The experience is good for us. It changes the experiencer across the board. These effects are well documented by that huge body of empirical research. They include self actualization, therapeutic effects that actually enhance healing form mental problems, less depression better mental outlook and so on. The placebo argument is neutralized because Placebos require expectation and a large portion of mystical experience is not expected. It’s not something people usually set out to have.

(2) Noetic aspects to the experiences

These are not informational but there is a sense in which the mystic feels that he has learned soemthinga bout the universe as a result of the experience. This usually is on the order of “God loves me” or “all is one.”

(3) The experience contains the sense of the numinous or sense of the holy.

This is closely related to the Noetic sense and they clearly overlap but there is a distinction. The snse of the Holy could be more general and gives the sense that some unique and special aspect of reality exists.

(4) why positive?

These experiences are never negative. The only negativity associated with mystical experience is the sense of the mysterium tremendum, the highly serious nature of the Holy. That is not a last negative effect. If this is nothing more than brian chemistry and it’s just some sort of misfire where the brain just forgets to connect the sense of self to the big that says “I am not the world.” Then why is it so positive, transformative? It’s not often such a positive experience results form a biological accident.

(5) bad evolutionary theory

Mystical experience has not been tied to gene frequency. So the argument about adaptation has to rest upon the intermediaries that it provides, such as surviving long winters so one can have gene frequency. Yet all of those kinds of experiences flaunt the explanatory gap of consciousness. Why should we develop a mystically based sense of the world to get through had long winter when we could more easily develop a brain circuiting that ignores boredom? Then this adaptation that is only there because it enabled us to get through beings snowed in has such an amazing array of other effect such as life transformation and better mental health, and leads to the development of such complex fantasisms of errors as religious belief and organized religion. It’s so inefficient. Surely survival of the fittest should take the course of least resistance?

(6) Navigation in life

It does enable navigation in life, these experiences and their effects enable us to get through and to set our sights on higher idealistic concepts and ways of life.

---

[1] find, Trace of God

[22] Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A study on the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual consciousness. New York: Dutton, 1911.

[3] W.T. Stace, Teachings of the Mystics: Selections from the Greatest Mystics and Mystical Writers of the World. New American Library 1960. A good General overview of Stace’s understanding of mysticism is  Mystical Experience Registry: Mysticism Defined by W.T. Stace. found onine at URL: http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/mystical_experiences/learn/experts_define/stace.shtml

[4] Ralph Hood Jr. “The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism.” In Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion.  Patrick Mcnamara ed. West Port CT: Prager Publications, 2006, 119-235.

Google books on line version: URL http://books.google.com.cu/books?id=0bzj3RtT3zIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true  visited 8/20/2012

[5] Robert J. Voyle, “The Impact of Mystical Experiences Upon Christian Maturity.” originally published in pdf format: http://www.voyle.com/impact.pdf.
google html version here: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:avred7zleAEJ  Voyle is quoting Hood in 1985, Hood in return is speaking Stace.
:www.voyle.com/impact.pdf+Hood+scale+and+religious+experience&hl=en&gl
=us&ct=clnk&cd=2&ie=UTF-8

[6] Matilal (1992)  in Hood, ibid, 127.

[7] Hood, ibid.

[8] ibid.

[9] ibid.

[10] find JL Hinman, the Trace of God, Studies chapter, also Hood ibid, 128.

[11] Find, John Hick

[12] Dale Caird, “The structure of Hood's Mysticism Scale: A factor analytic study.”journal for the Scientific study of religion 1988, 27 (1) 122-126

[13] Burris (1999) quoted in Hood, ibid, 128

[14] Hood, ibid, 128

[15] ibid.

[16] ibid, 129

[17] ibid

[18] ibid

[19] Bernard Spilka, Ralph Hood Jr., Bruce Hunsberger, Richard Gorwuch. The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. New York, London: the Guildford Press, 2003.

[20] Ibid, 323

[21] ibid

[22] ibid, Hood in McNamara.

[23] Find  trace of God J.L. Hinman, fn 47-50 are original fn in that source

[24] Ralph Hood Jr., W.P. Williamson. “An empirical test of the unity thesis: The structure of mystical descriptors in various faith samples.” Journal of Christianity and Psychology, 19, (2000) 222-244.

[25] R.W. Hood, Jr., N.Ghorbani, P.J. Waston, et al “Dimensions of the Mysticism Scale: Confirming the Three Factor Structure in the United States and Iran.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40 (2001) 691-705.

[26] R.K.C. Forman, Mysticism, Mind, Consciousness. Albany: State University of New York Press, (1999) 20-30.

[27] F.S. Brainard, Reality and Mystical Experience, Unvisited Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. (2000). See also D.Loy, Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. Amherst, New York: Humanities Press.

[28] Krishna K. Mohan, “Spirituality and Wellbeing: an Overview.” An Article based upon a Presentation made during the Second International Conference on Integral Psychology, held at Pondicherry India 4-7 January 2001, published in hard copy, Cornelissen, Matthijs (Ed.) (2001) Consciousness and Its Transformation. Pondicherry: SAICE.On line copy URL: http://www.ipi.org.in/texts/ip2/ip2-4.5-.php  website of the India Psychology Institute. Site visited 9/3/12.

[29] Find,ibid Trace

[30] Reid argued that we go with the experiences that work. We navigate through the world and those experience that enable us to get by we accept and those that don’t we avoid. No soldier in battle conducts a debate about Cartesian doubt while an enemy charges with a bayonet. The solider decides post haste to get out of the way and worry about the philosophical ramifications latter.

[31] find it’s in chapter 4 trace of god.

[32] Trace of God, find


 

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