My Grand Apologetics Project Part 7

See these previous posts:

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2-cont.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-3-a.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-3b.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-3c-f.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-4.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-5.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-6.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-grand-apologetics-program-part-6c.html

Part 7- The Mystical

So far I have tried to deal with the human experience in the widest possible way. I have relied on insights, intuitions, and experiences that I think almost everyone can relate to. But here I will deal with experiences that are not as universal. They are, in my view, less trustworthy, because they are by their very nature vague and influenced by the particular culture and lifeworld of the one who has them. Yet, I do not think they are without value. For the person upon whom they are visited, they can matter very much.

Mystical experiences rarely begin the religious quest for people. They are a later stage of a much longer journey, they are not the first steps. Additionally, they rarely can be used to draw people into the religious life. I cannot argue that God to a person, exists by pointing to experiences that person has never had. Religious apologetics in my view works like this: I invite you to open yourself up to a particular way of thinking, I share insights. These insights cause you to reflect upon certain experiences, and bring up certain types of feelings. Then I stop and say "now there, stop, feel that? What does that feeling MEAN?" But with mystical experiences, I can't exactly get you there by talking you into feeling something. It takes more work to 'get there'.

At this point in our journey, however, one has weighed options, and has continued down the path past the basic experiences and to a particular vision of what those experiences might mean. Models have been built. In science, a model's effectiveness is measured by how well it helps one navigate life, and not just 'life in general' but the particular field of study that one is engaged in. These are what William Alston calls 'doxastic practices', which means simply 'processes that help one learn'. All doxastic practices are plagued by some kind of circularity. Science is as subject to this as any other 'practice'. So we accept a theory in part because it opens up new questions, and because it helps us move further along the path of that particular scientific endeavor. We accept a scientific theory because it helps us "do science" more effectively. A theory of gravitation that makes it easier to open up new fields in stellar research is considered more reliable than a theory that doesn't open up these avenues. That is just part of what truth is, in science.

Once we have organized our experiences and created a picture of the world concomitant with both our religious and sensory experiences, we test that picture by giving ourselves over to it. In this way, science and religion diverse. In science you test a theory by doing your all to falsify it, to see if some piece of evidence 'breaks' it. In religion, a model is tested by structuring one's life around it, by taking a risk on it. This is unavoidable, as part of what brought us to this model-building was the experience of life as, at its best, being an adventure of risk. The model becomes a map. That doesn't mean that the model is incorrigible. People's religious beliefs change. My have many, many, many times. They change because other ways of life are tested out and found to be superior. In religion, I think, a model is never really 'dead' it is just 'less alive'. We find superior ways of life that accomplish the goal of religion in a better way.

But like science, the goal of a religious model, of a religion, is to open up new avenues of thought, and to expand one's understanding of the reality that is behind the model. Religion is how we reach out and touch God. When one gives one's self over to a religion in this way, one should receive the benefit of expanded and heightened religious experience. Things happen that increase one's confidence that the way of life one is living corresponds to the truth. This increase in experience must also help one navigate life in general. Science's trustworthiness is buoyed by technology, by an increased ability to navigate life in general. Religion, too, should have a positive outcome in life in general. It must lead to increased well-being (which is not the same as mere 'happiness') and moral worth.

"Mystical experience" as I use the term here, is a catch-all for any experience of a direct encounter with the reality that is taken to be behind the model one has given oneself over to, as the result of more general religious experiences. This encounter is experienced as direct, but reflection upon it shows it to be in some way 'filtered' through the way of life itself. The model is the medium of the encounter. A reflective person realizes that a mediated encounter is never exactly direct. A phone distorts the voice of the person being spoken to. And indeed, in the classic examination of mystical experience in the work of psychologist and philosopher William James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience" , one of the notes of mystical experience is supposed to be its 'transience'. It is something one cannot hold onto very long. But one also feels like something has been learned. One gains knowledge. James calls this the 'noetic' quality of religious experience.

Of course any seemingly direct encounter with the divine will look suspect to the person who lacks these kinds of experiences. One may be quick to attribute them to simple psychology. But it is different for the experiencer. Let's take a simple example: a religious dream. A person who has made a commitment to Christianity may have a dream in which Jesus Christ visits them and gives them some kind of mission. The dream may be particularly vivid, but no dream is retained with 100% clarity. There is a transience to the whole thing. But one may remember clearly the mission given by Jesus. This is a noetic quality. One could, I suppose, just ignore a moment like this. They could say 'well it is just a dream' and go on with their lives. But what if they cannot get it out of their heads? What if it sticks with them, and gnaws at them, until that is all they can think about? The sense that one should take a risk on the experience can itself be overwhelming. That a risk is what one SHOULD take, may be itself a certainty even. If a person then follows this call, and does as they are asked in the dream, it leads to great results in the world or in the soul of the person, then it seems to me that a person is justified in taking this as confirmation of the veridical nature of the dream.

Now no thinking person can have any confidence that Jesus 'literally' came down and 'literally' visited them. They may believe that, and that is fine, but it can't be a belief held with certainty. For one knows that the content of the dream is very likely influenced by the model one has taken on. But the truth of the message can be real even if the content of the dream does not have a one-to-one correlation with reality. One may be changed by a dream like this, forever, irrevocably. A change in one's outlook is not something one has complete control over. If this moment changes you, it changes you. I see no reason why one can't consider such a shift in attitude justified in the epistemic sense. You have learned something about God, and about yourself. That is the true power of the mystical experience: it enhances the form of life, the model, one has given oneself over to. And if that 'giving over' leads to a greater navigation of life in general, then increased trust in said model seems reasonable.

A great argument to this effect is the Dostoevsky's short story "The Dream of The Ridiculous Man". In it a non-believing secularist has an elaborate dream, where they encounter a world without original sin. Their own sin infects the world, to the point where they beg for their own death to end the madness. The man wakes up completely changed, having given himself over to a Christian vision of the world. He gladly calls himself ridiculous, realizing that a dream proves nothing. But the message is clear: let it happen to you.

I think this attitude is prudent when it comes to experience like this: be skeptical of the content of the experience, but always mindful of the message. There is something to be learned, but beware of what William James calls 'over-belief'. The epistemic value is not in the content of the experience ("I saw Jesus in my dream so Jesus really is God") but in the fact that one has had it ("my religious way of life has led me to incredible experiences that expand my understanding of myself, my world, my place in that world, and my God.") And we must always be mindful of the fact that what has changed us has not necessarily changed others. My encounter with God cannot be used to try to convince others that what I believe is true. I speak about it to inspire and because I feel the need to share. I can never bring someone to belief beyond the realm of SHARED experience.