--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I don't think this is what Sam is challenging. He is one of the few > skeptics who validates transcendent experiences. The experience is > real, and he has had them too. What he is challenging is what people > conclude after the experience involving what the experience "means". > Experiencing the feeling of being one with the universe doesn't give > anyone the epistemological authority to claim that they "know" that > Jesus died for their sins, or that the Vedic recitations contain the > blueprint of creation.
How can you possibly know that? Isn't it an epistemological statement in itself that you can't possibly back up? Who are you to put limits on what a person can know on the basis of inner experience? Harris dismisses Sullivan's assertion that he always believed in God and insists Sullivan's parents told him God existed when he was very young. But Harris can't possibly know that. I've read many accounts, from ordinary people as well as spiritual luminaries, that their earliest memories were infused with a sense of God's presence. In some of these cases their parents weren't even religious. They can't *prove* their memories are accurate, of course, but neither can anyone else prove they aren't. And obviously even if their memories *were* valid, it wouldn't prove God's existence. But Harris is very wrong to claim all such memories are really culturally inspired. He is advocating that we start our inquiry > into the study of human consciousness with humility rather then as a > "knower of complete knowledge." I don't think anybody starts such an inquiry with that idea. Sullivan in particular is quite open in saying that there is a great deal that he not only does not know but *cannot* know. (And it strikes me that what is being called "humility" in this context is almost certainly the same as what MMY calls "innocence." I'll bet he considered and rejected the term "humility" because *it* has more cultural connotations than "innocence." You can get into heavy moodmaking with "humility," but it's a lot harder with "innocence.") That we know the differences between > what we "know" and what we have decided to believe from stuff we > have heard or read, or even imposed onto our abstract experiences > as their meaning. But this is just what Harris claims to "know" on behalf of others!
