Possibly speaking to Awesomly Glorious' condition

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Number 1 Son's Dutch uncle Jaap has been reading Richard Rohr, particularly his work on the Enneagram. Recently he sent his sister mt wife this extract from Rohr. It seems to me to speak to the issue of my divergence from Awesomely Glorious on conviction, evidence, and argument.

When (says Rohr) engaging with one who has NOT gone through the rings of fire, any attempt to "prove" the existence of God - or even the reasonableness of your own faith - will invariably meet with failure. It can be reasonable only to those who have endured the temporary unknowing darkness, the "childhood", and have returned on different level of awareness... [Paul's Damascus experience] surely symbolizes the unsayability of faith, and it makes you feel very powerless or foolish aroud those who have not made the same journey. It also explains Jesus' frequent, bothersome, and surprising line to his disciples and beneficiaries: "Don't tell anyone." No doubt, this was hard for them to hear. But often to try to talk about the unsayable to the "crowds" is to trivialize it, or even to losze its depth, like describing great lovemaking to an outsider.

On which last my wife Jaap's sister comments, Why would anyone? and Isn't Rohr a priest? Is this appropriate? Me, I just want to point out that ineffable is a perfectly good word easy to say and spell.

Oh, please, this is a ridiculous game. The difference between you and I is that I am more willing to honor what I have stated.

As for "temporary unknowing darkness", stop pretending that you know what I've been through and what I haven't. Even further this does not have relevance.

You were to argue against a position, that's it. I don't think you were confused. You actually volunteered for this task. This is just a stupid game from a person in love with their own self-importance. (Other people don't publicly announce that they are leaving the forum, for instance)

The conversion experience is difficult to explain and hard to defend.

Awe - if I may abbreviate you to save my fingertips -

Believe it or nay, THIS thread is nothing to do with THAT. Totally separate issue.

Which is why I put it separate.

Gee whiz - usually other people, like Compere Rohr, speak more clearly than I do, so I figured emulating the guys what post links without comment was legit.

Whatever.

The point:

Rohr puts rather nicely the big problem of discussion of certain matters. WITH the experience, little more than a word is needed to communicate. WITHOUT the experience, it is impossible to go beyond, "Seems stupid, but I will have to take your word for it.", and most people stop at "There hain't no sich an animal."

It is of course a special case of A picture is worth a thousand words", with a dash of "Guess you just had to be there."

So - what is fringe?

Like Pest-in-a-Teapot posts sans comment a clip presenting George W Bush climbing Mt Everest in a tutu [not Desmond] with the caption "Go figure" and this passes for legit?

Anyway, you are wrong to discard without perusal quotes from Alphonse Spadaro because Dr. Spadaro wrote a book on Robot Spirituality. Even if the Enneagram were bunk [which despite very suspect origins I assure you it ain't, Rohr on other subjects might be incredibly sound. An awful lot of great scholars have loony fringes, well I know it. Sherlock Holmes is not lessened by Doyle's spiritualism.

Anyhow - I reserve the right to discuss the other point, but this note is on technique - I do believe verbum sap. If what Rohr says is not valid or interesting, no addition of mine will make it so. If it is, what does it need from me?

Okay - regrettably I will have to zigzag here - too much - I will get back on points in your latest. For now - expeientialism:

I will remind you that ultimately ALL we have for access to [potential] truth is our onboard awareness of incoming sensation. Which we have to learn to process. Which we have to decide whether to trust because there is a lot that is possible error or delusion. We have to decide is there something outside corresponding to the assumed data flow? Can our senses be trusted? Are there really other entities out there? Can THEY be trusted?

Most of us assume others exist. Most of us assume that on the whole consistent reports from our senses and those of the assumed others can be trusted.

But there are always grey areas. Pun intended, a reference to my seriously colorblind uncle - I am only slightly Daltonish. My wife says two cups are different colors. My eyes say they are the same. She says this tie clashes with my shirt. My senses see no problem. On the cups, I will generally trust her because the majority of the people I assume exist say they are different, and they have built a machine that purports to measure color and agrees with their report.

On the tie / shirt clash, it is not so easy. I know [not THAT colorblind] that colors like sounds can "clash", I understand the phenomenon. But is her allegation of a tie / shirt clash subject to confirmation from the majority of non-colorblind humans, or is it a matter of taste / culture / socialization?

All science ultimately comes from our [fallible] reasoning applied to our shaky sensory input. Yes, we gradually design machines that "see" and "hear" and can even resolve images independently of our brains. But - we design them first to replicate our senses, then to expand their range. AND it is with our senses that we read their output, our reasoning that fits their datas into our world-image, and our decision that even lets us accept the machines really exist.

Given a long ago minitribe - all males are colorblind. Do the men believe the women's report of color or put it down as an old wive's tale? It is well-known that there are a few who can perceive tastes, sounds, whatever other cannot. Until we have spectrometers and sophisticated chemical analysis, DO we believe the color vision of the women, the bitterness alleged by the supertaster?

Historically, often not. Not until technology and theory expand to provide support. Every so often somebody announces he has devised a way to "see" the invisible, detect the unsuspected. A lot of these are bunk, more are debunked [not all that is debunked is bunk, of course] - but a few things creep into mainstream science.

So let us suppose: 20% of all humans report a very particular sensation associated with a certain place [I could tell you where - it is a strange one]. The 80% perceive nothing. Available tests and sensors dectect nothing. Of the 20%, 75% are sincere, sober, reputable, and apparently otherwise sane.

Do we

A. Call out anecdotal experiential mass delusion, there can be nothing where Science sees nothing.

OR

B. Mutter, Interesting and look into designing experiements that might eventually detect the what it may be

That said, I hardly need go on, but for clarity:

Through the ages a significant percentage of mankind [and Sand can go play in his box because it cannot in all cases be put down to conditioning or insanity and certainly NOT wishful thinking, nor is it tied to any culture or genetic heritage, and it has to ahave started SOMEWHERE] has reported sensations, experiences, insights which are very real to them and come from no source detectable by others or and devices yet designed [sorry, Scientologists]. One guy coming down from the mountaintop talking about revelations and commandments can, arguably should be disregarded. But many independent reports [as of a pillar of fire?] might well, I would argue, interest the scientific community and stimulate an is there and if so what campaign. At least as relevant as the Big Bang [though it ism, I can confirm, a lot scarier].

So here is t

AND we zag.

"Dismissiveness is rarely a black and white matter. The real heart of the issue of dismissiveness is actually that evaluating sources is costly, so it is easier to use a quick and dirty heuristic. Do great scholars have loony fringes? Yes. Can one evaluate a scholar as a source of information using the loony fringeness as part of one's metrics for a quick and dirty evaluation? Yes."

All of the scholars I have ever known or heard tell on have been and in many cases still are loony. Up to and including the world's greatest and most truly humble [yes I am] authority on Pau-Danqoid languages, who talks a great game on ProtoPau-Danq but is a Christian, finds the Enneagranm useful while decrying its origins, accepts a lot of the claims of homeopathy while very aware that it has never received the right kind of scientific attention so its theoretical underpinning is VERY shaky [and yet it DOES move], and thinks he knows where the Bsque language come from which is as close to saying "I AM A LOONY" as a linguist needs to come.

You have every right to use this and the consensus metric [the more people dismiss it, the less reasonable it is likely to be] in evaluating evidence. The jury should note which story comes from the neatly dressed pillar of the community and which is told by the rambling bum.

But of course,such rough and ready quick and dirty criteria do not guarantee truth. Often a closer look is appropriate. I consider Hawking to be not without looninesses, and given his personality and mine he will never convince me as readily as Feynman. But when he is talking on black holes I will not dismss him out of hand - I will look at the data and interpretation, not the source.

As for Rohr, even if you were justified in accepting as evidence the neglect of the Enneagram, when he is talking specifically on the nature, working, source of faith, an area of his prime expertise and a discipline which is by no means as fringe as the Enneagram, you would be as wrong to ignore his arguments because of the Enneagram as I would have been disregarding Professor Woody's expertise in Pau-Danq because of his crank psychosocial theories about ethnicity and humor.