What is a spiritual experience?

[Jersey Girl]

Jersey Girl, that was a beautiful post.

Thanks I'm glad you liked it! The way I experience the natural world is transcendent. If you look through the replies here you'll see that's a common theme with many of the posters here. I try to express that in what I write about (I write things that I never show anyone) and put children in those situations so that they have an opportunity to experience that sense of connectedness to something beyond themselves.

[I Have Questions]

If you want to chalk it all up to “phenomena can be explained in terms of the interactions of physical matter and energy”, that’s fine. But don’t then go and say that a religious person hasn’t experienced the divine or had a witness that something is true or that God is in their life.

You don’t have any business doing that. As Tim Walz would say, “Mind your own damn business!!”

Regards,
MG

You’ve never experienced the divine or a communication from God. What you’ve done is make a choice to believe that there is a God. Right upfront. After that you’ve simply assigned all your emotional highs and positive mental impacts to the “God” you’d already decided existed. You don’t allow for any other source of good sensations. You simply want everything to point to your predetermined conclusion as being correct.

You don’t know how to differentiate between feelings you generate yourself and something supernatural. The Church cannot articulate how to differentiate between self generated feelings and something supernatural. You cannot articulate how to differentiate between self generated feelings and something supernatural. The best the Church puts forward is the circular reasoning that if a feeling agrees with the current leaderships view, then yeah that’s from God. Which is, when you think about it, classic affinity fraud modus operandi.

I’ve seen nobody put forward a way to reasonably and reliably conclude that humans receive sensational messages from anywhere other than from within.

[Gadianton]

I’ve seen nobody put forward a way to reasonably and reliably conclude that humans receive sensational messages from anywhere other than from within.

This is a very interesting point that leads into my beliefs that spiritual experiences in Mormonism are as a general rule, lies and fabrications; fish stories after the fact. Testimonies fabricated due to social pressures to fabricate testimonies. Most people will say to a claimed Mormon testimony "that's just subjective feelings," but I say, "no, you didn't even have that feeling, you are making the whole thing up."

Mormons have two key problems with their testimony framework. The first is the emphasis on its epistemological role. If I'm having dreams because I smoke Peyote in a tent with my fellow elders, and you say, "obviously that dream came from within you, you smoked peyote," I'm going to shrug and say, "yeah, wasn't that the point?" Somehow nature and the supernatural are intertwined, the supernatural is assumed, whereas Mormons are looking for outputs in vast disproportion to physical inputs as the proof that "the divine is real".

Mormons do have their low-key Peyote equivalent. In general "feeling the spirit" is similar enough. By being quiet and reverend, and singing a hymn, the spirit has been invited and missionaries tell investigators daily that this is proof that the message is true. But they don't buy it. They don't believe that. In theory, there shouldn't be a single doubt for any missionary because after a few hundred first discussions, the spirit has borne witness to them hundreds of times. It only takes one of those to try and commit an investigator to baptism -- yes you can commit them on a first discussion.

Mormon's believe in the ground-shaking, soul rapturing lighting bolt testimony -- that's the prize. That full-body zap that can't be explained by the inputs is what every Mormon knows a testimony is, and many if not most Mormons doubt that they have it, but per candle-of-the-lord logic and other kinds of reasoning and pressures, they feel compelled to pronounce the truth as if that's what they've had.

Mormons don't work themselves up like Pentecostals, they don't do things that would achieve the required physical transformation. Perhaps by accident this happens on occasion if a member has a ton of stress going on and they stay up all night pleading with the Lord, and then their body breaks down and finally, the testimony has arrived. I think this does happen but not very often, and many would still doubt it if it had because they would take their exhaustion and these factors into account.

The perfect example would be when Bruce R. McConkie lied and said he knew for sure through experiences too sacred to recount. Trust me, he's making up those experiences. Bruce didn't accidentally drink a bunch of lsd-spiked punch, have a vision, and then really think it came from something outside of his own physiology.

[MG 2.0]

If you want to chalk it all up to “phenomena can be explained in terms of the interactions of physical matter and energy”, that’s fine. But don’t then go and say that a religious person hasn’t experienced the divine or had a witness that something is true or that God is in their life.

You don’t have any business doing that. As Tim Walz would say, “Mind your own damn business!!”

Regards,
MG

You’ve never experienced the divine or a communication from God.

I think I have.

Regards,
MG

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I don’t think that substance dualism or property dualism dovetail exactly with LDS teachings although property dualism seems to come close

I agree they don't and so you might just as well call it materialism.

Is your urge to use this word because of your belief in a spirit and a body, rather than just a body? If so, are you okay with the implication that you haven't always existed? I know some Mormons are adamant that they have existed for eternity in the past. As a dualist (coopting the term to describe the situation of a spirit + body) you are denying them this possibility.

Perhaps it’s property dualism? I don’t really understand the distinction from materialism, but somehow certain philosophers can so there you go.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

No, that's a particular atheist philosopher's terminology to describe his unique rejection of materialism (while a naturalist and atheist still). There is a ton of hair-splitting that would go way beyond my knowledge on the various positions. I'm just talking about the basics. It has historically been important for Mormons to identify as "materialists" like scientists, and join scientists in rejecting empty religious ideas like immaterial beings, even an immaterial God. Mormons see themselves as going on to becoming Gods as sort of a joint religious/science endeavor. The spirit world is a physical realm it's just made of stuff our science doesn't know about yet.

If MG wants to castigate atheists as having empty lives, I don't take offense and I am happy for him to do so, but he will need to find a way to properly distinguish between atheism and Mormonism. Drawing the line at materialism just doesn't work since Mormons are avowedly materialist. I'm sure he's just regurgitating stuff he's read from Dan, who is atrocious on this subject, but this is the problem with MG as a message board participant, he doesn't really aim for comprehension. He just wants to be right without any effort.

[I Have Questions]

You’ve never experienced the divine or a communication from God.

I think I have.

Regards,
MG

Then you’d be able to explain how you can reasonably and reliably tell the difference between a divine communication and something you’ve subconsciously generated yourself.

But you can’t.

[MG 2.0]

I think I have.

Regards,
MG

Then you’d be able to explain how you can reasonably and reliably tell the difference between a divine communication and something you’ve subconsciously generated yourself.

But you can’t.

I think I can. At least to myself and a few others that I trust. But as I may have said earlier, I don’t think I have adequate words to describe the difference to someone ‘on the street’. I know that spiritual experiences, at least for me, are something qualitatively different and unique from the many elevated experiences I’ve had along with, I’m sure, many others.

Natural surroundings. Birth of a child. Reading great literature. Not to say that it isn’t possible that the Spirit of God may interact with our spirit in any one of these situations/experiences, but the few unique experiences I’ve had fall outside of the range of what I would generally consider ‘elevation’ experiences that I believe are mainly integrated/targeted within our bodily/sensory experiences.

Again, I would say to you in regards to whether there are or aren’t differences between the earthly and the divine…mind your own damn business and don’t preach to others the doctrine of nihilism as though it were true.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

Then you’d be able to explain how you can reasonably and reliably tell the difference between a divine communication and something you’ve subconsciously generated yourself.

But you can’t.

I think I can. At least to myself and a few others that I trust. But as I may have said earlier, I don’t think I have adequate words to describe the difference to someone ‘on the street’.

How would you articulate the difference to an investigator of the Church? You know, so they could determine that what they felt was actually from the divine rather than self generated?

[MG 2.0]

I think I can. At least to myself and a few others that I trust. But as I may have said earlier, I don’t think I have adequate words to describe the difference to someone ‘on the street’.

How would you articulate the difference to an investigator of the Church? You know, so they could determine that what they felt was actually from the divine rather than self generated?

I would leave it up to them to determine what they feel/experience. I’ve never been one to tell someone else what they’re experiencing is one thing vs. another.

We are each on our own path and accountable to God, I believe, for our own choices based upon what we believe to be our own best judgement.

That includes you.

Regards,
MG