But adults often have feelings they can trust for the most part. We speak of intuition and gut feelings.
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Who is to say it isnât the sense you make of the passage and the significance you make of it which doesnât trigger the biochemical response and not the other way around. This reminds me of the nonsense people make of research showing brain activity before a subject recognizes theyâve reached a decision. Supposedly that shows we have no free will and therefore determinism. Pointing to a fact and understanding its significance isnât the same thing.
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The thing about feelings is theyâre not about whatâs what or how to get things done. But feelings are about what you care about, what matters to you. With thinking, youâre in charge. You decide what to believe and why. But feeling and intuition tell you facts about yourself and those arenât up to you to decide. You get to decide what youâll do about it but not how you feel. Anyone who lives their life paying attention to just the one or just the other isnât firing on all their pistons.
That is not entirely true. Some people do decide how they feel about many things. I will not say that everything all people feel is something they decide or that the portion of feeling they decide is the same for everyone. A lot of this is a matter habit and people have different habits â not only habits of behavior but habits of thought and feeling.
The peace of God that passeth all understanding is precisely what it says. A feeling of calm that belies the surroundings and current mental wranglings. It is not the only presence of God but it is probably the most powerful and noticeable.
I guess if you have a close relationship with God it becomes almost second nature so His presence is not something you look for because it is always there. You do not notice your breathing unless it is disturbed in some way. I do not Notice God unless He wants me to. And that is another topic altogether.
Richard
Doing background reading on determinism here
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
Unfamiliar with the brain study you mentioned.
Working today, so Iâll check back later.
Benjamin Libet is the name of the scientist often mentioned.
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I found this helpful in confirming my disbelief in the experiment.
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Iâd gone to my copy of McGilchristâs Master and His Emissary to retrieve Libetâs name and would have shared a passage from there if your author hadnât beat me to it. So glad I decided to finish the article before responding ⌠for once.
Libetâs experiment seems to assume that the act of volition consists of clear-cut decisions, made by a conscious, rational mind. But McGilchrist points out that decisions are often made in a more fuzzy, ambiguous way. They can be made on a partly intuitive, impulsive level, without clear conscious awareness. But this doesnât necessarily mean that you havenât made the decision.
As McGilchrist puts it, Libetâs apparent findings are only problematic âif one imagines that, for me to decide something, I have to have willed it with the conscious part of my mind. Perhaps my unconscious is every bit as much âme.ââ Why shouldnât your will be associated with deeper, less conscious areas of your mind (which are still you)? You might sense this if, while trying Libetâs experiment, you find your wrist just seeming to move of its own accord. You feel that you have somehow made the decision, even if not wholly consciously.
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We can also share our feelings. If youâre married, your spouse probably shares her feelings(!) At a business meeting one time my boss asked somebody, âWhat does your gut tell you?â So feelings are part of the big picture.
Waiting for Youngest Kid at tumbling, finishing my notes on determinism and wishing I had a real key board. Skipping the brain article, because i think it doesnât probably address what I think is relevant to our differences in understanding of spiritual experience. Gonna try to put some thoughts together in my notebook and type 'em up at home.
This is a relief. It sounds very much like my experiences when I am stymied making some decisions. Too much input from my own brain and undesired factors outside.
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Hereâs a story of somebody who felt the presence of God:
Canadian singer/songwriter Burton Cummings visited my church as a tourist a long time ago and felt a strong spiritual presence. It even inspired him to write this song: Iâm Scared (It starts about 1 minute into the clip.)
Years later, he came back for another visit, this time bringing a camera man. We welcome tourists who drop in to take pictures, but we donât like unauthorized recordings because it can disturb people who come to pray. But Mr. Cummings was lucky that day, and he was able able to film inside the church and reminisce about his spiritual experience. (btw, he calls it a cathedral but itâs just a church.)
@Trippy_Elixir Kevin.
Here you go again. When are you going to ask questions based on your own religious experience instead repeating questions that others have raised?
Get serious, Man.
For those who have experienced auditory hallucinations, itâs not just that you hear other voices in your head, itâs that these voices take on a mind of their own and will often engage you in conversation with a personality of their own. Like another mind in the unconscious mind, but is it aware or conscious of itself, now thatâs a really great question.
Another question I once considered, and this was in the middle of a drawn out discussion with a hard determinist. Letâs say there are two instances of you in two parallel universes. These two worlds are exactly identical to each other, and you are asked to choose a simple series of numbers. Would you choose the same set of numbers? A funny thing occurs when you consider this thought experiment, as you picture these two copies of yourself, it is no longer you who are making the choice.
Is it God, or dopamine? How do we know?
I find we often assume too much and it is our assumptions that blind us from simple answers. My measurement of a question is if the answer seems difficult or not jumping out at us, we are still looking at it wrong. Our description of the problem is the problem. Letâs first simplify the key question. This is mineâŚ
Is it God, or dopamine? How do we know?
Well, thatâs two questions, so for the sake of simplicity letâs look at the first one first.
Is it God, or dopamine?
What came to my mind is realizing God is in all things, including dopamine. So the question is still faulty as there is no dopamine without God. Seems the question throws the baby out with the bathwater. The assumption that if it is dopamine, then it is not of God is errant.
So, looking further I see dopamine is a natural compound our bodies make that is associated with emotions.
Like the ones listed as fruits of His Spirit being love, happiness, kindness, mercy, and more.
Maybe the proper question is
Is it from God, or fruit of His Spirit?
Well, that seems to be coming from the same source.
Is it from God, or God?
I know itâs better if you reveal the answer you need as we do believe ourselves more than others so I will leave you to ponder further. Remember to test our assumptions. It is difficult to answer a wrong question.
Currently, I sense we might have problems hearing His Spirit without it. Do we not physically respond to love?
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I just think feeling isnât the kind of thing one chooses. There is always feeling present. It isnât always the most pertinent factor in play but what it is is a phenomenological fact, whether the person is tuned in or indifferent to it. IMO of course.
I think there is no âdisabilityâ as long as, at the outset, you arenât shutting yourself off from a genuine possibility. Assuming from the git-go that God is NOT responsible for a given experience or phenomenon achieves this disability. Sure.
But âpersistent exploration of alternative explanationsâ does NOT shut you off from the God explanationâor any other⌠so it does not count as a âdisabilityâ to understanding anything in my book. Whether God exists or not⌠I think persistent exploration of alternatives is good.
Not that he is the final word on any questions but I put a lot is stock in McGilchristâs theories. He thinks schizophrenia is much more like an excess of rationality than a deficit. If people try to make every decision consciously they can lose touch with the deeper, unconscious layers of their self and come to regard it as other or as unruly foreign voices. Does that seem likely to you?
Those voices can be not so easy to discern. Jung comes to mind, but Iâm not a fan.
The unconscious mind, or maybe the gut, it is from here the golden hair falls. It is also from some other hidden place, the laughter can be heard. But itâs been nearly 30 years since I heard those voices.
The real mind bender came later when I became persuaded that Jesus was a myth, and then thought I could still know God through a philosophical argument.