Of course, here I am presupposing that there IS something to be
sensed, ...
How can this be a presupposition? It as much truth of human nature as
mothers loving their children, but being prepared, in the appropriate
culture, to attempt infanticide under certain conditions, as was done
with Moses.
Numinous experiences do occur. I don't know anyone who denies that.
It is the same with apparitions and stigmata. They occur, too.
The issue is not whether whether some people have such experiences,
but how they are interpreted. Within a single culture, there is no
question. Everyone interprets the experience the same. But people in
different cultures interpret apparitions, stigmata, and numinous
experiences differently.
Consider numinous experiences.
Someone in a strongly Catholic culture most likely will interpret a
spiritual experience as supporting Catholicism. Someone from a mixed
pagan-Catholic culture, such as Joan D'Arc, interprets
experiences to fit. Someone who is atheistic, such as certain old
time Buddhists and Confucians, interpret a spiritual experience as
confirming their beliefs.
If your experience comes fundamentally from one culture, then it makes
sense to you to figure that your experience confirms your
early-learned beliefs. For you, that judgement is rational.
On the other hand, if you have experience several cultures, and take
the other cultures seriously (rather than as `foreign' or `crazy' or
`misguided'), then your spiritual experience tells you that humans
have a characteristic that enables them to come to embrace certain
beliefs, but that the particular nature of the beliefs is culturally
determined.
Note that the beliefs of major religions such as Confucianism,
Hinduism, or Christianity, include preferences for actions that are
generally considered altruistic and actions that have good long term
consequences in spite of creating short term difficulties.
When you think in terms of nature rather than nurture, then you note
that our paleolithic ancestors survived in bands. And the members of
the bands had to cooperate, to help each other, and to act for long
term as well as short term survival. Pretty obviously, such bands
would survive better if they were made up of people some of whom would
have numinous experiences that confirmed the local belief system (if
the belief system was helpful).
It also goes without saying that numinous experiences can and do
confirm statements of liturgy that are unfalsifiable in other ways.
As the late anthropologist, Roy Rappaport, pointed out, numinous
experiences transform "the dubious, the arbitrary, and the
conventional into the correct, the necessary, and the natural." This
is important because members of a paleolithic band must cooperate,
which is to say, members must behave often enough in what everyone
thinks of as a `correct, necessary, and natural' manner, else the band
will die.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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