Sorry not to get back with you on this sooner. Life interfered.
No need to apologize; reply as you can or wish, (presumably, life intereferes for everyone).
I think I do make a conscious choice to hold what you regard as an irrational belief. If people are self-aware enough, they can choose to how they want to behave or react in a given situation. If they aren't self-aware, then they will react in a knee jerk fashion.
'Oddly', if some are making the conscious decision to intentionally hold a superstitious belief for which there is no objective substantiating evidence, then they are choosing to be irrational, (since such a choice doesn't fall under the definition parameters of a "rational" choice). That's fine, as far as making a decision for/against rational logic and people are relatively-free to make such a choice. Pardon the implicit conclusion based upon the previous premise; which would be that a conscious choice to be irrational is unlikely to be a contributing aspect of self-awareness.
Yes, some part of it experiential. A number of things have happened in my life that are convincing to me. Trust me, I looked hard for rational explanations. Sometimes I even found them. But enough of these things occurred that went beyond mere coincidence or serendipity.
Actually, you are contending that such vague, (and subjective),
expereiences are being
interpreted as going "beyond mere coincidence or serendipity", (note that under the burden of proof obligation for making that initial claim, I could await supporting evidence or, move on after countering that such an assertion remains unsubstantiated and basing one unsubstantiation upon another is a logical fallacy).
I think at some point, either on this thread or another debate thread, another poster actually listed some experiences that she had that were sufficient proof for her at least of the existence or God or a supreme being. For her, those were truth, at least spiritual truth. Neither you or I had those experiences so neither of us can really address the validity or truth of them for another individual.
Those would be considered as unsubstantiated hearsay, would they not? The validity or veracity of 'testimony' can be subjected to examination by reason/logic in that, if any logical internal inconsistancies, (or lies), mutually-exclusive assertions or, obscuring vagueness are revealed by that 'testimony', the witnesses' veracity falls into question/doubt.
I am curious as to where intuition fits into your framework if it does at all. In other words, do you ever follow a "hunch" or a "gut feeling" that may not necessarily have a rational basis in deciding your actions?
No, since such "hunches", "gut feelings" or "intuitions" turn out to be
cues not noticed consciously but, processed subconsciously, (and since the conscious mind isn't nominally
aware of the underlying logical processing, it interprets the 'sudden' conclusion as an intuitive gut feeling hunch). There is significant hard evidence in support of such a contention and I'd be glad to provide it, (unless others look it up before then), in exchange for your supporting non-ambiguous evidence in regards to 'spiritual experientialism'.
If you can remember any of the old threads, I'd like to browse them sometime even if they are locked to further comment.
Ack; well, using the search feature and typing in such parameters as "religious belief burden of proof blind faith", etc. yields interesting results, (I wouldn't want to pick
only the threads/post where religious adherents' contentions are refuted by non-religious logic, nor would it be equitable to present only those posts where religious adherents are evangelizing unopposed). That said, maybe I can find an 'even' cross-section.
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