Relationship in the gutter.

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Persuader said:
What I meant is that I don’t want to signal to her that she has me whipped, or that she has control of the relationship. Just because I have agreed to various things, doesn’t mean she has me completely wrapped around her finger.
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As I said before, this kind of thinking relatively early on in a relationship and while you are thinking of proposing is very unhealthy and speaks to an unhelpful and unresolved power dynamic in the realtionship.
Persuader said:
I understand your explanation of the god helmet, but I can’t really see how it is addressing the issue.
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The issue was that you were citing the helmt as an explanation of your girlfriend’s spiritual experiences. My point is that although it may (remember it hasn’t been replicated)demonstrate an association of those areas with spiritual experience, it has not been shown to be the *cause *of spiritual experience. An analogy would be that stimulating particular areas of the visual cortex may produce a hallucination of a shiny red apple; this does not mean that when a person sees an actual shiny red apple the cause of that sight is the cortex firing. In broad physical terms the actual cause is the presence of the apple.

In addition, if you are so relieved that your girlfriend is feeling better why would you want to discuss the god helment with her when you clearly believe that it would challenge her renewed faith? This is the faith remember that you would have given almost anything to return to her. As I said before, I think that you and this relationship need professional help.
 
Hey, guys. I’m travelling to my gfs house today. Obviously I’m quite nervous, but I am hopeful they will be accepting. With my newfound expertise in the catholic faith, this should be a cake-walk, right? 😛 Wish me luck!

Flyingfish: I agree with what you said about how humans form beliefs. The issue for me is developing beliefs with the intention of deceiving myself. I don’t think that is right. Being aware of the fact that we humans overestimate our rationality, gives you a good reason for being skeptical of beliefs, and certainly doesn’t give you any incentive to willfully deceive yourself. To say that because we fail so much at being rational, that we should just give up trying, is just a copout IMO. 🤷

Fran65 and others regarding the God helmet: The reason I mentioned the God helmet, was not to say that spiritual experience in general have the same causes as the ones produced by the helmet. Although it might be a possibility that the god helmet is simulating something that resembles the cause of (naturally occurring) spiritual experience, that is not why I mentioned it. I mentioned it because the god helmet shows that the content and form of spiritual experience is all over the place. Even if the stimulation of the helmet is similar, the resulting experience will have significant, individual differences. That shows that the content of the experience is not validated by the experience. That was the only point I was making. I do not wish to discuss this with my gf per se, but she has already asked me what I think. She is a curious girl, and that has shown itself to be a bit of a problem for her religious views.

I agree that our relationship is not completely resolved. I suspect she is overly confident in her own ability to make me change my views to suit hers. In this respect, I think she needs to be taken down a notch or two. But it is understandable that she would overestimate her influence, since I have given a lot of ground, and am willing to give a little more. However, I do not want her to get her hopes up in terms of convincing me of the truth of her religion, because I think that is highly unlikely. I am sure we will speak about this after the holidays. We will also have to decide on kids and other things if we are going to get engaged in a couple of months.
 
Ever think why you used the user name Persuader? Was it because you are proud of Persuading your gf to question her faith in her life with you; perhaps showing your personal power in your relationship, or was it because you want to be persuaded yourself? Either way you are getting/taking a lot of powerful advice from those who have walked their own journey and trying to help you on yours. BTW it might seem that some of this is an interesting game, but those participating are serious about it, some of this may be rubbing off on you …
 
Individuals will inevitably interpret subjective experience according to their own referents. This is inevitable particularly when an experience occurs without a context which may provide cues to help interpretation. It is of no surprise whatsoever to me that a Christian will impose Christian concepts on an induced neurological experience and that a Hindu will impose Hindu concepts. Remember that the participants did not see or hear anything, they felt a ‘presence’ and interpreted that presence according to their own beliefs. There is nothing in that finding to challenge anyone’s faith.

Enjoy your visit.
 
Persuader said:
I agree that our relationship is not completely resolved. I suspect she is overly confident in her own ability to make me change my views to suit hers. In this respect, I think she needs to be taken down a notch or two. But it is understandable that she would overestimate her influence, since I have given a lot of ground, and am willing to give a little more. However, I do not want her to get her hopes up in terms of convincing me of the truth of her religion, because I think that is highly unlikely. I am sure we will speak about this after the holidays. We will also have to decide on kids and other things if we are going to get engaged in a couple of months.
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Stumbled upon this while browsing some topics for the class my wife and I teach.

I feel for her, and you, and hope God helps you both. I must say, though, anyone who says they must take their loved one “down a notch or two” related to something that makes them who they are is asking for trouble. That and your talk of giving ground, you’re far too controlling. For whatever reason, you have a serious lack of understanding what a relationship means, as well as compatibility. You’re in dangerous territory and you have it all wrong. For her sake, and yours, please listen to those who have given sound advice. You’ve both suffered enough.
 
Persuader said:
Flyingfish: I agree with what you said about how humans form beliefs. The issue for me is developing beliefs with the intention of deceiving myself. I don’t think that is right. Being aware of the fact that we humans overestimate our rationality, gives you a good reason for being skeptical of beliefs, and certainly doesn’t give you any incentive to willfully deceive yourself. To say that because we fail so much at being rational, that we should just give up trying, is just a copout IMO. 🤷
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I understand your point of view, the only thing is I don’t think it’s quite entirely intellectual self deception.

Intellectually you’ll still be an agnostic, prayer, meditation and the like won’t change that. But emotionally you’ll have a sensation that maybe there is something other than the material world after all. Very intelligent philosophers (like Leibniz) have argued for a god philosophically, if you consider their arguments you’ll see that it’s not intellectually dishonest to believe that god has some non 0 probability of existing.

If you are the kind of person who is afraid of dying, having this perspective can lessen that.
 
Merry Christmas! I hope you had a good celebration!

Celebrating my first Christmas with actual Christians has been a novel experience. Quite different from what I am used to. With my family, the focus was on eating, drinking, having fun, and most importantly: the presents. We don’t go to church or sing Christmas songs (we did sing a bit when I was a kid). Lately we’ve been playing SingStar when the adults got tipsy/drunk, but apart from that, no singing. A lot of fun, but very different from a catholic celebration.

Even though I prepared myself, I couldn’t help but to feel bored by the monotony of the mass and church play. It just went on and on… And when we came home, there was even more singing and praying. I think the singing and praying is weird. The language is very strange and old fashioned. It sounds contrived (maybe the wrong word). My gf said I would get used to it. Maybe that’s true.

I thought dinner was pretty nice, although the alcohol consumption was limited. That was probably a good thing due to all the kids that were there. Some of my gfs older sisters have kids, and that sucked the tension right out of the air – it was my life line. The kids were even more bored than me! 😛 I was surprised at the lack of presents for the kids, though. Don’t get me wrong, they did get some nice gifts, but not what I would expect. They are all pretty well off too… I am pleased with my decision of not bringing a lot of gifts to be opened with them. I imagine that would’ve been very awkward. Btw, is it some catholic tradition to cut back on presents?

The visit was ok all in all. It was tense and uncomfortable at times, but that was expected. The religious practice freaked me out a bit, but I think I can handle it. This has not dissuaded me from continuing the relationship! It isn’t like we need to be with her family all the time. At this point, we need to figure out what to do with kids. I was thinking about suggesting that she can take them to mass and do that stuff, as long as they are taught critical thinking skills as well. I see this as a reasonable compromise. What do you think? If Catholicism is true, then critical thinking shouldn’t be a problem anyway, now should it?

Flyingfish: The probability for there being a creator is not zero. That is not correct epistemologically, and I don’t think that. The thing is, I have no reason to believe in a God, and much less a Christian God. I could try meditation, but I don’t think I would make a connection to the creator of the universe from that experience.

Fran65: I disagree. Even when the stimulation inducing the experience is similar, they will interpret it like a confirmation of their belief. That shows how disconnected the content of the experience is from its cause. So why would you think the cause would be a God in any case? I don’t think natural, spiritual experience support the dogma. If it did, explanations would be more convincing. Instead, you are left wondering how they could connect the experience to the dogmas without giant leaps in reasoning. I think this is probably true with the God Helmet, and with birds singing heavenly songs (a religious experience I have heard of. Supposedly supporting Christianity).
 
Persuader said:
So why would you think the cause would be a God in any case?
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There are two competing explanations. Some believe that as humans created by God we have an unconscious knowledge of God and what we are missing. We therefore seek Him and this seeking is determined by our culture. The other explanation is that as a species we have evolved a need to explain our experiences and that the explanations differ because of cultural differences.

As for subjective experience not constituting evidence for the existence of the spiritual world; I assume then that you are a materialist who sees no need for anything other than the material world. In this case you are arguing that any subjective experience of the spiritual is a misinterpretation of neurological (i.e. physical) activity. If this is the case why do you assume that you love your girlfriend when in those terms all that has happened is that contact with her has led to a series of hormonal and neurological changes - all of which will inevitably change again over time? This contact could be reproduced with another receptive female who does not have the ‘impediment’ of faith and her family 😉 That would be the logical thing to do in a purely material world in which subjective experience is worthless as evidence of ‘how things are’ 🙂
 
Persuader said:
The visit was ok all in all. It was tense and uncomfortable at times, but that was expected. The religious practice freaked me out a bit, but I think I can handle it. This has not dissuaded me from continuing the relationship! It isn’t like we need to be with her family all the time. At this point, we need to figure out what to do with kids. I was thinking about suggesting that she can take them to mass and do that stuff, as long as they are taught critical thinking skills as well. I see this as a reasonable compromise. What do you think? If Catholicism is true, then critical thinking shouldn’t be a problem anyway, now should it?
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It really depends on her. The Church only requires that the Catholic parent promise to do their best to raise the children Catholic. Nothing at all would be required from you as the non Catholic parent, and she could marry you knowing that you would be teaching them the atheist point of view.

That said, I am talking about what the Church requires, your girlfriend’s personal requirements would be different.

But really, why do you need to resolve this issue now? If everything works out and you do marry her, aren’t children many years in the future for you?

If anything, your girlfriend has shown herself to be very unstable in terms of what she believes. Even if she says something with certainty now, she may well do a complete 180 later. She has already done that twice.
Flyingfish: The probability for there being a creator is not zero. That is not correct epistemologically, and I don’t think that. The thing is, I have no reason to believe in a God, and much less a Christian God. I could try meditation, but I don’t think I would make a connection to the creator of the universe from that experience.
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What I meant to say is that there is room for intellectually thinking that the supernatural is possible. We can’t know whether or not it’s possible. But this doesn’t matter since you have no interest in believing.
 
Fran65: Well, to your two explanations, I could say this:

If spiritual experience is about seeking God, and our culture decides, how is it that people without religion (or for example Buddhists) don’t see the spiritual experience as being with the creator of the universe? It seems to me like one should be able to generalize further, and say something like what your are saying in your second explanation. Anyway, I cannot really see how the second explanation gives you any reason to think the cause of the experience is the creator of the universe. In this explanation, the claims of being in contact with God would be the part of the cultural content.

I don’t think this implies me being a materialist. I am in fact a materialist, but that word is misleading. Your claims about what that entails seems very strange to me. 🤷 I am not arguing that spiritual experience is a misinterpretation of neurological activity. What does that even mean? It is a fact that love has a physical representation in different brain states. That feelings have a neurological basis, and can be talked about in scientific language, doesn’t take anything away from the experience.

Of course there are other women I am compatible with, but I cannot be sure to find a fit that is as good as my current one. And why would I when we are both happy? We can both handle having some different views.

I don’t understand your reasoning about subjective experience. If I found it meaningless (I don’t), how would that have any bearing on breaking up with my gf because of science? Any person is living their own subjective experience, so why would I automatically believe in science (for instance) if I didn’t believe my subjective experience? And why would acknowledging the fact that the brain is the seat of our consciousness give me any reason to demean my feelings? If a biologist knew a lot of scientific data about the flowers he studied, would that take away from the beauty of the flower? Do you want to ask a question about qualia?

flyingfish: I don’t want to teach atheism to my children. I think critical thinking is important, though. It isn’t necessary to resolve this issue now, but if we are getting engaged in little over a month, I think it would be smart to decide before that. I don’t want to marry without deciding on how to raise the kids. I would like to wait with children, but since she is off the Implanon, I can’t be sure about not getting pregnant with her. She is going to try this NFP-business, so we will see.

The things is, she doesn’t see as much reason to wait as I do. She has done some research, and it seems like money won’t be that much of a problem. Financially, you can get a lot of support from the state when you are students. This has happened because the government is worried about people having kids too late. Also, she knows I have some money (stocks and savings), and we can both get support from family. Things wouldn’t be that tight, so my initial argument against kids turned out to be rather weak. My main and real reason for delaying is that I want the freedom, and I am worried about becoming a stereotype. I don’t know if I want the nine till five job with the generic house and a Volkswagen. It scares me a bit to think about. She has agreed to wait, but I don’t think she would mind getting pregnant.
 
Every intelligent parent teaches their child critical thinking skills. That was an uncalled for jab.
 
that_name said:
Every intelligent parent teaches their child critical thinking skills. That was an uncalled for jab.
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I don’t think it was as intentional as it might appear. Many non-religious think that the religious ONLY follow the rules, not think through things and understand. It’s a common misconception. And to see some others here portray things, one might get that impression from the Catholic Church. What most do not understand is that there has been a couple of thousand years of proper critical thinking that backs up the Church’s claims.

To put another way, there are several references on what Catholic’s “must believe.” And yes. We must believe them to truly embrace and live the faith. We are allowed to take them on faith alone (“because the Church says so”) or, we can be like folks like me and have to go looking for the justification. None of the Church’s teachings I’ve dug deeper into are without justification. There are many generations of critical thinkers out there all coming to the conclusion the Church is correct and why.
 
I’m a newb here and chiming in late, I know, but I can’t help but throw in my 2 cents. First of all, I didn’t have time to read the entire thread… Is your gf feeling better now? How terrible that she felt so hopeless after she lost her faith. I would feel the same way, though, if I were convinced there were no God.

Anyhoo, my suggestion is that you look more deeply into the “Is there a God?” questions yourself. Don’t assume you or your girlfriend, just because you are intelligent people, “know all the arguments.” They are complex and there are many fronts of investigation. It depends on how deep you are willing to go, really. I HIGHLY suggest you check out ReasonableFaith.org. Watch some videos, listen to some debates together (or alone). William Lane Craig is not a Catholic, but is friendly to Catholics and argues for theism and Christianity itself. He has more than one doctorate and is the best Christian apologist out there. If you are interested in debates, you might find it interesting. He destroys every atheist opponent I’ve ever heard him debate. 👍

How wonderful it would be if you could be become convinced that there IS a God, and persuade your gf that there is good reason to believe what she did all along. If you want to give her back her reason for living and a reason to have joy, it can’t hurt anything.
 
Haha. Critical thinking skills.

That’s like saying a chemist can’t come in and accept 2,000 years of knowlege other chemists gained through their own work and say because he accepts that and the other principles of physics and bases his own life work on that as a starting point for his own experiments and inventions that… he lacks “critical thinking skills.”
 
TaraJoBean said:
I’m a newb here and chiming in late, I know, but I can’t help but throw in my 2 cents. First of all, I didn’t have time to read the entire thread… Is your gf feeling better now? How terrible that she felt so hopeless after she lost her faith. I would feel the same way, though, if I were convinced there were no God.
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The girlfriend was feeling better and has since returned to the faith.
 
oops. I can’t figure out how to edit my previous post but I just realized it wasn’t Persuader who wrote that. lol Bear with me, I’m new at this. 😛 Thanks for the info, though.
 
Persuader said:
Hello, catholics. I hope this is the correct place for this kind of post.

I am not a catholic. In fact, I’m an atheist/agnostic, and personally I’m fine with that, and this has been managable in my relationship with my girlfriend. We have had our discussions and fights over these things, but it has been good.

Lately this have changed. I think I’ve gradually won her over to my way of thinking, but unfortunatly, she has not adopted my positive way of thinking about a life without God. It seems she has lost faith, and not only in God, but in life as well.

In the beginning, I thought it would be good that she lost her faith, but the consequenses have been terrible. I have tried to advance the positives of a life without God, but she isn’t buying it, and I am almost ready to give up on trying to make her adopt a more positive world view.

If I cannot persuade her on this point, I feel that I have destroyed her, and that our relationship will be over. Part of the reason I fell in love with her was because she was full of life. Now it seems that is completely gone, like a needle popping a balloon.

I have been thinking about trying to make her believe again, as this seem to be the only way to fix her. Maybe this is the last chance for our relationship, and maybe the last chance to make her what she used to be. But I have no idea on how to do this. Any advice on this, or some other way to fix things, would be greatly appreciated.
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Your an Idiot. Don’t you know anything about the mind of a women? I cant say anything more about that because ill be ostracized for being sexist. You fool! you took away her heroism project… there’s a reason why more women then men believe in God…

Essentially you have to come up with a convincing lie either to her or yourself.
 
Hosh said:
Your an Idiot. Don’t you know anything about the mind of a women? I cant say anything more about that because ill be ostracized for being sexist. You fool! you took away her heroism project… there’s a reason why more women then men believe in God…

Essentially you have to come up with a convincing lie either to her or yourself.
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I’d like to hear more, heroism project? Why do more women than men believe in God? I promise I won’t think you’re sexist 😃
 
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