First, I want to say that this thread is assuming that God exists, so if you want to argue the existence of God this is not the thread for you.

There are a variety of religious experiences that I have been questioning over the years, and the more I study Wittgenstein, the more I question what people claim to know. In particular, many Christians claim to have knowledge of the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and many of them seem to attribute this knowledge to some feeling or state of mind. My point is not to say that God does not work in their lives or any other life, it is simply to challenge their claim to knowledge based on some subjective experience.

For example, I have observed over the years that many people who read the Bible think that because a verse has some impact on them, for whatever reason, that God is speaking to them. Another example might happen in a church service where they experience joy, conviction, or some other euphoria, which they then attribute to the Holy Spirit. Again, I am not saying it is not a religious experience, I am simply saying that one does not know if the experience is a religious experience, namely, the work Holy Spirit or the work of God.

My reasons for challenging this kind of thinking is based on Wittgenstein's argument (if you want to call it that) that one cannot have a private language, because having a private language presupposes rules and making mistakes within the context of language-games. I am going to assume that you know Wittgenstein's claim that one cannot have a private language; and if you do not know this argument, you should read it first before challenging what I am saying.

Since most of the experiences I am talking about are private, I believe that one can dispute them using the same arguments Wittgenstein uses against having a private language. What these experiences amount to is this: Thinking one is having an experience of the Holy Spirit is the same as having the experience of the Holy Spirit. What objective criteria is there that would make your private claim to such an experience not true, since believing it is of God is tantamount to - 'it is of God.' How do you falsify your private interpretation of such an experience. What would count as evidence that your feeling of joy while reading the Bible is NOT of God? I know there are things that would falsify your actions, but what would falsify your feeling that God is speaking to you, or giving you a feeling of joy?

Another problem with believing these kinds of things is that they commit the fallacy of the self-sealing argument, which means that they seal themselves off from any counter-evidence by rejecting any claim that counters their conviction.

When we converse with imaginary people in our dreams we are also engaging in an unverifiable private language. However these are real experiences to the dreamers. I imagine the people who claim interactions with God also have vivid experiences which they can never prove to anyone.The lack of evidence doesn't negate the reality of the experiences for those who are having them. In fact, most of the conscious awareness we have are hidden behind the private walls of our own mental boundaries.

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...For example, I have observed over the years that many people who read the Bible think that because a verse has some impact on them, for whatever reason, that God is speaking to them.

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You know what the bible says "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.... For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?" This is to answer you that spiritism comes with faith within individuals which in Philosophical sense can be attributed to or compared to "Thought". Thought is an individual experience through own mind, If I may ask you how is that one object on a table can project alot of different perceptions from different people who are in the same room and write difference essays about the same object? You and me can read the same verse in the Koran or bible but since we have different minds and powers to percieve that is written infront of us we will interprete it differently unless we jointly agree on the actual revelation or meaning of God's word. Same applies how we feel about the same verse, I might feel (thru my personal experience and expectations from God) that this verse is indeed was meant for me but it might be an irrelevant text to you.

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Another example might happen in a church service where they experience joy, conviction, or some other euphoria, which they then attribute to the Holy Spirit. Again, I am not saying it is not a religious experience, I am simply saying that one does not know if the experience is a religious experience, namely, the work Holy Spirit or the work of God.

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For starters, what is the main reason one leaves his/her home to go to the Mosque or Church or sinagogue(sp)? I guess It is to go and experience that is of God. So while in God's house people expect that is of God! You get me? So no one would say this is also how I feel when am in a disco house! And since the spirit comes with belief one ought to believe that he or she is indeed experiencing the spirit from God. The bible says "We have not received the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Holy Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words" So it is a personal conviction that all these euphoria going on in God's house is from God and since you really believe in him, so is in his spirit! Actually, HE even said it himself HE visits mankind thru the Holy Spirit.


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Another problem with believing these kinds of things is that they commit the fallacy of the self-sealing argument, which means that they seal themselves off from any counter-evidence by rejecting any claim that counters their conviction.
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Self sealing? Yes! just as like self conviction and faith about God. It is subjective. I can tell you I love GOD, how do you prove it?

Suppose there is an experience that a community of people call The Spirit of God. Various people in the community report occasionally that they have experienced this. Since The Spirit of God is a private sensation there is no way for anyone to know what another person has experienced when they claim to have had it. They might discuss it and try to describe it to each other but they can™t plug into each others minds so they can never really know what another person means by The Spirit of God.

This raises two serious questions.

How do the people in the community learn to recognise or decide that they are having The Spirit of God experience?

Since this experience may be different for every single person reporting it, how is that the community can use the term œThe Spirit of God in a consistent and coherent way?

Wittgenstein in the philosophical investigations sets out to give an answer to these questions. To the first question he argues that anyone having a private sensation will have some sort of corresponding behaviour. So a person with a headache will put their hand on their head and make a certain exclamation. A person experiencing œThe Spirit of God would have other outward behaviour. They may appear to go into a trance or throw their arms in the air and start shouting. There are a huge range of things that people do in various different cultures to send out the public signal that they are having a religious experience. Children from a young age will see adults doing these things and they will be told that the person is experiencing The Spirit of God. The children will then learn to behave like that when they think they are having the same experience, they may even start to induce experiences within themselves to go along with the outward expression they have been taught by their community.

The second question he answers using the famous beetle in a box thought experiment and various other analogies. The Five Red Apples thought experiment is the beginning of these arguments. The upshot is that the meaning of a word is how it is used and not what it names. If the term œThe Spirit of God was used on the basis of what people actually experience then it couldn™t be used in a coherent way publicly. Wittgenstein would argue that if a word is being used a coherent way it must be used according to publicly agreed rules and not according to what it may or may not be naming. In the community every singly person could have a completely different experience, some may not be having any experience at all and might just be behaving like they are to join in. Therefore œThe Spirit of God could be naming countless different experiences or no experiences at all. Yet they all use the phrase The Spirit of God in their public life together. The phrase will be used in various rule based contexts which Wittgenstein calls language games.

Of course none of this says anything at all about the actual experiences themselves. Some people might be having an internally induced emotional high not much different from taking drugs. Having watched The God Channel I think this might be what a lot of people are experiencing. People learn to have certain experiences from the culture they live in. Wittgenstein argues that language is not just a way or reporting experiences but actually informs and shapes our experiences and ways of perceiving things. A person who lived in a society with no concept of God would never experience God or interpret an experience as being God.

This is where I find Wittgenstein™s views a little fuzzy. He seems to hold the view that there is no private inner world of experience separate from our physical environment or culture. Not that we don™t have private sensations but that we don™t have private sensations that aren™t related to our surroundings and human interactions. Yet Wittgenstein seemed to have some sort of deep religious conviction and wanted a connection with God.

The question was though, how could a person ever be sure that what they were experiencing was actually God and not just an experience that is part of their culture and various language games. The only answer would be that if there is such a thing as experiencing God, it would be so profound that there would be no mistaking it. It would have to be a completely transcultural experience. The trouble is the search for God is something you learn to do from your culture.

Private religious experiences can be very powerful and very dangerous. They could be authentic spiritual experiences, on the other hand they could be the product of a warped mind seeking to validate it™s own beliefs. Remember that people have committed atrocities on the strength of so called religious experiences.

There™s no simple answers to this post I™m afraid.

Graham:

What if I go to an Amazon remote village that has never ever heard of God and the Holy Spirit and tell them I Josh GM will pray for you and you will recieve a Holy Spirit? (Of course through an Interpreter)

Are you telling me this community will give me a physical sign as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit by way of my prayers?! The bible tells us that the Holy Spirit's visit can and is seen through speaking in tongues and other physical manouvres. But this is what you and me can read and expect. But somebody who does not read and understand (or expect the signal of the holy spirit) will sit there watching me asking God to drop the Holy Spirit unto the people until I lose my voice. So what people do as a sign of the visitation by the Holy Spirit is in most cases fake (taught, brainwashed, drilled, coached ) as one could imitate what he saw on TV, what he/she is seeing his/her fellow christians are doing, possibly also obeying what their preacher instructed them to do as a sign of the Holy Spirit.

Take a 10 year old from the Maddasa (sp) Islam School for example and try to pray for a manifestation of the Holy Spirit on him... The kid will look at you like you just lost your f*king mind!

The private language argument seems to me like sort of a strange or obscure angle from which to establish skepticism about these experiences. Anyone who believes in God believes that communion with God is not at all purely private (it had better not be) but happens in a very important 'community,' that of their relationship with God...right? Could we not have a community of two, particularly with such an interlocutor -- who plays a deep role in every aspect of one's life, and, moreover, is omnipotent?

Someone who reads every possible thing in their life as a sign of something -- be it of God's influence or humanity's inherent despicableness or the plight of the proletariat or any other monolithic central theory -- is plainly liable to fall prey to the worst kind of confirmation bias. One can build a massively reinforced framework of quite false beliefs out of this little bias alone; the examples of people doing this are too numerous to bother recounting. That seems like plenty of cause for skepticism about these claims of religious experience, without any recourse to Wittgenstein's somewhat nebulous and questionably applicable claims about private language.