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Can You Make Me See Red?

Forums: Spirituality And Religion, Religion, Christianity
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aktorist
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:36 pm
Quote:
We are not trying to prove anything here. Trying to explain these things to someone who has never experienced them.


You don't need to experience God to know what the idea of God is.
Which is why you can't compare it with Red.

Experience, as I said, is unimportant. It offers nothing unless there is evidence.
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Intrepid
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:37 pm
Aaarrggghh!
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:39 pm
Intrepid wrote:
Can you describle the colour red to us?

I can't, I'm just this guy, I can't even properly describe how I feel right now. I can't describe cold either, to one who doesn't feel it. But such a one can easily find plenty of sources more articulate than me, either on cold or on colour, whether it is scientists explaining how the perception of the colour red works in the human eye, some machine that would be able to track the frequency of colour (I'm such a layman on this issue that I'm wholly going on Farmerman on that one, btw), physics books that explain how colour is formed, et cetera.

From all that, the colourblind can come away not, for sure, with a personal experience of "red" (though if he finds a machine like Farmerman's he will have an experience of some sort), but most surely with a concept of "red", a sense of what it is, how it works and how it is experienced by those who experience it. Note that MA's assertion here is that those who can not experience sight or sound can not have a concept of it.

Most definitely, such a person could come away with the certainty that the colour red does, in fact, considering the ample verifiable measures, documents and manifestations of it, exist; whereas again, MA bases this thread on the contention that colour does not exist to the blind -- the same way that the God that she experiences does not exist to us. Its simply a false premise.
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Eorl
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:41 pm
Momma,

There are those in the world who have felt god's love and haven't been able to express how it feels, or to convince others.

Then, later, they have realised that they were fooling themselves, imaging that love and warmth through sheer determination to "know" it.

Then there are those with whom gods communicate daily, even more so when they stop the meds.

Which is exactly why some kind of objective demonstration of FACT is required before you (let alone anyone else) accept it as true.

Either that, or admit that you could be wrong. What you feel COULD be self induced....but you are willing to take the chance and go with it.
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Intrepid
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:42 pm
I don't think that most have a clue as to what you are trying to say here, Momma
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Chumly
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:43 pm
Re: Can You Make Me See Red?
Momma Angel wrote:
But, how do you get them to experience these things? How do you make Charlotte see red? How do you make Sandy see? How do you make David hear?
Implants! They are already available to some degree and will be much more sophisticated and more readily available in the coming years.

You know what happens to those that drive by looking in the rear view mirror?
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:44 pm
Momma Angel wrote:
nimh,

We are not trying to prove anything here. Trying to explain these things to someone who has never experienced them.

You are asserting something, MA: namely, that the God that you experience does not exist to us in the same way that colour does not exist to the blind, sound to the deaf. If you assert such a thing, then people of course are going to react to that assertion. And the truth is that the comparison - the basis for the whole thread - just doesnt fly.
0 Replies
 
Intrepid
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:44 pm
nimh wrote:
Intrepid wrote:
Can you describle the colour red to us?

I can't, I'm just this guy, I can't even properly describe how I feel right now. I can't describe cold either, to one who doesn't feel it. But such a one can easily find plenty of sources more articulate than me, either on cold or on colour, whether it is scientists explaining how the perception of the colour red works in the human eye, some machine that would be able to track the frequency of colour (I'm such a layman on this issue that I'm wholly going on Farmerman on that one, btw), physics books that explain how colour is formed, et cetera.

From all that, the colourblind can come away not, for sure, with a personal experience of "red" (though if he finds a machine like Farmerman's he will have an experience of some sort), but most surely with a concept of "red", a sense of what it is, how it works and how it is experienced by those who experience it. Note that MA's assertion here is that those who can not experience sight or sound can not have a concept of it.

Most definitely, such a person could come away with the certainty that the colour red does, in fact, considering the ample verifiable measures, documents and manifestations of it, exist; whereas again, MA bases this thread on the contention that colour does not exist to the blind -- the same way that the God that she experiences does not exist to us. Its simply a false premise.


The question is not to prove whether the colour red exists. The question is to explain it to someone that cannot see it so that they can see the same thing in their minds eye that others see when they actually look at the colour red. I think that most are missing Momma's entire point on this.
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Eorl
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:51 pm
Intrepid,

Not agreeing is not the same as not understanding.
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Eorl
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:53 pm
Momma, Intrepid.

Find me a blind person who claims that no evidence exists to support the idea that the colour red exists and then you might have a point.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:54 pm
Intrepid wrote:
The question is not to prove whether the colour red exists. The question is to explain it to someone that cannot see it so that they can see the same thing in their minds eye that others see when they actually look at the colour red. I think that most are missing Momma's entire point on this.

I am bolding the part of your question that, IMO, defeats all logical discussion from the start. Noone sees anything the exact same way in their minds eye as others. I "experience" red in a different way than you do. So the bolded addition sets the "describer" up for pre-established defeat.

Now, however, can someone who can not see the colour red be explained it, shown it, in different ways, so that they can acquire a concept of it? Can they be explained it so that they have a concept of it, and so that it exists for them?

MA says, no. But of course they can. As has been described here.

Can one explain MA's God, on the other hand, to those who can not experience him, feel him, the way she does? Nope.

So in that sense, MA's God is like the sparkly things I experienced in my trip to those who were not in my head, not like sight to the blind or sound to the deaf.
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aktorist
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:54 pm
Quote:
Can you describle the colour red to us?

Can you describe the number 0 to me?

It's different from God because god is not this abstract. God can have a state of existance/nonexistance.

But red can neither exist nor not exist.
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Arella Mae
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:56 pm
Intrepid is right. Most of you are missing the point entirely. You are thinking so far out of the flippin box you can't see it.

You keep thinking I am trying to prove God's existence with this. That is NOT what I am talking about.
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Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:57 pm
By what passes for logic here, color-blind people should be running red lights and causing untold carnage on the streets of our cities.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 08:58 pm
Hee
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 09:00 pm
Yes.

Intrepid, that point was acknolwledged back on page five ("I for one will concede that you can't communicate all experience through language without contextual reference") and has been acknowledged several times since. The only place that there is continuing discussion is how that point has any larger significance.

Momma Angel says that her evidence for the existence of god is her own experience of god. That is not evidence any more than nimh's experience is evidence of the existence of the shiny, sparkly things he saw.

What I have said repeatedly is that I personally don't require any evidence -- if people want to believe in a god, that's no skin off my nose, in and of itself. (What they DO with that belief is something else, but not quite what we are talking about here.)

I think it's fine to say, "I have no evidence, I have no proof, it is just my faith."

But if evidence is being proffered, ones own, private, uncommunicable experience is not evidence.
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 09:02 pm
(Took a while to write that one, had to look some things up, the "yes" was in response to Eorl's "Not agreeing is not the same as not understanding.")
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Eorl
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 09:02 pm
Laughing

...just enjoying your tag nimh.
0 Replies
 
aktorist
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 09:06 pm
Quote:
Intrepid is right. Most of you are missing the point entirely. You are thinking so far out of the flippin box you can't see it.

You keep thinking I am trying to prove God's existence with this. That is NOT what I am talking about.


But again, you can't compare abstract concepts with a non-abstract idea.

Red's existance is not the same as God, for Red can neither exist nor not exist, but God can.

But as for experience, that's not important. Experience has no ties with existance.
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sun 22 Jan, 2006 09:07 pm
Whether you are calling it proof of god or calling it evidence of god, yes, that's what the thread is about, Momma Angel, in your own words:

Momma Angel wrote:

Ok, I thought I explained why in S&R twice but I will do it again.

Many ask for evidence of God. Well, someone's experience with God is their evidence. But, just as I cannot make you see red, hear, or see I cannot make you experience God.[/b]


(Italics mine.)
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