The Rationalist and the Mystic, Part 1

I've been meaning to write this post for a while. I put it off partly because I felt like it was a bit too obvious to bother writing about, but an exchange I had today reminded me that it's still something that should be put out there.

One pretty large rift that I'm sure hasn't escaped anyone's attention these days is the one between so-called skeptics and so-called believers. This is related to any sort of claim about "spiritual" or "paranormal" phenomena, as well as metaphysical models of the way the universe works and religious dogma. The "believer" claims that there is something extraordinary going on (psychic phenomena, spiritual entities, survival of consciousness beyond death, etc), and the "skeptic" (for the sake of this post, "skeptic" will refer to someone coming from a hard-line rational materialist viewpoint generally, and not a skeptic in the original sense) claims that it is not so.

The skeptic in this scenario generally has good reason to doubt: Scams are everywhere. People from all sorts of religious or spiritual viewpoints have been caught red-handed blatantly faking miracles by a wide variety of clever means. Scientific findings which disagree with an official religious dogma have in the past been ignored or suppressed. In short, there is every reason to treat psychics, faith healers, religious leaders, astrologers, palm-readers, etc. as people who are probably full of shit.

What's also clear is that new-agers, religious and spiritual types, seem at times to be ridiculously gullible. After all, they're willing to accept wild absurdities about miracles of all sorts, often without a shred of hard evidence. Those who think they have personal proofs often seem to be deluding themselves, setting aside the rational mind entirely in favor of what they would prefer to believe.

For these reasons at the very least, the skeptic is quite justified in starting any investigation of these matters with a very high degree of doubt. It is unfortunate, but perhaps understandable, that such people couple this doubt with a certain degree of contempt for all such extraordinary claims. The skeptic believes that the "truth" of this matter will be settled by science, in which the overwhelming burden of proof must fall on those who make extraordinary claims.

What, then, does the mystic have to say about all this (and why in the hell should anyone take such a person seriously)? The mystic, much like the modern scientist, is one who seeks proofs. But the proof of the mystic is not the same kind of proof as that of the scientist. The main difference is that the scientific viewpoint holds that proof is to be found external to the experimenter, whereas the mystic holds that proof can only be found by individual direct experience.

The mystic then seeks that experience for him/her self, with the understanding that it is the only thing can settle the matter. If I experience X, and you believe there is no evidence of X and it is in fact impossible, your opinion is completely irrelevant to me. It has already happened. Even if your reasons are completely correct by all rational measures, I have acquired proof to the contrary. It's not the kind of proof that should convince anyone else, but that's another matter.

On the other hand, this gets us into some tricky territory. Naturally, if this occurs for two people from radically different cultural or religious backgrounds which conflict with one another, we can recognize that they cannot both be completely right. As for what conclusions can be rightly drawn from this, though, well, that's a topic for the next post!