Thread: Are feelings and intuitions a valid source of knowledge?

Originally Posted by Linkzelda

Because when I contemplate on that a bit, I often find myself that people are just engaging in skewed Solipsism when they lend faith towards a God, that it's really just them reaching out to the inner self to provide solutions. I would like to know your opinions on this, I left the concept a bit in muddy waters, but just to see if you have something different to discuss on this.

Yeah, I often suspect that what people see as God(s) or spirits or whatever is really some aspect of their own psychology that they're interpreting as something external, because as you said earlier the unconscious mind is much bigger than the conscious mind and what exists in the unconscious is often seen as alien or external, just as it is in dreams.

Of course that can be turned to different purposes depending on the individual - some people will use their belief in God to justify their own actions that they don't want to take responsibility for - like you said earlier about religious terrorists. Or sometimes an unscrupulous religious leader can use brainwashing tricks to motivate his 'flock' to do his own selfish bidding (to send money to him or whatever). But of course this is on an individual basis - moral/ethical people will mostly understand whether their own actions are ethical or not, except in cases where their deeply held religious beliefs tell them it's necessary to act a certain way. And obviously many religious people don't obey all the dogmatic rules such as stoning their neighbors for working on the sabbath etc. So I think that depends largely on the person.

But then, more in line with what I posted on my Thoughts on God thread, the kind of God I used to believe in is closer to something natural, and would express itself through a person's unconscious. But if a god does that, then you'd have no way to tell if it's him calling or some hidden unconscious fear or complex or belief.


About the NPD thing - it does't always manifest as people becoming daredevils or anything, different people express it in their own ways. My friend was a tough guy who's dad drove a tow truck and had an incredibly harsh hard-working blue collar attitude and was also a tough guy himself. So lifelong conditioning in the necessity for being tough and bold played a strong part, as well as high testosterone. I've known a few other NPD people, and they're all quite different.

As far as I'm concerned this thread is done unless somebody wants to provide either some good evidence that intuitions about God can be somehow tested for truthfulness or has a good way to falsify my statements that they can't.