Tiassa,
Hi and please forgive me for not responding to your earlier post. I started several times on a response and discarded each one and now I thought it might be too late. Now you have contributed again I feel I should now respond, even if only briefly.
But in the end, it would be most interesting to leave that issue to Cris, as it is apparent that he sees nothing wrong in taking one leap of faith in order to criticize another.
Yet I don’t believe I am doing that, and I think you are making incorrect assumptions about my motives and approach.
That one cannot see something does not automatically mean that it does not exist.
If it were that simple then I would agree. But I am not making that assumption either.
It could simply mean they're going about looking at it wrongly.
And by this I assume you mean to look for the answer that probably isn’t 42.
This is the problem with operating according to an anti-identity: one constantly allows others to define reality in order to undertake an insurgent role and protest the definition.
Yet that does not reflect my thinking either.
But I believe I can be safely dismissive of the major religions such as Christianity and Islam. As Einstein stated these ideas are childlike. We have surely seen enough to see how religion and politics have been so intertwined over the millennia that complex dogma is invented to meet those very material ends. And we can see how superstitions are created and how rampant myth making adds to the fire, combined of course with no independent observational evidence. That some 3 billion plus people believe these things is of no real consequence since the world was flat for many thousands of years, right?
Isn’t the real issue whether there is anything non-material and that we can experience it and which would perhaps justify some type of spiritual paradigm? I don’t know if there is such a thing or that such a thing could be possible. Neither do I see anything or anyone who can show otherwise. I’ll keep an open and skeptical mind. And I’ll suitably adjust my life outlook if anything comes up.
I’ll mention neurotheology here since I believe you missed an important point on this. I believe the findings show that a spiritual experience is a result of a brain reaction in the same way that pain is a brain reaction. We can easily generate pain by say stubbing our toe on a rock. What we don’t say is that the pain gives us a special understanding or knowledge of the rock, other than it should be avoided. The spiritual experience appears to operate in a similar manner, i.e. it can be triggered via various external events (i.e. external to that specific part of the brain). If a God triggers the event then he would be of little more significance than the inanimate rock. The sensations would not be a direct experience of God presence but a predefined sensation that the brain generates by itself. The important point is that many theists claim proof of God because of their
direct experience of him. But these claims are false if the new science is correct, and that seems very probable. What these people are experiencing is brain generated sensations that are independent of any trigger, i.e. they are entirely material, and would be the same whether a god triggers them or a drug or whatever. Given this revelation and combine that with all the other non-observed claims then there is nothing left to indicate a ‘god being’ is present or could be present. A spiritual sensation has no connection with anything non-material.
Moving on -
Fictional: something invented by the imagination or feigned.
Fantasy: the free play of creative imagination.
While these can be seen as perhaps emotive and offensive terms when directed at a religionist, and the resultant irritation is of course not lost on me, I believe they are also factually objective observations. The terms do not say that the non-material does not exist only that the claimant does not have anything unless they can demonstrate otherwise. But I now usually refrain from requesting they prove their claim, i.e. asking them to define reality as you put it, but more that these fantasies are reality, so deal with it.
My path is not anti-identity but the reality and hope that we see in the newly budding transhumanist developments.
I don’t think I have responded to all your issues. Please come back at me. I do have immense respect for your opinions, at least most of them that I can understand.
