Evidence

[Rolling_Stone]

Show me someone who asserts that they make their life’s decisions based on evidence, or whose every discounting, cynical and intellectualizing argument includes “show me the evidence,” and I’ll show you someone who has never really considered what kind of “evidence” they are looking for: consensus. Truth-seeking is not an undertaking for cowards: it requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the exploration of unknown realms of intellectual and living. By limiting their life’s decisions to the “evidence” at hand, people build a cage around themselves that prevents them from exploring new avenues of thought.

Rationalism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring phenomenon, in making its objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower because the “evidence” for a purposeful Creator is scant. Consistency requires that it not discount religious experience on grounds of credulity while it persists in the assumption that man’s intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from something that is utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling. “Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic which tolerates the concept of truth alongside the observation of fact.” They should be mature enough to acknowledge that not everything in life is reasonable, logical or empirical. The incessant demand for “evidence” at the expense of the inner life is also a demand to be an outcast in the universe, for reality doesn’t end where the skin begins.

 

[frg001]

Show me someone who asserts that they make their life’s decisions based on evidence, or whose every discounting, cynical and intellectualizing argument includes “show me the evidence,” and I’ll show you someone who has never really considered what kind of “evidence” they are looking for: consensus. Truth-seeking is not an undertaking for cowards: it requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the exploration of unknown realms of intellectual and living. By limiting their life’s decisions to the “evidence” at hand, people build a cage around themselves that prevents them from exploring new avenues of thought.

Rationalism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring phenomenon, in making its objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower because the “evidence” for a purposeful Creator is scant. Consistency requires that it not discount religious experience on grounds of credulity while it persists in the assumption that man’s intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from something that is utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling. “Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic which tolerates the concept of truth alongside the observation of fact.” They should be mature enough to acknowledge that not everything in life is reasonable, logical or empirical. The incessant demand for “evidence” at the expense of the inner life is also a demand to be an outcast in the universe, for reality doesn’t end where the skin begins.

Ok, thats quite a mouthful... but, forgetting evidence. What else do we have.

I don't go around my daily life thinking about the need for evidence for things.
However, when it comes to mindblowing stuff that is fundamental to existance, or the makeup of reality, then yes, I need evidence, or at least a theoretical idea that can give some positive data.
So yes, for me, a supernatural creator as an answer to the existance of the universe is to be honest a quite fantastic assumption on the same level as a child watching a magician can assume that the man in the cape has real supernatural power when they make a rabbit appear. The child cannot understand how it is possible without magic, and so, in my book does the god-believer not comprehend the existance of the universe, without magic.

 

[Popeyesays]

Yes, FSR; but why is there a rabbit at all, and why are there people to observe it come forth from the magician's hat?

Regards,
Scott

 

[frg001]

Yes, FSR; but why is there a rabbit at all, and why are there people to observe it come forth from the magician's hat?

Regards,
Scott

I haven't a clue... And I am not afraid to say so , unlike someone who jumps to the aforementioned supernatural answer.

 

[Popeyesays]

I haven't a clue... And I am not afraid to say so , unlike someone who jumps to the aforementioned supernatural answer.

So you can't find a natural solution at all. Where do you look next?

Regards,
Scott

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Ok, thats quite a mouthful... but, forgetting evidence. What else do we have.

I don't go around my daily life thinking about the need for evidence for things.
However, when it comes to mindblowing stuff that is fundamental to existance, or the makeup of reality, then yes, I need evidence, or at least a theoretical idea that can give some positive data.
So yes, for me, a supernatural creator as an answer to the existance of the universe is to be honest a quite fantastic assumption on the same level as a child watching a magician can assume that the man in the cape has real supernatural power when they make a rabbit appear. The child cannot understand how it is possible without magic, and so, in my book does the god-believer not comprehend the existance of the universe, without magic.

Atheists make fantastic assumptions, too, relying on on nothing more than consensus.

 

[Panda]

So you can't find a natural solution at all. Where do you look next?

Regards,
Scott

If you can't find a natural solution then you are missing the information required to obtain one.

 

[Popeyesays]

If you can't find a natural solution then you are missing the information required to obtain one.

So, where do you look next?

Regards,
Scott

 

[frg001]

So you can't find a natural solution at all. Where do you look next?

Regards,
Scott

You only look as far as (current) science allows.

Frightened people try to fill in the gaps with ghosts and gods.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

You only look as far as (current) science allows.

Which is to say you only look as far as consensus allows at the expense of the inner life.

 

[frg001]

Atheists make fantastic assumptions, too, relying on on nothing more than consensus.

I agree... But atheists are uite happy to go to the next (better) idea when it arrives... Why fall back on the paranormal?

 

[Rolling_Stone]

I agree... But atheists are uite happy to go to the next (better) idea when it arrives.

On another planet, perhaps. Even so, they fear to venture into new realms of thought pertaining to the inner life because of the lack of "empirical evidence."

 

[Willamena]

Regardless of what is experienced --whether inner, outer, higher, or lower --it is still the evidence of experience.

 

[Willamena]

or at least a theoretical idea that can give some positive data.

Frubals for that.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Regardless of what is experienced --whether inner, outer, higher, or lower --it is still the evidence of experience.

Yes, but in my experience atheists are more prone to shrug off the inner or simply be unaware of it.

 

[Willamena]

So, where do you look next?

There can be no situation that cannot have a natural explanation.

Really.

 

[Willamena]

On another planet, perhaps. Even so, they fear to venture into new realms of thought pertaining to the inner life because of the lack of "empirical evidence."

And which "realms" of thought would you have a person with no context for a reality underlying reality venture into that isn't fantasy?

 

[Rolling_Stone]

And which "realms" of thought would you have a person with no context for a reality underlying reality venture into that isn't fantasy?

Unentangled awareness.

 

[Willamena]

Show me someone who asserts that they make their life’s decisions based on evidence, or whose every discounting, cynical and intellectualizing argument includes “show me the evidence,” and I’ll show you someone who has never really considered what kind of “evidence” they are looking for: consensus. Truth-seeking is not an undertaking for cowards: it requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the exploration of unknown realms of intellectual and living. By limiting their life’s decisions to the “evidence” at hand, people build a cage around themselves that prevents them from exploring new avenues of thought.

Rationalism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring phenomenon, in making its objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower because the “evidence” for a purposeful Creator is scant. Consistency requires that it not discount religious experience on grounds of credulity while it persists in the assumption that man’s intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from something that is utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling. “Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic which tolerates the concept of truth alongside the observation of fact.” They should be mature enough to acknowledge that not everything in life is reasonable, logical or empirical. The incessant demand for “evidence” at the expense of the inner life is also a demand to be an outcast in the universe, for reality doesn’t end where the skin begins.

Do you consider your "inner realm unentangled awareness" to be "the truth" accessible to atheists? If not, then you are simply blaming atheists for being atheists. Well, d'uh.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Do you consider your "inner realm unentangled awareness" to be "the truth" accessible to atheists?

Not THE truth, but the avenue to it. I'm just saying their reliance on consensus evidence limits them outside the truth of their inner life. There is no blame, really. That would be like blaming a blind person for not knowing what color of socks he's wearing.

P.S. quite perceptive....thanks. I love to rant.