The Need to Evolve

[Belacqua]

Well obviously I can consult a dictionary myself, but since the other poster made an assertion, I wanted them to explain what they meant, and how they knew it existed. If we are going to claim abstract ideas "exist" then Superman and Spiderman et all exist, this doesn't seem helpful in advancing our understanding of reality. 

According to the definition I gave, spirituality is deep feelings and beliefs. I think the existence of those feelings and beliefs is very well attested. As you said, subjective states may be evidenced by objective results, and I think the history of culture is full of such evidence. 

Your new analogy makes the same false equivalence your first did, since my criteria is that sufficient objective evidence be demonstrated, and I explained previously objectivity and subjectivity are on a scale, they are not a binary condition, one or the other, thus evidence can be said to be sufficiently objective quite apart from whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant credulity.

I believe that all the cathedrals of Europe and all the temples of Japan attest objectively to the existence of spirituality, when we're using the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

we can objectively measure how well depressed people do on the drug, again simple double blind clinical trials where the test group involves a placebo spring to mind.

Again, how can we objectively measure this? Even if we have a control group, simply having two groups doesn't make their subjective feelings into objectively demonstrated evidence. You're dealing with knock-on effects which may or may not have strong correlation to moods. But you don't have objective access to the moods themselves. 

we know physiological changes can be cause by drugs, and objectively testing them is easy, I have explained how> 

I don't think you have explained it. Emotions are slippery, and people react differently, and may tell the researcher what he wants to hear, etc.etc. 

Emotions are real, and subjective, and our objective perceptions of other people's remain unreliable. 

Paradoxically I know of no way to objectively verify that religious beliefs making the adherent happy, objectively evidences that belief? Given they've had limitless resources and millenia to do so, I can only remain dubious. 

Yes, I agree. We have no objective way of determining this. We can, however, use pretty much the objective follow-on effects that we'd use for drugs. Do they jump off bridges? Do they have the energy to leave the house? If these objective measures apply to drugs, why not to religion? 

It wouldn't prove that the religious beliefs are true; only that holding the beliefs, or having what they interpret as religious experiences, have certain results. 

whilst all claims carry a burden of proof, they do not carry an equal burden of proof, and that claims involving phenomena we already objectively know are possible, must be deemed to carry a lesser burden of proof than those we have no objective evidence are possible. 

Yes, that's the heart of it. We interpret all evidence within frameworks of things that we already feel confident about. If you feel far more confident about the kind of objective quantifiable empirical repeatable framework of facts that science deals with, then claims which fit easily within that framework will seem more likely to be true. To you. 

what objective evidence if any, can that person demonstrate that anything "spiritual" exists.

As I said, if we define spirituality as a condition or state of mind that people can be in, and then look for evidence of what they do when they are in that condition, then I believe there is a lot of evidence. 

Perhaps the issue here is that you are associating "spiritual" with "supernatural." Is that right? I have never seen anything indicative of the supernatural, but I have reason to believe that spiritual states exist in people who are disposed to that kind of thing, or who have trained for it. Rather than "supernatural," I would probably say they are states of mind which are rare, or simply "outside of quotidian experience." Practitioners have described them as very affecting. 

The part where you'll probably disagree with me is where I say that these states may in fact tell us important things about the world which science never can. 

FYI we know emotions relate to brain states, and these can be indicated on an MRI scan. 

Happiness in an MRI

Heh. I worked for over ten years with a group of scientists at Hiroshima University research hospital doing fMRI research. I'm no scientist, but they needed to read papers in English and publish their results in English, so I had to sit down with them every couple of weeks and go over their writing in detail. 

The claims made for MRIs in the popular press are wildly exaggerated, and the scientists working in the field know it.