The Evidence Required Is?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yet the square root of negative one produces results that have application yet clearly does not exist, hence the moniker "imaginary". Do concepts such as number exist outside of our imaginings? IDK

Yep, it;s really simple, hold an object in one hand, and an object in another, that's 2. It doesn't matter what symbol you've imagined to express this. "2" is a description of a thing or a state, or a quantity (or it's relationship to other things or itself), "2" is the written analog of an idea. Numbers are imaginary, in the same way that any language is ultimately imaginary. Do words not exist? Are they not a demonstrable thing? Do numbers float about unattached to this or that? Only in our systems, which again, we created. I don't require them to be any more "real" than this, because thet's as real as they need to be for the purpose they were designed. Do they describe the concept we are attempting to communicate effectively? Yes. Is there a better way to describe it? Some better symbol or sound? No, not that we know of.

Joseph Campbell turned up quite a few gods in investigating the beliefs of people from all cultures all over the world. So many and so universally that it can be argued that unless you can account for why that is, you don't really understand human nature. Personally I think it is too easy to say they are just mistakes in attempting to give a natural explanation of the world which were made in our youth as a sapient species. That claim would require evidence.

He turned up quite a few stories, but I don't recall him leading a god back to civilization by the hand for peer review to the astonishment of his fellows. It's a claim with a vast amount of evidence attached. We have attempted to explain what was inexplicable to us by way of cosmic skyhooks that are very familiar to us. Just turns out that we've been consistently wrong.

While drugs have been found which affect the way in which pain is experienced I don't think it is very well understood at all. You know how they ask people to rate their pain on a scale from 1 to 10? That's just to establish a relative scale for each individual because it really is that subjective. A 4 on your scale might be my 10. There is just no way of knowing. This really is a good example of a subjective reality, probably the best example.

Understood well enough for anesthesia to work. "Not completely understood" is not equal to mysterious, especially if we are using god or gods or spirits as measures of mystery. As my daughter is so fond of saying "One of these things is not like the others".