(May 14, 2013 at 9:02 am)Texas Sailor Wrote: No claim of an unembodied mind or celestial agent can be posited from evidence that is made available to me.
Agreed.
(May 14, 2013 at 9:02 am)Texas Sailor Wrote: The people that make the claims to me cannot present evidence for their claims either.
I have been left to assume, that there is no such evidence made to them, that is not made to me
Yeah, I assume the same.
(May 13, 2013 at 6:45 pm)Texas Sailor Wrote: I must ask,what you are reflecting on? .. Any other meaning cannot be rationally correlated to reality if the nature of its existance did not either.
As a means of answering empirical questions it is not good methodology, I'll give you that. Supposedly Crick dreamed about the double helix form of DNA but I'm pretty sure he didn't publish anything based upon the dream. It would have been its ability to fit what observations we could make at the time which made it believable and noteworthy to others.
(May 14, 2013 at 9:02 am)Texas Sailor Wrote: Inspiration is a beautiful thing. Both my fiancee and I are amateur painters. Mostly acrylic , but we've filled our house with our "works"..
Good on you both for making room in your lives for creative expression. I used to draw a lot but now I leave it all in the garden, the most complex art form I've ever done involving color and texture and sculpture and change over the seasons and the years. A garden is also a place and constitutes an environment for a community of living things which interact with a 'will' of their own. I may not believe in God but I play one in my garden.
(May 13, 2013 at 6:45 pm)Texas Sailor Wrote: I'm not so inclined to agree here. It almost feels like we're equivocating a bit on the word belief and the context we are using it in. There are things that you can believe are true, and recognize that they are souly true for no other reason than it is your opinion, an opinionated belief...such as in taste of food, art, music etc. But I don't think anybody would expect justification for preference be made for such things as the subjects of such beliefs, are at least grounded in experience and reality, in at least some sense, even if small.
I think theists would do well to leave it at this level. I think many believe they are in communion with what they call God, that they are constantly in the presence of an 'other' that is wiser and knows more. Fine, hold it as a preference, as something they would no more insist on to others than they would their preference for more salt. If they just stopped there, their own understanding of the world could be as empirically grounded as anyone's. It is the desire to project that 'other' out into the universe and find literal evidence of it there that corrupts their understanding of the universe.
(May 14, 2013 at 9:02 am)Texas Sailor Wrote: Then there are claims that one believes are true, and are true for everybody, the universe included.
A believer either admits a certain level of agnostism by holding it as an opinion, or the believer suggests gnostism by holding it as a conviction and regard it as true above any other opinion of it.
Exactly. There are private truths -verifiable by no one but me- and public truths which require evidence to be shared.
