OK so what are your thoughts on the original ideas I proposed. That the Christians and the atheists are using similar methods of analysis but applying them to different data sets. Also in their respective methodologies, the anomaly that is different between the two methodologies is not reason vs faith, but skepticism vs faith.
I see the atheist data set defined as exclusive to the material universe studied through the hard sciences, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history. (I have a side theory that many of those who prefer the debate over discourse model are from the hard sciences rather than such disciplines as history or anthropology which deal with all the variability that human populations bring to any data set!). There is no need for a god, no data for the existence of a god and in fact the addition of a god throws the whole system off. So by definition this reality set can have no god.
I see a further world/reality construct that is exclusively mental/ abstract/ conceptual. This is comprised of pure abstract math, music, philosophy, linguistics - things that in their natural state exist purely in the mind, though they can each be expressed in their own language from one mind to the other. Physics is an interesting blend of the pure abstract world of of math and the experimental world of the hard sciences. And music can be expressed directly in the material world through material objects. And language, of course is always evolving through actual physical speech, writing, etc. But they actually exist only in the mind unless they are expressed through some physical means. And they exist in their full form in the mind even if never expressed. To me "reality" is a philosophical mental object which the discipline of philosophy spends a lot of time analyzing, deconstructing, defining, etc. All in the mind.
I see religions as the bottom end of a spectrum of reality construction that extends to some very complex stratopheric multivalent systems of thought, method, practice, experimentation and discipline. The problem with defining religions simply as thought systems is that they cannot be reduced to simply sets of beliefs. In fact they are and have always been systems of dynamic interative sub-systems which deal with society formation and management, culture generation, psychological treatment, and philosophical thought.
If we do reduce the religious reality structure for the sake of comparison and contrast to a set of ideas about the nature of reality, we find the data set is different from the atheist material universe model. The religions reality data set (for the most part) does in fact posit God as the primary reality with the rest of everything derivative and conditioned by its relationship to the primary reality.
Let us discount the religious faithful and the religious professionals at this point because they really don't think through things, they go by revelation. Looking at the data set from the outside there are religious thought systems that are way better at conceptualizing this form of reality than Christians. So I'm going with this larger composit picture pulling from a variety of older traditions and newer disciplines. I see it as a dual system comprised of a material and a spiritual dimension (whether that spiritual dimension has gods, God, or none is irrelevant).
In these reality constructions, the spiritual precedes the material both temporally and ontologically. The spiritual dimension has been observed, studied, tested, experimented with and its properties, attributes, functions, and interactive mechanisms mapped and patterns both observed and deduced. Then checked and verified by independently by others.
I think it would be really challenging to seek a point of congruence around which to build bridges between the single-valent reality structure of material universe as the exclusive reality and the bi-valent system of the dual spiritual-material reality
I see the atheist data set defined as exclusive to the material universe studied through the hard sciences, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history. (I have a side theory that many of those who prefer the debate over discourse model are from the hard sciences rather than such disciplines as history or anthropology which deal with all the variability that human populations bring to any data set!). There is no need for a god, no data for the existence of a god and in fact the addition of a god throws the whole system off. So by definition this reality set can have no god.
I see a further world/reality construct that is exclusively mental/ abstract/ conceptual. This is comprised of pure abstract math, music, philosophy, linguistics - things that in their natural state exist purely in the mind, though they can each be expressed in their own language from one mind to the other. Physics is an interesting blend of the pure abstract world of of math and the experimental world of the hard sciences. And music can be expressed directly in the material world through material objects. And language, of course is always evolving through actual physical speech, writing, etc. But they actually exist only in the mind unless they are expressed through some physical means. And they exist in their full form in the mind even if never expressed. To me "reality" is a philosophical mental object which the discipline of philosophy spends a lot of time analyzing, deconstructing, defining, etc. All in the mind.
I see religions as the bottom end of a spectrum of reality construction that extends to some very complex stratopheric multivalent systems of thought, method, practice, experimentation and discipline. The problem with defining religions simply as thought systems is that they cannot be reduced to simply sets of beliefs. In fact they are and have always been systems of dynamic interative sub-systems which deal with society formation and management, culture generation, psychological treatment, and philosophical thought.
If we do reduce the religious reality structure for the sake of comparison and contrast to a set of ideas about the nature of reality, we find the data set is different from the atheist material universe model. The religions reality data set (for the most part) does in fact posit God as the primary reality with the rest of everything derivative and conditioned by its relationship to the primary reality.
Let us discount the religious faithful and the religious professionals at this point because they really don't think through things, they go by revelation. Looking at the data set from the outside there are religious thought systems that are way better at conceptualizing this form of reality than Christians. So I'm going with this larger composit picture pulling from a variety of older traditions and newer disciplines. I see it as a dual system comprised of a material and a spiritual dimension (whether that spiritual dimension has gods, God, or none is irrelevant).
In these reality constructions, the spiritual precedes the material both temporally and ontologically. The spiritual dimension has been observed, studied, tested, experimented with and its properties, attributes, functions, and interactive mechanisms mapped and patterns both observed and deduced. Then checked and verified by independently by others.
I think it would be really challenging to seek a point of congruence around which to build bridges between the single-valent reality structure of material universe as the exclusive reality and the bi-valent system of the dual spiritual-material reality
having passed through many states of believing I was right I have come to the place of finding "rightness" rather irrelevant to the project of becoming human
