What the God debate is really about

[*Deidre*]

… can a mere idea ever be considered objectively real or viable?

You use the word “mere” as if you can easily dismiss the world of personal experience, value, and meaning. If you have already assumed that objective reality is the whole of reality, then you leave aside the best half of reality, the subjective part of which life is made.

The quality of our lives though are not the sum total of our ideas, but rather our choices and actions stemming from those ideas. Or inertia, being a dreamer and not a doer.

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Even though dreams vary person to person, science accepts that dreaming during different phases of sleep is a real phenomenon.

But you don't require science to know that you do dream, do you? We don't know that we dream because science has checked it out. We know that we dream because we experience them directly and, if we write them down upon waking, can remember doing so.

Lots of subjective experiences can be verified through first person experience, like emotions, feelings, intuition and creative impulses. As with dreams, science can study these from the outside and deduce which physiological responses correlate with each one. What science cannot do is directly study that which we actually experience.

For example, science has found that while in dream sleep, a person will often exhibit rapid eye movement. If we wake them, they can probably tell us what they were dreaming. What they won't tell you is that their eyes were flitting about. Rapid eye movement wasn't what they experienced first hand; it is only what dreaming looks like from the outside. What they can tell you is what happened in the dream, something which science cannot directly verify.

I suspect for the person who in prayer feels they are in the presence of a god, the situation is the same. Their direct experience is what it is and is not available to science to verify or discount. Now if the person who feels a connection to god makes claims about that god's effect on the physical world, those can be tested.

I read this a few times, really good.
During my time of following Christianty, I felt like my prayer life was as essential as food and water. I actually viewed my faith at that time as being built on objective truth. Until I learned it wasn't.

Thanks for posting this; it brings back some memories for me. Some of them good.

To add, going with what you're saying here and the theme of the thread, my perception of things back then, was my truth. And so I wonder. Is our perception of life, "our" truth? And is it wrong for want of a better word, to live in two worlds, simultaneously? A physical world and a spiritual one? For me, once I realized religion is built on deception and non truths, I couldn't perceive it as my own personal truth anymore.

I'm trying to explain this well, but not sure if I am? haha :/