Plumbata
Well-Known Member
So what "time" was I born into, 25 or so years more recently than you, Jim? Was it not the age of science and technology as well? I am not trying to argue or anything, but despite what I wanted to believe back when I was 19 (essentially identical to your stated position here), there really aren't reasonable scientifically substantiated answers for absolutely everything that one can experience. Not yet, anyway.
We both know that you are highly intelligent and aware, but conscious, fallible, subjective, and malleable human awareness of the universe does not constitute or comprise the entirety of objective reality. I've written well-rounded (and sober, heh) manifestos about this general subject but won't share them here, not yet anyway. Believers don't like having their foundations shaken, and just the same nonbelievers don't like their "logical" foundations shaken either. At the core it is all the same thing; a matter of belief and faith. It is almost funny that despite being at the opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum, both diametrically opposed sides are guilty of the same "logical" fallacy. Both sides "believe" in something, or some idea, that can't be definitively proven. This is why I abandoned Atheism. It made me just as ignorant and closed-off to incongruous information as my religiously or spiritually faithful Judeo-Christian compatriots are to unfamiliar ways of spiritual thinking (or a lack thereof).
I didn't relate other past experiences that in retrospect may have been subconsciously triggered/cultured by prior knowledge or understanding; even subconscious. A bullet, by nature, carries unique subjective psychological and emotional implications for everyone who knows what a bullet is. The imagination can make manifest many potent "experiences"; I've been there and metacognitively debunked most of my "supernatural" experiences, but a few are beyond explanation given what we (or I) know presently. I still don't believe in spirits, ghosts, heaven/hell/afterlife or any of that crap. I do know that my friend and I experienced something so obnoxiously unusual that there is no reasonable explanation for it; save there being some troglodytic misshapen "Igor" of a freak being kept chained secretly in a hidden space somewhere under the roof of the house which hasn't been occupied (by non-freaks) since the 1970s. Deep in the woods at 3 AM with the closest property being that of my friend, I sincerely doubt someone was playing an elaborate prank on us.
Stuff like this makes me firmly Agnostic. I really don't know, and anyone who presumes to know the true reality of the universe in it's entirety is full of BS. When I have people way less intelligent try to preach to me I laugh silently but am respectful. Usually they are great people who I like a lot, but... Sometimes; or even most of the time, I wish that I was as dumb as them and believed that the world was just as black/white and cut/dry as they think it is. Doesn't matter if they are born-again or militant atheists. They "have it figured out" and can move on without worrying about the uncertainties. Life would be a helluvalot easier if I could do that.
We both know that you are highly intelligent and aware, but conscious, fallible, subjective, and malleable human awareness of the universe does not constitute or comprise the entirety of objective reality. I've written well-rounded (and sober, heh) manifestos about this general subject but won't share them here, not yet anyway. Believers don't like having their foundations shaken, and just the same nonbelievers don't like their "logical" foundations shaken either. At the core it is all the same thing; a matter of belief and faith. It is almost funny that despite being at the opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum, both diametrically opposed sides are guilty of the same "logical" fallacy. Both sides "believe" in something, or some idea, that can't be definitively proven. This is why I abandoned Atheism. It made me just as ignorant and closed-off to incongruous information as my religiously or spiritually faithful Judeo-Christian compatriots are to unfamiliar ways of spiritual thinking (or a lack thereof).
I didn't relate other past experiences that in retrospect may have been subconsciously triggered/cultured by prior knowledge or understanding; even subconscious. A bullet, by nature, carries unique subjective psychological and emotional implications for everyone who knows what a bullet is. The imagination can make manifest many potent "experiences"; I've been there and metacognitively debunked most of my "supernatural" experiences, but a few are beyond explanation given what we (or I) know presently. I still don't believe in spirits, ghosts, heaven/hell/afterlife or any of that crap. I do know that my friend and I experienced something so obnoxiously unusual that there is no reasonable explanation for it; save there being some troglodytic misshapen "Igor" of a freak being kept chained secretly in a hidden space somewhere under the roof of the house which hasn't been occupied (by non-freaks) since the 1970s. Deep in the woods at 3 AM with the closest property being that of my friend, I sincerely doubt someone was playing an elaborate prank on us.
Stuff like this makes me firmly Agnostic. I really don't know, and anyone who presumes to know the true reality of the universe in it's entirety is full of BS. When I have people way less intelligent try to preach to me I laugh silently but am respectful. Usually they are great people who I like a lot, but... Sometimes; or even most of the time, I wish that I was as dumb as them and believed that the world was just as black/white and cut/dry as they think it is. Doesn't matter if they are born-again or militant atheists. They "have it figured out" and can move on without worrying about the uncertainties. Life would be a helluvalot easier if I could do that.