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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (11207)	4/13/2001 11:58:29 AM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 82486

There is a difference between similar and identical. While I can infer a great deal about the nature of birth, details about my actual birth will always remain a mystery to me and in a very real sense to everyone. My mother was on endorphines and my father can only rely upon his memory. Hospital records could be wrong, and most of the witnesses are dead. However, I'm comfortable with this type of knowledge regarding myself. For spiritual truths, it is simply beyond me how a transient form of life like us would be able to communicate timeless truths across the ages. It seems unlikely that a spiritual entity wouldn't have to provide new evidence of its existence to every generation and not just rely upon the flawed story telling of humans. The fact that there are so many stories of creation carried down through the generations and that they are all different in their details suggests that all are wrong, not that one is more true than any other. Testaments of faith are not even similar events from what I can gather. I've simply never had the types of conversional experiences I've had people relate to me. They seem very profound but not unlike the altered states that other people of different persuasions seem to have. So what am I, a scientifically oriented person, to infer? My reaction is that transcendental moments are a part of the human experience. There is a bit of a chicken and the egg component here. The chemistry of the brain is inextricably linked to the environment in which it operates and vice versa. People can have waking states that resemble psychotic breaks, yet be able to return to a baseline spontaneously. The reality transducer we call consciousness, doesn't arise from the brain per se, but the brain is an integral part of it. I wouldn't discount someone's reality any more than to say religiosity isn't a transferable quantity. But then neither is love or other emotions. I doubt that there is much universality in these kinds of experience other than in a general way. As a result of this observation, the feelings may not be as suspect as a hard-core cynic like X might feel they are, but they are necessarily suspect when applied externally to their source against the will of others. This summarizes my opinion. Believe anything you want, but leave me out of it. Hard to go wrong with that.