Magilum - Quite a meaningless post.

Why cant you guys speak without quoting any of the worthies. Dawkins and Dennet seem to be your prophets. Few others who keep featuring must be the angels. Is Hitchens another deity in your pantheon ?Can we have some original thinking or posts without support of these worthies.

You seem desperate for proof of god. Guess deep inside you believe in it. Do you feel excluded from the community of believers ? You seem to be inhibiting yourself , but there are no barriers to reaching god. I fear you have a mental disease where you feel bound and shackled by rationality, and express this in many meaningless posts. It must be a strong complex, jealousy about not reaching god and resulting into cries of despair.

Just free yourself and unshackle your mind. Evidence and Science is a booby trap. Come out of it and just crush your ego, the truth realization shall be fantastic, beyond description.

You too can get redeemed and join the faithful.

Lastly hope when you reply, you shall maintain the cool unlike last time when it went awry. For the same reason, suggest that dont reply immly, reflect on what we state, and reply. I will also understand if you dont reply at all.

Just keep nipping at my heels.

Venkatrajan,

Are you here solely for the purpose of finding threads on which you can proselytize?  You must be aware that it's against the rules.  Please, however, feel free to continue your actions as I would dearly like to see you banned so that you can't poison threads with your meaningless and (usually) stupid posts.

What are 'worthies'?  This doesn't even make sense.

Dawkins and Dennet are not prophets.  They are intellectuals who share a particular point of view with whom some Atheists happen to agree.  They have said some some quotable things.  Magilum may have said some quotable things.  Apparently, you have  and if you've looked at the signatures of other posters, you'd know this.  After all the times I've seen a response posted to your inane posts you can't possible actually think that there is a pantheon of deities Atheists worship.  I won't give you the benefit of the doubt, however, I'm just shocked that you can ignore, or are to stupid to understand, simple things.  Magilum's thought is original.  You really need to stop lying.  The quote from Hithens only serves to demonstrate his thought further and to set the reader up for the following elaboration.  Hitchens is not even the first person to have proposed such a thing.

I would not say that any Atheist is 'desperate' for proof of god.  I certainly wouldn't mind if a theist were able to give me proof.  That would certainly settle the debate.  I don't actively pursue proof of god because I don't believe the idea is even logically coherent (it actually isn't, and you'd know that if you weren't either stupid or good at ignoring things).  Besides, the burden of proof is not on the person with the negative claim, it's on the person making the extraordinary positive claim.  This is another thing that's been explained to you before.  No Atheist feels 'excluded' in the sense you mention.  There are no cries of despair, you poor fool, and what's written immediately before you write that is bullshit.

The rest of your post elicits laughter from me at least.  It's really quite funny that you appeal to other people to open their minds.  It's really quite funny that you ask Magilum to keep cool when it is you and no one else who has broken the rules.  Are you more than one person you ass?  What exactly are you trying to do with the use of 'we'?  Are you invoking god and suggesting that he's writing these things with you?  Has he so appealed to you, no possessed you, to ask Magilum to redeem himself and join the faithful?  This is rich!

If the moderators are as fed up with you as I am this will be your last post and you will be stopped from further harassing people on this forum and poisoning threads.  Oh, if you don't get the chance to reply at all, I'll understand. 

Translation: I didn't really read it and don't understand your position at all.

Why can't you speak without being condescending?

Have you tried reading some of the book pages like deludedgod's posts?

Why can't you speak without jumping to conclusions based on ignorance?

You seem desperate to look down on people who don't believe in your god.

Venkatrajan, please describe what you believe about god, perhaps in a thread somewhere or post a link if there is somewhere you've already stated it.

You seem to be inhibiting yourself, but there are no barriers to letting go of your belief in god. I fear you have a mental disease where you feel bound and shackled by irrationality, and express this in many meaningless posts. It must be a strong complex, jealousy about not reaching a state of thinking and resulting into cries of despair.

Translation: "Just believe like I do. (It will make me feel better about my own beliefs)"

Wait, wait, wait... you are the one claiming access to the amazing truths of the universe, and maglium is the one with the ego? Please stop projecting.

You too can begin to think and join the rational.

So three hours is plenty of time to reflect? Seemed sufficient for you.

In case you don't get it, the reason I've parroted you in several spots is to attempt to illustrate the fact that you aren't making any real arguments. Imagine two people having an argument and one person saying those things to the other. "Well, you disagree to much, you must really agree with me deep down inside." It's nonsensical and insulting.

-Triften

P.S. I apologize for the potentially awful formatting, the text box doesn't seem to be working properly on my browser. (Yes, I'm using Firefox.)

Venk is commiting the same fallacious reasoning associated most closely with "New Ageism". When we laugh at their claims because they are absurd and have no evidence, they actually project their emotions onto us and appeal for us to be "open minded". The word "open minded" does not mean: Believe whatever takes your fancy. An open-minded person is one who changes their beliefs in accorance with evidence, whose worldview is not based on tradition, authority, or their feelings, but instead what they can know and conclude about the world by proper epistemic methodologies. When I speak of proper epistemic methodologies, Venk is so far outside his epistemic rights that for him, the concept does not exist. Venk, there is obviously an enormous hole in your Fideistic sola fide rejection of epistemology, it is simply this:

quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur

It is most amusing to see the following from a theist.

Free your mind

Cast off your shackles

 Rationality and science are tools not shackles. A support from science and rationality helps to build an epistemological bsae for a good reason to believe in something.

The hypocrisy in Venk's comment reminds me of the following:

The trouble with [The Da Vinci Code] is that people may start to believe the fables within

-The Archbishop of Genoa

I am fed up with him. He never contributes anything, he never writes anything of quality. He deliberately invites insult and then berates people for being insulting. He cannot speak without being condescending and expects everyone else to reply in a calm manner. His prose is incoherent and often syntactically meaningless. He refuses to engage in real debate. He often refuses to read his opponent's refutation. He often selects a single line from a 2000 word response and decides to focus on that. He never quotes his opponent. He never reads the posts of his interlocutors. He asserts everything he says. He never does any research. His posts are a misery because they are often gramatically very poor. Bottom line, he has nothing to offer here. 

I second for a ban

That's a key difference between a rational view (and I don't pretend atheists have the market cornered on this, but I do think atheism is the rational position; which is a point I'm willing to argue) and one rooted in faith (understood as unconditional belief). I like explanations that are grounded in evidence or proven through repeated application, and can be explained step by step in great detail; and I like explanations that are elegant and efficient. Entire concepts can rarely ever be reduced to a quote, but quotes do summarize familiar ideas nicely. They can articulate a familiar idea attractively, or provide just a taste of a concept that invites one to learn more. The trouble with a hardcore theist view is that they have lives built upon books full of quips. And they're not shorthand for ideas that have been elaborated on elsewhere, they are in themselves assertions of reality, commands and judgements. From that perspective, it's no wonder that Dawkins quote, observing inanimate nature to be indifferent to us, seems more like a chilling instruction to them. But that's not how it is; it's just an observation on nature, not a moral command.

Unfortunately, while I agree totally, those may not be reason enough to see him banned.  I would they were.

As to Magilum's blog: I think you're right on the money. 

Well , Well, Well, so when a group of atheists are cornered, they raise their swords, Interesting.

Quote - I would dearly like to see you banned

I dearly would like you to be redeemed and freed from the shackles. I feel for you guys , shackled and trapped, unable to grasp the transcendental. It is totally obvious to us.  "Us" means Theists, god believers you idiot or you thought "us" was alien entities on a different planet.

Quote - They are intellectuals

LOL. They are egotists supreme euphemism for atheists. Their position seems to be " We are supreme because we are cracking the code of the Why and the How." If it was possible to  understand the language of monkeys in a chatter group, the chief and egotist monkey maybe saying the same thing. What difference is there between these guys and  monkeys , afterall we evolved from apes, have some extra intellect. No but your position seems to be adding a huge value to that extra intellect, so much that you stand on a pedestal and scream "No God , No God, only us".  

Quote - Magilum may have said some quotable things

LOL. A totally meaningless post. To whom is it meant for is what set me thinking. Every now and then , a new post seeemingly , but really targetted at no one and meaning nothing. A thousand ways of saying "God doesnt exist", "we are egotists" , " Thiests are fools" . Or do you guys write posts one after the other other, have some kind of round robbin arrangement and support one other. Is it emotional support to carry this cause forward and does this fulfil your life purpose ? Complete LOL.

Quote -  Magilum's thought is original

Oh . Oh . I must have missed a great and profound meaning somewhere deep inside what he said. I shall print a thousand copies and distribute to a group of intellectuals and have a great big group discussion and write a book on this after cracking what he postulates.

 Boss - This is complete bullshit. His daily and hourly prayer is "God doesnt exist" and the same is being said in myriad ways.  Maybe we should recommend a Booker and Nobel both to this extremely original thought which you seem to see in what he writes.

Simply Said - All of you are wasting thousands of words, mental faculties stretched to the wasteful limits, nerves thrilled and stressed to the extreme, fingers tired totally of typing net net net net only " God doesnt exist"

Quote -  would not say that any Atheist is 'desperate' for proof of god.  I certainly wouldn't mind if a theist were able to give me proof.  That would certainly settle the debate 

Again no one can miss a subconscious doubt and then call for the proof.  Deep inside you feel miserable Man. 

Quote -  further harassing people  

No one can harass you if you dont decide to get harassed. If you are harassed, you only have yourself to blame. Your ego gets offended, so you resort to swords.

Pitiable state man.  High school debaters waiting to pounce on anyone who wanders in the ring.  Suggest read a lot of scriptures of various religions. Will give you a purpose in life. 

Much of this is entirely inane. You barely make sense. The only point I can draw from this is that you would like to see me (and I assume you mean me personally) freed from what you term 'shackles'. I would like to see you banned for the reasons I've mentioned as well for those others have suggested. Please, if you do continue to post, lay off the figurative language. It's unimpressive and you're inept at its use.

That's not even a complete sentence!

This is not only mostly incoherent, you prove once again that you've failed to learn anything from any previous posts, if you've read any, and that you lack some of the most elementary education.

You're being nearly incoherent again. The only posts that have been meaningless are yours and this is something that has been pointed out over and over again. You've managed to 'thread-jack' Magilum's blog.

I've actually thought about how to respond to you and I don't really care anymore to waste my time. You're clearly intent only on disturbing every thread you post on and your posts are clear evidence of this; you're trolling now.

LOL, yeah. He's got it out for me. Too bad he's too FOB'd out and senile to do anything about it.

Venkatrajan,

Let me make this perfectly clear.  What you are doing is not debate, nor is it even productive conversation.  I have been watching you since your first post, and you have yet to answer anything that has been addressed to you.

You have simply continued to preach, ignoring everything contrary to your position.

You're welcome to stay if you are capable of adult discussion.  Right now, you sound like a teenager who's never had a real debate.

Consider this your first warning.

It's funny, when you spend time with California moderates, who don't really talk about their religions, and who generally just cherry-pick whatever makes them feel good from scripture, you forget about the depraved roots from which all these happy-go-lucky people ultimately derived their watered down dogma. The pedant in me wants to condemn them, "You don't even know what you're worshipping! Crack open that damn book and see!" But I'm glad that in practice they have recognized the benefits of secularism (I'd prefer if they examined their religions thoroughly enough to get past the cognitive dissonance, but that's another topic) and not shunned materialism (as opposed to dualism, not in the "I want a Bimmer" sense) and technology as a matter of principle.

So I forget that there are people out there that will get on their affordable and powerful computers, sign on to a high speed global communications network, and type a long diatribe about how limited and pointless science and technology are. I forget the sado-masochism of religion that betrays its roots as the survival mechanism of parasitic monastic classes. "You're worthless," so informs the priest, "You have a debt to pay, but I can help. You just have to do what I say for the rest of your life." To paraphrase A Clockwork Orange, it's the weak having a go at the strong (and the majority of the world is strong). They need to tear you down, because if values are left intact, relating to what is self-evident, there would be no scenario in which such mediocre people, as priests and theologians generally are, to have our ears, and have them with authority. An appeal to fear, an appeal to invented consequences, is all they have. The majority of people look down on cults; if only they recognized what a cult is, and applied that view uniformly.

Sorry folks, I'm a theist now. I didn't consider it valid at first, but hearing Pascal's Wager the 998 time did the trick. *Drools*

Did I miss something?  Is this real?  Well, you've got the 'Theist' tag to go along with your new position... how long will this last out? (I hope I don't hear the 998th use of Pascal's wager...)

Quote - Consider this your first warning.

Thanks . I am crouching now . My eyes wide open and body tensed, looking all around , fear in my mind.

My Dear Sir.

My reply to Magilum's post means the following if you have not understood :-

1.  To whom is his post targetted ? If he wanted only atheists to reply, maybe he could have gone to FTA.

2.  If not, I can reply and my reply is it is really old hash mixed up and served again as something insightful which it is not. Basically the same story " God doesnt exist, faith is just that , cant be proved " . He is not saying anything new , nor is he commenting on any new event or happening. He is probably self reflecting. Suggest you have a forum for self reflection , where he can post hourly, and you may remove the reply feature from it.

3.  My question , If I "troll" or "show incapable of adult discussion" , why do you reply and then feel bad about it.  Thomathy seems hurt and harassed. Dont reply at all. Infact Magilum's first reply to me was ok, he understood that he and me are on different poles and will not able to meet, He says something and I say something else, and both of us will stick on.

4. No but reply you have to and very frankly you guys use Science as an excuse to boost your superiority complex. It is evident all over the place. Rational you are and that makes you feel that others are incapable of discussion , so why do you reply at all. You dont own Science and neither has Science accorded to you a special privilege to trash religion , faiths , ridicule faithful people.

5. As much as I "Preach" , you "Preach" Science and that it is the only way forward. We dont agree at all.  

No, no, you've convinced me. After the 15th time you've told me to contemplate your not-quite-though-ESL ramblings, it finally clicked, and I've converted to religion. What religion? Well... in order to avoid special pleading, I've converted to EVERY religion. I am now omnireligious. To all the contradictions of the religions themselves, I now have their mutual contradictions to bolster the demand on my faith, and I unquestioningly oblige. Baaaahahahahah.

I really do welcome your replies Fobkatrajan, because I can only describe what's weak and insipid in religion, whereas you can demonstrate it. I feel like the vacuum cleaner salesman who doesn't have to bring his own dirt. You think you're helping your religion? Most people, theists or not, would see your words and think you were in the late stages of syphilis.

You're the "after" photo in a poster called "What does religion do to the brain?"

I want to note that I've never asked that the old bull worshipper be banned. Yeah, his whole shtick is projection, but he is a potent force for atheism. The sight of his ungainly, fumbling advances on the English language would make anyone feel creeped out in a way that defies description. That such petty, ignorant, unresponsive, arrogant, sado-masochistic gibberish could come from a Hindu has pretty much cured me of my Western guilt, and any illusion that the modern eastern religions are harboring a superior breed of believers. Between he, and the Dalai Lama's platitudes, and the New Agers I've dealt with, I'd repeat that the case against is made better by those still going through the motions.

Magilum - You are babbling incoherently.  Dont do this. It is bringing shame to your creed and fellow atheists. I dont want to take responsibility of turning you completely mad.

Ok let me try to 'debate' on what he states in the original post. Let me see if there are any gems in what he says.

Quote - What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." -- Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great

I dont agree.  This may hold true if a person says all electrons are made of living cells or if someone says Sun has life inside its outer core. But to use such a statement to berate the largest body of people on this earth who have one thing common other than they are Homo Sapiens ie they are religious , this smacks of lack of analysis on Hitchens part.

Hitchens probably came to this desperate conclusion as a last resort to refute religiousness.  Maybe you guys can explain what evidence would have convinced Hitchens and you guys.

Quote - Faith is not applied uniformly, generally favoring the assumptions of one's native culture.

True . Requires analysis why it is so. Large bodies of people in various countries are religious, but to explain the supernatural, they take recourse to their culture, history and mythology. This expresses  itself in different ways and different religions.  The fact that various people express and account for the supernatural in different ways probably amuses Rationalists and further makes them foolishly conclude that since there is no uniformity, it must be untrue.  Water in USA has the same structure as Water in Iran, so it is true to say it is H2O. But Islam and Christianity express supernatural in different ways , these two may have a completely different take on creation , so both are untrue. 

 This may not prove the local fables/myths, but doesnt necessarily disprove the supernatural. Lack of 'evidence' of the supernatural doesnt mean it is not there.

Quote - Religiosity is self-evidently not the default position at birth

Same is true for a person with Scientific temper. So doesnt lead to any conclusions , does it.  

Quote - The probability of a proposition is not unaffected by motivation to prove it: it shrinks in proportion to the gap between scrutiny and evidence. One person may fail to demonstrate a valid phenomenon; the failure of several billion people motivated to do so damns the proposition more than any dismissal.

There is an assumption here that several billion people are trying to prove something. It is incorrect. Infact you are trying to disprove their belief. If what you say  was true, you would have had a million Theists posting on this site.  By same analogy , Several billion people have failed to prove evolution and thus it stands damned.

What do you know about Hindus or Hindusim , my dear ?

Your rebuttal is based on an appeal to popularity, and is thus invalid. Would you care to make another rebuttal, or abandon your claim?

To what evidence do you refer? Evidence that there is no god? You make the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. Any positive claim requires positive evidence. Would you like to abandon your claim, or would you like to present an argument without a fallacy?

Lacking subject does.

No. For each and every version of religion on the planet, there is a logical fallacy at the foundation. Therefore, each and every religion is demonstrably invalid.

Furthermore, the very definition of religion, namely a belief system that relies on faith in something irrational, invalidates anything falling within that definition.

To use your own analogy, if a hundred different people each claimed that water was something other than H2O, we could, simply by the definition of water as H2O, conclude that all hundred people were wrong without the need to examine each case individually.

The incoherency of the definition proves it is not there.

Please read THIS ESSAY before continuing to display your ignorance.

False.

The scientific method is not inherently known at birth, but basic cognition and reliance on empirical evidence is inherent in humans.

This is mad! It's hard for me to even wrap my brain around what kind of insanity is necessary to write this kind of thing.

* Not one out of the billions of humans who've lived has proven any god or anything supernatural. Atheists simply point this out. We do not seek to disprove that which has not been proven. This is impossible.

* The fact that billions of people do not realize that they cannot prove their god does not absolve them of the logical responsibility.

* Truly, I can't even wrap my head around why you think we ought to have millions of theists posting here. I don't even know how to respond because it's possibly the most absurd thing anyone's ever written here.

* Evolution has been proven. It is proven daily, millions of times over. Oddly enough, it's proven by people who actually know what it is. These people are called scientists, and they're much different than you. Please read THIS ESSAY and THIS ONE before continuing to display your ignorance.

Ok. You now have a debate on your hands. Refute my points or abandon your claims.

Yes we come to the crux now.

1. We cannot give you evidence of the type you are familiar with for proving the supernatural.  I have said this in earlier posts. The moment I say this , you are likely to say so it is disproved. No.

2. The foundations of all Scientific theory is human senses. ie what we are able to see , hear , touch etc , measure and further use various experiments to run, evaluate, estimate , measure and then arrive at conclusions. These conclusions are true in themselves. I am not denying them at all.  (Including many parts of evolution theory)

3. But the supernatural is above this methodology. Only an  intuitive realization of it can be had currently by humans.  

4. Sorry - Cant prove it the way you likely 'see' things. But doesnt necessarily mean it doesn exist.

5.I have realized the supernatural.  I tried , reflected , and now am completely convinced about it.  Unless you try it out, you wont know. Again done even think physically here.

No.  I agree with you that it is unproven.  The debate is over.  You lose.   Unproven is different than disproven.  If you understood the burden of proof, you would see that there simply is no debate.

If you'd like to learn, you can read about it in this series of essays.  You need to read all seven, as you've displayed ignorance about topics in pretty much all of them.

Fine.

You didn't read the essays I suggested.  Until you demonstrate that you comprehend the arguments contained therein, I refuse to play this game with you.

Once again, you mangle the perceived problem of induction and the foundations of probability theory.  You can read about your ignorance here and here.

You are ill prepared for a debate because you don't even know the arguments of the side you are opposing.  You have demonstrated this clearly.  Educate yourself before demonstrating your ignorance again, please.

This is an argument from ignorance, an argument from anecdote, and a completely irrelevant statement to boot.  Your conviction has nothing to do with the complete lack of evidence for your assertion.

Friend is your proof reading should do kind.

I actually think we should keep Venk here. After all, rarely in such an argument is the desired effect to convince your interlocutors. Rather, it is to convince the audience that your opponent and hence their belief system, is moronic. I think Venk has been doing quite a good job of that himself.

Firstly:

Venk asserts that "Quid grateus asseurtur, grateus negatuer"
does not apply to "faith". From what I could discern from his English, it is because many, in fact most people, have such beliefs. This is an ad populum fallacy.

He also commits a special pleading fallacy. He asserts that the normal limits on human epistemology do not apply do positions of "Faith". Invariably, of course, this rejection of epistemology provides justification for any beleif that anyone may wish to hold, and then there is no way of discerning truth values of beliefs. Let me repeat: You are not within your epistemic rights to take things of faith! Faith, by definition, is a rejection of epistemology. This means that any claim X that takes my fancy has the same validity as a logical predicate that anything Venk could make up.

So how are we to discern truth from the rejection of epistemology? If the answer is "faith" this merely begs the question.

Venk also commited an ad ignorantium by arguing that supernatural cannot be disproved. This is not a valid reason for holding claim X to be true or false. The concept of supernatural can actually be dismissed a priori. The links provide, some of which are my own, have already established this.

Venk commited another special pleading fallacy by asserting that the supernatural was beyond human epistemology (which is quite limited). This is a special pleading fallacy. There is no good reason to hold a position if the conjecture is outside the limits of what we can coherently gather knowledge about. If there is no good reason to hold a position to be true...then I do not need a good reason to say that the position is false. I can dismiss it out of hand. Always, when we speak of epistemology, we need to consider four things:

How well do I know what is behind my own argument?

Am I aware of my opponents’ argument. Do I ignore that which refutes me?

Do I consider the ratio of evidence for my opponent’s view versus my own?

Do I consider what debunks what my opponent is propagating?

Venk does not concern himself with these things. IN fact, the propositons he holds are supposedly outside such epistemic necessities. This means he has no good reason to assign truth probablities to such claims. If we examine the heirarchy of truth claims as they conform to human epistemology, we cannot find such incoherent babble on the table:

The Table of the Heirarchy of Truth Probabilities in Human Epistemology:

Many people reject my outlined proposals and choose instead to take things of “faith”. However, faith is an epistemologically broken idea. BY definition, faith is the rejection of epistemology. You cannot gain any knowledge of the world through “faith”, the two ideas stand in mutual opposition. Nothing can be derived from “faith”. It is impossible to assign truth values to propositions, because we have no valid model upon which we can assign such probabilities. We come of course to the impossible problem of deciding what to take on “faith”. The vast majority of people inundated with “faith” are simply drilled with what their parents indoctrinated them with. Why is it that I cannot in a court of law decide the verdict on faith, I cannot test new pharmaceuticals on grounds of having faith in their working, yet when it comes to religious doctrines, faith is a perfectly acceptable grounds for holding a position? The unfortunate fact is, we are epistemically limited beings, we need methodologies by which we can gain knowledge and assign truth probabilities to claims.

Another special pleading fallacy is commited when Venk talks of certain positions being "beyond logic". This is an internal contradiction. There is no good reason for holding such positions, and there is a huge flaw in it: And yet, as Wittgenstein showed us in Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, the idea of "outside logic" is incoherent. We cannot talk of beings as being "outside of" or "transcendent of logic" it is conceptually garbled to speak of "beyond logic". I would go one step further and propose that even the very idea of "outside logic" presupposes logical constraints. Why? The ideas of "outside" and "inside" which is to say, set theory, of things being classed into discrete categories by which we may assign them property depend on the soundness of logic. Hence, the idea of a being "outside logic" is inherently contradictory, since if a being was "outside logic", it might also be "inside logic" or indeed, the whole notions of "outside" and "inside" would be meaningless. It makes no sense to refer to "outside logic" as if there were discrete sets of things being "logical" and "not logical" because the idea of such discrete sets presupposes a foundation of logic.

So Venk refutes himself.

Venk also commits an ad hominid by asserting that any and all form of argument against him is egotism. THis is not adressing the points made to counter him, and is a very poor attempt to hold arguments at arms length without adressing them.

I suppose we cannot be too harsh. India, after all, is the land of gurus and godmen, yogis, con-men, and extremely dangerous irrationality. THere is a good reason that I hold Prabir Ghosh in such incredibly high esteem. Ghosh is one of the bravest men I have ever met, 20 attempts on his life in the last 26 years from irrational faith-heads, and he continues to attempt to promote rationality and science in a nation which is so desperately in the clutches of Orthodox religion.

Conclusion? Let it stay in thread. We shall see how this amusing escapade turns out.

Guys  - I am realizing I am speaking to philosophers in a closed room which they have locked from inside , but refuse to open up and further scream at the top of their voice that their world is limited to the room and nothing is outside. 

Quote - Rather, it is to convince the audience that your opponent and hence their belief system, is moronic. I think Venk has been doing quite a good job of that himself

Rather quick to conclude, arent we here . DG - I find you to be an intelligent high school debater. But. The but here is very critical.

But you have limited your sources of knowledge. Now I am convinced that you or Hambydammit havent even comprehended the depths of what has been stated earlier and maybe never comprehend in this lifetime.  Self realization , Intuitive realization thus obviously doesnt seem to find place in the hierarchy of truth probabilities given by you.  I and other Vedanta experts place  it right on top of the grid shown by you.

Quote - He asserts that the normal limits on human epistemology do not apply do positions of "Faith". Invariably, of course, this rejection of epistemology provides justification for any beleif that anyone may wish to hold

Very unwittingly , you have said it yourself. "Normal limits of human epistemology  " .  I had assumed you to be a philosopher who has carefully checked all the sources. But I presumed wrongly I guess. I thought that you would have researched beyond the 'normal limits' to arrive at your stand.  Here is again the crux. This is the self created barrier for most rationalists. Cant help you if you havent ventured beyond.

Quote - There is no good reason to hold a position if the conjecture is outside the limits of what we can coherently gather knowledge about. If there is no good reason to hold a position to be true...then I do not need a good reason to say that the position is false. I can dismiss it out of hand. Always, when we speak of epistemology

Quite a ridiculous assertion this.  Sir. You havent even tested or tried  self realization and intuitive realization. You as in yourself maybe have no reason to hold the position, but are foolishly generalizing.  

My dear Science trap man - We have gone beyond and realized it. So we hold the position commonly called faith by you. In fact faith becomes a misnomer here for the supernatural , since it has been realized and completely evidenced.  However this cant be evidenced to you as you likely 'see' things . If you limit yourself, which is what I have been calling the Science trap all along, you cant comment on it not being there.

 A bacteria in the stomach of a human will always assert that its universe is the stomach. There is nothing beyond at all. You are the bacteria here as an analogy.

Your epistemology essays are true to the limit of what can be seen , heard , touched, estimated , deduced , or whatever your collective knowledge pool can be called.

Please study Vedanta for once and refute it if you can. There are lots of material to start with . and exponents. No dearth of them also Nisargadatta Maharaj , Swami Ramana Maharishi , Swami Parthasarathy. You may go to the 8th century and read Adi Sankara who was great exponent or others like Ramanujacharya , Chinmayananda, Sri Aurobindo.  There are many umpteen others . In fact Swami Viveknanda took the USA by storm in the 19th last century.

"Prabir Ghosh" . I lastly realize your knowledge of India is completely limited. Not worth commenting.

You don't need "faith" or "intuition" to acquire knowledge. As a matter of fact, they can't be used at all. They are only words used after the fact to reinforce beliefs that don't make any sense.

Prepare to scoff, but READ WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY.

I don't believe in Christmas elves, the Easter Bunny, or unicorns. This is considered reasonable. Rational. Acceptable. I don't believe in them because there would be no foundation for such a belief. But could I, at that point, persist in such a belief, asserting that I have "faith"?

I know what you're thinking: "But it's not the same. Faith means more than that."

Does it? Alright, I'll let you have whatever else you think it is. Personally, I would wager that the only reason you think this is because you've considered the word "faith" to be sacred for so long that you have difficulty thinking it's not. But my opinion on that matter is beside the point.

Whatever ELSE you think faith is becomes irrelevant, because faith is still---despite whatever the other aspects may be---a belief in something with no foundation in reason.

Think about it.

Faith and reason are not equal. They are opposite. For instance, you could not say "I believe because of faith AND reason" or even "faith and reason are compatible". You can't do that. Here's why:

If you have a rational reason to belief (i.e. direct or indirect empirical evidence/inferences) then you don't require faith to belief. If you had reasonable arguments, faith would be completely unnecessary! You'd have such profound proof, why would you need to support your claim with faith?

When I say that I refuse to have faith in God based on faith, it is but one part of a larger statement, which is that I refuse to believe in [insert whatever you like here] based on faith.

The only way that you can vindicate faith is by proving that human reason is somehow incapable of understanding some fact of reality (which you can't do, and even if you did, it would only cripple you instead of helping you).

Faith is not a means to truth. It is a either cop-out, or else it latches itself to the rational world and claims to be rational itself.

But it is not rational. Faith is a part of the rational world in the same way that a barnacle is a part of the shipping industry.

You can have faith if you want, it's just not rational.

You ignored 80% of what I wrote. You ignored my refutation of the idea of "beyond logic". Could you please not focus on two lines of an entire response?

You have not demonstrated a good reason for knowledge ot be gained throug "intuitive realization". Remember an insignificant little book called An Enquiry Into Human Understanding? All knowledge, one way or another, is derived from experience, but as you fail to understand, that is not good enough. To understand the mechanisms which generates the experience (such as those you call "transcendental"

You said that "intuituve experience" should be above tautology in the table. This made me laugh so hard I almost choked.

I presume you already read my refutation of the idea of "beyond logic". At any rate, immediate experience per se is not a valid method of gaining knowledge of the underlying mechanism behind the experience. This is so obvious a child could grasp it.

This is something critical to consider: When we discuss immediate-world epistemology, we refer to deriving knowledge of things based on experience, but sense of your immediate world is derived from an a priori reasoning foundation with a posteriori knowledge complementing it. You can gain absolute knowledge only through direct empiricism. Upon this, are built the methods of indirectly inquiring into the empirical world, and drawing conclusions. However, immediate experience is not valid grounds for holding conclusions which can only be drawn from indirect empirical methodology. If I experience drinking water, I am not suddenly in possession of the necessary knowledge to conclude that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. For conclusions to be drawn about the phenomenon behind the experience in question, the experience per se is not valid grounds for deriving such knowledge! Personal experience can only give us direct knowledge of the immediate world. We cannot draw upon mechanisms as a result.

I see you quoted me but failed to actually answer the question, which was how one derives knowledge from "intuitive realization". The problem I presented, which you ignored, is that, of course, this knowledge is derived from experience, so many people may come to "intuitive realizations" which are mutually contradictory to other "intuitive realizations" held  by other people, such as those of different faith. And here is where the problem of Faith lies: It is not an epistmic justification for anything. How do you discern truth from the numerous mutual contradictions that will arise from people having different "intuitive experience"? You can't. THere is no justified way of doing it. I can insist that X has validity because of intuitive realization. Contra, you can say that Y has validity for the same reason. THere is no way to assign probabilities to truth claims under your epistemilogical model, and that primarily, is why I reject it. Since the "intuitive experience" simply seems to be directly correlated to whatever religion their parents taught them, it is highly suspicious as a model. Please respond.

When you speak of "intuitive experience", do you always consider the following four things?

1) What evidence?

2) What refutation?

3) Evidence for other explanations?

4) Refutation of other explanations?

You have to. Know why? If we forget any one of these, then our methodology for making inferences based on our empirical knowledge is flawed, because we will be selectively recruiting facts from the empirical world when we design our methodology to test our proposition. This, in effect, was Karl Popper’s answer to the Problem of Induction, and no methodology can be complete without this, without falsification. Many people, unfortunately, choose, when examining propositions, for whatever reason, to focus only on what verifies it. This is called the verificationist error.

The fact is, I can demonstrate reasons why the epistemological model I put forth is valid. YOu have just asserted, without good reason, that "intuition" is a valid model. It is not. Direct experience per se does not allow me to conclude what is behind the experience. That would be a non sequitur.

Are you going to respond properly this time?

Can you coherently define "transcendental"? If not, it can be rejected a priori.

Of course, it has already been discussed why supernatural, as a concept, is linguistically broken. With the collapse of logical positivism, it seems there is a renewed interest in metaphysics. While it is quite naïve and overly restrictive to say that “cognitive meaning” can only be derived from testing (also, positivism generally does not stand up to the four criteria listed above, with an overt focus on verificationism) it is nonetheless an inescapable conclusion that any word which attempts to refer to an existent thing necessitates that the word describe properties of what the existent thing is. Unfortunately, as has already been outlined, it does not meet this cretira. So, it can be rejected on a priori grounds. While I reject positivism, along with contemporary analytical philosophy, I still find myself returning to Wittgenstein’s famed quote in Tractus:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world

Tier I of epistemological foundation of models of the world is characterized by your immediate world. You gain knowledge of such a world through your immediate senses. You make sense of this world through an a priori foundation that comes from experience but is not derived from it. The knowledge of the empirical world is derived from your senses. You can only know, in terms of absolutes, what your immediate experience tells you. However, this is not a satisfactory model for gaining knowledge about the world, because it severely limits what we can know about the world, it limits what we know to what we can absolutely know. You cannot, through such a framework, conclude in the nature of the experience without a model built upon that. You are human, and therefore, limited in your epistemology.

You assert a "self-created" barrier. It is not self-created. It is a barrier of human epistemology. You are the one who has to demonstrate that your model is valid.

You spoke of evidence. What type of evidence? Experience per se is not evidence for that which underlies the experience. Are you too dense to grasp this? That is so basic.

Do I get to reccomend books now?

Philosophical Explanations by Robert Nozick, the Tractatus of Ludwig Wittgenstein, An Enquiry Into Human Understanding by David Hume.

None of us have a “God’s eye view”. We cannot view the world as a set of objective absolutes about which we may derive knowledge, because our means for gaining knowledge are not objective in and of themselves. Hence, when we speak of empirical truths, we cannot speak of “Truth” with a capital “t”. A claim is either true or false, that is the law of the Excluded Middle, but epistemology of empirical claims concerns itself with whether or not we can know for absolute whether or not a claim is true or false, and by what methods we determine the validity or invalidity of claims about the universe.

If your claim were at the top of the heirarchy above tautology, that would mean that the probability of it being "true" would be greater than 1. That is absurd. However, to consider this:

What exactly do you mean when you speak of your intuitive experience as "true"? By which you mean that it is "true" that the experience is outside the empirical world. Thats impossible, since all knowledge, in one way or another, is derived or comes from experience, and experience relies on the empirical world. An internal contradiction is commited when anyone speaks of "transcendantal". It is incoherent (as Wittgenstein showed in the Tracatus) How do you derive such a probability? From the experience per se? That is invalid. There is no good epistemic foundation for doing that.

Pardon the digression, but I just wanted to note this:

 deluded god wrote:

An established mathematical relationship between things which is considered to be of a more elevated status of truth claim than a scientific theory.  (see the table for "Law (Science)" above)

 This is a little bit inaccurate, however many people make this misconception, which is why I felt it would be important to point this out.

A Scientific Law attempts to DESCRIBE some natural phenomena.  A Scientific Theory attempts to EXPLAIN a natural phenomena. They aren't really in the same hierarchy, compared to Theory v. Hypothesis, for example. 

Consider gravity:

The "law" portion would be: Objects in space are attracted to each other with force equivalent to the product of their masses, inversely proportional to their distance of separation.

The "theory" portion would be: Gravity is caused by distortions in the space-time continuum. The more massive an object, the more it distorts space-time. (The "bowling ball on a bed" example works here)

Now, you might be talking about something a little bit different here, since you're referring to the "probability of being true" - in which case I would agree that most Scientific Laws are typically more likely to be true simply because they are more simplistic and directly describe some aspect of nature. 

Similarly, a Scientific Theory's likelihood of veracity is proportional to the evidence in support of it plus the inverse of the tests that DON'T disprove it. (After all, science is in the business of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at theories to test their mettle).

I guess all I'm saying is that I tend to agree with what you said in your post except that I felt the wording was a little unclear. (Nice post, aside from that) 

[ For quick reference, check wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory ]

Quote – You have not given good reason for knowledge to be gained through intuitive realization.  

What you experience in your consciousness through senses and further derive  is not the ultimate truth of reality as in Being  or knowledge both. So we differ in the very basics at this point.  I am talking ontology and epistemology both here.

How have you assumed that what you experience through your consciousness is the truth (ie what you see is really what is there in front  of you and what you touch is really in touch with you ? ).  This sensory experience is proven to be untrue or illusory when you get an intuitive realization of the Inner Self of yourself .  When this realization happens , you know that the Self is within you and outside you and pervades the universe. It is the substratum in which you get illusions of the objects of the objective world in your day to day existence.

Thus the ‘truth or knowledge’ that we get by empirical means is a lower level of truth or a ‘lesser’ truth. Truth itself is at various levels as far as we are concerned.   The lowest level of truth is the events in our dreams, which though we believe to be true when we are sleeping gets disproved when you wake up. But we wrongly assume that the waking experience is the real truth which is not. It is just one more stage of illusion to the next level of  truth which you ‘get’ intuitively when the Self Realization occurs.  The one big difference is that your dreams are unique to you , but your waking up perceptions are shared by others also. But this only falsely reinforces the idea in our mind that while we are awake, that is the true state .

Thus normally humans fail to explore levels of truths beyond this stage. So objectivity or duality of the subject and the object remains deeply ingrained in us.

However deeper introspection and efforts leading to the Realization of the Self reveals that there is a next level.

Note the Self Realization actually occurs , is possible if there is sufficient endeavour. It is the progress of your Being to the next level of Being there is.  The supernatural divinity is completely evidenced here.  The process is esoteric as much as a complex scientific theory. This is the philosophy of Vedanta of Nondual Reality.

What you mention here as ‘experience’  is the total  realization in all its wonderous awe of the truth of the Being there is (thus all sensory and empirical knowledge becomes realized as illusion at once , a lower level of truth ) . You don’t need senses here at this stage.

As I said , it is esoteric.  You probably laughed and choked because you probably are unable to imagine this currently.

Idealism was a close enough philosophy , but still was based only on  first a thought and conjecture. But Vedantins (people who are exponents of Vedanta) have first realized this themselves and then explained to others.   The truths and the processes to realize this are clearly explained in the Vedas  Upanishads and other commentaries subsequently.

I repeat that your current model of epistemology is valid for truths at a lower level, but nevertheless these truths get proven illusory when the Self realization occurs

An existence which is above the normal existence of this objective world is transcendental.  However the next level of the transcendental Being described above neednt be the last level. There is no reason to reject the ‘existence’ of  higher levels of Beings which even the next level to us may find illogical by its reasoning.

The Nondual reality cannot be described by most humans, since firstly few have realized this. But the numbers are increasing. Secondly since it is all pervading , it thus  encompasses Space/time also.  I can myself say it is all pervading , lacks any kind of form that one may imagine , but is ever present and  omnipresent. Space and Time get any meaning only when we exist in  our current objective state as a Subject separate from an Object. But in the Self Realized state , you as a Subject merge with your Self Consciousness which you realize is also the Object , which  further reveals to you that it is everywhere , outside your body limits which your senses have placed on you.  So there is no space and no time also. You are everywhere at all times. However the lack of a description leads others to conclude that it cannot exist  which is wrong.  It has to be realized first to know what it is.

This is semantically meaningless. It is incoherent to speak of such things. There is no meaning behind a predicate which attempts to refer to something as existing without referencing positive property. This, in effect, means I can reject it a priori since the proposition belongs to ontological category Ø. It was summed up by Wittgenstein and WV Quine:

No Entity Without Identity -WV Quine

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world -Ludwig Wittgenstein

If your assertion breaks the Axiom of identity, as it has, then it commits an internal contradiction. Then it can be dismissed a priori. 

If you assert that it is "beyond contradiction" you refute yourself again, since Wittgeinstein pointed out in the Tractatus that such statements are untenable. I already pointed this out (four times in a row). You are also commiting a special pleading fallacy.

Either way, you cannot escape the vice of axiom, no matter how hard you try. Its like quicksand. The harder you try...the more effectively you refute your own propositions. So, since your proposition leaves S=set Ø is cannot be worked with. 

This is ontologically meaningless since it breaks the Axiom of Identity. It is complete and utter nonsense, since it cannot coherently reference the notions it attempts to reference per the axiom of identity, this means it breaks the associated contrainsts upon language, which is the a priori limit to any epistemological model, whether you like it or not.

“Pan-Consciousness” is ontologically absurd and begs the question: It was crushed by functionalism and epiphenomenalism. It has no ontological status. It is process, not entity, and hence the view of it being the underlying highest ontological status is absurdity of the highest degree. Having established the consciousness is a lower ontological status than the material, your point is destroyed by reductio ad absurdum.Pan-consciousness begs the question of existence since it does not answer the question of what it means to be conscious. Regarding consciousness being a higher ontological status, I have already established that the alternative is inherently absurd, which is why your assertion that an entity could be conscious without thought is equally absurd. While consciousness is not necessary for thought, thought is necessary for consciousness. The ball is in your court to establish how this process could possibly be a higher ontological status than the material despite that all the evidence points in the opposing direction. You are facing a vast leviathan of contemporary Western Philosophy of Mind and Neurophenomenology. This position is old and outdated and, ironically, two opposing schools crush it (functionalism and epiphenomenalism). Consciousness is a property which can only be held by neurologically complex beings. This is why only a handful of organisms have the property of being self-aware (please do not make another Affirming the Consequent Fallacy by misconsterueing this relationship as reciprocal again). If consciousness were a higher ontological status, such a view would inherently beg the question. If consciousness is C, then talk of ~C is absurd under this proposition, yet ~C clearly exists. There are entities whose existence is such that it cannot be conceived as to what it would be to perceive through this entity because this entity has no capacity to perceive itself as being. That function requires neurological complexity. I also pointed out that such an entity would require the ability to neurologically make the distinction between that which is perceiving and that which is being perceived. And I explained such perceptive mechanisms in molecular detail hence establishing that only certain neurologically complex beings could posess them. Your argument can be destroyed by reduction ad absurdum since definining C requires a dichotomous distinction between that which is being perceived and that which is doing the perceiving. In this regard, your point about subject/object bias is a Red Herring since it fails to account for the absurd point you made. If there is no ~C, then the existence of C as ontologically discrete process begs the question. Hence, the idea of consciousness as a the highest ontological category is absurd since it denies, effectively, the existence of consciousness. (it begs the question as to what consciousness is, if it cannot be defined as C, since by that definition ~C=Ø, which means that the idea of consciousness being coherent at all is inherently absurd. We can conclude that consciousness requires the requistes of existence which you postulated as requiring consciousness, which I refuted, and you did not acknowledge, hence making your entire argument a stolen-concept fallacy. The idea of Pan-consciousness is easily reduced to the absurd because by it, C is not anything meaningful QED, It refers to nothing to say it is the highest ontological status. It is philosophically absurd, and indeed, refutes itself. Most functionalists and emergentists regard it as a lower ontological status than the material without which the process cannot be. The problem with ~C= Ø is the nature of the causal relationship of If ~A, then ~B, therefore if necessarily B, then necessarily A. For consciousness, the relationship has been established as reversed: It requires thought, self-awareness, and a powerful neurological engine. Furthermore, it is a process existing in degrees in entities or not at all. We do not know how it works but we do know that it is neurologically discrete, which is to say that obviously ~C= Ø is ridiculous. Allow me to remind you of the emergentist position:

One of the things I covered in the other essay (albeit not with this specific terminology) is the concept of ontological orders. We have higher ontological status and lower ontological status. The lower ontological status arises from the higher ontological status. A finger is a higher ontological status than a working hand. A fermion is a higher ontological status than a quark, and a quark higher than a proton, and a proton higher than an atom. In other words, the concept of an ontological status requisites materialism. Not necessarily reductionism because it can also encompass emergentism but it does necessitate that beings exist due to the existence of higher ontological status. Eventually, according to the grand unifying theory of physics, we keep going back and we eventually hit the highest possible ontological status, the absolute substance (or perhaps lack thereof) from which all is composed.

Emergentism is an arm of materialist philosophy. Many naturalists regard consciousness and the mind as an emergent property of the brain. Some others hold that the mind can be divided and is hence, with respect to the whole brain, reductionist, not emergent. I am sympathetic to a middle ground position . Obviously when we reduce the system to a certain degree, we find the property which we were examining in the first place disappears. Hence to some degree the two positions of emergentism and reductionism are valid and mutually reconcilable in much the same way that empiricism and rationalism are reconcilable. In fact, I do not think there has been a “pure” empiricist or rationalist since the days of Immanuel Kant. Likewise, the materialist philosophy does not usually find one taking a pure stance on emergentism or reductionism.

Reductionism does not say that X does not exist, merely that it is a lower ontological category than its constituents Y and Z. Emergentism says that X exists of its own accord due to a synergistic effect between Y and Z. The latter can be invoked to explain many phenomenon from a materialistic perspective, especially consciousness and the mind. Regardless, any dualist asking for a materialist to explain abstract X is revealing their own unsurprising ignorance of materialist philosophy. Abstractions in this context are merely what a reductionist would call lower ontological categories that result from increasingly complex systems, or what an emergentist would call the result of synergistic effect in the system. Emergentist materialism is extremely important in my work, since one of the things I study is enzyme kinetics, drugs and medicine, where synergistic interplay is extremely important. The same logic which causes a Calcium Channel blocker and a Beta Blocker to work better together to lower blood pressure than the mathematics of their individual workings would have us believe is the same logic that may give rise to abstractions from material systems. In other words, this may cover thoughts, emotions, rationality etc. To a reductionist however, we can explain these in terms of direct reducibility to their electrophysiological activity in corresponding neurons. Regardless of which position you take, the abstract, the thought, is still generated.

There are clearly entities for whom we can imagine have no concept of being. You also commit a fallacy of non sequitor by misconstruing neurological relationships as reciprocal (ie A then B therefore B then A), which is to say that while a being need necessarily not be conscious to have thoughts, it does require that it can have thoughts before it can be conscious, the same with the perception of subject/object. This is not a reciprocal relationship. A being requires preexisting neurological complexity before consciousness may arise, not vice-versa.

as Paul Drayper put it:

To sum up, your statements can be rejected a priori not merely because they are nonsense, but because they break Quine's Ontological Law:

No Entity Without Identity -WV Quine

This is a stolen-concept fallacy since it requires the presupposition the validity of empiricism as a method of gaining knowledge. There is truly no way, no matter how much metaphysical nonsense you generate, to escape from David Hume's merciless logical attack on the gaining of knowledge through any other means except the empirical of the immediate experience. None. He has you locked in a vice-grip. 

Also, since your terms are undefined, could you clarify them in relation to the Kantian

Or, if you reject Kant's dichotomy, which position do you take? Quine's? And if so, what would you say about the predicates of your statements, since I cannot discern coherency from them. If they are synthetic a priori what is the necessary ground for holding them? 

You commited another stolen concept fallacy by asserting that the epistemic model was only valid up to a certain point. This invalidates itself. Recall the basics from A Critique of Pure Reason by Kant:

All knowledge comes from experience yet not all is derived from it...

Your model doesn't fit. Its like trying to shove a square block into a very round hole.  

  Quote - This is semantically meaningless. It is incoherent to speak of such things. There is no meaning behind a predicate which attempts to refer to something as existing without referencing positive property. This, in effect, means I can reject it a priori since the proposition belongs to ontological category Ø. It was summed up by Wittgenstein and WV Quine: No Entity Without Identity -WV QuineThe limits of my language mean the limits of my world -Ludwig Wittgenstein 

Are you too deeply analyzing the position put forward by me and further without understanding the depth of it, comparing with stands taken by various philosophers some of whom have created confusion by their  language usage (unwittingly perhaps) . Kant the great philosopher is the foremost example and till date people are trying to sort out certain of his assertions.  Though Kant clarified that information gets processed in the mind in various categories leading to grasp of the way things can perhaps be (thus sense perception gets  moulded  by categories of understanding in the mind) , we also don’t know  what Kant really meant when he was apparently ‘found creating paradoxes’   now and then in his works . But we grant  Kant the benefit of doubt , we may have understood something else and from Kant’s own standpoint , he may have had a total unity of thought (ie nothing contradictory) .  There is no doubt   language has been a devil in philosophy. 

However Kant probably came closest to the possibility of an intuition which might reveal nature of things.  He  also  failed largely to explain how the categories could get created in the mind , were we born with it or is there another background which aids this.

I also sense in your comment here an added subconscious prejudice (You already believe in something very strongly) acting in your mind , due to which you are unable to understand clearly something which in truth is supremely simple but not so self evident. To understand the nature of this reality, one needs extreme profundity of thinking detached from all baggage of sense experience related phenomena as well as the constructs resting over sense phenomena.   The ‘realness’ of this reality once you have grasped conceptually  in its unity will propel you instantaneously to go towards realizing the same yourself. Please note the philosophy here is first tried, tested , realized and then propounded rather than thought of by and expressed first as with most Western Philosophers.

Coming to “no entity without identity :-  Don’t agree at all here. Reveals limitations.

Philosophy cannot take for granted Science and Logic. This is the biggest mistake you make. Science and Logic are constructs of human faculties to explain apparent perceptions.  There are  observations , theories, experiments  and ‘proofs’. All of it understood and constructed by ourselves. But  why should one wrongly assume that Philosophy and its assertions need to account for these and further that any metaphysical assertion or proposition needs to be scientifically validated.   You will also note that the greatest Philosophers were from an era before today’s  significant advancement of Science and Technology.  Why is there a lack of top Philosophers now and why are we still unable to account for much now ? Is Scientific development and the community in totality  creating a barrier to philosophical pursuit or is it making a mockery of the entire persona of a Philosopher who thinks daringly different because he needs to think differently. These are questions you need to answer since you quote Science extensively.

Coming back to the Reality and Quine , if you are a minute part of a huge universal being / cosmic divine substratum, you cannot express it in words. That doesn’t mean that an entity doesn’t ‘exist’ or cannot exist.   The axiom invalidation which you refer to , the meaningless Ontological State  that you refer to and seemingly similar contradictions to Logic or  reasoning etc will not be applicable to a Being Transcendental as far as we are concerned.   This is because all that is happening is happening in its substratum , within itself.  As far as it is concerned, it is the doer, the witness, the bearer, the all encompassing one, the causation , the seer of effects, everything that can be imagined by us.  If we ourselves are part of a Cosmic Being , these laws valid and true for us neednt apply to that Being.  If we die, we die singly, IT doesn’t die. If we see sunlight and feel hot, IT doesn’t see sunlight and feel hot, because these are also minute parts of the same Being.  The above is what is called various Levels of Truth. Truth is not  one single absolute finality. It is true in its frame of reference, but is untrue in another.  On a glance at Nature , the fact that there are various levels of truth is glaringly evident.

The word Ontology was used in my previous post to help you conceptualise this.

An analogy  perhaps to clarify further the Universal supreme being  :-

What are you ? You are composed of billions of cells. At a cellular level, a cell doesn’t know (if it were to know) it is part of a unity of a huge , complex system. However it is part of an extremely complex system which if viewed separately as discrete cells doesn’t give a picture of unity , but when combined with all other cells, gives unity as our Being. The same carries forward to the universe. The supreme Universal being is a very complex Unity of which we are a small part. You and me view ourselves separately just as a cell views another cell as separate from itself. But  looking from the person’s  point of view, both the cells are part of the same being, similarly we both are part of a universal being whose unity we fail to comprehend , since we see ourselves as discrete and not in unison.

The universe and the nature with its randomness of certain events coupled with regularity of certain other events confuses us to think that there is no interrelation amongst all the elements comprising it.  But viewed at a cosmic level, there is the Divine Absolute which is controlling all processes within it (we are minute elements in it , much like  bacteria in the stomach or individual cells) and whose unity we can comprehend in an intuitive Self Realization . This is a process, esoteric now as it is, but still a process and can be realized by us.

I think a lot of confusion arises because the term consciousness and further I can see you have understood what I mean as the Self or Self Consciousness with the conventional understanding and definition of the word.  The Consciousness can mean varying things to lot of people.  Conventionally consciousness can be an awareness of Thoughts , Perceptions , Surrounding environment  , Ideas, and awareness of existence at given instant .  However the confusion arises since you and others take all this collectively .

The awareness of existence is most fundamental as compared to the remaining  awarenesses.  While the others may be sense dependent and / or be a result of processes of the mind , the existence of the awareness alone is an intuition. Your detailed essays and the thoughts of Drayper/ Tooley etc refer to the other awarenesses, thus though true , not valid for the Self.   A short meditation session will reveal that the awareness is of nature of an  intuition and not a thought or feeling. It is commonly understood that we have intuitions rarely. Though true , we fail to realize that the most fundamental aspect of our existence is through an intuition . 

Hume , the doubter. Hmmm.

Hume doubts the truth of all knowledge that we gather . A complete doubter of all and everything, except his own proposition. He contradicts himself.  He  should have first doubted his proposition which is in nature of doubt of all knowledge gathered. Gets negated.

Kant came very close to  philosophy and its problems . Undoubtedly a great philosopher.   He took a politically correct and also daring view of his times that while one cant get to know of true nature of things and that this applied to both God/Soul and Scientific knowledge. He sort of gave acceptance to both in separate types , just stopping short of saying that the conflict will continue. But he also indicated that both might be true in themselves possibly. Only one cant account for the other. He just needed to expand the concept of Intuition, but was sadly lacking in the personal experience of the Self.

I am not responding to you until you use a decent font scheme. Seriously, stop with the thick bright highlights, its impossible to read and even harder to undo when responding. Just use white on black like everyone else.

DG Sorry, I realized after posting, will try to take care

regards 

Venk, the experience you describe, this "intuitive realization", the way you describe it involves mechanisms which neuroscientists already understand, since the LeDoux and Greenfield models. I will explain it to you in greater detail, but the experience you describe, about the loss of sense of self, and the sense of time, and this explosive experience, is actually caused by a very specific neural correlate. I will explain it to you later. It has to do with the synaptogenesis overturn rate, and the associated action and inverse tug-of-war between the electrolytics of neurons and the transmitters which are involved in molecular ligand with receptors embedded in dendrites in the gap with the axon (the synaptic cleft), many things can cause this, including extreme overproduction of this molecule:

Serotonin, a critical neurotransmitter which can aid the junction of action potentials in reasonable levels, or impair conduction at very high levels due to its adverse affect on the ability of neurons to pump potassium out of the channels (effectively de-electrolyzing the neuron) 

However, it can also be caused by drugs which perform a function called transmitter masking, since the associated inability of transmitters to perform the receptor interaction due to the imposter effect of opiates (or in the case of lithium, ions) means that the neurons become more resistant to synaptogenesis.

The point is, the experience you describe is well understood by neurophysiologists, albeit imperfectly understood. It is also correlated with Tripartate theory, albeit a newer model of it, associated with the idea of the Id restrained by the ego restrained by the superego (with correlates in the stem, pons medullas, amygdala, and cerebral cortex respectively) where conscious awarness and an associated structured logical world are functionally computed by the cortex, and the extreme over-production of neurotransmitters of functional masking drugs have an effect where the synaptic overturn rate is so high that the brain cannot comprehend the notion of logical abstraction and hence the experience you describe is generated. A wide variety of drugs can do this (either by functional masking or transmitter stimulating) including opiates, tryptamines, dopamine, serotonin (in high levels) and certain (unidentified) neural peptides. The neural effects of the experience due to the inability of logical abstraction include the loss of sense of self, time, memory, logical sequentiality of the world. I really would not call the experience "intuituve realization", rather, from my training in physiology, I would call it "tripping".

Consider a similiar case study: The same function you refer to of the loss of the restraint of the Ego can be contradistinctivelly considered by a rather less pleasant experience: Lesch-Nyhan's syndrome. Lesch-Nyhan causes a mutation in the primitive second-tier of the brain, at the brain-stem, where locomotive signals are fired. There are two distinct effects of signal-crossing in the midbrain. The first is that a Lesch-Nyhan child is spastic and assumes an odd “fencer” position, as appearing with one leg diagonally bent and the opposite arm crooked backwards. The second effect is that the midbrain is deranged and the insane signal-firing causes it to “cross” signals with the neocortex. The effects are ghastly. In a fight between the primitive brain and the conscious neocortex, the primitive brain always wins, it has simply been there for a longer course of evolutionary history, it is more ingrained, it overrides the higher functions. Hence, the deranged vertical dividing of the Lesch-Nyhan brain causes the sufferer, during bouts or “attacks” when the signal firing goes berserk, to attack the people around him (always him, girls, having two X chromosomes, cannot get Lesch-Nyhan), and causes intense writhing and seizure-like convulsions. The most brutal effect of this is autocannibalism, the thrashing of the facial muscles causes the boy to eat away their own face, they will often rip out their own palate with their teeth and most of their lip flesh as well. For their own protection, they often have their teeth extracted.

I don't think it's about feeling isolated from believers, but more to do with being stigmatised for not believing in a religion that has managed to spread itself into the mainstream culture and become the de facto position through an ingrained form of intimidation, and for many years as an excuse for gaining power and wealth, which is completely at odds with what Jesus supposedly said if he existed. The bible is riddled with contradictions and falsities stemming from the morals of the time it was written and its attempts to lessen the necessary leap of faith by giving what they thought to be unassailable answers to questions. Despite being heavily edited after it was written, the Bible now presents itself as the definitive word of God, which makes it rather stuck in its ways and vulnerable to evidence that contradicts the whoppers within it. As such, going after young-Earth creationists is a bit like shooting very slow fish in a barrel.

 The alternative is to lose face and authority and claim it's metaphorical. If I wanted to be irrational and find spiritual enlightenment I could eat some magic mushrooms, but that would ultimately be as reliable a basis for belieiving in God as blindly making an uninformed leap of faith. You talk of rationalism being a mental disease, yet epilepsy was known as "the sacred disease". Did God think the time was right for a bit of  chat when people's brains started firing uncontrollably? Or when people have schizophrenia?

The film was passable, if a bit of an amateuristic attempt to tackle the issues and questions religion fails to answer, and much of it was crude and simplistic, which is a shame.

I don't expect I'll be replying to anything you say as I don't frequent this site, so please feel free to "understand if I don't reply". It's probably because I'm deep in thought about your words of wisdom and unable to muster any words in reply.