Joe, my last post was mostly responding to Rajesh. That's where i got the idea that the way HE has been defining god is without sentience.

science is all about questioning things and finding new ways to look at things. scientific theory and practice constantly changes when new evidence or theory comes to light. It's entirely the opposite of the faith required for religion, science is about exploration and change.

If you see a series of lights or whatever that COULD be a UFO, the only way to know for sure is to investigate and follow up on it (say, finding elements or lifeforms that aren't found on earth). To automatically assume it's a ufo for no discernable reason is shows faith, an assumption without any proof to back it up. If you can't convince a single other open-minded person of your claims (someone who accepts that aliens might exist) with then you have to start to question whether it's what you definitively saw, not just what you think you saw. If you can't prove it them others, then you probably can't prove it to yourself either.

I don't know if aliens exist and i don't know if god exists, i've seen things that haven't be explained by science, but there's also no evidence to support any other reason. It's just thrown in the category of 'unknown' until somebody finds a way to answer/explain it in a rational and demonstratable way backed with evidence.

It goes back to what i said about people who don't believe in things that have already been proven wrong. People look in the lengthy category of 'unknown' and find an explanation in which nobody can prove them wrong (because nobody really knows), and then believe it with all their heart.

I wish i could draw a diagram to show this but... the way things are right now i can't believe that truth is subjective. Everything that science has showed me supports this belief. It's not close-mindedness, it's exactly the opposite, if i get proved wrong then i'll be the first one to admit it.

Firstly, lets picture a perfectly clear, transparent lens. Anyone who looks through the lens perfectly sees everything for exactly how reality is.

Secondly lets picture a hypothetical omniscient being who looks at reality through such a perfect lens, and knows everything on every level, and call it God. God knows all the answers because it has all the evidence and knowledge to support his claims. Perfect lens clarity.

Lastly there's us humans. we all also see through a lens, but it's probably not perfectly clear. All the things we believe that are wrong are represented by a dirtier or more opaque lens to show we're not seeing the truth, just bits and pieces of it.

This may seem elitist, but if one person believes 2+2=5 and another believes 2+2=4 then at least one them has to be wrong. The only time 2 people can be right is when they both have half of it, like 2 people fighting over whether the sun is 'bright' or 'hot'.

We don't have all the answers, and out of the billions of people who've lived on the planet, there MIGHT have been a few people who out of blind faith in something got it right but didn't now they did. They couldn't prove it (like the omniscient being could) due to lack of a way to percieve all the evidence. It's like randomly hitting a bullseye without knowing it because you can't see any of the numbers.

Fire burns people's hands and stepping off a cliff makes you fall, that's an objective truth. People who believe that have a clearer lens then people who don't.

"There are some who will put their hand in the fire and not get burned but it may not be within your concepts of probabilities therefore not something that is of interest or importance and certainly not something that you will truly desire to bring forth into your creation.
When you are intellectually and spiritually ready for that evolutionary step your mind will take a new direction"

I'd like to know who, when and where? I don't just mean not feeling pain when waving their hand over a lighter or walking across hot coals. I'm talking not burning themselves when immersed in molten gold or liquid magma or something. I'm aware you can sort of callous or toughed up your skin like you can build up a resistance to many things, that's fairly common knowledge. That monk who light himself on fire, which is on the cover of the Rage Against the Machine album probably wasn't feeling pain, but he still burned to death.

I don't understand why you seem to think of me as close-minded, set in my ways, and that my reality is fragile bubble. You've alluded to it several times in previous posts.

If somebody can not burn to death after being immersed in molten gold, you'd better believe i WANT to know about it! I want to know what happened and why, and i want a whole darn investigation/study/experiment to figure it out. The same applies to not falling after stepping on a cliff.

I'm not saying that those objective truths (fire burns, ppl can't levitate) can't be proven wrong. If they ARE proven wrong, then they were never truths to begin with and we were all looking through a dirty lens by believing them, and now have a clearer lens by no longer believing that. We were all INCORRECT.

It's the job of science to find the perfectly clear lens. Not just any wild theory that MIGHT fit, the absolute truth that when given all the evidence is the only truth that can fit.

So if God exists, he's the ultimate scientist because he can prove anything

(he/she/it is abritrary and i don't want to have to type that out every time, i'm assuming we're all mature enough to handle that).

i don't mean 99% logic and 1% belief
i mean 99% certainty and 1% uncertainty/agnosticism

that uncertainty allows for the fact that people aren't perfect and make mistakes and can admit they are wrong given the evidence.

Rajesh
i don't understand...
so if i'm God, then is everybody else also God from their own perspective? It's not a question of thinking of God as less then myself, it's a question of raising myself to be equal to something like God.

we're all in big trouble if i'm God
because when i think God, i also think omnipotence and omniscience. Would that mean I'm both those things?

How about this, Ryokirah, how about if we're all a part of God? Since the whole is contained in the part, each part contains the whole.

Ryokirah: "I don't know if aliens exist and i don't know if god exists, i've seen things that haven't be explained by science"

You seem to presume some incompatability between Religion and Science. There is none. The greatest scientists have invariably been the most deeply religious. In my experience, it's the religious feeling that inspires and motivates the science. Sure, you can do science without religious feeling, but then it's just bland.

Nice Guest, holograms

Ryo, we don't mind your procrastination, but are you here to learn? I think theres some basics you need to see.

or, if I recall correctly, as Einstein put it, "Religion without Science is blind, Science without Religion is lame."

What do Einsteins words mean, to a believer they are gospel!

Find you own truth

his words mean that religion and science are not antagonistic to each other, but that they complement each other, and that it's not very useful to have one without the other.

Perhaps it is his truth Laz.

There are the instruments of the spirit which are personal or only within the subtle senses of the human and there are the mechanical instruments derived of the mind through its perceptions of the senses.

What is called co-creation is a democratic agreement of a sort in the minds acceptance in a me and a you, an us and them. It is the lense that sees the fragmented aspects of the personality of God so to speak.
Like a drop of rain that falls into the ocean, once it lands in the immense body of water it seems to disappear from its individual status of its little body back into the immenseness of the bigger body.
But where did the drop of rain come from in the first place.
Science would probably agree that it was born from the ocean in the first place, probably through the process of evaporation and then condensing back into water to fall into the ocean again.

The principle of God and spirit personality is not that far from this same principle. Knowing this, begins in the same way as any scientific exploration.
A thought about the subject and the pursuit of validation.

Belief in truth is always subjective to the human mind. What it knows of its physical self is applied in the process of exploration.
Generally speaking the majority take the findings of a few for granted based on the logical co-operative democratic association to belief.
In other words not everyone will become the scientist of the mechanical process, to build the instruments that are applied to the specific idea in order to substantiate that idea. The instrument being relative to the subjective idea in order to create the subjective/objective experience.
Probably 99% of humanity as we see it will go to school and read a book that someone has written to explain the world and we will believe and accept it as it being so.
I find it fascinating that a scientist of beliefs will argue theory against Faith.
They both come from the same place. The only difference is in the application of truth regarding the thought and the experience.
Science takes its current technology and applies it to the relative knowns and creates the objective experience.
Spiritual insight is mostly ignored because the mind tends to create its reality in boxes.
What is known experientially with the instrument of mind and senses is constantly being tested within the relative process of physical properties and not the spiritual or non-physical because doubt is stronger than the experience. Not because doubt is real, but because democratic process and belief and reason is more pessimistic than optimistic.
We won't believe what we see and feel unless we get confirmation from something or someone on the outside of us.

The instrument of Faith and spiritual awareness is atrophied because of this logical approach to theory and the ability to prove that when you build a box you will bounce into the walls of the box when you live inside of it.
You will say this is what I know because it was proved by someone else so this is real and anything else I will ignore and not give thought to unless someone proves it for me.
There are few that will call themselves visionary without taking the teachings of another and apply it to their own thoughts to create new discoveries of the same basic principles of life.
Whether mechanical or spiritual, enlightenment starts with the process of exploration and is never complete.
Every answer brings a new question in either arena and arrogance is part and parcel to the fear that one may be lost in their own ideas and experiences, so we must fight to know something.

Science is always evolving but it has not always been a part of every generation of evolution where as spiritual insight and superstion has.

A true scientist will not ignore this process of insight and experience nor its history of repetition in humanity.
Only the limits of physical properties keep the scientist from substantiating what is not and cannot be contained within the physical box.

Those that know of God can never give their experience to another. Only speak of it and point in a direction. Experience is constantly changing and evolving but you will find the absolute stable and non-changing. Because it never changes it is ignored because it does not excite the habitual search for evolving self stimulation of the senses, mental masturbation and instant gratification.

You can deny God but that doesn't mean it/he/she doesn't exist.
Physical properties when applied to miracles never include what cannot be contained within the box.

It is an endless and often useless argument to some and to others it only drives them further into their faith and understanding of their own experience.
It is always a win win situation because contrast is what keeps the mind active and searching. When you do fall upon it more than once it becomes more tangible and the great thing about God is that there is an eternity to play with it until the experience repeats itself often enough to stike a resounding chord in the soul of man to awaken a higher sense than the logic and definition of the physical world.

Rajesh,

If an idea is rational it is defined as 'sound and reasonable' [see dictionaries].

I agree that this does not mean that the idea is correct, certain, or the truth, but it probably will be close.

An irrational idea is unsound and unreasonable. This does not mean that the idea is false or a lie, but it probably will be.

God is dead

So your saying fanatical devotion is acceptable with doubt..

Don't you go putting words in my mouth! in fact i'm not quite sure what you are saying for me?

I'll try it another way; scientific principles and mindsets are great, and should be used in all situations. No one should be placed on a pedestal to be worshiped unless you can prove to yourself that they are worthy of their position, as long as you are doing this everything is fine.

For me Einstein is not worth placing on a pedestal, but I realise that he may be for others.

maybe you're saying that blind reliance on authority is no substitute for independently derived understanding?

Sounds right to me

Of pigs and Kings

There exists a great cosmic gulf between matter and thought, and this gulf is immeasurably greater between material mind and spiritual love. Consciousness, much less self-consciousness, cannot be explained by any theory of mechanistic electronic association or materialistic energy phenomena.

As mind pursues reality to its ultimate analysis, matter vanishes to the material senses but may still remain real to mind. When spiritual insight pursues that reality which remains after the disappearance of matter and pursues it to an ultimate analysis, it vanishes to mind, but the insight of spirit can still perceive cosmic realities and supreme values of a spiritual nature. Accordingly does science give way to philosophy, while philosophy must surrender to the conclusions inherent in genuine spiritual experience. Thinking surrenders to wisdom, and wisdom is lost in enlightened and reflective worship.

In science the human self observes the material world; philosophy is the observation of this observation of the material world; religion, true spiritual experience, is the experiential realization of the cosmic reality of the observation of the observation of all this relative synthesis of the energy materials of time and space. To build a philosophy of the universe on an exclusive materialism is to ignore the fact that all things material are initially conceived as real in the experience of human consciousness. The observer cannot be the thing observed; evaluation demands some degree of transcendence of the thing which is evaluated.

In time, thinking leads to wisdom and wisdom leads to worship; in eternity, worship leads to wisdom, and wisdom eventuates in the finality of thought.

"Probably 99% of humanity as we see it will go to school and read a book that someone has written to explain the world and we will believe and accept it as it being so.
I find it fascinating that a scientist of beliefs will argue theory against Faith."

The thing about scientific learning, is that if you really want to, you can affirm the things you've been accepting on 'faith'. An engineer designs a bridge that that withstand the weight of all the cars as well as weather the elements, i don't need faith to see that it works... BUT if i really doubted the principles behind how he did it then i could learn them myself if i was so inclinced, and then go back to the bridge and look at it with understanding instead of just acceptance.

But if i absolutely didn't believe in the princples of engineering and bridge-building... the bridges would still be built and fuction according to their design regardless of what i believe.

Just because i can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. At the same time, just because i can't see doesn't mean it DOES exist either. That's the basis for agnostic reasoning. If i can't see it, then its just unknown, there's no assigning of artibrary beliefs to unknowns.

I can see engineers building bridges that function all the time, so i can reasonably assume that the principles of engineering bridges DO work, just like i can reasonably assume that stepping off a cliff will make me fall, and fire will burn me.

Joesus, do you go to the doctor when you're hurt or injured? i don't know very much about the medical practice. What about we needed surgery? I know that doctors have PROVEN that they can help people, and i hope they can help me when i'm sick. I can reasonably assume that the doctor can help me with my problems in that area.

We don't just take these experts on faith, we see evidence of their ability to do things in their respective fields and THEN we see the principles of science at work, and working successfully.

If i see some crazy flashing lights and movement one night, what does that mean? Well lets start with what it COULD mean. It COULD be a UFO, it COULD be an airplane, it COULD be a hallucination, it COULD be a meteorite, it COULD be swamp gas reflecting off the light of venus, it COULD be any number of things. To say 'that was definately a UFO' without acknowledge the other possibilities... how could someone even convince themselves of that?

"Science is always evolving but it has not always been a part of every generation of evolution where as spiritual insight and superstion has."

science has been there the whole way, from the creation of fire, to the creation of spears to creation of the wheel. spirituality back then was assigning arbitrary explanations to events going on around them. Do we still believe that Ra the sun god rides his chariot across the sky? No, we have heliocentricity and astronomy to show us that we were jumping at shadows. I've yet to see any changes in spirituality today, assigning artibrary answers to questions taht are just 'unknown'.

The amount of people who are turning away from spirituality and turning to rationality is on the rise. The exponential rate of scientific principles being tested and approved blows my mind, but i can see that they work (tried, tested and true) so i can reasonably believe in them. I for one refuse to regress to jumping at shadows because the chupacabra might get me. (i know according to the logic of horror movies i'm the first one to die... bit still )

Science and Religion while not mutually exlusive, are hardly bedfellows. Theology is based entirely on accepting the same thing that's been taught for the last 2000 years (give or take dependong on the religion).

I've argued this same point since i got here, religion is based on dogmatic acceptance of the idea that God exists (which is the only important truth), while science is about exploring the unknown in order to find truth and accept truth as you go.

Laz i would argue that your journey IS scientific if you're approaching with an open-mind and not seeing things that you want to see. The nature of scientific exploration is open-minded at it's core. things that people have beleived to be true for years can be proven wrong and corrected.

"Those that know of God can never give their experience to another. Only speak of it and point in a direction. Experience is constantly changing and evolving but you will find the absolute stable and non-changing. Because it never changes it is ignored because it does not excite the habitual search for evolving self stimulation of the senses, mental masturbation and instant gratification."

those that KNOW of god are being close-minded, by not allowing for the possibility that they might be WRONG.

I don't understand how you can equate science to mental masturbation and instant gratification. Science is a long exploration in search of the almost insurmountable goal of find the truth of everything. Theology is the one that gives easy answers to questions without any real explanation as to why (a sun chariot... right). That smacks of instant gratification to me, while the idea of going to heaven when you die, the meek shall inherit the earth, etc smacks of mental masturbation.

Religion is static, science is exploration and change because we haven't found all the absolute answers yet. People who have said they are on spiritual journeys of experience, i would argue are on scientific journeys of experience. Do you document your journeys in a journal on/off-line? do you hypothesize answers and experiment with things in order to come to conclusions? That sounds like science to me.

"You can deny God but that doesn't mean it/he/she doesn't exist."

have you even been reading my posts? i've NEVER denied the existance of God. EVER. I've only said that it's entirely in the world of UNKNOWN.

If you are going to discuss theology and religion lets not put them in the same category as Faith. Faith is what connects us to the source of all things it is alive within each creature. Religion is created as people try to follow concepts that align us with our beliefs in regards to that known connection and Theology is the study and categorization of those beliefs.

Anything that is believed to be real can be experienced. Placing Scientific principles on anything that can be experienced is fine except when it becomes non physical and then as you like one can ignore all the rest to follow physical and logical approaches to life.

In your doctor analogy, I would like to offer something of fact.
There was a doctors strike that took place in the 70's. During that strike less people got sick and less died than when the doctors were not on strike.
No I don't always go to the doctor when I am feeling sick, hurt of injured.
What we put our faith in is always subjective and objective. Faith can lead you through all kinds of beliefs but when we look into our faith to find union in all beliefs and all of humanities connection to faith there is something that is substantial and something that is very real.
Just because you cannot prove it exists within the same process as the engineer is a poor reason to give your attention to only the things that you see, feel, hear and taste with your external senses and say everything else is unknown.
If you categorize the known by what your senses believe and experience then you don't have to deny what you have not personally given attention to and have not developed. If you categorize the unknown to what you have not developed then it would more logically fall into the category of the unexplored.
If you categorize the unknown or unexplored into the unknowable then you are making an assumption.

If humanity was to live within the same box without evolving it would continue to bounce off of the same four walls of probability for eternity.
A few visionaries have taken humanity from possibility into reality.
I find the arguments to contain reality within the known box stagnant and intellectually stifling, when assumptions are made regarding Religion and Faith and the separation of Science and Faith.
They both must be combined and lived as one Science, not separate.
One must include the spirit into the physical to find union in all things.
Thinking what is not proven within the realm physical instruments is not tangible or logical, is not necessarily intelligent thinking when we justify our ignorance with the belief that "if you cannot prove it, it doesn't deserve any attention."
Will Science limit its exploration to only what it knows is real? Will it prejudice itself against what it cannot prove?
Would Science deny God if it is personal to someone but not personal to Science?

Habits created in the reality of Skepticism is more of a protective device than an objective device when it uses judgment based on good or bad or right and wrong or lesser or greater. Everything has value and the point of reference will always determine the value system.
IF thinking is limited to the box then everything that does not fit will be thrown outside and ignored. IF thinking is anchored in something that cannot be boxed then there are no limitations.

There is a saying, "The heart knows no reason." The true visionaries do not stop at reason when the impulse is to follow true inspiration that is not contained within the known realities of any box.
Life is not meant to be isolated to the physical repetitions of thought and experience.

A wise jew once said "yada yada yada!"

"Faith is what connects us to the source of all things it is alive within each creature"

"...that known connection..."

thats a lot of assumptions there. connects in what way precisely? what is this 'source of all living things' you speak of and how is it suddenly a known concept? faith in WHAT, exactly, brings this connection? God? Where did any of this come from?

"In your doctor analogy, I would like to offer something of fact.
There was a doctors strike that took place in the 70's. During that strike less people got sick and less died than when the doctors were not on strike."

What you're implying from that is that people stopped believing they needed doctors and suddenly didn't, correct?

That would be an arbitrary assumption. There are other possible reasons. Maybe there was less REPORTED sickness. People might have moved to places were they had a chance of getting treatment or any other number of possibile explanations to mess with the statistics gathered during that strike. One stats class is all it takes to know how easy it can be to bend stats to your liking.

I'm not denying the mind-over-matter phenomenon, with placeboes etc. The idea of m.o.m. excites me a great deal and i'd like to see further experimentation in that realm, among others. At the same time, there are definately some conditions that placebos haven't cured. m.o.m. is unreliable at best, given current knowledge on the subject.

"No I don't always go to the doctor when I am feeling sick, hurt of injured"

i'm not talking skinned knees and headcolds. I'm talking aneurisms, massive trauma like car accidents/3rd degree burns, smoke inhalation, and heart attacks. How would you deal with those?

"If you categorize the known by what your senses believe and experience then you don't have to deny what you have not personally given attention to and have not developed"

I'm still staring and blinking blankly at this. Can you possibly rephrase that? It seems important but i'm having some trouble wrapping my head around that triple negative

"If you categorize the unknown to what you have not developed then it would more logically fall into the category of the unexplored. If you categorize the unknown or unexplored into the unknowable then you are making an assumption"

i purposely never said unknowable, but unexplored is perhaps a better word for that category.

"A few visionaries have taken humanity from possibility into reality.
I find the arguments to contain reality within the known box stagnant and intellectually stifling, when assumptions are made regarding Religion and Faith and the separation of Science and Faith.
They both must be combined and lived as one Science, not separate.
One must include the spirit into the physical to find union in all things."

as long as spiritual exploration is done is a scientific way there's no cause for debate. There's nothing wrong with exploring the unexplored, i can't emphasize that enough.

I don't understand why you keep bringing up this 'box' analogy. how can open-minded scientific exploration of everything result in trapping reality in a box?

personally i find the influence of the Wizard's First Rule (people who believe something is true because they want it to be or because they're afraid it is) on people to be stifling and oppresive, the ones trapped in a box of their own devising.

If i can refer to an episode of the simpsons where lisa espouses the exact same point... She has an anti-bear rock, which she claims to work because 'well, i don't see any bears around do you?' and of course homer misses the lesson entirely and tries to buy it.

If on a scientific/spiritual journey you find yourself seeing anti-bear rocks, then you have to have a scientific enough mind to sift the anti-bear rocks from the true visionary brilliance that you mentioned. You do that by systematically eliminating every other concievable possibility through testing and experimentation.

"The heart knows no reason."

i find virtually no redeeming qualities in that line of thinking. That is the very essence of the line of thinking that will cause you to see anti-bear rocks at every mental corner you turn on in your journey towards a true vision.

Back when radio was a big deal, the fictional 'war of the worlds' broadcast actually caused a huge panic among the american public because they thought that the planet was being invaded by aliens.

The heart that know no reason is the illogic behind an angry mob that tears apart a hermit woman for witchcraft.

I'm not saying emotion is bad and i'm not arguing for soma in every household. That being said, emotion isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't cloud your rational judgement, so you don't see aliens in your radio, witches in your neighbourhood, or start buying anti-bear rocks being sold on TV... Then rioting when you find out the rocks don't work as advertised... those who survived the bear attacks that is

Extremists. Sheesh....

hahaha
people who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality

Ryo, you keep refering to RATM around the board, so do some raging yourself!

Science is a system like any other, break that system and find out things for yourself. Stop relying on what other people have said and go your own way, you will find it very beneficial.

Repeat this mantra until you get it: F**K you I won't do what you tell me!

AS a side note; brevity is as valued a skill as writing pages and pages, think of your readers, please

If you believe that science will enable you to understand reality then you will never find it. Neither will Logic get you there entirely. You will need many disciplines to understand the reality you seek. If you limit yourself then you will limit how much you understand of the universe.

C'mon, Ryo. You know that logic has no place in religion!

(Commence hating me)

"Science is a system like any other, break that system and find out things for yourself. Stop relying on what other people have said and go your own way, you will find it very beneficial"
-Laz

Science may be a system, but it's not an oppresive one that it requires 'breaking'. It's a constantly evolving system that changes as new information comes to light. As soon as you go on a journey of exploration, you ARE being scientific. As long as your observations and conclusions aren't littered with anti-bear rocks.

"AS a side note; brevity is as valued a skill as writing pages and pages, think of your readers, please"
-Laz

*lol* I overcompensate for the inherent problems with debating in a text-only format by overexplaining. I'm not nearly so long-winded when i talk, in fact i'm quite the opposite.

I use alot of analogies to illustrate points because it's a method that's easier for people to picture. Recently i've been quoting people also to make it easier on you guys so you can see me reponding to specific points.

"Ryo, it seems as if you take the scientific method and science to be the be all and end all of truth, yet it's only a part of truth. You do see this, don't you. You do see that science and the scientific method have limitations regarding what they can say about truth, right? This is not degrading science and the scientific method in any way. It's merely realizing that they have limitations. Truth encompasses science and the scientific method. You seem to have it the other way around."

science isn't a truth unto itself, it's a method for discovering truth. It's THE method for discovering truth. I feel i have to explain this further (sorry Laz ). I think you guys are seeing science as a bunch of guys in white coats in laboratory. That's definately a large aspet of science as you can get the most accurate results, but the ESSENCE of science is the desire to explore the unknown. Any time you experience something that's a scientific journey, as long as your conclusions aren't anti-bear rocks, chariots flying across the sky or other doubious answers when there are other explanations available.

Keep in mind, that knowledge of heliocentricity and the nature of the sun didn't become possible until important advances in technology which expand your senses to see millions of miles away. I suspect that right now you're trying to see certain aspects of existance without the proper equipment. Maybe in the future we'll have eiditic memories and a form of telepathy that allows you to transmit your experiences with perfect clarity, either naturally developed, or technologically assisted.

"If you believe that science will enable you to understand reality then you will never find it. Neither will Logic get you there entirely. You will need many disciplines to understand the reality you seek. If you limit yourself then you will limit how much you understand of the universe."

i disagree. i see me as limiting myself from seeing the anti-bear rocks of the universe. If there's one right answer to a question then every other answer is wrong. That's a ratio of 1:(ridiculous) in terms of the number of wrong answers out there. I think it makes a LOT of sense to be very cautious about the answers, and to test your theories with experimentation to narrow down the field of answers. You have find and to sift the nuggest of truth from the anti-bear rocks.

ok i'll bite

what other methods of discovery are then that don't use any elements of scientific exploration?

can you give an example of using that method?

it would be nice if people used more analogies and examples here

the main problem with the scientific worldview is that it assumes an objectively existing world. Or to put it differently, it starts from the outside, and assigns some independently existing reality to our mental constructs. Only with the scientific paradigm can you have arguments about the possibility of 'zombies', of automata that are identical to humans in all respects except they aren't conscious. Such arguments are absurd because there is no possibility of such things. To grant such a possibility is to misunderstand the relation between mind and nature, and the realization that they're inextricably linked. Only with the scientific paradigm can you have the emergence of the Behaviorist school of psychology which sought to completely neglect consciousness and to simply describe organisms in terms of their overt behavior. Today, we openly laugh at the Behaviorists, but I think they are a consequence of taking the scientific method too far. The scientific method is useful, and I'm all for it, but it has its limits, and it's important to be aware of its limitations.

I'm not going to try to read all the posts occuring in the interum of my last contribution to this thread and now, but I will say I find myself agreeing with almost everyone but myself, which is a rather uncomfortable position to find myself in, as you can imagine. For the first time in my life I find, no comprehend, the utter inadequacy of reason alone. Words fail me, but at the same time I feel that words, that is reason, is all that I have. I have alway had reason to hold reason suspect, paradoxical as that may sound, but from the vantage point certain recent experiences have afforded I see just how delicate the rational house of cards truly is, and I have nothing but diluted metaphor in which to take solace.

God is infinity. And infinity is everything and nothing at all. This is not a rational statement; yet I feel that I know it's truth nonetheless. Am I going crazy?

What did you do Tim? you've told us about your experience but not what casued it!

There comes a point, when the cradle of science doesn’t fit us anymore. We just need to jump out and start walking, jumping, dancing … whole new experience…

Those babies who still enjoy the swing of the cradle (of science), will realize one day… there comes a point, when the cradle of science doesn’t fit us anymore…

... and the baby grows, as ever ...