[s|k]

MrL_JaKiri, why do you even bother to respond? Read his posts, does he seem reasonable? I don't understand why people feel the need to try and reason with a person who has his fingers in his ears. Do you like talking to walls much? The man's clearly acting like a sociopath with a troubled worldview, hanging onto his indefensible belief for all its worth. Even if Travler were not a Christian, he'd still be an asshole, commandeering conversations with self importance, he would still be unreasonable, he would still be a jackass. He would probably be a Sony fanboy or a fanatical sports enthusiast. It's a personality issue, I think.

I believe that ultimately, whatever we end up believing does rest in uncertainty, because whatever we as humans end up observing, and up inferring from those observations, it's not ever going to be enough. It will not explain our lives, or our experience of our lives rather, entirely. I think at somepoint in our lives, many of us recognize that answers are not going to happen, and then at point, and any point in the future when we consider it again, we make a choice. We chose to make sense out of it anyway, but it will always be in our minds that we don't know. What is death? What is life? Forget what happened before the big bang, what happened before I was born? Where was I? How did I begin? Where did I come from. And oh my god, I'm going end someday, return to that state, or nonstate, I was in before my birth. And that's ****ing scary to me sometimes. Only sometimes, because other times I'm not thinking about it.

Experience seems fleeting, somehow it is so incredibly visceral and real, but then as time passes and you see your actions become a second old, a minute old, a day, a week, a month, years old, it can seem like a dream. Somewhere inbetween my fears and my frustrations I get a sense of something permanent and reassuring. Something big, something powerful, and stable. Sometimes I think that is God. That is where I find God. It's not out there in that world I am experiencing, but it is internal, and more than likely it is just something within me and not anything 'real' or of the 'real world.'

My understanding of God is not challenged by the existence of dinosaur bones, it is not troubled by evolution, or by the lack of design in the universe. It is not affected by anything I hear or see or touch, because it is 100% internal. There is a gulf between the observer in us, and the observation. In order for it to be bridged it requires something like a suspension of disbelief. We accept what we see, it comes so natural that you have to realize that you are doing it. What the f*ck is a human being? Two arms, two feet, two eyes, a nose and it seems right. You look in the mirror and you don't see some strange gooey organism/monster that moves on it's own, you see a familiar shape, a familiar face. That sense of familiarity with our world, with what we are is based on what? Look at the way we depict monsters and ghosts, and aliens. The shapes, and the design, it's all unfamiliar. It's not the two arms, it's not the two legs, it's something else. My immediate point is we are comfortable with 'familiarity' but that familiarity we have with our experience, with ourselves is based on our willingness to accept what we see. And I don't. It's not solipism. I'm not adopting the point of view that only I exist and that nothing I observe is real, I'm simply not crossing that gulf blindly. And sometimes, this thing I feel inside, this thing I call God, it seems more real to me than anything I might observe with my five senses on the other side of this gulf. It is with me, part of the observer.

The ultimate point is, that Travler goes too far. Like so many other fanatical 'my way or no way' single minded people in this world, I see a lack of introspection, I see an inability to discern, to question. Travler's experience may be as real to him as mine is to me, but his mistake is that he brings it to places where it doesn't work. He requires that what is observed be reconciled with his God, nay that his God explains what he is observing. It's a mistake, I think.

I know my ideas are unlearned, I haven''t read philosophy yet, I read history and fiction. So excuse me if whatever I've said is offensive to you or obtuse, it probably is.