Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Age]

You’ve essentially built an argument where your God operates in a way that’s conveniently unverifiable, untestable, and outside the realm of rational scrutiny, yet somehow still expects belief.

Well, firstly, Mike...I didn't invent it. It's the Biblical view.

But secondly, it's very far from unverifiable, untestable and outside the realm of rational scrutiny. It's well within all three, actually.

LOL HOW, EXACTLY, does one go about verifying and testing if a, laughable, male gendered being/person created absolutely Everything, or not?

What's it's not inside is the demand that God should force you to believe...somehow...even though you refuse to believe, and aren't even willing to specify a test you could actually be expected to accept.

Verification, testing and rational scrutiny, you say? Well, all three are readily available. Just not on the terms you might like. If you examine Christ, you'll verify the existence of God. If you have even a mustard-sized faith in God, you'll be able to test and see what He'll do. And rational scrutiny? He who said, "Come, let us reason together" is also He who invented rationality. So you'll have no problem with that.

"immanuel can" is LIVING PROOF of those who had been and were DECEIVED and FOOLED BY the 'devil', itself.

However, your commitment to Determinism will make that impossible. You have no faith in the existence or goodness of God -- not even enough to test.

Well, OBVIOUSLY, your biblical god did NOT put the ability to have faith in "bigmike". Obviously if God created EVERY thing, then God created that INABILITY AS WELL.

You don't have any faith in your own (or my) ability to choose an decide, which God has chosen to make the sine qua non of knowledge of Him.

The man who will believe in nothing sees nothing. Not even himself. That's what's really going on.

AND, the one who believes God is a male gendered being or person is what that one WILL see. Even if and when 'it' OBVIOUSLY DOES NOT EVEN EXIST.

You rattle off a list of supposed divine interventions—the Red Sea parting, water turning into wine, the resurrection of Jesus—all of which are stories handed down from ancient texts. None of these are verifiable, repeatable, or supported by empirical evidence. You admit this yourself, yet you cling to these anecdotes as if their inclusion in a book somehow elevates them above myth or legend. Hearsay is not evidence, no matter how fervently you believe it.

Actually, if they did, indeed, happen, then they most certainly WOULD BE evidence...just not for you. For you will accept NOTHING as evidence, at least nothing that cannot be explained another way very easily.

So you have no test for knowing whether or not God exists, but you insist He cannot.

LOL you have no test, YET, for knowing whether or not God exists, but you INSIST It can, and does.

And, LOL worse still you, ACTUALLY, INSIST that God has a penis and testes, of all things.

Nothing about that is rational, since you cannot expect that you already know everything, nor that you can even know what others know,

Straight back at you "immanuel can".

nor can you know what, of the miraculous nature, has happened in history.

But absolutely nothing has miraculously happened, EVER.

There's no rational connection, then, between your claim of the non-existence of God, and what anybody can expect you actually to have any way to know.

Straight back at you in regards to your claim of the existence of God, and It being a 'he'.

But you're adopting a very interesting position: you scorn God, you deny His existence, and you dare Him -- you dare the Supreme Being -- to dance to convince you in such a way that you cannot doubt...without specifying what that would be.

Here's your surprise: He's promised He will do exactly that. In the fulness of time, He will convince you, beyond any possibility of doubt, of His existence, His power, and His rightness. But when He does, you want to arrive before him in the guise of a mocker, a skeptic, a disdainer, a cynic, who has enjoyed heaping scorn and calling God powerless?

Well, you're a brave man, I must say. Not a wise one, but very, very brave. And if you persist in your "bravery," you'll get exactly the thing you're asking for -- and won't have any grounds of complaint when you get it. You've been asking for it...longing for it...demanding it...and insulting God in order to get it...or rather, to sustain the claim that God can't do it.

Brave. Very brave.

You say God doesn’t perform miracles for "parlour tricks," as if the concept of evidence-based belief is beneath Him. But isn’t that precisely what those biblical miracles were?

Not at all, actually. The difference is in who gets to say what happens, when and how. You seem to be under the impression that person should be you...but it's not.

Public displays intended to convince doubters of His power? How is it reasonable for you to cite those as proof for your faith while claiming God no longer operates that way because it would undermine free will?

Very simple: miracles do not generally serve the function you attribute to them. You seem to think that they make disbelief impossible; but they never do. There is, as in the case of your own lightning test, always another way to spin the miraculous...to say, "Well, I know it looks like a miracle, but really, it wasn't." That was true of the Red Sea crossing, of the walking on the water, of the identity of Messiah Himself, and of the Resurrection itself, as the text readily makes clear itself. There is literally no 'test' no miraculous demonstration that we presently have that is beyond the power of cynicism to controvert.

But the Great Judgment will be everything you're asking for. Be careful what you wish, therefore.

You also attempt to downplay my example of a clear violation of the conservation laws—such as the spontaneous creation of an electric charge—by asking how one could differentiate it from an unexplained phenomenon.

I don't attempt to downplay it. I just ask how you'd test it. And you don't know, it seems.

Which would you do: admit the miracle, or revise your "current understanding of physics," and persist in your skepticism? I think we both know.

And then there’s the audacity of claiming that God "will convince me" by judging the earth and forcing "every knee to bow."

That's not my audacity. That's His explicit promise.

What’s the point of free will in your framework, Immanuel, if your God’s ultimate plan is coercion?

Don't worry: you have your free will already. You're actualizing it fully, right now. When the incontrovertible evidence appears, it will appear not to a mindless robot or forced believer, but rather to you -- a determined cynic, who's already exercised his free will to decide his own eternal disposition relative to the God he despises and scorns.

It'll be fair. And it will be an actualization, even a respecting of your free will. In that sense, there are no unwilling souls in Hell. If you end up there, it will be the place you willed yourself.

I would prefer you didn't. Hence the point of this discussion: not a "win" for somebody, but rather the ensuring that whatever it is you get, that you've had a chance to freely choose it.

That’s not free will—it’s a cosmic dictatorship.

How ironic. You demand that you will not believe in God unless He provides you with an unspecified but incontrovertible test -- and then you point out that if He did so, he'd be a "cosmic dictator"? Now you know why, for the present, He does not do that. You've answered your own question -- if only you understood how. Here's what the Word of God says:

"The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be disclosed..."

It's coming. For now, you have free will. But the day will come when what you have done with your free will will be confirmed for you, sealed by the very hand of God Himself...your free will written for you in stone. And the disposition of the soul you presently deny you even possess will be decided according to your explicit demands. If you want to be in a place without God, you'll get it.

Whatever burden of proof you place on God and on me will be met. Don't worry. But what will you do with the burden of having despised God and chosen a world without Him?

Not once has "immanuel can" MET ANY challenge regarding PROVING God, a LAUGHABLE male gendered being, exists, and, 'that one' having LAUGHABLY created absolutely EVERY thing.

And, the reason for this is because THE PROOF for those things can NOT be met.

[Immanuel Can]

…

I said:

Sorry...stopped caring.

[Atla]

First, one does not talk with Atla. Whatever ideas he has are closely held and can only be revealed at an approaching evolutionary turning-point! No man knoweth that time comes! (Even The Hyperborean Apollo is stumped when asked about such things).

I'm not very fond of the final idea I've arrived at (besides it's just probabilistic speculation). Revealing it now or in the future could only make things worse, both for humanity and for me. I've nothing to gain from it.

[Wizard22]

Because what's impossible to You,
Isn't what's impossible to Me.

[BigMike]

Alexiev, this is where your argument completely collapses under the weight of its own misunderstanding. Your claim that "existence governs the principles" is an empty abstraction that doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s just wordplay meant to make a simple concept seem more profound than it is. Let’s strip away the rhetorical nonsense and get to the core of the issue.

Scientific principles don’t just "describe" reality as if they are arbitrary human inventions; they are derived from consistent, repeatable observations of how the universe actually works. The conservation laws and the four fundamental interactions—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—aren’t just convenient descriptors; they are the framework within which everything happens. They are not external "laws" imposed on the universe; they are the fundamental constraints that shape what is physically possible.

Now, let’s address your ridiculous mischaracterization of my position as "quasi-religious." You’re implying that accepting the fundamental structure of the universe as governing reality is akin to saying "the law precedes the universe." But I never said the laws predate existence itself—only that they define the structure within which all existence operates. That’s a massive difference, and one you’re either unwilling or incapable of understanding.

If you want to challenge this, do what no one arguing your side ever seems able to do: point to a single verifiable, reproducible example of something occurring outside of these fundamental principles. If you can’t, then all you’re doing is throwing up vague, pseudo-philosophical nonsense to avoid confronting the reality that everything—everything—obeys the deterministic structure of nature.

So, let’s be clear: either these principles govern existence, meaning nothing happens outside their domain, or you provide actual evidence of something that does. If you can’t, then what you’re really doing is engaging in intellectual smoke and mirrors—pretending that poetic abstractions are an argument when they are, in fact, nothing but empty noise.

If anyone could find exceptions to your four rules it would not discredit determinism; it would merely mean we would have to discover new rules (principles?). Of course this has happened repeatedly. People used to think "time is a constant" was a basic inviolable scientific principle. Nobody, however, thought that when this was proven false we had to abandon science and return to examining the entrails of chickens to predict the future. Instead, we altered the "principle".

The challenge is ridiculous. Of course the scientific orthodoxy admits of no exceptions. If it did, it wouldn't be the scientific orthodoxy. That doesn't prove it's right. Why would it?

There's more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than you have dreamt in your philosophy. Until we discover them all, we are guessing about the rules. That's the nature of an inductive enterprise like science. Our guesses may be quite accurate; they may be useful; they remain guesses.

Alexiev, this is where your argument completely collapses under the weight of its own misunderstanding. Your claim that "existence governs the principles" is an empty abstraction that doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s just wordplay meant to make a simple concept seem more profound than it is. Let’s strip away the rhetorical nonsense and get to the core of the issue.

Scientific principles don’t just "describe" reality as if they are arbitrary human inventions; they are derived from consistent, repeatable observations of how the universe actually works. The conservation laws and the four fundamental interactions—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—aren’t just convenient descriptors; they are the framework within which everything happens. They are not external "laws" imposed on the universe; they are the fundamental constraints that shape what is physically possible.

Now, let’s address your ridiculous mischaracterization of my position as "quasi-religious." You’re implying that accepting the fundamental structure of the universe as governing reality is akin to saying "the law precedes the universe." But I never said the laws predate existence itself—only that they define the structure within which all existence operates. That’s a massive difference, and one you’re either unwilling or incapable of understanding.

If you want to challenge this, do what no one arguing your side ever seems able to do: point to a single verifiable, reproducible example of something occurring outside of these fundamental principles. If you can’t, then all you’re doing is throwing up vague, pseudo-philosophical nonsense to avoid confronting the reality that everything—everything—obeys the deterministic structure of nature.

So, let’s be clear: either these principles govern existence, meaning nothing happens outside their domain, or you provide actual evidence of something that does. If you can’t, then what you’re really doing is engaging in intellectual smoke and mirrors—pretending that poetic abstractions are an argument when they are, in fact, nothing but empty noise.

[BigMike]

If anyone could find exceptions to your four rules it would not discredit determinism; it would merely mean we would have to discover new rules (principles?). Of course this has happened repeatedly. People used to think "time is a constant" was a basic inviolable scientific principle. Nobody, however, thought that when this was proven false we had to abandon science and return to examining the entrails of chickens to predict the future. Instead, we altered the "principle".

The challenge is ridiculous. Of course the scientific orthodoxy admits of no exceptions. If it did, it wouldn't be the scientific orthodoxy. That doesn't prove it's right. Why would it?

There's more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than you have dreamt in your philosophy. Until we discover them all, we are guessing about the rules. That's the nature of an inductive enterprise like science. Our guesses may be quite accurate; they may be useful; they remain guesses.

Alexiev, if there were even one documented case of something defying conservation laws or the four fundamental interactions, it would revolutionize physics overnight. And let’s be clear—not in the way you think. If a charge suddenly appeared out of nowhere, if energy was created or destroyed, if mass popped into existence without an equivalent energy conversion, we wouldn’t just be revising our models—we’d be looking at the possible death of determinism itself. Because suddenly, we’d have a violation of causality, an event with no physical precedent, no underlying mechanism—just a spontaneous, unexplainable break in the chain of cause and effect.

And you’re right that scientific models change—when evidence demands it. That’s the entire point. When relativity refined Newtonian mechanics, it wasn’t because someone threw their hands up and said, maybe time isn’t constant just because I feel like it! It was because hard data from experiments like the Michelson-Morley experiment and observations of Mercury’s orbit demanded a new framework. The principle didn’t get thrown out—it got expanded to accommodate real evidence.

So let’s make this simple: if you’re arguing that our current understanding of physics isn’t the final word—fine. Nobody’s saying otherwise. Science is an evolving process. But if you’re claiming there are actual violations of the fundamental laws, then you need to show the data. Because if something truly violated conservation or the fundamental interactions, that wouldn’t be just a minor tweak—it would force us to fundamentally rewrite our understanding of reality.

And here’s the kicker: if that happens, determinism as we know it could be dead. If energy, charge, or mass could just appear or disappear without cause, if something could break the fundamental interactions without an identifiable mechanism, then causality itself would be in question. That would be the first real evidence for true randomness, true indeterminacy—something happening with no prior cause.

But let’s be honest—you don’t have that evidence. You have speculation. You have what if statements and vague appeals to mystery. That’s not how science works. Science doesn’t bow to poetic musings about “more things in heaven and earth.” It bows to hard, testable, reproducible data. And until you produce that, your entire argument remains empty conjecture, nothing more.

[BigMike]

You claim that I lack the "equipment" to see your version of metaphysics, as if understanding reality requires some hidden, esoteric faculty rather than the ability to reason, observe, and test claims against evidence. This is the classic move of those who prefer to dwell in the realm of speculation rather than face the hard, cold, deterministic structure of the universe.

Let’s get one thing straight: metaphysics, when done properly, is an extension of our best knowledge of reality, not a rejection of it. You can talk all day about "higher understanding" and "spiritual faculties," but unless these things can be demonstrated, measured, or logically defended without resorting to circular reasoning or theological fiat, they remain intellectual fog—concepts with no purchase in the real world.

You don’t possess the ultimate definition of metaphysics.

Two, the “evidence” of the effects of registering those higher regions of meaning and value, determine so much of human social life and concerns of other types. Anyone with literary, philosophical, cultural and art background knows this.

Your mathematically-driven physicalism will tend to break or sever the “connection” I refer to.

And then there is all that is connected with “spiritual life” (man’s inner life). Realms of perception that do not appear on your radar.

Your physicalism is a totalizing philosophy and, as you know, I think it is skewed. Not wholly inaccurate, but incomplete.

I actually do believe that “understanding reality requires some hidden, esoteric faculty”. It requires the cultivation of other perception faculties that require cultivation.

Alexis, you are doing exactly what I expected—retreating into vague mysticism while avoiding any direct engagement with testable reality. You claim that I don’t have the “ultimate definition of metaphysics,” but what you really mean is that I refuse to indulge in your brand of esoteric hand-waving that conveniently evades any need for evidence, logical rigor, or real-world applicability.

Let’s cut through the nonsense. The evidence you appeal to—literature, culture, art—these are human constructs, shaped by deterministic factors just like everything else. They don’t exist in some higher, mystical realm of meaning—they exist in brains, in neural patterns, in the structured constraints of cause and effect that govern all mental and physical processes. Saying that I “sever the connection” is just a poetic way of saying you don’t like that my perspective doesn’t cater to your mysticism.

And then we get to your most ridiculous assertion: that understanding reality requires some hidden, esoteric faculty, one that must be cultivated. This is nothing but elitist nonsense, the same kind of thing that religious mystics and self-proclaimed “higher thinkers” have peddled for centuries to shield their views from scrutiny. If your so-called “spiritual faculties” can’t be demonstrated, tested, or logically defended without retreating into subjectivity, then they are not real knowledge—they are personal delusions dressed up as profundity.

Here’s the brutal truth: the only reliable way humans have ever discovered real, functional knowledge about the universe is through reason, evidence, and falsifiability. That is why science works and mysticism doesn’t. That is why medicine can cure disease while prayer and meditation have never—not once—regrown a lost limb. That is why technology progresses while “spiritual wisdom” spins in centuries-old circles, producing nothing but words, interpretations, and more untestable claims.

If you actually believe this mystical perception faculty exists, then prove it. Demonstrate that it yields knowledge that is more accurate and more useful than what we gain through rational inquiry and empirical observation. Until you do that, you are just spinning empty rhetoric, mistaking your own aesthetic preferences for some hidden truth of the universe.

You can claim my view is incomplete all you like, but I’ll take rigorous, demonstrable, real-world understanding over romanticized speculation every time. Your version of metaphysics isn’t a path to truth—it’s an excuse to reject reality whenever it conflicts with your preferred narratives.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Watch it, Mike! Put on the brakes now before it’s too late! My understanding is that Age’s issues began with boldface and then became acute with ALL CAPS. Pay heed …

[Alexis Jacobi]

And then we get to your most ridiculous assertion: that understanding reality requires some hidden, esoteric faculty, one that must be cultivated. This is nothing but elitist nonsense, the same kind of thing that religious mystics and self-proclaimed “higher thinkers” have peddled for centuries to shield their views from scrutiny. If your so-called “spiritual faculties” can’t be demonstrated, tested, or logically defended without retreating into subjectivity, then they are not real knowledge—they are personal delusions dressed up as profundity.

My suggestion is to examine the motives expressed in what you have written. Here is one way that might be conducted. In my view we must understand, respect and appreciate the existence of hierarchies especially in the realm of knowledge. There are many differing fields where men may spend their entire life pursuing some branch of study and become knowledgeable in that field. Their dedication, and the expertise they gain, must in my view be respected.

Take as an example those scholars who, like Ruth Leila Anderson who wrote Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare’s Plays, a depth examination of rather concealed elements in the make-up of Shakespeare’s age which when understood enable a broader understanding of the man, his art and meaning. I could list a dozen disparate fields where authority is achieved by such focused dedication (obviously with the physical sciences as well).

Here’s the key little one: in order to grasp and appreciate what Anderson has done a certain sort of “prepared mind” is required. If you picked an average man out of the Walmart aisles or someone at a truck stop in Nebraska, and grilled them about such “domains of knowledge”, you’d get nothing. There is nothing there to reflect an appreciation of the elements of knowledge there. You see?

Now, moving toward exemplars who we know you will not — I say cannot — appreciate I might mention Richard Weaver or certainly René Guénon. But let’s take an example of a “genuine mystic” who dedicated his life to something like inner, spiritual disciple (take St John of the Cross as an example) for his whole life. In your case, because you have brutish intellectual blinders, self-imposed impositions, his discoveries, his achievement, would for you be unintelligible. You would not be capable of ‘seeing’ the value and the content that the man explored.

Again, I could list a dozen “fields” involving epistemological categories that are not discernible to the software you’ve installed in your giant BigMikean brain.

But here is the question: in what “area” is this man St John of the Cross dealing? You have absolutely no idea! Or it is an area that you simply dismiss with an imperious gesture of contempt. Your rigorous and necessarily limiting focus (in my opinion motivated by unconscious psychological factors) effectively locks you out of a realm of knowledge that, in your reduced intellectual field, simply disappears.

Now obviously you have at least some notable IQ even if you come across like a cross between a human being and the male Siri. But consider a man plucked off the street who has never cultivated himself in any area that would have enabled him to achieve greater sensitivity to these realms of knowledge. Note that the issue is that of cultivation.

Man is a cultivation. In this way, my brutish mathematically obsessive humanoid-AI amalgamation, perhaps a wee glimmer of understanding might flare up in that extraordinary brain of yours: that understanding reality in specific domains really does require some “hidden, esoteric faculty, [and] one that must be cultivated”.

When you get even to the first rung of that fabulous path of understanding that The Hyperborean Apollo has crawled up with such panache and dancer-like élan, well, we might be able to exchange ideas.

In your present undeveloped state I don’t have much use for you. Nevertheless, I’ve tossed out some valuable Apollonian tidbits that you can chew on for the rest of your incarnation which may help you to advance slightly.

[BigMike]

And then we get to your most ridiculous assertion: that understanding reality requires some hidden, esoteric faculty, one that must be cultivated. This is nothing but elitist nonsense, the same kind of thing that religious mystics and self-proclaimed “higher thinkers” have peddled for centuries to shield their views from scrutiny. If your so-called “spiritual faculties” can’t be demonstrated, tested, or logically defended without retreating into subjectivity, then they are not real knowledge—they are personal delusions dressed up as profundity.

My suggestion is to examine the motives expressed in what you have written. Here is one way that might be conducted. In my view we must understand, respect and appreciate the existence of hierarchies especially in the realm of knowledge. There are many differing fields where men may spend their entire life pursuing some branch of study and become knowledgeable in that field. Their dedication, and the expertise they gain, must in my view be respected.

Take as an example those scholars who, like Ruth Leila Anderson who wrote Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare’s Plays, a depth examination of rather concealed elements in the make-up of Shakespeare’s age which when understood enable a broader understanding of the man, his art and meaning. I could list a dozen disparate fields where authority is achieved by such focused dedication (obviously with the physical sciences as well).

Here’s the key little one: in order to grasp and appreciate what Anderson has done a certain sort of “prepared mind” is required. If you picked an average man out of the Walmart aisles or someone at a truck stop in Nebraska, and grilled them about such “domains of knowledge”, you’d get nothing. There is nothing there to reflect an appreciation of the elements of knowledge there. You see?

Now, moving toward exemplars who we know you will not — I say cannot — appreciate I might mention Richard Weaver or certainly René Guénon. But let’s take an example of a “genuine mystic” who dedicated his life to something like inner, spiritual disciple (take St John of the Cross as an example) for his whole life. In your case, because you have brutish intellectual blinders, self-imposed impositions, his discoveries, his achievement, would for you be unintelligible. You would not be capable of ‘seeing’ the value and the content that the man explored.

Again, I could list a dozen “fields” involving epistemological categories that are not discernible to the software you’ve installed in your giant BigMikean brain.

But here is the question: in what “area” is this man St John of the Cross dealing? You have absolutely no idea! Or it is an area that you simply dismiss with an imperious gesture of contempt. Your rigorous and necessarily limiting focus (in my opinion motivated by unconscious psychological factors) effectively locks you out of a realm of knowledge that, in your reduced intellectual field, simply disappears.

Now obviously you have at least some notable IQ even if you come across like a cross between a human being and the male Siri. But consider a man plucked off the street who has never cultivated himself in any area that would have enabled him to achieve greater sensitivity to these realms of knowledge. Note that the issue is that of cultivation.

Man is a cultivation. In this way, my brutish mathematically obsessive humanoid-AI amalgamation, perhaps a wee glimmer of understanding might flare up in that extraordinary brain of yours: that understanding reality in specific domains really does require some “hidden, esoteric faculty, [and] one that must be cultivated”.

When you get even to the first rung of that fabulous path of understanding that The Hyperborean Apollo has crawled up with such panache and dancer-like élan, well, we might be able to exchange ideas.

In your present undeveloped state I don’t have much use for you. Nevertheless, I’ve tossed out some valuable Apollonian tidbits that you can chew on for the rest of your incarnation which may help you to advance slightly.

Alexis, your entire argument boils down to an appeal to intellectual hierarchy as if merely invoking obscure scholars or spiritual mystics grants legitimacy to your claims. But authority in a field doesn’t make that field inherently valid—what matters is whether its claims are demonstrable, testable, and logically coherent. You keep referencing “higher realms of knowledge” as if they are self-evident, yet you never establish why they should be taken seriously beyond subjective interpretation and tradition.

Your Walmart analogy is just elitist filler, a way to dodge the real question: what makes these so-called higher insights true rather than just another layer of human storytelling? If someone lacks knowledge of a legitimate discipline like physics, their ignorance is measurable—their predictions fail, their understanding collapses under scrutiny. But when someone rejects mystical claims, you don’t engage with their reasoning—you just insist they lack the right esoteric perception, a convenient way to shield these ideas from challenge.

You can dress it up with Guénon, Weaver, or St. John of the Cross, but at the end of the day, this is just the same old trick—asserting the existence of a hidden domain, claiming only the enlightened can perceive it, and dismissing all skeptics as brutish or blind. That’s not a pathway to knowledge; it’s just intellectual hand-waving designed to avoid scrutiny. If these realms of knowledge are real, then demonstrate their validity in a way that doesn’t rely on circular appeals to authority or unverifiable “cultivation.” Otherwise, they remain what they have always been—speculative indulgences with no basis in reality.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Alexis, your entire argument boils down to an appeal to intellectual hierarchy as if merely invoking obscure scholars or spiritual mystics grants legitimacy to your claims. But authority in a field doesn’t make that field inherently valid—what matters is whether its claims are demonstrable, testable, and logically coherent. You keep referencing “higher realms of knowledge” as if they are self-evident, yet you never establish why they should be taken seriously beyond subjective interpretation and tradition.

They are indeed “self-evident” among a very wide class of men who are part of our intellectual tradition. Taking intellectual in the widest sense.

A greater literacy on your part is required.

[henry quirk]

why on Earth would you not be willing to invest the time in what, if IC is correct, could result in you yourself being born again.

Why are you worried about the speck in my eye? Look after the plank in your own (you're supposedly fractured and desperate to reintegrate yourself: why aren't you investin' the time to get yourself born again?).

[BigMike]

Alexis, your entire argument boils down to an appeal to intellectual hierarchy as if merely invoking obscure scholars or spiritual mystics grants legitimacy to your claims. But authority in a field doesn’t make that field inherently valid—what matters is whether its claims are demonstrable, testable, and logically coherent. You keep referencing “higher realms of knowledge” as if they are self-evident, yet you never establish why they should be taken seriously beyond subjective interpretation and tradition.

They are indeed “self-evident” among a very wide class of men who are part of our intellectual tradition. Taking intellectual in the widest sense.

A greater literacy on your part is required.

If something were truly self-evident, it would not need a "wider class of men" to affirm it—it would be immediately and universally recognized by all rational minds, independent of culture, tradition, or intellectual lineage. The concept of self-evidence means that no justification is necessary; its truth is inescapable upon contemplation. If what you are pointing to requires a certain literacy, background, or initiation into a specific intellectual tradition, then by definition, it is not self-evident—it is learned, interpreted, and contingent on external frameworks. The moment you require others to be "more literate" to grasp it, you have already conceded that it is not self-evident at all.

[henry quirk]

If something were truly self-evident, it would not need a "wider class of men" to affirm it—it would be immediately and universally recognized by all rational minds, independent of culture, tradition, or intellectual lineage.

Yes, exactly. Universally, as far back as you wanna go, all men, everywhere, recognize themselves as free wills. The ridiculous idea that man is a meat machine is a recent thing, not at all universally accepted and not self-evident.

[BigMike]

If something were truly self-evident, it would not need a "wider class of men" to affirm it—it would be immediately and universally recognized by all rational minds, independent of culture, tradition, or intellectual lineage.

Yes, exactly. Universally, as far back as you wanna go, all men, everywhere, recognize themselves as free wills. The ridiculous idea that man is a meat machine is a recent thing, not at all universally accepted and not self-evident.

Henry, you’ve just made a spectacularly self-defeating argument.

If universal recognition across all of history is your standard for what is self-evident, then you’ve just obliterated free will.

Let’s break it down.

For most of human history, people universally believed:
- The sun moves around the Earth (self-evident to the naked eye).
- Illness is caused by spirits or curses (self-evident before germ theory).
- Kings rule by divine right (self-evident in feudal societies).

Every one of these ideas was universally accepted, yet all were dead wrong once examined with scientific rigor.

So, by your logic, geocentrism, demon-caused diseases, and divine monarchy must also be self-evident truths. Unless, of course, we acknowledge that historical consensus is not the same as truth.

Meanwhile, the "ridiculous idea" that man is a biological machine governed by physical laws is not recent at all. The roots of determinism go back millennia—from the pre-Socratics, to Spinoza, to Laplace, to modern neuroscience. The only reason free will felt self-evident for so long is that people lacked the scientific tools to investigate the underlying mechanisms of thought and decision-making.

So, I’ll repeat the actual standard for self-evidence: if something were truly self-evident, it would not require social reinforcement, tradition, or cultural conditioning—it would be immediately and universally apparent to any rational mind, across time and place.

And yet, the only reason you "recognize yourself" as having free will is because it feels that way—not because you can demonstrate an exception to causality, conservation laws, or the four fundamental forces. And when pressed for evidence beyond subjective intuition, free will believers never produce any.

If free will were actually self-evident, I wouldn’t have to keep asking for a single, testable case of an uncaused choice—and getting nothing but dodges in return.