Tim's comments, that objective reality is really not so objective, but subjective based on an interpretation of sensory data and an agreement of a subsequent "shared" experience of the results is a valid one, however I'm not sure where to go with it.

We have deniers of everything out there (this is not addressed to Tim, btw).  Some deny Christ ever lived, others deny the Holocaust - this being the case even knowing what meticulous record keepers the Germans/Nazis were both on film and on paper.  "Prove it," the deniers say, as they give pseudo-plausible reasons why what we know to have occurred might never have happened at all. 

The problem with saying that we can never prove everything is that we are left with a feeling that nothing matters (or some of us are left with that feeling).  It is a moral relativism - to say that truth is relative, history may or may not have occurred, etc. 

I believe that in our shared experience of reality, there are obvious truths in the shared experience.  I believe then that there are obvious moral "right" and "wrong" actions in our shared reality to help us get closer to love and God.  ("wrong" tends to be those actions that lead away from love and God). 

Don's questioning whether Siddartha Gautamata really walked the earth is analagous to the Christ deniers.  I wonder, if the arguments made against the Buddha's real earthly existence were leveled at Christians with the same purported proof, if Don would truly accept it in a factual way if the roles were reversed...

Tim's point about personal experience is very important.  But there is a shared experience we all agree on in the physical plane.  We can not say that the conclusions we come to from our shared experience are completely invalid without somehow saying that earthly life loses some of its meaning.


Doc

[Matthew:] "Don's questioning whether Siddartha Gautamata really walked the earth is analagous to the Christ deniers.  I wonder, if the arguments made against the Buddha's real earthly existence were leveled at Christians with the same purported proof, if Don would truly accept it in a factual way if the roles were reversed..."
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Sorry Tim!  Jesus's existence is verified by verious eyewitnesses who knew Him personally and, in one case, was even related to Him as His brother.  His existence is verified by both His non-Christian and Christian contemporaries.  That amounts to "proof" in the ordinary historical sense of the word and almost all modern Bible scholars (including atheists) who teach at secular unversities acknowledge this fact.   The proof for Jesus' existence is even more compelling than that for towering ancient figures like Alexander the Great, Anthony and Cleopatra.   Of course, a New Ager like Tim can change the standards of "proof" so that no historical figure can pass the test.   That New Age ploy might be used to try to exempt absurd claims of past incarnations from decisive critical scrutiny.  

By contrast, the existence of Siddartha Gautama is far more tenuous.  Scholars cannot even agree on when he allegedly lived and estimates range from 563-400 BC.  More serious is the fact that his life is not even written down untul well over 400 years after the earliest proposed date.

Don

Thank you for the kind words Mr. Nobody.

Rondelle:

To find what others have found and to share what I have found. I'm still figuring it out. I figure it is a rare bird indeed who figures it all out while here in the physical. It isn't easy.

rondele wrote on Apr 27^th, 2007 at 5:10pm: