Eduk, you wrote:
I don't see how necessity for a source logically follows from being impossible to experience that source. To me if you can't experience something then you can't draw conclusions.
I’ve learned that the universe functions through the interactions of laws. I don’t know what is responsible for the laws or how they were created. I only know that science has proven these laws exist and are discovering new interactions as with quantum mechanics. I have two choices. Either these laws appeared by themselves by accident or they had a conscious source. The idea that they appeared by themselves seems absurd so the only logical alternative is a conscious source beyond our sensory perception.
Plato discussed this question in Meno’s Paradox. How will you know what you are looking for if you first don't already know it and thus have no reason to go looking for it? But why look for something you already have? This is the paradox raised in Plato's dialogue called the Meno. In answer to "Meno's Paradox," Plato suggests that before we were born we existed in another realm of being (the realm of the Forms). The shock of being born makes us forget what we knew in that realm. But when we are asked the right questions or have certain experiences, we remember or "recollect" innate (inborn) truths. So if we existed before our births, there is every reason to think that we will continue to exist after our deaths.
It seems that we have two paths to knowledge. One is what science offers and the other is what is possible through remembrance.
But what conclusion should I draw?
Would it make a difference if you concluded as Socrates did that “I know nothing” as it pertains to higher reality and the God question.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that you can still think spiritually without the need for a conscious source or external purpose. You can make your own purpose. Of course your purpose could be to try to find if there is an external purpose, that's valid. The only issue I have is the axiom that that purpose must exist.
Yes, in the absence of the feeling for objective purpose only subjective purpose is possible. The struggle for the dominance in the conflict of subjective appreciations of purpose is what creates chaos within the Buddhist burning house. The Master uses skillful means in order to awaken the fighting children in the house to the reality of the situation. In other words the Master has to lie. Many would call it insulting. We are educated and can discuss and debate. Of course the Master knows the insulting truth of our ignorance so has to use skillful means for the process of awakening to reality.
There is no axiom that objective purpose must exist. A person reads the great traditions and it raises questions. Some just ignore or ridicule these writings and their questions while a minority are willing to make the painful efforts to “know thyself” in order to experience both the fallen human condition and our personal potential connection to higher consciousness. It is far easier to either emotionally blindly believe or blindly deny. Some value the potential of emotion to serve more than as a tool for self justification and can sacrifice both blind belief and blind denial for the need to become one with objective human meaning and purpose.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
But still to convince me of your theory it will need to be provable. Otherwise it's just not reasonable.
