How do Christians possibly rationalize these things?

[Didymos Thomas]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fight the Power

I am at a loss. Explain please.

Read Aesop and then read the Bible.

Originally Posted by Mr. Fight the Power

Testing, scientific or otherwise, necessarily implies that the proposition being tested can be proven wrong. Let me switch sides here and hear you provide examples of how my Christian beliefs can be proven wrong.

A study of beliefs in practice. You look at the results.

Originally Posted by Mr. Fight the Power

Yes, I treat religious truth much in the same manner as moral truth. I do practically deny the reality of both.

I guess it comes down to what you mean by truth. I deny any objective truth in morality and religion.

Originally Posted by Mr. Fight the Power

I do not agree. I think the process of reasoning and the qualia associated with reasoning are subjective, but the rules of reason are objective (although they may not be real) and apply to all human understanding.

I don't believe that the relationship of cause and effect is necessarily true, but I believe it is inherent to human understanding.

Even if the rules of reason are objective, if everything being evaluated is subjective, the results of reasoning must be subjective.

Cause and effect is not necessary for human understanding, cause and effect has simply been the most popular western model. It's all about the water you swim in, and other people in other times and places have swam in very different waters.

Originally Posted by Mr. Fight the Power

The difference between objective and subjective experience is that objective experience is externally verifiable and typically replicable. If I have a spiritual awakening, it is a matter of consciousness alone and I cannot purposefully replicate that or expect another to have experienced it. If I observe the sun rising in the morning, to return to this example, I can expect another to have experienced it and I can reasonably expect it to be replicated in the next morning.

Human experience is subjective. We can strive for objectivity in our understanding by replicating some experience, ect, but this is only striving for objectivity, not objectivity.

Even the sun rising is not objective. We necessarily see the sun from different perspectives and no one can ever see the sun rising the way I did this morning, not even myself. Objectivity isn't real, it's an ideal we pursue in certain contexts because doing so seems to be useful.