---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote (to salyavin808): 1. Remember Gould's phrase, "nonoverlapping magisteria"?
2. What do you mean by "real"? Define it, please. Perhaps you should also define 'real' and see if the definitions match up first. In science, real is defined primarily by 'show me', that is provide a demonstration of what one thinks as real, something someone else can replicate. This is the empirical path. This is done by proxy (scientific papers) where the record of the experience is detailed and those instructions can be followed to replicate it. Then there is private experience, which is like the path of enlightenment where certain things are postulated and there are various instructions for attempting to replicate the experience privately, but of course, no one else can see the result. Therefore you have either a public demonstration which all can see, or a private confirmation which no one can see. Arguments by themselves are groundless: sophistry and illusion as David Hume would say (with a Scottish twang). Things concerning gods (1 or more) as theism progressed seem to have become a more private experience matter and therefore resolution would seem to depend on the path of enlightenment. But the path of enlightenment eventually undoes the reality of verbal truth, and in addition the experience of unification undoes the concept of 'nonoverlapping magisteria' when everything is experienced as connected. So it can't be demonstrated, arguments lead nowhere except trading opinion, and what might perhaps be called the mystical resolution of the problem (enlightenment) completely undoes the premises upon which the argument is founded.
