[ExI] A science-religious experience

[Adrian Tymes]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 5:20 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 4:20 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On 20/02/2025 20:10, Jason Resch wrote:
>> > Surely you hold some beliefs, including those that you can't justify
>> > with science or reason.
>> >
>> > 1. ... an external reality beyond your consciousness (non solipsism)
>> > 2. ...  you will experience future events in your life (rather than
>> > "you" being confined to this singular moment in time)
>> > 3. ... physical laws that have held will continue to hold (a belief in
>> > empiricism)*
>> > 4. ... other people experience things and are neither automatons (sic)
>> > nor figments of your imagination.
>> > 5. ... the universe is old (rather than being created in its current
>> > state in the last few minutes)
>> >
>> > You choose to not call these religious beliefs, but they are
>> > nonetheless beliefs you accept as true and operate according to the
>> > assumption of their truth. An assumption not justified by science.
>>
>>
>> None of these are beliefs, and all are justifiable. They are null
>> hypotheses, or working assumptions,
>
>
> What justifies choosing these to be the null hypothesis rather than
> choosing the converse to be the null hypothesis?
>
> that are backed up by experience.
>
>
> I chose these examples because there is no experience, no experiment, and
> no empirical result that has ever justified them.
>

"Prove that you have actually had experiences."

While it is technically correct that there is no absolute proof of anything
beyond "the person who is having these thoughts - which this language
defines as I - must exist to have them, therefore I exist", it is not very
useful to go down to that level.

Moral and spiritual guidance rely on the premise that there is something to
be moral and spiritual about.  By the time you're even having that
discussion, it's generally taken for granted that one has experienced the
things one remembers experiencing, et cetera.
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