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Great post. I'd take laughter over prayer personally.

Why stop at one? I take laughter, and prayer.

We all see, hear and interpret the way we want. Not too many people look at the bigger picture. This reminds me of the following joke:

A philosopher, a physicist, a mathematician and a computer scientist were travelling through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train.

"Aha," says the philosopher, "I see that Scottish sheep are black."

"Hmm," says the physicist, "You mean that some Scottish sheep are black."

"No," says the mathematician, "All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black!"

"Oh, no!" shouts the computer scientist, "A special case!"

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were traveling on the same train when they passed the same field full of sheep.

"Look at that solitary black sheep among all those white ones" said Watson to Holmes.

"Yes Watson, the ratio of black sheep to white in that field is one black to three hundred and seventeen white" replied Holmes.

"But how can you be so precise" said Watson, flabbergasted.

"Elementary, my dear Watson" replied Holmes, "I counted all of the legs and divided by four!"

An Excerpt from the Douglas Adams book "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"

"Hey, er..." said Zaphod, "What's your name?"

The man looked at him doubtfully.

"I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name."

...

"Listen" said Zarniwoop, "I must ask you some questions."

"All right" said the man, kindly, "you can sing to my cat if you like"

"Would he like that?" asked Zaphod.

"You'd better ask him" said the man.

"Does he talk?" said Zaphod.

"I have no memory of him talking," said the man, "butI am very unreliable."

...

"Now," Zarniwoop said, "you do rule the universe, do you?"

"How can I tell?" said the man.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Ah," said the man, "this is a question about the past, is it?"

Zarniwoop looked at him in puzzlement. This wasn't exactly what he had been expecting.

"Yes," he said.

"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepency between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"

"So, you answer all questions like this?" said Zarniwoop.

The man answered quickly.

"I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear peopel say things. More I cannot say."

...

"I only decide about my universe," continued the man quietly. "my universe is my eyes and ears. Anything else is heresay."

"But don't you believe in anything?"

The man shrugged and picked up his cat.

"I don't understand what you mean." he said.

"You don't understand that what you decide in this shack of your effects the lives and fates of millions of people? This is all monsterously wrong."

"I don't know, I've never met all these peopel you speak of. And neight, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own universes of their eyes and ears."

...

"But don't you understand that people live or die on your word?"

"It's nothing to do with me," he said, "I am not involved with people. The lord knows I am not a cruel man."

"Ah," barked Zarniwoop, "you say 'The Lord'. You believe in something!"

"My cat," said the man benignly, picking it up and stroking it. "I call him the 'The Lord'. I am kind to him."

"All right," said Zarniwoop, "how do you know he exists? How do you know he knows you to be kind, or enjoys what he thinks of as your kindness?"

"I don't," said the man with a smile, "I have no idea. It merely pleases me to behave in a certain way to what appears to be a cat. Do you behave any differently?"

Now, this appears to be a man with a uniquely unprejudiced view of his universe completely devoid of assumptions. He has beliefs and prefered behaviors, but acknowledges he may be in error, but does what he does because it pleases him, as a "bundle of vague sensory perceptions". This is a parallel to what I think they were describing in the Matrix. One cannot be factually sure of what his/her senses are communicating to the brain. In order to remain sane and procede with life, a certain number of assumptions must be made, but are utterly unprovable, like the perception of people still "connected" to the Matrix. they think they know their reality, but are totally wrong in that regard.

When it all comes down to the nitty gritty, anything outside of your own mind might be false information delivered by your sensory organs and the way you perceive those inputs. Choosing to believe what you see through your eyes as "real" typically proves beneficial to the passage of time and enjoyment of life as we perceive it. Choosing to believe in a "creator" is another coping choice to deal with the eventuality of death. Some people draw a parallel that since they had a "beginning", the universe must have had one as well, thus someone needed to "create" it. None of these things are ultimately provable based on my above proposal. You may say "This new guy is nuts, I am real and so is the world I perceive." But, consider how drugs and emotions alter perceptions of reality and people claim to have "out of body" experiences while unconscious, or how a hypnotized person can be instructed to remember something that never happened.

The mind, is, ultimately, unreliable.

Now, I'm not saying the world isn't real, or that there isn't a god, but I also can't prove the opposite. I only have my preceived experiences to go by. Just because some other person, or "book" tells me something happened, doesn't make it true, no matter how many proofs you apply to it.

Can you conclusively prove that we all aren't just a figment of someone elses imagination? Wait, if that's true, that person and it's imagination ARE God....

For what it's worth...

Mikus

After all that writing, I forgot to state my original reason for writing it all.

Maybe the above thougths are what "Agnosticism" is all about. It's the way I choose to believe "Agnostic" means, anyway.

Also, consider the other difficulty of communication. Everyone has a slightly different, or even significantly different, meaning for the words in their head. As Bill Clinton once said, "It all depend on what you definition of 'sex" is." People laughed, but think about it.. Before a constructive discussion can occur, the meanings of other peoples words must be correctly understood, or the conversation starts going in circles with people saying "You are misinterpreting my meaning."

Also, check out a book titled "Virus of the Mind" by James Brodie. If anyone else reading this is familiar with the book, back me up, here...

Regards,

Mikus

Hi Mikus. Great post, thought provoking.

Welcome to this discussion.

OK, you mean is up to God to show that He exist. You are right. But with the attitude of you know who, He might hide from him. A humble person will go to Him trembling and praying: "If you exist I want to obey you".