Dear Razor,

You give me undue honour by attributing the grand statements of the ancient seers of the Upanishads to me.

You call those "claims", though they were never intended as such and were not uttered in that spirit to begin with.

Sages for thousands of years have declared that the Ultimate Reality, which is also called 'God', the unqualified Absolute which is truly what you are, which is truly what I am, which is truly what everything is, cannot be defined, understood or proven - yet you expect me to do just that...

The Tao Te Ching begins:

"The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name"

«I dont even actually know what you mean»

For this [if you want] you will need to know yourself; and this you do not by adding but by subtracting, by peeling off all previously-held false notions of yourself, including the "human" feature that you introduced in your previous post.

«There's no evidence that a thing with a standard definition of God, a Creator deity, exists»

Of course: such existence could be easily demonstrated to be a logical contradiction. However, the cruellest and last thing I would ever want to do is to inflict this understanding on everyone, including billions of Christians and Muslims, for whom this precious belief works so well.

//So whether there is or isn't a god or gods, we should all just get on with it, and do something useful.//

Like trainspotting?

//However, you cannot locate yourself and you cannot point to anything that is you.//

Yes I can. I'm sitting right here, and like G.E. Moore I can point to my own non-noodly appendages.

//In fact, I think that we agree that He doesn't exist, so what is the argument about?//

Because a moment ago, you were claiming the exact opposite. And you will again. Show some courage in your convictions, and stop trying to have it both ways.

God either does or does not exist.

//If you are unsure what you are//

I may or may not be, but just because I'm sure I'm not God, it does not necessarily follow that I am unsure of what I am. It follows that I am sane - anybody who is sure that they are God is suffering from a textbook case of grandiose delusions.

//then try locating yourself//

Sorted. As I said, I'm sitting right here. I misplace stuff all the time, but I've never managed to misplace myself.

//try looking for things that are you//

Sorted. I'm me. These aren't very hard problems, Yuyutsu. Do you have anything more challenging?

//you will find that every attempt crumbles.//

You lie.

Pogi,

<<I am not skeptical of gods, ghosts and demons. My position is that you cannot present positive and compelling scientific evidence of their existence.>>

This is your reductionism in action. All the evidence available to you, me and others in the universe is not all 'scientific evidence'. There's a stack of evidence in our universe that is outside of that associated with the data of 'scientific evidence'. What about historical evidence? How about cosmological evidence that does not involve experimental repeatability?

Seems to me that you are engaged in a begging the question fallacy. Of course you will not want other than scientific evidence from me because that is your premise before you began.

Your view is very myopic.

Spencer

Yuyutsu

<<<<You give me undue honour>>>
I did no such thing

I'm not interested in the Upanishads, and quoting them gives your view neither more nor less authority. Below is a sample woo-woo quote. A string of flowery sounding assertions without proof.

“God is, in truth, the whole universe: what was, what is and what beyond shall ever be. He is the God of life immortal and of all life that lives by food. His hands and feet are everywhere. He has heads and mouths everywhere. He sees all, He hears all. He is in all, and He Is.”
&#8213; Anonymous, The Upanishads

<<<<<<which is truly what everything is, cannot be defined, understood or proven - yet you expect me to do just that...>>>>>

No - I'm saying that , by definition, you can't provide it. I just want you to realise the inherent contradiction in your philosophy. You cannot know the unknowable. (This is not a virtue)

Spencer

To the contrary, your view is myopic. You fail to comprehend the notion of sufficient evidence. You offer up a vague assertion - "what about historical evidence?"- Without providing any.

As all of us know, if there was sufficient evidence of "gods, ghosts and demons" they would be considered knowledge, and not belief. To get on asserting the opposite is delusional.

Dear Razor,

«<<<<You give me undue honour>>>
I did no such thing»

You wrote: "The burden is on you to justify the grand claim you're making."

I assumed that this was in response to my mentioning the Grand Statements (Mahavakyas) of the Upanishads. Just as Newton said: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants", I do not consider myself or my own statements (which you call "claims") as grand.

«No - I'm saying that , by definition, you can't provide it»

Yes, by definition I cannot provide you definitions, understanding or proofs, but I never claimed that I can. If you were after those, then why didn't you ask from the start?

«You cannot know the unknowable»

But you can know what is almost unknowable, what is most difficult to know - provided that you make sufficient and sincere efforts. In the least, you can make progress toward removing the obstacles which prevent you from knowing.

Knowing yourself (and God and others for that matter) is no ordinary knowledge. There is no way to know yourself because ways always lead between two different points, A and B. Via such ways, A may be able to see B, to go to B, to touch B, to learn about B, to understand B, etc., but no way leads from A to A, where the knower and the known are one and the same. To know yourself, you must relinquish all ways of perception (such as looking, listening, thinking, remembering, etc.), as all ways only lead you away from yourself. This is very hard work because it requires us to break our habits of looking outside of ourselves. Nobody can do this work for another.

OzSpen, Monday, 8 August 2016 10:14:10 PM: "There's a stack of evidence in our universe that is outside of that associated with the data of 'scientific evidence'. What about historical evidence? How about cosmological evidence that does not involve experimental repeatability?"

Historical evidence: Such as hearsay, third-party communication, archeology, deduction [Jesus must have existed so let's cobble together anything that might seem to support such a claim]?

Where shall we find this attention-gripping "evidence"? Archeology is heavily reliant on the sciences so how do we overcome the deeply questionable doubt as to the value of other historical evidence?

Cosmological evidence that does not involve experimental repeatability: Like the red shift and the expanding universe, like black holes, like super-novae, like galaxy formation, like the anthropic principle?

Repeatability is not a feature of any of the cosmological phenomena listed. No repeatability is involved, but direct observation is. So how do these support your contention for the existence of a supernatural realm? Perhaps you are referring to the last on the list; the anthropic principle? Is it your claim that the entire Universe was created by a god for Homo sapiens sapiens to play in with a reciprocal subservient worship as part of the deal?

I would have replied earlier to your post as it is my wont that such courtesies shall be observed. A computer malfunction had rendered me incommunicado for three and a half days.