You got that right. Religion, science, countries, etc., a very long list, are ideas in the minds of those who associate themselves. Can you even imagine the existence of science with no scientists. Just a null. Our world is a world of ideas, and thoughts about those ideas. I have said many times your thoughts are very important to your wellfare and your future. Choose them carefully.
Very funny, but you gain nothing from it.
Facts can be known in hundreds of ways, including personal experience.
I guess you could say it “happened.” But not all at once, it is something you grow into with emotional maturity.
You have a view of spirituality exactly opposite of what it is and does. Spirituality teaches love, compassion, caring.
There is enough proof of psychic ability to convince most people in this world. There is evidence of life after death, separation of brain and spirit, and lots of other spiritual principles. I regret that skeptics won’t even discuss the subject calmly and with interest. It is like Emmaneul said: “they stand in the middle of a brilliantly lit room with their eyes tightly shut yelling for someone to turn on the lights.”
People usually bounce around from one belief system to another looking for what is missing in their lives. After many years, and sometimes many lifetimes, they become sick and tired of looking. At that point when they are open to truth, it comes to them, not in rolling thunder, but in a small voice they never heard before.
Schizophrenia?
If someone really has “proof” and “evidence”, why not go see the JRF mentioned at the beginning of this thread and pick up a cool $1,000,000? If I read correctly the offer is still open for a couple of years.
Oh wait, it could not be just what YOU call “proof”. It would have to be what scientific opinion accepts as “proof”. Darn it all! 
Or conversely, you are completely and utterly wrong and self-deluded. You claim that “spirituality” is the result of emotional maturity. What if it’s the result of ignorance and hopeful feelings over logic and rationality?
I have hundreds of years of science behind my stance. What evidence do you posses that doesn’t involve ignorant people giving anecdotal accounts?
The still small voice I heard said “If it looks like made-up stuff, and it walks like made-up stuff, and it quacks like made-up stuff, then it probably isn’t a real duck.”
But then, I heard this voice long before I reached emotional maturity, perhaps because I never wasted time hunting around for some made-up belief system to fill some hole in my life; I would prefer to fill my holes with reality or not at all.
Picking the one that seems more logical:
Well, I know spirituality is real because I have experienced it. But you think it is all ignorant people giving anecdotal accounts. What they give is their personal experiences. Don’t you realize that every tiny piece of knowledge was once the personal experience of someone. To deny the reality of personal experience is to deny your own existence. There is no other way you can be in the world except through your own personal experience. Do you really not exist at all?
I took some LSD about 40 years ago. I personally experienced David Crosby smiling down at me from the sky. Therefore, he must have been real.
But, humans are easily fooled. It sure looks like Criss Angel is walking up the side of a building. But I know not to trust my observations. I have no idea how he does the trick, but is it not more logical to believe that it’s a trick than to believe that the law of gravity does not apply to Mr. Angel?
Question: how do you, lekatt, separate the fake psychics from the real ones? Presumably, you don’t believe everyone who claims to be a psychic. So, in your mind, there must be a way to separate the ones you feel are real from the fakes. How do you make that call? Please give examples of the real and fake psychics.
So anything I experience is a fact? My perceptions are perfect? I can’t be fooled? All magic tricks are real? The girl is really sawed in half and put back together?
Wow. Whoda thunk?
Science is such a waste. No point in doing an experiment if you know what is right already.
Peace and love, Leroy. My eyes have been opened. The Dark Ages were such a wonderful time to be alive, weren’t they?
Closed-minded egotism says that the individual’s interpretation of their observations must be correct.
Non-solipsistic reason says that other people’s interpretations of their observations are to be weighed in addition to the individual’s; though the individual’s own interpretation is more valued than the anecdotes of others, it remains reasonable to believe that in cases where the massive majority of other people’s interpretations agree to a repeatably high degree of detail, that the majority conclusion is likely the correct one, even if it does not agree with the individual’s own conclusion.
(And if spiritual experiences agreed to a repeatably high degree of detail, there would only be one religion.)
And yet another thread driven into the ground, like a clown without a parachute, by lekatt.
Hey, if you have a comment you’d like to make about Randi setting a withdrawal date, bring it.
Yet it is based on my personal experience, so it is universally true, and you must therefore respect it.
I went out for chinese food for lunch and got a fortune cookie that made me think of this thread. The fortune read: Doubt is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.
Cool. I saw Martin Lawrence.
Not cool.