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As my previous post will tell you, I am able to accomodate other people's experiences completely into a rational framework. However, the same rational framework-the very same worldview which led me towards conservatism-also tells me to question both my own and other people's experiences, and how they correspond with outside reality. It's odd that you seem to advocate "argument from experience," which is typically a leftist strategy, rather than argument from principle or evidence, which are the basis for rational thought.

It's odd that you seem to advocate "argument from experience," which is typically a leftist strategy, rather than argument from principle or evidence, which are the basis for rational thought.

Look, man. I just related an experience I had. I didn't ask for the experience, and can't explain it. That doesn't mean I'm a leftist, ya dingbat.

...'and how they correspond with outside reality.'

What the heck is 'outside reality'? Some general statement of 'the way things are' according to concensus thought? You sure have a lot of faith in that. You prefer to disbelieve my and others' similar experiences. It doesn't mean they didn't happen. It just means that you can't accomodate the possibility that your mental construct of 'the way things are' is not complete.

The idea of argument from evidence is flawed. It is impossible to demonstrate objectively that anything we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell has any relationship to the universe outside us. Why? Because seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling are subjective experiences— they occur entirely within the mind of the person perceiving them. A dreamer, for example, experiences sights, sounds, and other sensations while dreaming, and accepts them as being real at the time they are experienced. He cannot demonstrate the unreality of the "universe" he pereceives in his dream; how then can we therefore demonstrate that we are in fact not dreaming right now?

We cannot. Because we depend upon our subjective sensory perceptions for data on the world outside of ourselves, we have no objective way of demonstrating that anything exists except our own selves. A man in a sensory deprivation tank cannot feel, hear, taste, touch, smell or see anything; how, then, can he know that anything exists? He cannot — with one exception: he can know that he himself exists. He can "hear" himself think; "see" with his mind's eye, "feel" himself becoming disoriented or afraid — all without any recourse to the senses. Thus, as Descartes proved, the true skeptic can always be certain of one thing: his own existence. As long as a man can "hear himself think", he undoubtedly exists. Cogito, ergo sum.

And thus collapses the objectivist house of cards.The senses can be fooled; therefore, any being relying on the "evidence" of his senses as "proof" of a given assertion is basing his entire wordview on his blind faith that what his eyes and ears tell him is true. In othe words: in the end, we can prove nothing. We must assume on faith that the world outside our skulls is really there.

And, since all systems of thought are faith-based anyway, why not just believe in God?