Of course you do not know me. We have just met. But, please assume that I have been at this for a decade or two and that I have studied scripture, Plato and have at least read Super Strings and the Theory of Everything
My theory isn't arrived at recently.
I am intrigued by you and your sister bird because you reason and have expanded your horizons beyond the Bible. I must tell you that I am immune to the quoting of scripture. It is faith and I am in pursuit of objective nowledge before I die. Scripture is one view of the universe; birds are supposed to see the whole.
Please answer this question: What "thing" do you encounter that isn't made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons?
Your "immunity" prevents you from achieving your goal.
God is not a "thing" or an "event."
Nor is God a hypothesis. I've known Him personally for half a century and counting. His Name is I AM.
But your "immunity" prevents you from knowing Him and therefore from knowing objective Truth.
Sensory perception and reasoning - even knowledge of Scripture - can only take you so far because you suffer from the observer problem. You must know the power of God, Who is Jesus Christ Himself.
But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. - I Corinthians 1:24
Perhaps your bird instincts will overcome the frog predisposition and you, too, will be given "ears to hear" or if you have chosen to ignore what you hear, you'll change your mind.
To God be the glory.
One thing at a time here PasorBob!
First of all, from where I sit, neither A-G nor I have “expanded [our] horizons beyond the Bible.” If you understand what the Bible is, you would understand that cannot be done: God’s Word is the Measure. Scripture comprehends everything that is, everything that ever was, and everything that ever will be. It is the Logos (in the sense of "story" here) of the Alpha and the Omega.
You say you are “immune to the quoting of scripture. It is faith and I am in pursuit of objective [k]nowledge before I die.” I gather by that you mean you are confining your field of interest to physical bodies, to the things that are composed of particles according to the laws of physics and chemistry, which must also satisfy the condition of being directly observable by you as "facts" of external nature. This is what makes them “objective.”
Yet there are two questionable things implied by your method: First, your expectation that physical bodies (composed of “protons, neutrons, and electrons” — i.e., “matter”) are “all that there is”; which of course leaves out the small matter of the laws of physics and chemistry, which are not themselves “physical.” Second, you overlook the not so small fact that the separation of knowledge into “objective” and “subjective” categories is itself a “subjective” operation, an operation of your mind (another non-physical entity).
You wrote that “you birds ‘are supposed to see the whole.’” Well, we don’t "see the whole." No one (save God) ever sees the “whole.” We just try to take a perch where we can get the most expansive field of vision possible.
You and we and all of us humans are all parts and participants of “the whole.” As such, we cannot ever stand outside of it to see it all “entire.” What we are left with is a point of view only. As James Bowman writes in his latest book, [Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, Encounter, 2008], “….we all must have a point of view of the world, if only because we can’t see it all at once.” We must accept we can only have partial views of it based on our spatio-temporal position.
And “partial views” in another critical sense, as Immanuel Kant pointed out. Human perceptual equipment is only designed to register what can be filtered into it by means of direct sensation by our five senses, and mainly sight. Kant, in effect, argues (persuasively, it seems to me) that what we actually perceive by means of sensory experience is a sort of temporal “image” of the surface appearance of the entity under observation. We never see the entity, the intended object of our thought, as it is in itself, but only its surface appearance at a particular moment in time.
I think what you are looking for is not so much “objectivity,” as “certainty.” But there is no certainty in this world! We cannot have that unless we are omniscient, omnipresent observers of its evolution over time, AND we are not “involved” as entities in its process.
Thus there are cognitive limits that we humans cannot transcend. That being so, there is no way we can have absolute “certainty” about anything in this world, this side of the grave at least.
FWIW PasorBob! Thank you so very much for your participation on this thread.
p.s.: There is no "thing" that isn't made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. But man is MORE than a "thing."