But without the reductionist censorship, the information could be conveyed.
Why on earth would you say that, "In a perfect world we wouldn't have the physical limitations we do?"
How do you define PERFECT? And did you forget that God created, not a "perfect world," but "only" a GOOD one?
Had He created a "perfect world," there would be no place, no role, for man — who, made in the Image of God, possesses reason and free will — that is, a mind capable of effecting action in the real world....
In a "perfect world," there would be nothing for Man to do. There would be no reason for a man to inquire into anything, let alone try to improve the methods and means of his divine stewardship of the natural world (Genesis 2: 8 ff). The existence of Man would be entirely pointless, gratuitous, under such conditions.
8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.So the Lord God had made Adam steward of all the Creation He made, and left it to Adam to control the "epistemology" of His Creation by investing in Adam the divine privilege of naming all the created things.
9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil....
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden....
15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. [I.e., IMHO Man's divine appointment as steward, not "owner," of of God's Creation, or any aspect of it.]
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet [i.e., "fitting," or "appropriate"] for him.
Well, suffice to say, according to Genesis 2, Adam did not find "help" to meet his perceived loneliness, absent another being like himself. And so God created Eve....
The rest is "history."
Thank you so much for writing, dear tacticalogic!
I thought we'd already established that you cannot convey "experience".
tacticalogic: 1. Reductionism eliminates information that cannot be conveyed.
betty: 2. But without the reductionist censorship, the information could be conveyed.
3. Why on earth would you say that, “In a perfect world we wouldn’t have the physical limitations we do?”
Spirited: These three issues interface one with the other. Men long for a perfect world, perfect body, perfect life, immortality. If possible they would rebuild the Garden, as ‘sinless’ utopians, socialists and communists tried to do and spilled the blood of 160,000,000-350,000,000 men, women and children in their devilish effort to eliminate evil.
Our world is not perfect due to the presence of evil: environmental (i.e., hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes), physical (disease, mortality), and human evils in their endless permutations.
In response to the question of evil, including his own, Buddha chose to deny ‘self,’ to shut himself down, to not see, hear or feel suffering. To not know what he really did know. To withdraw into inner stillness.
Buddha denied personal accountability and his way is ultimately selfish.
Methodological naturalism follows the way of Buddha in its’ denial of ‘free will’ (i.e., either it’s your fault or my genes made me do it) and negation of ‘self:’ “Reductionism eliminates information” (we don’t want to know because it makes us feel bad).
In a perfect world, you would be able to convey to another person an experience like being born again so that they would also have that experience, and there wouldn't be any need for this argument. Spiritual revelation is personal matter. It doesn't appear to happen to everyone, and may not even happen the same twice. We don't know because we don't have the means to adequately communicate it.
You cannot convey whatever spiritual experience you had to someone else so that they also have that experience. At the same time, you want to be able to present them with ideas that come from that experience and expect them to understand and accept them, and to reject any conflicting ideas that come from their own or someone else's spiritual experience.