It is really that simple

While indulging in the theist atheist debate over the last few months I have come to realise that there is only one question that really needs to be answered. The rest are qualifiers at best.

No it not the Problem of Evil which seems to be immortal in spite of being thoroughly defeated in ways too numerous to mention.

Nor is it the question of proof that God exists – many atheists appear to hold to a belief that is beyond logic, for many their faith is indeed strong.

There are two very important questions:
* Do we have freewill?
* How are we different from the complete thinking, singing, dancing, simulated human on the horizon of science?
But these questions only allude to the key and are themselves not the key.

The hub of the issue remains for me the existence of a metaphysical realm. While it may not obviously answer the freewill question, it does set us aside from machines. Of course you could argue that the spirit realm has/can colonise machines and perhaps that is what we are, colonised bio-mechanical devices – but none the less occupied in a metaphysical sense. So where I am really going with this is that the true crux of the issue is; “do we have a metaphysical or spiritual element?”.

How would we know if we had a spiritual element or not? – the $64,000 question! (my but inflation has taken its toll!).

Firstly we would have to seek the evidence within ourselves and secondly we would look to confirm it in others. The evidence would of course be metaphysical – no point using a metal detector to find wood.

The area I risk bumping into is that of brain chemistry and emotions – how to distinguish between the normal functioning (or even malfunctioning) of our bodily machine and metaphysical effects? We know quite a lot about brain function and personality etc. We know how sadness manifests itself in the brain and we know the areas of brain involved in math and memory. Clearly the human machine can function on a day-to-day basis as we would expect any fine machine to function.

So where and when does the metaphysical become relevant? It would be pointless for the spirit to occupy us merely as a physical home if it did not have a purpose – what are the options?
* To direct the body to do what it would not otherwise do – that is achieve some physical objective of the spirit.
* Provide a vehicle for the spirit to improve itself, or in some way to meet its own personal non-physical objectives.
Now I don’t know the answer, but either of the above (and perhaps other reasons you may think of) would most likely manifest themselves in ways which direct or influence our actions.

At this point I keep coming back to examples of metaphysical experiences (not necessarily religious in nature) that those whom I trust and respect have had. These range from premonition to telepathy like events and visual manifestations (yea call it seeing that which is not there – but not to be confused with hallucinations from wacky-backy or whatever). As for myself, yes I have a few events that defy scientific or probabilistic explanation.

However I find myself returning to the incident of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. This is a more powerful example to use than personal incidents which tend to be less open to scrutiny, less verifiable and easier to attack. But there are other well known incidents besides Paul’s, William Wilberforce’s conversion to name but one.

How does this convince me? The hypothesis “There is no metaphysical realm” is an absolute statement, all I need is a single metaphysical event to discredit it. In practice I am spoilt for choice, there are too many events to credibly dismiss then all as frauds or insanity.

With the existence of a metaphysical realm established, the existence of God is but a small step which I will keep for later.