I understand Baker's quote. It just seems to stretch the meaning of 'investigation.' The notion of 'Direct Experience' is an epistemic disaster. Think of the strong criticisms of sense-data empiricism. This stuff is private by definition, so it makes an absurd foundation for science, however initially plausible. Instead we have to start with (theory-laden) observation statements. — j0e

Take a more down-to-earth example of a "private investigation": Recovering after an injury. You, with your particular injury, with your particular socio-economic givens, with your particular psychological and other givens are the subject of the investigation required for recovery. First you'll have to spend the time somehow when immobilized, and then you'll have to retrain the injured limb. Take care of all the changes in your life that have occured because of the injury. And throughout all this time and effort, you will have to think about things, act in very specific ways. You will have to investigate.

Granted there are journeys into the interior, the self making sense of the self, we can still talk about what 'self' is supposed to mean here and how language works. I think the issue is trying to be philosophical and rational and at the same time gesturing beyond rationality. It's as if the mystic can't leave behind the desire to be recognized as some sort of scientist of the interior, hence metaphors like 'truth' and 'knowledge' for something that's also called 'mythos' or 'gnosis.'

I think a big part of the problem is the trend toward general democratization, egalitarization: the idea that just anyone should be able to have access to just anything, on their own terms. Initiation (whether in religion/spirituality, or in the trades and other professional fields) serves some important purposes. It's not just about protecting the "secrets of the trade" or "keeping out the unwanted", it's also for the purpose of not confusing the uninitiated.

Unfortunately, the result of this trend toward general democratization, egalitarization is plebeification and a devaluation of knowledge of a particular field, along with the normalization of lowering the standards of knowledge. Which, at best, leads to a lot of poorly spent time and the blooming of people's egos, and at worse, to dangerous situations (when people don't understand the importance of knowing and doing things properly).

One issue is that a science of the the interior is only possible with the assumption of similarity, but such an assumption cannot be justified via Direct Experience.

Imagine what would happen to the economy if there would be no guilds (with all their functions of preserving and advancing knowledge of a particular field of expertise, making sure that their practitioners live up to the standards of the trade, and so on): it would collapse, or produce relatively low quality items.
It's what is happening to religion/spirituality.

How does one florist convince another that she too has had the Direct Experience of the world as a purple rose? — j0e

The florist feels no such need to convince others.

That's a good example. I think intuitively we'd all want to say that the woman in question was suffering from some mental health issues and would possibly benefit from psychiatric help.
— Isaac

It seems a little wacky to me too. But perhaps our florist is happy. Then I'd classify it as more of the usual human vanity. The woman probably obeys traffic rules and is nice to babies. It's only when you get her started on flowers that she's harmlessly mad. A very nice person recently told me she believes in fairies. — j0e

Yes, absolutely. I classify such utterances under "poetic ontology", "poetic epistemology", and other poetic suches. There's plenty of this in literature. It doesn't occur to me to think of the utterers of such utterances as having "mental health problems".

See the beans in my hand in my avatar? I grow them. There is something absolutely transcendental to growing food and other plants. I'm just very careful about what I say about this to whom and when. There are other gardeners who understand very well what I'm talking about. And I know there are people (some of whom garden) who have no clue what I'm talking about.

God is omnimax, by definition. One of the implications of this is that nothing in this universe can exist without God willing it and making it possible.

I’ve observed that when people point out the fact of our insignificance, our relatively small size and that of our planet when compared to the size of the multi/universe is often offered as evidence of this. — Pinprick

It has been my observation that people say this when they don't want to get involved in the conversation, or when they try to present a problem as smaller than it is. "Yes, sure, you have a very bad toothache and you need to go the the dentist, but you don't have the money for it. But hey, human problems are insignificant in this vast universe!"

That does not follow. Obviously we did not create ourselves (nor did God create himself). But it does not follow from God's omnipotence and omniscience that he created us. If we, like God himself, exist with aseity, that is consistent with God being omnipotent and omniscient and omnibenevolent.

Problem solved. God does not author sin, we do. — Bartricks

No. Nothing in this universe can exist without God willing it and making it possible.

Well, you've got that smug confidence. Unfortunately, said confidence doesn't guarantee knowledge of God ... or anything else, for that matter. But it helps you to stay childless. Now that's a twofer!

Are you sure you're not confusing 'addressing' with 'accounting for'? — Isaac

Science, religion, economics, art theory, etc. -- they (can) all claim to account for the meaning of life, and not merely address it, indeed.

That religion claims to account for the meaning of life is not an indication that it actually does account for the meaning of life. It tells us the subject matter of it's investigation, not the success of the outcome.

(Leaving aside that threats of eternal damnation, or simply being burnt alive upside down in a public square have considerable persuasion power --)
I agree.

That science does not account for the meaning of life has no bearing whatsoever on whether non-scientific endeavours do account for the meaning of life. It tells us only what science doesn't do. It remains possible that all other endeavours don't do it either.

Agreed.

If non-scientists can claim that science does not account for the meaning of life from outside of its practices, then the non-religious can claim that religion does not account for the meaning of life from outside of its practices.

Yes, but the relations between those claimants are likely going to be rather tense.

One mustn't take religion so seriously, or at face value. Yes, reliigions appear to have enormous power and influence, and they can do horrible things -- but this is still no reason to take their claims at face value.

I can sort of see that. Just not sure why you're doing it in reply to my posts. — Isaac

It's not just in reply to your posts. It's something I've been working out for myself. Maybe someone else benefits as well.

Are they really the only options you see? Either a gut feeling guess or a full blown scientific investigation? What about a rough, informed-but-not-expert, examination of the general picture?

I think that in some matters, esp. in religion, those are the only options.
Also, why would you need that kind of rough, informed-but-not-expert, examination of the general picture?

But neither of those negations have any bearing on the matter of whether you can do it for you. Maybe you can't do it for you either, maybe no one can do it for anyone.

Of course. Such are the prospects of any practice.
(But as long as one doesn't believe in eternal damnation, things aren't that bad.)

Could you sketch out where you see the problem with such prospective failure?

So? — Bartricks

So your "God" is indistinguishable from being a mere figment of your imagination. And since you deny any relation to religion, your "God" is a mere figment of your imagination. And being a mere figment of your imagination it can do and be whatever you want it to do and be. It can favor antinatalism, if you want it to, yay!


The religious theists are at least bound to some code external to them, so they can't just make stuff up and ascribe to God whatever they want.

2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat. — Aoife Jones

How do you know that??

2. No matter how much I learn about the subjective world, I will never know what it means to be human. — SimpleUser

How do you know that??
The above two premises strike me as undecidable.

The premises one uses should be true, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.

But the point about the scientific perspective is that it is third-person by design. It is what any observer will see, all things being equal. It presumes the subject-object relationship i.e. ‘I see it’. — Wayfarer

While in religion/spirituality, "you" are the object of your investigation.
Noone can do that for you, nor can you do it for anyone else.

By having confidence in yourself, believing that you exist for a reason, that you're a worthy person, and so on. Yes, cheap self-help slogans, I know. But I'm earnest about this. It's a contextual reply to your question.
A philosophical quest for the truth, for "knowing how things really are" can sometimes turn into a self-perpetuating obsession that makes one's life miserable. It can start off out of a poor self-image, or it can result in one (and then further perpetuate it and itself).
— baker

I've no idea how this addresses what I said. Perhaps you could expand. — Isaac

I'm trying to give a context for approaching religion, a context that tries to make sure that one's involvement with religion isn't going to become something ill.

That's a good example. I think intuitively we'd all want to say that the woman in question was suffering from some mental health issues and would possibly benefit from psychiatric help. — Isaac

Eh.

There's been a tendency to exempt religions on the grounds of numbers (that many people can't all be mad).

What I'm doing is that I try to establish a healthy and safe distance toward religion. I'm not defending it.

But yeah, personally, I don't really see any other way out of it. There's no denying the difference between some lunatic believing in their own fantasy world and a religious claim is the number of people ho go along with it, and that does make claims about the success of religious practice empirical, otherwise the lunatic gets their fair shake too.

That's where one's self-confidence comes in and intuitively deciding that some claims aren't worth one's time, or are otherwise none of one's business.
One will simply crash and burn if one wishes to give all claims a "fair hearing" or approach them scientifically, testing them or requesting evidence for them.

By having confidence in yourself, believing that you exist for a reason, that you're a worthy person, and so on. Yes, cheap self-help slogans, I know. But I'm earnest about this.
— baker

I think you are right that religion offers some people these things. — j0e

No. I'm saying one has to have those things, or else getting involved with religion is going to squish one.

I don't agree with Marx entirely, and personally I think humans can get just as entangled with conspiracy theory sans the supernatural for the same 'opium.' Perhaps even Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals, etc. I quote this to make the point that 'mythos and ritual that makes us feel good (but only if one really believes and practices a certain lifestyle)' is not so far from what an atheist might say.

I'm sometimes amazed by high-calibre thinkers like Marx, Weber, or Nietzsche because they don't account for the cunning of religious people. Instead, they talk of religious people as if a page from De Imitatione Christi were a template for them.

Doing a religious practice can never convince a person who doesn't already believe.
— baker

I lean toward agreeing with you, but I can imagine exceptions to this rule, depending on the practice. — j0e

Of course, it's possible to jump to conclusions, even encouraged sometimes.
I've seen this in Buddhism, for example, where there was a subtle pressure to conclude, after a few "good" meditation sessions, that the Buddha was enlightened and that the practice of meditation was the one true path to enlightenment.

That's the trouble with talk of objectivity and of subjective experience: it doesn't help anything. — Banno

And then there is the issue of power struggles between people. We could say that notions of subjectivity and objectivity are born of, created by the power struggle. But even if you do away with notions of subjectivity and objectivity, the power struggle remains, you're still a person in a power hierarchy, and you still have to look out for yourself.

Tying this to our earlier exchange about losers and winners: Feeling like a loser seems to go hand in hand with operating within the dichotomy subjective-objective. I'm not sure what would apply for those who see themselves as winners (possibly they also operate within said dichotomy). Much less can I imagine what it's like not to operate within this dichotomy at all.

They are not so much stated beliefs as sentiments; to be seen in music and art, not dissected by philosophers. — Banno

I agree. Although religious apologists sometimes go to great lengths to present them as objectively empirically testable propositions.

Nagel's point is trivially true: there are other creatures, they have different ways of experiencing the world, and we can't know what that's like just by studying those creatures.

That's totally non-controversial (or should be). — RogueAI

Actually, it is controversial.

It was controversial, for example, for Descartes who believed that animals have no feelings, don't feel pain, and that therefore, it was okay to torture them.
It has been controversial for so many peple who promote meat-eating.
It has been controversial for some many ists, such as for white supremacists who believe that black people aren't really humans and don't have human feelings.
I've known teachers who would refer to their students with "it", saying "it doesn't feel anything, it doesn't have a conscience".

Yes, Nagel's point is highly controversial. People are not likely to give up their belief in their supremacy over others, they're not easily going to give up their belief that they are the arbiters of another's reality.

1. There is something it is like to be a bat.
— Aoife Jones

Is there? How could you possibly know this? — Banno

Well, you're not a bat. Do you know what it's like to be a bat?

I think there is a better name for that - hint: one word, begins with 'b' 'B'. — Wayfarer

Sorry, I'm too daft, apparently, to discern the reference. B ...?

That's some insightful stuff, but Karen Armstrong promised religious 'truth'. How are we to understand a meaning of 'truth' which doesn't have a truthmaker? — Isaac

By having confidence in yourself, believing that you exist for a reason, that you're a worthy person, and so on. Yes, cheap self-help slogans, I know. But I'm earnest about this. It's a contextual reply to your question.
A philosophical quest for the truth, for "knowing how things really are" can sometimes turn into a self-perpetuating obsession that makes one's life miserable. It can start off out of a poor self-image, or it can result in one (and then further perpetuate it and itself).

As they say, Even though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one is still obliged to dress for dinner.

I think that's true to an extent. My comments here were aimed at non-scientists (in the main), so the critique would still apply. If one needs to be embedded in Buddhist practice to be able to judge what it can and cannot discover, then we should expect to hear about the limits of neuroscience only from actual neuroscientists. Alternatively, if layman can say what neuroscience can't account for it seems one-sided to say the least to claim that I'd have to practice religion to be able to comment on what it can't account for. — Isaac

Insofar as someone is just repeating the claims of experts from a particular field, and is straightforward about doing so, it's not clear what the problem is. Other than perhaps that they're trying to gain some benefit for themselves, by association. I guess that's a philosophical-ish equivalent of name-dropping at a party.

As such, the claim here, oft repeated, that science does not account for X in the way that religion/phenomenology/woo does, can only come from a Buddhist neuroscientist!

Re: underline part: Sure, and this is trivially true. Science does not account for, say, the meaning of life the way religion does, nor the way economics or art theory do. One needn't be an expert in either field in order to notice this.

It's not just the old science vs. woo, mind you. In many fields of human interest, but which are of vital importance to many people, science is quite useless or inapplicable. Issues like "How to choose a worthwhile career?", "How to be happy in life?", "How to get along with others without being a doormat, but also not so aggressive as to alienate them?" are of vital importance to people, but even though these questions are studied scientifically, there isn't much use for those studies (too small a return for considerable investment). So people resort to other or additional ways of obtaining useful information on such issues. Advice of elders, traditions, self-help, ...

Hmmm. Excellent example. I had an almost identical experience. A local lawyer, 6 foot 6 and a real prick, did the exact same thing to me a few years ago. He clearly knew that he was in the wrong, however he didn't care. — Pantagruel

Just because someone says that they believe something doesn't mean that they actually do believe that, does it? This is the rather subtle question of mental state that I am investigating.

I think it comes down to why they say they believe something. On one end of the spectrum, there is the conman who, for the purposes of betraying others and getting money from them, will say anything that he thinks will sway his target in his favor. On the opposite end are probably those genuinely mentally ill people who are genuinely confused about things to the point that they can't function normally in daily life.

How much terminological precision can rightfully be expected from people? Most probably can't tell the difference between "believe", "know", "hope", "want", "expect" and instead use those words intuitively, esp. when they talk about things that are close to their heart.

Esp. "believe" still seems, for many people, to carry in it its old etymological meaning 'to hold dear'.

Yep. It remains an open question as to whether we ought follow the will of god; even were that will clearly manifest. — Banno

If there would be such a thing as the will of God, we would necessarily know it* and have no choice in the matter, unless he deliberately hid it from us.


*On account that he's omnibenevolent and thus wants us to know the truth.

What is so attractive about being a mere number? — Nikolas

Rather, what is so attractive in seeing other people as being mere numbers?

But one thing is obvious; liberty is being rejected for the security of becoming "a mere number" within a grand collective.

Democracy is forcing people into that. Because in democracy, the only hope for success that one has is success through sheer large numbers.

'God' denotes an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. There's no dispute over that. And anyway, I stipulated that this is how I am using the term. But yes, if you are asking me if I am claiming to have proved God exists, then yes, I absolutely am.

But as with most people on this forum, you seem to have the focusing abilities of a goldfish. This thread is not about whether God exists, it is about the compatibility or otherwise of God with antinatalism and whether God's existence positively implies antinatalism. — Bartricks

None of the monotheistic religions is in favor of (absolute) antinatalism.
So someone is wrong here, you, or them.

Will you argue that you have better knowledge of God (in general, or in particular in reference to antinatalism) than they do?

Mind you, all you've got going is a dictionary definition of the term "God".
They have millennia of sacred texts, some of which are said to have been dictated directly by God.
Your dictionary definition of the term "God" is derived from those monotheistic texts, but the rest of your premises about God are merely your own inferences.

I don’t understand the masochism displayed by some of our more educated members to engage. I havent seen a single productive response from him. — DingoJones

There is something attractive about his smug certainty. Being able to prance around with a certainty like that -- that must be great! Yay!

I'm curious, and you may well decline to do this, but if you were a skeptic, hypothetically making a case against the notion of God (however this looks) what would be some directions you think might be fruitful? This question was put to theologian David Bentley Hart and he immediately said, 'The problem of suffering, especially the innocent and children dying of cancer.' or words to that effect. — Tom Storm

It depends who the intended audience for such a case against God would be. Some (many, most?) theists will not even listen to someone who disagrees with them.

The problem of theodicy is small fry anyway.

If Armstrong is right, then religion is not universally rational in some sense. It would be absurd to argue for such doctrines as opposed to simply evangelizing and drawing potential beneficiaries immediately into the practice, so that the apparently incredible becomes believable and believed. If such doctrines are, pre-practice, absurd or incredible, then most philosophers are damned. (I'm sort of joking, but the point is that a certain personality type will be turned off by the doctrines and never try the practice.) — j0e

Doing a religious practice can never convince a person who doesn't already believe.

But that's not an argument that they do in fact work once you try them. It's not, as clearly claimed, an argument for the 'truth' of religious practice. — Isaac

Here are some assumptions that religious people (of different religions) make and I learned them the hard way:
"If a person visits a religious venue for th second time, the only reason is that they believe what is being taught there."
"If a person reads a religious book, this means they believe it and are a member of said religion."
"If a person takes up a religious practice, this means they have committed to said religion."

When I explicated those assumptions and ran them by the religious people, they usually disagreed and had a more what would normally be considered rational, critical attitude. I derived those assumptions from the way religious people talked about others, esp. those that have "failed" and the "doubters".

In short, the religious have a vastly different attitude toward religion than an outsider. (Stick around, and I'll tell you more, I think I've figured this out quite well.)

For that, plenty of people have 'tried them' and found nothing at all, or even become worse people.

Of course. One isn't supposed to "try" those practices, one is supposed to just do them. Religious people will even quote Nike and Yoda for this purpose.

So unless you just beg the question (they obviously weren't doing it right, because it definitely works!), the evidence we have thus far seems to be that it either fails as a exercise in practical knowledge, or the teachers don't actually know what it is they're teaching - ie the success it appears to have in the few, is not, in fact, the result of the practice they think it is.

No. We're wrong to begin with when we think that there's something to learn, or to "know for oneself" when it comes to religion. Nevermind what official apologetics say.

Religious apologetics again. What a disappointment from such a genuinely positive start.

is such a nice person. Armstrong wrote an academic book. It takes a more crude and direct person to elucidate some points about religion in plain plain terms.

I get what you're saying (I think) but would that not be surmountable by personal report? If a hundred people attend Catholic liturgy and one of them is thus transported (and reports as much), the other 99 gain nothing (and report that), then does that not demonstrate that the Catholic liturgy is not teaching what it thinks it's teaching? — Isaac

Not at all. One doesn't go to mass to experience rapture. One does religious practices in order to do one's religious duty, not to get something from doing those practices. (And one is supposed to consider oneself fortunate to have a religious duty in the first place and to be able to carry it out.)

This is what I loved so much about Wayfarer's initial talk of the Mythos. It had this wonderful fallible sense of us all trying to grasp at the ungraspable, to express in myth the experience we have of life which, let's face it, presents to us as so much more than just the biology or physics of it.

I don't think religion (or spirituality) was ever intended for such purposes (such as approaching the "ungraspable").

A different question is if someone knows or is aware that they are bamboozling someone on purpose. In these cases you can say it's bad faith. — Manuel

But can it be said that the ordinary daily struggle for survival really is about acting in bad faith?

If we accept the Theory of Evolution, and with it, the idea of the evolutionary struggle for suvival, and along with that, Social Darwinism, then doing whatever one can in order to get the upper hand isn't acting in bad faith anymore. It's a necessity and it's normal.

And that's the big problem. Given how much time we may invest in a certain way of thinking that adopts certain belief sets, how are we going to discern when it is worth un-attaching ourselves to these beliefs, taking into consideration how much more time and effort is required to readjust ourselves? I think the younger we are, the easier it is to go through such big changes - not that it's easy in that case either.

But the more years accumulate, the more difficult it's going to be to change as you've spent more time with your beliefs while not yet seeing a good reason to abandon them. — Manuel

Yes. It's takes a while for cognitive biases to develop and to become firm. The man who cut in front of me in the waiting line said, among other things, "Who do you think you are?!" I'm guessing he operated from the bias that he's not going to allow a person visibly younger than himself and a woman at that tell him "how things really are". I never stood a chance. Showing him that there were still items on the counter from the customer before me was irrelevant.

I just don't know how other people live with other people's biases like that.

As for the willingness to accept flattery, that is a rock-solid example of the desire to believe something, which I think completely conforms to the distinction I am trying to describe. — Pantagruel

And sometimes, it's just more strategy.
I think that a philosophically inclined person is in comparison to the ordinary, extroverted, socially adept person like a muttering idiot in comparison to an academic. I'm not saying this to disparage philosophers or those so inclined, I'm one of them, after all. "Ordinary" people are experts in cunning, faking, pretending, social strategizing. They can do intuitively, in the blink of an eye, what a philosopher needs an hour for.

I think there are robust studies demonstrating that secular countries have happier citizens. Religiosity may not really be about God all that much and more about culture and community belonging. — Tom Storm

There are studies that show that religiosity plays a different role and has different effects if the person is living in a culture where the majority is religious of the same religion, as opposed to living in a country where one's religion is just one of many (and the country is officially secular).

E.g. https://www.livescience.com/18117-religion-happiness-countries.html

God and sin. A sheer unsolvable theological problem.[/quote]
It's unsolvable for Abrahamists. There are more theisms than just the Abrahamic onces. Hindu (mono)theism, for instance, doesn't face such problems.

The question is, is there a difference in the subjective experience of the believer who tends to believe in true beliefs, versus one who tends to believe in false beliefs? Is someone who believes in false beliefs guilty of the sin of bad-faith, that is of believing something which he knows at some level to be not worthy of belief? — Pantagruel

I don't think so.

An example: I was once waiting in line at the grocery store. I was second in line. So I was waiting, standing still in my spot at the checkout counter, looking around, waiting for the time to pass. When suddenly an older man cut in front of me, placing his items on the counter, ahead of mine, while the cashier still wasn't done with the items of the customer before me. I told him that he cut in front of me, that it was my turn. He insisted that I wasn't waiting in line at all, that I was idly looking around. I told him that it wasn't even my turn, that the cashier wasn't even done with the previous customer. The man didn't care. He kept repeating that I was idly looking around, and that I wasn't really waiting in line (and that as such, he had every right to cut in front of me).

I didn't get the impression he felt the least bit bad about his claims or the beliefs he held and expressed. I think it's similar with flat-earthers and so on.

Personally, I really don't find that I have a lot of "concrete" beliefs. I believe that some ways of acting are right and others wrong. I can't even begin to imagine the psychological and epistemological state of mind of someone who believes the earth is flat. I think that is more of a reaction to an overall state of affairs in which not a lot of things are really understood at all. — Pantagruel

Or the person has different epistemic priorities and different epistemic standards than a philosopher.

A bit of folk wisdom says "If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything." I imagine that for many people, this is such an important motto and certainty such an important character trait, that they impel them to declare certainty by standards that are alien to a philosopher.

This also explains why the general image of philosophers is so negative: people generally seem to think of philosophers as indecisive, idle doubters, lacking character strength.

Look at Oprah's What I know for sure, for instance. Epistemologically, this is a nightmare, but for the ordinary person, this is probably what "knowing the truth" is all about.

You've literally just repeated, for the third time now, the exact deception I originally posted about. That entire post demonstrates (quite admirably) how science does not account for certain qualitative values.

It does nothing whatsoever toward demonstrating that any alternative study does account for those values. (As opposed to it simply claiming to do so). — Isaac

Yes, it's a claim. A claim made by relatively small, highly specialized groups of people. If one wishes to test those claims, one has to become a member of said highly specialized group of people and play by their rules. (Just like one has to earn some degree and other credentials in science (ie. become a member of the group called "scientists") if one wishes to properly understand the claims that science makes and to test them.)

If the claim of scientism (that science does indeed account for them) is dismissed, then a claim alone is clearly insufficient ground to believe any study does so satisfactorily.

This is an inescapable problem that applies to every field of study when observed by an outsider.

Which field of study does satisfactorily address the question "What is green?" Chemistry or linguistics? Or maybe physics? Psychology?

It does nothing whatsoever toward demonstrating that any alternative study does account for those values. (As opposed to it simply claiming to do so).

If the claim of scientism (that science does indeed account for them) is dismissed, then a claim alone is clearly insufficient ground to believe any study does so satisfactorily. — Isaac

As with all studies, one interested in a particular field of study has to play by the rules of said field.
This is true whether we're talking about the field of what is usually understood as "scientific study" or whether we're talking about what is usually understood as "spiritual study".
Staying within the domain of one field, one will not see the merit of other fields, nor be able to study them.

one's own experience is all that a person has, and all that is or can be relevant to a person.
— baker

True, but again 'all we have' is not sufficient to demonstrate that a study has a corpus of usefully shareable information either. — Isaac

Why would one want to do such a study?

Here I'm assuming you're talking about what is usually understood as "scientific study", and the topic are personal/private experiences.

By ratiocination. And yes, I have read such books. Is this going anywhere? — Bartricks

It's not clear how you can be sure that you know the truth about God.

"God" is a term whose native domain are monotheistic religions which offer competing or even mutually exclusive accounts of what "God" is.

Are you suggesting you resolved millennia of theistic disputes and figured out who or what "God" is?

You said:

Their virtue is not to be found in their metaethics, though. It is found in their commended actions. — Banno

from which I surmised that you hold that virtue can be found in metaethics, it's just that the virtue of Stoicism and Early Buddhism cannot be found in their metaethics, but is found in their commended actions.

I wondered how can virtue be found in metaethics to begin with.

Thank you for the passages.