Don’t blame me if you disallow legitimate empirical evidence, giving you an incomplete and misinformed understanding of reality.
Exactly!
You yourself claim: “None of us creates our own identity and interests, nor do we decide what will fulfill us. All of that is a given which must be discovered.”
I am someone called to be someone forever, because there is someone who loves me, and calls me to love him: It is this reciprocal love what will fulfill me. Only love can fulfill us, so if we want to reach everlasting fulfillment we have to discover the One, who loves us everlastingly!
What do you mean by “life”? An evolutionary mechanism?
If not, then you can’t help acknowledging that “life” means someone who is “the life”, the “living one”, the giver, who gives me life and being.
In whichever way you look at it: Religion is an undeniable fact, and as such you have to include it in the evolutionary explanation (as for instance Robin Dunbar does).
You can consider “religion” a relevant part of the evolutionary adaption of Homo sapiens. But this amounts to claim that evolution aims to bring about humankind as a community of people called to live respecting each other! And so the question arises, where this aim come from?
My answer is the axiom I have enunciated in the previous post:
You claim that you are not convinced this “would be the only way”.
All right. But could you please propose an alternative way? This would be helpful for the discussion.
Another way is to recognize there is something more within which knows me better than I do myself and sees more clearly than I can into what really matters. It is separate from what I call myself and it exists in what, from my POV, is a kind of blind spot. I can only know of it what it chooses to grant me. It isn’t something a person just makes up though it is very easy to fool ourselves about this. It is the source of insight and inspiration, gifts that are easily overlooked if we are constantly focused on our own deductions, ruminations and brain storms. But it is there all the same and if we can keep our questions in mind and our minds humbly open long enough, insight can sometimes find a way.
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There might be some irony there. 
That sounds familiar…
How do you define “what really matters”?
For me the only sound definition is “what matters for the everlasting happiness of humanity and each human being”.
If “what really matters” is not defined by yourself but by this “something within” which knows you better than you do yourself, then this “something within” has all the attributes of someone who exists beyond space and time!
By opening both eyes you can easily see what exists in each eye’s “blind spot”!
Again here, at the end of the day, you are acknowledging that “this something within you that knows you better than you yourself”, is someone who loves you so much to underpin your existence, and call you to everlasting happiness by sharing with him and all human beings a relationship of love. In fact, you are acknowledging that everything in your live is a gift of this someone’s love.
Frankly, I do not understand why you seem to find pleasure in sentencing yourself to remain alone!
Denying God amounts to deny humanity.
And indeed, rather than moving towards a post-Christian age, we are moving to a post-Human one!
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Given your assumptions I’m sure what you say must truly seem undeniable. But I don’t share those assumptions. Best of luck to you.
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That was hard not to notice, that the conjectured “it” has personal attributes.
And
Not unlike certain empirical evidence.
To you, too. I hope you win a few lotteries, for your own sake.
Dear Mark,
All right that you don’t share my assumptions. But I would be thankful if you could clearly formulate your assumptions.
So far you state:
Here you deviate from conventional atheists like Richard Dawkins.
But additionally, you declare:
By assuming “something” and not someone here, you are assuming “human interactions or cultures as being mechanistic”, emerging from evolutionary mechanisms, very much in agreement with Richard Dawkins.
Thereby, what you call “yourself” would also be reduced to “something”, “no one”, at the end of the day.
In my view you are paying a high price for the lack of consistency, and harming yourself.
This said, you will have all my respect whatever decision you make.
Not really. Just because I understand it too poorly to say definitively that this mystery is a who and not a what does not imply I must believe it just a dumb force like gravity. That I view it as arising in consciousness the same as my self does not mean it cannot be thought of as a who. I think there is a dynamic relationship between these products of consciousness but with different roles and abilities. My wife and I have different roles and abilities but there is nothing mechanistic about either of us or our relationship.
In seeking to understand myself and humanity it is not from any desire on my part to view it as something mechanistic. That seems to be coming from you.
Thank you for your concern but I don’t think adopting a degree of certainty I don’t actually feel will cost anything at all. Assenting to truths I can’t verify would probably be more damaging.
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How do you do that or why do you imagine there is?
The difference between us is that you have chosen to believe the Bible and your own interpretation of omens indicate you yourself are the son of God, a younger brother to Christ himself. I’m not sure how I failed to recognize the humility of your position. Did you never need a single conjecture to figure this all out?
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Well, then there is the empirical evidence you deny. Why should I not be confident that I had a biological father? I am confident that I have a heavenly Father for similar reasons.
The infused meaning amongst the “omens” of Maggie’s sequence, for instance(s), was obvious and actually explicit and obvious to everyone, if you would revisit them, and not at all open to personal ‘interpretation’.
And the disparaged ‘omens’ have way less woo than the imagined personhood of your “it”.
(@MarkD: heavily edited above, so you may wish to withdraw your 
, if you can.)
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We could talk about epistemic humility again if you like. It is not about conjectures at all – it is rather about propositions to either believe or disbelieve, and is there evidence to support them. (The answer over the millennia: Yes, empirical even.)
Magnificent!
Here you are taking the right pattern of explanation: The relationship between you and your wife.
Where there is a dynamic relationship, there is a someone at each end of the relationship.
The same holds for the relationship between you yourself and the ‘it’ you refer to as “arising in consciousness the same as my self”, and as “something more within which knows me better than I do myself and sees more clearly than I can into what really matters”:
Either you are someone, and then at the other end of the “dynamic relationship” there is someone (just like your wife is someone). Or at the other end there is something, and then you (and your wife) are something (and not someone) as well, i.e.: you are understanding you yourself and humanity as “something mechanistic”, very much as Richard Dawkins does.
Amazing!
You are making the same discovery as Augustine of Hippo did:
“ You [God] were more inward to me than my most inward part”.
But by some kind of Kafkaesque mental barrier you do not dare to call You, the person you are discovering within you, at the other end of the relationship underpinning your being and life.
This is interesting!
After all that you are witnessing within you, what other verification would you still like to get?
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I’ve been distracted and forgetful as I have much to do before an event this Sunday. I feel like I want to answer you here though I also feel you are too eager to draw conclusions where I would leave the pieces in the air a bit longer. I very rarely if ever reason from dichotomies so it is off putting to be told that I must choose between A and B. That sort of reasoning does not appeal.
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In my view the position you endorse is tricky.
Consider the following statements:
A: MarkD and his wife are human persons and therefore deserve a dignity that animals and machines don’t deserve.
B: MarkD and his wife do not deserve more dignity than animals or machines.
Would you claim that “it is off” if you are told to choose between A and B?
Would you leave the pieces in the air a bit longer?
Your position is harmful for you yourself and humanity after all.
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