MsSanguinarius,
You're absolutely correct that you have total right to your beliefs. As for defending them, that's part of discussion, is it not? I'm just trying to get a firm grasp on why it is you believe what you believe. Unless I ask, I can't know if you have solid evidence behind your beliefs or if it is purely subjective (which appears to be the case).
I note that you stated before that you were spiritual but not religious. And while I still don't know what you mean by "spiritual", aside from the strong likelihood that it means; "prone to emotionalistic tendencies", the fact that you're not religious perhaps opens a door to present some comparisons that you shouldn't find offensive.
Until recently, most of my online debating took place at a site called "Christian Forums". It had a section which was claimed to serve the purpose of "General Apologetics" where people of any belief could engage Christians in discussion/debate. The truth, unfortunately, was that on any one-to-one discussion field, the Christians quickly walked out bruised, battered and with nothing left to say but that they didn't need logic, didn't need reason, didn't need evidence and only needed their "faith".
Eventually it was pointed out that "faith" as they were utilizing the word, meant nothing more than applying the usual logic, reason and evidence to every concept UNTIL... until that concept began to show them things they didn't want to see regarding their religious beliefs. That's when they suddenly abandon reason, abandon logic and declare a distrust of evidence in order to simply believe what they want to believe. Eventually statistics showed that despite being a site dedicated to promotion of Christianity, the deconversion rate was actually nearly 13-times the conversion rate. In other words, far more Christians were becoming non-Christians than the other way around. In fact, in order to be a moderator at that site, you had to electronically sign an affidavit declaring total believe in the Nicene Creed, the Holy Bible, etc. And yet, during my time there I know of no less than four of the former moderators who deconverted after spending time trying to moderate the General Apologetics forum.
My point here is that people following any religion, be it Christianity, Hinduism, Faithist, Muslim or what have you, tend to offer exactly the same subjective "evidences" proclaimed of every other religion. And each one presents them as an indication of their specific god. Many attempt to sell the idea that their "faith" comes directly from their god, while paying no attention to the fact that nearly every other religion also operates on faith and "internal" subjective "evidence".
I think history offers a very strong lesson about beliefs backed only by subjective interpretation of experiences, "feelings" and supposed faith-issues. In every case where any level of confirmation has been reached, those following logic, reason and evidence have been right, while those following subjectively backed beliefs have been wrong. And the number of cases is incredibly vast.
For instance, look at the number of people who used to worship gods like Dionysus, Osiris, Mithras, Tammuz, Horus, Attis, etc. Each follower had nothing but subjectivity upon which to support their beliefs because none of these gods (as it turns out), ever existed. They were all fooled by their subjective assessments. On a secular level, we find exactly the same thing (if we practice the intellectual integrity to really dig into the available data). Studies on placebo-effect never fail to produce strong beliefs held on subjective merit which the study itself is designed to be able to confirm or discredit.
One recent study was presented as being a comparison of two new treatments for chronic arm pain; a new drug and a new form of acupuncture.
Based on the subjective beliefs of the volunteers for the study, the acupuncture was far more effective at relieving their chronic arm pain than was the medication and the medication produced more side-effects and much worse side-effects. In fact, in three of the subjects the side-effects produced by the drug were so acute that after a reduced dosage failed to offer relief, the subjects elected to discontinue their participation in the study.
So if left to the subjective indications (the "internal evidence"), the conclusion must be that the drug was less effective at reducing chronic arm-pain and more effective at producing substantial and quite unpleasant side-effects.
The objective analysis shows something quite different. The objective side demonstrates that the drug was nothing but cornstarch pressed into a pill and the acupuncture needles had been specially designed to retract rather than puncture the skin. So all of the subjective data was wrong. It was simply people experiencing exactly what they had been told to expect. None of those experiences were any more real than are most subjectively held experiences and beliefs.
And in every study on placebo-effect (subjective vs objective), the results are the same. People will experience what they're told they will likely experience, even when the objective side (the side fully supported by evidence and documentation), clearly demonstrates that none of those subjective assessments held any degree of merit.
What you believe is purely up to you. Your reasons are your own. But I believe that when people gather together to discuss subjective beliefs, it should be with the knowledge that subjective beliefs have a tremendously scarred history of being totally unsupportable, and completely wrong when faced with opposing objective evidence.
