@kennethamy,
kennethamy;106832 wrote:Not know with certainty. But that does not mean that we cannot know. After all, we can have evidence for what is (or is not) in the box although we cannot open it (and may never be able to open it. Don't forget that).
Kennethamy, the black box represents the unknown, the beyond, even death if you will, in this metaphor. Such evidence as we have of what lies beyond death is highly controversial--near death experiences, past life regression and memories, and other speculative conjecture. The black box is like a black hole that we may enter but not thereafter depart.
Therefore, if we can have evidence of God's existence, none of us have determined yet how to get it, and some of us have concluded that lack of evidence is equivalent to lack of existence. We also have no evidence of sentient life and civilizations on other worlds, but we strongly suspect that they are there.
The metaphor, however, is not about whether God exists or not. It is about how we spend so much of our time and energy trying to prove something about the unknown, and how we actually start wars and commit genocide because of what we believe is or is not inside the box, whose contents cannot be known until and unless we have gone somewhere beyond all contact with this world.
I respond to you because I'm melonkali's husband and helped her develop the metaphor. We may have left loose ends. We're trying to focus on the impact of mystery upon human actions and history, with the premise that maybe, just maybe, we go too far based upon beliefs and fears for which conclusive evidence is absent.
Samm
