Amos,

I'm really having trouble with how "you have to experience what you actually believe" is any advancement from "believing what you experience." Isn't that just a restated chicken/egg question?

It seems to me that experience is the only reasonable basis for belief; otherwise, you have to base your belief (i.e., your basic premise) on belief alone.

Ultimately, we all have the point at which we have to say "beyond this lies the unknown." But if you base where that point lies on experience, rather than some inviolable god space, you can still kick it back —— shrink the ignorance, enhance knowledge —— rather than just say "that's god's territory" and forget the question.

david