What speculative view of reality, Paul? You may have mistaken me for somebody else that annoys you...or some straw man you yearn to joust with. I'm saying that we don't know what happens after death (aside from the decay and dissolution of the body). None of us knows. I've no idea if anything like "God" exists or not. I've no idea if an afterlife exists or what it would be like if it did, although I've heard a variety of interesting theories about it. All I am absolutely sure about is that life itself exists, right now, and I am here at the moment in the midst of it, and I am therefore a part of life for the time being...maybe not later, though. I'll have to wait and see about that.

Bill - Cool. ;-) I understand your reasons perfectly. It is evident that your main concerns are with the search for truth and with various people (in the American electorate?) who think they "know" some great truth, yet have no evidence or rational thought (reason) to base their certainty on. I'm not one of them, because I don't think I know. The only things I think I DO know are all kinds of ordinary things I have much evidence for (like the existence of Dachshunds, for example...or the fact that water is a liquid...)...plus a very few other things I've encountered in a very direct way, in which case I had some kind of experiential evidence at that moment all right, but it was not evidence that I could capture, put in a container, and present later to anyone else. Thus it is only what is termed anecdotal evidence.

I don't expect anecdotal evidence to convince anyone of anything, but it might interest someone. Then again it might not. Either way is fine. If it actually annoys them, though...??? Well, that would tell me more about their personal hangups than it would about my experiential anecdote. (and I'm not implying that you are one of those people who would be annoyed by any of my anecdote(s)).

I have never encountered a "God", and I really have no opinion at all about whether such an entity exists. I would be tremendously surprised, though...even astounded...if a God existed that even remotely resembled the weird stuff about God in the Bible. That doesn't make any sense to me at all, and I see no reason to adopt a set of bizarre, barbaric, patriarchal beliefs propounded by a dour, fanatical, brutal bunch of old desert tribesmen from thousands of years ago who took for granted things like stoning people to death and committing genocide on their neighbours, and who treated their women like cattle...and then claimed to be "God's Chosen". Uh-uh. Not my cup of tea. If I saw people like that coming over the hill toward my town intent on conquest and conversion, I would man the ramparts right quick and ready the arrows, spears, flaming pitch, and whatever else was ready to hand and prepare to send THEM to their "maker".

Bill, my view of revealed truth is probably about the same as your own.