Thanks for your words. I've read a bit about Sufism and I think if we could sit and speak at length over many days and a few cups of coffee, we would find a lot of agreement and kinship. You seem like a person who has thought a lot about the nature of truth and the divine, and someone who values peace and knowledge.

Please imagine for a moment that I told you the REAL truth is: we are surrounded by trickster spirits. There once was a Creator who created these tricksters along with the cosmos, and they whispered their powerful lies into his mind and convinced him to die. Now, they turn their powers on us and convince us of religious beliefs. Every personal mystical discovery through prayer and meditation is a lie from such demons, and the only path to salvation is the painful task of purifying yourself of all religious belief.

I think you would probably not believe this (me neither). But how could you know it's not true?

Maybe you would reject it because you have received God-given teachings that contradict it, but I would say this is evidence of my view, the supernatural convincing power of the trickster spirits. You might challenge my view, but that's not possible, because my statements are unfalsifiable. Every statement you made in favor of your belief would further support mine.

Neither of us would be able to test or disprove one another. We would be stuck, each believing the other ignorant of an essential cosmic truth.

This type of thinking is poisonous to our species, it locks us into ignorance and makes us putty in the hands of the powerful, leading us to believe whatever we feel or hallucinate or are taught. It leads us to label non-belief as idiocy and a rejection of happiness. It leads good people to believe they are impure and in need of purification. The power of those trickster spirits twists our kind natures into isolation and self-hatred.

The fact is, to be truth, a statement must be observable by even our enemies and all of those who do not share our views. What makes truth is its objectivity.

Your belief is that you and very few others have a special knowledge of the thoughts and intentions of the creator of the universe. I feel this is an intensely prideful view. How small the creator's intentions must be to be comprehensible to our minds, a few tiny mites crawling on a mote of dust for only an instant, floating through a sunbeam in a vast and ancient cosmos.

You say we are all one human race and should care for one another and create peace here on our blessed Earth. I agree with you fully on this.

But what peace we have has come only from diverse and open societies, liberalism and secularism and scientific pursuit of truth. The world is improving, demand for equal human rights growing, lifespans extending, generation upon generation thanks to idea exchange and liberal values, not faith or autocracy.

You say all groundbreaking science is rejected at first. This is to the credit of science, not a criticism of it. All the examples you referenced were the result of questioning, skepticism, and the acknowledgment that previous views could be wrong, and today they are accepted, thanks to science. What religions can be said to equally subject their own ancient god-given teachings to the same skeptical inquiry? If this is what you value, the ability to be proven wrong, you will not find it in your religious claims of ancient, infallible, immutable teachings.

You claim to know the science of the soul, but science is challenge, disproof, falsifiability, doubt, skepticism. I don't see evidence of skeptical science being done on the soul by the faithful. Faith has none of these questioning qualities. In fact you encourage me to call skepticism negative, an enemy, a parasite.

No truth has ever feared any doubt or question. That's the nature of truth: it is not harmed by doubt. Skepticism is not the enemy, it is the path to discovering lies. Descartes said: "If you would be a real seeker of truth, you must, as much as possible, doubt all things."

Thank you again for your thoughtful discourse.