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So the spritual world is not curious?No, it's not, by definition. Instead of finding out how stuff works, this particular philosophy prescribes just deciding how it should work and then believing this arbitrary decision to accurately reflect the nature of the universe.
> What about when you ask yourself why the universe exists?
Yes, I do, but I suspect that it's a different "why". Mine is causal, where I suspect yours is centered on some definition of cosmic meaning. The problem I have with this view is that it seems inappropriate to me. It's inappropriate to tag cosmic processes with a concept that should be reserved for intelligent life forms.
> However I believe you are a critical thinker and that I may at least get you to appreciate why I would see things that way.
I do, I'm sorry if I seemed overly aggressive. I'm just so used to religious people demanding scientific recognition of their views that I sometimes overshoot my target. However I have to admit that I sometimes feel deeply sad and disappointed.
> Making stuff up is also part and parcel of science. In fact it is the essence of sentience.
It's this fallacy which brought us a movement that explores "alternate theories" in biology class. Religion is not science. "Making stuff up" that is unsupportable by evidence is not science. I agree that making mental models is the essence of sentience, however it's not required that these models are unprovable and in contradiction of the laws of nature.
> But are testable hypotheses the only important things in life?
I believe when it comes to very important things, like the nature of reality for example, making testable hypotheses the basis of a person's mental models is the only important thing. Rejecting the whole stack of evidence and the hypotheses that came out of those observations in favor of something untestable and arbitrary does not seem like a viable strategy to understand the nature of the universe. In this context I need also to point out that there are important things in life that pertain to your personal life itself, not the universe. I'm just against mixing them up.
> Don't use religious nuts as a strawman to justify an atheistic hubris that nothing exists beyond what our physical instruments are capable of revealing.
It's not just about religious nuts, it's about a fundamental difference in perceiving the world. You call it atheistic hubris, I call it the growing impatience of rational people in the face of a world governed by fairy tales. When a fairy tale crosses the boundary from personal phantasy into a widespread public substitution for the provable truth, it becomes a lie designed to manipulate people. And I don't mean to imply that you hold this position, I merely want to explain why I feel so passionately about the issue.
> I just take the nature of my own consciousness as evidence that there is something bigger going on here than we can be aware of from within our meatsacks.
I know, this is where our fundamental disagreement comes from. I studied the sciences, I studied the human body, and I like to think that I thoroughly enjoy the very fact of our existence. I don't think our meatsacks are profane puppets in the service of an unseen force that floods the universe with artificial meaning. Instead I believe our "meatsacks" are marvelous, awesome machines and they gave rise to a form of consciousness that is unparalleled on this planet. Those meatsacks are the substrate, the hardware our consciousness runs on, and they're doing a pretty good job of it.
> "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
For me, the supernatural is not a valid idea to begin with. I don't have to believe in any and every idea out there, I don't have to give them all equal weight. Nobody does that, even spiritual people don't do that.