No leap of faith for you then. No sirree, leaping is prohibited at all times. Health and safety.
Letās be clear here.
What you mean by a āleap of faithā is the initial step in an inward journey. A recognition, by whatever instigation, that the external world is not all there is. In fact that the interior world is a much richer, much more rewarding āplaceā where the meanings of things - as opposed to the mere factual representations of objects - is to be found.
The experience of Jesus you speak of is the initial awareness that the interior life exists - but the journey does not end there.
When Winterwolf speaks of being ātrapped,ā what he fails to realize is that someone who thinks the external world is all there is, is just as ātrappedā - in fact more so - than a religious fundamentalist or cradle believer. He is trapped in the world of physical reality, but as āpersonā he is a foreigner in a strange land subject to strange physical laws (which is why many seek to escape feeling thus ātrappedā by drugs, alcohol, sex, enterprise, good times or whatever.)
The larger point being that experiences of the numinous are indicators of the āinteriorā world and ought not be dismissed neither by supercilious comments such as yours nor by dogmatic proclamations by materialists.
There is no denying that science is an effective means to understand the order and function of the physical world, but that is because the physical world is consistent and amenable to that kind of treatment. To assume physical laws and determinable consistency apply to all possible worlds and entities is a huge leap of logic.
Of course, it is an understandable one because it makes one feel secure in oneās entrapment. If you can convince yourself that what you know is all there is to know, that does provide a comfortable security blanket, of sorts.
Unfortunately, that position requires a continual denial of reality - the inexplicable continues to exist and continues to challenge our comfort. The niggling sense that finding meaning is a far deeper and extensive endeavor than fact finding alone or restricted to uncovering the order embodied in the mere appearances of things. And, then, there is also death, which leaves great uncertainty concerning the question of why I am here in the first place.
I suppose one could simply ignore that question completely and put the onus on physical things to explain their functions, purpose or utility, but never apply the question to ourselves. On the other hand, why should things in the physical world all have their determined roles within it, but we humans left entirely out of the whole enterprise? Oh, there is that sense of alienation again.
Why should we be the only beings in our world even considering the question of meaning at all? We alone are looking for answers? Locked in this external world where real answers - to crucial questions that keep resurfacing at the core of our being - do not seem to be forthcoming?
