Ranger19 Mar 2006

Certainly your parallel with love and lions is to an extent accurate, although I'd contest that you wouldn't have to actually be a lion to know what it is (if you are only going to count introspective knowledge as certain knowledge, then the parallel only works if you accept that to know love, I'd actually have to be love). There's a difference, though, between seeing something solid, tactile, like a lion and encountering something 'mystical' like love. You can stand on a savannah and see the lions, you can hear them, you can smell them, if you're brave/foolish you can touch them and if you were really that determined, you could taste them. This is knowledge not coming from introspection. The nearest you can get to non-introspective knowledge of love, however, is seeing couples together. But what can you actually say you experience in this situation? This is not conclusive proof that such a thing as 'love' exists. I'm more than willing to accept that you can say 'Love almost certainly exists, from what I've seen' - but not 'Love definitely exists, from what I've seen'.
And no, I don't think I've ever directly experienced God. I've experienced what is probably the work of God (the beauty of nature), but while I think that it almost certainly is the creation of a higher being, I can't say that it definitely is.