Evidence depends on theory, theory depends on assumptions

If this is how it all began - then purpose, meaning and personal significance are merely trivial "optional extras"

Evidence depends on theory, theory depends on assumptions.

So; he who controls our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality - controls everything that ultimately matters.

(Just a reformulation of an old thought.)

We live in a world of public discourse that pretends to be determined by evidence; but evidence is not determinative - and cannot be.  

Because what counts as evidence, and what an item of evidence means, is dependent on theory. 

And all theories depend on assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

So that our assumptions concerning the nature of reality - i.e. metaphysics - determine all knowledge. 

And this is why totalitarian, materialist, atheism rules the world of public discourse, why all "evidence" seems to support it, and why there seems to be no evidence to support the spirit and the divine. 

It is why all "serious" theories acknowledged in public discourse lead in circles back to themselves; why "there is no alternative" and "resistance is futile".

It is why all discussion of purpose, meaning and personal significance seem arbitrary and feeble - and why hedonism, nihilism and despair are the pervasive moods of modernity...

Purpose, meaning, and the significance of the individual person are all excluded from the accepted and propagated picture of the nature of reality in this life and universe. 

For us; the ultimate assumptions of real-reality are of abstract impersonal particles, forces, processes, fields, energies, randomness... operating unknown and mechanically, algorithmically, in a world without consciousness, or life.   

These assumptions are built-into our public life, our pubic institutions; and from such ultimate metaphysical assumptions, any purpose, meaning, personal significance is arbitrary.  

Even for the self-identified religious; the purposeless, meaningless universe - indifferent to life and Men; is the real picture - much realer than that of God. 

Indeed God is regarded as having primarily created such a dead and futile world, without values: only later inserting some living beings, and finally humans. 

So, according to the mainstream and institutional reality; the purposeless, meaningless, impersonal world came first, and existed without our consciousness; by this we know which is most fundamental, which is most important - and is is not us.     

Thus the assumptions of our underlying metaphysical picture combine to rule-out the primacy and seriousness of  purpose, meaning, personal significance, and values in the universe and in our societies and individual lives. 

These are not regarded as fundamental, but merely "optional extras" - even for the religious. 

Public debate and discussions about evidence or theories relating to God, creation, good and evil etc. are all rendered necessarily trivial. 

Our motivations are poisoned at source. 

Those who controls our fundamental assumptions - control everything that ultimately matters.

This is one reason why the "alternative" internet makes no substantive difference; why those political animals who regard themselves as opposed to mainstream leftism make no difference; why even the most serious types of institutional religion make no difference.

Dig down; and they share the same deep assumptions as the globalist totalitarians - such that dissent is merely superficial, and ultimately irrelevant.