We exist not in a universe of purpose, but one of absurdity and misunderstanding. I look beneath the sentient puddle that is humanity, and watch the sun slowly evaporate us into nonsensical extinction.
lol, well I do think he's being an asshole (as he readily admits), but I thought this video was making a pretty clever point.
I mean, faith or no faith, if my family was starving to death I'd have no problem crossing out "god" for a little money. I could just rewrite my sign after he left. And the other point that's being made here is to beg the question: If their faith is so amazing and useful.... where has it gotten them? It's not really getting them anywhere that validates this kind of commitment in my opinion. lol ;)
But I totally agree he's being an ass. However, it's pretty obvious that the director is being provocative for a reason (To make it more interesting of course, and to make his point more explicitly stated).
Well I would like to know why it says on dollar bills "In god we trust". If faith is really disadvantageous to a person, then why do we put it on our money?
To make things even more clearer: the united States has not been on a gold standard for over 30 years. So what are we to think then? The money that you offer a person to give up their faith is in fact based on faith. There is no gold or silver behind that money, it's just a promise. Little more than faith. We all use faith whether we like it or not. The question is what do you have faith in? Some people have faith in money. Others have faith in God. But in america its different with our money. Our money says In God We Trust
You'd like to know why? Um... no offence, but ever heard of google?? lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust
I have faith in humanity, and human dignity. Only sheep need a shepherd bro. I don't think we need imaginary friends to rationalize away all personal responsibility and critical thought. When you understand why you reject all other possible gods and supernatural beings, you will understand why I reject yours. It's an unnecessarily redundant hypothesis that is unfalsifiable (untestable), and has very little explanatory power. The method of science has progressed civilization and religion has stagnated it, being dragged kicking in screaming from a flat earth, a geocentric universe, etc, etc. the list is so long I'm not even going to list it.
So you don't reject Zeus? Thor? Horace? You don't reject Santa Clause? How about Fairies? We cannot disprove any of these supernatural beings, but you probably wouldn't think I am crazy for rejecting them would you?
In a previous post however, I demonstrate that we can prove a negative (http://thesentientpuddle.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-atheist-and-not-agnostic.html):
Can we prove a negative?
Many theists and some agnostics argue against the atheist by saying that "we cannot prove that god does not exist because you cannot prove a negative." What they are really getting at is that our limited ability to experience and explore a world of infinite possibility means that we cannot have absolute certainty about any objective claim. For example, I cannot claim absolute certainty that fairies do not exist just because one has never been observed, or there being no documented evidence. Fairies might be really good at hiding. And we haven't looked everywhere in the world, much less the entire universe. I just don't have the ability to do so, and neither do you, and thus, for all we know fairies "might" exist.
The problem with this argument is that it applies to absolutely everything you currently believe, and reduces all claims about the world to epistemic absurdity. We already know at least via a priori logic that this is a problem in attaining knowledge, but we can make claims about the world that are fairly certain based on logical possibility and empirical adequacy as long as we accept that an objective and empirical world exists (which all three arguments grant for the sake of their own claims).
If something exists, it will leave evidence of its existence otherwise there is absolutely NO justification to make a positive existential claim (See the video in my previous post). If we are told that there is a box in a room somewhere and asked what's inside, we cannot make any positive claims about what might be inside without evidence, because an infinite amount of possible objects can be inside a box we have yet to open and yet to know the size of. We CAN make negative claims however that involve what's NOT inside, e.g. "There will be no planet inside," "there will be no married bachelors inside," etc.
David Ramsey Steel in his book Atheism Explained, notes that "we can indeed prove negatives, and we do so all the time. IN fact, if we couldn't prove a negative, we couldn't prove a positive either, since every positive statement implies negative statements (an infinite number of them, actually). If I prove that 'all the marbles in this box are white', I automatically also prove that 'none of the marbles in this box are blue', 'none of the marbles in this box are transparent', and so on [ad infinitum]." The confusion is in the word "prove". In science "proving" a claim is about demonstrating that it has been tested to satisfaction, beyond reasonable doubt, based on empirically adequate observation and sound reasoning. The theist generally does not meet any of these criteria.
Have you studied Plato's forms any? It presents and studies things as having a certain quality or essence in the sense that we can imagine them in our minds, but they may not be physically present. This is true for a great many of things especially human invention in general. The automobile for example started with an idea. That idea became true for one person, then two, then eventually everyone. Every year people think up non-physical ideas and make them become reality as improvements to the automobile in terms of design and engineering. If you make something that's not physical become real, then by your own definition it is impossible and magic. At the very list that seems restricting.
Okay. If I conceive of an invention and I am able to make it a reality, then it becomes a reality. Prior to that it is simply an idea. But there are things I can conceive and yet cannot make a reality (fairies, square circles, married bachelors, unicorns, the sorcerer's stone, etc.). Fantastical ideas can only become part of reality by writing them down and telling a story, we can't bring them (like the automobile) into being.
Yes, I have read Plato's complete works. He has great and interesting ideas (The Republic is my favorite because I agree with many of his political ideas), but the forms are logical speculation by Plato which he criticizes himself in the Parmenides, and Aristotle later criticizes them as well. He arrives at the forms by asking how we know what perfection is when we have (supposedly) never experienced perfection (such as a perfect sphere or circle). But it is unwarranted to suppose that nonexistence is more natural than existence, or that forms actually exist in a magical realm simply because we conclude a basic idea of a chair, love, justice, etc, have a general meaning. Most of our ideas are a combination of experience (the unicorn is simply a horse with a horn on it; God is not surprisingly in man's likeness with human emotions; Magic is descriptive of wishing to do what one currently is prevented from doing by the laws of nature; etc… name one thing conceived that is not in part a manifestation of reality and experience - mathematics excluded, which actually destroys platonic idealism because no experience creates its form. I can expound on that if you wish, but this can be found simply by typing it in google).
Aristotle agreed that forms are closely tied to intelligibility, but denied their separate existence. Kant saw form as the a priori aspect of experience: We are presented with phenomenological "matter," which has no meaning until the mind imposes some form upon it (not always the correct form or meaning is applied, but the mind is a sorting and defining machine that likes to impose form on experience).
It is also important to point out that after all his romantic philosophizing of the forms, Plato held that "reality can be known and reality is rational; what cannot be known is not rational, and what is not fully real is not fully rational" (Copleston on Plato). His idea of forms is a philosophical attempt at explaining experience and language.
Perfection is really just a logical inference by the mind that helps generalize a term or meaning of a term so that we can categorize, communicate, and reference our experience. It's no more magical than that.
People think foolish things all the time. People used to think the world was flat for example and that if you sailed long enough you would fall off the earth. That seems way silly, but that's exactly what everyone used to think. When Alexander the Great arrived in India to conquer he encountered monkies and thought they were men and tried to kill them! A similar incident happened in France that always made me laugh where a ship wrecked that was carrying monkies off the coast of England during the Napoleonic wars. Supposedly one of the monkies escaped with it's life to shore and the locals found it and hanged it thinking the monkey was in fact a French spy. The monkey was reportedly wearing a french uniform.
So if a tree fall's in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it still make a sound?
Personally I try to focus on freeing my mind, not trying to restrict it with rules and limitations for how, for whatever reason, things "ought" to be as we are usually wrong when we say something is impossible. With modern genetics someone very well could possibly "invent" a unicorn, why is that so strange and unbelievable? You know, I think it was Asimov who said the technology of our civilization would be indistinguishable from magic if we showed it to someone from the past like the Roman Empire.
"People think foolish things all the time. People used to think the world was flat for example and that if you sailed long enough you would fall off the earth."
- And thanks to the scientific method, we now know the world is round. What's your point? People think silly things sometimes, and therefore god exists?? How? Make a real argument here.
"When Alexander the Great arrived in India to conquer he encountered monkies and thought they were men and tried to kill them! A similar incident happened in France that always made me laugh where a ship wrecked that was carrying monkies off the coast of England during the Napoleonic wars. Supposedly one of the monkies escaped with it's life to shore and the locals found it and hanged it thinking the monkey was in fact a French spy. The monkey was reportedly wearing a french uniform."
- So this makes platonic idealism true?? Because someone saw a silly monkey and didn't know what it was? I'm not sure where you are going with this.
"So if a tree fall's in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it still make a sound?"
- Yes it does. Did you have a point you'd like to make with George Berkeley's question? Can something exist without being perceived? No? Then god does not exist (notice I'm using the same riddle as you are). The skeptical dilemma it presents is simply that, a skeptical dilemma.
"Personally I try to focus on freeing my mind, not trying to restrict it with rules and limitations for how, for whatever reason, things "ought" to be as we are usually wrong when we say something is impossible."
- Sounds like you're restricting your mind by refusing to entertain reality as the cold hard truth you would wish to avoid. - IS anything possible? IS it? I see this all the time with beginning philosophy students.. They say "well… anything's possible!" Say that to a professor and they will respond by saying, "anything? Married bachelors are possible? Square circles are possible? Can something both exist and not exist at the same time? Could an omnipotent god create a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it? Could he then lift it? Is it possible for 2+2 to equal 3?
- There is a difference between saying we live in a universe of infinite possibility, and saying "anything is possible." The first is consistent with logic, the second is the utter denial of logic.
"With modern genetics someone very well could possibly "invent" a unicorn, why is that so strange and unbelievable?"
- What's your point? If we succeeded in doing that, unicorns would exist. So what? This does not justify belief that unicorns exist right now. What if we genetically created something half hippo half horse? How does this help your argument. If we succeed in creating it, it is part of reality. If we do not, it remains an idea.
"You know, I think it was Asimov who said the technology of our civilization would be indistinguishable from magic if we showed it to someone from the past like the Roman Empire."
- Well no kidding. So what? Asimov was a biochemist and an atheist author. He was simply pointing out that IGNORANCE leads to misunderstanding.
Um.. I'm not being hostile. I'm just trying to address your argument with something provocative enough you can see where it goes wrong.
How come YOU never address the problems I introduce in your arguments? You keep ignoring the issues I bring up (meanwhile I'm addressing ALL of your argument), and instead you just pick one little thing and change subjects or add a non sequitur.
As far as Asimov.. How does an appeal to an atheist author help your rather ungrounded leap to magic and platonic idealism? You have authors all over your blog misquoted and taken out of context to help justify your position that magic exists and so does god?? Who is it who is unwilling to seek the truth? It seems like you're doing everything to ignore it and replace it with "magic". You are not "seeking the truth" you are asserting the truth. Where is your evidence? Hell, where is your argument??
But that was my last attempt to get you to look at where your logic goes wrong. Believe what you want. That Plato's forms somehow justify the existence of god and all the supernatural entities you wish. I was hoping we could actually get a dialogue going, but oh well.
This video is hilarious. The problem is that he's highlighting a very superficial issue. Not that the belief in god is hindering long-term success, only that it's hindering short term success.
There are a lot of cases where delayed gratification pays off- going to college to get a better job, not eating cake to get a better body, and so on. The problem is that these people have an unfounded, but very common, belief that rejecting short term happiness is better because the payout in the end is better.
So it's not that these people aren't using very common reasoning, it's that the basis for their reasoning is, perhaps, faulty.
I think that for an argument, this brings very little to the table. Nonetheless, I was very entertained!
As always, keep up writing. Your friend at explain god, interested.
Please consider for a moment that you are on earth. That you exist and are surrounded by both matter and energy and are under constant bombardment by forces and extreme spatial anomalies that are quite beyond our ability to comprehend. What we do comprehend however is that we are moving incredibly fast through both space and time. That every cell and every atom within our bodies is undergoing constant change in a continuous and non-stop cycle of death and rebirth. That at any given moment you are not the same as you were as the last moment, nor will you ever been the same again. That you and everything you think that you know is impermanent and is always changing from one instance to the next. That we attempt to graph this change and say that now "we know". What 'We know', it is quite clear to me, is nothing. That to think there is nothing like you or me anywhere? That we are the only thing in this great and wonderful universe that will look in the mirror and say, "that I am, or that is me?" Do you believe beyond all certainty that what you see in front of you, what you feel, what you taste, touch, and smell is real? What is real? A series of electrical impulses to your brain that creates the illusion of what you think is real? Do you believe that you are you that when you look in the mirror and you say, that I am, that you are just deluding yourself into thinking that you can really think at all? That, even though you think, it does not matter because only what you taste, touch, hear, and smell are real? Those things are less real than what you think. Ideas are timeless but what you think as real is always changing. How do you suppose the cells in your body know what to become when they die and new ones are made? I will tell you it is because they received the information or ideas of how to become what they are. Those ideas or information is permanent, but the cells that became cells out of that information die all the time only to be replaced by more cells based on the same information.
Well I already kind of talked about this in a recent post: http://thesentientpuddle.blogspot.com/2011/03/monopoly-on-truth-we-dont-even-have.html
I agree to our inability to access absolute certainty, but if we accept the axiom of an objective reality that is not a figment of our imagination, then we can argue equally on those grounds.
All that being said, even in the greatest of skeptical dilemmas... Ignorance is not evidence of the supernatural. Ignorance is not evidence of anything. And that's all I wish to say on the matter.
15 comments:
seriously, can't you do better than this ;)
what do we learn from this? that 2 people are commited to their faith but they still get the $20...
redx
lol, well I do think he's being an asshole (as he readily admits), but I thought this video was making a pretty clever point.
I mean, faith or no faith, if my family was starving to death I'd have no problem crossing out "god" for a little money. I could just rewrite my sign after he left. And the other point that's being made here is to beg the question: If their faith is so amazing and useful.... where has it gotten them? It's not really getting them anywhere that validates this kind of commitment in my opinion. lol ;)
But I totally agree he's being an ass. However, it's pretty obvious that the director is being provocative for a reason (To make it more interesting of course, and to make his point more explicitly stated).
Well I would like to know why it says on dollar bills "In god we trust". If faith is really disadvantageous to a person, then why do we put it on our money?
To make things even more clearer: the united States has not been on a gold standard for over 30 years. So what are we to think then? The money that you offer a person to give up their faith is in fact based on faith. There is no gold or silver behind that money, it's just a promise. Little more than faith. We all use faith whether we like it or not. The question is what do you have faith in? Some people have faith in money. Others have faith in God. But in america its different with our money. Our money says In God We Trust
You'd like to know why? Um... no offence, but ever heard of google?? lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust
I have faith in humanity, and human dignity. Only sheep need a shepherd bro. I don't think we need imaginary friends to rationalize away all personal responsibility and critical thought. When you understand why you reject all other possible gods and supernatural beings, you will understand why I reject yours. It's an unnecessarily redundant hypothesis that is unfalsifiable (untestable), and has very little explanatory power. The method of science has progressed civilization and religion has stagnated it, being dragged kicking in screaming from a flat earth, a geocentric universe, etc, etc. the list is so long I'm not even going to list it.
I never defined God>and what did I reject?
So you don't reject Zeus? Thor? Horace? You don't reject Santa Clause? How about Fairies? We cannot disprove any of these supernatural beings, but you probably wouldn't think I am crazy for rejecting them would you?
In a previous post however, I demonstrate that we can prove a negative (http://thesentientpuddle.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-atheist-and-not-agnostic.html):
Can we prove a negative?
Many theists and some agnostics argue against the atheist by saying that "we cannot prove that god does not exist because you cannot prove a negative." What they are really getting at is that our limited ability to experience and explore a world of infinite possibility means that we cannot have absolute certainty about any objective claim. For example, I cannot claim absolute certainty that fairies do not exist just because one has never been observed, or there being no documented evidence. Fairies might be really good at hiding. And we haven't looked everywhere in the world, much less the entire universe. I just don't have the ability to do so, and neither do you, and thus, for all we know fairies "might" exist.
The problem with this argument is that it applies to absolutely everything you currently believe, and reduces all claims about the world to epistemic absurdity. We already know at least via a priori logic that this is a problem in attaining knowledge, but we can make claims about the world that are fairly certain based on logical possibility and empirical adequacy as long as we accept that an objective and empirical world exists (which all three arguments grant for the sake of their own claims).
If something exists, it will leave evidence of its existence otherwise there is absolutely NO justification to make a positive existential claim (See the video in my previous post). If we are told that there is a box in a room somewhere and asked what's inside, we cannot make any positive claims about what might be inside without evidence, because an infinite amount of possible objects can be inside a box we have yet to open and yet to know the size of. We CAN make negative claims however that involve what's NOT inside, e.g. "There will be no planet inside," "there will be no married bachelors inside," etc.
David Ramsey Steel in his book Atheism Explained, notes that "we can indeed prove negatives, and we do so all the time. IN fact, if we couldn't prove a negative, we couldn't prove a positive either, since every positive statement implies negative statements (an infinite number of them, actually). If I prove that 'all the marbles in this box are white', I automatically also prove that 'none of the marbles in this box are blue', 'none of the marbles in this box are transparent', and so on [ad infinitum]." The confusion is in the word "prove". In science "proving" a claim is about demonstrating that it has been tested to satisfaction, beyond reasonable doubt, based on empirically adequate observation and sound reasoning. The theist generally does not meet any of these criteria.
Have you studied Plato's forms any? It presents and studies things as having a certain quality or essence in the sense that we can imagine them in our minds, but they may not be physically present. This is true for a great many of things especially human invention in general. The automobile for example started with an idea. That idea became true for one person, then two, then eventually everyone. Every year people think up non-physical ideas and make them become reality as improvements to the automobile in terms of design and engineering. If you make something that's not physical become real, then by your own definition it is impossible and magic. At the very list that seems restricting.
Okay. If I conceive of an invention and I am able to make it a reality, then it becomes a reality. Prior to that it is simply an idea. But there are things I can conceive and yet cannot make a reality (fairies, square circles, married bachelors, unicorns, the sorcerer's stone, etc.). Fantastical ideas can only become part of reality by writing them down and telling a story, we can't bring them (like the automobile) into being.
Yes, I have read Plato's complete works. He has great and interesting ideas (The Republic is my favorite because I agree with many of his political ideas), but the forms are logical speculation by Plato which he criticizes himself in the Parmenides, and Aristotle later criticizes them as well. He arrives at the forms by asking how we know what perfection is when we have (supposedly) never experienced perfection (such as a perfect sphere or circle). But it is unwarranted to suppose that nonexistence is more natural than existence, or that forms actually exist in a magical realm simply because we conclude a basic idea of a chair, love, justice, etc, have a general meaning. Most of our ideas are a combination of experience (the unicorn is simply a horse with a horn on it; God is not surprisingly in man's likeness with human emotions; Magic is descriptive of wishing to do what one currently is prevented from doing by the laws of nature; etc… name one thing conceived that is not in part a manifestation of reality and experience - mathematics excluded, which actually destroys platonic idealism because no experience creates its form. I can expound on that if you wish, but this can be found simply by typing it in google).
Aristotle agreed that forms are closely tied to intelligibility, but denied their separate existence. Kant saw form as the a priori aspect of experience: We are presented with phenomenological "matter," which has no meaning until the mind imposes some form upon it (not always the correct form or meaning is applied, but the mind is a sorting and defining machine that likes to impose form on experience).
It is also important to point out that after all his romantic philosophizing of the forms, Plato held that "reality can be known and reality is rational; what cannot be known is not rational, and what is not fully real is not fully rational" (Copleston on Plato). His idea of forms is a philosophical attempt at explaining experience and language.
Perfection is really just a logical inference by the mind that helps generalize a term or meaning of a term so that we can categorize, communicate, and reference our experience. It's no more magical than that.
People think foolish things all the time. People used to think the world was flat for example and that if you sailed long enough you would fall off the earth. That seems way silly, but that's exactly what everyone used to think. When Alexander the Great arrived in India to conquer he encountered monkies and thought they were men and tried to kill them! A similar incident happened in France that always made me laugh where a ship wrecked that was carrying monkies off the coast of England during the Napoleonic wars. Supposedly one of the monkies escaped with it's life to shore and the locals found it and hanged it thinking the monkey was in fact a French spy. The monkey was reportedly wearing a french uniform.
So if a tree fall's in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it still make a sound?
Personally I try to focus on freeing my mind, not trying to restrict it with rules and limitations for how, for whatever reason, things "ought" to be as we are usually wrong when we say something is impossible. With modern genetics someone very well could possibly "invent" a unicorn, why is that so strange and unbelievable? You know, I think it was Asimov who said the technology of our civilization would be indistinguishable from magic if we showed it to someone from the past like the Roman Empire.
"People think foolish things all the time. People used to think the world was flat for example and that if you sailed long enough you would fall off the earth."
- And thanks to the scientific method, we now know the world is round. What's your point? People think silly things sometimes, and therefore god exists?? How? Make a real argument here.
"When Alexander the Great arrived in India to conquer he encountered monkies and thought they were men and tried to kill them! A similar incident happened in France that always made me laugh where a ship wrecked that was carrying monkies off the coast of England during the Napoleonic wars. Supposedly one of the monkies escaped with it's life to shore and the locals found it and hanged it thinking the monkey was in fact a French spy. The monkey was reportedly wearing a french uniform."
- So this makes platonic idealism true?? Because someone saw a silly monkey and didn't know what it was? I'm not sure where you are going with this.
"So if a tree fall's in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it still make a sound?"
- Yes it does. Did you have a point you'd like to make with George Berkeley's question? Can something exist without being perceived? No? Then god does not exist (notice I'm using the same riddle as you are). The skeptical dilemma it presents is simply that, a skeptical dilemma.
"Personally I try to focus on freeing my mind, not trying to restrict it with rules and limitations for how, for whatever reason, things "ought" to be as we are usually wrong when we say something is impossible."
- Sounds like you're restricting your mind by refusing to entertain reality as the cold hard truth you would wish to avoid.
- IS anything possible? IS it? I see this all the time with beginning philosophy students.. They say "well… anything's possible!" Say that to a professor and they will respond by saying, "anything? Married bachelors are possible? Square circles are possible? Can something both exist and not exist at the same time? Could an omnipotent god create a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it? Could he then lift it? Is it possible for 2+2 to equal 3?
- There is a difference between saying we live in a universe of infinite possibility, and saying "anything is possible." The first is consistent with logic, the second is the utter denial of logic.
"With modern genetics someone very well could possibly "invent" a unicorn, why is that so strange and unbelievable?"
- What's your point? If we succeeded in doing that, unicorns would exist. So what? This does not justify belief that unicorns exist right now. What if we genetically created something half hippo half horse? How does this help your argument. If we succeed in creating it, it is part of reality. If we do not, it remains an idea.
"You know, I think it was Asimov who said the technology of our civilization would be indistinguishable from magic if we showed it to someone from the past like the Roman Empire."
- Well no kidding. So what? Asimov was a biochemist and an atheist author. He was simply pointing out that IGNORANCE leads to misunderstanding.
Asimov was also a humanist and a human. I am too. I was also an staunch atheist when I was younger for a short period.
Why are you so hostile if you really want to know/ Do you seek to know and discover the truth?
Um.. I'm not being hostile. I'm just trying to address your argument with something provocative enough you can see where it goes wrong.
How come YOU never address the problems I introduce in your arguments? You keep ignoring the issues I bring up (meanwhile I'm addressing ALL of your argument), and instead you just pick one little thing and change subjects or add a non sequitur.
As far as Asimov.. How does an appeal to an atheist author help your rather ungrounded leap to magic and platonic idealism? You have authors all over your blog misquoted and taken out of context to help justify your position that magic exists and so does god?? Who is it who is unwilling to seek the truth? It seems like you're doing everything to ignore it and replace it with "magic". You are not "seeking the truth" you are asserting the truth. Where is your evidence? Hell, where is your argument??
But that was my last attempt to get you to look at where your logic goes wrong. Believe what you want. That Plato's forms somehow justify the existence of god and all the supernatural entities you wish. I was hoping we could actually get a dialogue going, but oh well.
Phaedrus,
This video is hilarious. The problem is that he's highlighting a very superficial issue. Not that the belief in god is hindering long-term success, only that it's hindering short term success.
There are a lot of cases where delayed gratification pays off- going to college to get a better job, not eating cake to get a better body, and so on. The problem is that these people have an unfounded, but very common, belief that rejecting short term happiness is better because the payout in the end is better.
So it's not that these people aren't using very common reasoning, it's that the basis for their reasoning is, perhaps, faulty.
I think that for an argument, this brings very little to the table. Nonetheless, I was very entertained!
As always, keep up writing. Your friend at explain god, interested.
Please consider for a moment that you are on earth. That you exist and are surrounded by both matter and energy and are under constant bombardment by forces and extreme spatial anomalies that are quite beyond our ability to comprehend. What we do comprehend however is that we are moving incredibly fast through both space and time. That every cell and every atom within our bodies is undergoing constant change in a continuous and non-stop cycle of death and rebirth. That at any given moment you are not the same as you were as the last moment, nor will you ever been the same again. That you and everything you think that you know is impermanent and is always changing from one instance to the next. That we attempt to graph this change and say that now "we know". What 'We know', it is quite clear to me, is nothing. That to think there is nothing like you or me anywhere? That we are the only thing in this great and wonderful universe that will look in the mirror and say, "that I am, or that is me?" Do you believe beyond all certainty that what you see in front of you, what you feel, what you taste, touch, and smell is real? What is real? A series of electrical impulses to your brain that creates the illusion of what you think is real? Do you believe that you are you that when you look in the mirror and you say, that I am, that you are just deluding yourself into thinking that you can really think at all? That, even though you think, it does not matter because only what you taste, touch, hear, and smell are real? Those things are less real than what you think. Ideas are timeless but what you think as real is always changing. How do you suppose the cells in your body know what to become when they die and new ones are made? I will tell you it is because they received the information or ideas of how to become what they are. Those ideas or information is permanent, but the cells that became cells out of that information die all the time only to be replaced by more cells based on the same information.
Well I already kind of talked about this in a recent post: http://thesentientpuddle.blogspot.com/2011/03/monopoly-on-truth-we-dont-even-have.html
I agree to our inability to access absolute certainty, but if we accept the axiom of an objective reality that is not a figment of our imagination, then we can argue equally on those grounds.
All that being said, even in the greatest of skeptical dilemmas... Ignorance is not evidence of the supernatural. Ignorance is not evidence of anything. And that's all I wish to say on the matter.
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