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Date Posted: 03:10:43 06/06/02 Thu
Author: One-eyed Jack
Subject: In my opinion the Greeks did this topic as well as anyone.

Parmenides: The world of the senses is illusion--our senses do not reveal anything about the ultimate reality. Reality is an unfathomable whole. (Zeno wrote the famous Paradoxes to show that things like motion are logically impossible and therefore prove that our sensory perception of motion is an illusion.) Logic alone can show us something about reality.

Socrates and the Skeptics: "I know only one thing, and that is that I know nothing." Neither sensory perception nor logic can reveal anything about ultimate reality. Therefore, the wise man says, as did Socrates, that he can know nothing. Modern writers have noted that the 'strong' skeptic position is unprovable...but also that it cannot be disproven.

Pragmatists: Only direct evidence from the world of the senses tells us anything about reality. Logical interpretations of this evidence is useful but logic in and of itself is not reality.

I may have that last position mislabeled. But to me it seems that we have four possibilities vis-a-vis reality:

1. Neither sensory evidence nor logic give evidence of reality.

2. Only logic gives evidence of reality; sensory evidence is illusion.

3. Only the senses give evidence of reality; logic is illusion.

4. Both the senses and logic give evidence of reality.

Personally, I agree with the philosophers who hold that no one of these four propositions can be definitively proven true or proven false. Therefore I would choose the one which offers the richest set of possibilites: #4 allows us to test sensory evidence against logic (and vice versa) and see if there are areas in which the evidence of the two modes of knowing agree. (The stage magician releases 20 white doves from a hat--logic tells me it's a trick and the sensory evidence is not good evidence of reality. Logically one would expect to find salt in a saltshaker but if a prankster fills it with sugar my senses quickly correct my logical but mistaken assumption.)

Of course we all assume #4 is true, at least in everyday life. It's pretty much ingrained from birth.

Where is divine revelation? Personally, divine revelation is, to me, an illusion weaker than the magician and his doves. In my experience it is a non-logical belief, and one unsupported by sensory evidence. To me it fails both the tests of logic and of sensory evidence. What would it take for me to believe in a god? Purposeful and repeated violations of causality: in short, demonstrable physical miracles. If a religious figure where shown, definitively and unambiguously, to be able to regenerate the amputated arms of Congolese children, then I would have to rethink my position.

Without such evidence, I belive the physical world suffices without any supernatural beings. Certainly mankind has believed in such beings just about everywhere and everywhen we know about, but the beliefs are famously inconsistent and contradictory. (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism share close historical roots. One must compare these monothestic religions to Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, to see some of the deeply contradictory beliefs I mention.) To me that is evidence that the belief in a god or gods or in spirits is simply a creation of the human mind and has no relevance to the the reality I assume is revealed by logic and sensory evidence.

Sheesh, what a bunch of sober talk. Ah well, that's what the forum is for I suppose.

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