crAFTY_turTLE Posted:

I’m gonna read the topic (I got lazy but I’ll read, I just wanted to be honest before posting) but I must define my believes in my answer? Just that? Oh simple… I’m catholic and I’m college student. Most of the time I keep my believes to myself, I don’t believe my religion is the correct one, and I believe that God loves us all. People has prejudices and preopinions but God doesn’t. I believe that all religions are correct but I am catholic because I already accepted it’s dogmas and I don’t wanna change my religion, I’m fine the way I am. That’s is it…

No offense meant, but isn’t that ever so slightly intellectually lazy?

From a Christian perspective, there is quite a bit of value in apologetics – know your faith, so that when it is attacked, you may blunt your attackers’ momentum and then turn it back upon them. After all, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev3:15-16)

As for my above post, I believe I’ve arrived at a conclusion.

First off, it would be of no small worth to be familiar with the works of David Hume, and most especially his philosophical theories.

According to a skeptical view of philosophy, reality simply cannot be proven. First, let’s examine the senses. When we sense something, there are several separate biological and cognitive processes at work – and for the purpose of the discussion, given lack of evidence to the contrary and plentiful evidence supporting, let’s bumume that the mind is actually a biological process centered in the brain.

When we sense, first, we have the object (which for the purposes of this discussion, we are bumuming exists). This is the primary perception, and that which we cannot know. tl;dr: the object is the primary perception.

Next, we have the infinite primary perceptions in between the object we are perceiving and our sense organs. Countless molecules, air currents, infinitesimal chemical processes and reactions, all occurring in between the object and our perception of such, and each altering it in its own infinitesimal way – but altering it nonetheless. Already we see a problem with reliability of the senses beginning to take form.

Next, we have the sense organs themselves. Due to biological variability, anatomical, genetic, and other such differences, we can safely bumume that no two people will ever share an identical perception of anything – for in order for one person to share a truly identical perception with another, the two would have to be one and the same (and we’re still only accounting for strictly environmental and biological differences – we haven’t touched mental ones yet).

Next, we have the biological channels from the sense organs to the brain itself, which are, of course, due to biological necessity, widely varied from person to person in terms of exact anatomical makeup.

Next, we have the brain/mind itself, understanding the perception which the sense organs are relaying to it. This would be the secondary perception, and the only one we humans are currently capable of knowing, due to the brain/mind’s complete lack of independent (of the body and crude biological sphere, that is) sense organs. tl;dr: the brain/mind cannot perceive anything directly. Thus, all perceptions are suspect.

With this, we can safely conclude that the physical world around us, though we may understand it to exist, cannot be proven to exist – for we cannot even agree that it is the same. If we are not all living in the same physical reality, than none of us have independent observers to verify our observations regarding the physical world – and thus, all we have to prove the physical are our own (weak and tenuous, at best) physical perceptions. I believe that I am typing on a computer right now – that I am listening to music, that I can smell the remnants of breakfast wafting in from the kitchen, that I can feel the clack of the keys underneath my fingers. These perceptions, however, are all suspect, for the sole reason that I cannot sense a single one of them directly with my advanced mental faculties as opposed to crude biological faculties. Each of these perceptions has to follow a long and convoluted path fraught with possibility for error before even reaching my brain, and from there, my brain has to form these secondary perceptions into something my mind, as a non-physical entity, can understand.

Reality is suspect.

From here, we can go on to examine the mind itself – ”Ergo, cogito sum”, right? “I think, therefore I am”?

There is a problem with Voltaire’s famous treatise: what, exactly, is “I”? Is it the mind? The body? The two together? Is the mind independent of the body still “I”? Can “I” be conclusively proven by independent observation to be a single, distinct entity independent of all others?

...Well, no, not really. You see, following with the above theory regarding reality, we discover that “I” am the only person who can observe and/or verify the existence of “I”, and we enter a the realm of circular logic: I exist because I exist, and I know this because I know it.

A cannot prove A, and B cannot prove B.

With that, we have no way to verify that anything outside of our own minds exists, and if nothing outside of our minds exists, than all we have is inside the realm of our mental perception (imagination, if you will). We imagine our worlds.

With all of this, we begin to see the universe lose any semblance of a logical existence. Everything begins to lose all meaning, and thoughts and perceptions become caught up in Möbius loops of circular logic where the end is the beginning is the end.

From here, why not believe in a God? Nothing matters anyway, since all is illusion, so if the belief in a God gives pleasure, obviously, this God can no more exist than anything else, but hell, we imagine our own realities anyway, so why not imagine a God simply because we can?

Final tl;dr: If nothing is real and our existence is nothing but smoke and mirrors, why not believe in a God? In a meaningless existence, objective values of “reality” and “nonreality” lose all meaning, and if it gives one pleasure to create a God for one’s own individual reality, nobody else can say that that God doesn’t exist for that person, since in that person’s reality, nobody else exists except as fragments of that person’s imagination.

So in conclusion, yes, it could very well be possible for a sane, rational, educated person to believe in a deity of some sort. It would just take some fairly intense mental contortions to get there.