"Ron Baker, Pluralitas!" <this@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said :
>> In fact, you cannot even produce objective, verifiable evidence that
>> G. Bush is the President of the United States. Oh, you can produce
>> newspaper re****ts, you might even produce the man himself should it
>> happen that he is at your beck and call. But how will I know this
>> man is indeed the president? I cannot.
>
> Are you a solipsist?
Pardon me butting in - but solipsism is an interesting question,
especially asked in one of Bill's threads.
Given that my consciousness is the only one I can know for certain
actually exists, solipsism would seem to be a reasonable conclusion.
According to the standards demanded by Bill et al, I should accept the
possibility that others have similar consciousness only if there is
*verifiable, objective evidence* to that effect. But of course, there
isn't. Everything I perceive - including whatever evidence you might
show me - is dependent on my perceptions. And if for whatever reason my
perceptions don't show me what really exists, then what evidence could
you ever provide?
Fortunately, I don't adhere to the strict standards demanded by some
here, and so, without any 'verifiable, objective evidence', and based
solely on my gut feeling, I accept that others experience consciousness
in their own way, just as I do in mine.
This is one of the big problems that faces those who live their lives
crowing about 'verifiable, objective evidence'. They don't grasp that
even supposedly objective evidence can only serve as such within a
certain frame of reference. If the question being considered is the very
nature of reality (into which category the matter of gods must surely
fall), then we cannot find answers. There are no instruments we can use,
no tests we can run, no observations we can make, that will serve as
'objective' evidence to answer this question. All our methods of
observing the reality around us (or what we suppose to be the reality
around us) are contained within that reality, and are therefore
subjective in nature. If my perceptions are flawed - and that's required
for the solipsist view to apply - then everything that comes in via those
perceptions is also flawed. Thus, no evidence from *outside* my
consciousness can be trusted or considered 'objective' (and obviously,
nothing originating *inside* can be objective either).
Contrary to the presumptions of some, as a religious person I'm not anti-
science. In fact I'm fascinated by science; absorbed by it. I don't see
it as a competitor against my religion: my gods are the natural world, so
science is, if anything, a tribute to them - our attempt to understand
them better. I don't claim any great expertise in science - but to the
best of my ability I follow what's going on, and trust that in the vast
majority of cases, and maybe after some trial and error and some false
starts, scientists get it right. What I *don't* do is try to use science
as a bludgeon against those who like to ask questions that science
doesn't ask. It's often forgotten, but the questions of gods or of a
reality existing outside 'ours', are matters that science simply doesn't
bother addressing. They're outside its remit. Science knows it has
nothing with which to test these questions. It can't *disprove* them,
and it knows it can't - but it takes the rational position that if they
can't be tested or observed in some way then they're assumed not to be a
factor.
What science does is look at the world we see around us and try to find
out how it works. It does it - if it's done properly - without any
preconceptions about what it hopes to find (at least beyond the basic
hypotheses that it usually sets out to test). There *are* those who try
to use science (or sciencey-sounding words, at least) to address the
existence of gods - but invariably they fall into pseudo-science
(Boatwright and Hammond would be good examples of this), because they're
trying to use science to do something it isn't equipped to do.
As I said, I have the utmost respect for science, and where religion and
science come into direct conflict, I'll usually side with science. But
science and religion don't actually come into conflict nearly as often as
some people would like. Those who wield science like an anti-religion
****eld misunderstand both concepts, as do those who deny any merit in
science because they think it threatens the possibility of divinity.
There are certainly doctrines and dogmas *within* religions that can and
should be opposed with science (Genesis Creationism springs to mind), but
the fundamental questions of reality - like solipsism - cannot be
sup****ted or denied through science.
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