(07-24-2010, 07:12 PM)J.E_Magog Wrote: TOTALLY UNRELATED but w/e

(07-23-2010, 04:10 PM)NiX Wrote: BTW, I added a lovely poll. No real purpose.

edit:
Religious - someone of a religion and believing in (a) divine being(s)
Atheist - there is no god
Agnostic - there's no way to know whether there is a god or not!
Deist - there's something out there but religion isn't the way to understand it

(07-23-2010, 04:10 PM)NiX Wrote: BTW, I added a lovely poll. No real purpose.

Quote:The Reality of Perception

Man is constantly subjected to sensations, beginning at birth. Because of this, man is conditioned to believe that the world has an absolute material reality, and his or her entire life is built around this viewpoint. All information is picked up through the 5 senses; sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

When it comes to our sense of sight/vision, light is reflected off matter which is picked up by photoreceptor cells, which then convert these sensations into electrical impulses which are sent to the brain and processed by the occipital lobe in the cerebrum. It can therefore be said that the brain does not confront the true form of matter, but merely interprets information about the subject. Given this, our sight is reduced to a “deception” of sorts, because we are unable to confirm the truth of what we are actually seeing. It has been proven that electric impulses sent to the brain in a specific fashion can make us hallucinate and see things which we are not actually perceiving at the moment.

As the same holds true for all our other senses, how would we know that real life is not merely a dream which we fail to realize because our habits and prejudices prevent us from doing so?

Even the brain itself can be felt and touched, so how sure are we that the brain is processing all the information it sends us properly? Ultimately, we can only confirm the presence of one absolutely real entity – our own soul or our being, which is not something that can be perceived like the brain. The material world is made up of perceptions shown to the soul. The matter around us on the other hand does not have a a system of self-government, but it is continuously growing and changing, so it must have been created or started by something or someone. This points to the existence of a higher being, if only for the sheer scope of what we already know and have yet to learn about the smallest constructs of matter to the expanse of the universe.

The philosopher Sartre once said something along the lines of, “Humans are incapable of finding an ultimate, irreducible meaning in life, and that the only meaning in life is the one that we ourselves give.” This is quite true, and in fact all of us should abide by this. In fact, doubting ones own view of reality is what we would define as madness. When we perceive the outside world, we should instead accept the fact that while it may not be real, the perceptions from which we take in this reality are indeed our own and are real to us. It is as if all of us have individual pieces of a pie, and together it would create an undeniable whole. Sadly, it is impossible for because of our limited sensory capability.

While we are unable to know real, undeniable truth about the outside world, there has never been any undeniable fact presented that what we see are deceptions. What we see has being; it exists within ourselves and that should be enough. The fact that we can be skeptical about our reality is proof that we do have some truths to begin with.

Quote:The argument to ignorance is a logical fallacy of irrelevance occurring when one claims that something is true only because it hasn't been proved false, or that something is false only because it has not been proved true. A claim's truth or falsity depends on supporting or refuting evidence to the claim, not the lack of support for a contrary or contradictory claim. (Contrary claims can't both be true but both can be false, unlike contradictory claims. "Jones was in Chicago at the time of the robbery" and "Jones was in Miami at the time of the robbery" are contrary claims--assuming there is no equivocation with 'Jones' or 'robbery'. "Jones was in Chicago at the time of the robbery" and "Jones was not in Chicago at the time of the robbery" are contradictory. A claim is proved true if its contradictory is proved false, and vice-versa.)

The fact that it cannot be proved that the universe is not designed by an intelligent creator does not prove that it is. Nor does the fact that it cannot be proved that the universe is designed by an intelligent creator prove that it isn't.

(08-03-2010, 09:19 PM)Twin-Skies Wrote: @Sforza

Careful there - you might be committing the error of arguing from ignorance.

http://www.skepdic.com/ignorance.html

And as far as brains are concerned, there is a way to read it: MRIs, and CAT scans.