(September 13, 2021 at 12:02 am)Ahriman Wrote:(September 12, 2021 at 11:34 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Why don’t you?God and death are the only certain things
Clearly, you missed the most important philosophy lesson.
There's this notion called Solipsism which states that one can only be sure that his/her own mind exists. Nothing else.
It says "mind", not brain. You can't even be sure that your own body exists. It may be a thing that your own mind made up and then copied to "other people".
(September 13, 2021 at 12:02 am)Ahriman Wrote: , and of those, only death can be proven. In fact, death is the only provable thing. Everything else in existence is open to conjecture.
But fine, let's be pragmatic and assume that the world really exists, people exist and people live and die. It happens every day. And there are many other things that happen every day that can be proven.
(September 13, 2021 at 12:02 am)Ahriman Wrote: God is certain, only for a number of abstract reasons, none of which an atheist would understand.
Why did you go there?
Why would you think an atheist can't comprehend that people attribute the quality of "real" to a being that has nothing but abstract integrity?
The god of the philosophers is one that makes a bit of sense, even though I disagree with one of the steps that leads up to it.
Any other god is mostly made up, with some theologians attaching to their own the qualities of the god of the philosophers so as to lend their own god some credence. Some more aware of things do say that the leap from the God of the Philosophers to, say, the god of Christianity is one of faith.
Now for an extra whammy of mixing reality and non-reality:
I can understand how a fictional character can be said to exist. Darth Vader is very real, within a strict compartmentalization of reality.
This will always require some extra explanation, as we all know what fiction is and we can't really say that a fictional character is real, can we?