Are we relativists all religious fanatics?

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Everything represents reality, nothing represents reality. Everything is real, but nothing is real.

Sooner that MysticKnight lets go of his extraordinary faith... happier he'll be, and less brain trauma he'll cause

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Hello, I'm new to this forum and registered myself here because this question makes me thinking a lot.

Welcome. Thinking is a dangerous pastime.

What I want to say with this provocative title is that it seems to me like you can compare theism with relativism.

'We' relativists? I'll say that's provokative, that you'd include 'us' in your question.

All the empirical sciences are a good (or the best) way to explain our nature and physical phenomenons but they're all based on the premise that our image of the reality depending on the reliability of our senses is true or that it gets close to it. (Do you know Plato's allegory of the cave? It describes exactly what I mean.) And we have absolutely no evidence for this premise.

You sound very certain of that.

But I nevertheless "believe" that the reality looks like my senses pretend it to look like (so it's relativism). The reason for this is that I'm feeling better when I think I can explain the world. But that's only an emotional reason and not reasonable. So I "believe" that I'm right just because of emotions and my image of reality is based on a premise. In my opinion this doesn't differ much from religiousness. And due to the way we handle the uncertain information we got from the sciences, I think we also could be called fanatics.

Reality DOES look like your senses perceive it... to you. How it looks to you is not how it looks to another. Others don't have a reality that they can SEE, but their's is also how reality is to them.

Odd, when I think I can explain the world, I feel terrible. I like to attempt to do so, but I hold no illusions: I will never manage it.

Emotional reasons are necessarily reasonable, otherwise they wouldn't be reasons. Do you believe, or do you not believe? To what extent?

But you're right: the knowing of anything is faith-based, which is also is the nature of religious knowledge. If you have no faith in anything but logic, you are a solipsist. If you have not faith in even that: you are crazy.

Fanatics are willing to die and more for their beliefs... few people, relativistic or religious or otherwise, can say the same.

So what's your opinion about this and Plato's allegory of the cave? Do you think that it's true that relativists don't differ much from religious men?

I think that Plato could have phrased his argument better.

I do not think it's true, as relativists have no holy books, no dogma, and no code to which all relativists adhere to... indeed, such would be quite nonrelativistic.