RE: I am atheist,but I do not like science.
July 8, 2012 at 4:45 am
(This post was last modified: July 8, 2012 at 4:48 am by CliveStaples.)
(July 8, 2012 at 4:43 am)FallentoReason Wrote: Ok, I think I get it now. You believe the past is practically non-existent. To this I say look at your watch for 5 minutes. You can then be absolutely confident that this memory of yourself looking at your watch wasn't some random memory implanted into you from who knows where, but that it was an historical truth that really did happen in the past.
No, because your memory of having looked at your watch for 5 minutes might itself only be an instant old. You're assuming that your memories are actually accurate. How do you know that?
(July 8, 2012 at 4:35 am)cato123 Wrote: Clive,
Hello, I'm Cato. With the evidence I have I can claim that I posted to this forum before you joined; therefore, I submit that my historic postings relative to you are real and did not poof into existence with the appearance of age at the time you chose to grace me/us with your presence at AF.
How do you know that you actually have that evidence? How do you know that your memories of that evidence are accurate? How do you know that you didn't come into existence three seconds ago with false memories?
Quote:To put it another way...
If you are sincere with your 'appearance of age' shit, you must adhere to the idea that your mother and grandmother were non-existents before your birth and only came into existence at the moment of your birth with the appearance of age.
No, I don't even have to think that I was born. That's just a memory I have, which is just a result of my brain being in a particular physiochemical state. How do you know that you and your brain didn't come into existence three seconds ago in your particular arrangement of physiochemical states?
Quote:At this point you can argue that nothing existed five minutes ago and we were all created (with common memory of what we call history) five minutes ago. Which is more likely? There was existence and history before us or we were all just created with appearance of age parading around as history?
How are you deciding those probabilities? Is it based on evidence? How do you know what evidence is? How do you that your understanding of the evidence is actually accurate?
It seems like not many people take time to actually question their assumptions.
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
