Zarathuckya

Hello people, I am new here, im from New Zealand, im 22, I am a man not a woman and I am trying to be good. I like Billie Holliday, the Wu-tang Clan, basketball and my guitar. (Any other NZers here?)

Now I have a question- it stems from the fact that I am trying to be good.

How can a human that does not know EVERYTHING ever be sure about the truth of ANYTHING? To be absolutely sure about the truth of something, would we not need to know everything first?

For instance, I might think that ending the suffering of beings is a good objective. But I dont know everything you see. perhaps if god granted me with knowledge of everything, it may turn out that contributing to another beings happiness is evil...

ah, so recently I have been coming to the conclusion that everything a human does is done in folly. we can never know anything for sure, everything we do, we do without full knowlege.

Even if god gave me knowledge of 99.9% of things, but he didnt tell me that rabbits fart through their mouth, then I could not be SURE about anything of the 99.9% of 'knowledge' he just bestowed upon me. Because for all I knew, the .01% of knowledge he was witholding (about the rabbit) may really have been the fact that the 99.9% he told be was all lies.

Maybe the only thing I can know is that I cant know anything for sure unless I first knew everything.

hmmm

This realisation has thwarted my quest to be good, as it seems I cant be sure about what being good really requires. I am annoyed now.

respond react pretty please

Thus spake Zarathuckya

Theophage

Originally posted by Zarathuckya:
How can a human that does not know EVERYTHING ever be sure about the truth of ANYTHING?


Short Answer:

We can't be sure.

Slightly Longer Answer:

We don't really need to be perfectly sure, we can be sure enough to get on with things.

Example:

It has been my experience that if I touch metal that has been heated, it hurts quite a bit. Now I do not have perfect and complete knowledge of everything in the universe, and thus it may be that the next time I am near a very hot metal object, it won't hurt at all when I touch it. So am I going to touch it?

Not bloody likely...

One must not confuse the fact of imperfect or incomplete knowledge with the idea of useless or illusory knowledge. Just because we can't knowit all doesn't mean we can't know things, and just because we cannot be perfectly sure of our conclusions does not mean that our conclusions are somehow worthless.

Please feel free any time to grab any hot metal objects to display your lack of confidence in human knowledge.

Daniel "Theophage" Clark

logansluf

first off hit yourself in the head


go on do it


now, does it hurt?

are you sure?

there you have just proven that it is true if you hit yourself on the head it hurts.

from this conclusion it stands to reason if you were to hit the next person you see it would hurt them

my point is there are some things that are completely natural and understandable
(by the way if you really wanted to i sure you do not need god to find out if a rabbit farts out of its mouth)

we may well someday be able to understand everything, in the meantime i suggest focusing on what is around you

jpbrooks

Let me add to the replies above (and hopefully relieve your epistemological worries) by stating that such a situation could never arise. I.e., we could never reach the point of "knowing" everything with certainty without first "knowing" something with certainty. And we do "know" some things with certainty, such as, for example, that something exists or that we can consciously create meaningful propositions.

That said, I will go along with the majority view here that we cannot know many things exhaustively precisely because we can't know everything.
In fact, this problem may be even more complex than it appears to be on the surface because it makes use of the term "knowledge" which needs to be clearly defined. I could, for example, propose something like the following:

"Not knowing everything does not prevent us from acquiring new information about things, (like 'goodness'). In fact, it would probably not be possible to gain or assimilate new information without first knowing something, (at least about language, for example), with certainty."

However, the truth of that comment depends on how one defines "knowledge". For example, if "knowledge" is "justified true belief" then my comment above could be mistaken because I may not be able to "justify" everything that I'm assuming that I "know" to be true.

The whole issue surrounding the definition of the term "knowledge", therefore, has to be settled before the issues raised at the beginning of this thread can be adequately dealt with.

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Amos

True, if by "everything" you mean omniscience and to be omniscient you only need to know your own mind. If you know your own mind you will know that which you know with clarity and understanding and have no knowledge (but may have hearsay) of that which you do not know.

I can see where you have a problem. If God, or others, must tell you what you know you will only know what others know (hearsay)and that will be the only thing you do know.

Amos

99Percent

You can't know everything, of course, but fortunately in the human realm of existence things are quite predictable, at least predictable enough so you can use your reason and live and prosper. Don't lazy your mind with the pretext that you can't know everything!

Infinity Lover

The first and formost thing you need to know for certain, is what you are in doubt of. Because if you're not willing to doubt yourself, you can't trust yourself.

There's things you can't be sure of, and thing's there's no doubt about (Bill Gates is rich, gravity, mortality).

The trick is to not get them mixed up.

That path you might be looking for is called honesty, and the sure way to stay on track is certainty. Because (trust me) you don't like doubt!

Just take a piece of paper, divide it into 2 sections; one marked ?, the other !

Start spewing thoughts, questions, observations, and make sure everything ends up in the proper catagory. (God is doubt!!)
Remove doubt by gathering information, but ultimately base your choices and conclusions on certainy, and you're cooking!

Oh, and one more thing you can be sure of...
...there's an infinite amount of information out there, and most of it will get lost before you could ever get your hands on it. It's impossible to know everything! But it is possible to be HONEST and distinguish certainty from doubt!

[ January 13, 2002: Message edited by: Marcel Rombouts ]

[ January 13, 2002: Message edited by: Marcel Rombouts ]</p>

Jim Mitchell

I'd just like to mention in passing that you bring up a very Van Tillian point here (see other threads on presuppositionalism if interested)!

The unbeliever is stuck in this situation of needing total knowledge if he is no have any true knowledge at all. If you have no foundation that is certain, then you can't even have the smallest bit of probable knowledge. It seems clear that calculating probability, even roughly, presupposes some firm, absolutely reliable method - if not, and our method for determining what is probably true is merely probably true itself, then we beg the question. What if our probably true method turns out to be false and some other new method of determining probability turns everything we thought probable around as improbable or impossible, including our original method? The point here is simply that it is impossible to have any probable knowledge without presupposing some certain knowledge. But atheism, if reflective on the implications of naturalistic metaphysics at all, forces reliance on flawed and finite human faculties alone (certain knowledge attributed or revealed by God is surely excluded), and must maintain that no human knowledge is certain. But the problem is that this leads to absolutely no knowledge of any sort - including the probable sort - and it is quite obvious that the universe is intelligible, whatever atheism implies to the contrary. Hence, for this reason and many others, it appears quite obvious that atheism is false.

Of course, as Christians, it is not necessary to know everything in order to know something. We merely need to know the One who does know everything. Therefore, you have the Christian stress on revelation, the self-disclosure of God. The fact that our cognitive faculties are fallible in no way negates God's ability to reveal absolutely true knowledge to us. We can surely argue about the propositions we hold to be revealed from God and to what extent they do in fact correspond to the truth that God knows - it is not always easy interpreting all of life in accordance with God's mind! Indeed, even interpreting Scripture by Scrtipure's own principles can prove difficult at times. We want a God-bias in every proposition, to view everything the way God views it - but due to sin and the feebleness of our finite minds, believing Christians disagree on issues. The general principle for true knowledge is clear, but the specifics are, of course, often quite complicated. This is one reason theology is such a rich and interesting subject.

One final note: In the Christian scheme, good works are the result of true faith. The Bible is very clear that although perfect obedience to the whole law of God merits heaven, the only way to legally obtain this perfect obedience is through faith in the person of Jesus Christ and his works, our own works inevitably falling short of the glory of God.

Jim Mitchell

[ January 13, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Mitchell ]</p>

Theophage

Leave it to a Christian to turn a thread on epistemology into a witnessing/proselytising opportunity. Sheesh...

Zar

There are several things that always seem unclear about the position of people like Jim Mitchell and it implications.

Is he saying that:

(A)

As an unbeliever, I do not now actually know that I am? That I do not actually know English? I do not actually know how to use a computer?

-or-

(B)

That I may be close enough to the truth to be getting along in the world, but I don't have any final justification for my knowledge?

(A) is unlikely to sway anyone, since most sane people will find it silly to think they are not actually capable of crossing the street unless they ask Jesus to hold their hand.

(B) is a better argument, but not only is it a poor argument for Christianity, since many faiths would be equally compatible (or incomatible) with this notion, but it is an argument, which means human reasoning has produced it. Is the argument itself valid because God made it so? If so, it is not a case for the existence of God, but assumes it a priori. There is nothing novel about assuming the existence of the Christian God. But also, if we just take the Christian God's existence as axiomatic, it is hardly better than any othe axiom because those tenets of faith are so relatively controversial and particular and temporal. It takes an ability to know something to know that about 2,000 years ago, Jesus walked the earth. Unless you are arguing that God has no free will or that his free will consisted of one unchanging decision that began with the beginning of ths universe, you are on very shaky ground. You may as well argue that logic depends on you having had a bagel for breakfast -- there is just about as much necessity to it. And although this "embeds" Christianity in the structure of the universe, there still seems to be no reason to think it could not have been otherwise, so it is still just as contingent as any other "axiom" in use -- we need to know that it is a fact first to know that what we know is valid. But this is precisely what we lack.

Besides all this, even if we assume Christianity, it is unclear that it can even be reconciled with reason and knowledge, let alone serve as an exclusive basis for it. But Christian Presuppositionalism has upped the ante on Christianity itself, by forcing Christians to deliver a proof for this on top of all the other ones meant to cover up absurdities. And yet attempts to actually derive and prove, point by point, the theorem that:

Knowledge exists if and only if Christinity is true.

Are as rare as Unicorns and faeries. I have never, ever in my life seen a proof for this. This does not mean there isn't one, just because I haven't seen it, but I would advise anyone who proffers this assertion to please skip the sermon and get to the point. No one has any business spreading nonsense like this until they are ready to prove it beyond any doubt at all (which is the standard of knowledge Christians themselves hold up.)

Perhaps this never happens because, despite the high talk about proof and knowledge from Chiristians, it turns out they actually have almost no idea what they are talking about, and have no real advantage over their non-Chrisitan antagonists other than the one they have pretented and imagined in their own minds. Christian Presuppositionlism is a desperate and cynical attempt to clog people's cognitive abilities and nothing more. It is simply "lying for Jesus."

[ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: Zar ]</p>