Every semester I guest speak at a local college for philosophy and religion classes. Today the question of miracles came up, and the more I argued that they did not happen the more I realized that claim is impossible to make. There are too reasons for this. (1) Even if out of all the humans that ever lived there was not one person who rose from the dead, to say rising from the dead is impossible because of this is a huge leap of statistical faith. (2) In order to know if something was a miracle – a violation of natural law – you would have to know every single little thing about the universe and the could possibly happen, and determine that this absolutely could not. So faith or arrogance, neither of which I am a big fan of, I was required to use in my claim that miracles do not exist, and eventually to avoid arrogance was forced to accept the concept of “miracles” as an untouchable topic, since we may well never have enough knowledge to comment on such a thing.
Things get even crazier though. Understanding everything about our universe from a human perspective means that all the knowledge will be sense based and three dimensional, as humans interpret all the information and the universe as we experience it is third dimensional. Yet there is absolutely no reason or ability to say that is all there is. Perhaps there are Nth dimensional entities who are responsible for miracles, and even though we understand the universe as we experience it we have no way to know of these beings, therefore no ability to know if there are the cause of supposed miracles. Even if these beings came into your living room and told you all the things they know, there would still be no way of knowing whether they had the full picture or not.
Let’s take the example of depression. When people with depression get the proper anti-depressant it can seriously aid with the disorder. This would suggest that depression is something chemically based which can be addressed with medication. Our senses and knowledge of the universe as we experience it tell us then that depression is a physical/chemical illness which can be treated by physical pills and chemicals. However, what if there is actually an invisible imp pounding on people’s brains causing their depression, and the imps happen to be put to sleep by serotonin and other such drugs? Many will laugh, but the sad fact is there is no way to address this. All we can ever do is make claims based on statistics and the assumption that humans are seeing the whole picture.
Another common example is the “invisible pink unicorn in my garage” point I see way too often. Previously I laughed at this and argued that there’s no evidence of unicorns nor invisible things, but I no long feel like holding on so tightly to that faith. Nor am I willing to be arrogant and say that I know enough about existence itself to say with certainty this is not the case. All I can do is say that – as far as I can tell – there is not going to be a unicorn in your garage. In other words, there is nothing I can do to argue against you. What if you have specially evolved eyes and the unicorn moves interdimensionally? Most would laugh but only out of fear or arrogance. The simple truth is you have no idea if I have an invisible unicorn in my garage which only I can see and which moves only through the Nth dimension.
A bit of a ramble, but when you start studying knowledge your mind seems to become pretty much a jumble. I’m interested in anyone’s take on this.
Things get even crazier though. Understanding everything about our universe from a human perspective means that all the knowledge will be sense based and three dimensional, as humans interpret all the information and the universe as we experience it is third dimensional. Yet there is absolutely no reason or ability to say that is all there is. Perhaps there are Nth dimensional entities who are responsible for miracles, and even though we understand the universe as we experience it we have no way to know of these beings, therefore no ability to know if there are the cause of supposed miracles. Even if these beings came into your living room and told you all the things they know, there would still be no way of knowing whether they had the full picture or not.
Let’s take the example of depression. When people with depression get the proper anti-depressant it can seriously aid with the disorder. This would suggest that depression is something chemically based which can be addressed with medication. Our senses and knowledge of the universe as we experience it tell us then that depression is a physical/chemical illness which can be treated by physical pills and chemicals. However, what if there is actually an invisible imp pounding on people’s brains causing their depression, and the imps happen to be put to sleep by serotonin and other such drugs? Many will laugh, but the sad fact is there is no way to address this. All we can ever do is make claims based on statistics and the assumption that humans are seeing the whole picture.
Another common example is the “invisible pink unicorn in my garage” point I see way too often. Previously I laughed at this and argued that there’s no evidence of unicorns nor invisible things, but I no long feel like holding on so tightly to that faith. Nor am I willing to be arrogant and say that I know enough about existence itself to say with certainty this is not the case. All I can do is say that – as far as I can tell – there is not going to be a unicorn in your garage. In other words, there is nothing I can do to argue against you. What if you have specially evolved eyes and the unicorn moves interdimensionally? Most would laugh but only out of fear or arrogance. The simple truth is you have no idea if I have an invisible unicorn in my garage which only I can see and which moves only through the Nth dimension.
A bit of a ramble, but when you start studying knowledge your mind seems to become pretty much a jumble. I’m interested in anyone’s take on this.
