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I can. In fact I'm more alarmed at the history of misery inflicted by some of these faiths than about any advancement they might have achieved.
To yourself.
IMO, it's actually quite easy to know. The world existed for billions of years before you or I, and what real reason is there to speculate that myself, or yourself, or any singular individual is somehow the only thing that is real? Saying you yourself is truly unique and so super special and ultra important out the billions of people is one thing, to say it when he have the known universe as that is to be nothing more than utterly ignorant of the reality that you are nothing more than a grain of sand in a vast desert.
It's not impossible to know as long as we know stuff, and as long as there is stuff that we know. Descartes argument was that we can practice doubt to the point where we can doubt everything, but we cannot doubt that thing that is doing 'doubt'. It is untouchable by any concept that it must be used to practice. That also works for knowing, doing 'know', and that thing that is doing 'know' is untouchable by the practice of it. If one can be said to know anything--anything at all, like for instance that one's untouchable self is the only sure thing--then one can also be said to know other things just as well. There's no real difference between knowing there's an untouchable self and knowing that you are hungry or that bachelors are men.
Good! This is a much more interesting approach: a mind that engages the world rather than sits around wondering about it without realizing that it is the world sitting around wondering about itself. The mind that literally is the world--no distinction to be made that separates them at all--is the mind engaged in being.
Solipsism doesn't claim "super uniqueness" or "super specialness" in the sense you mean, and your premise that the world existed before you or I is unsupported. I can dream a deep history as easily as I can dream a pink unicorn.
They can try. But things such as the distance of the stars and the time it takes their light to reach us adds much heavier evidence than mere speculation.That's not clear evidence for solipsists, because, when talking to them, they would most likely stop you at the first three words and ask for evidence
That's more my disliking of solipsism than anything. I can look at the stars, sedimentary layers, stagmatites, fossils which all suggest that the universe, this world, and other people were around before me, and really are there. To say it doesn't goes against basic and obvious observation; really the same reason why so many religious mythos do not withstand scientific scrutiny.
