I've said for years now that any question becomes an epistemological question, if you're stubborn enough.
I know the universe wasn't created yesterday, because I remember the day before yesterday. And because there's a pile of laundry in my bedroom that I couldn't possibly have accumulated in a day.
Ah, but what if God created the universe yesterday, filling our heads and libraries and televisions and Free Republic message boards with all the false evidence of the last several thousand years of civilization? Or what if this entire universe exists as a dream of someone who just fell asleep, with all the "evidence" created in an instant, etc? What if we're in the Matrix, and it was just switched on?
That's a favorite argument of college freshmen, with or without chemical stimulation. It's also employed to further the claim that you can't prove anything, so all forms of science, superstition and wild guesses are on an equal footing.
The answer of Western philosophy at least since Descartes has been that we can trust the evidence of our senses because God does not deceive. If you don't trust that explanation, I recommend that you ask as if it does; look both ways before crossing the imaginary street, lest your non-existent self imagines itself getting hit by a non-existent bus.
Science comes up with the best possible explanations for observed phenomena. The explanations change as the observed facts change. It is an empirical pursuit that does not, and cannot, prove any metaphysical point (though it can sometimes provide a materialistic explanation for phenomena that could only be described in metaphysical terms before).
My bottom line is that it doesn't really matter beyond idle speculation -- either everything we observe exists or nothing we observe exists, and our relation to the rest of the world is the same either way. If you attempt to discredit science because all the evidence to support it is based on the fallible five senses, then the same applies to scripture.
It turns out ElectricStrawberry cannot even prove that the world wasn't created yesterday.
The answer of Western philosophy at least since Descartes has been that we can trust the evidence of our senses because God does not deceive.
And how do we know that there is a God who does not deceive? Which cognitive faculties should we use to determine that there is a God who does not deceive, so that we can trust the deliverances of our cognitive faculties?
If you don't trust that explanation, I recommend that you ask [act?] as if it does
What started off as a bold assertion concerning what science can prove is reduced to a recommendation that we act as though science proves things.
-A8