You don't believe a word of it? This sort of response goes to the heart of my argument against scientism. (Scientism is the belief that the only truths that exist are those that are scientifically demonstrated.) I'm not going to criticise you for not believing this article, of course; what I'm criticizing here is the process by which most people determine the truth.
What is truth? That was Pilate's question to Jesus. Today, we claim to be able to discern the truth without asking God; we rely on something called "the scientific method". To modern people, truth is that which can be supported by evidence. This method works fairly well as far as inanimate objects are concerned; that statement that "water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen" is held to be true in a certain sense because anyone can combine hydrogen and oxygen and view the result. But what about other truths? Social, psychological, historical truths? Can these be determined to be genuine using the scientific method?
I don't see how. let's take the JFK assassination, for example. The statement "JFK was shot in Dallas on 22 November 1963" is a historical fact; JFK was alive on 21 November and dead on 23 November, during which time he was in Dallas, and examiners did find wounds consistent with gunshot wounds. On that we all agree. But who shot him? And why? We cannot determine the answers to these questions using the scientific method. There is no impartial court of cosmic data examiners in the sky who have analyzed the scientific facts of the case and come to a conclusion. Instead, what we have is a government-approved "finding" created by a panel of political insiders — the Warren Report. Now, the Warren Report might be the Gospel truth about the JFK assassination — but it also might not be. Yet for most people, the Warren Report is the truth, and that's that. We accept a certain version of events as true on the basis of authority alone.
That's fine as far as it goes. But it is important to realize that the Warren Commission's job was not to investigate the murder of the President of the United States. Its job was to prevent the shock and chaos created by the assassination from causing disruption of the social and political order of the United States. Bearing this in mind, it becomes easy to see why the Commission ultimately issued the finding that the JFK assassination was the result of a "lone nut". Let's say you're a member of the Commission, and you are presented with a clear, color 8mm sound film of LBJ hiring Lucien Sarti to kill JFK. Do you publish it for all the world to see?
Hell, no. Why not? Because you are an authority figure. If the American people hear from you that the President was killed as part of a coup d'etat instigated by his own Vice President, they'll go nuts. They will stop trusting in the government. They will lose all their psycholical bearings. The financial system will undergo a critical loss in investor confidence and crash. The military will no longer be certain who (if anyone) is their Commander-in-Chief. Foreign powers might choose such a moment to stike. No, as a patriot what you do in that case is to bury the evidence and say whatever you have to say to keep the country together.
But even that scenario doesn't strike at the heart of the queation. What IS Truth? Is it what we see on TV? Is it what the government tells us? Is it what the history books say? How can we know? Back to the JFK affair: a good question to ask oneself is "What evidence would it take to convince me 100% that JFK was shot from the front?" Color photos of a second gunman? Photos can be faked. A sound recording? Ditto. The testimony of witnesses? Dozens have testified to hearing shots from the Knoll. They could be mistaken, delusional, or lying. So much for evidence.
We need to admit it: in some cases, no amount of evidence, no matter how incrminating it might be, would be enough to get Oswald off the hook. In fact, for most people, even a signed, notarized affadavit stating "I had Kennedy killed" written on White House stationery and signed by LBJ would not be enough. Do you see my point?There IS no 100% certain way to know the truth regarding the JFK assassination — OR ANY OTHER HISTORICAL EVENT.
Therefore, the scientific method is useless in determining historical truth. As thinking people, we are forced to examine ALL the evidence — ALL — and then apply our reason and intuition to come up with a statement of belief that seems to fit. We cannot KNOW exactly what happened to JFK on that fateful November day; the best we can do is pick from a menu of interpretations and choose one to believe in.
And, in a larger sense, this is true for life.The scientific method proves nothing; evidence taken on authority can be faked, and even directly-observed evidence may not be true (since our senses can food us). So how do we know what we know? The only things we can know are those things that do not rely upon evidence or observation. We can know that we ourselves exist, because we do not "see" or "hear" ourselves; we ARE ourselves. And we can know that God exists through reason and (for a blessed few) through personal Communion. Everything else — the sun, gravity, that chair over there — we accept on the basis of faith.
You were doing pretty good until the part where you said we can know that god exists through reason but we only know the sun exists through faith. You are turning words upside down for your amusment, I guess.