Great example, LeGrande! Thank you!!!
Yes, excellent example...of imprecision which I already agreed can be “added” up. If that’s what you mean by “uncertainty” it’s a meaning I’ve never heard of.
Since you all seem to be more interested in proving you can know nothing certainly, I’ll leave you with that. You should all feel very comfortable with the post-modernists who together with the cultural Marxists have destroyed education at all levels in this country. They all agree with you that there is no truth (that anyone can know with certainty) and that everything is relative to one’s own “inner” convictions (read “feelings” or “revelation”).
The reason I think your views are very dangerous is because they are the basis of all the inclusivist multi-culturalism (the PC nonsense) that dominates our society today. “If nothing is certain and nothing can be proven, well than, anyone’s views, any culture, any society is as good as any other.”
I think you are all making a great mistake. I know it is contrary to the clear teaching of the Bible, but I would, like Voltaire, defend to the death your right to believe and promote and practice what you believe as you choose.
I would be at fault if I did not point out the following considering Paul’s method in preaching:
“And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures.” (Acts 17:2) “Reasoned with them?”
“And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and Greeks.” (Acts 18:19) (Now why would he “reason” with them, if reason is not a means to certain knowledge?)
“But Saul increased the more in strength and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.” (Acts 9:22) Apparently Luke did not have the advantage of all your wisdom on the subject because he though something as important as the Messiahship of Christ could be PROVED. Too bad you weren’t around to show him that nothing can be proved.
Wish you all well.
Hank
Science is based on falsification Hank, not proof. If we can't falsify it we generally accept it, that is why they are called theories, not proofs.
While that may be a dandy summary of Marx's position, Hank, I don't know in what way it even remotely applies to my own. Analyze it, and you'd see that his view and mine are polar opposites.
Bottom line, when it comes to human souls, Marx is adament: There is no there there. Thus there's really nothing for "inner convictions" to inhere in; there's no such thing as "inner." The very idea is adamantly forbidden, abolished. This allows us to say that man is born a tabula rasa — a "blank slate" on which just anything can (and will) be written.
I believe that by virtue of being ensouled, man is not born a tabular rasa. My own childhood experiences discussed earlier convince me that my view is correct. There seems to be a lot that children "know," even before they become fully "rational." Call it intuition maybe. Whatever it is, it appears to be something in-built in the consciousness, not something that is learned by experience. The issue has been discussed for centuries under the rubric of "innate ideas" with no consensus whatever yet achieved.
However I dislike that term as a descriptor of the phenomenon. I like the suggestion of "innate"; but the word "idea" connotes the rational mind is preeminently involved. Yet my own feeling is that the phenomenon does not arise in the mind, but in the heart, in connection with soul itself. That is, in essential feeling, not in mind.
Essential feeling, of course, is a prime example of a "qualium." Qualia cannot be communicated person-to-person, nor can they be "falsified" in any way. They are utterly intangible. And yet these intangible things stand as causes for human action, and even (as in my case) form the core around which a life can be organized and lived in truth.
My view is based on primary faith. The Roman Church sometimes speaks of the fides quaerens intellectum, of "faith in search of its reason." When you think about it, this not only denotes a spiritual quest, but merely confirms the way human minds normally operate: one must start with faith (some faith), and then see whether or not it "maps" to Reality. My childhood insights continue to map to Reality. Go figure!
So as you see, I do not regard myself as standing in the same camp with cultural Marxists or the other po-mo, multi-culti fashionable. To me, they are "spawn from Hell!!!" And may they return there as quickly as possible!!! LOLOL!
They certainly are hell-bent on destroying Western civilization — and human souls to boot.
You cite Acts 9:22:
“But Saul increased the more in strength and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.”Some observations. The Jews at Damascus were the very type of people who would demand "proof" to believe: arguably, they worshipped the Law, not God Himself. If anyone could prove anything to them, it would have been Saul: For he had been of the very same culture prior to his shattering epiphany on the Road to Damascus. [Talk about a "qualium"!!!] If Saul could have directly and vividly communicated that, perhaps more proof-needing Jews would have converted to Christianity. But we know that didn't happen.
It is the nature of qualia that they cannot be directly shared. Nor falsified. They are altogether beyond the reach of the scientific method.