← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Conservative
Thread ID: 8492 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2003-07-27
2003-07-27 05:14 | User Profile
Posted by someone at Google Groups:
"How do you know what happens after death? Have you been in that position?
If we are the rational skeptics we ought to be, we will doubt that our perception of 'fleshiness', or materialism in general, is a complete and perfect perception. If we doubt enough, we will see that there is no proof that anything we perceive is real. Then we will have to start from cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. The only reality we can be sure of is that we are thinking.
The human body is limited to the sensory and cognitive apparatus it is made up of. If you were a rat, do you doubt that there would be more to reality than you could perceive? Why do you think human beings are capable of perfect perception of reality? We're not much brighter than apes, after all, which sit around eating their own puke.
So, having reached the decidedly un-atheist position of humility, you should look around and see what phenomena you can see. You might want to start with a book on near-death experiences, move on to synchronicity, read a mystic or two, and so on."
2003-07-27 07:46 | User Profile
Originally posted by Ares@Jul 27 2003, 00:14 * *If we are the rational skeptics we ought to be, we will doubt that our perception of 'fleshiness', or materialism in general, is a complete and perfect perception. If we doubt enough, we will see that there is no proof that anything we perceive is real. Then we will have to start from cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. The only reality we can be sure of is that we are thinking. **
"Cogito ergo sum"
*If the I in cogito is understood to be an individual human being, then the statement demonstrates nothing: I am thinking ergo I am, but if I am thinking, no wonder, then, that I am; after all, it has already been said... (a tautology)
Immediacy is reality; language is ideality; consciousness is contradiction. The moment I make a statement about reality, contradiction is present, for what I say is ideality.
Doubt is conquered not by the system but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the world.*