Introduction to God Theory: Practical Skepticism

Welcome to my world. I started this blog to share my ideas and subject them to criticism so please feel free to post anything you want pertaining to the ideas presented. This is a simple introduction to a world view, or hypothetical construct of our universe that I call God Theory. It has nothing to do with any particular religion, though it is influenced by my religious beliefs. I also am not claiming that any of my ideas are completely original but I did think most of this up on my own. Feel free to tell me who said it before me and how it was said. Because this is an original work that I have some pride in I ask that if you use any information on this blog please post a link, or publish the URL with your work. Here is the first part of God Theory, it is the method I used to draw all the conclusions I will discuss later. I call it Practical Skepticism.

We all as human beings wish to understand. The things we understand can be broken into two categories: ourselves, and our universe. The universe is the name I give to the place I exist, myself is the name I give to the only being that exists in this universe that I can prove exists. The following is a journey to understand both the universe and myself.

First we start at the skeptic level: we know nothing that can not be proven. So at this level I like to reference Descartes "I think therefore I am". We know nothing however we can prove that we are thinking because if we were not thinking how could thought be perceived? Descartes equated thinking with existence. In order to learn anything about the universe we must first reach the conclusion that we exist. Examining Descartes logic carefully, we notice that it is not logic at all but a simple assertion: It dose not follow that thinking leads to existence, but we KNOW that we exist based on the fact that we have knowledge. Think about this how do we define existence? Is it physical form? If so then how do things without physical form exist, and if we did not have physical form, would we exist? What Descartes concluded was that we all inherently equate the ability to think. If you doubt this assertion think about this: if your mind stopped functioning, but your body lived on, would you still exist? And what if someone had the ability to clone you along with your personality, did so and then "killed" your present body? Assuming that there is no afterlife, would you stop existing? Finally, what if there is an afterlife and after your body died, would you still "exist"? After examining this thought process it is clear that we associate THINKING with existence. Thinking is existence, therefore, if we think, then we exist.

Now we know that we exist. Despite this, it is very difficult to prove that other things exist because that depends on us trusting our senses and our reasonings. Because the only think that we really and truly know is the fact that we think anything else requires assumption. Now we start taking risks. The first step is admitting that we can't prove anything beyond ourselves. We see, but evidence has shown us that our eyes can be false, we feel but what if that too is an illusion? Even our reasonings can be flawed without our knowledge. So we are trapped at this point in a world of uncertainty and can no longer know anything else. If we are to make any kind of decision we have to decide what to trust and what to ignore. This is a very risky business because if we make a wrong assumption there could be consequences. If we choose to trust our sight for example when we are walking there could be an invisible trip wire and we could fall. This is of very small consequence when compared to decisions of our life. Suppose we choose a religion and it is the wrong one? When we die we could burn in hell for making a wrong choice. At the very least we could have ended up wasting the life we had. So the question arises: What do we trust?

To decide what to trust we have to know the options. In our life we have seven sources of information. We have our sight, our hearing, our senses of smell and taste, and our sense of touch. From those senses we draw conclusions for example if one side of a scale goes down we conclude that the other side is lighter or the scale is flawed, or our eyes deceive us. Finally we have feelings, instincts and emotions which are tell us many things. Out of all of these senses NOT ONE, is infallible. Everyone who has lived long enough to think can remember numerous examples of how each sense has failed us at one time or another. Even the more reliable ones such as touch have been proven wrong. Have you ever felt like something was crawling on you when it was just a hair or clothing brushing your skin or felt like something that was cold was also wet? It is therefore impossible to take one sense or any two and make any reasonable conclusion about anything. So what is our solution? Do we take no action and remain paralyzed in our own minds?

This is the problem: While I can prove nothing, I am not content with knowing nothing. Therefore I must KNOW something without proof, or live without contentment. With this in mind I will make reasonable conclusions based on my seven fallible sources of information: my eyes, my ears, my nose, my mouth, my skin, my mind and my heart. Since all are equally fallible, all will be given equal skepticism and equal respect. While I recognize that any conclusion reached by these means can be false I keep in mind that will test them against each other, constantly taking in new information in order to keep the results accurate. This process is the best way that I have come up with to form opinions and ensure good decisions. More on this later but I will give one analogy. Suppose you are walking in a field and wish to avoid obstacles. The first thing you do is think, you remember past experiences with walking through fields and things people have told you about it. You remember your mother telling you to be careful, the time you stubbed your toe on a rock and you also deduce that you have not walked this particular field before. The next thing you do is look across the field and see that there is a thorn bush. You then listen and hear the sound of a wasp and make sure you do not come near it's nest. You take in a whiff of air and smell the faint aroma of a skunk and keep in mind it might still be around. Finally you feel the wind pick up and consider that apples might fall from the tree you have to walk under. While walking, you take all of these into consideration, but for some reason you miss the board with a nail in it crossing your path but you narrowly avoid stepping on it because of a strong feeling and knee jerk reaction that barely registers in your mind until you realize that you have avoided the last obstacle in your path. We deal with these inputs regularly, but all pass through the lens of our mind. All our senses are colored, distorted and interpreted by our conscious thought. This is what our mind seems designed to do: interpret information into something meaningful. As I mentioned earlier, more on the senses and the function of the mind in later posts.

Now we have tools. They are imperfect but they exist because our mind perceives them. Even if they only exist in our mind they have substance because we can prove that they at least have that much substance and that is all we can say of ANYTHING except the mind itself. They are, as it were, the second most likely thing to exist at all from our human point of view. So lets get practical: Since we exist we, for no apparent reason, want to do certain things. We have drives and needs and desires. Essentially we all want to be happy. We know this desire because it is part of our inherent thought process. I stated earlier that I cannot be happy without having knowledge. I have many other desires and needs that cause a state of general discontent. So in my exploration of the universe, I am searching for conclusions that will bring contentment. If a conclusion dose not bring contentment, even if it were true, I would not be happy. Therefore, in a practical light, I, as well as any other practical human being searching for meaning, am not looking for a true or infallible conclusion, but rather one that makes me content. With this in mind, any conclusion that I draw will be completely unsatisfactory if I cannot believe it. I cannot believe any conclusion that is not proven to the best of my ability. Therefore, all conclusions I reach are filtered like this: "Dose it match my senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch?" "Dose it make sense to every form of logic I can put it through?" And finally "Will this conclusion make me content?" The last is one that many people ignore. Some ignore it and come to conclusions that they like without realizing that they are steering their logic toward a predestined conclusion. This is common in religious philosophers. Others send their thoughts on wild tangents considering every possible option and never grounding on any idea because as soon as a conclusion is reached a possibility for the conclusion to be wrong arises. Still others stumble on a conclusion that is unsatisfactory to their heart but satisfactory to their mind. These individuals end up in a state of perpetual depression because they have concluded that the universe is a terrible place. While the last is noble it is pointless because the conclusion can still not be proven and causes you to become unhappy perpetually. So a practical thinker will realize that his thoughts are self serving and while attempting to find the most likely explanation to the universe will accept a less likely notion in order to keep himself sane.

In our quest to understand ourselves and our universe our conclusions so far are these:

1)Nothing can be known except for the existence of oneself.

3)In order to achieve any understanding of the universe where the self exists we are forced to make assumptions.

4)We have seven sources of information upon which to draw conclusions.

5)All of these sources are flawed.

6)Any practical conclusion must be drawn from the seven sources of information, and be acceptable to the self drawing the conclusion.

This Concludes the first part of Practical Skepticism, the method I use to draw conclusions in the Universe.