How do we know?

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What have I been doing all this time? I am basically arguing that faith can be an acceptable means of knowing. Faith IS in fact the foundation for rationalism and empiricism. As I've alread said, we have to believe we are real and that this reality (or perfect illusion) is what it is... etc. and so forth. Once we believe we are what we seem to be and that our logic and senses are not fooling us, we can then have faith in ourselves and begin knowing by rationalism and empiricism.

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The key to empiricism and rationalism is objectivity, not assumption. I "know" that my senses are rational and empirical because other people are able to substantiate my findings through their senses. I know that this rock weighs 20 grams because everyone measures the weight at 20 grams. I know the sky is blue, or rather refracts light at certain wavelengths of light, because other people can substantiate my findings. When it comes to faith you are relying on a sample set of one, yourself. You are saying that I believe in a certain thing regardless of what anyone else feels. Even further, religious experiences can not be shared, and therefore the rationality of the exerperience can never be checked.This is what separates knowledge from belief, the ability to objectively check your findings with others. This is the atheist philosophy (in my opinion, others can argue whether or not it is accurate). An atheist trusts those things which can be objectively tested and verified by others. God and religious experiences do not fall under this heading, since these are personal experiences that can not be compared or shared between people. Religious experiences can be vocalized and illustrated, but the experience can never be shared at the level needed for verification.

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You're still missing the point. Fear actually has nothing to do with it even though in my analogy fear would be the natural reaction to the belief or knowledge that the truck was coming. The point was that you can't half-ass belief in God because God is immanent, and IF you really believe this will produce action. Therefore for the believer, believing is essentially the same as knowing.

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If I claimed that a UFO invasion was imminent without a shred of proof, what would you do? Would you become my follower giving your complete faith to my belief, following my commandments to the letter? Why or why not? If you do not believe me, then why should I believe you when you say that God is real?

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Okay, cool. So to verify that faith is a perfectly good means of knowing all I must do is believe my teacher when he tells me Spain is a country and then gather the class and go see Spain for myself. I believed my teacher's words to be true and whadya know! They were. Since I gained knowledge by faith and verified it by empiricism, faith works. I know exactly what you'll say to this, but go ahead and equivocate.

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In this case, faith wasn't even necessary. If you removed faith altogether the teacher's statements were still true. If we remove all faith in religion, there is no reason for God to exist unlike Spain in your example. Knowing that Spain exists is a product of empiricism, not faith.

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EVERYTHING you know enters your head through a personal subjective perception that cannot possibly be verified.

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What can be verified, through empiricism, is that other people perceive the same thing you do. This is the highest level of "knowing" that humans are capable of. We often call this objective data, but truthfully a more accurate term is intersubjective (ie a verifiable subjective experience). The existence of Spain, for example, can be verified by other's experiences.

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How confident must we be to say we KNOW something? That is up to the individual.

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True, it is left to the individual, but this doesn't mean that certain realms of knowledge are more inherently "true" than others. Which do you have more confidence in; 2+2=4 or that Buddha reached Enlightenment?

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I am willing to accept this statement as true knowledge without verification in the same way I am willing to accept that you see blue the same way I do without verification.

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A small nit pick. We can measure the wavelengths of visible light. Barring color blindness, people perceive the same wavelengths as the same color. The perception of color is verifiable between individuals. How one experiences color, on the other hand, is not verifiable.