What test would you apply? Note: assuming some implement real so that you can utilise it in a test for the reality of something else ends in an assumption of reality.
I could test anything I wanted to in any way I wanted to, but would not consider my tests valid unless verified by another person or (better yet) many different persons. If they got a different result, I would then investigate why their results were different from mine and depending on the investigation, I would either accept or reject my own findings.
Of course, I could just be hallucinating such tests being conducted and/or that the implement being used is the same as the one I used and/or God could just be fucking with me, but are these imaginings really useful? If I went around ranting about everyone else's "implements" not working properly and that only mine were accurate I would expect those around me to lock me up in a place where I could rant about it all day long to my heart's content. I could even start raving about how "my reality is more real than theirs" and probably feel very sure and feel secure in my own delusion, but "my reality" would not be forced on anyone (except my unfortunate therapist and all those trapped in their own delusions whom I would be forced upon in an institution).
Or I would just be properly mocked by the scientific community and other rational people and allowed to have my own radio program or congregation/cult to rant away to. But I would hope that those who know me would lock me away.
We all go through this throughout all of the stages of our lives, but the basics of physical reality are established in infancy and early childhood (we get words to describe what we see and we test it out and get either confirmation or refutation and we can repeat these tests as necessary throughout our lives, but who really wants to stick a fork in an electrical socket over and over again?). It is only later that we tend to start navel-gazing and come up with "is reality real" types of questions, which can be amusing (especially while consuming copious amounts of illicit substances and/or feeling the "natural high" of encountering others who have similar questions and pretending that you and your little group have "found" all of the answers) but ultimately leads to no solid evidence. Just a bunch of people who have congratulated themselves on their own profundity and refuse to let the evidence take their high away.
Your running ahead of yourself here. "Everyone" and "everything" are perceived by you to exist. You trust that this perception is real but cannot test that it is real in anyway. For all you know it you are a brain in a jar.
Sure. I could drive myself crazy by imagining that no one else is real or that I am not real, but where would that leave me? In the same place that I am right now. Imagining things to be true is good for the imagination and provides me with fodder for my own writing, but it still leaves me in the physical reality which can be verified and tested. If the things I can imagine are true or I can make them true, then I would not be sitting at my computer responding to you.
There is no point in supposing this to be the case of course. No more that there is for me to suppose my own perception of reality is anything but real.
Sure, but if your perception of reality is constantly refuted with evidence (not your God, of course, as that hasn't happened, I assume) would you not then question your perception of reality?
Say you took the
Ishitara test for color-blindness and then went around insisting that there really were no numbers in the circles of dots.
Sure, in your "reality" there are no numbers in the circles of dots because you can't see them, but the numbers are there for the majority of people and the reality of the colors can be established through scientific means (measuring the wavelengths of colors).
You could then go on to rant against the "implements" used to measure the color's wavelength, but would you really expect those around you not to lock you away (unless, of course, you started a church)?
View it as you will - it doesn't alter the case. I am as confined to trusting what I perceive to be the case as you are and am telling it like it is for me. God is as real as real can be.
And I really have no problem with that, except when people who have a similar perception as you decide that I have to live
my life based on
their perception.
The point was to neutralise your objection - not to add more weight to the case for God vs Leprechaun
Did it work?
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -
The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea
™ Version 4.2
