Human reasoning and experience are sufficient to know of the existence of God, but they are insufficient to know God. It's not difficult to lay outside at night and gaze at the vastness of space or look at the complexity of a cell under a microscope and come to the conclusion that things so complex and vast didn't come into being by time and chance. But knowing of someone's existence is a far cry from knowing intimately that person.
What happens to your understanding comes to this conclusion? What if there is something more that is beyond reason and experience necessary?
Concerning morality, you seem to be suggesting that it is subjective. What is to keep another from inflicting harm upon you without repercussions because in their subjective view their behavior passes their standards?
Your example of staring at the stars is enough for someone to feel wonder that leads them to entertain the idea of God, but they may not feel certainty and they have not proven it to themselves in a way that removes all doubt. This is not what I was referring to when saying that human reason and empirical observation leads to idealism.
1. Reductionism is a valid approach to understanding reality (supported by scientific success).
2. The interaction problem is a genuine philosophical issue (widely accepted in philosophy).
3. We can empirically observe our own experience (self-evident).
1. Premise: If multiple fundamental properties existed, they would need to interact.
- This follows from our observation of a coherent reality.
2. Premise: Truly fundamental properties cannot be reduced to or explained by anything else.
- This is the definition of "fundamental" in this context.
3. Conclusion 1: There cannot be multiple fundamental properties (from 1 and 2).
- If they interacted, they would not be truly fundamental.
4. Conclusion 2: Reality must be monistic (from 3).
- There must be only one fundamental property or substance.
5. Premise: We directly observe experience.
- This is empirically self-evident.
6. Premise: Experience can accommodate the full complexity of known reality.
- Our experiences can represent everything we know about reality.
7. Conclusion 3: The fundamental property of reality expresses itself as experience (from 4, 5, and 6).
- This is the most parsimonious explanation that accounts for all our observations.
Final Conclusion:
The fundamental nature of reality is experiential.
So this is the sort of certainty I’m looking for.
As for your question on morality, I don’t know if it’s subjective or objective. I don’t know if I’m applying morality correctly. And even if I said it was subjective, based on my own judgements, those judgements are based on concepts that may be innate and universally shared. If your point is that we need external law to impose morality, I can see the value in that - but there is morality in every degree of action - I would suppose - and I doubt any law can make our every decision for us, so some subjective morality must always be in play.
Maybe the concept that evil can have a utilitarian function is directly opposed to Christianity, part of the reason for bringing it up is that I suspect it might be. But, I’m not suggesting a purely relative morality, so I think there’s hope for reconciliation. I’ve heard a quote that evil is the absence of good being part of some Christian thought, and thats an idea I can understand.
I see in nature - as an example although I know there are higher standards for humans than animals - there are frogs that eat their young, there is not enough food and too many predators so they over proliferate and cannibalize. There are other frogs that raise their young, dedicating a great deal of time to them, and their circumstances are better.
Good has utilitarian value. Kindness, forgiveness, charity, humility, all aid in survival, and beyond that in bringing the conditions of life in harmony with the initial design, the nature of the underlying quality. Survival seems a part of that, which is why we can see such utilitarian results. Death, particularly the extinction of a culture or species, is a loss of that accumulated alignment of physicality towards design, and so is a greater evil than whatever evil must be done to protect it. So circumstantially relative, but an underlying objective, platonic I suppose, good
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