Wednesday, May 23, 2012

            Yet this begs the question:  how can we know whether anything is really true?  To this, we have two options.  One, we can assume the existence of God, even the Trinity, and make it the center and foundation of knowing truth, subsequently believing that in it we find the road to knowing true truth.  By making this a priori assumption about reality, we frame our arguments in a context which we establish before we even begin deliberating (although we hold that this context is implicit in our experience, and by acknowledging it we are merely recognizing the essential nature of reality).
            Two, should this option prove to be intellectually dishonest, that is, should it stir protest by seeming to posit the end before assembling the beginning, then the other option is to assume nothing about the nature of reality, other than that it is there (and we tread tenuously to even assert this much, for we will inevitability encounter difficulty in proving it to be consistently true—assuming that truth must reflect a correspondence to material and visible experience), then seek to understand it with the materials of that reality.  Although this will work to an extent, eventually the seeker must acknowledge that his understandings are only as sound and valid as the materials with which he is conducting his search.  This seeker may find the truth of his material reality, but he will never know if this is all the truth that it is possible to know.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t; but he will never know with certainty.
           Consequently, we are left with either assuming that truth is centered in a presence beyond this reality, or it is not.  Both seem logical, both are possible, but both cannot be right.  Hence we are left with Pascal’s wager:  on balance, should we wager in favor of God?
          Or should we, like Richard Dawkins, wager the opposite, and ask ourselves, does God really need to exist?—to which we will reply that he does not.
         Yet if God doesn’t need to exist, how do we know it?  More importantly, how can we prove it?

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