Reply #183: You are quite right in saying that there is objective reality

[More Than A Feeling]

which exists regardless of our beliefs about it. You are also right in saying that there is truth and there is falsehood. So then the question becomes,"How do you know?" How do you know that God exists, number one, and number two, what he/she/it is like? If you say the Bible, I would note that I could write a book featuring real historical characters, and real historical places, and have it take place during real historical events, only that book would proclaim me the messiah or the prophet, and tell of the wonderful miracles that I have performed, and claim that it has God's divine guarantee of truth. Could you claim I was wrong? Apparently you would try, because you just claimed the Koran is untrue, and it is the equivalent of the book I have just described. Again, I would ask: How do you know it isn't? What basis do you have for rejecting any set of Holy Scriptures, if you are willing to rely on someone elses' claim of divine guarantee?

Ok, so if not the Bible, where does knowledge about objective reality come from? The best method for experiencing objective reality is through the senses, although even those can be fooled. So what if you had a sensory experience of God and God's nature? Well, how do you know it was God? It might be any number of things that aren't God. What is the standard? Isn't personal experience the ultimate subjectivity? A person in India might have personal experience of Vishnu, and a person in America a personal experience of Jehovah, and a person in South America have experience of female spirits with wands in their genitalia.

So again I ask, how is knowledge of God possible? Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps we are supposed to take it on faith. But faith in who? As demonstrated we don't have the knowledge to make that determination, and what if we get it wrong? Eternal consequences, that's what?

In summary, the whole thing is arbitrary and an illegitimate grounds for any sort of authority. That is why I no longer claim to know anything about God's nature, or the existence of heaven or hell.