One of the first things we ask ourselves is how we know what we know. We call this study epistemology. Through epistemology we interpret the rules of thought and how they influence our understanding of the universe around us.
Several assumptions are fundamental to the way we learn and percieve. First we observe something in the physical realm we can, sense, and from that observation, create. For example, a person looking at a topography can reproduce what he sees with a map. However, the warning here is that the map is not the actual topography but an abstraction, a creation of the mind. We can create a name: tree, or rock, or planet. Nevertheless, the name is not the object named; it is a symbol. Taking this process a step further, we can observe relationships between objects, note how they interrelate and act upon each other. These processes and forces are in turn labeled at yet another level of abstraction such as gravity. Again, the name is not the physical process. When these processes and systems are placed into a hierarchy, we call that hierarchy a paradigm - a symbolic model we have interpreted from our observations. In the end, we have nothing more than an abstraction - not reality in the purest sense.
We accept these abstractions, maps, names, and paradigms, as being true because of a limetime of indoctrination. From the time we are infants until we die, we are led to believe that the world is the way it is because everyone else believes it to be so. Not only that, such beliefs are operational. They help us cope with the physical environment around us. However, when we look beyond the accepted, we find nothing more than a reality based on abstraction. My challenge to each of you is to consider how you know what you know. Are the truths you accept really true? Or have you simply been indoctrinated, trained to accept without questioning why?
One of the everlasting problems that perplexs scholars is the proof of God's existance. Through the recorded ages, some have looked to miracles, others to Divine revelation. The ways and nature of God have always been the study of the obscure, the mystical, and the hidden.
The question is begged, then, why does God hide itself? IS it rational to believe that a Deity who created such an ordered universe would play silly games with its creations? What purpose would lie behind such a scheme?
To the insecure, a statement such as this reeks of loathsome heresy, and in response the question is begged: Why should we expect a beneficent champion in God? Must we bind Deity in chains and demand preferential treatment because we have faith? Are we so immature that we can't stand on our own without a friendly paternal pat on the head from our God? Must we insist that God impose silly rules of diet and subservience? And worse, emotions such as jealousy, wrath, and vanity?
In the end isn't it all the result of human hubris? Or worse, self-delusion as we seek a rosy and comforting fantasy to calm our fears?
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