rationalism and empiricism

The dispute between rationalism and empiricism takes places within epistemology, the branch of philosophy devoted to studying the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. The defining questions of epistemology include the following.

What is the nature of propositional knowledge, knowledge that a particular proposition about the world is true?

Knowing a particular proposition requires both that we believe it and that it be true, but it also clearly requires something more, something that distinguishes knowledge from a lucky guess. Let's call this additional element ‘warrant’. A good deal of philosophical work has been invested in trying to determine the nature of this additional element.

How can we gain knowledge?

We can form true beliefs just by making some lucky guesses. How we can gain warranted beliefs is unclear. Moreover, to know the world, we must think about it, and it is not clear how we gain the concepts we use in thought or what assurance, if any, we have that the ways in which we divide up the world using our concepts correspond to divisions that actually exist.

What are the limits of our knowledge?

Some aspects of the world may be within the limits of our thought but beyond the limits of our knowledge; faced with competing descriptions of them, we cannot know which description is true. Some aspects of the world may even be beyond the limits of our thought, so that we cannot form intelligible descriptions of them, let alone know that a particular description is true.

The disagreement between rationalists and empiricists primarily concerns the second question, regarding the sources of our concepts and knowledge. In some instances, their disagreement on this topic leads them to give conflicting responses to the other questions as well. They may disagree over the nature of warrant or about the limits of our thought and knowledge. Our focus here will be on the competing rationalist and empiricist responses to the second question.

1.1 Rationalism

To be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of three claims. The Intuition/Deduction thesis concerns how we become warranted in believing propositions in a particular subject area.

The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions.
Intuition is a form of rational insight. Intellectually grasping a proposition, we just "see" it to be true in such a way as to form a true, warranted belief in it. Deduction is a process in which we derive conclusions from intuited premises through valid arguments, ones in which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. We intuit, for example, that the number three is prime and that it is greater than two. We then deduce from this knowledge that there is a prime number greater than two. Intuition and deduction thus provide us with knowledge a priori, which is to say knowledge gained independently of sense experience.

We can generate different versions of the Intuition/Deduction thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable ‘S’. Some rationalists take mathematics to be knowable by intuition and deduction. Some place ethical truths in this category. Some include metaphysical claims, such as that God exists, we have free will, and our mind and body are distinct substances. The more propositions rationalists include within the range of intuition and deduction, and the more controversial the truth of those propositions, the more radical their rationalism.

Rationalists also vary the strength of their view by adjusting their understanding of warrant. Some take warranted beliefs to be beyond even the slightest doubt and claim that intuition and deduction provide beliefs of this high epistemic status. Others interpret warrant more conservatively, say as belief beyond a reasonable doubt, and claim that intuition and deduction provide beliefs of that caliber.

Still another dimension of rationalism depends on how its proponents understand the connection between intuition, on the one hand, and truth, on the other. Some take intuition to be infallible, claiming that whatever we intuit must be true. Others allow for the possibility of false intuited propositions.

The second thesis associated with rationalism is the Innate Knowledge thesis.

The Innate Knowledge Thesis: We have knowledge of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature.
Like the Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis asserts the existence of knowledge gained a priori, independently of experience. The difference between them rests in the accompanying understanding of how this a priori knowledge is gained. The Intuition/Deduction thesis cites intuition and subsequent deductive reasoning. The Innate Knowledge thesis offers our rational nature. Our innate knowledge is not learned through either sense experience or intuition and deduction. It is just part of our nature. Experiences may trigger a process by which we bring this knowledge to consciousness, but the experiences do not provide us with the knowledge itself. It has in some way been with us all along. According to some rationalists, we gained the knowledge in an earlier existence. According to others, God provided us with it at creation. Still others say it is part of our nature through natural selection.

We get different versions of the Innate Knowledge thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable ‘S'. Once again, the more subjects included within the range of the thesis or the more controversial the claim to have knowledge in them, the more radical the form of rationalism. Stronger and weaker understandings of warrant yield stronger and weaker versions of the thesis as well..

The third important thesis of rationalism is the Innate Concept thesis.

The Innate Concept Thesis: We have some of the concepts we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature.
According to the Innate Concept thesis, some of our concepts are not gained from experience. They are part of our rational nature in such a way that, while sense experiences may trigger a process by which they are brought to consciousness, experience does not provide the concepts or determine the information they contain. Some claim that the Innate Concept thesis is entailed by the Innate Knowledge Thesis; a particular instance of knowledge can only be innate if the concepts that are contained in the known proposition are also innate. This is Locke's position (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I, Chapter IV, Section 1, p. 91). Others, such as Carruthers, argue against this connection (Human Knowledge and Human Nature, pp. 53-54). The content and strength of the Innate Concept thesis varies with the concepts claimed to be innate. The more a concept seems removed from experience and the mental operations we can perform on what experience provides the more plausibly it may be claimed to be innate. Since we do not experience perfect triangles but do experience pains, our concept of the former is a more promising candidate than our concept of the latter for being innate.

The Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis, and the Innate Concept thesis are essential to rationalism: to be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of them. Two other closely related theses are generally adopted by rationalists, although one can certainly be a rationalist without adopting either of them. The first is that experience cannot provide what we gain from reason.

The Indispensability of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in subject area, S, by intuition and deduction, as well as the ideas and instances of knowledge in S that are innate to us, could not have been gained by us through sense experience.
The second is that reason is superior to experience as a source of knowledge.

The Superiority of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in subject area S by intuition and deduction or have innately is superior to any knowledge gained by sense experience.
How reason is superior needs explanation, and rationalists have offered different accounts. One view, generally associated with Descartes (Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence, Rules II and III, pp.1-4), is that what we know a priori is certain, beyond even the slightest doubt, while what we believe, or even know, on the basis of sense experience is at least somewhat uncertain. Another view, generally associated with Plato (Republic 479e-484c), locates the superiority of a priori knowledge in the objects known. What we know by reason alone, a Platonic form, say, is superior in an important metaphysical way, e.g. unchanging, eternal, perfect, a higher degree of being, to what are aware of through sense experience.

Most forms of rationalism involve notable commitments to other philosophical positions. One is a commitment to the denial of scepticism for at least some area of knowledge. If we claim to know some truths by intuition or deduction or to have some innate knowledge, we obviously reject scepticism with regard to those truths. Rationalism in the form of the Intuition/Deduction thesis is also committed to epistemic foundationalism, the view that we know some truths without basing our belief in them on any others and that we then use this foundational knowledge to know more truths.

1.2 Empiricism

Empiricists endorse the following claim for some subject area.

The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience.
Empiricism about a particular subject rejects the corresponding version of the Intuition/Deduction thesis and Innate Knowledge thesis. Insofar as we have knowledge in the subject, our knowledge is a posteriori, dependent upon sense experience. Empiricists also deny the implication of the corresponding Innate Concept thesis that we have innate ideas in the subject area. Sense experience is our only source of ideas. They reject the corresponding version of the Superiority of Reason thesis. Since reason alone does not give us any knowledge, it certainly does not give us superior knowledge. Empiricists generally reject the Indispensability of Reason thesis, though they need not. The Empiricism thesis does not entail that we have empirical knowledge. It entails that knowledge can only be gained, if at all, by experience. Empiricists may assert, as some do for certain subjects, that the rationalists are correct to claim that experience cannot give us knowledge. The conclusion they draw from this rationalist lesson is not that we gain knowledge by indispensable reason, but that we do not know at all.

I have stated the basic claims of rationalism and empiricism so that each is relative to a particular subject area. Rationalism and empiricism, so relativized, need not conflict. We can be rationalists in mathematics or a particular area of mathematics and empiricists in all or some of the physical sciences. Rationalism and empiricism only conflict when formulated to cover the same subject. Then the debate, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, is joined. The fact that philosophers can be both rationalists and empiricists has implications for the classification schemes often employed in the history of philosophy, especially the one traditionally used to describe the Early Modern Period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leading up to Kant. It is standard practice to group the major philosophers of this period as either rationalists or empiricists and to suggest that those under one heading share a common agenda in opposition to those under the other. Thus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are the Continental Rationalists in opposition to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, the British Empiricists. Such general classification schemes must be viewed with caution. The views of the individual philosophers are more subtle and complex than the simple-minded classification suggests. (See Loeb (1981) and Kenny (1986) for important discussions of this point.) Locke rejects rationalism in the form of any version of the Innate Knowledge or Innate Concept theses, but he nonetheless adopts the Intuition/Deduction thesis with regard to our knowledge of God's existence. Descartes and Locke have remarkably similar views on the nature of our ideas, even though Descartes takes many to be innate, while Locke ties them all to experience. The rationalist/empiricist classification also encourages us to expect the philosophers on each side of the divide to have common research programs in areas beyond epistemology. Thus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are mistakenly seen as applying a reason-centered epistemology to a common metaphysical agenda, with each trying to improve on the efforts of the one before, while Locke, Berkeley and Hume are mistakenly seen as gradually rejecting those metaphysical claims, with each consciously trying to improve on the efforts of his predecessors. In short, the labels ‘rationalist’ and ‘empiricist,’ as well as the slogan that is the title of this essay, ‘Rationalism vs. Empiricism,’ used carelessly can retard rather than advance our understanding.

Nonetheless, an important debate properly described as ‘Rationalism vs. Empiricism’ is joined whenever the claims for each view are formulated to cover the same subject. What is perhaps the most interesting form of the debate occurs when we take the relevant subject to be truths about the external world. A full-fledged rationalist with regard to our knowledge of the external world holds that some external world truths can and must be known a priori, that some of the ideas required for that knowledge are and must be innate, and that this knowledge is superior to any that experience could ever provide. The full-fledged empiricist about our knowledge of the external world replies that, when it comes to the nature of the world beyond our own minds, experience is our sole source of information. Reason might inform us of the relations among our ideas, but those ideas themselves can only be gained, and any truths about the external reality they represent can only be known, on the basis of sense experience. This debate concerning our knowledge of the external world will generally be our main focus in what follows.



so.. which side are you on? ;)

A new post at last :) this will be about the "All".

i have been reading a book called the KYbalion, this may be familiar to some of you, or it may not. the book is about the seven hermetic principals at its philosophies, its a very interesting book and is worth the read, i recommend it to any of you who are interested.

im going to write out its blurb so you have an idea of what its all about.


The Kybalion: a study of the hermetic philosophy of ancient Greece and Egypt is a concise and elegant treatise on occultism and hight magic in Greece and Egypt. Here you will be introduced to the seven hermetic principles, a foundation upon which one can build their own personal spiritual path.

In this post i will be writing about the "All", if you guys would like to hear more about this then ask and ill inform :)


Okay, first the All is infinite across time and space, there isn't a time were it hasn't existed and there will never be a time were it wont existed, there isn't a place any were were it does not existed for it is infinite and ever lasting.

second, since it is infinite it cannot be subtracted from nor can it be added to, it simply is. the All needs nothing, nor does it crave any thing, it does not have the emotions of us "mortals" as it lives on a higher plane of existence to us.

this All decided to everything we know as the universe. now as i previously said, the all cannot add to it self as its infinite, and it cant create the universe some were as the all would be there as well, as it is infinite. so were did it create? and out of what materials, as the all is every thing and cannot be subtracted from.

the All created us in its mind, as the Kybalion is so insistent on reminding us it says "the universe is mental" so we inhabit a small part of its mind.

okay now i have described the "All" im going to tell you what happens after death.

when we die, we carry on our soul carries on with out us, it goes to the "next plane" of existence. there are many plans of existence and we are on but the first. when we die as i said we advance onto the next one. how we advance from that one to the next i dont know, it dosnt state, i guess because you have to get to that stage to actually know at all.
the Kyabaion states that gods of other religions are just beings that inhabit higher plans of existence, these higher being have powers we wouldn't think possible, but we to can possess if we reach such a level. how ever high these beings get though, they can never escape the Alls mind as if they did the All would cease to be infinite and that is impossible.


pretty odd way of looking at it, but its a nice little theory to think about, i dont think i really accept the ideas, but non the less found them interesting, if you want more on ti then ask and im sure i can provide :)


sorry for the late post, its been hectic :)

Harry

sorry for the lack of activity lately, my college courses are really piling on the work, so i have had no time to post, i will be posting a new post soon on hermetic ideas, if you are not familiar with this then either have a look at the "kabalion" or wait for my post :) it will be on the "all"
so there sense of god.


i hope you are all keeping well :)

Harry

okay, i sent my last post to my grandfather, who i hold in VERY high regard.

and here is his response

Dear Harry

Oh Dear!
I was worried by your Blog - it looks as though you are turning into your Grandad. Is there anything I can do to help stop the rot?

Despite that I liked what you had to say and the way that you said it.
Religion and Belief Systems are really important aspects of human existence and we have to try and understand them both for our own sakes and so that we can understand what makes other people tick. Unfortunately you are likely to spend an awful lot of time and effort before you reach the conclusion that it is all based on nonsense. God (at least the version who is an old man with a white beard wearing a dressing-gown) is a delusion as Dawkins keeps pointing out. I believe (!) that you can’t just take someone else’s word for that. With religion or anything else for that matter you have to go back to the source material to find out the facts. Do not believe anything you read in the newspapers (or books) without checking the facts.
(I coined an aphorism once: ‘the spurious authenticity of the printed word’ by which I mean that if you see something in print you are inclined to believe it to be true, just because it is printed.)
Your Blog:
First of all, according to fundamental Christians, (ranging from Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Salvation Army), the Bible is the Word of God, no human involvement at all except for the few who were in direct communication and could write very quickly. (Digression: the advantage of theC.of E. as a Belief System is that you do not actually need to believe in anything to belong to it - there was an Archbishop of Durham called Jenkins who went on record to that effect).

So yes, according to the Bible, God was bored and lonely so he created Angels, Seraphs and Cherubs before he created the Earth: these were the ‘Sons of God’, thousands, maybe millions of them. They included Jesus (called Michael, confusingly) and Satan. See Job1:6, 38:4-7 Isaiah 6:1-3,7 Ezekiel10:1-2 Genesis 19:1-26 for starters. Maybe God just liked to party? However, if he was perfect then He didn’t need to party to take His mind off things.
Do not agree that humans are motivated by a pursuit of perfection. Here I might digress onto a different subject but I’ll try not… essentially the vast bulk of humanity do not aspire to anything beyond gratifying their immediate physical needs. It is only the Europid branch of humanity, and precious few of them, (starting off with the Cro-Magnons) who are imbued with a sense of dissatisfaction with their lot. That is why we invented art and technology. The problem with Pot, Hash, Mary-Jane is that it removes the sense of dissatisfaction and the possibility of personal and human progress.
More on that if you want it.

The Bible lays down that all of God’s works are perfect and that all of his intelligent creatures are endowed with free will (Deuteronomy30:19, 32-4, Joshua 24,15). Satan was created perfect but used his free will to go his own way. In the Garden of Eden he argued that God wasdepriving A & E of their rights (Genesis 3:1-5), they agreed, went on strike, ate the apple, made the Boss cross and the s*** hit the fan (Genesis 3:6-19). So Satan is the cause of human suffering - a dodgy argument when the Boss is supposed to be all-loving, all-powerful etc.
Incidentally, a load of other Angels joined the Satan party to ‘satisfy their sexual cravings with the daughters of men’ (Genesis 6:1-4) - the Bible is full of good stuff, you really should read it. They became Demons and are responsible for some of the problems we have to put up with (Mathew12:43-45, Luke8:27-33).
Strikes me that God runs a pretty slack ship.
Despite which I don’t entirely rule out the possibility of a celestial watchmaker who set the whole shebang ticking…
More if you want it?
(Boring boring boring - but I spent a year reading the Bible at bedtime so’s I could argue with a couple of Rev gents and quote the facts at them - they wanted to recruit me but gave up)


i thought you lot would like to hear what he has to say, i think he makes a few good points as well as adding a bit of humor :)

Harry

A perfect God, continued Matt response.

Me
"There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. A perfect creator God is impossible."

Matt
"While it's true that God, triune in nature, is lacking nothing in terms of community. He needs no one to fulfill Him in His perfection, and He needs no one to keep Him company. But that in no way means He cannot desire something. Do you need the albums you buy at the record store? Of course not. But you do desire them. Desire is not related to need. Need is related to need."




But isn't desire in it self a imperfection? a perfect being would not desire any thing? a perfect being would be content with what he had and would want for nothing else. so again a God that desires renders him imperfect, a Perfect God that desires is impossible. 


Me
"What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible."

Matt
"This is another false assumption. According the the Bible, evil existed before Eden. Evil was born in the heart of an angel, and that fallen angel deceived the first humans into sinning by disobeying God's commands. I believe most Christian theologians use the term "innocent" rather than "perfect" when speaking of the first humans."




If evil was born in the heart of an angle, then i have to assume that this perfect God created the angle capable of being evil, as nothing perfect can create something capable of being evil, so yet again, the idea of a perfect God is impossible. 


Me
"It does not matter how just, kind, and generous they have been with their fellow humans during their lifetime: if they do not accept the gospel of Jesus, they are condemned. No just God would ever judge a man by his beliefs rather than his actions."


Matt "The Bible teaches that the only punishment befitting the crime of sin is death. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9). Jesus came from Heaven as the only perfect sacrfice for sin. His death secured eternal forgiveness for those who would, by faith, believe so. Simply being good does not atone for sin, because sin can only be paid for through death. No sorrow, no penance can pay for sin. Only death. Our death or Christ's death. This is the clear teaching of the Bible."




But these people never had a chance, they had never even heard of the gospel? so from that logic they are dammed to eternal torment simply because they hadn't heard of the gospel? regardless of how good they have been to fellow people. this unfortunately leads me to believe that God, is just like us and is fickle and like all things has evil within him. Rendering him imperfect. 




im also introducing a new writer into the blog, his name is Jack and he will be making his own posts. 


i will mark my posts his my name- Harry and he will do the same with his. 


i look forward to your responses to these questions.  :) 


Harry 

God. a perfect being?

okay, this is for the sake of argument, this is not my beliefs.  but i would like you all to read it and counter my argument.

and i would like to know what you all think of this.

A perfect God

What did God do during that eternity before he created everything? If God was all that existed back before the universe was created, what disturbed the eternal equilibrium and compelled him to create? Was he bored? Was he lonely? Did he some how need to create? God is supposed to be perfect. If something is perfect, it is complete--it needs nothing else to be perfect.. We humans engage in activities because we are pursuing that elusive perfection, because there is disequilibrium caused by a difference between what we are and what we want to be. If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he wants or needs, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. A perfect creator God is impossible.
But, for the sake of argument, let's carry on with this chain of thought. Let us suppose that this perfect God did create the universe. Humans were the crown jewels of his creation, since they were created in God's image and have the ability to make decisions with their gift of free will. However, these humans spoiled the original perfection by choosing to disobey God.
If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it as that would be a contradiction. Someone once said that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, and yet this "perfect" God created a "perfect" universe which was rendered imperfect by the "perfect" humans. The ultimate source of imperfection stems right back to God. What is perfect cannot become imperfect, so humans must have been created imperfect. What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible.


The Christians' counter to this argument involves freewill. They say that a being must have freewill to be happy. The omnibenevolent God did not wish to create robots, so he gave humans freewill to enable them to experience love and happiness. However the humans used this freewill to choose evil, that caused imperfection into God's originally perfect universe. God had no control over this decision, so the blame for our imperfect universe is on the humans, not God.
Here is why i find the argument weak. First, if God is omnipotent, then the assumption that freewill is necessary for happiness is false. If God could make it a rule that only beings with freewill may experience happiness, then he could just as easily have made it a rule that only robots may experience happiness. The latter option is clearly superior, since perfect robots will never make decisions which could render them or their creator unhappy, whereas beings with freewill could. A perfect and omnipotent God who creates beings capable of ruining their own happiness is impossible.
Second, even if we were to allow the necessity of freewill for happiness, God could have created humans with freewill who did not have the ability to choose evil, but only to choose between several good options.
Third, God supposedly has freewill, and yet he does not make imperfect decisions. If humans are miniature images of God, our decisions should likewise be perfect. Also, the occupants of heaven, who presumably must have freewill to be happy, will never use that freewill to make imperfect decisions. Why would the originally perfect humans do differently? following this line of reasoning leads us to the conclusion that we humans were created imperfect because of the decision to make us in the firsts place.
The point still stands: the presence of imperfections in the universe disproves the supposed perfection of its creator.


God is omniscient. When he created the universe with the humans as its crown, he saw the sufferings which these humans would endure as a result of the sin of those original humans(Adam and Eve). He heard the screams of the damned and scorned. Surely he would have known that it would have been better for those humans to never have been born (in fact, the Bible says this very thing), and surely this all-compassionate deity would have foregone the creation of a universe destined to imperfection in which many of the humans were doomed to eternal suffering. A perfectly compassionate being who creates beings which he knows are doomed to suffer is impossible.
God is perfectly just, and yet he sentences the imperfect humans he created to infinite suffering in hell for finite sins. Clearly, a limited offense does not warrant unlimited punishment, we do not accept this in modern society, and it goes against logic. God's sentencing of the imperfect humans to an eternity in hell for a mere mortal lifetime of sin is infinitely more unjust than this punishment. The absurd injustice of this infinite punishment is even greater when we consider that the ultimate source of all human imperfection is the God who created them. A perfectly just God who sentences his imperfect creation to infinite punishment for finite sins is impossible.


Consider all of the people who live in the remote regions of the world who have never even heard the "gospel" of Jesus Christ. Consider the people who have naturally adhered to the religion of their parents and nation as they had been taught to do since birth. If we are to believe the Christians, all of these people will perish in the eternal fire and damnation for not believing in Jesus Christ. It does not matter how just, kind, and generous they have been with their fellow humans during their lifetime: if they do not accept the gospel of Jesus, they are condemned to eternal torment. No just God would ever judge a man by his beliefs rather than his actions.




okay as i said, this is just some thoughts i have been musing on for a while, i would like to know what you think..


as i said at the start of this post, this NOT what i believe but they are still my thoughts. 
at this moment in time i am agnostic, but sampling the ideas in religion, there are facts in it that i find disturbing and questionable. the above is a prime example of this. 


and i just want to add this. Every human has faith in something, because it fills a gap in our understanding of existence that nothing else can.
Atheists claim to have faith in logic, although logic itself would favor creationism.
As our scientific understanding goes, in order for something to exist, it has to be created.
So who created this creator (god)?
Probability, which is mathematical and logical, would favor that it is much more likely that a single being --that just always -was- outside of our understanding of existence -- created all of what we know to exist, rather than everything creating or being infinite itself.

okay guys. discuss. 

In response to Matts comment. "How can we know any thing for certain?"

"If we talk about all of these possibilities and then say we could likely never prove one is right, then we have to accept them all as plausible. In other words, we all have to believe that no one can know anything for certain, a rule we would break if we all agreed to that sort of thinking. The quicker question is this: how do we know for certain that nothing can be known for certain? If we cannot know for certain that we can know nothing certainly, then we believe what we believe, in part, by faith, and not because we are certain that what we believe is true. Or right."





They are all plausible yes, but some have more merit than others, well in my mind they do, but maybe thats just because i dont want to accept something that is clearly quite radical and potential disturbing. 


things can be known for certain takes maths for example 


2+2=4 no matter what we do or how we twist this, this simple sum will always come out as 4, there is no getting around it. 


however there are a lot of things out there that we do not know for certain things in my ever day life for example, how many people will look at the blog today, i cant know that for certain.  
and things in science like how the universe has been formed, was it god? or was it just all fluke and coincidence? we just cant know. 


or well until one or the other is proven, if it can be proven that is... 


now let me ask you this, and i believe this is an important question, if we cant prove it, why should we believe it? 


im open to any response, weather its just a simple "have faith" i dont mind. 


i look forward to your comments. 




Thanks to Matt for his in depth comment.