Regarding The Cake...

This is a response to the post by Julia Les about the absurdity of truth and lies. What other ways of thinking can lead to a conclusion that everything we perceive is false? The answer: There are many ways. We can take the class-discussed "matrix route" and say that we are all brains floating in jars somewhere and that "there is no tree", we just think that there is. We could also be stuck in a permanent dream world, a hallucination, and not realize it. Perhaps everything we see is a hologram. What if we do not even have free will, and everything we go through is pre-recorded? This may explain deja-vu, if we assume that at some point in time, we heard the recording or watched the movie of our lives. Free will is funny that way. If we didn't have it, we wouldn't notice. We would think what we were doing was on our own when in fact it was all carefully planned.
So maybe it is all a big illusion. Though there really isn't a way of figuring out whether it is or not.

Now that I've somewhat touched on the idea of worlds outside of our own, here is my question: Realism or idealism?

-Megan

"There is no normal life, Wyatt, there's just life." -Tombstone

Would religion change if people only told the truth?

This is a response to Misty Elliot's post about how religion would be affected if nobody was allowed to lie. Well firstly, Dan Brown wouldn't be quite as rich, seeing as his books depend on the superstition that the church is lying about many events in history. Actually, many authors would not be able to publish. Quite an unfortunate downside to such a society. No more adventure-fiction for us.

Getting to the point though: Everyone believes that their religion, or faith, or perhaps their belief that nothing exists past death, is true. For example, if someone were to pray to God for some sort of comfort and have it happen, they could use that as proof that God exists. Others might say it is simply a coincidence. But even in a society that can only tell the truth, to say "I believe in God" would be a truth. The person is certain that God exists, therefore they are telling the truth.

Now that I've established that certainty can exist within religion, this poses the question: Is there any situation where an absolute truth can exist within religion?

-Megan

"There is no normal life, Wyatt, there's just life." -Tombstone

Greeting

Hello, and welcome to my blog! This blog will be used for my Philosophy class (and occasionally off-topic thoughts, no doubt.) I hope you enjoy my entries. Have a good one.

-Megan

"There is no normal life, Wyatt, there's just life." -Tombstone