Why not all of it?
And another thing. If we think that we can justify the belief that our senses are a reliable guide to reality by appealing to our belief that God exists because a good God would not allow us systematically to be deceived – then what about the rest? If a good God would not allow us systematically to be deceived, why would a good God allow us to have such incomplete senses? Why would a good God not arrange for us to have exhaustive senses, that sense everything that can be sensed? Why are there senses that we don’t have? Why are the senses that we do have so limited? Why are there senses that animals have that we don’t have? Why can’t we hear that high note that dogs can hear? Why can’t we echolocate the way bats and dolphins can? I want to know.
Agreed.
I awoke this morning with 5 or 6 mosquito bites. Why would a good god make us insensate for about 1/3 of our lives? Why don’t we have a mosquito-warning sense?
Of course these nonsense questions could go on ad infinitum. Why is our blood nourishing to those damn critters? Wouldn’t a good god make our blood poison to them? Why do they exist at all? Or maybe it’s a good god contending with a bad god. Should I be glad that the bites were only on my arms and hands and not on my face? Should I be glad that I only have small red spots in various places, and not a serious illness, like malaria or West Nile virus? Or maybe I should be glad that the good god protecting me is not just a bit weaker, so that the vermin that came into the house last night weren’t big enough to hold me down, slit my throat and dine in peace on all my blood (as the bad god desired)?
When science is so far developed, what’s the point of asking such questions? Not all questions are meaningful. Just because some wild idea is theoretically possible/conceivable doesn’t mean mental effort isn’t wasted on it.
There’s that well-known example of people being awakened by scores of shots fired outside their house. They get up, look around, and find one bullet hole through their front window, and a corresponding bullet hole in the back wall of their living room? How much time ought to be spent deciding whether more than one bullet went through that room? Of course, it’s theoretically possible that every one of the 60 or 80 bullets fired followed the exact same trajectory, and made only those 2 holes in their house, but the odds of that are so vanishingly remote that the idea doesn’t bear serious contemplation.
Eh, Merlijn?
Mayhap mosquitoe bites will improve you Doug . Your suffering will improve you.
And if you want faulty reasoning, excluded middles, ranting on about what has not been said or written, and not addressing the real points at issue …
Then try this well-known loons comments.
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6019
“If a good God would not allow us systematically to be deceived, why would a good God allow us to have such incomplete senses?”
Not just incomplete but very fallible as well.
It takes much more work to believe that a good God has given us our senses than that an evil God was having a laugh when he did so.
But of course struggle is virtue, so you’re evil if you can’t put in the effort.
I have always wondered why god, who presumably speaks to people in their own language couldn’t have similarly arranged for a self-translating bible, koran, veda or whatever, or one that could magically be read by whoever looked at it.
It seems like an obvious thing for an all powerful being who wanted to communicate through a book to do….
Maya