I see many posts in here questioning what's real and what isn't, what can be known with certainty and what cannot be known at all, what is platonic and what is human invention ... Descartes, psychoactive substances, physical vs. abstract...

It's got me doing a lot of thinking on the subject.

I was sitting one day and thinking how perhaps after death God will make everything known. Everything will be made crystal clear ... what was real all along, what was a lie, what was illusion, false perception on humanity's behalf, God's plan from the beginning, reality in a nutshell, physics, math, pre-bigbang (or in more Christian terms, 'creation')...

And then I started thinking about conversations on this forum about how one cannot know the difference between a physical reality and a mentally constructed world.

Take Chalmers viewpoint for example:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/matrix.html

Descartes questioned whether he himself even existed.

But to get to the point of this whole post, I just wanted to ask your thoughts on dying, the afterlife, and meeting the Maker. If I stood and talked with Jesus Christ in heaven and he said, "Mark, I'm glad you found the bible and heeded its word...", how would I know THAT was "really happening". The question of "is this real or illusion" can NEVER be done away with, even as God himself reveals the universe to you. You may simply ask, "God, how do I know I'm really talking with you and this isn't a 'brain in a vat' (Matrix) scenario?"

I think this proves there is NO hope of ever learning and accepting the "truth" even if God himself wrote it out for you and then explained it in simple terms. For the rest of eternity (if there is an eternal afterlife) you'll be asking yourself, "is this real or imagined?"

• Yeth anonymouth Harv; pleathe exthplain all thith! - sillyuniverse - July 17, 2003 - 19:00 UTC
  • Ha ha - harvey1 - July 17, 2003 - 19:09 UTC
    • Ha ha ha - kantolfir2 - July 17, 2003 - 21:58 UTC
  • To all NPR listiners... - smartguy - July 17, 2003 - 19:14 UTC
    • to Mark - kantolfir2 - July 17, 2003 - 22:02 UTC
      • There you have it... - smartguy - July 18, 2003 - 01:30 UTC
        • I send money to Public Radio -- do you - sillyuniverse - July 18, 2003 - 17:21 UTC
          • No I do not... - smartguy - July 18, 2003 - 19:33 UTC
            • Baaah ... humbug! - smartguy - July 18, 2003 - 19:34 UTC
          • Correction: I SENT money to public radio - kantolfir2 - July 18, 2003 - 22:38 UTC
• I'm not sure - harvey1 - July 17, 2003 - 19:12 UTC
  • This might help you - harvey1 - July 17, 2003 - 21:29 UTC
• Existance revealed - eventhorizen - July 17, 2003 - 19:19 UTC
  • Existence spelled - sillyuniverse - July 18, 2003 - 01:35 UTC
    • Insecure Existence - eventhorizen - July 18, 2003 - 14:39 UTC
      • algebra and chemistry both thrive on good spelling - sillyuniverse - July 18, 2003 - 17:09 UTC
      • algebra and chemistry both thrive on good spelling - sillyuniverse - July 18, 2003 - 17:09 UTC
      • criticism is the stuff of testing... is the stuff of science - sillyuniverse - July 18, 2003 - 17:27 UTC
        • criticism is abused. - eventhorizen - July 18, 2003 - 17:54 UTC
          • I like this idea; would you elaborate please? - kantolfir2 - July 18, 2003 - 19:28 UTC
            • Forums - eventhorizen - July 19, 2003 - 22:44 UTC
              • Common Sense Supervision - kantolfir2 - July 19, 2003 - 23:48 UTC
• Don't be so sure that you'll never be sure - mikelev - July 17, 2003 - 19:31 UTC