Tuesday 8 April 2014

Knowledge is Non-existent!

The clash of science and religion throughout the past decades has paralleled the clash between reason and faith. Reason is associated with science while faith is associated with religion, and these are the primary arguments for both systems. Non-believers attempt to discredit the existence of an afterlife and of a god, by pointing out the lack of rationality. The counter-argument to this claim is that faith requires no rational and that it originates from a deep belief and "knowledge". However, if we were to discredit faith as means of "knowing", then there is nothing in this world that we would understand, and therefore there is nothing in this world that we would know. Here is an example (Question Chain) to prove this theory:

We know that grass is green, but Why?
Because I have eyes and I can see that it is green
Why is it green?
The waves arrive at the cones in my eye and portray this colour.
What makes it green, and not a different colour?
It emits a specific wavelength different from that of different colours.
How does the length of a wave determine colour?
Ummm............................................................................................


You will reach a question that you cannot respond to with reason, and thus theoretically absolute knowledge is unattainable. When you ask a self-acclaimed intellectual, they will state that knowledge is attained after answering a specific answer in the Question Chain, but the issue with this is that humans are asserting the limits of such a chain, revoking the absolute property to the claim. Furthermore, thousands of years can pass where a scientist can answer more questions on the chain, and they will then think that the limit that self-acclaimed intellectual has asserted is ignorant, creating an endless cycle of unanswerable questions. Thus the very basis of scientific approach coupled with reason is disproven, requiring a certain level of faith. Religious individuals just decide to end at an earlier question on the Question chain.



1 comment:

  1. Here's a link to explain color http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-vision/how-the-eye-sees-color - but that would be to miss your point, I realize… I am not a physicist, Ali, but I think current scientific knowledge is pretty sophisticated and many aspects of the physical world can now be both explained and proven. The virtue of science is that it is self-regulating. New theories have to be tested many, many times and peer reviewed before being accepted as 'knowledge'. When a theory is discarded it is because a better one emerges, is tested, and is proven (and scientific and mathematical proofs are extremely rigorous.) Of course, there will be limits to what current scientists can uncover - but I think the assumption is that gradually we will understand more and more. What you seem to be asserting here is that anything we cannot explain, god must be responsible for. This idea is known as 'the god of the gaps' meaning god is summoned to fill any gaps in our knowledge. Does the fact that we do not have answers for certain phenomena, or what brought the universe into existence 13.8 billion years ago necessarily mean that the answer must be that god did it? How is this different from ancient humans assuming that when there was a storm, the gods were angry? Why would we assume a supernatural explanation for what we cannot yet explain, when science has already explained so much we could not account for previously?

    ReplyDelete