Adherents of Strong Rationalism established what they call the “verification principle”: no one should believe a proposition unless it can be proved rationally by logic or directly experienced by the senses. Proof, in this view, is an argument so strong no one thinking clearly can have any reasons for not believing it. Strong rationalists demand this kind of “proof” for God. The irony is that there is no similarly airtight proof for strong rationalism. Strong rationalism has to be taken on faith.
We now turn to “you cannot know” and what I call “The Elephant Analogy Error.” This error is a self-defeating rationalization for not accepting the existence of a creator. The Elephant Analogy Error supposes that each God- based religion sees only some small part of spiritual truth, but none are able to see the whole truth. Thus, it is claimed, people should simply forgo the search for truth because we are incapable of seeing it fully.
An often used metaphor demonstrates the limitation of this self refuting notion: that of the elephant and the blind men. Religions, it is said, are like blind men examining an elephant. Each one makes an independent conclusion about the nature of the elephant: it is like a snake, no it is thin and flat, no it is like a tree, and so on.
The irony is that the story is told from the point of view of someone who is not blind. How can they know that each blind man only sees part of the elephant unless they claim to be able to see the whole elephant?
No comments:
Post a Comment