sola scriptura

[rusmeister]

[Josh]

[AllanS]

[AllanS]

[Josh]

[AllanS]

[WolfVanZandt]

Berkeley is very much in the minority for very good reason. He only went Descartes one step further (not better) and said, "Not I think therefore I am, because 'I think' doesn't prove that I am." His contention is that you can't prove that the world is real - therefore he chose to believe that it isn't real. If a person went into a psychiatrist's office and said that the world wasn't real, he'd be diagnosed as a schizophrenic and the diagnosis would be valid. Yes, that's insane.

The bottom line is, since you can't prove one way or the other, you have to choose which position you will take. Berkeley chose a position that, if followed, would neutralize a person's effectiveness in the world.

Philosophy is usually a game people play. It's not a mature game. I don't believe Berkeley acted as though he believed what he said. It was a mind game. I've read the founding fathers and they often sound like kids trying to be smart - the same for philosophers. Their writings do not "ring true". I simply will not trust anyone who comes up with the "stuff" that I've read in some of the old books.

I will not accept that reality doesn't exist when everything I meet tells me otherwise. As soon as I run into anything at all that indicates that, of the two defensible undisprovable positions, realism or idealism, idealism is true, anything at all, I'll think about it. Otherwise I will go with all the evidence.

[AllanS]

Let's try this on for size.

Berkeley's dictum is a million miles from Decartes. "I think, therefore I am" puts Man fair in the centre. Quite the reverse of this, Berkeley said "To be is to be perceived." This puts God in the centre. (Interestingly, quantum mechanics says much the same thing about perception.)

In other words, I exist only because God knows me. I exist in his mind. He thinks me up. This is why I cannot flee from his presence. In him, I live and move and have my being. God is Spirit or Mind in which I have my being.

In the same way, what I mistake for the material world is the Word of God, spoken continually into my mind. The material world does not exist 'out there', it's actually 'in here'. Far from it giving the atheist grounds for disbelieving in God, the 'material world' now becomes unassailable evidence for God's existence. This is why men are without excuse. Disbelief in God is now as absurd (and as understandable) as a fish disbelieving in water. What almost everyone simply assumes, that the world is 'out there', is simply wrong. How amusing, how ironic and how apt. Man's wisdom and autonomy, utterly humiliated. Those who claim we have dreamed up God, discover they are the dream.

This isn't some immature game of intellectual self-stimulation. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, knew exactly what he was about. He was defending the faith not just against Materialism, but against the proud claims of Objective Material itself. Of course, such ideas are considered mad by the unthinking mass. I know of a man who claimed to be God. They thought him mad too. It is said he could heal with a word, walk on water, turn water into wine, make bread and fish appear out of nowhere... All very difficult to do if the world is objectively material, but a cinch if Jesus was the Word of God, God's story-teller.

(Interestingly, when God spoke the words of Creation, to whom was he speaking? When God says "In the Beginning...", is that analogous to my saying "Once upon a time..."?)

We've all seen children become absorbed in a story told well. They are transported to another world, or more accurately, the spoken word creates a new world in them. God is the greatest story-teller of all. His story draws us in utterly. It seems real in every way. It's certainly God's creation. It's just not objectively there.

Berkeley said we don't perceive objects. We perceive perceptions. That's undeniably true. An objective world (other than God himself) is quite unnecessary. We simply have no need for that hypothesis.

[postodave]

[Josh]

[Josh]

[AllanS]

[AllanS]

[WolfVanZandt]

The philosophy of Berkeley as is the case of most of the philosophies of most of the philosophers, is the result of playing word games so that, in the end, he knew quite a lot about the world of words and not a lot about the creation of God - assuming, that is, that he actually believed nearly all of what he wrote.

As it is, if he was "quite right" then prove it.

[AllanS]