Reality can only be partially attacked by logic!

This Title comes from the first chapter of a Book called ‘Re-Thinking Worldview” written by J. Mark Bertrand. Much of my thoughts on this subject will come out of that book so credit is due to his insights. The subject we will be looking at is “Worldviews” and every body on earth who can think has one. A worldview is a lens that you use to interpret reality with. Your prior ideas and interpretations of the experiences, circumstances that you encounter form how you relate to the world. We live in a world where there are many different worldviews or ways of interpreting reality. The problem starts only when one says, but mine corresponds better to reality than yours. And I think we would agree that this is possible as a worldview that brings more pleasure then total pain would be preferred by most people.
But once we open our mouth and say that word, mine corresponds better to reality then yours our opponent soon replies “says you” and this response is true. Whenever you say something, it is “you” who says it. You, and what do you know? Who are you to speak? Please, get real, you? But the fact that we are talking to some one and understanding them shows we are both connecting with each others reality and can perceive some truths. The person who says it is a logical fallacy to trust anything “You’ say, only needs you to respond by saying “if your saying that it must be false, then that statement is also because “you” said it”. The simple logic is we are both arguing and understanding each at the same time. This shows that just because we interpret the world, this does not mean that we all have a different reality, but that we perceive things different.
Have you ever wondered if you are the only real person in existence and the rest of us are just figments of your imagination. It’s a freaky thing to think about, but reality of other people just seems to be obvious, so why should we doubt it.

Bertrand says,
“And yet, if you really believe that the rest of us were illusions, imagination how hard it would be to talk you out of it. What argument could possibly convince you? The evidence of your sense could not be trusted, since it is the principle means by which the illusion is maintained. You couldn’t rely on reason or logic, because your logic teacher in school was another person who clearly did not exist. This means you basically invented logic, and if you made it up, how do you know it is reliable? The fact is we assume that other people exist and any hint to the contrary is dismissed as ridiculous.”

We accept it as true because to embrace the contrary would be absurd. Worldviews are formed by seeing things happen, events occur. We observe them happening to other people, you experience them happening to you. These events produce emotional responses, joy, sadness, fear and worry. When we think about what we have observed we arrange these events and search for meaning in their patterns. We begin to draw conclusion’s about the way the world is. To think that we are neutral unbiased observes is naïve. For many a worldview is like putting on glasses seeing the world through a different shade. This is what serves to color our perception of the world. All perception’s seem to be normal. I think that it would be better not to think of a worldview as different lenses, which we see the world with but as a pair of prescription lenses we put on. The task of every worldview is to see the world as it “is”, to correct our vision. The fact that we don’t invent all reality means that we must work with reality to see it sharply and clear and live in it. Some of us have sat at the back of a classroom and have had the thought that the teacher had scribbled on the black board, but once we got some correction glasses we saw reality sharply and perceived the teacher’s scribbles were in fact meaningful words.
So a worldview, wither, Naturalism, Hinduism, Darwinism, Postmodernism, or Christian etc is not something we just chose by subject thought. As Bertrand says in his book “Do I chose my worldview or does it chose me? The answer to this question is both.

Yes we chose our worldview, but based also on the pressure that our environment is shaping our responses. To the extent that we exert ourselves against the pressure, we are forming a worldview, and to the extent that the pressures are shaping our responses they are changing and polishing and demolishing that worldview. And this is happening constantly, whether we are alive to the struggle and engaged in it or not. So it does no good to hold to a worldview as true if it is not livable or does not engage reality. If one has the right correction lenses on, our environment should speak to us in some way sharply and explain what we sense and feel is good and true for the soul. There shouldn’t be numerous contradictions even if we don’t have ever answer. That is why a belief is not true just because I think it is subjectively.

Bertrand says,
“If worldviews interpret reality, then the observation from which they are drawn should correspond to reality. Given what we observe in the world around us, what explanation can give an adequate account? Would you trust a belief system that starts from the premise that man is intrinsically good, even altruistic? This is a widely held belief, but even its fervent adherents do not usually behave as if it were true, they have had true much experience with actual people…To correspond to reality a belief system needs to account for this intrinsic flaw in the description of humanity.”

All of us know from experience that people are not always objectively good. Therefor the claim is false and so is the worldview. As I have show before the existence of good or evil, right or wrong implies a God worldview. A good belief system should produce good results. It should solve philosophical problems, resolve dilemmas and put us in a better position to understand and act within it. So the idea that every one has a perception of the world, so every one’s is right, is not true. Beliefs must correspond to environment pressure. We must explain a rational world, a Universe, objective morals, and rational agents acting in it. Just because we can not answer everything does not mean we cannot know anything. And even if what we know is subjective as it is in our minds, this does not mean that subjectivism turns into relativism. The fact that there are many individuals who subjectively interpret a world that’s seem the same and we relate to others in this world show’s that many minds can connect with objective reality, a world outside our minds.
Others have tried to say that truth is what the majority have imposed on the rest, but this is still not true. Even if a whole country was told that when it feels like it is raining and your getting wet it is not raining and your not getting wet, our own experience would tell us otherwise. The pressure of reality would demonstrate itself, maybe even by floods that wash us away.

William Lane Craig in his book ‘Reasonable Faith’ takes on and refutes the idea that History can not been known because every one interprets history differently. Craig says, While the historian does not have direct access to the past, the residue of the past, things that have really existed, is directly accessible to him. The modern historian is not simply dependent on the reports of earlier historians. For example archaeological data furnish direct access to the objects of the historians investigation. I mean a dinosaur and it’s bones were never thought of as a tree or a cup as if all reality is relative. Now the knowledge that the historian comes to may be wrong today, but that does not mean that we don’t have objective objects to work with from the past. As Old Testament scholar R. K. Harrison explains, modern historians are not so heavily dependent on subjective literary sources as before, because the sciences of linguistics, sociology, anthropology, numismatics, and archaeology have become so developed. Also historical documents from the past can be trusted as well as from internal and external research.

Also the idea from Postmodernism that all knowledge is theory laden so nothing correspond to true objective reality is also false. The fact that one person calls a tree one name and another person calls it a different name does nothing to the existence of the objective tree. Craig says, that facts are not just in his mind but are, as it were “out there” subjective influences are constrained by the facts themselves. The statement that facts exist only in the mind is somewhat silly. His beliefs forces him to the bizarre conclusion that Lincoln’s assassination made a difference in history only because people have long memories, but that if everyone had forgotten Lincoln’s death within forty-eight hours, then it would have made no difference at all and would have ceased to be a historical fact.

As The apostle Paul says, we see in part of the perfect, as a dim mirror of reality, but this does not mean we do not see reality. As my title says “Reality can be only partially attacked by logic.” It is not one or the other but both working together. Also I don’t believe that one can find facts in the world if the world is impersonal. Only if creation has a rational mind behind it with a meaning and an interpretation can we find revelation, knowledge and facts of truth.