Church of Reality

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Clearly not firm enough to support YOUR belief. As I said, Our Mileage May Vary.

When you get right down to it, there is very little that any of us know First Hand, directly using our own senses and having our own experiences. What we claim to "know" is really highly plausible second hand evidence, essentially hearsay which is not blatantly contradicted by our own personal experiences.

Did you know that as late as 1915 there were reputable physicists who were not convinced that the atomic theory was true? Ernst Mach (he of the Mach supersonic speed scale) was one such. Till his dying day he did not fully accept the atomic theory as more than a convenient rule or heuristic for tying up the measurements. This skepticism was finally worn away by the pioneering work of Albert Einstein (yes, that Einstein!) in molecular dynamics. Einstein's most quoted paper is on Brownian Motion in which he demonstrated very convincingly the molecular and atomic theory of matter (he published this in the pre-quantum physics days before quantum theory hit the big time in 1913). Nowadays, no one doubts for an instance that atoms exists, even though no one has every seen an atom (they are too small to be resolved by the human eye or any optical microscope).

So have a caution and distinguish what you know for damned sure and what you hold provisionally and what might be true, but not well supported by empirical evidence.

ruveyn

Is reality nouminal or phenominal? See Kant -Critique of Pure Reason- on this distinction.

ruveyn

Anybody who recommends a book to be read to make a point in an argument has no clear concept to present.

BS! The distinction is subtle and sophisticated. Kant did a masterful (but wrong minded) study of the matter.

The Phenomenal is what your senses tell you.

The Nouminal is what is there independent of your senses. What is Really There.

Unfortunately our senses can be fooled, deceived, distorted and misdirected. That is how illusionists and sleight of hand artists make their living. That is now politicians survive, by appearing to be what they are not.

So what is real? Our perceptions or the unperceived reality behind the perceptions? Is there such an unperceived reality? It depends on whom you talk to.

ruveyn

I like groups that show humility, and atheists laying claim to "reality' just hits my nerve just like a Christian site doing the same. I mean, one can say "We believe", "We promote", etc, but the CoR's position makes no sense unless they posit a CoU (unreality) which is just condescending but implicit.

So would devotees of the Church of Real be realists?

I think they're just making a flamboyant claim to "reality" as a response to traditional religions' claim to reality. Reading some of the text, though, they sound serious overall and seem to be promoting something closely affiliated with the Unitarian Universalists. Whether they're seriously making the claim that they know best, I can't say for sure, but it would be intellectually dishonest if they didn't mean the name to be said with tongue in cheek.

I also don't like Unitarian Universalists. I mean, I don't hate them, but just they seem too hokey spiritual, and I really don't have a similar view of reality to them. I mean, too hippy-ish I think.

What is real? What is Real?

ruveyn

You don't want to cross the Universalist-Unitarians. I did once and they burned a question mark on my lawn. You can always spot the U-U church buildings. That have a question mark atop the steeple.

ruveyn