Does The Sun Really Exist?

[Skaloop]

Maybe the OP wasn't clear enough for some people, but the intent still remains: You are convincing a blind man that the sun exists.

I'd provide him with a library of books in braille that include all the relevant and applicable scientific findings, studies, data, and research related to the Sun. I would also provide him with access to experts in the various fields relevant to the Sun, should he have any questions about what he was reading.

Of course, that would be a whole heck of a lot for him to read. I doubt he could get through a tenth of it in a lifetime. On the other hand, once he's convinced of one specific aspect relating to the Sun, we could move on to something else, so he wouldn't have to read everything.

Counter-question: How would you convince a blind man that God exists?

 

[itdepends]

Maybe the OP wasn't clear enough for some people, but the intent still remains: You are convincing a blind man that the sun exists.

Okay so focus on the intent then ... why convince a blind person the sun exists ? And what would make you stop trying to convince such a person ?

 

[Loudmouth]

The ‘raised textured map’ to the blind man who cannot see the sun would be equivalent to the Bible for someone who cannot see God.

No, it wouldn't. The equivalent would be a book that describes the Sun.

This is quite different from the raised texture map I am talking about. This map is hooked up to a CCD array. When a photon strikes the CCD array it produces an electrical impulse which is then used to raise a pixel of the textured map. The intensity of the signal determines how high the pixel is raised (through number of hits or binning, take your pick).

So what empirical measurements are we using to detect God in the same way?

 

[Loudmouth]

Faith is confidence in someone whom you trust.

Faith is also a belief held in the absence of evidence.

 

[Doveaman]

However if you want to be convinced or have it proven and still remain blind, on a practical level you could not be convinced or have proven to you the existence of anything you could not detect with your other senses or were relevant to your life and experience.

Does this include the existence of God? What does He have to do with our senses?

However on a practical level, you could possibly be convinced of the existence of the sun because if I left you out in the sun and you started to get sunburned, I could explain to you the pain you were experiencing and the effects of such burns. So you could still detect the effects of the sun with your senses, and it would be to your advantage (if you want to avoid burns, scarring, pain, etc) to trust the person telling you that "fire is hot" so to speak.

It reminds me of the universe being the effect of God and our trusting in what the Bible tells us about Him.

I suppose you could believe that what caused your sunburn was a fire breathing dragon, or that Kim Jong Il caused a great ball of flame to rise and torment your skin …. regardless, you would most likely choose to not do things that would cause you to burn along the rest of us.

Actually, there are some people who cannot distinguish between God and fire breathing dragons and they make no effort to avoid being burn.

A more difficult thing to prove or convince you of, say, would the existence of moons around Jupiter or some such. As a blind person, and with no practical or relevant reason to acknowledge they exist, there would be no real motivation to accept someone's knowledge on such matters. You could just as easily accept it, or deny it, seemingly without consequence. The sun is different however, as you can still suffer direct consequences of it's effect on yourself personally. In other words, you are more likely to have a vested interest in understanding the sun, since it can damage you.
So there is the issue of practicality as well, which may motivate someone's trust in information.

I may have a vested interest in understanding the information you present to me since I cannot see the sun for myself. But you could be describing a fire breathing dragon, for all I know.

There was a Chapelle Show awhile back, where they did a skit and Chapelle was the head of the KKK, but he was born blind, and no one ever told him he was African-American lol. He had thought he was white all that time, and wrote many books on the racial superiority of whites and how great the KKK was and all …. whenever he gave speeches he was dressed in the garb with the hood and all, so no one even suspected he wasn't white. Later in life he found out and divorced his own wife lol. This thread reminds me of that skit

Was that a skit about unbelievers who don't believe they are created in God's image?

 

[Loudmouth]

It reminds me of the universe being the effect of God and our trusting in what the Bible tells us about Him.

Why would you need to trust it? Why can't you test it and see if it is true?

Actually, there are some people who cannot distinguish between God and fire breathing dragons and they make no effort to avoid being burn.

So how do we tell the difference between God and an invisibile fire breathing dragon that lives in my garage? From all appearances, they are indistinguishable:

The Dragon In My Garage

 

[itdepends]

Does this include the existence of God? What does He have to do with our senses?

In my own experience, the effects of some things I can't easily explain and have directly witnessed, or attribute to the "supernatural", do in fact reflect in reality and can be experienced through the senses. To answer your question more specifically, you'd have to define what you mean by "God".

It reminds me of the universe being the effect of God and our trusting in what the Bible tells us about Him.

I'm not seeing the parallel to that being practical, relevant, everyday knowledge for all. I have not understood the focus on trying to prove God created the universe, because in my eyes, it points to the existence of God in the past, not necessarily the present ... furthermore pointing someone to trust the Bible's account does not necessarily correlate to "God". Many claim to experience the supernatural and/or supernatural beings without it.

I may have a vested interest in understanding the information you present to me since I cannot see the sun for myself. But you could be describing a fire breathing dragon, for all I know.

I could take that and run the direction of "God" being a matter of semantics. What you call "God" is actually this or that. In a previous post you questioned "dark energy" in correlation with "God energy". So if it's a semantic's issue, you could use the argument, "This and that, therefore God" as often as you like in any combination you wish. But what is the use in that ?

Was that a skit about unbelievers who don't believe they are created in God's image?

If I was drawing parallels, I'd say the skit was about believers who didn't understand the irony of their own belief. Their own belief hinged on their OWN blindness, not the blindness of others. As long as they remained blind, they could believe whatever they wished, and as long as others allowed them to continue in such a state, it only perpetrated the irony.

 

[itdepends]

Actually, there are some people who cannot distinguish between God and fire breathing dragons and they make no effort to avoid being burn.

Sorry forgot to respond to this part.

Can you describe a direct experience you had that seemingly defies conventional explanation and could be evidence for you as to the existence of something supernatural at the very least ? Remove all religious labels, books, bibles, assumptions, and appeals to the same, etc, and state the facts only .... so that someone else can decide for themselves what to call it ? It wouldn't have a standard Occam's Razor type explanation. Do you have anything like that ?

 

[USincognito]

Which, when you think about it, makes sense. After all, what does the quarter of a round cake look like?

To analogize to the moon, it would be half of a half of a round cake.

 

[And-U-Say]

If I was born blind, how would you prove to me or convince me that the sun exist?

It is highly amusing that this thread has gone on as long as it has. I see what you are trying to do here, but like all religious analogies, this one is rubbish. Let me show you why.

1) The real question here is how you would convince several blind people that the sun exists. The best way to determine reality is when several people can experience the phenomena and they all experience the same thing. Put 20 people blind from birth who have never been outside before (admittedly hard to do, but this is a thought experiment) and place them on an island in the South Pacific. In six months they will have a very refined and well agreed upon description of this phenomena we call the sun. They will not know what it is, but they will know that it is there.

2) On an individual basis we can actually ask people blind from birth how they "know" there is a sun. So we don't need to ask this question just from a theoretical standpoint, we can actually investigate it.

In both of these cases we end up with this thing called evidence. Evidence is the sole criteria for determining reality. Theories and logic help us understand and make sense of reality, but evidence is the only indicator of the nature of reality.

Thus, your effort to say "blind men understanding the sun is the same as all of us sighted individuals understanding god" falls way wide of the mark. Because, again, evidence is the key and no religion has ever had any evidence of its veracity.

(Bonus question: Why are christians, who use analogies all the time, so bad at them?)

 

[Tomk80]

The experiment only tells me about the direction of the warmth, but it doesn’t tell me it’s the sun.

It tells you that there this direction is above you, that this direction is localized in a single point. In other words, you would identify a single point in the sky where the warmth eminates from. Which is what the sun eventually is, a single source of electromagnetic radiation in the sky. So yes, it tells you it is the sun.

Bear in mind I am born blind and cannot observe anything.

That you are born blind does not mean you cannot observe anything. You can observe warmth, touch, sound etc. This means that by the use of instrumentation you are able to make further observations about the sun, the same way we do. We cannot see the magnetic fields eminating from the sun, except through instruments we have sent to the sun by satelite. We cannot see the spectral lines of the sun which tell us about the sun's composition unaided, we need a prisma to do that. By using instruments we can

Is this similar to how we make use of the knowledge of God acquired by other persons?

No, because the knowledge about the sun can be verified independently, even by a blind person.

Is that knowledge valid too?
That’s the problem with being blind, isn’t it? There’s always something wrong with our perception.

There can always be something wrong with our perception, regardless of whether we are blind or not. But that there are things we have incorrect, does not mean that everything we know is incorrrect. So what we have to do is look at ways we can verify or falisify our knowledge.

 

[juvenissun]

The premise states the hypothetical. There's nothing in the question about 'solving' the cause of the hypothetical.

"OK guys, this little girl has cancer. What can we do to cure her?"
"Well, we could try aggressive chemotherapy to try to force it into remi-"
"NO NO NO THAT VIOLATES THE PREMISE AND IS ILLEGAL!"

Can't you see how silly you sound?

Your logic is flawed.

In your example, has cancer and cure cancer is about the same issue.
In the OP, the blind and the sun are two issues. To see is not the only way to sense the sun. How to sense the uniqueness of the sun without "seeing" is the question.

 

[Loudmouth]

Sorry forgot to respond to this part.

Can you describe a direct experience you had that seemingly defies conventional explanation and could be evidence for you as to the existence of something supernatural at the very least ?

If we go back 2,000 years the natural world was largely inexplicable. There was no explanation for fire, rain, the passing of the seasons, fermentation, and so on. What humanity did was ascribe gods, fairies, brownies, dryads, and a whole host of supernatural beings to describe these occurrences that defied explanation.

Now we have natural explanations for these things. They are explained. In the process, those gods and fairies have disappeared. Time and again it was shown that supernatural explanations were nothing more than place holders that filled our ignorance. You are making that same mistake in this very thread. You think that the supernatural is best found in our ignorance.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Your logic is flawed.

In your example, has cancer and cure cancer is about the same issue.
In the OP, the blind and the sun are two issues. To see is not the only way to sense the sun. How to sense the uniqueness of the sun without "seeing" is the question.

That is not the question posed by the OP, however, the OP has since clarified that this is what he intended to ask, so I concede the point.

 

[Loudmouth]

Your logic is flawed.

In your example, has cancer and cure cancer is about the same issue.
In the OP, the blind and the sun are two issues. To see is not the only way to sense the sun. How to sense the uniqueness of the sun without "seeing" is the question.

You are incapable of seeing photons with a wavelength of 12 cm. Are you convinced that they exist?

 

[itdepends]

It is highly amusing that this thread has gone on as long as it has. I see what you are trying to do here, but like all religious analogies, this one is rubbish. Let me show you why.

1) The real question here is how you would convince several blind people that the sun exists. The best way to determine reality is when several people can experience the phenomena and they all experience the same thing. Put 20 people blind from birth who have never been outside before (admittedly hard to do, but this is a thought experiment) and place them on an island in the South Pacific. In six months they will have a very refined and well agreed upon description of this phenomena we call the sun. They will not know what it is, but they will know that it is there.

2) On an individual basis we can actually ask people blind from birth how they "know" there is a sun. So we don't need to ask this question just from a theoretical standpoint, we can actually investigate it.

In both of these cases we end up with this thing called evidence. Evidence is the sole criteria for determining reality. Theories and logic help us understand and make sense of reality, but evidence is the only indicator of the nature of reality.

Thus, your effort to say "blind men understanding the sun is the same as all of us sighted individuals understanding god" falls way wide of the mark. Because, again, evidence is the key and no religion has ever had any evidence of its veracity.

(Bonus question: Why are christians, who use analogies all the time, so bad at them?)

I think your initial point is a good one that is often overlooked by the believer's argument ... the believer often thinks that convincing themselves is the same as convincing everyone else, because they do not take into account other people or their input in their acceptance of "evidence" lol. "So long as I realize that the sun is a dragon, then this other person should realize that too. That's faith." Then the unbeliever has the "Show me evidence it's a dragon," and the response is "You can't prove it's not a dragon," .... and one thing the believer fails to realize, is that their own argument locks them into a solipsistic dead end road ... at the end of their own thought road, they might as well say they are a head in a jar, because their own argument doesn't take into account anyone else's input in it's acceptance of "evidence" and anything goes. Just because they stop short of claiming all reality is a hoax in their mind, doesn't make it more valid.

In fact, the idea that they even believe it in the first place is considered evidence as the rationale why it could possibly be true. I think this is why tactic and manipulation are relied upon so heavily in "evangelizing", because it's an attempt to pretzel facts and evidence to get a person to trick themselves into realizing, "Hey, 2+2 could actually be 7 after all. You can't say it can't somewhere. Therefore I'm right."

I think if such a believer stopped for a moment and asked themselves, "Okay, this other person doesn't believe in what I believe, and has no practical reason to believe in what I believe ... how would I prove to them my idea is correct ?" they would actually step foot on the path to understanding the way evidence works for their own-selves as well and see why the difference between faith and fact important.

The "Bible as proof" ... is very difficult to argue against, because it's like someone grabbing ahold of a block of wood and saying, "This wood is a god named John. See here, it even has it scribbled into the side of it. John is a miracle." If a person chooses to believe that and thinks the wood is physical evidence, the "You can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into," seems to apply.

 

[itdepends]

If we go back 2,000 years the natural world was largely inexplicable. There was no explanation for fire, rain, the passing of the seasons, fermentation, and so on. What humanity did was ascribe gods, fairies, brownies, dryads, and a whole host of supernatural beings to describe these occurrences that defied explanation.

Now we have natural explanations for these things. They are explained. In the process, those gods and fairies have disappeared. Time and again it was shown that supernatural explanations were nothing more than place holders that filled our ignorance.

Speaking of 2000 years ago, are you familiar with the theory of the bicameral mind (Julian Jaynes) ? I don't believe there is a strong case for it, but I've always found it interesting and wondered if something similar to it was the case: the idea was that at one point essentially "schizophrenia" was the norm, due to the way the brain worked, and when we progressed in our knowledge of nature and such, the brain changed the way it processed information and how we, ourselves, considered ideas. Prior to that, we may have heard a voice we thought was a god, because of the way our minds conceptualized the data. After the advancement and change, fewer and fewer of us heard such "voices". Like I said, I don't believe there was a strong case the brain actually went through such a change, but it was an interesting idea and I've often wondered if it pointed to something like itself actually going on with our state of psyche thousands of years ago.

You are making that same mistake in this very thread. You think that the supernatural is best found in our ignorance.

You're assuming what I'm doing ... don't know how you drew such a conclusion about me in particular. Care to show where I've done that in this thread ?

Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not throwing straw around or purposefully assuming without backing it up, I will say, though, that I consider anecdotal testimony when I consider an argument. Cargo cults had anecdotal testimony, natives living around the okapi had it, witnesses to a crime have it, patients in a medical environment have it. So I consider it, to see what it might actually point to in reality. But that's just me. Also, if someone finds a "god in the gap" (what I'm guessing you're actually referencing), I'll consider what they have to say as well to see what exactly is in the gap if possible.

 

[Loudmouth]

Speaking of 2000 years ago, are you familiar with the theory of the bicameral mind (Julian Jaynes) ? I don't believe there is a strong case for it, but I've always found it interesting and wondered if something similar to it was the case: the idea was that at one point essentially "schizophrenia" was the norm, due to the way the brain worked, and when we progressed in our knowledge of nature and such, the brain changed the way it processed information and how we, ourselves, considered ideas. Prior to that, we may have heard a voice we thought was a god, because of the way our minds conceptualized the data. After the advancement and change, fewer and fewer of us heard such "voices". Like I said, I don't believe there was a strong case the brain actually went through such a change, but it was an interesting idea and I've often wondered if it pointed to something like itself actually going on with our state of psyche thousands of years ago. You're assuming what I'm doing ... don't know how you drew such a conclusion about me in particular. Care to show where I've done that in this thread ?

From what I understand, the human brain is hardwired to find associations between facts. Most of the time, this allows us to come up with good models of what is going on around us. However, it can also produce false associations. Good luck charms are a good example. So we have a very useful brain that makes mistakes here and there. From an evolutionary standpoint, that is about what we would expect.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not throwing straw around or purposefully assuming without backing it up, I will say, though, that I consider anecdotal testimony when I consider an argument. Cargo cults had anecdotal testimony, natives living around the okapi had it, witnesses to a crime have it, patients in a medical environment have it. So I consider it, to see what it might actually point to in reality. But that's just me. Also, if someone finds a "god in the gap" (what I'm guessing you're actually referencing), I'll consider what they have to say as well to see what exactly is in the gap if possible.

How does one go from "I don't understand how that works" to "God does it"? It seems to me that you should stay with "I don't know" until you do know instead of ascribing it to the supernatural by default.

 

[itdepends]

From what I understand, the human brain is hardwired to find associations between facts. Most of the time, this allows us to come up with good models of what is going on around us. However, it can also produce false associations. Good luck charms are a good example. So we have a very useful brain that makes mistakes here and there. From an evolutionary standpoint, that is about what we would expect.

Yes I understand this, it's a general understanding ... I'm assuming you're not familiar with the bicameral mind theory however, as it pointed to theoretical specific change in the way the mind worked.

How does one go from "I don't understand how that works" to "God does it"? It seems to me that you should stay with "I don't know" until you do know instead of ascribing it to the supernatural by default.

Again, you didn't show me where I did this in this thread. If you are saying "you" in a generic way, then I'm misreading you.

 

[juvenissun]

You are incapable of seeing photons with a wavelength of 12 cm. Are you convinced that they exist?

No.

The reason is not because I don't see it, but because I don't care.