Title:	Relativistic Nihilism
Self Righteous:	8
Opinionated:	9
Simply true:	0
YMMV:	10

I often get asked:

Nothing, depending on your definition of 'believe.'

I've had some pretty strong opinions. Still do. I often consider this my biggest weakness.

I used to be a well thought-out Laissez-Faire capitalist. I'm not so much anymore, though you can still see vestiges of it in my economic attitudes.

But sometime around 1991 I had one of those self-relevations that shook up my world. I realized I couldn't prove some of my philosophies so I tore all of them down one-by-one. I moved towards my base philosophy trying to find some set of philosophical 'postulates' that I could prove. As I worked my way down, I realized that I wasn't going to find any, and there weren't going to be any beliefs left. And I still haven't found any, and I'm guessing that it's because there aren't any.

I suppose that classifies me as a relativist or nihilist.

That fits in pretty well with how I started off in life - I've always been a skeptic, so it was only a matter of time before I finally got over the beliefs I had built up and threw them all out.

If you look throughout our history, mankind has held great convictions on a stunning lack of knowledge. And at each point in time, mankind looks back to its collective past with great mirth over the foolishness of previous generations, since they didn't finally understand things like the present.

And each time they've been wrong.

But somehow, this time we've really got it. Those wacky doctors in the past would try witchcraft and leeches and ointments, but now we finally understand how the body works.

And in the past they had this silly notions of gravity and ether and what matter was made of, but now we understand how the universe works.

I just don't buy it anymore. I don't want to be the fool that the future looks back on and pitifully wonders how I could possible believe the earth was flat.

Science and our senses fail us, because:

1. Our total lack of ability to demonstrate causality (the primary failure of the otherwise pragmatic 'scientific method')
2. Our subjective error
3. Our inability to know everything that we need to observe
4. Our inability to observe everything that we need to observe.

Our perceptions will always be lacking, and the consequences are demonstrated by the famous allegory of the Blind Men And The Elephant.

Shaking all my beliefs off has some obvious religious conclusions, but while I wouldn't claim to have any beliefs about religion, I still have light-hearted opinions (surprise, surprise..)

Before discussing my views, consider some important definitions:

atheist: [a=without, theism=god]. Without god. One who denies the existence of god.
agnostic: [a=without, gnostic=knowing]. Without knowledge. One who denies knowledge of the existence of god.

Atheism in itself is a belief system - some even call it a religion. Because of my realizations, I've moved from atheism to agnosticism, though I admit to having atheistic tendencies. I've never gone for the god thing - when I first thought about it I was three years old and I declared to my brother that there was no god. When pressed on the issue it occured to me that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny didn't exist either. My poor brother had just received money from the tooth fairy, so he finally asked me about that. I informed him that the tooth fairy was a fraud as well and he started crying.

(Sorry Mike, I couldn't resist)

I've never been a fan of religion, particularly organized religion. I feel that religion requires blind faith which interferes with truth. I may regret feeling this way when I die. We'll see.

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DaveFAQ