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Lv 4

For atheists: Is there any chance that there are aspects of reality that we can't perceive?

Kind of like that old question "How do you describe color to a blind man?".

Update:

@ Jesus Christ : We should give a crap because the way we approach the unknown affects the way we approach the world around us. Stating positively that "the unknown is irrelevant" limits our hopes.

@ Brenda : I don't see how our inability to perceive certain things is evidence of their non-existence

@ Mike : It only stays "nothing" so long as you cannot perceive it, and so long as it isn't involved at all in cause and effect. Because if it jumps anywhere into cause and effect it has the potential to affect you.

@ Tobias : Why directed at atheists? Because I want to understand where the difference is between agnostics and atheists. I am an "implicit atheist", but was raised Christian. My view is that "explicit atheism" takes a "leap of faith" in making the positive assertion that "There are no deities".

To some others : I didn't mention God or gods at all and didn't make any assertion that there are any, or that there is any reason to believe in Him/them. I just wanted to see

Update 2:

how open atheists are to the unknown, and accepting our human limitations to understand. My conclusions so far are that 1 in 25 say that we can eventually "perceive" everything. So atheists are not as closed minded as I thought.

26 Answers

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  • Junior
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Absolutely.

    The world around us is so much greater than our own ability to know it completely - to say otherwise is to betray your own arrogance.

  • 1 decade ago

    Always. In fact, there are quite a few aspects to reality we choose to ignore. Otherwise we would suffer from constant attempts to process everything we observe. The trick is to sort out with your amygadala the really relevant bits. For example, I regularly have no experience of a living god, thus gods are not really relevant. Not that I'm not open to the idea of gods if they ever happen to make a difference, but the fact is they don't. People, however, do make a difference, so if the Spanish Inquisition stops by I might pretend believe in god. Please ask them to bring the comfy chair though if that's going to happen. Right nice of them...

  • 1 decade ago

    Sure. But if it cannot be perceived in any way, there is absolutely no reason to suspect anything specific. Right now I can't see under my bed, but that is no reason to postulate a monster is under there.

    The blind analogy is not that good, as there are a whole lot of wavelengths none of us can see that have been very well described with other means.

  • 1 decade ago

    I think the answer is no. I think all aspects of reality can theoretically be perceived in some way. I'm taking a very broad definition of 'perceive' to include all possible indirect scientific evidence, not a limited view to just human senses.

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  • 1 decade ago

    Not an atheist, but I can't resist: theoretical physicists are speculating that 93% of the universe has to be made up of dark matter and dark energy, which is making it expand. There's no proof for it other than numbers crunched on a blackboard, but the stuff has to be there, or a lot of things in our Cosmos that are happening shouldn't be happening. So far, no proof for either dark matter or dark energy, yet I'll bet a lot of atheist scientists readily accept it.

  • andrew
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    Yes, a 100% chance. There are colors we can't see (infrared) and sound frequencies we can't hear. Some of us have genetic disposition to taste Kale differently. Odds are that we are not biologically built to understand the absolute truth of the universe. What are the odds that we evolved on our singular environment with the capability to understand everything?

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    There may very well be.

    By the way, explaining color to a blind man is not a difficult as one may imagine.

  • ?
    Lv 5
    1 decade ago

    Yes but you have to be able to prove it. If you can't prove it, any religion could make up anything out of thin air and then use it to justify their political agenda. Have you ever noticed that different religions have different realms of your unperceivable reality? They are often in contradiction with one another.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    yes. in fact, there is evidence that the brain may act as much like a reality filter as a command center.

    ...but that doesn't prove anything about the existence of god.

  • ?
    Lv 5
    1 decade ago

    Evidences, evidences, evidences, got any evidences god exist? No tangible evidences god exists whatever so ever.If I told someone i saw a unicorn and no evidences than no one would believe me.

  • 1 decade ago

    Sure. There are at least six other dimensions that cosmologists have hypothesized. But they are curled in upon themselves. So what? What does that have to do with divinity?

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