to expect the universal truths to come from either
reason… Athens or universal truths to come from religion, Jerusalem…
is to first ask, is there such a thing as universal truths?
I have stated before, I don’t accept the idea that there is such
a thing as a “universal truth” that is a judgement of some nature…
for example, a universal truth is “because Adam sinned, all human kind
is cursed with the original sin” that sort of “universal” truth, it isn’t
very plausible or likely…… it is simply a justification to sin without
consequences……
“all men are evil” is another example of a universal truth, that is simply
wrong based on just us looking at the people around us…
universal truths are very hard to disprove…… an example of this seems to
be a slam dunk… “all human beings die” and yet, I am not sure this is true
because we haven’t been able to and won’t be able to examine everyone
who has ever been born… there might be a case, a human being that has
lived for centuries… I cannot know either way… I must remain
agnostic to the idea of universal truths and judgments because I simple
don’t have the information necessary to make such a judgement…
I must reserve my judgment until I have all the facts and in
the case of universal truths/judgement, we can never have all
the facts, so we must reserve our judgements in the cases of
universal/judgements…
but then Kropotkin, you cannot proclaim yourself to be an atheist because
you don’t have all the fact within your possession…
I have reason, which on a small scale can offer up answers to
many of the vexing questions of human existence…
I see no prove of a god…I cannot imagine a situation where
it becomes necessary to imagine up a god… I cannot imagine up
any necessary reason for god… I have no evidence for god’s existence,
I have no reason for god’s existence…now can I expand that into some
universal truth/judgements? I don’t think so… for everyone has their
reasons to believe or disbelieve in some universal truths/judgements…
but locally, within my field of vision, I cannot justify the use of or the need for
god, nor can I find any evidence for such a being…….
hence, I call myself an atheist because I am not trying to reach some
universal reason about such matters, I am simply stating my local truth…
there is no god… I can’t speak for you, but for me, there is no god
and there is no proof of such a being…I reasoned that out…
whereas someone else might reason out otherwise… that is the nature
of reason… it is a locally applied use of a tool we humans have…
Kropotkin