David Hume and the empiricists maintain that all that man can know for certain is that which we attain through our physical senses. All the rest that we know is uncertain because we obtain it merely through belief and habit. This philosophy suggests that only knowledge that comes through the senses can be real, whereas knowledge that comes from belief or habit is always suspect, and therefore, less than real.
However by experience, beliefs and habits have proven to be useful or useless depending on how they are employed. If a belief or habit improves a person's life, causing them to be healthier in mind or body, then that effect would seem to be just as real as feeling any solid object. Even more real in some respects because beliefs and habits can improve lives whereas the feeling of a solid object is mainly neutral in this effect. It is difficult to understand how anything that is useful cannot also be real.
In fact, if one examines all sensory feelings and their ideas and all abstract feelings and their ideas in their simplest forms, one will find that they all are useful in one way or another. This rule is a universal fact. If all sensory and abstract feelings and ideas prove themselves useful, then they all must be real. Thus all of the objects of consciousness must be true and real in their simplest forms.
Habits and beliefs are useful or useless combinations of these basic realities. Whether habits and beliefs are useful or useless, the basic realities that compose both are always true and real.
A habit always combines basic realities. If a habit, such as regular exercise, improves one's health, then the effect of that habit can only be true and real. If a habit, such as smoking cigarettes, tends to destroy one's health then the effect of that habit is destructive, reducing one's health toward nothingness and to that effect proves not true and not real. Thus, the habit of smoking cigarettes constitutes a false combination of basic realities that is real as an experienced habit, but its effect is a tendency toward an absolute nothingness which is not true or real; that is, a complete loss of health.
Falsity itself is real since it is a name that identifies combinations that produce useless, empty or destructive effect. Nothingness is also real, but only as an idea . One of the uses of the idea of nothingness is that it identifies the effects of false combinations that reduce reality towards absolute nothingness. Unreality always equals absolute nothingness. A mermaid is a false combination of the realities of "fish" and "female." Yet, the effect of the mermaid is a real nothingness which as a real idea, in turn, identifies an absolute emptiness which is the nonexistence and only unreality of the mermaid.
The false combination of basic realities called: " the theory of aether in space" proved useless because the effect of this false theory revealed that "aether" does not exist. Thus, the idea of "aether" equals the idea of nothing. The real idea of nothing proves useful because it identifies the nonexistence of "aether." The absolute nonexistence of the "aether" is the only unreality of the false combination.
Thus, reality appears in five forms: basic realities, real combinations of basic realities, false combinations of basic realities, names for the effects of false combinations , and the idea of nothing and all terms that equal nothing. The basic realities and their true combinations are always real. False combinations and their effects are also true and real in the sense that they indicate the unreality that should be discarded, avoided, or left behind. The idea of nothing is useful in many ways with no room to explain here. One of the main uses of the idea of nothing is that it points to the absolute nothingness inherent in all false combinations which is the only unreality in human experience. Actually though, humans never experience absolute nothingness because it does not exist in any place or at any time. Unreality is never experienced.
As an experiment, if one should read any page in a dictionary one will find that every word will fit into one or more of the five categories of reality. One must use some thought though.
As for the reality of habit, by habit we expect the sun to rise every morning. The empiricists maintain that this habit is less than real because the sun may not rise one morning. While the empiricists are right that the sun may not rise in the morning, they are wrong to aver that habit cannot be certain. If the sun does not rise in the morning, we humans can be certain that that true and real combination of basic realities called "the sun rising every morning" has drastically changed. Perhaps that basic reality called "gravity" has been subtracted from this real combination. Perhaps that basic reality called an "explosion" of the sun has been added to this real combination. Of course, an "explosion" can be a true or false combination depending on how it is used, but if added to a macro reality like "the rising of the sun every morning," then an "explosion" can be considered a macro basic reality. In any case, if the "sun rising every morning" fails to happen one morning, then we humans can be certain that some basic reality has been added to, or subtracted from, this real combination. We humans can also be certain, by a real habit, that as long as that true combination called "the sun rising every morning" holds exactly as is, then this reality will never fail.
As for the reality of belief, this basic reality proves useful in such combinations as: "confidence that a particular unproven system will prove useful." If such a system is tested and proves to be useful and real, then one's "faith" in that system has also been proven to be real. However, if such a tested system proves to be useless, then one's "faith" becomes equal to the idea of nothing which, in turn, indicates an unreality that should be usefully discarded.
If a Christian has "faith" in that system called: "the sacrifice of Christ that saves one from sin and destruction," and this system proves to be useful and real, then that Christian gains the effect of that system which is "everlasting life."
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