My Questions

What is the significance of a question? Well, that's my first Question. This is a list of the Questions that make me seriously wonder and that I have no hope of answering. Discovering these Questions and writing them down is the first step in "knowing." (By the way, if anyone reads this and thinks s/he has an answer, please feel free to email me!) So,

1. What is the significance of a question?

Questions about "knowing"

1. What does it mean to "know"?

2. Is it possible to "know" anything?

3. If the answer to question (1.) is [x], how do we "know" [x]?

4. Is there any reliable foundation upon which to base "knowledge"?

5. The answer to question (4.) MUST have something to do with Christ and the Bible (Proverbs 1:7, NIV: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.” John 14:6, NIV: “Jesus saith unto him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life…’” John 17:17, NIV: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”) What?

6. What is the difference between "believing," "thinking," and "knowing"?

7. Is there any "fact" upon which we may base all "knowledge" and even our definitions of "knowledge"? See question (5.).

8. How do probabilities relate to "knowing"?

9. Is anything not a probability? (again, see question (5.).)

Questions about metanarratives

1. How does a metanarrative relate to the "unified field theory"? (A "unified field theory" still hasn't been discovered. If we can't find a "metanarrative" of sorts in physics, one of the most objective and unified areas of human study, what does this mean for the possibility of a complete metanarrative?)

2. How does a metanarrative relate to Godel's Theorem?

3. How does a metanarrative relate to Jesus and the Bible?

4. Why does it "feel" like there should be a metanarrative?

Questions about our presuppositions

1. What do the premises we simply accept have to do with "truth"? I ask this because I used to think that postmodernism is stupid, but when I researched it and gave it serious attention, I realized that it's closer to "truth" than anything I've seen (by "truth" I mean "compatible with the Bible," "complementary to the Bible," "free from as many contradictions as possible," and "as close to empirical evidence, experience, and observation as possible"). But what do my initial presuppositions reveal? Are they closer to or farther away from the "truth"? Or do they simply reveal nothing, because they are culturally conditioned?

2. As a follow-up on question (1.), how should we deal with things we just "feel" are wrong (by "wrong" I mean either (1) immoral or (2) different from the truth [by "truth" I mean absolute truth, not our perception of it - that's why it's not in quotation marks. This is topic for another discussion!])

3. What role does natural law play in all this? *pulls out Blackstone's introduction to his Commentaries* *pulls out Locke's Second Treatise*

Questions about truth

1. What is truth?

2. Again, is anything not a probability and how does Christ relate?

3. Can truth be "known?" More specifically, can absolute truth be known?

4. Does Satan "know" the truth? (define "know" and "truth" how you like)

Questions about logic

1. How do we derive the system of "logic" and is it flawed? To be considered in attempting to answer this question:

• Paradoxes. Ex.: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists." Abbreviate "this sentence is true" as "S" and "Santa Claus exists" as "E". (We'll use ">" for the if-then operator.) We now have

S > E.

The only way for this sentence to be false, according to the laws of logic, is for S to be true and E to be false. But if S is false, then "this sentence is true." We must therefore conclude that the sentence IS true, because either 1) S is true so the sentence is false (paradox) or 2) the sentence is true. Therefore, Santa Claus exists (modus ponens).

Logic can't escape this, at least to the best of my knowledge.

2. As a follow-up for question (2.), should we accept the laws of logic and why? See also my questions on our presuppositions. Logic seems right, it feels right, but is it right?

Other questions

1. What are the implications of Godel's Theorem?

2. I think like a postmodernist (in many areas), but act like a modernist. In other words, my philosophy is basically postmodernism from the viewpoint of a Christian worldview, but I refuse to make decisions without a logical basis. What is the meaning of this contradiction and does it matter? Does it reveal something about postmodernism - that it is not viable as a worldview?