Metaphysics + Epistemology = Philosophy

Do you live in a world where bread falls from the sky for you because you’re hungry? Where dead relatives rise from their graves because you love them and miss them? Your answers to these questions define your metaphysics. If you are rational, and you understand and accept the nature of the world you live in, your answer to both questions is obviously “no.” So when a rational man is confronted with starvation or the pain associated with the death of a loved one, he knows he can not wish or pray his hunger or pain away. He knows he has to act to preserve himself and he must do so in a very real way: He must wake up in the morning, shake off his pain, go to work, and bring home the groceries. The thinking of the man with an irrational metaphysics is clouded by promises that his daily bread will be given to him, that his dead relative is not really dead.

He argues these beliefs are a comfort to him.

Notice: The irrational is easier, more seductive. This is why faith [the irrational] has been accepted by men of all cultures and through all of time…it’s a short-cut, it’s easier. You don’t have to get up, you don’t have to work, and you don’t have to face death. You can lie in bed all day and pray for pain relief. But, know this; if somebody [some living loved one, perhaps] doesn’t come to your aid, you will eventually starve to death.

Fortunately, most Americans, however faithful, have the common sense to get up and go to work. They get up and go to work and thank God for the strength to do so. The irrational beliefs they cling to for whatever reason serve only to cloud their thinking, like OxyContin, while subconsciously they do the real work of solving their problems.

Because the Laws of Nature are immutable, hard to explain, and do not change to serve the whims and wishes of man, the epistemology of the irrationalists worldwide is stored on the pages of ancient “holy” texts, man's thinking long before he actually explained a Law of Nature, e.g. Newton/gravity. The ancient texts [ALL] are a reminder of the ambitions of our ancient ancestors…How they wanted to fly, how they wanted to cure disease and extend life, how they wanted to never go hungry. How they explained a moral life at a time when men knew only authoritarian governments. [Big collective ambition requires human sacrifice, they thought.] Of course, the modern men who developed the first flying machines, “miracle drugs,” and 21st Century agricultural techniques shared the ambitions of the ancients. All men do. But not their epistemology. Free men, pure and applied scientists, for generations now have been working to transform the ambitions of the ancients from dreams and atrocities to reality and morality.

How have we achieved the modern world? 1. Meta- physically: By understanding the real nature of the world we live in; and 2. epistemologically: By developing ideas that work within the parameters of reality. For example: 1. Pasteur and others discovered the nature of disease, i.e. hostile, mindless, microorganism invading our bodies. 2. Armed with the truth and reason, their protégées developed the means to destroy the invaders while preserving the host, i.e. modern medicine.

So...when a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

The modern world was built by men who answer "of course!"