Smith on Sense-Data
From George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God , in which he presents an invented dialogue between a Christian who resorts to skepticism to rebut rational arguments against the existence of the supernatural and an atheist antiskeptic. That's right; in Smith's view the Christian is the skeptic, in the philosophical sense of believing that reason is unable to yield knowledge about reality. By attacking reason the skeptic imagines he can clear the way for revelation and other nonrational justifications for his beliefs. He goes so far as to reject the reliability of the senses, which are at the base of our knowledge. Of course, he cannot attack the senses without at least implicitly relying on sensory evidence. Here is an excerpt: Skeptic : "But don't you agree that all we ever have direct awareness of is immediate sense data?" Antiskeptic: "No. What we have direct awareness of is reality, and we are given this awareness through perception. Perception