I wasn't going to reply but I can't resist one more stab at it since Justinian has come along to say hi, and avo is good at directing the conversation where he likes so I'll humour him. For example why did he not tell me why it appears that he does not believe that the report by Children's Commissioner is not based upon decent evidence?

I didn't think the the matrix comment would be taken literally... I wasn't using it in the "machines or aliens controlling us" sense, I was using it in the "you are living in a dream world, neo (avo?)" sense.

No I'm not a philosopher, I'm an engineer. I'm happy to stick with what I'm good at.

Every test needs to make some base assumptions that are going to hold true under most conditions. Have you ever met a scientist who had to state that one of their assumptions is that our brain interprets everything correctly? If I see a building across the street, there is no chance that I'm misinterpretting it in any significant way. If I walk over to it and try to walk through the wall, it ain't going to happen. My brain isn't mistaken in sensing that if a car is going really fast and if I jump out I'm going to get hurt. That seems to be a pretty good test. The biggest misinterpretation that we may make relates to colours etc - we see colours, while many animals do not.... sounds, smell taste etc we interpret differently to animals and other people. I suppose then experience contributes that the only things that individuals interpret incorrectly are superficial - the wave lengths of the sounds/light are the same regardless of how we interpret the colours.  So I guess that how we interpret the colour doesn't matter, all that matters is that the wave length is the same.  What's the alternative? Justinian says there are an infinite number of ideas. Perhaps I wouldn't make a very good scifi writer. Other than a psycopath God interupting the signals with his magical powers or some kind of matrix (take it literally this time), how could we not interpret things correctly. I'd be interested to hear some ideas. Even if the universe was inside an arse wart of a 3 legged elephant, we can still interpret everything that we know about inside that wart, correctly.  Perhaps you can think of some way that our senses <--> brain link does not function correctly. How then does this contribute to the presence of a God? We don't know everything about the universe, but we know a lot. Most things work. If you throw a ball then you have a parabola to show that it works, maths backs up most things. If our brains interpretted things incorrectly, it is doubtful that maths would work quite as nicely as it does.

God does not come into this. If there is a possibility that he is causing some kind of interuption in our senses, then he is a screwed up individual who does not deserve worshop. I say that our brains interpret things correctly, so do you, and I'm sure most catholics would agree. That is the base level and then on top of that you can choose to believe in an invisible guy who created the universe, but was not created himself, loves you as an individual etc, based upon a book and old stories.... or you can choose not to. I had other things to say but my lady wants some attention. Maybe I'll read your reply when you rip my opinion to shreads, maybe not, see if I can be bothered with it anymores, it's getting a bit OT.