Assumptions and Knowledge: Mutually Exclusive

Assuming something and knowing it to be true are mutually exclusive things which a person cannot engage in at the same time.  Someone cannot assume a premise or proposition to be true while knowing with the intellect that it is truly so, for to assume something one must allow an unverified logical leap.

Allow me to demonstrate the inconsistency of many who pursue assumptions.  If one is justified in assuming the Bible as true, then someone who assumes the Quran or Book of Mormon to be God's special revelation is also justified.  If someone is justified in assuming that Biblical morality (with its condemnation of racism and the slave trade in Exodus 21-22) reflects the truth, then those who assume the validity of Islamic morality (with its instructions to amputate the hands of thieves [Surah 5:38] and allowances for striking one's wife [Surah 4:34]) are equally justified in their assumptions.  No one can legitimately have it both ways, believing in a moral position or theological statement on a basis other than reason and then condemning others who do the same thing but in regards to a different belief.  Yet I encounter many who attempt to defend or justify their erroneous and fantastic personal beliefs with nothing but assumptions who then attack others for the exact same fallacies.  People who believe in Christianity because they were born into a Christian family and have never challenged their family's practices may object to or ridicule those of another religion content to blindly believe in the theological persuasion they themselves were taught as a child.

It is highly important that I admit that someone can only make so many assumptions before at least one of the assumptions is indeed ultimately correct.  Some assumptions will by necessity be revealed as true--a great multitude of them, in fact.  However, the only pathway to actual certainty and true knowledge is reason.  As I have stated elsewhere, I have grown to despise this fact despite my love of knowledge and reason itself, for it leads to great uncertainty and can seem to ironically produce a lack of intellectual fulfillment in the sense that it only exposes the limitations of our present knowledge.  The only way to arrive at a conclusion without reason is to accept assumptive belief--but this is the one thing that can never be epistemologically justified.  Though many mistakenly assume they do, no one has the intellectual right to believe something on blind faith and treat it as true and binding in their interactions with other people.

Assumptions, my great nemeses, must be purged from the public intellect as people learn to accept only what can be known.  The world of knowledge may terrify and immerse us in the great enigmas and uncertainties of reality, but we must offer these sacrifices if we wish to know how things really are.  Terror and difficulty are sacrifices I am willing to acknowledge and make.