You cannot search for ultimate truth. You either know it, or you don’t. You can’t search for something unless you already know what it looks like, and if you find it, you can know that you have it only if you already knew what it was. If you assume something faulty, you search for a lie that you call “truth,” and when you find it you rejoice over the “truth” that is really a lie.
Ultimately, all knowledge is assumed. We must assume that our minds give an accurate depiction of our world, because we have no alternative. If our minds give us faulty knowledge, we can’t exchange them (and we couldn’t know they were wrong anyway).*
“Faith” people correctly see that we believe what we want, but they falsely imagine that we choose our beliefs independently of outside forces. Much of what we believe is forced upon us by common sense. “Reason” people correctly see that we can test each other’s beliefs, but they falsely imagine that our reasoning itself stands independent of faith.
This is a great paradox; you cannot know the truth about something unless you make an assumption. You are not partly finite; you are totally finite.
