Could you prove to a blind man (blind since birth), that a rainbow exists? How?

Question

If you couldn't, then that means the blind man would have to believe the testimonies of others, correct? Why/why not?

Answer 1

Give him so skittles so he can taste the rainbow. Seriously your question just made me realize why it is called "blind" faith because faith is all the blind man can rely on to believe that a rainbow exists. Excellent Question!

Answer 2

Easy enough. Hand the fellow a device that is sensitive to incoming photons and delivers the output in a means the blind man can understand. Let him use it enough to develop an understanding of how the device works and what its output means, and then point him at a rainbow.

In a sense, this is no different from radio. How do you KNOW there are radio waves beaming music and information to you? It's certainly not by percieving them with your senses. Most people just trust that they're there. But if you want to be sure, you can follow the above method and do what early experimentors did.

In another sense, a blind man with the right tool is in a very similar situation to any of us. How do WE know that a rainbow is there? We see it, but how do we know that this is not an illusion or malfunction of our senses? Maybe, in some senses, we can never really be sure of this. It all depends on what you are comfortable believing, I suppose.

Answer 3

I once saw a sitcom or movie where someone was explaining to a blind person what colors and clouds were. He used terms like Hot - for the color Red. Cold - for the color blue. Fluffy Cotten - for clouds. Using symbolisms that were easily understood through touch helped the blind person relate much easier. After explaining items that incorporate into a rainbow you could easily explain rain and how a rainbow is created.
Beyond that it's really up to an individuals perception to determine if a rainbow exists regardless of whether they are blind or not.

Answer 4

You can't "prove" the existence of anything that's purely visual to a totally blind person. All you can do is describe it to them. Some blind people do have visual images in their dreams-- if you were able to find out if the person you were talking to ever dreamed in images, you might be able to build a picture in their mind's eye from that.

I've found that music is often helpful in describing visual images to a blind person. For example a blind person knows what "water" is-- you could play a passage on a keyboard that described "water". They know what "wind" is-- you could build a musical image of "wind". Once you had established a basis of communication through music for KNOWN things, you could try to construct a musical image of this UNKNOWN thing, i.e., a rainbow.

You may not completely succeed in getting them to "see" the images, but you might get them a bit closer.

Answer 5

through reasoning and ideal analogies. because the guy hears, explaining radio and radio waves and the doppler result does not be problematic in any respect. Then explaining the wavelenghts of power fluctuate, and particular of those wavelengths are seen mild, which refracts even as interacting with water vapor contained in the air. for sure, on your analogy, i'm presuming you should portray atheists as born blind. when you consider that explaining a rainbow to individual who were sighted to commence with yet then lost sight does not be needed. so that you're assuming that delivery situations like blindness are not results of threat, yet extremely are the want of God, for causes unknown. If that is so, why would God enable human beings to be spiritually blind from delivery? And in the journey that they are not spiritually blind from delivery, yet quicker or later grew to develop into willfully ignorant of God, then your analogy falls aside because you do not want to describe rainbows to someone who observed a rainbow earlier turning out to be blind. edit: no individual is attentive to some thing "without" a unmarried doubt. No atheist i have ever met claims that massive difference.

Answer 6

It takes a few explanatory details to explain what a rainbow looks like.

First, you have to tell the blind man it's texture. Usually we would say the rainbow is probably something that makes people feel warm by heart.

Second of all, we should tell him it's surface, even though the rainbow is just light, we could say that its texture is smooth, almost transparent. Naturally we can say it's a wonder that warms the heart.

Answer 7

I'd say you can by faith. I haven't seen God in person but I still believe that he exist and that is by faith as well. A blind guy needs to trust that you are telling him the truth. A long time ago I watched a movie about a girl who was born blind. This man was talking to her about beautiful sunsets and he told her that one of the colors were red and she asked what's red? He then took her hand and gently touched a hot pan with it and she jerked back from the sudden sting. He said. "That is red." When she asked him what was blue, he took out an ice cube from the freezer and placed it in her hand. Her hand shivered from the sudden cold and he told her, 'That is blue." This was based on a true story. She had never seen a sunset but this man helped her believe by faith and he helped her see colors by heat and coolness. I hope this has answered your question.

Answer 8

The same way you prove to physicists that certain principles exist.

There are things that "normal" people cannot sense, and can only infer through indirect experimentation and mathematical theory.

So, your task is to find a way to explain about light waves (and he can easily feel raised wave patterns in textbooks for the blind) and about how these wavelengths refract, and about other such things using the same sorts of examples that textbooks use to demonstrate to us using water waves what we cannot actually see in light waves. They'll wind up understanding rainbows as accurately as we do.

You might have to expand into more physics to support wave theory if you want to actually PROVE it. Also allow for your blind person to have about the same level of skepticism as a regular person- I could refuse to believe in a hand that slapped my face if I was stubborn enough. But, I'm an ordinary person and I beleive in protons and electrons even though I've never seen them. You need to allow your blind person a realistic levl of open-mindedness, you you'll NEVER be able to prove ANYTHING.

Answer 9

No. How could a blind man, blind from birth even imagine what a color is? He couldn't.

Answer 10

Of course. I can prove to you that a nuclear explosion is possible. You don't have to have ever seen one to know that they exist. Of course you may have seen videos of it. So lets try a different example. I can prove that there are such things as molecules and atoms and quarks. You've never seen them or felt them but I sure you believe in them.

The fact is I can get you to believe anything as long as you know of no contrary evidence to support it. If you ever read 1984 by George Orwell, it's called the concept of reality control.