Atheists: If you were blind, how do I convince you that light/colors exist?

Question

Same goes with being deaf with sound/music.

Anyway, I'm not taking the theists side by asking this question, I just want to know your response(s), I myself don't have any good response(yet).

Answer 1

There is a scientific basis for the spectrum of colors in visible light to back it up. Same with music, there is science to prove that there are sound waves...even deaf people can feel sound waves. Same thing with colors invisible to the naked eye like the infra red spectrum or ultra violet...do you believe they exist? I hope so.

Answer 2

There are many aspects of the world that are not directly perceptible to humans that we know exist. For example, we can't determine electrical conductivity without using instruments to measure it, but we know such a property exists and there are tests we can set up to demonstrate the phenomenon. A blind person could use a spectrometer to determine the different wavelengths of reflected light and poll a random sample of sighted individuals to determine how they described various wavelengths of light. The result of the experiment would be that light of particular wavelengths would consistently be described with the same set of words with equivalent meaning, strongly suggesting a relation between the perception of color and wavelength of light, thus proving that such a thing as color exists.
A deaf person could set up a similar experiment using an acoustic spectrum analyzer. To my knowledge, there is no device that can measure the presence of gods, so the religion debate will continue to rage on.

Answer 3

DAMN THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION!!! KUDOS dude...

I guess if I were blind it wouldn't be that hard to convince me that light/colors exists as I can feel lights being on or off even if I'm sleeping face down and even if I'm deep inside the building I work in I always have a 'feeling' that the sun went down in the afternoon/evening. Same goes with televisions, Microwaves, radios...etc. Seeing as how me and alot of other seeing people have that ability I'm sure the Blind have a hyper-sensitive version of it. So if I were blind and doubted light existed you could stand me next to different colored lights or of varying strengths/bightness and let me feel the heat and frequencies of each light bulb. It would be hard for me to understand the concept of a color or what light 'looks' like but I'd have to understand that turning these devices on and off causes a sort of heat or frequency that I as a blind person could 'feel' but a seeing person interprets with 'vision', something I'd never experience, but I in such a senario I don't think I'd doubt the existance of light.

As for sound that's even easier... sound can be loosely defined as the audible vibration of air molecules. If I were deaf and doubted the existence of sound (the ability to interpret vibrating air) all you would have to do is play a simple drum beat as loud as possible, let me stand on the stage and feel how the different drums in the drum set cause different vibrations through my body. Just like in the blind senario it's impossible for a deaf person to experience audio the way a person with working ear drums can but no deaf person can deny that banging a drum 2 feet away from them causes their body to feel a quick shock or vibration.

Neither of these two examples can be done with any religion.
Like I say in alot of these types of questions, some religions can be studied to find a positive message that might help you in life, but it should never be taken literally or as instructions from some higher power

Answer 4

Convincing a deaf person of sounds would be easy. Sounds make vibrations that deaf people can feel.

As for light, that would be a little bit more difficult.
One way of doing so would be to explain that the heat during the day comes form the sun in the form of light. That would confirm to me that light exists.
Explaining the different colors might be tricky. I don't know how you could do that without actually explaining the physics and setting up an experiment to detect light waves of different wavelengths.

Answer 5

Light can be detected by various means, and not all electromagnetic radiation is light.

Even if I were blind, I could feel light as it is converted to heat on my skin. Ultraviolet would still cause me to sunburn. Radio waves would work just as well on my radio. I could use a prism to break light apart, and determine the properties of wavelengths. I could learn that red and blue wavelength are absorbed and green reflected from leaves using a photodetector.

Many deaf people dance well because they feel the rhythm.

Many things can be learned by inference.

Answer 6

I guess for a blind person you wlould just use other effects of light. How do you become convinced that exrays or radio waves exist. Light is just another form of radiation. One that we only percieve part of the spectrum of with our eyes.

Sound is easy. It is available through other senses like touch or by observing its effects on materials.
If you wanted to prove you could hear sounds you could set up and experiment to demonstrate that by using it to communicate, or by responding to it.

Answer 7

If I were blind,,, you could descrbe the color in words,, using brown is dark like you see but tan is like softness touching it, making it less and less dark.... Music is easy.... let them touch the machine producing the music they get the vibes... and again you could use words but music has the ability to trancend sound.... Now I ask how could you explain these things to a person chosing to wear a blind fold and ear plugs as a christian does? Perhaps you can understand the frustration of us who see and hear in getting through to them.

Answer 8

You couldn't......but your analogy is a bit off.


Could a blind man convince another blind man that light/colors exist?

Since the sense required to detect this existence isn't possessed by either man (in our constructed world, the entire population)....DOES light exist in this scenario?



Now to connect to the theist piece; why would God remain outside of our current sensory abilities if this would ultimately doom some of the population he claims to love?

Answer 9

The fact that light and color are tangible. The whole world (minus the blind) can SEE them and ALL have the same description (minus the COLORblind).

Yeah...had to get technical cause I know some punks on here are nitpicking little s.hit lol.

Answer 10

There are already many things in the world we can not detect with our senses. Our senses are not the judge to what's real or not real, obviously you don't know anything about electronic microwaves, low frequency sounds/light, radiation and all other things we cannot detect with our senses, all of the seem to exist.