To be sure of naturalism, physicalism, materialism, etc, you must first assume your senses to a pretty high degree to be correct.
This isn’t really true.
So let’s start of with basic senses - I can figure out whether we are all seeing the same thing by asking people, take vision or sense tests against a control to determine whether we are all seeing the same thing.
We can make observation of things that can be corroborated as consistent. We can conceive devices that we can assure as accurate through a variety of means by comparing it to other things.
That’s what we can do: now we don’t have to assume their results or what they observe is “correct” merely “all that we can make statements about”
The sun could be a fat guy called Gerald - and we are simply all observing this in a collective delusion; but until we have an observation of Gerald - we will never be able to know whether that’s true or false.
That’s really the crux of empiricism - it’s not claiming things we observe are true; but that only thing we can observe can be known.
Yet there's really not a very philosophical reason to believe this outside of pragmatism.
There actually is.
You have an apple on your desk.
I say that the Apple is an Apple. You say the Apple is actually God.
Let’s say God himself revealed that he is the Apple in some dream or revelation.
How can we tell who is right and wrong?
The only means we have of ever telling, is by observation.
Saying that it’s an apple is at best a statement that the apple is an apple by all means we have available by which to tell.
Saying that it’s God, however, cannot be corroborated at all.
The philosophical reason to use observations as opposed to anything else - is that it’s the only real means we have to validate any statement that someone make.
If the things we see cannot be proven to be mind-independent or real, Why are people so quick to assume God is a logical absurdity?
There’s a difference here between dismissing God as unproven, and as a logical absurdity. I think both are true. Most claims about Gods do not make logical sense upon examination, but are unrelated to the way we measure.
For the case that God is unproven or can’t be measured; the important point is that whatever our reality is, or isn’t: to us it appears to obeys common agrees rules; based upon the only means we have to check.
Nothing maybe real in the sense we think it is; but in the context that we observe it, there is no plausible observation attributable to God; and until there is, we should treat the claim of God the same way as the claim of Gerald.
It appears to me almost everything in this world (currently) requires some element of faith, this element of reality is exemplified by the problem of induction. Prove me wrong.
Faith is not actually required for any of it; because no one is really dishonest or misrepresenting the truth of the premise.
I am not saying that Gerald definitely does not exist, and the sun and our reality is exactly as we observe it. That would require faith, as we can’t tell for certain.
When everything is measured in degrees of confidence - not true and false, faith is no longer required.
The fundamental issue here you may need to let go of, is the concept of truth. There is nothing we can know absolutely.
