How were we to decide which placement of atoms was the one to embrace, assuming that is something one could do to a placement of atoms? But these questions were not answered. By driving a wedge between the realm of sensory experience and the realm of ideas, the whole realm of ideas became suspect. Ideas were what led us to believe that things we could not see with our eyes and touch with our hands – like God – were real, whereas they must, so went the logic, be our own inventions. Worse, endowed with such independent existence, they kept us in a state of indignity and humility.
