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A Religion Worth Following

The final area of truth I will write about is the area of religion. As with my posts on the other areas of truth, I will start by establishing a definition of the topic at hand.

One definition of "religion" in Webster's Dictionary is as follows:

"A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices."

And here's a necessary definition of "religious":

"relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity."

I will reference these two definitions in the rest of this post. Notice that the definition of "religious" refers to a deity (i.e. God) OR an ultimate reality. This definition indicates that religion says something about the world as a whole, whether a single divine agent is part of that world or not. 

With that point in mind, what kind of questions does religion attempt to answer? Since religion is a system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices about some sort of ultimate reality, the questions tend to encompass everything about life. The questions can be about specific things, such as how to properly respond in a certain situation. However, the central questions asked by religion have this all-encompassing quality to them.

Some examples of these types of questions include:

1. How did the Universe come into existence? (if it did in the first place)

2. Is there something/someone in control of what happens in the Universe?

3. Is there life beyond this current life (i.e. after death)? How does one enter that life?

4. What is the standard by which someone ought to live?

These questions are broad in the sense that the correct answers would be true for all people on Earth, at all times of the Earth's existence. This point, however, assumes that there is objective truth, where two contradictory claims about the same topic cannot both be true, and thus there is only one truth about a particular topic.

A person's answers to these questions, among others, forms that person's worldview. Someone's worldview affects the way that person views the world and life overall. It also affects the person's motivations and actions stemming from those motivations. Thus, even if someone does not believe in the existence of a deity, the questions asked by religion are important because a person's beliefs about those questions affect much of his life. 

Since these questions do have a large impact on our lives, getting the right answer to them is important, and perhaps urgent if the answers impact any potential life after death. However, there are so many religions in the world, not to mention atheism and agnosticism. How can we possibly choose between all these different sets of answers? For the purpose of this post, I will expand on one main consideration in deciding whether a particular religion is worth following or not.

We should follow a religion if the main claims that the religious system makes are true. The truth of the religion's claims should be able to be verified to some extent by the other areas of truth.

Again, if religious questions are important, and if there is only one set of correct answers to them, then following the correct religion (or correctly denying all religions) is important. In order to have more confidence that we are following a true religion, we would want to have the ability to verify that the claims a religion makes are true.

These claims typically involve some sort of divine revelation, where a deity directly reveals a truth. For example, Mormonism claims that God directly gave Joseph Smith true statements about the world that Smith wrote down word-for-word. Religious claims can also come through experiences, such as the concept of Nirvana in Hinduism, where one can experience a state of being that is essentially apart from the current life.

Verification of a religion's truth claims is difficult if only divine revelation or only experience are considered. If a revelation of truth is actually coming from an all-knowing deity, then we have better reason to trust that truth then any other in the world. However, just claiming that some writing came directly from a deity does not give us any reason to believe that claim. The big question to ask is, what reasons do we have to believe that a truth (i.e. a religious system) has come from an all-knowing deity?

To answer that question, other areas of truth can help us. If we view science, history, and philosophy as reliable for discovering truth about the world, then a true divine revelation should at the least not contradict these other areas, and most preferably should fit with these areas. A way we can test if a "divine revelation" is true is to determine if its claims describe the way reality actually is. To do so, we can take all areas of truth into consideration to see how much the claims match up with reality.

This idea can be extended to all religions, whether its truth claims come primarily through revelation or experience. An issue with a religion's truth claims coming solely through experience is that it results in an all-or-nothing test. If one does not experience what he is suppposed to experience, then the religion fails, and there is little opportunity to verify its truth otherwise. Asking others about their experiences could help. However, since experiences are personal in nature, the only way that you could be certain that someone actually did have an experience as they described would be though an external event.

For example, two people say that they feel like they are flying. One is just standing there in front of you, and the other is actually floating around in mid-air. Of course, you have more reason to believe that the second person is in fact experiencing the feeling of flying. You can see the external results of that person's claims to feel a certain way.

A religion can make a truth claim through an experience, and there are ways we can determine if that claim is legitimate. But a religion with truth claims solely based on experience is more difficult to verify than one that is based on other types of truth claims. We should prefer a religion that can be verified by other areas of truth to at least some extent.

There are other reasons to follow one religion over another. One might choose to follow a religion because it provides comfort, a sense of purpose, or other admirable qualities. While these factors should be taken into consideration, I think that the truth of a religion's claims is the main factor in choosing the best religion to follow. A religion based on falsehoods is not worth basing our worldview, motivations, and actions on.

This point also extends to worldviews, which include atheistic-type views. The worldview that someone ought to hold is the one that is true... the one which overall fits the way the world actually is.

And that ends this post, as well as this "From the Ground Up" blog. In the next post, I will merge my "From the Ground Up" and "Viewing Out" blogs, and summarize what has happened in this blog thus far.

The Philosophy of it All

Philosophy is a subject that we can use to discover a lot of truth about the world we live in. There are several reasons why it is so important:

1) Philosophy has a broad definition

One definition of philosophy that I thought fit philosophy pretty well is "the love of knowledge", or as Webster's dictionary defines it, "the pursuit of wisdom". These definitions fit as a general definition of philosophy because almost any type of knowledge that we have involves philosophy in some way. Another simple way to describe philosophy is, "using reason to ask questions and draw conclusions about the world we live in."

2) Philosophy separates good arguments from bad arguments

One way we engage in philosophy is through arguments. I do not use the word "argument" in reference to a back-and-forth verbal fight with another person. I refer to the definition, "a coherent series of statements leading from a premise to a conclusion."

This definition flows into a logical aspect of philosophy, where we can use logic to draw conclusions about the world. A logical argument involves premises that lead to a conclusion. A premise is basically a statement that claims certain things within itself, but is also part of a series of claims that lead to a conclusion. In order for an argument to be sound, all of the premises must be true and the form of the argument must "follow" to the conclusion.

An argument follows when the first premise leads to the next premise logically, and that premise leads to the next premise logically, and on and on until the last premise leads to the conclusion. If an argument does follow logically, then the truth of individual premises need to be proven false in order to prove the entire argument false. 

The easiest way to understand how an argument works is through an example. Take the following example:

1. All cats are not dogs                     (1st premise)

2. Felix is a cat                                 (2nd premise)

3. Therefore, Felix is not a dog          (conclusion)

This first premise involves a subject, cats, and claims something about that subject. To follow up that premise, the 2nd premise establishes that Felix is that subject. Thus, what is true about that subject is also true about Felix. Felix, like all cats, is not a dog. The argument flows logically, and the premises follow to the conclusion. 

In order to refute the argument, you would need to show that #1 or #2 are false. For example, you could get Felix and show that he is actually a mouse. If that were the case, the entire argument would be invalid. The conclusion may still be true, and the argument still would follow, but the means to reach the conclusion would be improper. 

This next example shows an argument that does not follow, and is basically non-sensible:

1. When I wear shoes, they are always red

2. I am wearing shoes

3. Red is a color of the rainbow

Assuming #1 and #2 are true, the argument seems to work until you try to transition from #2 to #3. There is nothing that connects premise #2 to the conclusion. There is some sort of breakdown in the argument; you cannot follow the argument from premise #1 to the conclusion in a way that makes sense. 

Using this logical form is one way we can determine if an argument holds up (a good argument) or breaks down (a bad argument). Arguments can have fallacies that show that the argument is a poor one. But why does the entire argument have to be false if one of the components of the arguments is shown to be false? 

That question leads to a situation where assumptions need to be made. In this case, we need to assume that logic can be used to discover truth about the world. If an argument in not logical, it is not true.

There is not an argument that can be made to "prove" logic works; it is just an assumption that we need to make in order to form arguments in the first place. If there was a way to show that logic exists, it could be simply through personal experience. We obviously seem to be able to draw conclusions about our world in this logical way.

 Once you establish the assumption that you can use logic, then the idea of making an argument and verifying its truth works. And this idea of assumptions leads to the final important aspect of philosophy I will discuss.

3) Philosophy establishes assumptions that are necessary to make conclusions using other areas of truth

Philosophy's penetration into all knowledge becomes evident when you consider that the assumptions we use every day are based in philosophy. The assumption that we can use our mind to form reasonable conclusions branches out to every other area of truth. If that philosophical assumption were not established, any truth claim a person makes would be meaningless and untrustworthy.

This basic assumption is called an axiom, or a self-evident truth. Other axioms include the continuity of nature, the existence of time, and the existence of truth. All other areas of truth are dependent on philosophy to some extent because of these necessary assumptions. One example is science, since the scientific method is built off certain philosophical assumptions. 

So does that mean that philosophy is self-sustaining, where it does not need to involve the other truth areas I discussed in this blog? Even if that is the case, I do not think that is an important issue. The question that is more important is "does philosophy cover all truth about the world?" I think the answer to that is no. When you focus on one area of truth and ignore the rest, you miss many opportunities to discover truth about the world. Philosophy is no exception. You can make logical arguments that follow perfectly using philosophy. However, if those arguments are not supplemented by history, science, religion, and other areas of truth, they will be much more difficult to prove. 

That ends this little introduction on the area of philosophy. This blog is almost done with "building" a foundation for what I am going to talk about next. My next post will be about the truth area of religion. 

A Historical Post

It has been a long time since my last post in this blog, so I am going to summarize where I am at right now. I started laying base "foundations" for truth, talking about its objectivity and exclusivity. I talked about different areas of truth such as morality and religion in terms of their objectivity. And I started to talk about the search for truth through science. I will continue off that last post by talking about finding truth through history, and will probably continue to other areas thereafter.  

I am starting a new blog here. This blog will contain more frequent and varying posts. Basically I will write about what I feel like writing about at the time, similar to the "side topic" posts in this blog. This "From The Ground Up" blog will continue in a more logical order and will have less frequent, but longer posts. 

Anyway, on to history. People, including historians have various definitions for history. Some of these definitions involve what people wrote down (hence their biases get involved), and how people today interpret the past. However, for simplicity, I will use the definition that history is "all true past events". Along with being simple, I think this is the best fit for a definition of history. For example, the fact that I wrote this sentence is a true event of the past. Even if there was no evidence that would help someone determine if I did write that sentence (i.e. if my computer broke and I never told anyone about it), that event would still be history. 

The historian's task is to attempt to determine what actually happened in history. There are issues that cause uncertainty with what actually happen, especially with ancient history. Today, video cameras allow us to see what happened in the past, sometimes with complete certainty when there are multiple camera angles and eyewitness testimony. However, with ancient history, we do not have that convenience. Instead, we have writings from people who had a particular worldview and biases which influenced their writing. And oftentimes, we do not have multiple "angles" as we would today. Instead, we have one writing (or a few writings) about a person or event, which becomes even more problematic when the person wrote with a bias. 

Should we give up on figuring what happened in ancient history because of these problems? I do not think so. Although we cannot have absolute certainty about what happened in ancient history, we can come to a reasonable conclusion about some events that happened using the evidence (i.e. the copies of writings that did survive through thousands of years) that we do have. 

Historians tend to "want" certain things from ancient writings in order to help them determine the truth about a particular event or person. Some of these things include:

1. Multiple attestation - This goes along with the "multiple angles" idea that I discussed above. Historians prefer having multiple perspectives about, for example, a particular event. Even though there are biases that affect how the writers describe that event, multiple attestation can allow historians to determine if the event did indeed occur.

 For example, assume there are two sources about Alexander the Great conquering Persian. One of these sources is from the perspective of one of Alexander's soldiers. The soldier essentially lifts Alexander up as a god when talking about his conquest. The other source is from the perspective of the Persian King, and the king writes constant insults about Alexander and complains about being conquered by him. Even though these are two completely different perspectives, and certain details about the conquest likely differ, historians can still determine that Alexander most probably 1. existed and 2. conquered Persia. 

I used the term "most probably" there because possible theories could be made that Alexander did not conquer Persia. It is possible that someone made up the story 100 years later to elevate Alexander's status after his death. However, in this case the best explanation for these writings (after consideration of other factors) would likely be that Alexander's existence and conquest of Persia are true. I personally like New Testament historian NT Wright's use of the terms "extremely unlikely", "possible", "plausible", "probable", to "highly probable" in reference to the certainty we have about a particular historic event. 

2. Date of original writing close to the events written about - This one is pretty simple. The closer that the writing was to the events, the better. There is less time to fabricate a story to the point that the main events that the writing discuss are false. Legendary material (i.e. elevation of the details of an event or person) tends to build up over time. This is especially true in ancient history, when stories were usually passed down through multiple generations before the story was written down. If the author used source material that has an earlier date than the original writing, is can also strengthen the reliability of the writing. 

3. If we do not have the original writings, there are multiple copies of the original writings that are close to the date of the original writing - this factor is important to determine if the copy of a source that we have today matches the original source. If there are multiple copies, then historians can detect if errors have been made from some one copying either the original source or another copy. If the copies were written close to the time of the original writing, there is less time for these types of errors, as well as manipulation, to occur. It is important to point out here that we do not have ANY original writings from ancient history, so these problems are present for every ancient writing we have today. 

4. Archeology backs up what was written down - this  factor does not lead someone to prove that an event happened, but it can build up the reliability of a writing. If findings from archeology do match up with details form a writing, it shows that the writer was not just making things up; there was some care with getting the facts right. 

5. Embarrassing material - this is information that historians would not expect the writer to include in the writing based on historical context. This is a minor factor compared to the others, but still something to look at.

There are more factors, or "criterion", that historians consider to help determine if an event occurred. The first two are most relevant for historians to determine what happened, number three helps determine the accuracy of writings we do have, and 4 and 5 provide additional evidence for the reliability of a source. 

I also want to point out an important distinction to make - historical facts vs. interpretation of those facts. Once a historian determines the events that happened at a time in history, there may be different conclusions about what those events mean. 

For example, two historians could agree that Alexander conquered Greece, Persia, and then turned back once he got to Asia. Virtually ALL historians who study Alexander may agree that this is true based on the writings we have. However, the two historians could disagree on why Alexander turned back. Maybe Alexander just got tired and thought he conquered enough, or maybe his soldiers complained enough to force him to turn back. No matter what answer is correct to the question of why Alexander turned back, the base historical facts of his conquering and turning back are still true. 

I know my example of Alexander is simple and probably not historically accurate. However, I am just using that example to show why multiple attestation is important (in factor #1 above) and how interpretation of facts do not take away from the truth of the facts themselves. And by historical facts, I mean events that  almost certainly happened based on the data we have". As discussed earlier, complete certainty in ancient history is nearly impossible.

There is more to talk about with ancient history too, especially the difference between oral tradition and how we record history today. But I'll leave it at this for now, and move on to the next area we can use to discover truth, philosophy.

Science Rules?

The first area we can explore to discover truth that I will discuss is science. When talking about this topic, it is important to establish definitions. There are different definitions for science, whether it's "the study of nature" or "any use of the scientific method." So, I will use the following three definitions from Webster's dictionary to establish what I mean when I use these words:

Definition of science:

"Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method and concerned with the physical world and its phenomena"

Definition of scientific method:

"Principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses"

Definition of knowledge:

"The fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association"

With these three words defined, I move to a discussion on science. This area of truth has been extremely important for our understanding of the world. Thus far, science has proven to be a very trustworthy source of truth. Why? If you have multiple people performing the same experiment over and over, and those experiments give the same results every time, you gather a great amount of evidence supporting the conclusion that those same results will continue to occur. Many tested hypotheses (i.e. if event A happens, then it will result in event B) consistently lead to the same results, which points to the conclusion that there is uniformity in the natural world. Using this assumption about uniformity in nature, scientists have drawn conclusions about natural “laws”. These laws indicate that a particular experiment or event, under the same conditions, will lead to the same result. 

A simple example of this method involves the law of gravity. You make a hypothesis that if you drop a pencil (assuming no anti-gravity conditions), it will move downward, towards the Earth's core. You perform the experiment once, and it holds true. Then you drop the pencil one hundred times, same results. Then one hundred people also perform the experiment, pencil still drops. As more evidence is gathered, you gain more confidence that the pencil will always drop.

This method has led to expansive knowledge about the Earth and the Universe. However, there are some shortcomings to science that prevent it from being the only way we can find truth. Here are some examples and brief explanations of these shortcomings:

1. The scientific method cannot be used to gather evidence for necessary scientific assumptions - The assumption that the scientific method can be used to gain knowledge about nature cannot be backed up through scientific experiment. Instead, this is a philosophical assumption. Also, the assumption that we can trust our intellect or senses in the first place is philosophical. I'll write about philosophy in a future post. 

2. Scientific knowledge can only be gained through observation with the use of the five senses - This is pretty obvious and may not seem like a big deal. However, if there is any truth that cannot be discovered through observation using sight, taste, hearing, touch, or smell, science cannot form conclusions about that truth. 

3. Science is limited to drawing conclusions about repeatable events - Example: The experiment of dropping a pencil can be repeated many times. However, a particular instance of me performing the pencil experiment cannot be repeated. When I dropped a pencil at 10am on 5/3/12, I cannot go back in time and repeat that exact event. Science cannot lead to the conclusion that I performed that experiment at that moment. This is an example of a past event. The conclusion that a past event actually happened would need to be drawn through history, which I'll discuss in my next post. 

4. The scientific method cannot be used to determine truth about many questions involving life and human existence -  Some examples include, "What is the overall purpose of my life?" "What is truth?" "Was it immoral to steal that candy bar?" These questions cannot be answered through repeatable and observable events. These are questions that philosophy and religion can potentially answer, but not science. 

Why am I pointing these things out? The worldview that science is the only method humans can use to determine truth is common today, and I do not think it is a very reasonable view to hold. My main point in this post is that while science is a trustworthy area of truth, especially pertaining to knowledge about the natural world, we need to consider other areas of truth. Science does not solely rule our search for truth. If it does, some very significant questions about life are passed over without consideration. To look into those questions, we need to consider non-scientific areas. Three of those areas that I mentioned in this post and that I may expand on are history, philosophy, and religion. 

To close, I would like to point out that my understanding of science is by no means complete. I may be incorrect about some of the things I posted above. This post gives a pretty shallow look into science, but I think it is sufficient to explain my main point. There are also more examples of the shortcomings of science. But this post cannot provide a full discussion about the topic, just like all my other posts.