The need for faith

I've given two questions to be pondered upon, and now i'll give the solution. Practically, there's no way we can't be sure that we have interpreted something correctly. Human beings are evolving. Our understanding is improving. We are undergoing a process of gaining more knowledge, getting wiser as time passes by. Hence, if this is so, how can we be so sure that we have done something that's correct? One might say that we can ask others for giving their opinions that act as indications. Well..even Newton's mistake by considering time and space as absolute values are unnoticable by experts on that time. How can we be so sure about anything then? A principle in philosophy says that something that is undergoing a process can't be made absolute. To put it simple, this means that so long as we are evolving human beings, we can't obtain that truth! We can't derive it in a systematic, scientific, and fundamentalistic way since we can't answer arguments that peeks into the future! A dead end? Nope.. this introduces to us the necessity of faith. We must have faith! We can't remain skeptic all the time. Truth is too strong for skepticism. And it was said that the peak of skepticism is agnosticism, meaning, it will come to a conclusion that we can't really conclude upon anything.

So what is this 'faith' all about? I would like to emphasize that faith is not an 'escape route' since we don't have any choice or scientific explanation. Wanna proof? Actually I have proven this point above. But just to make it clearer, think of it this way : we often see in science that assumptions comes first, and explanations comes later. The quantization in physics, for example, was never meant to be intended to be serious at first! But it was later found out that if we adopt this as true, then we are able to explain many things! In quantum mechanics, we have postulates! And we simply have to devour that and then only we can start to see things in the later stage, building on that postulates. Indeed, faith is like an assumption, so to speak. And finally, a true faith should provide us with a coherent worldview, and provide us with a profound understanding consistent with the observable reality. Faith gives understanding.

One thing to be noted is that, faith, although like an assumption, is not really an assumption. Well, you might actually start out to take it as an assumption, but this never works! Very often people wouldn't take it as a serious assumption, e.g. assuming that a particular religion is true, and start worshipping their Gods as they took upon that assumption, and wait for the results or any worldview changes. So i'm saying that faith is not really like an assumption. And, if Christianity was right, which is my stand (I am sure it is right), God works that faiths in our hearts. And this would be my explanation on why faith is not an assumption. This argument is too anthropocentric, and assuming that we are indeed the measure of all things, and nothing external can affect us.

Assesing the 'truth'

I assumed that you already have the mindset that there is indeed one and absolute truth. If not, you can refer back to my previous post.

Now, we agreed that amongst all the religions, there is indeed one that is true. The question is, how do we find out?

Firstly, before we argue upon anything, we should filter out possible 'distortions' amongst the religion itself. What I mean is, there are many misguided teachings within religions itself! So we need to understand that before we could perform any investigations upon those religions, we must obtain the 'pure forms' of each religion to be weighted. And the way we obtain the authentic form is of course, by going back to its scripture, the source of the religion itself. By this, we need to assess all possible implications if the doctrine taught by every religion in its scripture is to be taken as 'true'. But there is a very crucial point here. We may claim that we have read the scripture of a particular religion and we've found that it's totally absurd. First, we need to question, are we interpreting the verses correctly? This, I suggest, we need to find an expert. We must not learn things about religion B from anyone that's from religion A, etc. So we need to find a 'reliable source' to explain us about a particular religion and we must make sure that the person is really faithful to the scripture of his religion, and not distorted in his views.

Next thing, one instrument that can help us investigating the true religion is, of course, by examining the claims of the religion (providing it is understood correctly). This would help filter out 'nonsensical' religions which goes completely beyond common sense. Imagine a particular religion saying that the earth was triangular (well, a bit exaggerated). This would be completely out of sense and proven wrong! But here's the idea. In scriptures, we might find claims about facts. If those facts are wrong, then we can filter out those religions to be, well, a high chance that they are false! This does not go the other way round. It may happen that many claims about facts found in a particular scripture is true, but this would not automatically announce that religion as the 'truth'! The steep is slippery here. One might instantly denounce the religion as false if they found something false about the claim of facts (assuming they interpret the verse correctly), but we can't say that the religion is true the facts in its scriptures are correct!

So much I can say about helping us search for the truth. If you notice, this is a very tough job to do. How do we even know that we are interpreting correctly of one's scripture? And how can we be sure about the facts we know are really established facts?... This is what i would discuss in the next post.

One absolute truth

In this post, I'd like to discuss about 'truth'. What do you mean by truth? Let me give an analogy.

There was a biscuit in the table. A stole it. Now, D said that A stole it, while another 2 persons, E said B stole it while F said C stole it. Obviously, the 'fact' that A stole it is the 'truth'. It's impossible to claim that all three are guilty depending on which one you want them to be guilty! In this analogy, the definition is 'truth' is clear. Truth simply means 'what is true'! It is non sensical to say that both D and E are true, or D, E and F are all true since they have made a mutually exclusive claims!

Well, this particular claim can be extended to assess religions. There are many religions in this world, but they provide us with 'mutually exclusive' explanations with the nature of reality! Hence, there must be only one that is true!

One skeptic argument might be : "Well, it is possible that all of them are wrong!" Let's denote this objection A for the time being.

Another skeptic argument would be : "Well, this nature of 'one truth', perhaps is only true for the material world, and we can't extend it towards an immaterial or spiritual realm in which explanations that seems to contradict might coexists in some unknown manner." Let's call this objection B.

I will deal with this two objections below. But first, let's start with objection B since it is easier to tackle with. Well, to say that "contradicting explanations might coexists in some unknown manner" is to push your imagination a little too far! And how can one be so sure with the statement itself when it can't be understood by logic that two contradicting explanations can coexist? I would call this being "skeptic just for the sake of rejecting the argument". This kind of skepticism doesn't have any benefit at all and is not worth considering. It is like being skeptic about all things, even with our own existence. This makes me recall to the famous skeptic claim that even our very existence can't be confirmed, the reason being that we are connected to the outer environment just via our senses. And how do we know they're not manipulated? Well.. there's no way we can't prove this! And hence this is not worth considering. It's being skeptic just for the sake of being skeptic and if you apply this way of thinking, then you can simply reject every proofs, evidences, whatever it is. Indeed, this view of skepticism is an age old view, and it has been refuted. The biggest failure about skepticism is that it positions itself in a self-defeating stance. One question it can't answer is "Why am I not skeptical towards my own skeptic?".

Now, let's go to objection A which claims that all religions are wrong. There are 2 parts to this question.

The first part, we assume that there is truth, but it is different from what that has been presented in all religions and all its scriptures. Here again, there is simply no basis in asserting this claim. To think this way is to be too imaginative and it can be compared as saying "The colour of my hat is not black, not white, not red, not....(mentioning all the colours there is)".
This is the power of negation statements! One can simply boast a statement by applying the negation of everything that has been present! It's like saying "The solution to the question is a number, not present in the real or even complex plane, or any complete planes known to have contain any numbers".

For the second part, there isn't any truth! All religions perhaps are made up by humans, in order to teach us morals, etc. This would extend to another big issue that I would discuss in a separate post. But in the meantime, if we reject objections A and B, then we came back to the conclusion that religion is not something relative! Indeed, it is something objective, something absolute independent of our subjective viewpoints!

If we understand it this way, therefore, it's not merely a 'choice' that we make, to adopt a particular religion as our religion amongst other various religions offered in this world! Religion is indeed an objective thing! It's something that relates to the truth! Just like any detective stories, think that all of us are 'detectives', in which we must investigate the truth, amongst all possible suspects.

I think this issue was obvious, and sometimes it really upsets me to find that some people still regard religion as something not more than 'traditions'. It's something like a 'custom', and this gives the idea that we are the one that actually determine which one is correct, that religion is indeed no more than a 'choice'. It's so upsetting that many people, say, in some region in Asia, still believes that religions like Christianity indeed came from the Western countries, and they refuse to accept it. I think that their reasoning is unacceptable, for they're treating it as a choice!
Recall back to the example I gave on top of this post. We can't say that B stole the biscuit just because of his races, or because of his 'bad morals' although it can be an indication, but still, it talks nothing about objectivity! People who deny a particular religion just because they see the action of the some of the individuals behaving badly and thus quickly concluded that the religion is false, actually they're allowing their subjectivity come into play! Well, whether you believe it or not, A still is the one who stole the biscuit! It's truth and not a choice! We shall not judge by external factors such as traditions, people, etc! In fact, we shall examine the claims of the religion itself!

Well, I hope would straighten our minds a little bit, and will trigger us to think and search more information before we conclude upon anything.

To sum up, there is a one universal truth! Truth is something absolute, not depending on our perceptions or opinions or anything.

Introduction

First and foremost, let me begin by describing myself, about my personality, which i consider important to include as a beginning of a long journey discussing about religion, about my faith..

Well, i found myself as a critical person, a skeptic who always try to wipe out all preassumptions inside my mind about anything. I like 'scientific' ways of investigating things. I am the kind of person who is hard to believe in something if there isn't enough evidence! Or enough basis of that belief! Simply put, I'm a rational person! I hate biasness, preassumptions, and deriving conclusions from emotional tendencies alone!

As a science lover, i always try to be as open-minded as possible. (for your information, open-minded does not mean accepting everything, but it means that i am willing to accept new ways of looking at things and not reject it instantaneously just because of sentiments) . Moreover, besides the open-mindedness, i found myself as a person who is very curious about anything! A person who often questions things which we might sometimes consider as 'facts', such as in the case of the olden days perhaps, "Why the world must be flat?", or even "Why must there be certainty about anything?"

Now giving this idea about myself is very important, as this would further strengthen the validity of my arguments about religion, in case you might think that my view would be biased.
Well, it can't be denied that since I was in primary school, I had received lessons about Christianity. This process continues on throughout my secondary school days. However, it was not until I'm in college that I really knew what it meant, and why religion is so important. Before then, religion to me was just like any other subjects offered in school. It's just like mathematics, or science, you name it. And the reason that i studied it was just to help me pass my grades.

When I'm in college, I started to think seriously about this issue. I started to become exposed into philosophy. While I declared Christianity as the religion I believed in, I'm also trying to keep an open-mind, noticing all assumptions and possibilities, in order to investigate my own faith. I know you might argue that my view would be biased since i receive Christian teachings since I was in primary school. Well, I'm fully aware about this distrust. What's more, i'm just nothing but a stranger to anyone reading this blog. So it's totally up to you readers whether or not you would consider this to be a worthwhile issue to be considered. But due the presence of that distrust, that's exactly why I'm emphasising that I'm a critical, scientific person in which I always consistently assess myself, and ask myself whether or not I have made an assumption to believe in something that is not based on rationality. Another thing, I would also claim that I am presenting this as honestly as possible, in order to share whatever convictions that I have. Again, it's totally up to you to be skeptical about it, or consider it worthless. But if you share the same curiosity about truth, let's learn together in this journey to find the truth.

And yes, one final remark, as an open minded person, I constantly test myself, which means I will continuously assess my faith and I will continue doing so for the rest of my life! This is important, for if you believe in something firmly without questioning it's validity, it will indeed become a blind faith. Hence, for this I can assure you that I really know what I believe, and it is not a blind faith! And finally, it is not because I believe in it, therefore it becomes the truth. But because it is the truth, therefore I shall believe in it. Maintaining this mind-set is important throughout the whole journey.