• Zuhair
    132
    If one make a claim, then either that claim is presented in an objective manner, in a manner that its
    truth can be arrived at by procedures that are not related to the personality of the claimer, like for example scientific and mathematical data are judged to be true by matching reality or other logical or quasi-logical backgrounds. Or on the other hand the claim might be presented in a subjective manner, i.e. its truth CANNOT be arrived at by procedures that do not depend on validating the personality of the claimer as being a person who speaks the truth and not being affected by some mental illness that might deceive his senses or judgments . I call this dichotomy of claims as: Objective x Subjective.

    Now obviously from the above definitions, if a claim is presented objectively then we are to follow the above mentioned procedures that match the claim with reality (empirical sciences) or with the consequences of a predetermined logical or quasi-logical setting (logic or mathematics). While to validate a subjective claim we are to follow procedures that are related to the personality of the claimer itself since we don't have any other means of reaching to the truth of what he says but by depending on him saying the truth and him not being involved with perceptual or conceptual errors by mental illnesses or suggestions or the alike. So the procedures that validate a subjective claim are related to personal verification of the claimer.

    So ideally a subjective claim is accepted only after the personal verification of the claimer had been made. If we cannot verify his personal integrity, then the claimer is deemed as a STRANGER and ideally we don't accept subjectively presented claims from strangers.

    To give examples of such subjective claims and situations, we are to take the Patient's acceptance of what his doctor is instructing him to do. Most patients (unless they are doctors) cannot verify what their doctors are saying on objective grounds, most of them cannot understand the diagnostic and the management background the derived their doctors to make them in a fully objective manner, because they lack that kind of sophisticated knowledge. So they accept their doctors instructions depending on their trust in their professionalism, and this is a kind of personal verification, this is made by for example reading his CV, or that he is registered with a known medical body, his certificates, and sometimes by actual prior experience with him by themselves or other patients, or general trust in the health system which did that professional verification for them. Imagine that you are confronted with someone in a journey for example and he told you that he is a doctor, suppose from some foreign country and you have no way to ascertain that, would you follow his instructions when those instructions are not well known medical facts, and when those can potentially harm you in case they were wrong? the usual answer is NO.

    So the context is that if one makes a subjectively based claim, then we are to accept it only after we verify the personality and judgement of the claimer. However there are indeed exceptions from doing such verification: the ones that I'm familiar with are:

    1. If the subjective claim made has no serious consequences
    2. If it already agrees with subjective ethical and moral maxims of the listener.
    3. If another personal or body in which you have trust had done this personal verification for you, and if you think that this body has the ability to do that.

    Let me explain those: for 1 we have the example of a totally stranger who comes to you and tells you that whenever a football game happens he always guess the correct winner team and the correct lottery winning ticket. And he wants to sell you a ticket at a very low price. This is an example of a low risk situation were even if you accept his claim and buy the ticket and it turns to be false, you only lost a very small amount of money, so it is not a serious situation, so you may accept a subjective claim on the basis of gambling if there was no serious consequence.

    An example of 2 is when one comes to you and say that he reached a certain truth in some transcendental way and the result is that you should be kind, help people, always support the weak and sick. The result here is already in agreement with morals that you already accepted before, so there is no problem with accepting this claim, because it has already been accepted before.

    An example of 3 is when you go to the doctor and you trust that the health system can and it did verify the professionalism of that doctor, and you have a trust in the health system.

    Imagine a person who is totally stranger to you, who comes and tell you that you must divorce your wife, abandon your parents and sons, for they are conspiring against you to kill you and take your fortune. Now the immediate response to such a claim is to ask him to present an OBJECTIVE evidence, i.e. an evidence that is not related to checking his personality, because the latter is not available to you, since he is TOTALLY stranger to you. Now if he presents no such objective evidence, then the rational stance for you to REFUSE accepting his claim. Why because it is very serious (you will lose a lot if you accept it and it turned to be false), relies totally on subjective basis which is trust in honesty and sanity of the teller, and for which you have no evidence of that trust, because you have no account whatsoever about that person. So you must refuse his claim. That's obvious!

    In other words: SERIOUS SUBJECTIVE CLAIMS MADE BY STRANGERS ARE TO BE REFUSED.

    and to re-emphasize what I say is that since I said "subjective" then I already mean it cannot be verified objectively, so it can only be accepted after personal verification had been made, there is no other way; and when I said "serous" I mean they are not of the kinds 1,2, above, and when I said "strangers" then we can't have a verification of their persons nor 3 is applicable to them, i.e. we cannot even verify their person in an indirect manner. So we have a logical rule of inference being involved here.

    Subjective claim -> Accepted only if the teller is personally verified
    The teller is NOT personally verified
    .............................................................
    The claim is NOT accepted.

    Now what's the relationship of all of that to RELIGION.

    All Revelation based religions depends on accepting "serious subjective claims" that are made by totally "stranger" beings. They prophets of those religions say that they heard their teaching from "Angels" that they saw and heard, and that those angels revealed to them those messages from God. IF we accept those prophets as good persons who always say the truth and that are not deceived by some mental illness or suggestion or the alike, then those prophets are witnesses to some extra-terrestrial experience, and thus they'd constitute some kind of empirical evidence to the existence of those so called angels. In that case the beings whom they (the prophets) had encountered, who told them that they were angels carrying a message coming from the Creator of the Universe, those who identified themselves as "angels" those are examples of TOTAL STRANGERs. We have no means of verifying their persona whatsoever, since they are actually not even humans or any kind of the terrestrial creatures that we have experience with, so there is no possible way to verify their personal integrity, not only that, even the prophets to whom those beings had spoken, even those prophets cannot have any way of verifying the personals of those so called angels, because the prophets are just humans, and those angels are not humans, and moreover those angels were tho one who guided those prophets, they have more knowledge, then can even change their appearance, so the possibility that they were no saying the truth is there!

    Are those angels telling us something "serious". The answer is YES!. Since any sentence whatsoever that is said in the name of God (i.e. that God had revealed it) is of course serious, at least its belonging to God is itself a very serious matter. Now those angels are speaking lots of things related to detailed regulations of aspects of human life, including morals, legislation, wars, social affairs, worship etc..And we have no even a shred of Objective evidence about most of what they are saying in all those aspects really.

    So the rational stance that humans should adopt in response to such revelations coming from stranger beings is first to see if they can be objectively verified, and those claims that cannot be objectively verified then they are to be refused, since there is no personal backing for them, and they are presented in a subject manner, and they are dam serious claims, so the are subject to the above logical inference rule.

    The real problem is that if we say that there should be a God who created this universe, and that it is the only God, then saying that those stranger beings (i.e. the angels?) are speaking his words, makes it even a more serious claim, that it really ought to be rejected as not coming from that God. Since it is not imaginable that such a ONE God would ask us to adopt any solely subjectively presented account about him that comes from strangers? otherwise we'd be saying that this God is demanding us to adopt an irrational approach to him, which cannot be.

    So the correct way to approach God, is for us to be honest about how much certainty we have in his existence? so we must not claim that we have full certainty about that, the second is to approach him by what we think honestly that it is good, and refrained from what is bad, to the best that we can tell, and to concede that we might not be correct in telling those always. Not to go and impose on him our own human based expectations and figure him behaving according to our preferences.

    Obviously God didn't send any revelation, but that is not a proof that he doesn't exist, and that he doesn't care about it, no he can exist and be caring about us, even without sending any revelation, the relationship is very personal, and individualized, it not need be universally the same for all people, and it is God who decides what he do, not our own ideational casting about what he should do. It is how we should approach him, not how he would approach us. I say we approach him in the best of what we know it to be good. And leave the details about the plan of life, death, and existence to him, since we have full trust in him.

    So the correct approach to God is from below (us) upwards, and not the opposite way the "angels" of those revelations are stating.
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