God, a proven fact or a mere fiction?

[kprasad]

Re: God, a proven fact or a mere fiction?

@Mughal1

Thank you dear kprasad for taking the trouble to explain as you understand things.

1. Let us talk about self evident facts. That is not rhetoric but facts as perceived and understood by anyone objectively. This universe is self evident in which we live. Things are happening in this universe and if we perceive them then they are are self evident facts. Because they are self explanatory we do not need any proofs for them and that is why they are called self evident facts ie anyone who has come across them will observe them the very same way. What you know about the sun is also known by anyone else. So all who are aware of the facts none of them need to prove them to anyone else because they are self evident. Evident means something that you can actually see or hear or touch or taste or smell etc etc.

Evident means manifest in two ways eg it is out there for all involved to see as well as it is self explanatory for its existence and function ie how it works or the purpose of it. Because self evident thing or event is manifest therefore it needs no further proof or proving. Any other definition of self evident fact or event is incorrect and confusing.

2. Testimonial proof and proving is only needed for things or events that are not self evident to us all. Only some of us are witness to such things and when they tell us about them we can either believe them or disbelieve them. However, we have invented ways to be as sure as possible about these proofs, so we examine them for that reason. For example, you saw a road accident and told me about it, now it is up to me to believe you or not. If I have no reason to not to believe you then why should I reject your story? And if I must reject your story then it is I who needs to come up with reasons for rejecting it. These reason have to be reasonably solid because I am in a way accusing you of lying or dishonesty. If I have no solid ground to reject what you are telling me then it is not right for me to reject what you say.

That is when a question arises how do I examine what you tell me? I will look for you contradicting yourself ie logical inconsistency within your own story or see if you are contradicting any self evident facts that you are talking about. I will also question your motive or purpose behind this story of yours. If I find that all is ok then this is clear proof that you are not lying to me and that I have no reason to doubt what you have told me.

On the other hand if I found various faults in what you told my by your own admission then I can catch you lying so I will have the right to reject your story because it has become doubtful after I found faults in it.

3)Theoretical proof is all about collection of clues and their explanations and need of that arises only when something or event is not self evident and it there is no witness to it eg TOE.

When it comes to existence of God, it can be proven rationally but yes question does arise whether this God is hindu God, Parsi God, Jewish God, Christian God or Muslim God etc etc. However, by examining scriptures I think it is posible to reach a solid conclusion.

This is why a good explanation of scriptures is necessary that clearly shows what is really in them. This can only come about when some sensible people spend their time on this issue and when they do I think they will find all scriptures talking about the same God.

This is the reason I am trying to study the quran in a way that muslims hardly ever do. This is the reason I do not reject what other scriptures have to say about God either because they do make a lot of sense. This is going to take time and that is why people instead of rejecting scriptures must look into them themselves in light of ways that we have invented for finding truth about things.

At the moment all I see people including yourself rejecting things because what others told them about scriptures. Now we know people have their own agendas so is it not possible that the rulers and the priests and the bankers may have misinterpreted and misrepresented scriptures to us lay people the way it suited them? After all there is a lot of vested interest in this particular thing called religion.

I do not disagree with your perception of things but may be we have been fed with stuff for a purpose and that should also be obvious to us through what is going on in our world and who is making such things happen and why.

I mean look at how many multinational are breaking local, national and international laws to get whatever they want. Not only that look at how they are trying to get laws made in their favour at the expense of masses. So they have very strong motivation to spread wrong information about parties that oppose them.

It is not for me or for that matter anyone else to force anything on to anyone else because God and scriptures do not allow this however, you or I have no choice but to agree that in this world there is far too much tension between people. Is this due to God or mankind being ignorant and arrogant not knowing how to live in this world sensibly?

The quran gives a purposeful program, constitution and law that solves this problems which is otherwise impossible to solve and even after the quran for last 1500 years we still are fighting after being told how to live because some people derailed humanity from its true path. Who were those people and why they knocked humanity out of its proper way of life and how all this happened are questions that we all need to ponder over?

I can only explain things the way they make sense to me and I hope my explanation of things makes some sense. Thanks for you participation in this discussion because it helps us all to learn from each other.

regards and all the best.

Mughal1,

Self evident and self explanatory are not the same thing. Self evident is without proof. Whereas, self explanatory requires prior knowledge of the issue at hand, therefor it does not require an explanation. Something self explanatory to you may not be for me.

As for the universe, I can emperically find evidence for it and the evidence can be duplicated by others. The universe is not simply self evident. It is a fact that can be proven. The same goes for the sun as well! Scientists and astronomers all agree on the nature of the sun. Its fuel is nuclear fusion. We know it’s size. We know it’s mass. This is because the data can be replicated and used to come to a similar conclusion. This is not based on self evidence, but on emperical evidence.

Ancedotal evidence, and emperical evidence is that the latter can be examined. If I told you I witnessed an accident, you can take my word on faith. That is belief without evidence. However, if you wanted to check, you could get police records, insurance company records, photos of the cars involved, or traffic records. These, tertiarry accounts, corroborate my story. If not, you know I lied. Choosing to check, or not, is up to your volition.

So, what I am telling you, is that I am skeptical. Where is the corroborating evidence? If you are saying something is fact, then where is the evidence? The issue here is, if you believe in a supreme deity, and believe in a universal truth, then why is it misunderstood? Why are there Hindus, and Christians, and Muslims, and Jews? Why don’t we have different interepretation of the pythogream theorem?

All I’m saying is that you are free to believe as you choose. But belief should not be misconstrued with rationality and evidence. The problem isn’t, in my opinion, that there are believers. The problem is that there are not enough believers like you. People that are satisfied in their faith. People that don’t feel threatened in their faith. People equate questioning of their faith as an attack on it. I know it’s not politically correct to say so, but the wars we are engaged in, everywhere, are religious wars.