God, a proven fact or a mere fiction?

[Mughal1]

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

@kprasad

Mughal1,

Eye witness proof is called circumstantial evidence. It needs to be corroborated. Every professional knows that eye witness proof is very unreliable, unless you have lots of people that witnessed the same event and you have physical evidence. So, simply because two people saw something, doesn’t make it a fact.

Dear brother kprasad sb, whoever has told you circumstantial evidence is eye witness account has no idea what he is talking about or that you have failed very badly to understand what was being explained. Since you do not have any idea what the concept of proof and proving is all about I will have to explain it for you in a bit more detail.

Witness based account is always the strongest or most reliable proof of events. It is because it explains the events the way the person saw them happen. You do not need any further explanation of events because you have the explanation already. What you do is verify the testimony by examining it for contradictions within and with respect to the related evidences as far as they are available.

For example, a witness tells us he saw a man who had a gun and he was running after another man and got close to him and shot him twice in the head and the other person died. Note, that story is already there and no explanation is needed for the events. What the police now need to do when they arrive at the scene of the crime is get statement of the witness and get the forensic team to gather circumstantial evidence. Once they have both then they set witness based evidence against the evidences which they have collected from the crime scene and see if they back each other up. If they back up the witness then testimony is proven valid and if they contradict it then testimony is proven false. Police only needs to make a story when the actual story is missing or when a witness is caught lying and testimony is rejected.

How far a witness can be tested? As far as the independent evidence is available. For example, we will expect to recover the body of the murder victim. We will expect to find murder weapon. We will expect to find fingerprints of the killer on the gun. We will find bullets in the body of the victim. we will expect to find that bullets were fired from the gun that has been recovered by way ballistic tests. It is possible that we will find the whole lot of crime scene evidences that will back up the witness but it is also possible that some links in the chain of evidences remain missing because the murderer managed to get rid of them successfully before the arrival of the police at the scene. Where evidences remain hidden we will have to rely on the testimony of a witness alone. Since witness does not prove false and story he tells proves verifiable true to some degree, the murder will still be proven provided other requirements are also established like motive etc.

It is true that human evidence is not 100% reliable but I have already explained in detail as to why that is the case. When you start from the assumption that witness testimony is unreliable, you make a big mistake. Witness statement is always reliable unless it can be proven otherwise and that is exactly what is tested in court to its very limit to decide a case. If we start with the assumption that witness testimony is unreliable then we can never bring in any case against anyone. The law sets standard for anyone to be changed with an allegation. A person comes to police alleging rape for example will be taken seriously and the person will have to provide needed basic evidence to ensure the accused is charged. Even if there is no other evidence the police will have to talk to accused to see if there could be a case to pursue or not.

So the circumstantial evidence is not eyewitness account of events, it is about clues you find after the events took place and that is why you need to come up with explanation as to how things might have happened. For example, we are walking along a road and see a dead body lying on the road. We have no witness as to what has happened to this person. All we have to go on is clues that we find at the scene. There are a few possibilities eg it could be a case of natural death, murder, suicide or accident etc etc. Here we begin by process of elimination eg we find a gun and gunshot wounds in the head of victim and a note telling us he is committing suicide. This rules out natural death or accidental death. It needs further investigation as a murder or suicide because the murderer could have written the note to make it look like a suicide. Once murder is ruled out suicide death will be accepted.

@kprasad

But for the sake of argument, lets say that was enough. I trust you, so I will believe what you tell me. Let’s say you have a friend, and I trust him as well and will believe what he tells me. The issue here is, even if my trust of you is transitive, that is I trust you, and you trust your friend, therefore I trust your friend, the issue with believing in a deity, based on that, is that it has to be transitive thousands of times. But, why is that required? If there is an ever present and omnipotent being, why is it that only bronze age people have spoken to it/him/her?

Here you are questioning motives and plan of God after it is done and dusted. You cannot question anyone’s motive you just establish motive where possible. You murdered some one, now you have done it, all others can say is, you have done the right thing or wrong thing but that depends on what your motive was eg self defence or murder in cold blood.

Why God created universe and us human beings in it was up to God and we were not there to give him our permission. It is like you say to your parents why did you bring me in this world? Such like questioning is not right way of looking at things.

All we can do is look at explanation given by God and if we see that it makes sense then it is to be accepted. We are in no position to fight with our parents or God. If we do, our own life will suffer.

The quran has come to us through generations no doubt but there are very strong evidences or clues that the generations have passed onto us the same quran that was left behind by the prophet. More than that as I have already explained, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If the way the quran explains things makes sense then it is what it claims to be. It is because we have nothing against it to prove it false.

Let us suppose the quran is not the word of God, the next problem for us to explain is, why would any human write such a book that all are fighting against and would a human be able to write such a book even today when people like us have not yet attained the necessary information to understand the quran? Then we all know history that arabs were a backward people, so how could they produce a book this complex which people cannot do even today? I mean this book is telling us the universe is a closed loop system with laws so that it keeps within set range always. It is strange that it is free of all nonsense that was prevalent at the time and actually tries to educate people out of it.

@kprasad

As for the sun, it is not self evident. We can measure it’s radiation. It’s size. We’ve sent probes that have studied it. It can be verified empirically. I don’t need to take the existence of the sun on faith. It’s a matter of fact! Every aspect of the sun is verifiable, and we have verified everything we can think of.

Science is more reliable because it can be reproduced by anyone. That’s the great thing! As you stated, though somewhat differently, every brain is different. We have different experiences. But, we have come to universal truths, the Pythagorean theorem for example. Things that are true regardless of your experiences and prejudices. We then use those universal truths to examine what we’re looking at. Science allows us to rationally and empirically examine things, without our prejudices, and then lets us come to a conclusion. This is not what religion does! If order for me to believe in the prophet hood of Mohamed, I have to believe in the Quran. That is circular logic.

That is your mistake that you are telling me that witness testimony is not reliable but then you are telling me testimony of scientists is reliable because a, b and c. On the very same bases the quran proves to be reliable when studied without prejudices as it is. It talks about everything directly or indirectly and if we observe things we will see that whatever it states about humanity proves 100% true. Exactly like science eg closed loop universal system and its laws and human mindsets, attitudes and behaviours etc. It explains what is going on in the human world, what is wrong with it and how it could be put right.

@kprasad

I find this perplexing, the notion that some god has given us everything we need to know. I’ve read the Quran, albeit an English translation. There was nothing in there about biology, immunology, physics, no calculus, not even basic anatomy. What was in there, in regards to biology was dead wrong. Not even close! It was as wrong as the Mahabaratha, the Bible, and Torah! Every bit of attempted science, is wrong! What does that say? How can devine revelation be so wrong?

How can you say quran is wrong here or there about this or that when you have not read the quran but just a translation of it. Can you tell me if the person translated the quran was a biologist or a physicist or a phd in chemistry? To properly translate the quran one has to be master of each and every subject matter the quran is discussing. Not only that but he has to be reasonably aware of language and how it ought to work and then know arabic as well.

There are people who think the quran has grammatical errors in it. I ask, do you know which came first, the language or the grammatical rules? Some times we just carry some silly notions and follow them without giving things a good thought. The quran is not a religious holy book for pooja paat but a book that puts forth a way of life that humanity must come to live by before things really open up to it that will lead to huge discoveries yet to unfold.

I want you to think about it, if God had create us fully program robots, why would we need brains that we have? These brains are capable of self programming.

Having been programmed like robots why we would need a book like the quran to guide us? It is because if you already know all then you have no need for learning any more.

If people were not supposed to learn any more or were created incapable of learning they ought to have that kind of brains and no books.

But then why would God create a creature with brain to brainstorm and give him books to learn things from where his brain and senses fail him? What did I say right at the beginning? I said God is a living being. All living things have urge to exert themselves. The only way living things can make their presence felt is by way of doing something. It is called creativity. Since urge for exertion is useless unless there is someone out there that appreciate it. If you do something that you take pride in as job well done, you want others to comment. Since God was all alone he exerted himself through creativity of this universe and he is very proud of his creativity He has created man not as a slave but as a friend and a partner by giving him the power of brain and senses as well as a little help through revelation to give him some hints to the goal.

Man is although created from a tiny cell but the potential placed in that cell will take time to unfold. When man has developed independently as a creator in his own right then man will appreciate his own creativity and when he does that he will also appreciate creativity of his creator. That is how God and man both will be pleased with each other.

You will really need to study the quran as I explain to really appreciate what it is all about. Don’t give me muslim excuse that one mullah says one thing and another another thing. Mullahs are not and were never true interpreters or presenters of the quran, they in fact misinterpreted the quran and misrepresented it always. This is why the whole world is divided and fighting and the quran repeatedly tells us about it. There were always two concepts of islam since after the prophetic state lost its balance within a few generations after the prophet. One is islam by odd people with knowledge and the other is establishment islam. One represents actual islam and the other religion islam.

Iqbal Speech - YouTube

I hope things are a bit more clear for you but you need to work at it by yourself and that needs a lot of time. To make sense of things is not that easy, if it was humanity would have landed on the moon many moon ago.

The quran is alive and an interactive book just like we interact with each other. You learn a word and them read the book and it makes sense then you learn another word and that makes sense and so one has to carry on. One cannot go straight for calculus if one has not done the numbers yet.

regards and all the best.