This blog will be about how to determine what is true in the domain of politics, science and religion. Persons who profess to have a religion all agree that finding, believing, and doing what is true is important because that will determine your eternal destiny. Scientists and persons who do not believe in any of the traditional religions agree that truth is critical in determining our destiny in this world.
How does one determine what is true, factual, reality-based versus what is false, counter-factual, and based on superstition? For example, cigarette companies claimed for years that smoking did not cause lung cancer and a host of other deadly illnesses. In fact, they used to be marketed as good for you. Scientists in the 1930s discovered that there was a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer. By the 1960s the consensus among scientists was that smoking caused lung cancer. Nonetheless, some scientists paid by cigarette companies fiercely denied that smoking caused lung cancer. How was an individual to determine who was telling the truth? How should a society determine whether cigarette marketing should be regulated to prevent smoking related death and disease? It was a life and death question that affected millions of people. The method one uses to determine truth will determine the answer to life and death questions in a myriad of political, scientific, and religious domains. For example, how does one determine whether the U.S. should go to war? In Iraq 2003—in Iran 2012? How does one determine whether an ecological disaster will result from global warming?
In regard to life after death, how does one determine whether Moslems, Christians, Hindus, Mormons, or Christian Scientists are correct in their view of the afterlife? Not only that, but often religious believers claim that their divine revelation, inerrant of course, gives them special insight into the truth about global warming, what U.S. policy should be in regard to the State of Israel, whether evolution or “intelligent design” should be taught in public educational institutions, and appropriate domestic policy concerning healthcare insurance, for example. When all these believers urge us to “just believe” or “have faith” in their particular truth, how can one know what to believe?
This blog will examine specific examples of opposed truth claims in the realms of religion, science, and politics because, as suggested above, there really are no sharp boundaries between these three realms. If a given religious revelation has infallibly determined the truth about war and peace between Jews, Moslems, and Christians in the Holy Lands, what can mere earthly political considerations add? If a given religious revelation can determine what true science is, why even worry about science and the scientific method?
If you are a religious believer who already is irrevocably convinced that your God, scripture or prophet already predetermines the truth in all these realms and that all you have to do is believe and have faith, even you might profit from considering how it was that you arrived at this conclusion. Did God, however you conceived him or her, strike you with a personal revelation like reportedly occurred to Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus? Did you grow up in a particular religious tradition and never have any particular reason to doubt it? Did some type of miraculous answer to prayer occur while you were having a personal crisis? Did you ever even wonder why, (just coincidentally?), most everyone born in Saudi Arabia happens to be a convinced Moslem, most everyone born in India happens to be a convinced Hindu, and most everyone born in the U.S. happens to be, if not a convinced Christian, at least a nominal one? Are you a Christian by accident of birth and sociological inertia? Or are you a Christian just because you were inculcated with the idea that if you doubted, you’d go to hell---and well, you’d just rather not take the chance? Like Blaise Pascal’s famous wager: If I bet there is a heaven and hell and “believe it,” and if it does exist, I’ll go to heaven; If I wager the contrary and I’m right, I gain nothing. Why not wager on heaven? I’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Did you even consider the 3rd possibility that a non-traditional God might exist that sent all such mercenary, disingenuous, calculating bettors to hell while rewarding sincere, earnest, doubting atheists with heaven?
If your Truth cannot withstand close examination, if such examination makes you suffer unbearable existential angst, if you already have THE TRUTH and don’t want to be confused by the facts, stop now. You’ve already read too far.
However, if you are a truth-seeker who would like to exam in an adult manner what may have been your childhood faith with an evidence-based manner, you’ve come to the right place.
Our first case will study the claim that a 30 month old Christian became a miracle producing Saint whose relics were even displayed by the Emperor Maximilian upon his ascension to the throne.
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