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01 October 2006

Religion, Empirical or Not!?


The whole debate started in Bloggers-Eg chat room, when Iknaton2 was asking about some religious info in order to help in editing and article in the Arabic Wikipedia. I then said that it is hardo to get religious information from Wikipedia. Wikipedia by nature is open for everyone to add, delete, or edit in it. And religion like most of Human Sciences are not Empirical ones. You can not enter you lab and do an experiment there to prove that a certain belief is true. You sure can have evidences for what you belive in. And you can use your reason to find if a certain belief is true or not, but this is still your own point of view, and those evidences may not be valid to someone else, and the relsults your reason lead you to can lead someone else to totally different results. It's not maths nor physics. Pythagorean theorem for example has it own mathematical proofs and even before those proofs it was proved by experiment. Every singl person knows that "The sum of the areas of the two squares on the legs (a and b) equals the area of the square on the hypotenuse (c)". But on the other hand if religion were an empirical science, there would have been only one religion in the world that people belive in. And that's why in an environemnt like Wikipedia you'll see people writing some religious topics according to their beliefs, then comes other who edit it again according their beliefs which are totally different, and so on. It's not only religioun which is like this, but Politics for example suffer from the same thing.

Another bloggeress, Layal, had a typical Middle Eastern response to this, she just said that she doesn't agree with me, and then started to talk about something that has nothing to do with what I said. Even when I asked her to tell me what did she get from what I said she didn't answer. She said that people are supposed to reach their beliefs through thinking and then started to talk about the Misacles of Quraan, etc. Which is all good but has nothing to do with what I said. It's like someone saying that Oranges are orange, and then someone else says, I disagree, Apples tastes better than Oranges.

As Layal said, people shall reach truth through reason and thinking, but there is no garantee that the same reason can lead two different persons to the same conclusion when it comes to Humanities including Philosophy, Ethics and Religion.

The question now is, does this mean that there is no absolute truth when in comes to Religion for example. I myself believe that there is an absolute truth there. And that's what life then Judgment day - Yom Al Qiyama - is all about, it's our mission to find this truth. The point is that with a mathematical theory our own sleves are not a factor in it nor in its results. For me the result of Pythagorean theorem is independent on who am I, or what are my morals and ethics. But the results we come out with in the religious subjects are highly dependent on our own selves and this is what God/Allah want to test in us. At least this is how I see it.

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9 comments:

  1. Ah! It is the first time I see the new design. Impressing, but I liked the retrogeekish green on black as well. Glad to see you´re keeping it up Tarek, you have a very nice blog.

    Ta ta, Ritzy

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  2. I really liked your blog, i found it through the link on Arima's blog. i only skimmed through ur posts but once i get home i'm oing to read them properly... :)

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  3. edah edah..dah hogoum sha7'se 3allaya ana ba2a :D w a typical Middle Eastern response?! mafhemtish elfekra dah...i try my best not to typical..so u caused me a depression here :D

    anyway...first of all..i knew what u were talking about and i did answer you..and when i got drifted when talking to jad..i sent u a pm saying sorry dah mawdou3 tany...so i know that i was talking about something different which implies that i knew what u were talking about...and the talk isn't done yet..because i told u i have to go w hankammel ba3den...

    tany 7aga...bardo i disagree that there is no absolute truth when it comes to religion...there is..w law u want to talk about it as an experiment technical thing on ur very same example (yom al qiyama)...the theory is there... until u get a counter example..get me a counter exmaple to disprove that yom al qiyama exists...

    anyway...maybe it has not so direct proofs to everything...i mean we are still discovering new stuff...so what our religion (specially the holy books..and specially the Quran) gives us enough leads or clues (at least for me)to get absolute "theories" all we have to do is think a little about it "correctly"(that's where finding different beliefs in wikipedia comes from)...and you are right..if it has been so absolute and detailed such as mathematics and physics although they are barely comparable..we would have ended up with one religion....but it can't be like that...

    Pythagorean theorem thinks for you and gives you "absolute theories"..but religion makes you think to get the "absolute theories"...but both theories we come up with are absolute..that's my opinion...

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  4. @Ritzy, Happy to see you back to the blogging business.

    @izzi, Welcome to my blog Liz, and hope it's not your last time here insha'Allah

    @Layal, Here you go, you just did what I was just saying again.
    You said: "tany 7aga...bardo i disagree that there is no absolute truth when it comes to religion...there is"
    And I said: "I myself believe that there is an absolute truth there. And that's what life then Judgment day - Yom Al Qiyama - is all about, it's our mission to find this truth."
    So you just said that you disagree, and then said exactly the same thing, funny, huh!?

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  5. ya 3am 7ad msalatak 3alayya elyomen dol ? :D
    ana mel awwel 2olt there is an absolute truth...you are the one who mentioned to contradicting opinions..
    2olt the example about yom alQiyama (and sorry about that i misunderstood it..7a2ak 3alaya:D)w 2olt bardo kalam 3la two different persons lead to the same conclusion is not garanteed...absolute ezay w no garantee?!
    how come you agree with what i said (whether i was drifted or not) and you wrote this whole post to pick on me?:P

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  6. Dear Layal, I said that there is an absolute truth, but not everyone is going to reach it. And that's why there exists a Judgment day. Did you get my point, or not yet!?

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  7. Very nice post. I have similar problems. People just do not get that religion is a BELIEF and not a truth, at least not yet.

    I am wondering though if there is more that separates Religion and Science than just whether it's empirical or not. Something like Philosophy or Logic for example, they are not empirical and they are not religion. They may not fall under 'science' but they are not like religion in that they are not based on beliefs.

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  8. Hmmmm i'm confused- I think the Bloggers Eg chat room is a bit above my head.
    I think though that religion is a belief and cannot be proved right or wrong but remember: if you believe and God doesn't exist then no problem but if you don't believe and he DOES exist. Big Mushkilla!

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  9. religion started when the Jews gave a religious meaning to the Laws of Moses. These laws were originaly written in scientifc text by God and taught to Moses.

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