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Understanding
'rational criteria'
Dear Dr Abrar Hasan & Friends,
In your last post to Farzana Hassan (#26), you
see her use of religious beliefs as a
truncated synonym for what you call
empirically testable implications of religious
beliefs.
Religious beliefs are a subjective affair.
I am therefore trying to understand how we may
apply your acceptance/rejection criteria
to judge what you call the unjudgeable
since our minds are conditioned to judge.
How then can we arrive at a non-judgmental
acceptance -- or a real understanding -- of
the unjudgeable?
I find the two-part methodological solution
you propose (not to judge by the
label or the cover . . . but grant the
unjudgeable first principle on blind faith)
a little lax.
Since human behaviour in society is
dictated by one's conditioning, it is well
nigh impossible to formulate what you call
rational criteria despite our
accumulated and growing human knowledge,
even if we bring the full weight of human
rationality to justify our subjective
acceptance or rejection of the usefulness or
uselessness of all kinds of religions and
isms.
Given our sad history as
puppets of Authority -- whether it be the
authority of a Person, a Book, or the
authority of what we call God -- our judgments
on religions and isms are bound to be of
the knee-jerk emotive type, leading to
divisions, arguments, and wars, based
largely on perceptions of the nature of God
or on our sense of implied first principles.
This, as you state, is very damaging and
counter-productive.
Sadly, the rational approach you're
proposing hasn't been invented yet. At least
that's how I perceive the whole thing.
You contend that all
philosophies, worldviews and isms have, at
their base, principles that are taken on
faith. I would like to suggest that we
examine what we mean by faith, because,
by any yardstick, it is not the same thing as
religion or some form of ism.
Please note: I've italicized all the
words you used, to keep me from meandering.
Over to you.
Rashid Mughal
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