Steve (as 41oo) wrote:"the reason this particular person of religious faith says "I know," is because I have personally experimented and validated, subjectively, my religion. "
well thats a great pity Moishe.
If only you had said objectively.
However would still be interested in the basis of your experimental technique.
I have thought about this myself. If you take a church synagogue and mosque and get everyone to pray really hard, which congregation will win more on the lottery? That must be proof of Gods favour.
Subjectively, of course. As religion purports to originate in a plane outside of the five senses, one must somehow internalize the religious experience in order to verify it.
My thesis is that free will is the basis of religion and therefore, religious pursuits. The particular religion I practice, Torah observant Judaism (Orthodox) supports this idea.
Therefore, the verification of religion would begin in Man's free will.
And, quite simply (but not simplistically), it must start from the question:
"What do you want?"
If what you want is a new cadillac, then, based on this idea of free will, you should go after a new cadillac. And religion- fuggadaboutit. Once you have achieved or failed at obtaining said cadillac, the question remains - now, "what do you want?"
A wife; a million dollars; a beautiful sunset; a little peace and quiet; world peace; whatever.... Pursue that which you want. And religion? Fuggadaboutit.
It is possible that the answer to the question may one day be "why do I exist?" "Is there a G-d?" "Does religion hold any answers?"
If this question is sincere, as with all other pursuits, you go after it.
Then, you start experimenting....
However, it is useless to experiment with religion if you are not interested in the answers.
I, personally, am never going to try and splice a frog gene into a wheat cell in order to find out what the result is - because it is outside of my field of interest.
The initial question is "What do you want?"
What you do; what you experiment with, depends on the answer to that question.
(Just an example - if I were to tell you that learning Torah, which means studying a couple of pages of the Talmud each and every day, in Hebrew and Aramaic, along with the commentaries on what it means, was going to give you the answers as "how to find G-d;" or "how to validate religion," you would never engage in such a practice unless that was "what you wanted.")
), but the reason this particular person of religious faith says "I know," is because I have personally experimented and validated, subjectively, my religion.
