How are we sure that the religious experiences we are having are true or are they just a result of some processes going in the brain? How are we supposed to trust any explanations made by Jesus, Mohammed or any other religious figure if we don't have any way of testing their ‘truth’? As far as religion is concerned I believe most people do trust their senses through their intuition, their deep feeling about the power of God. If they just looked at the scientific reasoned evidence their belief would be seriously undermined.
When people look at the sky they often have a sensory experience that informs their prediction of the up coming weather, even the weather men, who rely on scientific testing and prediction often get it wrong. Shepherds and Bedouins who have lived their whole life outside are often more accurate using their perception and experience.
Today there is a lot of advanced technology that is making it even more difficult for people to decide what is true. How we are supposed to judge if something is accurate or reliable without our ability to test all the images and information given to us on the internet for example. During a recent talk at our school by one of the influential brains behind the Yahoo Empire, Yousef Fayyad, he mentioned that; ‘anyone who can solve this problem of verifying knowledge will become the next millionaire’.
I once tried to use a medicine on the internet that can heal pores and I assumed it would really remove those pores. It actually worked. I now believe in the claims of the product through personally tested experience. However, I cannot be sure that my skin would have repaired itself due to a change in my diet or lifestyle or just the time factor that may have coincided with the healing of my skin.
If an explosion occurred in an isolated area with no one around will it make a sound or not? The answer would be yes. So truth is what really happened no matter how it's reported. A change in how the story is told will not change the actual truth but will change the way people believe this truth indeed. Therefore, if we can't test the truth using our senses it will be extremely difficult to know if it is reliable and accurate.
People search for truth in the environment surrounding them. Perception is the best way to allow people to connect with the environment through the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, intuition) where all of the senses play a great role in the process of collecting the information from the environment that surrounds them. However, there's a process of understanding and evaluating the information they gained which affects the truth in a certain way. Human beings have a limited ability to collect the information and recognize it where the human mind believes whatever the human want and feels. Let's look at a glass of water you can believe that it's half full or half empty. Therefore, we make up our own truth depending on what we allow ourselves to see. Therefore we must bare in mind that our perceptions though can be affected or influenced by emotional state or by altered from alcohol or drugs. In these
Circumstances we must rely on our reason to guide us to safety and truth. When driving a car for
example. We must make the rational, reasoned decision not to drive as our perception would not be reliable in reading the ‘truth of the road ahead’.
Once during a chemistry lesson we did an experiment about Filtering where we placed in a beaker sugar and water and heated the beaker. I noticed that the water's level in the beaker was decreasing until it disappeared. I saw and believed that water was disappearing. However, there's a scientific explanation (truth) for what happened. In other words, we can observe that human minds are much more sophisticated than they were before where many truths will be ignored and new ones will be discovered.
If we take an example of a group of people who witnessed an accident it is very likely that each one of them will have a slightly different version of what they saw. This is why it is very important for the police to get as many witnesses as possible in their quest to try and find some version of the truth. People's perception here could be altered by their emotional state at the time of the accident.
Human beings are equipped with a ‘flight or fight’ instinct or sense of perception which can come into play in life threatening situations. If we were to rationalize and reason about how to escape from a tiger confronting us we would probably die. In a recent case in Australia, I grandmother jumped on the head of a giant sea crocodile that had clamped its jaws around her sons leg and was attempting to pull her son into the sea. The crocodile let go of her son and bit off her arm. She managed to save her son purely acting purely on her ‘fight/flight sensory perception reaction.
In conclusion, I believe there in no universal ‘truth’. The version of our own reality is dependant on our senses and affected by emotional states. In other words, it doesn't matter if reality exists or not because what is true for one person may not be for another. I do believe however, that we really need our senses of perception in striving for truth, but we also need to use our powers of reason, emotion and language to create a more rounded spectrum of reality. Occasionally though we must follow only our sensory perception to lead us to truth, such as in the life or death situations as I mentioned above. "The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must allure the senses to it" this is a quote for the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche which is an interesting quote that is related my topic. He discusses that importance of senses and how you must use them to give you truth when the facts around you are not very clear which is quiet similar to how you must use your senses in life threatening situations.
Bibliography
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"BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Crocodile-wrestling gran honored." BBC NEWS | News Front Page. 09 Feb. 2009
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"Friedrich Nietzsche quotes." Find the famous quotes you need, ThinkExist.com Quotations. 1 Jan. 2009 <http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_more_abstract_the_truth_you_wish_to_teach-the/171051.html>.
