The Revealing Science of God © 2000 The Church of Yahweh

PART 2: EPISTEMOLOGY

This leads us to the question of epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. It is not so much an examination of those ideas, facts and notions which constitute our knowledge, but rather a study of how human beings can know anything. And the manners and degrees in which that knowledge is possible.

As it comes to the question of religion there is one fundamental, epistemological question which every aspirant for truth must answer. That question is,

What criteria will you use to evaluate truth and falsehood?

Pontius Pilot asked Jesus, "What is truth?" The most important thing you have to do is ask yourself, how you are going to answer that question.

Perhaps mankind is not capable of knowing anything. Many people would say this. That anything having to do with religion, and even those things having to do with science, are simply interplays of words and thoughts which have no connection to actual existence.

To those people I simply respond that they may ultimately be right. But if so, then our interactions with a dog or a snowflake are likewise based upon pure imagery, pure conjecture and fantasy. If we can know anything at all, then, we can come to knowledge of the universe. And as we do so we are presented with different tools. How do you know something about God? What sources of information do you have? There are many.

Holy Books

Number one, a holy book. The Bible, either the Christian version or the Jewish version. Or, maybe the Catholic version. Or maybe add in a couple more books for the Moslem version. Or maybe add in a couple more books for the Mormon version. And then you have different translations. Or you could read it in the original language it was written in 2,000 years ago. Or if you are not going to do that then you're going to have to trust that somebody else has given you the right understanding of the words. And that they're manipulating you or lying to you.

So which translation do you use? The good old King James, maybe the New American Standard. How 'bout the living Bible? What about what is for many people the only true translation, the New World Translation from the Watch Tower Bible and Tract society. What is your position on the great scholarly debates around the proper translation of certain Greek words?

So, simply saying that you are going to trust in what the Bible says, is not necessarily an easy way out. Why pick the Bible? Why not the Koran? Why not the Bhagavad-Gita? Why not the Lotus-Sutras? Why not the Tao Te Ching? Is it because the Bible claims to be inspired by God? Sri Rama-Krishna said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to Atman-Brahman except through me." How do you pick one scripture over another?

Religious Organizations

Well, that leads us to number 2: an Ecclesiastical structure of some form. The Mormon church, millions of people have the witness in their hearts, is the one true church. To belong to the community of Israel is to enter a holy and sacred covenant with God. The Catholic church is God's instrument, and to leave or question the Edicts of the Catholic church is to question God himself, which one must do only with immense fear and trembling.

So if you are going to trust the edicts of a particular structure or organization, how do you know that the structure is telling you the truth? Well, perhaps they just "preach the Bible." That gets us back to point 1, and we really haven't accomplished anything.

Authority Figures

Third, we can trust in a person. Maybe it's a preacher on the old time gospel hour who really ministers to us. Maybe it's our priest or our pastor. Maybe it's a particular teacher we had in school. Maybe it's the author of a book, like this one. How do you know whom to trust? Why accept the words of one person and not another?

Ultimately, you must come personally to some form of evaluative technique. Whether it is a book or a structure or a person, you must turn inside to evaluate for yourself whom to trust, or forever abdicate responsibility to an outside entity!

Reason & Logic

So, that leads us to part four. You can use your reason, you can think things out. You can analyze, you can use logic. The powers of the mind are great and immense, but what happens if your logic is faulty? What happens if you are operating upon insufficient data? What if the Ecclesiastical structure is hiding some things from you? Why is it out of all of the thousands of scrolls in the Dead Sea, only 5% of them have been made available to the public? Did you know that there were hundreds of letters and Gospels written around the time of Jesus, but the church only decided to allow you to read 27 of them?

How do you know that they found the right ones? How do you know that your reason is based upon proper information? And even if it is, how do you know that you were drawing the right conclusions?

Well perhaps we need divine guidance. That leads us to number 5.

Direct Revelations

We can receive a direct word from God, in a vision or a dream or perhaps a miraculous prophecy spoken through someone else. We can sit and wait for God to talk to us directly. But, what if He never does? What if we are lied to? What if what we think is God is actually Satan appearing as an angel of light? How will you know if what is being told is true?

Overcoming Culture

As you see, ladies and gentlemen, there is no single answer. In every venue, every tool which we could seek to use as a criteria for truth is fraught with potential hazards, uncertainty and therefore ever in danger. If the religious life matters enough to pursue it then it matters enough to find the right answers. If you are one of those rare people who is actually seeking for the divine truth then you must do something which 98% of the world's planet does not do.

What is that? Well, for 98% of the world's population the overwhelming majority answer to the question of epistemology is "whatever mommy and daddy told me." And by mommy and daddy we mean the entire social societal structure around the child as that child grows. The book that is presented to the child as being holy, the practices that the child undergoes, the songs that the child sings, the mythologies and stories that the child is told, the religious authorities that the child meets, the holy buildings that the child attends gives to the child that child's religion.

And worldwide statistics indicate less then 2% of the worlds population ever abandons that societal structure. Jews give birth to Jews. The number one thing that will convert people to Islam is being born to Moslem parents. The overwhelming factor to make people decide to become Hindus is if their mommy and daddy live in India. Christians give birth to Christians.

Conversion, abandoning the faith, all of these things to occur. But, if you are talking about the human race as whole less than 2% of the population ever actually changes.

Therefore if you are going to be a genuine seeker for truth, the first thing you must do is rise above the social constructs which have been donated to you by reason of your birth and heritage, and begin a process of examining them for yourselves! To look at the books, to look at the organizations. To look at your prophets, priests and kings. To examine your dreams, visions and to challenge your thinking.

The Scientific Method

How, then, do we approach this? Is there any hope at all? The answer is an undeniable, unquestionable yes. The answer is what I call "The Revealing Science of God."

Science is an epistemology, it is a system geared toward the pursuit of knowledge, and is not just the combination of facts and ideas which we have. It is a methodology for discovering new truths. And that methodology has become absolutely codified over the centuries. And it is a actually verifiable series of steps which are reproducible by other people. Scientific method is designed to find as close to objective reality as is possible. The steps are quite few, and quite distinct.

First. Find a question, find a problem, find something you wonder about. This can be something simple from "how many times will a ball bounce when it's dropped 5 feet in the air?" to "what is cancer?" "How do we stop aids?" "Why are stars born?"

Second. You start with the question, now what you do is you formulate a hypothesis. This is your educated guess, the best answer you have at this given time.

Third. You read the literature. You see what other people have written upon this topic. And see if there's any consensus, see what the results of their research have led them to. See if any of it pertains to you. What areas are they uncertain of? Did they have dissatisfactory results in any particular experiment?

Fourth. You perform your own experiment. This can be something very simple like counting the number of times a cat purrs in a minute, to creating a 5 billion dollar nuclear reactor.

Fifth. You perform your experiment and gather your information. As you do that you evaluate the data. Was your test clean? Were you interrupted? Are there any extraneous circumstances? Can the test be repeated and the same results occur for someone else?

Sixth. Reevaluate your hypothesis in light of your new data.

Seven. Go back to step one. Perhaps we now need a new hypothesis. Perhaps we need to examine a new question.

This is the methodology of science. It has led us to everything from laser beams to symphonies. It has led us to the creation of antivirus vaccines. It has led us to aircraft carriers. It has led us to pencils and computers.

Applying the Scientific Method to Religion

Ladies and gentlemen, you can and must apply the same scientific method to your investigation of God! You must create a hypothesis. You must find your questions. You must formulate your initial hypothesis, you must do the research of the other people, other experts in the field. Fourth, you must perform experiments. Fifth, you must evaluate that data. Sixth, you must reexamine your hypothesis in light of the new data. And seventh, you must return to step one.

The problem, many people will say, is that the process and methodology of science is not applicable to the field of theology because science deals with quantifiable, measurable physical matter. Religion by its very nature is not dealing with mere physics, mere matter, but is dealing with non-corporeal, non material realities. How then can one apply this method to God?

Several comments here. First, if there is a God, and if that God is in any way associated with the creation, then all physical attributes and all scientific formulas are indicators of the nature of this creator. In exactly the same way that a artist's painting says something about the artist, so too, God's creation says something about God.

Second, every system of knowledge is based upon certain postulates. The postulates are those items which stand before the theorems. They are those items which cannot be proven, not disproved by any know methodology.

For example, the parallel line postulate. The parallel line postulate says in Euclidean geometry, that two parallel lines will forever remain equidistant. That means on out to infinity they never touch. Non Euclidean geometries will state either that at infinity the parallel lines meet. Or, that at infinity the parallel lines are an infinite distance apart. These are postulates, they cannot be proven, they cannot be disproved. They are then the building blocks of a system. The building blocks of further theorems. They are the definitions. Upon those definitions, if they are agreed to, we can come to sound conclusions based upon those postulates.

Much of religion then, boils down to postulates. And it just so happens that there is a very or relatively small number of postulates that one can pose regarding God.

You see, much argumentation in the religious community comes about because people start from different presuppositions. They start with different assumptions, they start with different postulates. Therefore they must come to different conclusions. However, since most of this remains preconscious, they sit arguing and bickering with each other about their different conclusions and are unable to explicate the problems stemming from the different assumptions.

If we are basing discussions upon assumptions and we grant that these assumptions cannot be proven or disproved, and if we start from different postulates then we can agree to disagree in peace.

Also, the scientific method is for the most part limited to simple external tests and examinations. When we come to religion we are dealing with the totality of your being. We are dealing with all of you. We are dealing with your body. We are dealing with desires. We are dealing with emotions, we are dealing with feelings. We are dealing with thoughts. We are dealing with reason. We are dealing with intuition. We are dealing with dreams. We are dealing with a subconscious and super conscious mind.

All of these things can be applied to the pursuit of knowledge of God. So, whereas the materialistic scientific community is limiting its research and its evaluative results to the realm of physical matter, the Revealing Science of God is not so limited. And there are tests which you can perform in matter, in your body, in your emotions, in your mind that can yield verifiable, repeatable results.

This is not abstract science, this is The Revealing Science of God. By revealing I mean God's attempts to give information to us. You see, if there is a God then we could easily postulate, and I do, that God is interested in making some part of him/herself known to us. In this way the divine mind is reaching out to touch and inspire human beings.

We then have a dance wherein through science mankind is reaching out with the totality of his being to God, and in grace God is reaching out with the totality of his being to man. This is why I call this, "The Revealing Science of God."

Knowledge of God is a pursuit, it is constant, it is clear, it unending. It affects every part of your being. You can leave nothing out. You must read the literature, you must talk to your Ecclesiastical authorities. You must use your reason. You must follow your heart. You must dream dreams and seek visions from God.

And using all of these, through an attitude of prayer and supplication, make yourself open to God's revelation.

You can and will come to your religion!

You will be freed from the religion merely that was handed to you by society and your religion will become your own. The unexamined life is not worth living and the unexamined faith is not worth having.

As I have said, The Revealing Science of God is a quest, it is constant and clear. And it is forever. This writing, then, is the result of my quest. I have read the literatures of the world's religions, I have attended many of their holy places. I have spoken with many of their holy people.

I have thought my thoughts. I have dreamt dreams, I have had visions. This is my scientist's journal, if you will, presenting to you the results of all of my experiments. I will leave it for you if you are interested to make it a part of your pursuit of truth. Not as a final authority figure, but as one more piece of literature in the never ending Revealing Science of God.

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