I should write something. What a good way to start an essay. I mean, I did leave the last one like I was going to do something drastic. But nothing really happened.
There is a lot to be said.
A subjective human experience is a tricky one to decipher. As a person who endeavors in objectivity, I try to make sense of the events by talking to many witnesses and piece together their accounts to see the common thread which I take as a fact. People perceive things differently and no one can say exactly the same thing. What perplexes me is how both parties perceive oppositely of each other. Their statements contradict each other and that makes my brain go, "Contradiction overload! Error! Error!!"
And then, there is my perception. If I can't choose after I exhausted my mental power in discrete logic along with a lot of research, then I ask myself this question. Which statement would fit better with my perception, however biased it may be? That is my last resort in choosing who to believe.
I do this everyday.
Which causes doubt and faith immensely.
It is not just about my religion. It can also be about my friends. With these two combined, it's very difficult to pass by to live my days peacefully. Here's a paradox. I believe in both opposing parties unless one of them proved to be a liar. But when it comes to retelling our experience, we believe it as the truth. We experience it and it feels so real to us. We see what happens and we retell the events. But is it the actual truth?
There are many non-fiction novels that disapproves the history textbooks we read in secondary schools. So, we can't believe everything that is written in textbook. No matter how objectively it sounds, it can still be a human witness' subjective account. It is like the story of the four blind men and the elephant. They all touch an elephant and each one feels a different part. When they compare notes, they learn that they are in disagreement. To each one, they think what they feel is the truth. Another story is two people see the sky at the same time and at the same location, and they tell the color in the sky. One says it's blue and the other says it's gray because that person is colorblind but they don't know that fact. They're both telling the truth although they contradict each other. Who do you believe if you don't know the science behind the color of the sky?
The Innocence Project shows that eyewitnesses are proved to be unreliable. It asserts that eyewitness mis-identification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in nearly 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Eyewitness mis-identification frequents so often, Innocence Project believes they should be scientifically and rigorously tested to prevent injustice. Some people would take advantage of this fact to manipulate the justice system. That is scary. We've seen that many times in Law & Order shows.
What about the Bible? This book has been under scrutiny for centuries especially in the last century when almost everyone has access to it (in United States alone). On internet, there are countless arguments from rational discourse to blatant name-calling over the Bible. Many prove that Bible is contradicting itself but the many other prove that it is not in terms of God's character or the outside documented histories (including science) against it. So what do we believe?
What about our friends? How about their testimonies? Do we see what they see about the same God we believe in? Do our actions prove or disprove our beliefs? Do our knowledge prove or disprove anything? Why is there faith as much as doubt? Why do we care at all? Especially if they should believe or not?
So what?
I know one thing that humanity likes to depend on since the dawn of time: hope. In the midst of the chaos and uncertainity, we always hope that what we believe is true.
