Our God — Page 130
130 of our knowledge was not acquired directly but by the narratives of reliable people, authentic books, or newspapers; we have never had the opportunity to personally witness or experience many things. In spite of all that, we have almost the same degree of cer- tainty about these things as we do about information gained by our own observation and experience. There is no reason why it should not be like that. After all, we trust and regard our own observation and experience as reliable, therefore, why should we not accept the observation and experience of a person who has a heart and a mind like us and whose truthfulness is also beyond doubt. We believe in the world news given in newspapers; we accept modern scientific research about the properties of parti- cles, though only very few of us have personally experienced these first-hand. All of the decisions in civil and criminal courts around the world are based on verbal or written testimonies and no one objects to this. Knowledge of history is largely based on verbal or written testimony, and this is accepted by all. Take the knowledge of geography. Everyone in India believes that there is a city called London, which is the capital of England, although less than one percent of the population of India has ever seen London. They believe in it on the basis of other people’s testimony. Moreover, practically, in our day-to-day life, we believe in many things only on the testimony of others, though we have no personal knowl- edge about them. In short, no sane person can deny that testimony is a major means of acquiring knowledge. Such a denial would render many sciences invalid and useless for most of the world. Rejecting the principle of testimony would mean that people should only believe in matters observed and experienced personally by