Everything You'll Ever Need To Answer Any Question

 

If no one believed in me, would I disappear?  Lucky for God, He doesn't have that problem.  If suddenly every living thing in the Universe didn't believe in monotheism, would the One God cease to exist?  No, I doubt God depends upon our faith in Him to stay alive in whatever state He exists.  So:  as long as I'm living, and note there are many things in life too difficult to understand, things I might miss, I decided to find a single method of thinking that would get me, or any one else, through the toughest of decisions and potholes of life's highway.  It all revolves around the act of hypothesizing. 

Let's suppose you are presented with a case, someone puts forth a suggestion, an idea, an argument for or against something.  This would include seeing a red light and making the decision whether to ignore it and drive on, or stop.  Okay, someone makes their premise.  When you respond, you are essentially rendering a verdict.  In the courtroom, juries are asked to consider a claim and the evidence for or against that claim, then reach a verdict based on its merits.  This process is also used in all the sciences and philosophies, it's called hypothetical reasoning, and I am making my own case for it as the key to answering every question.  I've arrived at 5 pared-down steps needed in this process:

l.  State very clearly what the claim or quest is.

2.  Gather all the evidence both in support and defiance of this claim.

3.  Examine this evidence very thoroughly, without bias.

4.  Consider any alternative claims or questions.

5.  Draw a logical, reaonsable conclusion based upon all of the above.

I know, it sounds far too easy, but remember that hypothetical reasoning is a way of evaluating specific claims in life, it's not a shortcut to certainty.  You may never be certain of anything, anyway, in this life we are forced to deal in what is reasonable, what seems to work.  If you just can't make up your mind about something in life, it is always permissable to suspend judgment.  After all, since we don't know what amount of time is allotted us, who's to say we haven't far more than we thought?  

Using hypothetical reasoning to get through life and it's myriad quests and claims is a quantifiable thing.  It can be measured, tested.  For instance, if you leave an ice cube on a table and return in a hour you'd find a small puddle in place of the cube.  Your reasoning would tell you the ice cube melted.  But why?  This is hypothetical reasoning.  Someone else might put forth that the ice cube was removed from the table by someone with very wet hands. 

It seems far easier to prove something was done than to prove it was not done.  How does one prove they did not do something if evidence exists that they did?  Using hypothetical reasoning once again, take the quest through those 5 simple steps and you can make a reasonable deduction.  I can't think of anything in life that wouldn't stand the litmus test of this method.  Can you?