The Colligion Process
Colligion is the product of Science

by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

The Naked Truth: Poetry by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

Colligion can be best depicted as a tree:

 (1)  Branches    

        | |  |  || |      | ||  |||| ||| |||  || |||

 (2)           |  |      |      |    

                           |

 (3)  Trunk         |

                                             Result (your hypothesis)

Not very pretty, but it tells the story of colligion's process. Looking at the branches of a learning tree, we proceed as we normally read: from the top line, reading left to right.

Doing so, we see a bunch of factual material represented by the vertical symbols, grouped in two's and threes, more or less, the way small isolated facts add up to one larger fact (like a steaming cup carried to you on a saucer by a waiter trying not to show a look of pain while he quickly rubs his hands together after he sets it down adds up to, "I had better wait a long while before I taste that soup.")

That's not the end of it, though. During the same incident, other groups of little facts get noticed, and some of them add up to other meaningful conclusions, which constitute facts of a higher order just like the little facts added up to very hot soup. You can verify the soup being too hot by testing it. You can verify what the other kinds of facts add up to by testing those. Once you have done so, you will feel very certain whether you are right or wrong, and confident enough about that to discuss it with anyone who disagrees (especially those who have not bothered to observe your facts or test them).

Often, those higher order facts will lead you to hypothesize at a still higher level. Facts noted in several areas of our imaginary restaurant will give you an overall picture that will allow you to confidently hypothesize about its quality. Chairs that creaked or leaned, torn upholstery, some obviously broken add up to poor seating. Tables with chipped Formica, dirt in cracks, missing moldings, loose legs tell a similar story. A cracked plate glass window, the bathroom door missing a hinge, the lock that refused to work, the bare bulb that blew when you flipped its switch, add up to another set of facts. You can show all these facts to anyone else, and they will experience them the same as you.

Add all of those facts together, and let me ask you: "What is your hypothesis about this place? Would you call it upscale or suspect it to be on its last legs? Would you be willing to bet on it being there when you pass this way again, say, in another year?"

That may be a poor example, but I am willing to bet that you understand it well enough to contrive others of your own, and to begin observing it at work in your daily life. Colligating facts is a process we all pursue without realizing it, it seems. We do that and, when we can test each fact as we accumulate them, we feel very confident about the results. When we learn how others have gathered up similar facts and arrived at similar results, our level of confidence increases.

We didn't look in books or seek authorities to find our facts, except maybe to see if they had observed the same as had we, or to see if they had facts that bolstered our own. We feel confused by those who look in books to gather support for results they had preconceived. We know they, too, are colligating information, but how can what comes directly from hearsay, unsupported stories told by strangers, that require conditions that can not be duplicated be called "facts", we wonder. If they are facts, why do they talk so much about "faith", as though that has to be more important than the obvious truth?

If colligion is about testable facts, and facts are what represents truth; and, if religion is about "faith", and faith is about the untestable claims inherited from an ancient past that cannot be shown to be true, they are opposites. Colligion comes from investigating reality. Religion, as practiced in the western world, requires denial of reality and the superimposing of an invisible, untestable, untraceable, indescribable realm over it that can only be truthfully described as imaginary. Colligion allows you to teach yourself the facts required to best know how to live, how to interact with other human beings, and how you will someday die. Religion, if you are going to be religious, denies you the right to do any of that.

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"To deny a right to the experience of pleasure is immoral unless that denial can be justified by a valid presentation of how pain will result from that experience in an amount that would render the expected pleasure regrettable; or, if it can be shown that pain will be induced in others innocent of any involvement. The role of science in moral issues should be to test that, predict that, and find harmless ways to demonstrate that."

— L. H. Whitling in the eBook, Secular Morality —