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Post by Reefs on Apr 13, 2014 3:05:04 GMT -5
As far as faith is concerned, it's not a popular word around here and while there might be other definitions there are few advocates. I'm surprised, that's nice to hear. My approach to 'not knowing' is exactly as you say a deconstructive process, rooted in logic of course, and keeping in mind the adage that to say nothing can be known for certain is itself a certainty and must be false. I hope we're not all devil's advocates here, that would take the fun out of it, having nothing to shoot down! Well, we've had some hot discussions about that, actually.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 13, 2014 3:09:33 GMT -5
I just read an article by a Christian blogger, and some of the responses and as always, I've come up feeling confused as to the difference between hope and faith. My own mind pictures rungs on a mystical ladder or something like that. To me, they seem too darned similar to separate them very well. But, I think it's pretty clear that most if not all of us 'exercise' some hope and/or faith at various times in our lives. I guess it's emotion-related but that would tend to suggest that 'trust' is also one of those words that sort of defy a truly accurate definition. I basically agree. Faith may be closer to trust than it is to hope. Hope may be more like wishing for a specific outcome, while faith seems more like accepting the truth of something without evidence. Well, it's all some kind of speculation, isn't it? I'd say there's no place for faith or trust in non-duality. Those issues are all personal matters, they only arise from a sense of separation.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 13, 2014 3:10:54 GMT -5
I basically agree. Faith may be closer to trust than it is to hope. Hope may be more like wishing for a specific outcome, while faith seems more like accepting the truth of something without evidence. Ha! ... of course it is! I was just gonna express that ... (** pushes pause button in anticipation of T's answer re "belief swapping" **)And the ultimate hopefulness is faith in faith itself.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 13, 2014 3:11:51 GMT -5
I am not familiar with this swapping of the belief. It seems to me a priori logic such as this is just the opposite of too much thinking, normally it's so hard to deliver such a clean, succinct morsel. Your question in parenthesis doesn't follow by the way, not sure if you were kidding or not. Logic can detect a contradiction between premises. It is not logic that tells you which premise is the wrong one. You have too much faith in Logic. Pun intended?
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Post by laughter on Apr 13, 2014 3:14:05 GMT -5
Ha! ... of course it is! I was just gonna express that ... (** pushes pause button in anticipation of T's answer re "belief swapping" **)And the ultimate hopefulness is faith in faith itself. Even "there is no hope" is too hopeful! (** evil cackle **)
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Post by Ishtahota on Apr 13, 2014 7:34:49 GMT -5
I often tell people to put faith and belief in the garbage where it belongs. All knowledge is already in us. The ego uses uses faith, belief, and even logic. These are the tools of the ego. The Mystics talked about The Knowing, something that we can tap into and become if we do the personal work. Logic for now I guess is a good tool, but the human race is way more then we have ever dreamed.
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Post by topology on Apr 13, 2014 9:25:41 GMT -5
Logic can detect a contradiction between premises. It is not logic that tells you which premise is the wrong one. You have too much faith in Logic. Pun intended? That is an interesting question. I've been reflecting on whether or not it is someone's intent when they are simply acting from their natural expression. I'm a very punny guy and enjoy even the most odious groaners when encountered. Was I aware of the double entendre when I wrote it, yes. Was I going out of my way to try to be punny? No. Baby, I was born this way. :-). So, no, it was not my intent to make the pun, but I enjoyed it when it came out!
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Post by silver on Apr 13, 2014 10:10:57 GMT -5
I just read an article by a Christian blogger, and some of the responses and as always, I've come up feeling confused as to the difference between hope and faith. My own mind pictures rungs on a mystical ladder or something like that. To me, they seem too darned similar to separate them very well. But, I think it's pretty clear that most if not all of us 'exercise' some hope and/or faith at various times in our lives. I guess it's emotion-related but that would tend to suggest that 'trust' is also one of those words that sort of defy a truly accurate definition. I'd say you cannot do or have trust/faith, and if it's meant in that way then it's just another Tool TM for TMT. Yeah...I get that.
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Post by enigma on Apr 13, 2014 20:56:40 GMT -5
I am not familiar with this swapping of the belief. Belief swapping is the difference between the scientific method and the method of self-inquiry referred to as neti-neti. ( two references) Science is a sort of collective act of self inquiry -- what is the nature of reality that can be determined by skeptical inquiry based on objective truth? What ZD said about scientists is (as what he usually has to say) quite insightful, but the fact is that not all scientists will perform all the experiments that they read about for themselves. There is an element of trust involved in any education or line of inquiry in the sciences. A scientist stands on the shoulders of the giants that came before him. In a sense, you could say that this trust is related to the notion of faith. Not every high particle physicist builds his own version of Youngs experiment to verify the result. He'll learn about it as an undergrad, maybe he'll encounter it in a lab somewhere, but the bottom line is that he'll build based on accepting ideas that are told to him 2nd-hand as being true. To do otherwise would create an unsupportable economy of inefficiency that would bring scientific inquiry to a screeching halt. Science over time has resulted in a set of ideas that have survived a rigorous process of selection based on observation. In this we can say that current scientific understanding has evolved over time, and Darwins notion of survival of the fittest is a helpful idea to understand how that has and is playing out. Noone is going to question the idea that can be expressed with the equation of an ellipse describing the path of the Earth relative to the Sun. This is how skepticism contains within it the seeds of its opposite, faith. Noone is going to argue that a flat Earth is at the center of the solar system on a forum like this unless it's just to troll, but how many people have directly looked in the same way that Copernicus and Eratosthenes did? The scientific method is the process of replacing old beliefs with new ones. This is good. It can bring one to a place where they've got the best beliefs that a mind can buy with the currency of intellect. Once there one can ask, what is the value of them? What do you really know? It seems to me a priori logic such as this is just the opposite of too much thinking, normally it's so hard to deliver such a clean, succinct morsel. Your question in parenthesis doesn't follow by the way, not sure if you were kidding or not. But "nothing can be known for certain" isn't justifiable as a logical conclusion. It defines an infinite series in the form of a square wave: if nothing can be known for certain is true (1) then it can't be known for certain that nothing can be known for certain (0), so of course then the conclusion is that nothing can be known for certain (1) ... and so on. It's a trick of self-reference. The same trick you play on yourself when you take yourself to be the voice in your head and let one thought lead to the next in an infinite loop of never ending internal dialog. So if by "false" you mean following the self-reference of the statement for one cycle from true to self-negating false then you've thought one thought too many, as you've just stopped arbitrarily in the middle of a circular track without end. On the other hand, if by "false" you mean that the statement is inherently devoid of meaning, then you've set the stage for noticing the absence of meaning in general. Similar to where science can bring the mind, that's a good thing. Yeah, it's not unliike saying 'Everything I say is a lie'. If we stop at the conclusion that it's logically not so, then we've either thought too much or too little, and either way we're screwed. Best not to follow the bouncing logic ball onto that gerbil wheel at all.
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Post by enigma on Apr 13, 2014 20:59:10 GMT -5
(** quickly grabs blanket to cover posterior **) Logically, I conclude that wisdom is in talking out of one's posterior.
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Post by enigma on Apr 13, 2014 21:27:33 GMT -5
Laughter: I like how you compared and contrasted science and philosophy earlier, it speaks to some of the reasons I chose to investigate reality in my life from a philosophical bent first and foremost, because philosophy and metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc, DOES allow for reaching a sort of blank slate, casting every single iota of what you thought you knew into the abyss, throwing nuts at a wall and seeing what sticks, looking for funny patterns in coagulated milk long ago spilled on a rotting floor or, as most people prefer to do, in cloud formations. There seems to be miscommunication of my use of the concept of hypothesis. Hypotheses by definition assume their premises to be true so that the theorized outcomes can be tested. When I talked about a blatant statement of fact, I only meant to illustrate that IF the premises are assumed to be true for the purposes of the hypotheses THEN the words in the statement are expressing a statement of fact (which I am neither agreeing or disagreeing with at this juncture): Both the word "nothing" and the word "certain" are absolute, so the hypothesis "nothing can be known for certain" is definitive in its hypothetical stance, as opposed to for example saying "nothing can be known for certain, probably". That's all I meant! I maintain that there is much value in adages such as that nothing can be known for certain is itself a certainty and must be false. It skirts the rim of necessity itself, pushes the envelope of thought towards the farthest limits of intellectual possibility, and provides a reference point in the ocean of information. Also for example I've had to deal with nihilists a fair bit in my time, so this type of adage really has its uses there. Sure you can replicate this sort of self-referential statement in countless forms, for example "I am from Canada" and "all Canadians are liars". And in each case it will prove a point, in this case that believing those two statements produces a limit about what we can know about Canadians in that context. Obviously it's a ridiculous context and an utterly moot point. But when this sort of paradox is applied to itself, when the 'semantics' if you must call them that are turned to the very underlying framework of reality that allows them to exist in the first place, then it provides an insight into this underlying framework. Traveling through the abyss, confronting the great existential dilemma, is truly a requisite passage towards enlightenment.. there are many ways to do it.. but when you do it my way and abandon everything, it's crucial to be able to discern the borders of reality itself. Were it not for this adage and the reality to which it speaks, I could have believed that nothing could be known for certain and my life would have been completely different.Better or worse? What's your guess?
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Post by laughter on Apr 13, 2014 21:39:59 GMT -5
Belief swapping is the difference between the scientific method and the method of self-inquiry referred to as neti-neti. ( two references) Science is a sort of collective act of self inquiry -- what is the nature of reality that can be determined by skeptical inquiry based on objective truth? What ZD said about scientists is (as what he usually has to say) quite insightful, but the fact is that not all scientists will perform all the experiments that they read about for themselves. There is an element of trust involved in any education or line of inquiry in the sciences. A scientist stands on the shoulders of the giants that came before him. In a sense, you could say that this trust is related to the notion of faith. Not every high particle physicist builds his own version of Youngs experiment to verify the result. He'll learn about it as an undergrad, maybe he'll encounter it in a lab somewhere, but the bottom line is that he'll build based on accepting ideas that are told to him 2nd-hand as being true. To do otherwise would create an unsupportable economy of inefficiency that would bring scientific inquiry to a screeching halt. Science over time has resulted in a set of ideas that have survived a rigorous process of selection based on observation. In this we can say that current scientific understanding has evolved over time, and Darwins notion of survival of the fittest is a helpful idea to understand how that has and is playing out. Noone is going to question the idea that can be expressed with the equation of an ellipse describing the path of the Earth relative to the Sun. This is how skepticism contains within it the seeds of its opposite, faith. Noone is going to argue that a flat Earth is at the center of the solar system on a forum like this unless it's just to troll, but how many people have directly looked in the same way that Copernicus and Eratosthenes did? The scientific method is the process of replacing old beliefs with new ones. This is good. It can bring one to a place where they've got the best beliefs that a mind can buy with the currency of intellect. Once there one can ask, what is the value of them? What do you really know? But "nothing can be known for certain" isn't justifiable as a logical conclusion. It defines an infinite series in the form of a square wave: if nothing can be known for certain is true (1) then it can't be known for certain that nothing can be known for certain (0), so of course then the conclusion is that nothing can be known for certain (1) ... and so on. It's a trick of self-reference. The same trick you play on yourself when you take yourself to be the voice in your head and let one thought lead to the next in an infinite loop of never ending internal dialog. So if by "false" you mean following the self-reference of the statement for one cycle from true to self-negating false then you've thought one thought too many, as you've just stopped arbitrarily in the middle of a circular track without end. On the other hand, if by "false" you mean that the statement is inherently devoid of meaning, then you've set the stage for noticing the absence of meaning in general. Similar to where science can bring the mind, that's a good thing. Yeah, it's not unliike saying 'Everything I say is a lie'. If we stop at the conclusion that it's logically not so, then we've either thought too much or too little, and either way we're screwed. Best not to follow the bouncing logic ball onto that gerbil wheel at all. It raises a question that we've sparred on in the past: is it the thinker, the reasoner that informs itself of the futility, or is there something else going on?
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Post by enigma on Apr 13, 2014 21:44:33 GMT -5
I basically agree. Faith may be closer to trust than it is to hope. Hope may be more like wishing for a specific outcome, while faith seems more like accepting the truth of something without evidence. Well, it's all some kind of speculation, isn't it? I'd say there's no place for faith or trust in non-duality. Those issues are all personal matters, they only arise from a sense of separation. I'm just talking about how those terms are generally used. I don't think faith or hope have anything to do with realization, though mayhaps trust is influential. For example, I do think there's potential value in trusting one's guru. (Not to imply it's a doing)
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Post by enigma on Apr 13, 2014 22:01:37 GMT -5
Yeah, it's not unliike saying 'Everything I say is a lie'. If we stop at the conclusion that it's logically not so, then we've either thought too much or too little, and either way we're screwed. Best not to follow the bouncing logic ball onto that gerbil wheel at all. It raises a question that we've sparred on in the past: is it the thinker, the reasoner that informs itself of the futility, or is there something else going on? Have you ever witnessed something so horrible or so beautiful that you can't get it out of your mind and it simply has it's way with you? Mind is possessed by a 'seeing' and change must occur, however subtle or profound. We already know there is no arguing with the self evident, which is why we struggle so valiantly to avoid it.
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Post by Reefs on Apr 13, 2014 23:37:21 GMT -5
Well, it's all some kind of speculation, isn't it? I'd say there's no place for faith or trust in non-duality. Those issues are all personal matters, they only arise from a sense of separation. I'm just talking about how those terms are generally used. I don't think faith or hope have anything to do with realization, though mayhaps trust is influential. For example, I do think there's potential value in trusting one's guru. (Not to imply it's a doing) Well, that's basically what I was trying to say. It's not some kind of personal choice. The trust is just there.
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