Is Faith an Acceptable Means of Attaining Knowledge?

In summary: God desired him to murder me, he would be compelled to do so.In summary, In this conversation, the speakers discuss the concept of faith and its role in acquiring knowledge. They mention extreme examples, such as a woman killing her children due to a perceived sign from God, and less extreme examples, such as the use of reason and logic to come to agreements. The idea of faith being a means of attaining knowledge is debated, with some arguing that it cannot be falsified or evaluated, and others arguing that it is not a reliable way to acquire knowledge. Some also discuss the difference between science and religion, with one using empirical evidence and the
  • #1
loseyourname
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say no, but I'd still like to see what arguments you guys can produce for and against. My guess is you've probably discussed this before, but I'd still like to see it.
 
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  • #2
I was reading the newspaper during my lunch break today, and there was an article in it that maybe bears on what you are talking about. I don't have the paper with me, so this is by memory. A woman in Texas is on trial for killing her two sons, aged 6 and 8. She killed them by bashing their heads with a rock. Because of her faith in the existence of the biblical God, she felt that when she tripped over that rock in her yard, it was a sign from God that she was supposed to kill the boys with it. That is, she believed she was gaining knowledge of God's will supernaturally, albeit through a rather commonplace natural occurence.


This is not an April fool's joke. This really was in the paper today.
 
  • #3
I fully believe that. Have you read Jon Krakauer's new book, Under the Banner of Heaven?

Still, though, I don't want to get into really extreme examples to discredit the idea. It would be more fruitful to attack it at its base. The argument I typically use is that although people might come to different conclusions using reason, reason has a means by which, at least in theory, they may come to agreement. Properly applied, people using logic should come to the same conclusions all the time. It's just that it's difficult to properly use it all the time, there are so many places in which one can make mistakes, plus it is necessary to postulate certain axioms and basic beliefs on which you might base a deduction, and these may differ from school to school.

Still, faith has no similar mechanism by which competing faiths might come to agreement. There is absolutely no way to falsify, or even evaluate, a faith-based argument. Is this enough to completely invalidate it?
 
  • #4
I have not heard of the Krakauer book, but I'll keep an eye out for it.

Years ago I read a book called Monkey on a Stick, the true story of an Eastern religious cult that took root in the United States. Fascinating, in a macabre way.
 
  • #5
I'm pretty sure it's a bestseller, though personally I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback.
 
  • #6
Acceptable?

Acceptable by whom? I think your choice of words is not so good here. Sure, it's acceptable to religious people, theologians and the like. I would say, though, that it is not acceptable by the secular...uhm... section of the community. Therefore, I would say that it is not acceptable in a court of law, which is clearly separate from the Church.

Maybe a more appropriate question would be whether or not it is an appropriate means of attaining knowledge, or even whether or not it can be a way of attaining knowledge. I would say no.

Looking at it strictly from a Aristotelian point of view, we cannot acquire any "real" knowledge about things from examining the transendent (i.e. faith). We acquire it through examining the world around us through our senses/perceptions.

Looking at it from a Platonist point of view, contemplating the divine is how one gains real, absolute truth about the world. We acquire knowledge about the abstract Form of things, a world of knowledge that we cannot, having afterwords attained absolute knowledge, travel back to the physical world.

Because I believe that the knowledge of the divine, of the form of things, can never be translated to knowledge of the real things around us, I don't believe that faith can be a means by which to attain knowledge.

So I've given an outline of two principle argument...anyone want to extend this?
 
  • #7
Unfortunately, all belief systems ultimately boil down to a question of faith. Either you believe that the speed of light is finite and equal to c or you don't (that's why it's called a postulate). However, the difference between science and religion is that for science, faith is only the first step. Before a theory is adopted as a viable model for physical reality, it must first be corroborated by empirical evidence. In my opinion, science and religion are fundamentally different, not because one is founded on faith and the other is not, but because one uses observation to buttress predictions, which were founded on a (often mathematical) leap of faith.

This brings me to my point on faith in general. I have a friend, an engineering major, and also a devout Christian. Not being religious myself, I was naturally curious as to why he'd be so eager to imbibe such seemingly outlandish propositions as resurrection and cloud riding anthropomorphized uber humans. So, being as disingenuous and uninvasive as possible, I approached him with a question regarding the prospect of an "objective" morality. I asked him that if we were to treat religion as guidelines for living one's life, that is, as suggestions for making decisions based on some fundamental and immutable doctrine (the history and experiences of the messiah or whatever), would there ever be a situation in which abiding by these religious decision procedures would yield a sub-optimal solution to a given problem (in other words, could his religion ever be wrong )? He said no. In other words my friend stipulates the existence of an objective morality. Any free thinking and scrutinizing individual could supply a veritable infinity of situations in which one set of behavioral heuristics would be better than another in solving a problem, but my friend would have none of it. He truly believed that his way of life was correct and that, I suppose, all others must be wrong. This is not really a testable hypothesis, and is therefore founded pretty much solely on faith. My friend is peaceful and kind (although somewhat ignorant), and poses no real threat to anybody. However, blind faith, when taken to an extreme, is a real danger to everybody, including those espousing the philosophy in question. I think it's important to believe in one's own fallibility, that is, to leave one's behavior open to testing and experimental verification. Nobody can be "objectively" correct because humans are never free from perspective. Blind faith is, to me, an illusory form of objectivity, and should be questioned and debated in every facet of every human society.
 
  • #8
Knowledge precludes faith. It is not possible to have faith in something you know to be true. Faith requires the potential for doubt.

Njorl
 
  • #9
I think you underestimate the difference between religious faith and inductive faith, point. We have good reason to believe that the speed of light is constant, and certainly mathematical axioms are known to have a good basis. Knowledge deduced from these basic beliefs is known to be testable and repeatable. There isn't the same "leap" that is made with religious belief.

Addressing Njorl: A religious person would likely disagree with you. I don't it's fair to simply say that knowledge necessarily precludes faith. As point points out (no pun), at some point one must make at least a tiny leap. Nothing is completely certain outside of your own existence. You must be careful not to completely exclude the possibility of any knowledge whatsoever.
 
  • #10
Point,

It might prove interesting for you to (gently, of course) ask your friend about the biblical commandment that goes, "Suffer not a witch to live." If he has read that part of the Bible, I wonder what he makes of that. There have been times and places where believers took it quite seriously, as you know.
 
  • #11
loseyourname, I agree that mathematical axioms "have a good basis". In fact, I would categorically assert that mathematical operations, if performed consistently, will always be true. However, this is not because of some intrinsic property of the structure of the universe, this is because we defined the rules for generating true statements within the framework of mathematics. The speed of light being constant is not just a statement about mathematics; it is a statement about an unobservable characteristic of physical reality. We can only even notice the existence of "light" (self inducing oscillating electric and magnetic fields, propagating through space at a speed c) by looking at how it interacts and affects the behavior of other, more tangible components of the observable universe. The only reason why we say that the speed is light must be measured to be constant from every inertial reference frame, is because this statement, when expressed mathematically, predicts values which can be tested against and verified through experiment. If someone were to come up with a theory that stipulated the speed of light to be variant, depending on some as yet to be discovered properties of a system, we would be hesitant to adopt it unless we could test its predictions experimentally and the theory itself were either more precise or simply more fecund in the number of testable predictions it produced than special relativity. Even if special relativity were superceded by some other contradictory physical model, people might still use it because it has been proven to work under certain circumstances (engineers can still use Newtonian mechanics to build bridges, but they certainly can't use it to talk about observations made over astronomical scales of space and time).

I agree that science and religion are founded on disparate notions of faith. There is nothing about science that obviates supersession, whereas denying the tenants of religion is heresy. Either Christ was the messiah or he wasn't. If you don't believe Christ was the messiah, then you aren't a Christian. If you don't believe that special relativity is an adequate model for physical reality, you can still be a scientist, but you are charged with coming up with a mathematically consistent model that is either more precise or more fecund. With science, we still must have faith that what works today will work tomorrow, and again loseyourname, you are right, it is far easier to belief this than it is that Christ turned water into wine, but only because we've seen physics "work" time and time again, but I doubt any of us have seen water turned into wine (my life would be radically different if I could major in that!).
 
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  • #12
philosophking said:
Maybe a more appropriate question would be whether or not it is an appropriate means of attaining knowledge, or even whether or not it can be a way of attaining knowledge. I would say no.

Looking at it strictly from a Aristotelian point of view, we cannot acquire any "real" knowledge about things from examining the transendent (i.e. faith). We acquire it through examining the world around us through our senses/perceptions.
I think that what Aristotle actually said was that certain knowledge, knowledge that which does not require faith, is identical with its object. That is to say certain knowledge requires that the knower must become one with the known. This is only possible by exploring that which transcends (or underlies) the world of our senses and perceptions.

Looking at it from a Platonist point of view, contemplating the divine is how one gains real, absolute truth about the world. We acquire knowledge about the abstract Form of things, a world of knowledge that we cannot, having afterwords attained absolute knowledge, travel back to the physical world.
Did he say we couldn't 'travel back'? I didn't think so.

Because I believe that the knowledge of the divine, of the form of things, can never be translated to knowledge of the real things around us, I don't believe that faith can be a means by which to attain knowledge.
Agree. Faith, in its everday sense, cannot be certain knowledge. As someone said earlier, faith implies the possibility of doubt. However 'faith' can have much more subtle meanings that its everday one, and faith may be a necessary precurser to certain knowledge, a necessary means to an end.
 
  • #13
It's almost like asking if an idea can be a fact.

If we ever get down to the bottom of it all... how much will absolute existence (fact) prove to be an idea?
 
  • #14
Erck said:
It's almost like asking if an idea can be a fact.

If we ever get down to the bottom of it all... how much will absolute existence (fact) prove to be an idea?
All of it according to some people.
 
  • #15
you must have faith. Faith in self!

once you have faith in self, you can accept any experience and expand. this in turn builds a belief system that requires more faith in self, etc etc

faith in your belief system is the basis for manipulating your reality.

peace,
 
  • #16
An idea containing an idea containing an idea... ad infinitum?
 
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  • #17
olde drunk said:
you must have faith. Faith in self!

once you have faith in self, you can accept any experience and expand. this in turn builds a belief system that requires more faith in self, etc etc

faith in your belief system is the basis for manipulating your reality.

peace,
I agree completely, and think it's an important point. What can we ever learn or know if we don't have faith in out own rationality and our own experiences.
 
  • #18
there is a certain amount of faith that those who are blazing the path of science are doing so ethically and delivering true facts to us...that a scientist is using the utmost objectivity in interpreting results.

we have a huge amount of faith in the media, at least here in america...it's amazing what power the news, for example has over us...
 
  • #19
Speak for yourself. I have no faith in the media.
 
  • #20
Faith in ourselves, will only lead us, to one undeniable fact.

We didn't cause the universe.

We don't even cause our own thoughts.
 
  • #21
I don't think that faith alone is a source of knowledge; however, if your faith leads you to the source of all knowledge then it is of course a source of knowledge and understanding.
I can't really say that my meditation or contemplation has led me to any new, to me, knowledge; but, it has given me understanding. Not just an understanding of some isolated bit of knowledge but a deeper, more complete understanding along with it's implications and relationship with other related phenomena.
 
  • #22
loseyourname said:
Speak for yourself. I have no faith in the media.

me neither, i probably should have stated that many americans do however...
 
  • #23
Rush Limbaugh said it, I believe it, and that settles it. :redface:
 
  • #24
i listen to others, but i make up my own mind.
 
  • #25
loseyourname said:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say no, but I'd still like to see what arguments you guys can produce for and against. My guess is you've probably discussed this before, but I'd still like to see it.
I think it can be if you treat it like a learning experience. :wink:
 
  • #26
as I see it, faith is not a mean to attain knowledge, rather a GOAL.
GOD is goal for humankind. to be able to do everything IMAGINABLE.

now THAT requires faith. being in a monastery all day looking at nuns and not be able to touch them also requires faith. but one would not do that if he had not a GOAL to put faith in. "If I'm good i'll go to paradise" is actually a little trick of our minds, the right sentence would be "if I'm good i'll help humankind to achieve this ultimate goal, although i'll be gone by then and i'll "waste" my life". but who would do that, while still grapped within the primal instincts? just some "visionary", dedicated individuals, who have FAITH.

so we need to be tricked a little bit. like isaac asimov's robots and their rules of preservation, which humans also have, although more elaborate and expansive. that's called SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS. that's where we draw our faith from.

once you have *strong faith* in being able to do something, albeit impossible, you will strive to attain it. maybe piece by piece. that's where SCIENCE and HARD WORK jump into help a little bit.

so god is merely a projection of *final* desires of our greater and individual consciousnesses.

it is a bit diversified, as the nations and races and their environments are. so for muslim arabs who live in desert, paradise is merely a lush garden with an endless stream of water. etc.

and the heaven-hell thingy is actually a full spectre of possible human/god behaviours, copied directly from our minds.

God is treated with exaggerated respect and humility, like everything that seems impossible at this point.

thus the anwser to your question is; faith is needed for the sole purpose of being able to see and strive to the GOAL, science and work are TOOLS to achieve it.

Amen. (ok was that over-confident?:)
 
  • #27
pocebokli said:
(ok was that over-confident?:)
I agree. :smile:
 
  • #28
olde drunk said:
you must have faith. Faith in self!

once you have faith in self, you can accept any experience and expand. this in turn builds a belief system that requires more faith in self, etc etc

faith in your belief system is the basis for manipulating your reality.

peace,

I agree totally. Too often we are imbued with a ridiculous sense of limitation and helplessness without realising that we can be light and we can be salt. Wising up to our own limitless powers and impacts in the very long run is and has to be the starting point of any serious endeavours.
 
  • #29
Canute said:
I agree. :smile:

well doh:-)
 
  • #30
pocebokli said:
well doh:-)
Sorry if I offended. I just meant I didn't think you were right.
 
  • #31
well you could try and enlighten me with arguements, other than that, don't worry i don't feel offended if someone doesn't agree with me, jeez:-)
 
  • #32
Sorry, I was being lazy.

pocebokli said:
GOD is goal for humankind. to be able to do everything IMAGINABLE.
Not sure what you mean here.

now THAT requires faith. being in a monastery all day looking at nuns and not be able to touch them also requires faith. but one would not do that if he had not a GOAL to put faith in. "If I'm good i'll go to paradise" is actually a little trick of our minds, the right sentence would be "if I'm good i'll help humankind to achieve this ultimate goal, although i'll be gone by then and i'll "waste" my life". but who would do that, while still grapped within the primal instincts? just some "visionary", dedicated individuals, who have FAITH.
Many monastic practices are not based on faith (eg Buddhism, Taoism)

once you have *strong faith* in being able to do something, albeit impossible, you will strive to attain it. maybe piece by piece. that's where SCIENCE and HARD WORK jump into help a little bit.
Agree, except I don't know what science has got to do with it.

so god is merely a projection of *final* desires of our greater and individual consciousnesses.
That may be true for some people, but you cannot state it as a fact.

it is a bit diversified, as the nations and races and their environments are. so for muslim arabs who live in desert, paradise is merely a lush garden with an endless stream of water. etc. ... and the heaven-hell thingy is actually a full spectre of possible human/god behaviours, copied directly from our minds. ... God is treated with exaggerated respect and humility, like everything that seems impossible at this point.
Don't understand you here.

thus the anwser to your question is; faith is needed for the sole purpose of being able to see and strive to the GOAL, science and work are TOOLS to achieve it.
I agree that faith is required when striving towards a goal. However your faith in science is just your personal thing. Most people have greater goals than reconciling the fundamental forces or building better refridgerators.
 
  • #33
I had these notes on faith from a previous project so I though I'd post them. They're a bit lengthy so just ignore all this if you want. All objections welcome.

FAITH

Faith, what it is and whether one should have any, crops up in most arguments about religion. By one common view an act of faith is necessary to the achievement of ultimate knowledge and understanding, and by another it is not reasonable or rational to have faith, since one should not believe in things that haven’t been proved. People are often very sure of themselves on this question, but it’s actually a difficult one to settle once and for all. It is not even clear that these positions contradict each other.

Faith has many meanings. As it relates to religious belief the Collins English Dictionary gives these definitions:

- A strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp. without proof or evidence
- A specific system of religious beliefs
- A trust in God and in his actions and promises
- A conviction of the truth of certain doctrines of religion, esp. when this is not based on reason

Roughly then we can define faith as conviction without proof or conclusive reasons, although not necessarily without any reasoning or evidence. In arguments for and against the need for faith this is what most people seem to mean by it.

Another definition comes from Buddhist teaching, which suggests that there are three kinds of faith.

- A longing or a wish that what you hope and believe to be true actually is true.
- A lucid faith in which you conclude that what you believe to be true actually is true.
- An unshakable faith, which is total conviction.

(Lama Suryadas ‘Awakening the Budha Within’.)

I’ll stick to the last two of these, since they present faith in its strongest and most controversial form. It is equivalent to the previous definition in that it also assumes a lack of any (third-person) proof.

There is some potential confusion between ‘faith’ and ‘belief’. Here I take ‘belief’ to be equivalent to ‘article of faith’.

The Importance of Faith

Faith is not simply a matter related to morality. It is a fundamental epistemological issue concerned with what we can know and how we can know it. Nevertheless it does relate particularly strongly to moral issues.

This is because our faith in our system of beliefs forms the basis of our behaviour, how we each live and act (or don’t act). This is as true for a materialist as it is for a Muslim. Our beliefs guide our every action from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. More accurately it can be said that to the precise extent that we have faith in our beliefs then to that extent those beliefs determine our actions.

Because of this the relationship between faith and morally correct behaviour might be stated like this: To the precise extent that a person believes that they are acting morally they are acting morally, since under no circumstances can a person behave more morally than this. This is true because it is not reasonable to suppose that it is ever morally correct to act other than in accordance with ones belief as to what is morally correct.

This does not entail that morality is entirely relative and subjective as is often argued. Rather it entails that there is a moral dimension to our pursuit (and judgement) of the knowledge on which we base our beliefs, a moral resposibility for forming our beliefs honestly and disinterestedly.

Faith and Knowledge I

If faith is a personal conviction of the truth of something that cannot be proved then there seems to be a good argument that it is not logical to have faith in anything at all. This is a pretty common view, and a standard charge against religious faith.

It is what is called ‘evidentialism’, the position that a belief is justified only just as far it is proportioned to the evidence. Evidentialism states that it is not justified to have a unshakeable religious belief unless there is conclusive evidence for its truth. (This is also a Buddhist doctrine).

However the issue of what constitutes evidence is not simple. We could call our evidence our provably true knowledge. However if we assume that our knowledge is restricted to what we can prove to be true then we must conclude that faith is the very basis of our knowledge. Philosophers have puzled over this problem (and long before Goedel).

(Non-dual philosophies escape this epistemological restriction, but that's another story).

Faith and Rationality

The problem with human reasoning is not simply that all formally logical systems of reasoning must be based on axioms that cannot be proved. It’s worse than that. These unproved axioms are the only theorems in the system of reasoning that are not self-referential, absolutely the only theorems that refer outside the system, and it is exactly these statements about reality that we are forced to take on faith alone.

The consequence of all this is that while any such system of belief, whether physics, mathematics, Christianity, analytic philosophy, Islam, alchemy or any other, may be judged individually better or worse at creating consistent structures of truths and falsities, it is logically inevitable that they all rest on a naïve faith in their axioms, their initial assumptions about what is true about reality. In theism or deism this is pretty obvious, but it is no less true for all other formal systems used to explain or describe reality.

For this reason it is very difficult to claim that having faith is irrational. One can quite logically argue that it is irational to claim that faith is irrational, since it can be shown that all rational knowledge depends ultimately on an act of faith. However it is an argument that should be used carefully, since it does not entail that all faiths are equally rational.

Science and Religion

From a metaphysical point of view religion and science are only in opposition to each other in a rather superficial way. Although the arguments may rage forever about which system of explanation is nearer the truth, in the end, at a metaphysical level, they are just different systems of faith. This is definitely not to say that everything a scientist or theist believes is just a matter of faith and, to say it again, it does not mean that these belief systems are equally rational.

Nevertheless at a metaphysical level, the level at which they refer to the truth about reality, theism, physicalism, idealism and Buddhism and so forth are all equally unprovable. The first three are metaphysical theories that must be taken on faith or not at all, and belief in the last depends ultimately on subective evidence inaccessible to third-persons. No system of strictly formal reasoning will ever decide between these three metaphysical positions or the assertions of Buddhism, Advaita, Taoism etc.

The Scale of the Problem

It may seem a rather trivial or arcane academic problem that we cannot prove the axioms of any formal system of reasoning capable of giving us knowledge of reality. Nobody seems to worry about it much except philosophers and mathematicians. Science makes good predictions, technology seems to work, and it is perfectly possible to compare the reasonableness of, say, the Baha’i faith with that of Christianity or Physicalism on logical grounds. However when it comes to metaphysics, the truth about reality, the problem of knowledge becomes serious.

The ultimate undecidability of our axioms, our inability to prove which of two possible answers to the fundamental questions about reality are true, entails that for every systematic explanation of reality there is always at least one other systematic explanation that seems equally correct, and both will agree equally with the evidence. That is, for all fundamental metaphysical questions there are always at least two rational answers, each of which gives rise to a quite opposite but equally consistent metaphysical system. Instances include physicalism/idealism, God/no-God, freewill/physical determinism etc.

What is more, the effect of this uncertainty as to the truth of any set of axioms infects the whole of any possible system of formal reasoning, inevitably making the whole system a matter of faith inasmuch as it asserts anything at all about reality.

All this is not to say that there is no true or knowable explanation of reality, but rather that the construction of a single, true and provable explanation of it is forever beyond the power of human reasoning or ability to explain.

Faith and Knowledge II

Knowledge is generally thought to be superior to faith in determining our actions, it is thought to be more ‘rational’. However this is only true to the extent that that knowledge is true, and only to the extent that our knowledge is provable and not itself simply a belief, and from the above it can be seen that provability is a tricky issue.

This does not mean that it is impossible to know things with certainty, or impossible to hold firm convictions that are completely rational. However, paradoxical as it seems, no formal system of proof can produce certain true statements about reality itself. Provable statements about reality, what lies beyond the self-referential system in which such statements must always be made, are true or false only ever in relation to some set of unproven assumptions, and in all cases there is an equally valid but quite contradictory set of possible assumptions that are equally consistent with the evidence.

Conclusion

In principle it is perfectly possible to argue that some faiths are more rational than others on the basis of their internal logical consistency and by their level of agreement with known empirical evidence. However it is not possible to argue that faith per se is irrational, for this is the reverse of the truth.
 
  • #34
well I'm really puzzled by you not saying what i meant there, i think that the first sentence you quoted was like obvious?:-) at least what i meant to say.
i don't think it has to be rephrased to be any more clear. just take it as it is.
ok, maybe, "we want to become god" sounds better, it is the primal wish. and such a wish to become true requires strong faith.

why is not buddhism or taoism based on faith? ok perhaps it is more of a philosophy, but you must believe in what you think if you want to pursue it, no?

Let me clear something out, as i see it is giving out misunderstood signals.

I am not referring to faith in strictly religious way, neither in a scientific, both scientist and monk and philosopher and common man require and have "faith". I am applying faith in it's broadest term that applies to all human beings.

what science has to do with it? let your thoughts loose. well here's an example... if you have "faith" or "belief" in that you can "discover" or achieve space travel or nuclear fission you must then work hard and apply scientific approach to achieve that what you believe can become true...but first there is an intinuitive hunch, a wish, where imagination allows you to even consider such impossible goals.

perhaps the scientific model that allowed flight is relatively modern, but the fundamental wish, the faith, is what has begun the pursuit. men dreamt of flight far before even basic geometry was discovered in ancient greece. this is de facto.

But without a wish, a belief that it can be achieved, to guide him, we would still be grounded.

Man's faith in god is also one of fundamental wishes. It's just that it seems so impossible to achieve this omnipotence that our sub-consciousness uses some safety-switches so we all don't commit suicide just by realising how many generations and aeons will have to pass to achieve it. So our sub-consciousness tells us : there IS a god. SEE? it's not impossible! just have FAITH.

i think i can state it as a fact through logic. but don't expect me to explain it to you so that you will be aware of it like you can be aware of a desk you're sitting behind or a chair you're sitting on. the rest is up to you.

and at point where you don't understand me, i applied the example, perhaps clumsily, to show the bond between faith and the image of god and human psychology, the same with the heaven-hell thingy. just think about it, but don't even try if your mind is not open to all kinds of seemingly absurd connections and if you are afraid to peek into the depths of your sub-consciousness (soul) here and there.

Also if you put your belief solely into scientific method and the present options that are based on our current knowledge of material world, you will never be able to understand what i mean. Your mind has already set it's course and an old dog is hard to learn new tricks or whatever it's said.

of course people have greater goals, that's just what I'm trying to tell you, but those goals can only be achieved and built through details. Just try to see the whole picture, use your imagination and move yourself a few hundred years in the past, where grandaddy canute tells you "man, people have greater goals than worrying how to store cattle, do you see the stars? i think it's impossible we will ever reach them". Or move yourself a few hundred years into the future where grandsonny canute tells you "man, you people were so primitive by trying to inhabit mars! we have a colony in alpha centauri system now!"

it is not just the imaginary text to consider, one must consider their feelings, put himself in their skin. when you join the present and the past in your imagination, which is the only thing NOT bound by time, you will be able to learn a very lot about yourself and human nature. And one must use this power to learn about himself and his relationship with the environment, and see in broader terms.

humans are only objective to their material environment when applying scientific methods, but the scientist usually forgets about his own head and usually never questions his psychology that actually forces him on sub-conscinouss level to build things with the help of science.
 
  • #35
pocebokli said:
well I'm really puzzled by you not saying what i meant there, i think that the first sentence you quoted was like obvious?:-) at least what i meant to say.
i don't think it has to be rephrased to be any more clear. just take it as it is.
ok, maybe, "we want to become god" sounds better, it is the primal wish. and such a wish to become true requires strong faith.
What you seem to be saying is that we want to become God and that because of this we believe in Him. I think there's some truth in that. But this has got no bearing on whether God exists or not. There are lots of reasons for believing that Being underlies existence and most of them are much better than this one.

why is not buddhism or taoism based on faith? ok perhaps it is more of a philosophy, but you must believe in what you think if you want to pursue it, no?
I agree that if you are pursuing a goal you must have faith that it is worth achieving, you must believe you're not wasting your time. This is a fundamental role of faith in Buddhism as it is tennis. You have to believe it is worth practicing, at least until you know it is.

But once you know it is then you know it is, you have seen the truth, (or so it is said to seem, if you see what I mean), so no faith is involved, you just know.

This is part of the reason why Advaita Vedanta, for instance, is known as an 'affirmation' rather than a religion, philosophy, theory or 'metaphysic'. It is said that once one has seen the truth then one knows it, one does not 'believe' in it. Belief is not necessary since the truth is self-evident, (as any certain truth has to be). This is why Buddhist practitioners are discouraged from believing anything they are told. Either you know something or you don't.

I am not referring to faith in strictly religious way, neither in a scientific, both scientist and monk and philosopher and common man require and have "faith". I am applying faith in it's broadest term that applies to all human beings.
I think I get what you're saying and I'm not really disagreeing. I'm arguing that the issues are a bit deeper than you suggested they were.

what science has to do with it? let your thoughts loose. well here's an example... if you have "faith" or "belief" in that you can "discover" or achieve space travel or nuclear fission you must then work hard and apply scientific approach to achieve that what you believe can become true...but first there is an intinuitive hunch, a wish, where imagination allows you to even consider such impossible goals.
I agree. This is a vital function of faith.

perhaps the scientific model that allowed flight is relatively modern, but the fundamental wish, the faith, is what has begun the pursuit. men dreamt of flight far before even basic geometry was discovered in ancient greece. this is de facto. But without a wish, a belief that it can be achieved, to guide him, we would still be grounded.
If we leave aside the issue of whether or not it might have been better for the world if the human race had stayed grounded then I agree completely.

Mind you, necessity can also drive us to do things, and perhaps faith has nothing to do with it. According to science everything happens of necessity, not because we 'strive' teleologically towards our 'goals'. It's just particles and fields interacting deterministically. It's hard to prove that this isn't true.

Man's faith in god is also one of fundamental wishes.
Yes and no, I would say. I agree that Man's wishes and faiths have no bearing on whether God exists or on whether Buddhism is true. What we believe or wish doesn't change what's true. I also agree that it would be ridiculous to believe that some greater state of Being is achievable just because you want to achieve it. It would be irrational. I also agree that becoming God is one of Man's fundamental wishes.

However none of this has any bearing on whether or not in reality we can achieve a greater state of Being or become God. This is a scientifically undecidable question.

It's just that it seems so impossible to achieve this omnipotence that our sub-consciousness uses some safety-switches so we all don't commit suicide just by realising how many generations and aeons will have to pass to achieve it. So our sub-consciousness tells us : there IS a god. SEE? it's not impossible! just have FAITH.
That's an interesting and perhaps possible theory, but I think you'd have difficulty proving that it's not just your own opinion.

i think i can state it as a fact through logic. but don't expect me to explain it to you so that you will be aware of it like you can be aware of a desk you're sitting behind or a chair you're sitting on. the rest is up to you.
Fine. I know what you mean. Some things can't be put into words.

and at point where you don't understand me, i applied the example, perhaps clumsily, to show the bond between faith and the image of god and human psychology, the same with the heaven-hell thingy. just think about it, but don't even try if your mind is not open to all kinds of seemingly absurd connections and if you are afraid to peek into the depths of your sub-consciousness (soul) here and there.
Keep going, most people back off this stuff, I'm all for it. I completely agree that human psychology is responsible for our traditonal western concept of Gods and all that heaven-hell stuff. This is what Buddhist teachings have always asserted.

Also if you put your belief solely into scientific method and the present options that are based on our current knowledge of material world, you will never be able to understand what i mean. Your mind has already set it's course and an old dog is hard to learn new tricks or whatever it's said.
Hang on. You've made some assumptions about where I coming from. I agree that it's impossible to understand the world by sticking to science.

of course people have greater goals, that's just what I'm trying to tell you, but those goals can only be achieved and built through details. Just try to see the whole picture, use your imagination and move yourself a few hundred years in the past, where grandaddy canute tells you "man, people have greater goals than worrying how to store cattle, do you see the stars? i think it's impossible we will ever reach them". Or move yourself a few hundred years into the future where grandsonny canute tells you "man, you people were so primitive by trying to inhabit mars! we have a colony in alpha centauri system now!"
I meant personal goals, achievable by us before we die, not later in some industrio-scientific vision of our glorious future. :smile:

it is not just the imaginary text to consider, one must consider their feelings, put himself in their skin. when you join the present and the past in your imagination, which is the only thing NOT bound by time, you will be able to learn a very lot about yourself and human nature. And one must use this power to learn about himself and his relationship with the environment, and see in broader terms.
I agree that it is necessary to you use one imagination and empathy to understand the world. I couldn't agree more. But all these things you are imagining are outside of yourself. Who or what is it that is doing the imagining? How can you know anything if you don't know that?
 
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