Epistemology/Faith
Verse Observations:
*faith before reason - Eph 4:18, II Thes 2:10-12, II Tm 4:3-4, I Jn 4:5-6
The inspiration/choice of faith & love.
It could all be otherwise, and what this means for faith.
EX: mathematical proofs -- inspired, yet verified
Why did the rich man believe once he was in the flames? (Lk 16:30) What’s the difference between burning in flames and seeing someone raised from the dead? This may sound like a really weird question, but think about it: what about burning in flames made the rich man finally believe, and what was “lacking” in seeing someone raised from the dead, since this would not prove effective in bringing about belief? You might say, “It’s because he finally went over to the other side, where everything is made clear and there’s no need for faith.” I would agree with that. This is the same kind of “faith” that the demons have (Jas 2:19, Mk 1:24, Acts 16:17, Jb 1:6, 11). But what is it about being on the other side that makes everything clear so that there’s no need for faith? (Rom 8:24). Why is faith required on earth, not in heaven? And what is the difference between Satan’s “faith” and saving faith? How does this relate to Phil 2:10-11, in which we see every soul bow to God, finally? For surely, though they bow, not all will be saved. (Mt 25:41)
The relation between belief and morals – Can you be a good person if you deny the Holocaust? What about man landing on the moon?
Why do some things have more of faith in them than others? For example, it requires more faith to believe or not believe in God than to believe that 2+2=4. God is controversial; math, for the most part, isn’t. But it's true that nothing is completely uncontroversial. So we're talking about a continuum here, not an either/or.
It has occurred to me that even though everything we believe we believe on faith, even so, some things, for some reason, require more faith to believe than others. For example, it doesn't require that much faith to believe in the law of cause and effect. Pretty much everyone believes in this, as far as I can tell. Even if they claim they don't, they're hypocrites, because they sure live like they do, since you can't live a normal life without this belief. It also doesn't require much faith to believe that 1+1=2. I'm pretty sure that this is completely uncontroversial. Then you have other things like belief in God, where you have the people who do believe and some who don't, but even among those who do believe you have tons of variations in belief, and even among those who belong to the same religion or sect, there's still a wide variety in belief. So God is pretty darn controversial. Now all these things rest on faith. Even 1+1 equaling 2, I really can't say why I believe it, other than that it's obvious to me, and if it's not obvious to you, then I really can't help you. As with belief in God, I can try all day to convince you to believe if you don't, but at the end of the day, if you just don't get it, I can't help you.
Let's contrast math and science with the humanities. It appears that for the most part, math and science are less controversial and require less faith to believe in than claims in the humanities. (God, being a part of religion, would fall in the humanities camp, so it makes sense that he's more controversial than math.) Even in math and science, math requires less belief than science. Science can actually be highly controversial, even politicized, but mathematicians all over the world can look at a new proof and come to a consensus about whether it's right or wrong. However, even in math you have different schools of thought, such as the platonists, intuitionists, pragmatists, etc.
But it gets even more complicated, as when even what's common sensically uncontroversial turns out to be highly controversial -- atheistic materialists who deny that the mind exists (they say your belief in your own existence is a delusion), New Agers and Eastern religionists who claim the same, dictators convincing apparently upright citizens who wouldn't even want to accidentally run over a deer to commit genocide, and even dialetheists, who have no problem in disbelieving the law of non-contradiction.
To be continued ...
The problem of the difference between thinking/believing and acting. It’s kind of like the potentiality in quantum physics.
How can we humans believe and hope in eternity, when we can’t even contemplate it?
Why is it that so many times we know something but don’t “understand” it (that is, we can’t define it [such as art, time, religion, holiness, wisdom, beauty, etc])?
Which is harder – heroic despair or keeping faith?
What constitutes belief? An atheist once told me that if he could see a great miracle, like the parting of the Red Sea, he would believe. But on the other hand, the Israelites did not believe. And what if Jesus did not ascend to the Father and withdraw from this world, but instead lived generation after generation among us, performing miracles and teaching truth? Then would not the whole world believe? And yet, there’s something too “easy” about it, but what? So then what does it take for people to believe, what should it take people to believe, and on what does God base belief (that is, why did he make things so that they’re hidden and must be reached by belief)? Why should faith be necessary at all? After all, the demons believe, and shudder! (Jas 2:19) – they who know God and see him directly. (Jb 1:6-7)
Why does the lie always need a story? I think I first began to realize this when reading up on atheism. While going through the forums and message boards, I saw that they consistently used evolution to explain all sorts and all manner of phenomena in this world. What really struck me as interesting was how exactly this paralleled the Christian’s use of the creation story to explain and give a background for questions about this world. I’d never made this connection before. What I couldn’t get was why they kept bringing up this story or why they thought it was pertinent to bring it up. I thought they could do just as good a job, and in fact, a better job, without it. But for whatever reason, that’s what they did. I could see that it was very important to them. I’m not even sure if they realized this. What I mean is, I think they believed evolution was true because they believed atheism was true, and not the other way around (that atheism was true because evolution was true), as they were making it out to be.
They (and I’m not just talking about atheists or evolutionists here, but every kind of liar and lie-believer) want the lie, the story, and they don’t want to hear otherwise. They cover their ears and keep screaming; but if they cover their ears, they acknowledge that you are telling the truth, and by rejecting the truth, we know that they know that they’re lying to themselves, and if they know that they’re lying to themselves, why would they still insist on putting up the facade of regard for the truth? They know and everyone knows and they know that everyone knows that they don’t really care, so why devote all this painstaking effort, time and resources into the story? Why don’t they just say, “Yeah, you know, I don’t care; this is just what I want, that’s why I believe/do this.” In fact, this dissimulation is taken to such great lengths and to such a level that when the lie manifests itself into something as large as a body (communism, for example), that body will spend enormous sums and so many valuable resources on upholding, teaching and propagating the story*, when all this could be put to much better use if they’d just be done with all this farce.
See, there’s 2 types of liars. There’s some who say, “I’m an atheist because ... evolution, God couldn’t allow such an evil world, whatever.” And then there’s the honest atheist that says, “I’m an atheist, even though I fully acknowledge the theist position makes perfect sense, because I don’t like God” (note: not “because I don’t want there to be a God [as if this God may or may not exist depending on their preference] but “I do not like God” [meaning, “There is a God, but I disregard him because the fact is unpleasant to me.”]) So now both are lying, but ironically, one insists on the story, while the other is much more practical and does away with it altogether, admitting the true nature of his position. (And I am not making this up. I have read of/heard of/met plenty of people that describe/admitted to this honest atheist/evolutionist viewpoint, incredible as that may be.) So why does the first put so much effort into the story?
Secondly, what’s truly ironic is that they both lie. The first puts up a facade, the second puts up no facade, but still proclaims the lie as true (that is, the first lies on 2 levels, the latter only on one.)
I’m not talking about the 3rd type, where the person truly does believe the lie. I’d also like to note that although I don’t know the numbers or percentages for the 3rd and 1st types, the 2nd type is indeed truly rare. In fact, the 2nd type may appear to others, and masquerade as, the 1st type, but in rare, individual/sporadic instances, reveal himself to be the 2nd type.
To sum up, if the story is not needed, why do they still insist on its use? And another question – if they do believe that God exists, why do they say he doesn’t? Why don’t they just say, “I’m actually a theist, but I don’t like God, I don’t want God, and I wish there were no God.” Then they wouldn’t be lying at all. As it is, they do lie, not only to themselves, but to others.
(*An excellent, and extreme example of this, is in Tortured for Christ, by Richard Wurmbrand. In it, he describes how the Soviets would hold propaganda classes for the re-education of the masses, really going overboard in their effort to stamp out all belief in God. In one “lesson”, the Soviets actually decided that it was worth their while (and this is incredible and bewildering to me) to deny the miracle of the wedding at Cana in which Jesus turned water into wine. The teacher put some sort of chemical or powder into water that dyed it red and said, “See, this is how he did it. We can all see that this was not a miracle, that he was a clever trickster.” I have no idea why they thought this one miracle was so important or why it had to absolutely be refuted in order for atheism to seem rational. Never mind that the teacher never gave the water to the people to sample so that they could taste for themselves the taste of wine.)
Now this is very funny – people say that they believe something because it’s true. But this isn’t true. They believe because it’s their culture. And why would this be? (because this is the real question) – because they have come to identify their beliefs with themselves. To change their beliefs, they would feel they were changing themselves (though this is all completely subconscious to the vast majority of people). But why is this? Why should your beliefs be a part of who you are? After all, you can always change your beliefs, but you remain the same person.
Why do people fear hell so much that they do not fear it? That is, like the Somalis in Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; they have a true fear of hell over all else, and because of this, they would never permit themselves to question their religion or search for the true religion.
Why is it easier for people to sacrifice, say, their child or their balls, than to do what’s right? This is of utmost strangeness to me. What the hell’s going on here? (Yes, Origen, one of the early church fathers, castrated himself. That was not a made-up example. As for child sacrifice, if we're well-read, we've all heard of that.)
Do these people not have true faith, that is, Christians who feel they should be afraid of science, for example?
Do you think we'll need more knowledge to figure out the world, or is the common experience of life good enough? After all, everything is connected to everything else (that is, this argument could work in favor of either side).
Two kinds of knowing: experience and study/logic
The difference between choosing in real life and choosing in the abstract. Eddie Murphy throws away his hot wife and family for a he-she. Probably wouldn't have done that if God had come down and asked him, "Do you want your hot wife and family, or the he-she?" But for some reason in real life, it was worth it to him.
On the difference in the implausibility of Christian vs Hindu miracles.
Hindu miracles seem highly implausible, while Christian miracles, while still incredible, do not require such a total leap of faith. Christian miracles usually involve healings, although there are other forms (parting bodies of water, walking on water, things not being consumed though they're on fire (the burning bush; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego). Hindu miracles are far more incredible -- the existence of other planets with oceans made entirely of milk, for example; giants (not like the biblical giants that are close to the size of the tallest people in the Guiness Book of World Records, but actual giants, like the kind in Jack and the Beanstalk); and people flying around (now levitating I can possibly buy, but not flying around). I can think of only one truly incredible miracle in the bible that I would consider on-par with Hindu miracles, and that's the talking donkey episode (Nm 22:28-30). Nothing else even comes close.
But if God is God and God is all-powerful, couldn't he do all these things? The logical answer is, yes, of course, it follows. But that's not the reasonable answer. However, this reasonableness is itself hard to define. I think most people would agree with me that Christian miracles are far more believable than Hindu miracles (unless, perhaps, you're talking to an uneducated villager in the remote Indian countryside), and yet it's difficult to express exactly why.
A more striking example of faith (in this case, false faith): asomatognosia, Anton-Babinski Syndrome (aka visual anosognosia). The first condition being an inability to recognize your own body parts as your own (leading one to be frightened of said body part or neglecting it), and persisting in this belief despite all evidence to the contrary, the second quite similar -- an inability to admit that you're blind despite all evidence to the contrary. Are these conditions insurmountable? I haven't read a case where someone finally admitted they were wrong, (not that I'm very familiar with these conditions -- you can read more about them in Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), but I do know of a similar case, in which the famous mathematician John Nash partially overcame his schizophrenia without medications, simply by what psychologists call "insight", that is, insight into the fact that you're psychotic and can't trust your perceptions. However, this is hard to come by.
*faith before reason - Eph 4:18, II Thes 2:10-12, II Tm 4:3-4, I Jn 4:5-6
The inspiration/choice of faith & love.
It could all be otherwise, and what this means for faith.
EX: mathematical proofs -- inspired, yet verified
Why did the rich man believe once he was in the flames? (Lk 16:30) What’s the difference between burning in flames and seeing someone raised from the dead? This may sound like a really weird question, but think about it: what about burning in flames made the rich man finally believe, and what was “lacking” in seeing someone raised from the dead, since this would not prove effective in bringing about belief? You might say, “It’s because he finally went over to the other side, where everything is made clear and there’s no need for faith.” I would agree with that. This is the same kind of “faith” that the demons have (Jas 2:19, Mk 1:24, Acts 16:17, Jb 1:6, 11). But what is it about being on the other side that makes everything clear so that there’s no need for faith? (Rom 8:24). Why is faith required on earth, not in heaven? And what is the difference between Satan’s “faith” and saving faith? How does this relate to Phil 2:10-11, in which we see every soul bow to God, finally? For surely, though they bow, not all will be saved. (Mt 25:41)
The relation between belief and morals – Can you be a good person if you deny the Holocaust? What about man landing on the moon?
Why do some things have more of faith in them than others? For example, it requires more faith to believe or not believe in God than to believe that 2+2=4. God is controversial; math, for the most part, isn’t. But it's true that nothing is completely uncontroversial. So we're talking about a continuum here, not an either/or.
It has occurred to me that even though everything we believe we believe on faith, even so, some things, for some reason, require more faith to believe than others. For example, it doesn't require that much faith to believe in the law of cause and effect. Pretty much everyone believes in this, as far as I can tell. Even if they claim they don't, they're hypocrites, because they sure live like they do, since you can't live a normal life without this belief. It also doesn't require much faith to believe that 1+1=2. I'm pretty sure that this is completely uncontroversial. Then you have other things like belief in God, where you have the people who do believe and some who don't, but even among those who do believe you have tons of variations in belief, and even among those who belong to the same religion or sect, there's still a wide variety in belief. So God is pretty darn controversial. Now all these things rest on faith. Even 1+1 equaling 2, I really can't say why I believe it, other than that it's obvious to me, and if it's not obvious to you, then I really can't help you. As with belief in God, I can try all day to convince you to believe if you don't, but at the end of the day, if you just don't get it, I can't help you.
Let's contrast math and science with the humanities. It appears that for the most part, math and science are less controversial and require less faith to believe in than claims in the humanities. (God, being a part of religion, would fall in the humanities camp, so it makes sense that he's more controversial than math.) Even in math and science, math requires less belief than science. Science can actually be highly controversial, even politicized, but mathematicians all over the world can look at a new proof and come to a consensus about whether it's right or wrong. However, even in math you have different schools of thought, such as the platonists, intuitionists, pragmatists, etc.
But it gets even more complicated, as when even what's common sensically uncontroversial turns out to be highly controversial -- atheistic materialists who deny that the mind exists (they say your belief in your own existence is a delusion), New Agers and Eastern religionists who claim the same, dictators convincing apparently upright citizens who wouldn't even want to accidentally run over a deer to commit genocide, and even dialetheists, who have no problem in disbelieving the law of non-contradiction.
To be continued ...
The problem of the difference between thinking/believing and acting. It’s kind of like the potentiality in quantum physics.
How can we humans believe and hope in eternity, when we can’t even contemplate it?
Why is it that so many times we know something but don’t “understand” it (that is, we can’t define it [such as art, time, religion, holiness, wisdom, beauty, etc])?
Which is harder – heroic despair or keeping faith?
What constitutes belief? An atheist once told me that if he could see a great miracle, like the parting of the Red Sea, he would believe. But on the other hand, the Israelites did not believe. And what if Jesus did not ascend to the Father and withdraw from this world, but instead lived generation after generation among us, performing miracles and teaching truth? Then would not the whole world believe? And yet, there’s something too “easy” about it, but what? So then what does it take for people to believe, what should it take people to believe, and on what does God base belief (that is, why did he make things so that they’re hidden and must be reached by belief)? Why should faith be necessary at all? After all, the demons believe, and shudder! (Jas 2:19) – they who know God and see him directly. (Jb 1:6-7)
Why does the lie always need a story? I think I first began to realize this when reading up on atheism. While going through the forums and message boards, I saw that they consistently used evolution to explain all sorts and all manner of phenomena in this world. What really struck me as interesting was how exactly this paralleled the Christian’s use of the creation story to explain and give a background for questions about this world. I’d never made this connection before. What I couldn’t get was why they kept bringing up this story or why they thought it was pertinent to bring it up. I thought they could do just as good a job, and in fact, a better job, without it. But for whatever reason, that’s what they did. I could see that it was very important to them. I’m not even sure if they realized this. What I mean is, I think they believed evolution was true because they believed atheism was true, and not the other way around (that atheism was true because evolution was true), as they were making it out to be.
They (and I’m not just talking about atheists or evolutionists here, but every kind of liar and lie-believer) want the lie, the story, and they don’t want to hear otherwise. They cover their ears and keep screaming; but if they cover their ears, they acknowledge that you are telling the truth, and by rejecting the truth, we know that they know that they’re lying to themselves, and if they know that they’re lying to themselves, why would they still insist on putting up the facade of regard for the truth? They know and everyone knows and they know that everyone knows that they don’t really care, so why devote all this painstaking effort, time and resources into the story? Why don’t they just say, “Yeah, you know, I don’t care; this is just what I want, that’s why I believe/do this.” In fact, this dissimulation is taken to such great lengths and to such a level that when the lie manifests itself into something as large as a body (communism, for example), that body will spend enormous sums and so many valuable resources on upholding, teaching and propagating the story*, when all this could be put to much better use if they’d just be done with all this farce.
See, there’s 2 types of liars. There’s some who say, “I’m an atheist because ... evolution, God couldn’t allow such an evil world, whatever.” And then there’s the honest atheist that says, “I’m an atheist, even though I fully acknowledge the theist position makes perfect sense, because I don’t like God” (note: not “because I don’t want there to be a God [as if this God may or may not exist depending on their preference] but “I do not like God” [meaning, “There is a God, but I disregard him because the fact is unpleasant to me.”]) So now both are lying, but ironically, one insists on the story, while the other is much more practical and does away with it altogether, admitting the true nature of his position. (And I am not making this up. I have read of/heard of/met plenty of people that describe/admitted to this honest atheist/evolutionist viewpoint, incredible as that may be.) So why does the first put so much effort into the story?
Secondly, what’s truly ironic is that they both lie. The first puts up a facade, the second puts up no facade, but still proclaims the lie as true (that is, the first lies on 2 levels, the latter only on one.)
I’m not talking about the 3rd type, where the person truly does believe the lie. I’d also like to note that although I don’t know the numbers or percentages for the 3rd and 1st types, the 2nd type is indeed truly rare. In fact, the 2nd type may appear to others, and masquerade as, the 1st type, but in rare, individual/sporadic instances, reveal himself to be the 2nd type.
To sum up, if the story is not needed, why do they still insist on its use? And another question – if they do believe that God exists, why do they say he doesn’t? Why don’t they just say, “I’m actually a theist, but I don’t like God, I don’t want God, and I wish there were no God.” Then they wouldn’t be lying at all. As it is, they do lie, not only to themselves, but to others.
(*An excellent, and extreme example of this, is in Tortured for Christ, by Richard Wurmbrand. In it, he describes how the Soviets would hold propaganda classes for the re-education of the masses, really going overboard in their effort to stamp out all belief in God. In one “lesson”, the Soviets actually decided that it was worth their while (and this is incredible and bewildering to me) to deny the miracle of the wedding at Cana in which Jesus turned water into wine. The teacher put some sort of chemical or powder into water that dyed it red and said, “See, this is how he did it. We can all see that this was not a miracle, that he was a clever trickster.” I have no idea why they thought this one miracle was so important or why it had to absolutely be refuted in order for atheism to seem rational. Never mind that the teacher never gave the water to the people to sample so that they could taste for themselves the taste of wine.)
Now this is very funny – people say that they believe something because it’s true. But this isn’t true. They believe because it’s their culture. And why would this be? (because this is the real question) – because they have come to identify their beliefs with themselves. To change their beliefs, they would feel they were changing themselves (though this is all completely subconscious to the vast majority of people). But why is this? Why should your beliefs be a part of who you are? After all, you can always change your beliefs, but you remain the same person.
Why do people fear hell so much that they do not fear it? That is, like the Somalis in Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; they have a true fear of hell over all else, and because of this, they would never permit themselves to question their religion or search for the true religion.
Why is it easier for people to sacrifice, say, their child or their balls, than to do what’s right? This is of utmost strangeness to me. What the hell’s going on here? (Yes, Origen, one of the early church fathers, castrated himself. That was not a made-up example. As for child sacrifice, if we're well-read, we've all heard of that.)
Do these people not have true faith, that is, Christians who feel they should be afraid of science, for example?
Do you think we'll need more knowledge to figure out the world, or is the common experience of life good enough? After all, everything is connected to everything else (that is, this argument could work in favor of either side).
Two kinds of knowing: experience and study/logic
The difference between choosing in real life and choosing in the abstract. Eddie Murphy throws away his hot wife and family for a he-she. Probably wouldn't have done that if God had come down and asked him, "Do you want your hot wife and family, or the he-she?" But for some reason in real life, it was worth it to him.
On the difference in the implausibility of Christian vs Hindu miracles.
Hindu miracles seem highly implausible, while Christian miracles, while still incredible, do not require such a total leap of faith. Christian miracles usually involve healings, although there are other forms (parting bodies of water, walking on water, things not being consumed though they're on fire (the burning bush; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego). Hindu miracles are far more incredible -- the existence of other planets with oceans made entirely of milk, for example; giants (not like the biblical giants that are close to the size of the tallest people in the Guiness Book of World Records, but actual giants, like the kind in Jack and the Beanstalk); and people flying around (now levitating I can possibly buy, but not flying around). I can think of only one truly incredible miracle in the bible that I would consider on-par with Hindu miracles, and that's the talking donkey episode (Nm 22:28-30). Nothing else even comes close.
But if God is God and God is all-powerful, couldn't he do all these things? The logical answer is, yes, of course, it follows. But that's not the reasonable answer. However, this reasonableness is itself hard to define. I think most people would agree with me that Christian miracles are far more believable than Hindu miracles (unless, perhaps, you're talking to an uneducated villager in the remote Indian countryside), and yet it's difficult to express exactly why.
A more striking example of faith (in this case, false faith): asomatognosia, Anton-Babinski Syndrome (aka visual anosognosia). The first condition being an inability to recognize your own body parts as your own (leading one to be frightened of said body part or neglecting it), and persisting in this belief despite all evidence to the contrary, the second quite similar -- an inability to admit that you're blind despite all evidence to the contrary. Are these conditions insurmountable? I haven't read a case where someone finally admitted they were wrong, (not that I'm very familiar with these conditions -- you can read more about them in Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), but I do know of a similar case, in which the famous mathematician John Nash partially overcame his schizophrenia without medications, simply by what psychologists call "insight", that is, insight into the fact that you're psychotic and can't trust your perceptions. However, this is hard to come by.