Jump to content

What Can We Truly Know?


romansh

Recommended Posts

Bill,

 

The topic of the theistic god and evil is one that has driven many away (and confounded many others), even or especially those who have grown up in theistic religions.

 

This topic is one I have been reading on for quite some time,with no easy answer (as if we will ever have one).

 

Right now I allow that god is Being, not the ground of being which comes off too static, but the constant, eternal 'letting be' that simply enables all that is to have being. Some authors allow that this is the world God had to 'let be' - this vale of soul making - in which and by which we achieve our Humanity. And since it is obvious that not many are 'truly' Human at death, they allow for a continued purging of selfishness and growth into our humanity after death. This seems to suggest that God 'allows' natural freedom/law and human freedom (and, thus, all the evil and suffering that results) because this is the way we work through and create ourselves. Other authors disagree, saying that God is always against evil and suffering.

 

What I have been thinking about lately is that 'letting be' is and must be a 'letting go.' That creating is a risk and vulnerability for 'God' (and for all). Just like we as parents, when we created a child, in the very and in all the moments of 'letting be' we had also to be letting go. The minute the child is born, there is a letting go because you have create a being who is determinate and 'other' than the creator. For the parent, it can be no other way if we give our child life and want them to have Fullness of that Life. Any true loving parent's power is only the power of love: it is persuasive not coercive. I think the same might be said of the world of nature: it is determinate and other than God and as such is on it way to its fullness - all creation, all beings are 'let be' and participate to varing degree in Being (Paul's groaning of creation) and acts according to its natural freedom/laws.

 

I allow (but I am still working on it) that in the very act of creating (which is constant?) God 'lets be' and must 'let go' and 'his' only power is the persuasive power of love calling and encouraging us, in and through creation, to Unity (love is all-powerful because it alone empowers humanity to become divinity). Further I allow, just like any true parent, that God is again evil, again suffering (nor does 'he' use it) that cause harm or setback to humanity, to creation but he must 'let be' for that what love demands and creating requires. It could not have been otherwise: to let be is to let go; love is powerless (not coercive) and a risk. In this I allow that Being is always 'with us,' always letting be until we become our True Self (now, through death and for eternity).

 

To make it more human, to communicate to my students years ago, I presented the hope born in faith, by asking a question: in the midst of a horrific place accident, where is God? God, in the midst of death and destruction is there, saying, "Child, I have always been with you, would I leave you now in your hour of need? Come, rise, it begins anew!"

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Back to 'what we can truly know', a subject more philosophical than religious.

 

(Snip for brevity)

Theism is no different. If one starts from an attitude of belief, new data starts to become apparent. Life becomes more beautiful, interconnected and poetic. There is an increase in gratitude and a new richness in life. Suffering eases more quickly, people become more attracted to you and you to them.

 

One cannot know what they cannot observe, and often one's decisions limit what they are able to observe.

 

Burl,

 

My experiences confirms what you have said in the above post. One has to go through that path of theism to experience it but i also must say that i have found through experience that a simple definition of theism is just a point on the journey to truth. It is not the destination or end. There come a difficult and painful point in the journey where truth seeks to evolve past the point of our programmed limitations and we must grow past what we thought were certainties that we were fed and once accepted solely by faith. We are compelled to evolve beyond the comfortable herd instinct into new personal uncharted territory where past answers no longer make sense. In my experience many choose to remain in comfort in familiar surroundings and that is fine with me. Yet sooner or later if we want to continue the journey i think one will come to see that the limits of religion, dogma and doctrine of theism will no longer suffice and each will have to enter these unchartered waters for themselves.

 

Joseph

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bill, just getting caught up on some of these posts - I believe I get your point and, I guess, many people did accept Thor at one time. So we might have believed with you, but eventually, with our development, Thor would have gone the way of the theistic Supreme Being.

Edited by thormas
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bill,

 

An agnostic is not neutral as they have a POV: we don't know. The atheist says there is nothing to know, the person of faith believes there is something to know. None are neutral.

Also, can't it be said scientists have a horse in the race?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would think most of what we “truly know” (forgetting about all of the stringent qualifications we would have to put on the phrase “truly know”), is provisional at best. Something we truly know today may go up in smoke tomorrow. That’s also true of most of our belief systems, opinions, moral judgments and so on. Deconstruct it all I say, and see what lies at the heart of this dream.

 

Steve

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One cannot know what they cannot observe

 

This I think is a totally accurate statement Burl. The second part is also true.

 

But as to you first phrase ... if it cannot be observed it may as well not exist.

Edited by romansh
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I sometimes play a game and think about knowing.

ignoring solipsistic arguments like is everything a creation of my mind, am I result of a brain in a vat or is the universe a simulation?

 

What is the capital of Poland?

Warsaw?

Or is it Warszawa?

Is the simply a definitional game, am I claiming to know a definition or just agreeing with a definition?

Can I consider Krakow (Kraków) in some way to be the capital?

What exactly is Warsaw? It is continually changing. The Vistula River continually flows through it. Does the water suddenly cease to be Warsaw as it leaves the boundary?

Does Warsaw change as the boundaries of Poland wax and wane over the generations.

What about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?

 

I really do need to get a life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What Is Dark Energy?

 

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the universe.https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy."

 

Does science narrow our views or open us up to possibilities?

 

There are models with and without, so can we know something observing with different brains with different qualifications, limits and defects? We can think we know something, but that doesn't mean we know it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy."

 

Does science narrow our views or open us up to possibilities?

 

There are models with and without, so can we know something observing with different brains with different qualifications, limits and defects? We can think we know something, but that doesn't mean we know it.

Science narrows our views. The very definition of science is to objectively replace a false view by documenting one which is less false.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Science narrows our views. The very definition of science is to objectively replace a false view by documenting one which is less false.

 

That seems a strange way to look at it Burl - do you consider this 'narrowing' as a negative?

 

Whether it is technically 'narrowing' our views or not, objectively trimming the noise/myth/falsities allows us to broaden our thoughts around the important stuff rather than all the noise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That seems a strange way to look at it Burl - do you consider this 'narrowing' as a negative?

 

Whether it is technically 'narrowing' our views or not, objectively trimming the noise/myth/falsities allows us to broaden our thoughts around the important stuff rather than all the noise.

It can be either positive or negative but is usually both. Good experimental data is positive, but it also discourages the investigation of alterative hypotheses and complex interactions.

 

How everything weighs out varies with discipline and exactly what is being studied and how. Engineering is probably the most positive discipline and benefits greatly from this narrowing, but sociology is typically the opposite.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It can be either positive or negative but is usually both. Good experimental data is positive, but it also discourages the investigation of alterative hypotheses and complex interactions.

How everything weighs out varies with discipline and exactly what is being studied and how. Engineering is probably the most positive discipline and benefits greatly from this narrowing, but sociology is typically the opposite.

Of course - good science versus bad science. The good science narrows our views for the better and accuracy, whilst poor science discourages like you suggest. But maybe poor science shouldn't actually be called science then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Of course - good science versus bad science. The good science narrows our views for the better and accuracy, whilst poor science discourages like you suggest. But maybe poor science shouldn't actually be called science then.

"Publish or Perish" and the funding structures of post-docs guarantees that even good science winnows out creative scientists in favor of those who focus on fine tuning and micro-improvements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Publish or Perish" and the funding structures of post-docs guarantees that even good science winnows out creative scientists in favor of those who focus on fine tuning and micro-improvements.

Guarantees? I agree there's that risk in many instances, but I don't consider it a wholesale, lay down misere concerning all science.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Publish or Perish" and the funding structures of post-docs guarantees that even good science winnows out creative scientists in favor of those who focus on fine tuning and micro-improvements.

 

This I think is a valid criticism. But then as a society we may have brought this upon ourselves. In that we (private and public sectors) expect value for money from academia. And we insist on quantity more so than quality. Being a product of scientific academia I can't help thinking my education was good value for money; sadly not for the taxpayers that stood the bill.

 

Nevertheless, there are a whole bunch of beliefs that do not pass scrutiny when we hold them up to the light of evidence. And such it would be wise to hold these nonsensical beliefs in abeyance until there is some evidence that corroborates the belief.

 

And again, science is a process; it works not in years or decades but centuries. And even that will turn out to be a bit short I suspect.

 

We can throw away many of our training wheels of belief/faith at least when we have a little understanding the physical world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here goes ...

 

I believe knowledge is an ongoing process and that process is currently being limited by the assumption that traditional categories, vague as they may be, somehow exhaust the possibilities. It is time, I think, to creatively challenge tradition and stop asking traditional questions.

 

For example:

 

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions that would constrain me to regard mind and matter as mutually exclusive categories? Insert any of the traditional categories into this question and see what you can generate ... and no, I'm not asking for a literature review.

 

I think this is a good example

 

Find a good thesaurus and look up "mind", you will get something like this:

 

mind
mīnd/
noun
  1. 1.
    the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
    "as the thoughts ran through his mind, he came to a conclusion"
    synonyms: brain, intelligence, intellect, intellectual capabilities, brains,brainpower, wits, understanding, reasoning, judgment,sense, head; More
  2. 2.
    a person's intellect.
    "his keen mind"
    synonyms: brain, intelligence, intellect, intellectual capabilities, brains,brainpower, wits, understanding, reasoning, judgment,sense, head; More
    • a person's memory.
      "the company's name slips my mind"
      synonyms: memory, recollection
      "Justin's words stuck in her mind"
    • a person identified with their intellectual faculties.
      "he was one of the greatest minds of his time"
      synonyms: intellect, thinker, brain, scholar, academic
      "the country's great minds"
  3. 3.
    a person's attention.
    "I expect my employees to keep their minds on the job"
    synonyms: attention, thoughts, concentration, attentiveness
    "he kept his mind on the job"

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=mind+synonym&oq=mind+synonym&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.9471j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

Now all you have to do is go through all of this and highlight the necessary and sufficient conditions. Once you have done that, have a peer do the same and compare the results.

 

Now, you are on your way.

 

Enjoy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"I believe knowledge is an ongoing process and that process is currently being limited by the assumption that traditional categories, vague as they may be, somehow exhaust the possibilities. It is time, I think, to creatively challenge tradition and stop asking traditional questions."

 

Thanks great statement to continue the journey.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

terms of service