Manoah
Member
One theoretical mathematics professor broke down knowledge into three styles:
Euclidean, based on traditional logic and reasoning—which is always consistent, as in classical physics.
Heuristics, or mental short cuts, also based on clear principles but not always applied consistently, for example in law, languages, or playing chess.
Finally, intuition, based on vast amounts of practice and experience, accounting for most skills, arts, and sciences.
If we also factor in Aristotle’s ideas that we communicate through pathos and ethos (emotion and values) as much as through logos (sheer evidence and logic), finding a path to knowledge may be more complex than we sometimes consider.
One of my half-baked thoughts is to someday make a collection of useful principles for considering religion and spirituality. Like telephone numbers that were designed with seven digits to accommodate short-term memory, I am keeping this initial list to 5. These are 5 keys I want to consider as I scan the landscape of many beliefs and groups of believers.
1. Conservation
2. Partial truth
3. Collective truth
4. Freedom
5. Dualities and dialogue
1. Conservation: Jesus and Buddha came not to destroy but to fulfill the law.
Much like teenagers who feel a rebellious extreme as they learn to be independent, we can feel like rebels when growing in knowledge and thinking differently. There may be a temptation to toss out all of the old ideas or to throw out the baby with the bath water. But the when Jesus and Buddha brought radical change to their respective religions, they showed respect for what came before, Jesus even claiming to bring a further step or completion to what the old covenants and laws intended.
2. Partial truth: We see dimly.
The Apostle Paul wrote that we see dimly as in a dark mirror, even if one day we will see more fully. In arguing that love is more important than knowledge, he argued that we only know in part. That we are dealing in mysteries may be obvious, but sometimes our dim revelations and insights bring pride or divisions instead of love, the actual purpose of real knowledge. Paul said, “Love builds up. Knowledge puffs up.”
Rumi said that “Love is the astrolabe of the soul.”
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
A lover may hanker after this love or that love,
But at the last he is drawn to the KING of love.
However much we describe and explain love,
When we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.
3. Collective truth: We need the group, universals, or consensus reality.
As a converse side to the partial truth seen by the blind men touching different parts of the elephant, perhaps when we get together and compare notes, we see a bigger picture. We balance and tune one another, to say the least. Both critical thinking and synthesis of ideas work among a network of folk—whether high culture or low culture.
4. Freedom: Knowledge requires individual thought and diversity.
The collective knowledge devolves into group think and cold legalism if there is no room for dissent and investigation. The movie World War Z dramatized the principle of the “10th Man” as the strange plague attacked Jerusalem, and the tenth person was sent out to check out a minority report, no matter how crazy, that dead people were walking. Pluralism allows for outliers and boundary breakers to influence the status quo, to think outside the collective box.
5. Duality and dialogue: An attitude of open discussion
Many polarities—even within like-minded groups—are necessary tensions that need to be held in balance or key components that need to be used in combination: arts and sciences, justice and mercy, or action and passivity. Many religions recognize God as both transcendent and immanent—beyond knowing yet close to each of us: the extremes of such paradoxes cannot always be held in view simultaneously and holding one necessary emphasis can lead to division even within oneself in a kind of cognitive dissonance.
I’ll close with one example of a never-ending dualism, perhaps discussed in part by Emerson in his famous essay on “Conservatism and Liberalism”—tradition and change that seem as eternal as the river of Heraclitus.
On the one hand, we need order and law, to maintain consistency. On the other hand, structure can sometimes lead us to write things in stone and become legalistic. The images and rules necessary for one time and place get applied too far and wide. Therefore, some theologians have noted we seem to receive “progressive revelation,” expanding understanding that the temples build of stone represent the living temples of humanity or that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.
As Augustine said, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love.”
Video version here: A Blended Path
Euclidean, based on traditional logic and reasoning—which is always consistent, as in classical physics.
Heuristics, or mental short cuts, also based on clear principles but not always applied consistently, for example in law, languages, or playing chess.
Finally, intuition, based on vast amounts of practice and experience, accounting for most skills, arts, and sciences.
If we also factor in Aristotle’s ideas that we communicate through pathos and ethos (emotion and values) as much as through logos (sheer evidence and logic), finding a path to knowledge may be more complex than we sometimes consider.
One of my half-baked thoughts is to someday make a collection of useful principles for considering religion and spirituality. Like telephone numbers that were designed with seven digits to accommodate short-term memory, I am keeping this initial list to 5. These are 5 keys I want to consider as I scan the landscape of many beliefs and groups of believers.
1. Conservation
2. Partial truth
3. Collective truth
4. Freedom
5. Dualities and dialogue
1. Conservation: Jesus and Buddha came not to destroy but to fulfill the law.
Much like teenagers who feel a rebellious extreme as they learn to be independent, we can feel like rebels when growing in knowledge and thinking differently. There may be a temptation to toss out all of the old ideas or to throw out the baby with the bath water. But the when Jesus and Buddha brought radical change to their respective religions, they showed respect for what came before, Jesus even claiming to bring a further step or completion to what the old covenants and laws intended.
2. Partial truth: We see dimly.
The Apostle Paul wrote that we see dimly as in a dark mirror, even if one day we will see more fully. In arguing that love is more important than knowledge, he argued that we only know in part. That we are dealing in mysteries may be obvious, but sometimes our dim revelations and insights bring pride or divisions instead of love, the actual purpose of real knowledge. Paul said, “Love builds up. Knowledge puffs up.”
Rumi said that “Love is the astrolabe of the soul.”
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
A lover may hanker after this love or that love,
But at the last he is drawn to the KING of love.
However much we describe and explain love,
When we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.
3. Collective truth: We need the group, universals, or consensus reality.
As a converse side to the partial truth seen by the blind men touching different parts of the elephant, perhaps when we get together and compare notes, we see a bigger picture. We balance and tune one another, to say the least. Both critical thinking and synthesis of ideas work among a network of folk—whether high culture or low culture.
4. Freedom: Knowledge requires individual thought and diversity.
The collective knowledge devolves into group think and cold legalism if there is no room for dissent and investigation. The movie World War Z dramatized the principle of the “10th Man” as the strange plague attacked Jerusalem, and the tenth person was sent out to check out a minority report, no matter how crazy, that dead people were walking. Pluralism allows for outliers and boundary breakers to influence the status quo, to think outside the collective box.
5. Duality and dialogue: An attitude of open discussion
Many polarities—even within like-minded groups—are necessary tensions that need to be held in balance or key components that need to be used in combination: arts and sciences, justice and mercy, or action and passivity. Many religions recognize God as both transcendent and immanent—beyond knowing yet close to each of us: the extremes of such paradoxes cannot always be held in view simultaneously and holding one necessary emphasis can lead to division even within oneself in a kind of cognitive dissonance.
I’ll close with one example of a never-ending dualism, perhaps discussed in part by Emerson in his famous essay on “Conservatism and Liberalism”—tradition and change that seem as eternal as the river of Heraclitus.
On the one hand, we need order and law, to maintain consistency. On the other hand, structure can sometimes lead us to write things in stone and become legalistic. The images and rules necessary for one time and place get applied too far and wide. Therefore, some theologians have noted we seem to receive “progressive revelation,” expanding understanding that the temples build of stone represent the living temples of humanity or that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.
As Augustine said, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love.”
Video version here: A Blended Path
