I walk in the path of Jesus....which gets a little wet when taking long walks on short piers.Hmmm... It makes me feel more grounded.
Years ago I decided to seriously subject my beliefs to intellectually honest scrutiny. I learned about my biases and how my understanding of reality had skewed my experiences, perceptions and interactions with it. Upon learning this, I then attempted to toss out any known biases and ideas that didn't yield useful or accurate results. Supernatural beliefs turned out to be one of those things I couldn't justify a real use for, and they didn't accurately reflect reality, so I kicked em to the curb.
Getting as close to understanding objective reality through the limited means I possess turns out to be something I have taken a great interest in. I'm not perfect, and I'm limited in my subjective understanding, but I have a better grasp of what's going on than I did before, and I find that exciting!
A reality based in the ideas of substance monism isn't a reality without wonder. Day to day life is already a thing of wonder right now. All of existence teams with complexity that we are only begining to scratch the surface of, and there is no end in sight to the things we can learn from it. I think that's pretty cool!
I can still live a "spiritual" life without believing in literal spirits. Mastery of the human spirit, of my self and my life, is far more rewarding than what I had in the past. For the first time I know what it means to be happy in a healthy, fulfilling way. In strengthening myself, I can more positively impact those in my life.
Now, everything I have said here only applies to me. These are my experiences, and you may have come upon a different conclusion based on the things you have experienced in life. Everyone walks their own path and comes away with something different. That's what it means to experience life subjectively, and every one of us deals with factors no one else will ever be able to truly comprehend.
We can only empathize with our own ideas of what we think other people are thinking.
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No Magic
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
It's my hallucination....I'll believe it if I want to (though several other hallucinations seem to disagree).
I wonder if the ability to perceive the divine is imagined? Surely the divine would have told us that by now.
So, if someone observes nature (volcano), then infers facts from the volcano (angry God demanding a virgin sacrifice). Is it possible that our idea of nature might be flawed? Is it possible that Atlas is not holding up the earth and there is no tortoise holding up Atlas?
No. There's a difference between jumping to conclusions and inference.
My point was that since what is and isn't "nature" is inferred from what we see actually happen, if we had proper reasons to think that God or miracles were real, God and miracles would be considered part of nature.
Hmmm... What would be your example of a short pier?
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Kind of weird to wonder if that majority of humanity is miswired.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
We each see only a little. Incredible species that we are, we rely on our senses and our minds to interpret information in ways that make it manageable. Too much light would blind us.
If things came about through eons of random(ish) mutation via evolution, there would certainly be some present miswiring if it didn't prevent people from reproducing, it seems to me. Neural pathways we used to need for survival become stagnant vestigial leftovers from a time when we utilized them in the past, much like the appendix.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Web MD says, "Researchers deduce that the appendix is designed to protect good bacteria in the gut. That way, when the gut is affected by a bout of diarrhea or other illness that cleans out the intestines, the good bacteria in the appendix can repopulate the digestive system and keep you healthy."
Why do humans have an Appendix?
Evolutionary remnant
Although initially it was thought that the appendix does not have any function in humans, evolutionary theories suggest that it might have played a role in digestion of food. A great deal of evidence suggests that the appendix is a vestigial or evolutionary remnant, which means the appendix of our ancestors served a specific purpose.
Another example of a vestigial remnant.
The auricular, or extrinsic, muscles of the human ear include the anterior auricular muscle, the superior auricular muscle, and the posterior auricular muscle. Together, they control the pinna, or the visible part of the ear. In many mammals, ear movements produced by the auricular muscles play a role in sound localization and the expression of emotion, but in humans, the muscles are considered
nonfunctional. Darwin proposed that humans effectively capture sounds by positioning the head to receive them, thereby compensating for the loss of or eliminating the need for the auricular muscles. Through repeated effort, however, humans can recover some ability to wiggle their ears.
Here are some more examples.
7 Vestigial Features of the Human Body
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
But "knowing" does imply that you believe it is right.
And how can a person KNOW something that is wrong?
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
"knowing" means that you are sure of something beyond questioning it. People "know" stuff all the time that they are mistaken about. Being sure of something is not always the best indicator that it is factual. For example there are some few people who just "know" that the earth is flat. For them it is beyond question. they are still wrong.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
In another thread I've pointed out that that's just having a really strongly held belief about something. It's not actually "knowing."
Of course I believe it to be right. But that does not entail it being right.
For instance, everybody knew the laws of gravity in the 19th century, everybody believed they were right, yet they were wrong. Therefore, it is possible to know something wrong.
Ciao
- viole
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Knowing is a verb. Therefore to know is subjective.
Knowledge itself, is a noun so a possessive case may apply. A person can claim to have knowledge.
But ownership is illusory, as the universe is characterised by events, not things. All things are mutable, they are merely activities in progress; that which we hold is changing all the time, as are the hands, or minds, in which we hold the thing, be it knowledge or a wedding ring.
So we can never really be said either to know anything, nor to have true knowledge of anything; but we can aspire to knowledge, we can move towards it.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
However, if we take it that only true things can be known, then no one can ever know something that is false. They can only have a belief that they are very sure of.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
So all any of us have by way of knowledge, is a working hypothesis which will almost certainly prove eventually to be flawed?
Well, in that case knowledge is applicable only to analytic propositions. Tautologies, basically. Like all bachelors are not married.
Because if you move away from it, you can never be sure that you will never meet a black swan. e.g. a violation of the speed of light that would invalidate my knowledge of electromagnetism.
Ergo, there would be no knowledge. Everything, apart from analytical propositions, would be a belief.
However, I am not ready to make that step, since I know (or is it believe?) that knowledge and belief belong to different categories.
Ciao
- viole
Fundamentally flawed? Who can say? Maybe. Or maybe we can only know things within a certain range of applicability, or approximation. For instance, Newton is fundamentally wrong, but works very well at the NASA. Less so in case of the GPS system. Could be that we find something that will turn general relativity fundamentally wrong (which is probably the case, anyway), but it can still be used reliably in astrophysics or cosmology.
Yet, even with these limitations and uncertainties, I find it silly to demote all those things to the rank of mere beliefs. They are more than that.
Ciao
- viole