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Justifications for faith

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jadeval
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Posted: Mon 14 Jan , 2008 10:50 pm
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Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:
Objective truth differs from subjective truth, and objectivity differs from subjectivity. Objective truth is an outer truth, and subjective truth is an inner truth.
Heidegger would question the division into inner and outer. Why divide everything up into two camps, two oppositions of a dualism? We are being-in-the-world, and that means contextualization of meaning, dispersion of signification, objectivity and subjectivity as derivative functions of being-in.

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jadeval
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Posted: Mon 14 Jan , 2008 11:19 pm
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Dave_LF wrote:
Sort of a side question: does anyone want to take a shot at defining the difference between natural and supernatural? This is something that I've never really gotten. Either a thing is a real part of the "all that is" or it isn't, right?
At its most basic level, I suppose I would think of "supernatural" as relating to things or events which are not consistent with the otherwise (and apparently) orderly and law-like behavior of things, or events for which there is no discernable (empirical?) cause.

Of course, science tends to assume a skeptical attitude as a matter of course, meaning that supernatural events or miracles are often assumed to be natural and explainable events in disguise (our ignorance causes them to appear as supernatural). More generally, if we were to assume that human reason as such could (or potentially could) deal with everything (i.e. whatever is not theoretically accessible to reason (whatever that is!) is not part of reality), then there would presumably be no supernatural "revelation" in the religious sense. So there is also a connection to human reason (in addition to empirical causality).

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Dave_LF
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Posted: Tue 15 Jan , 2008 1:26 pm
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But what I'd say there is, if a law of nature says something can't happen and it does (or says something must happen and it doesn't), it doesn't mean a supernatural miracle has occurred; it means the law was either wrong or insufficiently general. My suspicion is that people just say "natural" when they think they understand something and "supernatural" when they don't. I guess if one's view of the universe is that it's something like the Matrix with gods in place of aliens you could say that a natural event is one that initiates within the matrix code itself in accordance with its own programming and a supernatural event is one that is deliberately initiated by an outside alien typing commands on the keyboard. But even in that case, it would mean the human idea of the universe was too small, and there would be a bigger unity that encompassed the diversity of both the matrix and the world outside it that all events would fit into.


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Voronwë_the_Faithful
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Posted: Tue 15 Jan , 2008 2:50 pm
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jadeval wrote:
Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:
Objective truth differs from subjective truth, and objectivity differs from subjectivity. Objective truth is an outer truth, and subjective truth is an inner truth.
Heidegger would question the division into inner and outer. Why divide everything up into two camps, two oppositions of a dualism? We are being-in-the-world, and that means contextualization of meaning, dispersion of signification, objectivity and subjectivity as derivative functions of being-in.
Which explains why I've always disliked Heidegger. :Wooper:


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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Tue 15 Jan , 2008 3:00 pm
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"Natural" from within the system. "Supernatural" influence from without the system.

Sounds right to me.

Hey, before you go Iavas, I've got another book recommendation for you: "Distant Mental Influence" by William Braud. It's a compilation of a bunch of peer reviewed scientific papers about experiments done on the sorts of things I've been talking about. I bought it last year but haven't finished it yet as it keeps putting me to sleep. :( Seriously. The author is a deadly dull writer and I can't seem to get through even the introduction without falling asleep. But I did pick up the book last night and skimmed through the various experiments, and the things they found out are quite interesting. So, scientists do work on this stuff, and are finding that it is real.

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Dave_LF
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Posted: Tue 15 Jan , 2008 3:54 pm
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MariaHobbit wrote:
This cut and paste thing is gonna get quite convoluted! :D
Yes; I'll try to respond without too many quote bubbles. I think there is plenty of room for an approach to belief that is pragmatic in the sense of "I don't know why, but this works so I'll keep doing it". That's how understanding begins, after all. What I shy away from is coming up with explanations for those things and then believing those explanations as opposed to just keeping them in mind as possibilities. IMO, ideas spring from intuition, but belief should require proof. If no proof is possible, then there should be no belief either, just hunches.

As for the other type of pragmatic belief, the "It might not be true, but I'll believe it because it makes me happy" type, I shy away from that. You compare it to anesthetic during surgery. There is some fairness to that--there probably are times when some possibility is so awful it's better just not to think about it--but the idea of believing in a pleasant falsehood as opposed to disbelieving or not considering an unpleasant truth makes me very uncomfortable. I don't think I could every willingly accept it for myself, though I might concede that it's ok for other people to do as a last resort.

A "strawman", incidentally, is what you call it when a debate opponent attacks a weak caricature of your position instead of your actual position. This: "the faith that nothing that could not be measured by science was real" would be a strawman depiction of the Empiricist's position, though if you only meant it as a description of what you personally used to believe it would be a different matter.

About the nerve/muscle connection; it's not something I can describe in detail off the top of my head anymore (though I'm almost sure I had to on a bio test once upon a time). I'm not somewhere I can do research right now, but I'll come back to it later if someone else doesn't beat me to it. But I doubt it will affect your point. The smartest person in the world can't answer "why" more than 5ish layers deep before having to say "that's just the way it is".


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jadeval
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Posted: Tue 15 Jan , 2008 8:56 pm
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Dave_LF wrote:
But what I'd say there is, if a law of nature says something can't happen and it does (or says something must happen and it doesn't), it doesn't mean a supernatural miracle has occurred; it means the law was either wrong or insufficiently general. My suspicion is that people just say "natural" when they think they understand something and "supernatural" when they don't. I guess if one's view of the universe is that it's something like the Matrix with gods in place of aliens you could say that a natural event is one that initiates within the matrix code itself in accordance with its own programming and a supernatural event is one that is deliberately initiated by an outside alien typing commands on the keyboard. But even in that case, it would mean the human idea of the universe was too small, and there would be a bigger unity that encompassed the diversity of both the matrix and the world outside it that all events would fit into.
True, well, "supernatural" comes from the days when people thought that the aliens were God and that other outside world was the ultimate reality of God or whatever. In that case, we might presume that there is a kind of absolute barrier to our knowledge of God and heaven etc. Or, alternatively, if we are all a bunch of experiments in a giant virtual reality game, and if the aliens are the controllers, then intervention on their part to supervene the otherwise regular order might be considered "supernatural" IF it is somehow fundamentally impossible for human reason or human perception to come into contact with the origins of these interventions.

It seems to be rooted in what we can or cannot understand in principle as human beings. Yes, I suppose reality is one insofar as it is all reality. But how much of it can we access and understand? Many physicists tend to think that humans can potentially understand everything the universe has to offer. But why? There's no way my dog can understand Einstein's relativity, so why should we think humans can do it all?

We might even want to refrain from calling that part of reality which we can't understand "reality"... then again, how would we ever know what not to call it when we can't even really get a grasp on what or "where" it is? You pointed out the skeptical tendency of science to "keep looking" when things don't make sense... perhaps this tendency of the scientific search points to the fact that there is no "reality" which we can't understand (i.e. if there is then, for all intents and purposes, it isn't reality). In other words, our practice of science tends to say "screw what we can't understand, it's a closed system and we're going for broke."

On the other hand, what DO we really understand or know? Even our theories and "laws" are really just mental constructs designed to allow us to accurately predict the way things behave. It is questionable whether we can ever know or understand the being of things themselves. At the most basic level, everything might be called "supernatural" insofar as its very existence or being is not understandable or accessible by us. And what about "natural"? We might reserve that for what we "know", which seems to be the ordinary, "surface-level" interactions and behaviors of things... miracles come from the bottom up for sure (being itself is a mystery), but I'm not sure about from the top down (raising from the dead seems suspect).

Last edited by jadeval on Tue 15 Jan , 2008 9:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Tue 15 Jan , 2008 9:11 pm
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Dave wrote:
What I shy away from is coming up with explanations for those things and then believing those explanations as opposed to just keeping them in mind as possibilities. IMO, ideas spring from intuition, but belief should require proof. If no proof is possible, then there should be no belief either, just hunches.
People use suspension of disbelief all the time for entertainment purposes. Suspension of disbelief is critical for the sort of mental gymnastics I've been dabbling with. If you believe that the finger ring "trick" could not possibly work, then it won't. If you suspend your disbelief and have *faith* that it will work, then it really does work, at least it did for me. Scepticism in this sort of thing is self-fulfilling, for some reason. Belief has to come first. :shrug:

There's an even more impressive "ki trick" that isn't on that website, but I saw it in a book and we tried it and it worked. You lie down, imagine that you are as stiff as a board- head to toes- and then have two people pick you up, one by the head, one by the feet. The body stays completely rigid and holds its stiffened form despite such inadequate support. It doesn't even hurt or anything. It's really weird, but even my kids could do it without any training or preparation. They just believed that they could, and they did.

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Dave_LF
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Posted: Fri 25 Jan , 2008 9:35 pm
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The 3 alternatives, as practiced in the grocery store:
http://www.tweebiscuit.net/wp-content/u ... ophies.jpg


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halplm
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Posted: Fri 25 Jan , 2008 9:49 pm
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I don't see those as alternatives... why can't you have all three?

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eärendil
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Posted: Wed 14 May , 2008 5:46 am
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you know for some reason I was attracted to this thread at this unreasonable time by some things that are coming to pass in my life. I have read most of it though would not pretend to have understood everything (sometimes hard to read with tears in your eyes :roll:).

I may have missed it if someone already said so. But Iavas what are your scientific reasons and others not to believe?
Nietzsche said that at the beginning of every scientific truth there is the firm irrational belief that this is the truth (and truth does evolve).

When I was in my last year in high school, some students were always mocking me about the fact that I was raised a Christian and was wearing my baptism medal around my neck. That I was stupid and they kept asking me what my proofs were that God existed. After trying to answer, quite lamely I must say because how can you explain the ways of the heart, I felt really bad. How was it that I could not prove my point? But then I realised that they did not have any more proofs that He did not exist. For indeed what are the proofs that he does not exist?

Who are we to decide? We don't even grasp the concept of universe. We think we do but we don't. We don't know whether it expands or whether it is destined to shrink and explode in another big bang.

There is one thing that I have learnt over the years; in faith there is always free will, liberty of a choice. You can choose to believe or not to. You can decide that you doubt His existence because you are going through a rough time. Or maybe he does not exist but is it hurting so much to decide to live with the hope that those who pass away are in a better place? Is it hurting so much to think that living by some moral and ethical principles is a good thing? Is it hurting so much to live by the rule that "our differences are a wealth that we should nurture"?

What happens is always the choice of mankind. There have been mistakes, extremely wrong ones but they were always orchestrated by men (or women that is not my point).
Now you said that the death of someone can be justified by the greater good. What is the greater good? The Shoah was justified by Hitler as for the greater good of the Aryan race... I don't know...

Well random thoughts of a tired mind who is currently troubled because how fair is it that my best friend's dad is condemned to die within the next few days? Cancer, what a frickin' plight!!

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I Endure in order to Reflect
Transcending Order
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Who can say if I've been changed for the better, but
Because I knew you,
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ToshoftheWuffingas
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Posted: Wed 14 May , 2008 7:55 am
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:hug:

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Wed 14 May , 2008 2:48 pm
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:hug:

And I thought that was a beautiful post, Earendil.


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WampusCat
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Posted: Wed 14 May , 2008 3:37 pm
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A beautiful post indeed. And it's not fair that your friend's dad is dying of cancer, any more than it was fair that my husband died of cancer. There is no fairness, no logic to who lives and who dies. But there is peace, comfort and even joy in the perception that God is with us, no matter what.

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