Thank you so much for your reply! What a fascinating post!
Where in the heck did you read *that* [I suspect your reaction on this thread - that there is only one "right" answer which is your own] into my posts?
I gathered it from your post 62 where you said among other things:
As such, understanding how people (including ourselves) "know what ain't so" is a critically important subject, and yet few disciplines actually pay much attention to it (except to exploit it, as by advertisers, magicians, con men, and propagandists). So the "skeptic" community came together to study that topic and provide information to the public about how not to get snookered (by yourself, even, not just by others). Skeptics are often disliked by just about every group, because they usually act as "party poopers" pointing out the flaws in various comfortable presumptions, but they're the experts on how and why people believe various things that "ain't so" -- and how to learn to think more critically (about other people's claims, as well as about your own beliefs) and how to use more reliable methods of learning and understanding.
You also objected:
me: For example, I completely disagree with you on the above and instead agree with betty boop. I cannot speak to the other cultures, but Judeo/Christian faith not only encourages discovery - it demands it by Scripture (Psalms 19 and Romans 1). you: That's a wonderfully idealistic and rosy view, but it is quite inconsistent with actual history. My synopsis is based on a long familiarity with the historical roots of empiricism, and I stand by it.
You are certainly welcome to your views. That is the point of this thread, trying to understand one another’s bases for knowing. In the above example you are evidently focused on the failure of man whereas I am focused on the exhortation of God to look and see – that is a fundamental difference between us which is good to know. Man’s failures I take as a given – we always “blow it” - but we must never quit trying to look and see.
No, I do not say "mere belief" *instead* of "simply saying 'belief'", I said "mere belief" to DISTINGUISH it from those beliefs which are *true*. As the passage above should have made reasonably clear, by "mere belief" I meant, as I clarified in the very next sentence, "[those] of our beliefs [...] which are false". In other words, *false* beliefs are not knowledge, they are "mere beliefs" -- they are *only* beliefs, and nothing more. They are those beliefs which do not reflect reality. Perhaps you misread my words due to *your* "prejudice"?
Indeed. That is the point. I read your paragraph at post 217 in light of your previous post at 62. At 217 you said, among other things:
This is a remarkably inaccurate description of the history of science in particular, or epistemology in general. If anything, "(1) and (2) [faith and revelation]" were obstacles to real learning for millennia (just as they continue to be in the Muslim world to this day). Furthermore, faith and evelation" led primarily not to "confidence" in the reliability of "the first 7", but to doubt in them -- both because "the first 7" sometimes led to conclusions contrary to the "accepted wisdom" arrived at via "faith and revelation", and because belief in the results of "faith and revelation" pointed towards a conclusion that the universe was *capricious* (i.e., operated at the whims of god), and was not *predictable* (i.e. mechanistic/deterministic enough for constant physical laws and processes to be discovered). When lightning bolts are hurled weapons of god's wrath, who's going to bother to examine them for regularities and the constant laws by which they invariably behave?
IOW, in looking at the sum of your posts, I perceive a prejudice on your part – that “knowledge” must pass the skeptics’ test and further, that the skeptics’ test would preclude many beliefs (faith and revelation). If that is your prejudice, then so be it. It’s good to know how Ichneumon classifies and values knowledge. Your post continued in objecting to my remarks that you are demanding proofs. And again I refer back to the previous two posts linked and excerpted above.
Please keep your small-minded notions of how God may be reached to yourself.
Sorry. No can do. It’s a package deal for a Christian – we cannot be silent when we are compelled to speak.
Yes, of course, your capacity exceeds my own and is in fact limitless.
The point is that the knowledge which is revealed by God through the indwelling Spirit cannot be obtained by human effort nor can it be contained within the mind of any man. Secrets and mysteries are revealed in glimpses as the need arises within the believer – usually to give testimony (almost never for personal “gain”). We share the mind of Christ – which is without any limitation at all. IOW, my pride is in Him, not myself – my “certainty” is in him, not myself. Conversely, those who do not abide in Him are limited by the boundaries of their own mind. They cannot share in the mind of a Person greater than every thing, every where and every when.
Of course, there are some Eastern mystics who would say they share in the collective consciousness of the universe. But, as I understand it, that sharing is by an advancing awareness in the universe itself, life/death and reincarnation, and not sharing the mind of another Person.
Notably, the creation is also described in Romans 8 as having a will. IMHO, this is what the Eastern mystics have sensed.
Please keep your small-minded notions of how God may be reached to yourself. That's Ich talking -- something which he is apparently unable to do without insulting someone.
I wonder if he is aware he has this problem, which is starkly evident to any fair-minded observer. Or if he is, whether it might be something in which he takes pride....
A-G, you are a saint not to respond in kind. Myself, I've come to the conclusion that it's pointless to try to have a dialog with a nabal. Though I do wish the nabal well in all things.
Man’s failures I take as a given – we always “blow it” - but we must never quit trying to look and see. In this connection it might be well to remember John Donne...
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but, oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
There are echoes here of everything from St. Paul's
Romans 7:14-25 ("...For I have the desire to do what is
good, but I cannot carry it out...Who will rescue me from
this body of death?...")
to Shakespeare's The Tempest: (*)
And now my charms are all o'erthrown
And what strength I have's mine own
Which is most faint; now t'is true
I must here be released by you
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults
As you from your crimes would pardon'd be
Let your indulgence set me free
There is the constant theme of insufficiency,
whether of the heart or of the mind,
such that we can see an ideal, a goal, a promise of completeness,
which aside from external assistance, must remain forever unconsumated.
Cheers!
(*) Oddly enough, I came across this in the liner notes to a Loreena McKennit CD...