I’m in a strange place: very conservative, but not Christian
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Wrangler, if you look all around you closely, you’ll see that just about everyone gets ideologically defensive. They get defensive in politics, religion, even science. Yes, even mathematicians disagree with one another. The greatest minds, philosophers, etc. disagree. If people are so convinced of their conceptual fortress, why do they get triggered so easily? Why even have intellectual disputes if we think we know? Maybe deep down they know their conceptual fortress is only a house of cards that could potentially come down easily therefore justifying their defensiveness. People would rather have survival, sanity, and comfort over the truth. Fake fronts of knowing are put up in the form of beliefs, assumptions, speculations, theories, hearsay, deductions, narratives, ideology, guesses, intuitions. They are all highly fallible and partial, twisted to fit the needs of the ego.
This is why I say that I know nothing.
This is why I say that I know nothing.
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Wrangler
Well-Known Member
No. They are power seekers.
Did you read my post where I explained how all action is an act of faith?
One does not have to know it all to take the next step in faith to make life better.
That's opposite from the scientific method, which is to develop a belief (called a premise or hypothesis) and deliberately shake it. (This is called hypothesis testing in science. In religion it's called walking in faith). Logic has it's practical limit. Not everything can be logically proven. There must be some starting point that is taken on faith to be true.
Again, it is not a coincidence that science flourished in Christian countries and floundered were nations do not have a historcial Christiology.
Do you notice the absolute nature of your statement? There are absolutes. Keep thinking it through, my friend. Which of these statements is inherently self-contradictory:
A. There are absolutes.
B. There are no absolutes.
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And the fact that if I say something like “there are no absolutes” being a self contradictory statement just shows the limits of the mind and language. The mind ultimately contradicts itself, it is fallible. All I can say is I don’t know.
Society creates an illusion of knowing; religion, science, history, school, professors, books, pundits, experts, leaders, philosophers, public intellectuals, bosses, businesses, politicians, documentaries you watch, Wikipedia that you search, google. All of this creates the social matrix. The depth of mankind’s ignorance is never acknowledged by mankind itself. This is the basic epistemic folly of mankind. We have no one to call us out on our bullshit.
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Wrangler
Well-Known Member
That's one possibility. Here is my insight.
People are not automatons, functioning purely on logic. People are emotional, filled with prejudices and biases. I have developed an axiom, when it comes to politics, everyone is biased. Most people are not deep thinkers. You and I obviously are deep thinkers.
When one is confronted with not having thought through their world view (be it philosophy based or religion based), the natural reaction is to get defensive. This nature is ego driven. Therefore, many religions have as a starting basic tenet, the destruction of the self, the submission of the ego.
There is a verse in the Bible that reads, "To whom much is given, much is expected." It has always weighed heavily on me. Our divine mission, is not to tear down other people's conceptual fortress. Our job is to practically bring people to reconciliation, to find the light, to be the salt, to find love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
This is the ultimate test of a world view. Does it work? Does it being these things in practice? If not, keep looking. Shake your faith. Embrace the null hypothesis. (I hope I'm making sense).
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
I have no idea what you are saying but it sounds like an article of faith, that despite your mind and language leading you to a conclusion, you reject it in favor of this belief.
Anything the mind concludes is fallible. You can say that is also an absolute statement and an article of faith, there is no end to mind games. It only thinks it knows whilst going around in circles.
Society and culture pressures us to make up shit that we actually don’t know. And not knowing is treated as a weakness, as if knowing is trivial and easy and you should just blindly accept the things that humanity already knows. It’s treated as though not knowing isn’t even an option. However, not knowing is often the best option. It’s often an option that’s rarely recognized and utilized. Fundamentally people are very conformist and too lazy to question from scratch. People just adopt whatever ideas work for their survival in the time and society they’re living in since most survival takes place collectively for humans. This is both a blessing and a curse because we can all live in our conceptual castle. If I invent the fiction of money and you invent the fiction of money, then we can both treat money as this real thing. On one hand we construct this abstraction called money and use it to trade goods and services much more easily than we otherwise could and on the other hand it opens pandoras boxes as far as self deception, trickery, and shenanigans. We can now manipulate this abstract concept of money, we can confuse it with something real and tangible in the world, the concept can get disconnected from real and tangible things, then we can have all sorts of manipulations of stock markets and currencies, inflation..you can make money as quickly as you can lose money. You can print more money, with the press of a keystroke. The ancient skeptics, the pyronians tried to tell us that knowing was impossible. However, in the western intellectual tradition we didn’t take them seriously.
Mankind is lost in fantasy. Even science, even mathematicians and scientists are lost in fantasy. Science is a conceptual fantasy, no different than religion. It just has the flavor of something objective, tangible, or material. It’s conceptual just like mathematics..and we forget that. The ego hates uncertainty, it would rather have a false sense of certainty than to stand in a place of “I don’t know”.
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Wrangler
Well-Known Member
In denying absolutes, you have to assert them (there is no end to mind games). Hence, that absolutes exist is axiomatic.
Just because the mind is capable of error does not mean it is not capable of arriving at a valid conclusion.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Do you mean ADMITTING you do not know is often the best option?
How can you know what is the best option if you do not know? See the epistemological quicksand you are in, preventing the basis for rational action?
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
I figured you would retreat to abstractions to make your case rather than practical knowledge, one's own experience. I think, therefore, I am.
Dropship
Well-Known Member
Jesus said "I am the way.." therefore anybody who thinks there are other paths can't be true Christians, and this is the only path they'll be heading down..:)-
Admitting you do not know is often the best option. How can I know it’s the best option if I don’t know? Because by admitting I don’t know, there is absolute certainty. If I claim that I know there is a god or that there is no god, there is no absolute certainty there. There is always that small chance or doubt that I could be wrong all along. What one would consider to be a valid conclusion is one that either gives them comfort or helps them survive.
Not knowing is the only thing I know with absolute certainty. Everything else that I think I may know is merely partial, sheer conformity. Someone hands me a fork and asks me what it is and I say, “Simple, it’s a fork.” I’m only saying that because of conformity, what I’ve been taught. I can go on subdividing what the fork is into other concepts such as a utensil, a piece of metal, etc. they are just more concepts of other concepts. This is why I won’t hesitate to say that science is a conceptual fantasy, just like religion is.
Practical knowledge is there to aid in comfort and/or survival. The more we think we know, the more we actually don’t know. Why is it that even the most practical minds in this world disagree with one another? As I’ve said, there is much contention even among mathematicians and scientists.
And regarding your A or B question, saying there are no absolutes is a paradox. Saying there are absolutes however, is not. But then that gives way for the mind to continue churning on and asking more questions, seeking more answers, then asking questions about those answers. It keeps wanting to know because it really doesn’t know. Logic is useful but other than that it is limited. Absolutes cannot be proven if you believe they exist (even though that’s an absolute statement).
Consider that all of life is a paradox. Consider the possibility that the truth is that you simply don’t know.
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Wrangler
Well-Known Member
You are playing a mind game with yourself. Being intellectually lazy is not a virtue. And you contradict yourself again. If there is absolute certainty, then there are absolutes.
It is clear that you are relying on epistemological quicksand as a fire wall against righteous action.
Make a blessed day.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
So what? The test for humans is to act despite not knowing everything. To walk in faith.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
That's not true. The contradictions are emerging now.
Why does it matter to you that experts disagree?
They might disagree about nuance but seldom the basics. Surivival experts will tell you priorities are shelter, water and fire over food. Health experts will tell diet (environmental interaction) and exercise are the keys to good health. What matters is what you do with the knowledge you have.
An observation, you keep attempting to turn this conversation away from you and the burden on you to act on what you know. The word game you play - with yourself - is that you don't "really" know with sufficient certainty to act. God is not an abstraction but an intimate, personal God.
For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11
Acting despite not knowing everything is one thing, thinking that you know everything without admitting that you don’t know is another. The religious will never say that they don’t know whether there is a god or not. Instead they have the origin of the universe and what happens after death all figured out already.
It’s quite the opposite. Being intellectually lazy would be not using your intellect to see its own limitations. You are wanting a definite answer to fulfill your need for comfort when there is none. You are not comfortable with paradoxes. Kids are notorious for asking ‘Why?’ without end. If you tried asking “Why” at every turn, you would eventually end up admitting that you don’t know. Knowledge is second order, it is always ABOUT something. Being on the other hand, is first order. If you pick up any object, all you have are the raw sensations before you conceptualize that object. When Descartes said, “I think therefore I am”, I don’t think he was so foolish as to believe that thinking was necessary for being. There are many moments when we don’t think and we still exist. At best thinking is an indicator that there is being, but not a prerequisite. Rocks don’t think and they exist, for example. When you’re unconscious, everything you’ve ever known melts away yet you still exist.
If you believe there are absolutes, then you would have to prove it-which you can’t. For example you can’t say the sky is blue as an absolute truth because to someone else it may not be blue. ‘Objective reality’ is a conceptual fantasy. ‘Righteous’ action is not objective because what you consider to be righteous, will not be considered righteous by others. I think you are playing a game with yourself by attempting to impose some sort of absolute truth or objective reality when there is none. You are not the only one who thinks they have the absolute truth.
I am well aware that saying “There are no absolutes” is self contradictory, so when I say that..I say it loosely..as an understanding not as just another absolute truth. It’s the best language can do, eventually it falls apart logically because logic is limited.
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People disagree on the basics all the time. You would think there are only two genders but half this country believes otherwise. Then I come in and say that all gender terms (the 70+ genders and the classical 2 genders) are all man made concepts we have been taught. Both sides are wrong.
When you look at a woman for example, saying that she is a woman would be partial, not absolute truth. She is much more than a woman, she’s a life form, a human being, etc. it never ends. In fact no single word can truly encapsulate ultimate reality.
Postmodernism scares the living hell out of the religious and for good reason. Mankind merely pretends there are absolutes. Any framework of reality is just a tool to navigate it. The framework itself belongs to reality, reality doesn’t belong to the framework. Frameworks are superimposed on the reality that’s already there well before the framework. Mankind agrees on a framework and therefore thinks it’s absolute truth…that is until it comes tumbling down like a house of cards.
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