The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

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Eaglerising
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Eaglerising »

Felix, yes I am aware of what Krishnamurti has said. It is also wise to observe the difference between thought and the absence of it so that you can recognize when you are dealing with thought and not get caught up in its rhetoric.
Nick_A
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Nick_A »

Eaglerising wrote:Is belief necessary? What are the limitations of belief? Opposing beliefs create conflict. On the other hand, the unknown is free of conflict. Is the absence of belief (not knowing) a viable alternative to believing? In other words, is there an advantage to approaching everything from the "unknown" rather than the "known"?
IMO we all need belief. If we didn't believe we will be alive in an hour, why wash the dishes? The trouble begins when we become attached to beliefs. The Eastern religions all warn about attachments and in Christianity the rich man cannot enter heaven since he is attached to his riches. What does it take for a religious believer attached to their beliefs and an atheist denier to be free of attachment to denial? The problem is neither belief or doubt but emotional attachment to either dominating our personality. How do we free ourselves from debilitating emotional attachments?
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Eaglerising
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Eaglerising »

Nick_A, Belief is reinforced thought or knowledge. Knowledge, thought, and belief are in the same field of existence and are unaware of anything outside its field of existence such as understanding or consciousness. Thought is very protective of what it knows and believes. Thus, it does everything it can to protect and defend them. Thus, it causes you to believe you need belief.

Thought is unable to view things as a possibility. It is also unable to acknowledge it doesn't know what it thinks or believes it knows. And, it sees no sense in examining that which it knows.

Attentively observing the difference between thought and the absence of it allows us to become aware of consciousness. Upon seeing and understanding kthe limitations of thought, we rely upon consciousness rather than thought. Consciousness allows question and examine what we think we know and believe.
Moreno
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Moreno »

Eaglerising wrote:Moreno, now others and I know do you disagree with me. Like most people, you defend your perception rather then question and examine it.
To me this seems like an inadequate response to what I wrote, since you do not engage with what I wrote and further an assumption about me and my process - which is ad hom and also an unjustified assumptions. 2) I am not sure what the point of saying 'now you and others know that I disagree with you'.
That is understandable because thought cannot observe or examine itself. Everything needs something different from itself to see, observe and examine itself. You cannot observe your face without some type of mirror. Your hand needs something other than itself to see itself. This indicates that thought and consciousness are different.
If this is a response to the points I raised, please explain how.

-- Updated May 5th, 2017, 4:47 am to add the following --

Further it seems to me I could just as easily assert that you defended your perception rather than questioning and examining it.
Eaglerising
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Eaglerising »

Moreno, I understand how you may feel as you do about my responses. I realize you are a curious and intelligent individual. It is only natural to want to discuss things with others who are relying upon knowledge and thought. Unfortunately, a millions or words or thousands of books cannot provide you with want you want from me. The reason being is understanding isn't transferable from one person to another like knowledge. It can only be gained through observation, examination, and experience.

The whole purpose of this initial post was to point out the limitations of knowledge and experience the difference between knowledge and understanding. I am not knocking knowledge, because it is a useful tool, when you DO NOT EXCEED the limitations of knowledge. You don't try to repair a boat with a can opener because you understand its limitations. It is the lack of understanding the limitations of knowledge that cause people to exceed them. People's dependence upon thought, knowledge, and belief prevents them from experiencing a more viable alternative. The alternative is vastly different and unobtainable by knowledge or thought because it is outside the field of thought and knowledge.

In other words, I responded the way I did because i CAN NOT give or provide you with what you want. I am aware of how you feel because I used to do the same prior to experiencing an alternative to knowledge.
Nick_A
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Nick_A »

Eaglerising wrote:Is belief necessary? What are the limitations of belief? Opposing beliefs create conflict. On the other hand, the unknown is free of conflict. Is the absence of belief (not knowing) a viable alternative to believing? In other words, is there an advantage to approaching everything from the "unknown" rather than the "known"?
Yes, but how is it done? Beginning from the unknown for us is impartiality. Consider this from the Gospel of Thomas.
(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
The higher parts of the collective human soul or essence is capable of consciousness while the lower animal parts function by animal reaction and acquired negative emotions. The higher can observe the lower. This process of conscious observation invites being recognized by higher consciousness.

If this is true the value of consciousness isn’t found in escapism but in conscious experience of the lower. How many are even aware of the potential much less of becoming capable of it?
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by -1- »

Eaglerising wrote:Is belief necessary? What are the limitations of belief? Opposing beliefs create conflict. On the other hand, the unknown is free of conflict. Is the absence of belief (not knowing) a viable alternative to believing? In other words, is there an advantage to approaching everything from the "unknown" rather than the "known"?
I am having a super-hard time digesting this question.

Because in my view "belief of how the physical world works"" and "knowledge of how the physical world works" are equivalent in the ultimate. This is so because in my view knowledge is certain, and belief is a conviction of uncertain things getting accepted as certain.

"Belief" in gods and supernatural stuff, on the other hand, in my view, is foolish.

-------

Is the original poster on the same page as me with these views? Obviously not, because the opening post is meaningless when viewed via my "looking glasses". So similarities and differences between belief and knowledge, also what constitutes "approach via the unknown" versus "approach via the known" must be explained, as I have no clue whatsoever how the author meant the idea questioned. To me, it's equivalent, obviously, to "approach via the unbelieved" versus "approach via the believed"; and also, there is no way of knowing how to approach the unknown because we don't know its nature (or anything about it) so how can we pre-cognize the best approach to learn about it?

And seeing that the approach ought not to be fore-decided, why is it even important in the first place that we dogmatically create a venue of how to do this thing in the future? What is the import or the practical use of predetermining the nature of our approach??

This entire opening post in my view is rather very bizarre.
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Felix
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Felix »

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-1-: This is so because in my view knowledge is certain, and belief is a conviction of uncertain things getting accepted as certain.
But why do you accept ideas you are uncertain about (whatever they happen to be) as certain? Who or what is your authority in doing so?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by -1- »

Felix wrote: But why do you accept ideas you are uncertain about (whatever they happen to be) as certain? Who or what is your authority in doing so?
I guess for my old age, the test for acceptance as certain by belief is the repeatability of events, or else logic or else reason; both can be used or applied when creating situations to predict the future. If a certain set of circumstances creates the same future over and over again in somewhat different set of circumstances (i.e. jumping off a tall building, in the summer, or else in the winter, or from a slightly taller or shorter building, or wearing a coat or nothing at all, all result in my death when landing in the bottom is a belief I hold certain) then I hold that belief as knowledge, but it's still just belief.

There are other kinds of beliefs that are not tested, and they remain beliefs, never knowledge, such as things in the domain of the supernatural, or in the untested (such as what it is that others think of at a given moment.)
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Eaglerising
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Eaglerising »

-1- wrote:
I guess for my old age, the test for acceptance as certain by belief is the repeatability of events, or else logic or else reason; both can be used or applied when creating situations to predict the future. If a certain set of circumstances creates the same future over and over again in somewhat different set of circumstances (i.e. jumping off a tall building, in the summer, or else in the winter, or from a slightly taller or shorter building, or wearing a coat or nothing at all, all result in my death when landing in the bottom is a belief I hold certain) then I hold that belief as knowledge, but it's still just belief.
Your example pertains to “understanding” as opposed to belief. Knowledge, thought, and belief are different aspects of each other and are in the same field of existence. Understanding is in a different field of existence than knowledge, thought, and belief. Understanding is a higher form of consciousness that the former and unobtainable by the former. You can easily see this in that knowledge, thought, and belief cannot imagine or conceptualize “infinity” or something that has always existed, without a beginning.

-1-
There are other kinds of beliefs that are not tested, and they remain beliefs, never knowledge, such as things in the domain of the supernatural, or in the untested (such as what it is that others think of at a given moment.)
Are you defining a belief as untested knowledge? How do you know that the knowledge you have is accurate? Can knowledge, thought, or belief examine itself?
Moreno
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Moreno »

Eaglerising wrote: May 5th, 2017, 7:33 am Moreno, I understand how you may feel as you do about my responses. I realize you are a curious and intelligent individual. It is only natural to want to discuss things with others who are relying upon knowledge and thought. Unfortunately, a millions or words or thousands of books cannot provide you with want you want from me. The reason being is understanding isn't transferable from one person to another like knowledge. It can only be gained through observation, examination, and experience.

The whole purpose of this initial post was to point out the limitations of knowledge and experience the difference between knowledge and understanding. I am not knocking knowledge, because it is a useful tool, when you DO NOT EXCEED the limitations of knowledge. You don't try to repair a boat with a can opener because you understand its limitations. It is the lack of understanding the limitations of knowledge that cause people to exceed them. People's dependence upon thought, knowledge, and belief prevents them from experiencing a more viable alternative. The alternative is vastly different and unobtainable by knowledge or thought because it is outside the field of thought and knowledge.

In other words, I responded the way I did because i CAN NOT give or provide you with what you want. I am aware of how you feel because I used to do the same prior to experiencing an alternative to knowledge.
I noticed this years later, lol.
Anyway. This post is riddled with beliefs and purported knowledge and thoughts. You reached these conclusions (which you consider knowledge) via experience. You have beliefs about the sematics of words in your descriptions of reality here. It includes also more assumptions about me (at thened and the beginning) ideas you treat as knowledge.

If you continued to work, you had thoughts. They may not have been verbal ones, though I am skeptical about that, but you had thoughts, unless your job was something an extremely simple lifeform could manage.
Lone Wolf
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Re: The Unknown vs Belief (fhe known)

Post by Lone Wolf »

In the time since my retirement, I have written my opinions of things of this world that I believe to be true. Having just passed my 83rd year on this planet, I realize that everything I believe may be wrong. A belief is not knowledge and anyone who claims to know the truth may be deluding himself or herself. We have many truths which work for us in the physical world, but if you take them out of the box in which they are true you will find there are exceptions. (What goes up must come down. Out in space that truism is meaningless.) In the final analysis of all that I believe I have found one thing that is knowledge. I AM. Beyond that I cannot say who I am, where I came from, where I will go when this life is finished, or why I am here in the first place. When I compare the pitifully small amount of knowledge I acquired in this lifetime to the total amount of knowledge in a library, I really feel insignificant. When I compare the knowledge in the library to all the knowledge in the universe, I think I will really feel small.

I had an emotional experience in 1984 in which I experienced the love of something beyond my capability to understand. For me that is knowledge but I have no empirical evidence to prove it, so to others, it is my belief.

My college education allowed me to exist in our culture with a relative level of comfort, but in retirement with time to think, I find myself in much agreement with the non-physics or non-math of Albert Einstein. In one of his statements he said that matter does not exist. It is energy lowered to a vibration so it becomes visible. I find this interesting since I learned in a metallurgy seminar that the molecules in steel vibrate and that as you raise the temperature they begin to vibrate at a higher rate and slide past each other. If the temperature is raised high enough, steel becomes liquid and I can only assume that if you could raise it to a high enough temperature it would become a gas. I looked at Einstein's famous formula E=mc² and did the math. If you raise one unit of mass to the speed of light squared, it would be moving at at a speed of 34 billion, 596 million miles per second. Since I cannot comprehend something moving that fast, I have to take his word for it.

I put all my opinions together and made up a list of contents and titled the collection EVERYTHING I BELIEVE MAY BE WRONG. It is copyrighted but I don't expect to publish it.
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