Archives for posts with tag: faith

As if.

April 20, 2023 //
0

People act as if the world is as each of them sees it.

Nobody does anything unless they are convinced that there is some merit in ‘that’ particular something being put into practice.
Otherwise put, nobody starts doing anything before believing that the thing being started is well worth the effort.

In fact, doing – anything, in a voluntary manner – is an act of faith.

‘OK, I can live with that.
But which faith? Cause there are many…’

This is the moment when I’ll start commenting on the difference between creed and faith.
Creed is very specific. Personal creed, Christian creed, Islamic creed, even professional creed…
Faith, on the other hand, is more general. The concept itself encompasses creed and goes a lot further.

Personal faith is both the conviction which drives each of us to do something and the specifics about how we implement that something.
Those of us who are faithful Christians derive their energy from their faith and the particulars of their action from their Christian creed.
Those of us who are faithful Muslims derive their energy from their faith and the particulars of their action from their Islamic creed.
Those of us who are agnostics – or atheists, derive their energy from their faith and the particulars of their action from their specific creed.
In this sense, faith is more like a state of mind – shared by all faithful people, while creed is specific to each category of people. Down to each individual.

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Categories awareness, effective communication, In English, Psychology, skin in the game

A better world.

April 18, 2023 //
0

“And Jesus said unto them,
Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you,
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
ye shall say unto this mountain,
Remove hence to yonder place;
and it shall remove;
and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
Matthew, 17:20

Apparently, the quote above doesn’t make much sense.
No matter how much faith one has, telling a mountain to ‘remove to yonder place’ will yield nothing more than a wasted breath.

On the other hand… 2000 years is a lot. Erosion has moved many a mountains in this time… After all, Jesus didn’t say anything about how fast will the mountain remove itself after it had been told to…

OK, jokes aside, nowadays it’s a lot easier for us to remove a (smallish) mountain than it was in those times. We currently use cranes and lorries instead of mere words … but we still wouldn’t start before convincing ourselves that it’s possible.
That our goal is within our grasp. At least notionally.

The truth of the matter being that we live now in a better world.

According to our benchmarks.
We live longer and have it a lot easier!

But is our world really better?
According to other benchmarks…
Biodiversity loss, spoiled environment, continued human exploitation…

Let me put it differently.
What was the thing which had set apart the abrahamic faith from all other religions?
The notion that all people had been made in the image of the creator god.
As a consequence of how they’ve been made, they – the people – are not only equal – cast in the same mould, but also harboring a divine spark. The image they share being that of a god, not an ordinary one…

What difference does this make?
Democracy, capitalism, free market… all things we consider to be capital to our well being are based on the notion that all people are equal and have to be treated as such.
Otherwise why bother with what the other has to say about anything?

I’ll repeat the question.
Is our world really better?

Forget about biodiversity, pollution and quality of life.
Do we continue to consider our brethren to be equal to us?
Do we really hear them out when they speak to us?

How are we to achieve our goal – whatever that might be, if we don’t coordinate our faith?
If we don’t hear out what the others have to say about anything?

My previous post was about reification.
About the fact that each of us acts according to their faith. According to their belief that the world is as each of us sees it.
|How are we going to coordinate our efforts towards a common goal – a better place for all of us to live in, if we don’t hear what each of us has to say about where we’re going?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

Role play

October 30, 2022 //
0

You’re God.
The real McCoy, not the one concocted by us, humans.

Your ‘most cherished’ tool for bringing people back into submission being the all mighty thunder.
Jupiter Tonans. The Thundering God. Thor yielding his Mjoelnir…

And now what?!?
Every worshiping place has a lighting rod installed…

What do you feel?
Have all those people lost their faith in you? In you behaving as a rational being? In your ability to treat them right?
Are they convinced they are now insulated against your wrath?

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Stuck between knowledge and belief.

October 13, 2021 //
2

We know that smoking is bad for us yet we continue to smoke.

Because too many of us are convinced that each of us, in particular, will be fine.
That things are not that bad. Well, maybe for those who had bad luck. Or something…

You see, I’ve reached the conclusion that an individual’s conscience is more preoccupied with it’s own survival than with the ‘well being’ of it’s “host”. The conscience itself comes first, in its own ‘eyes’.

“What?!?”

Do you have a better explanation for why so many of us continue to smoke? To do drugs? To drink/eat too much? To… – feel free to fill in your favorite aberration! Your own method of self-destruction.

Please don’t quote any study about how powerful addictions are. For each of those there are many studies proving how powerful our minds are when they become determined enough.

How fast things happen after our knowledge about something becomes a belief. A belief in something…

Let me put it the other way around.

Did you get the anti-Covid jab? Why?
You haven’t made up your mind yet? Because you are not yet convinced?
You’re not going to? No matter what? Because you don’t believe in vaccines?

See what I mean?

The world is awash in information. All of us are exposed to more or less the same knowledge.
All of us know that a considerable number of people – the vast majority, actually, are convinced about the roundness of the Earth. Yet there still is a very vocal group of Flat-Earthers. Of people acting as if they actually believe that the Earth is Flat.
All of us have been told that smoking can cause cancer. And other diseases. Yet some of us continue to act as if they actually believe that nothing of that sort might happen to them.

Mind you, there is nothing inherently bad in this! On the contrary.
If people would have believed everything they had ever been told… at one time… the Earth would have remained flat, all witches would have been burned – or drowned, all ‘Jews’ would have been killed – many centuries ago…

The point of this post is to underscore the importance of self.
The huge responsibility placed upon our individual shoulders by the fact that we are the ones called to choose what to believe.

Yes, we are indeed inundated with ‘data’. From the day we are born to the day when our conscience goes dark.
Yes, some minds are sharper than others. Some of us are better at spinning thoughts than the rest of us. Some of us are indeed better at making sense of the information which happens to cross their paths.
And some of us are better at influencing others. At shining ‘light’ on ‘things’ in a manner which makes the message they want to convey more palatable for their intended targets.

Yet all this ‘trivia’ doesn’t change the reality.
We are the ones who make decisions. We are the ones who choose what to believe. We are the ones who shape our fate.

By choosing our faith!
By convincing ourselves that some things are worth doing and that some should be left undone.

https://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/pub/hvf/papers/maturana05selfconsciousness.html

LE
If this is of any help, for any of you, I still smoke a few cigarettes each week.
And continue to drink. Alcohol.
I’m not perfect either!

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English

From faith to religion. And back.

August 10, 2021 //
0

You can’t have religion without faith.
But not all faith is beneficial to the believers…

Religion is when a community comes together/works better because its members share a common set of beliefs. Of explanations about how the world works. Of ‘values’ which guide day to day life.

Faith, on the other hand, is unchallenged belief in a narative. Can be good – as the Christian faith had been so useful for the Northern Atlantic area of the Earth until recently, but it can also be bad.

It’s not as much the content of the belief which is bad but the fact that the content is unchallenged. Sacrosant!
Christian faith had been good because it had taught us that we were both equal and of divine nature – made in the image of God, and had become bad when nobody was allowed to challenge it. When people were literally burned at stake after being perceived as challenging the established order.

As it had happened to William Tyndall.
For translating the Bible into English…

William Tyndall, Biography of the Father of the English Bible.
https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/translator-william-tyndale-strangled-and-burned-11629961.html

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And to provide for my family.
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Your contribution will be appreciated!
Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.

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And to provide for my family.
Earning money takes time.
If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button.
Your contribution will be appreciated!

As much as I love writing, I do have to eat.
And to provide for my family.
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If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button.
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Categories autoritarism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, human rights, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

“Faith versus fact”

July 4, 2015 //
1

“Science might be based on a foundation of rational thought and trial-and-error, but the roots of religion lie in something much more incalculable, and thus much harder to counter.”

I haven’t read the book so I’m not going to comment on it, yet.

What bothers me is the idea of countering ‘religion’.

Why would anyone do something like that?

If any of us sees an error in the ‘scientific’ realm that error is brought forward and fixed but nobody questions the entire realm.
Meanwhile if a religious individual does a stupid thing, like all of us have done in our lives, quite a lot of people blame it on ‘religion’ and ‘faith’.

Rather irrational – hence unscientific – don’t you think?

After all science and religion are about something different.
Science is about how the nature works while religion (‘reliegare’ in Latin means ‘connecting’) is about the ties that transform a mob into a community. Some religions use Gods to achieve this, some don’t – Buddha was a ‘mere’ teacher and Buddhism has no need for any God.

So, again, why counter ‘religion’?

The real problem produced by ‘organized religion’ is that it encourages some people to act in blind faith instead of thinking with their own heads while it offers come callous manipulators the opportunity to use religious teachings as a way to further their petty interests.
‘Faith’ can induce blindness very easily, you know.  No matter if that faith is placed in a religious hierarchy/teaching or in the power of rational thinking.
Just as reputable scientists, Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman  among others, have amply demonstrated the human thinking process is not at all infallible.That’s why our pride about our ability to think scientifically should not be allowed to grow into self-sufficiency. After all that was how Marx, on the footsteps of Plato, reached the conclusion that it was possible for a small number of people (the ‘enlightened’ communists) to know better than the rest of the population how things must be organized… The Soviet Union, the biggest social experiment ever, was ample proof that he was plain wrong.

On the other hand the one thing that all religions have in common is that they teach their members to respect each other – something that the ‘scientific communists’ never did. Some religions even teach that all human beings, irrespective of their creed, are to be respected. Just think about how most nomad people welcome visitors – those that come in peace, of course.

So how come there are so many ‘scientists’ are ready to counter, entirely, something as wide as ‘religion’?

Faith versus Fact, Jerry Coyne

Can Religion and Science coexist? Jeffery Tayler

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Categories altruism, Choices we make, Frames of mind, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Social justice

Know, believe, trust.

February 23, 2015 //
2

“Seeing is believing.”

Yeah, right.

So, do we really know anything?

For instance I know that the Earth exists – I am able to walk on it and I eat things that grow out of it.

I also believe – without ever having seen it from far enough – that the Earth is round. Just as my ancestors used to believe that the Earth was flat. Both I and my ancestors were told what to believe and we did that. Because we believed in those who were offering us that particular piece of information and because the issue wasn’t of any real importance for us, personally.

I do trust that Neil Armstrong did land on the Moon. I’m not going to share with you my reasons for that here, this post is about something else. My point is that belief is casual while trust is active. I did research the matter, as I could, and I considered it carefully before reaching the conclusion that ‘Yes, I am convinced that Neil Armstrong did land on the Moon’.

As we all know ‘know’ is a verb. The corresponding noun is ‘knowledge’, information that we are aware of. And so familiar with that we don’t even remember how we have arrived to accept it as true.

Believe is also a verb. It’s corresponding noun is ‘belief’, information we are aware of and believe it to be true just because we were told so by a seemingly credible source.

Trust is both a verb and a noun. And here comes the really interesting part. While trust as a verb means more or less the same thing as believe, trust as a noun has nothing, but absolutely nothing in common with belief. Trust is a state of mind while belief is a piece of information with a ‘value’ attached to it.
In fact ‘trust’ is something you consciously choose to invest while ‘believing’ is something you are led to, sometimes even without you being aware of what is going on, by a person or even by the circumstances you happen to find yourself in.

Now it is time to introduce another notion. Faith. It exists only as a noun and that’s why I didn’t brought it up from the beginning.
It has something in common with both belief and trust. Similar to belief no proof is usually attached to faith and similar to trust faith is something that the individual has to willingly accept/profess/invest.

Coming back to knowledge we discover there are many kinds of it.
We have factual knowledge, the kind we have either witnessed or otherwise seems so evident that we’d never even dreamed of questioning. So evident that if somebody asks us to be specific and put it squarely in one of the ‘belief’, ‘trust’ or ‘faith’ drawers we’d be at a loss and protest vehemently ‘it’s plain knowledge, what’s wrong with you guys?’
Then we have our beliefs. For instance we know that we love our partners and our kids and we believe that they love us back. We also have faith in a lot of things. Some of us have faith in God, some others put their faith in politicians, market analysts or even the weather-man. For a longer or shorter period of time. When gravely ill we put our faith in doctors and in medicines. And so on.
And finally there is the trust problem. For a real trust to develop we need an actual understanding of what is going on. That’s where science and technology comes is. If we’d done something for a long enough period of time we gradually become confident in our ability to do that thing over and over again with consistent results. If the results are reproducible, if other people can obtain results similar to ours by following our methods then our endeavor is deemed scientific and, hence, trustworthy. Same goes for information gathered following scientific methods.

And here lies the pitfall. Science has to be constantly challenged in order to remain valid. If we reach that point where we start to put faith in science and scientists instead of continuously demanding proof and doing our best to understand with our own heads what is going on then we are doomed. Science morphs not in ‘religion’ – that is something else – but in hoax.

The ‘thing’ with science is that the only trustworthy aspect of it is the method, not at all the results. We’ll never be able to find the absolute truth – no result will ever be 100% accurate – but if we keep using the ‘scientific method’ – consistency and unhidden-ness – then we’ll remain on the safe side.

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Categories Psychology
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