I do, therefore I am

Interesting fresco

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In the Middle Ages, the prevailing creed was, "credo ut intelligam," "understanding comes only through belief."

In the latter 12th century Christians overran Muslim Spain and discovered a treasure trove of lost Greek and Roman knowledge preserved by the Muslims.

With this knowledge rediscovered, the European creed slowly changed to, "intelligo ut credam," "belief can come only through understanding."

With this reversal in creed medieval Europe slowly pulled itself, kicking and screaming, out of the monestery and into the Renaissance, but the kicking and screaming continues to this day.

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truth
Very good, Coluber. But there IS a lot of truth in the reversal: "Believing is seeing."

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truth
I did therefore I was.
I will do therefore I will be.
I am doing therefore I am being.
I didn't do therefore I am not.
Laughing

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JLNobody: Isn't "seeing is believing" synomynous with " "belief can come only through understanding."

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truth
Coluber, I have understood "Seeing is believing" to mean that empirical evidence leads to belief. When I said "Believing is seeing" I was thinking of how our interpretations of experience are influenced by our presumptions. People with different presumptions may interpret the same experience differently--forgetting for the moment that "experience" is never exactly the same and that it includes presumptions. I should say "our interpretations of DATA are influenced by our presumptions."

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but if u understand somthing by thinking then where does that knowlegde come from? are u taking something into ur self that makes u understand? From my view of truths then knowledge is already there u just have to remove the blocks we place upon ourselves.

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truth
Sibisis, knowledge is already there? This is reminiscent of Plato's (Socrates') notion that all Truth is latent within us, that we recognize the Truth because we already have it "within us." This notion of the objectivity of "Truth" is very passe.

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why? dont u think that would be a little closed minded to think of any idea as passe? if u classify thoughts as passe and acceptable then i worry if u really have the capacity to think on ur own

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Sibisis wrote:

but if u understand somthing by thinking then where does that knowlegde come from? are u taking something into ur self that makes u understand? From my view of truths then knowledge is already there u just have to remove the blocks we place upon ourselves.

Welcome to A2K, Sibisis. I'm a newbie myself. Would you do me a favor and not substitute u for you. These chat line abbreviations drive me nuts.

I assume you're talking about truth with a capital T. I see what you mean though. If you can see the illusion, then the underlying truth becomes evident. Is that what you mean?

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Interested,

and also agreeing with Coluber. Sibisis, I don't have any patience for reading letter shorthand either. I can't speak for others, but you might consider losing it here. We talk fast and hard sometimes and that is all in the way for a quick read. Or even for a slow read.

I have a friend who has, after all these years, even decades, finally gotten email, and what do I see, this shorthand stuff.

If this is a serious point with you, that you want to change language, then I'll back off with my comment.
If you are just trying it out, ahhhhhhhh, consider losing it on this particular forum. No, it's not a rule.

In the meantime, welcome, have fun....!!

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Re: truth

JLNobody wrote:

Coluber, I have understood "Seeing is believing" to mean that empirical evidence leads to belief. When I said "Believing is seeing" I was thinking of how our interpretations of experience are influenced by our presumptions. People with different presumptions may interpret the same experience differently--forgetting for the moment that "experience" is never exactly the same and that it includes presumptions. I should say "our interpretations of DATA are influenced by our presumptions."

I'm not sure what you're saying, JONobody, but the idea of the medieval "understanding comes only through belief" meant that the church's dogma was the truth, and all education was restricted to the learning of that dogma. The emergence from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and the present day involved the reversal of that creed to "belief comes through understanding." The war between the church and science is the war between these two creeds, and it still goes on.

That old creed—"understanding comes through belief—never died out; for instance, the church viciously defended geocentrism, and to this day manifests itself in its attacks on evolution. Whereas scientists accept evolution to be as factual as the position of the Earth in the cosmos, many people still consider evolution to be a theory and often nothing but a very dubious theory at that.

And vestiges of geocentrism still commonly exist. Many people still believe in a heaven which is somwhere away from the Earth; heaven is up, and hell is down. That's geocentrism. And anthropocentrism, an offshoot of geocentrism, is still a common attitude. People still ask what the purpose is of specific plants and animans as if all living things are here just for our utility.

Of course we don't understand everything the scientists tell us, we just believe it. But this belief comes with the understanding that the scientists are self-regulating, that theories are theories and facts are not facts without satisfying all tests. But the church insisted that their subjective reality be accepted objectively with meeting any tests at all.

I'm not sure that belief has any place in religion anymore at all. I think it was E. M. Forster who said, "I don't believe in belief." I think he meant that in a spiritual context, a refutation of the creed, "understanding comes through belief."

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truth
Of course, I was not referring to "understanding". I was referring to "seeing." I recall an anthropologist's report that he wanted to understand what "data" an african community used to claim that they actually "saw" ghosts. One man took the anthropologist on a walk in the forest to have an empirical experience of ghosts. At one point, as the sun went down, he said to the anthropologist, "There, do you see that?" There was, the anthropologist reports, a movment in the brush. The anthropologist asked his informant, "How do you now that was a ghost?" The answer was "I just know." The anthropologist concluded that here at least "Believing is seeing."

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I thought you meant understanding too. I think what you are trying to say could better be phrased as "seeing is believing" because the believing comes after the seeing, not before.

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Sorry about the shorthand I'll be better.....
Believing doesn't always come after seeing. When put in front of a situation one will see what they are used to seeing. So even if they see something that they think is a certain way it could be exactly the opposite way it is meant to be seen. That is way "Magic" is so easy. people don't see the Truth of the matter.

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Seeing something and overlooking it or seeing something and interpreting it are different from seeing a hallucination or an illusion. Culture doesn't change the way your eyes work, it changes how you interpret what you see.

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Interesting discussion.

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The world and the choices we make in it are indeed meaningless and absurd without the idea of God. It is very odd that some, who call themselves philosophers, refuse to accept the idea of God, only because they cannot prove it rationally in the earthly terms of reference around them, and then waste their lives in foolish contemplation of the resulting absurdity of their existence. Sartre offers us a wonderful example.

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Georgeob1, I hope you enjoy the rapture. I'll just stay behind and try, as honestly as I can, to figure out the nature of things without the escape of a theistic myth.

I don't necessarily think that a belief in God is an "escape of a theistic myth". My observations and reasoning have led me to conclude that the universe was designed and set in motion by a higher being. BUT, my obersavtions and reasoning have led me to believe that said higher being is NOT the god of the Bible, Torah, or Quran. I think those gods were invented by man for the sake of control.

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Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot committed far worse crimes in the name of atheism and the improvement of the human condition

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In other words, not only does their God render human existence Meaningful, but the Divine Meaning itself allows them to sanction damn near any barbaric act. In the name OF God, you might say.

Evil people can use anything to justify their acts.

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Sibisis, knowledge is already there? This is reminiscent of Plato's (Socrates') notion that all Truth is latent within us, that we recognize the Truth because we already have it "within us." This notion of the objectivity of "Truth" is very passe.

JL, are you trying to say there is no truth outside of human perception? If so, I must disagree.

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truth
CQ, No, I do not mean that. I DO believe that our understanding of the world is mediated through our conceptual apparatus, viz. our system of presuppositions, many of which are out of awareness. This is what I mean by "Believing is seeing." It's meant as a addition to (not a replacement for) the empiricist's "Seeing is believing." The latter implies that we believe on the basis of empirical experience/evidence; the former implies that our empirical experience is often influenced by our presuppositions, i.e., perceptions are influenced by conceptions.

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rufio you misinterpreted what I said. It was a metaphor. i wasn't saying that life is an illusion, or anything like that. i was just showing how when you are taught from birth a certain thing that that is how you are going to believe.

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Then you're not talking about seeing - JL said he was being literal.

And that's not true either though - your opinions and beliefs are continually shaped by your experiences. You could be totally turned around in the course of your life.

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I do, therefore I am

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