First Believe, Then Understand

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Philosophy Now
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First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Philosophy Now »

Peter Adamson reviews the relation of reason & revelation.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/133/First_Believe_Then_Understand
DMT
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by DMT »

Many psychological issues mask as philosophical quesrions. Take birth defects. They dont exist less real than unicorns in nature itself, but then we turn to genetics and by mafic they appear. Thats a psychological issue and is related to modern philosopies issues. Its fantasy of course simple science observation is all thats needed to realize that. But if philosophy cannot see and repair that then philosophy has the identical issue and is no longer philosophy but the symtom of the problem. Thats not plato thats pretending nothing more.
commonsense
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by commonsense »

According to Adamson, “God is perfectly rational.”

If that were true, then wouldn’t we be able to understand God’s reasoning?

If we cannot understand God’s reason, then perhaps God’s rationality is distinct from human reason.

Then human reason cannot play a part in understanding divine truths.

If God’s truth cannot be fathomed by human intellect, then how does divine belief underlie human thinking? How can human reason be made more powerful by relying on belief?
jayjacobus
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by jayjacobus »

Are these similarities a meaningful factor in the comparison of two religions or are they simply coincidental similarities and not a way to understand religions?

Water and alcohol are both colorless liquids but what does prove about chemistry. They are coincidentally linked and perhaps foundationally linked but observed similarities don’t reveal the foundation of water nor alcohol.
Jai
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Jai »

I enjoy respect for equality of religious expression in the Vedas and teachings in Christianity. For me the central issue is - Can Christians advocate for Jesus Christ as an Avatar, as god incarnate in earth? I do not see reason as any aid toward justifying beliefs in Jesus as god, and Christianity has been struggling with defining the trinity, the role of the divine female but has not had much success to my understanding. My favorite Christians are S. Kierkegaard and C. Jung. Both were very careful in NOT equating Jesus Christ with god, and both did NOT identify with the barbarian like history of Christianity, along with its violently orientated evangelism. A. Einstein had said that god was reason, intelligence itself, the order of the universe, while also identifying with scientific positivism. I think defining the rational, what is reason, god's relationship to reason is an impoverished premise coming from people of little faith, or did not have the opportunity for religious education Seeing god and rationality as being the same Being means that we can see the truths in all revealed literature, scripture, everyday life.
Systematic
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Systematic »

It's more like this:

First believe, then believe, then believe some more.
Walker
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Walker »

First experience, then understand, then codify.

Belief is good for awishin and ahopein.
nothing
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by nothing »

First Believe, Then Understand
who/what/where/why/when/how and/or if:
not to Believe.

First Know thy self, less one Believe
themselves falsely to be
something they are truly not.
Nick_A
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Nick_A »

I believe that one identical thought is to be found—expressed very precisely and with only slight differences of modality—in. . .Pythagoras, Plato, and the Greek Stoics. . .in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita; in the Chinese Taoist writings and. . .Buddhism. . .in the dogmas of the Christian faith and in the writings of the greatest Christian mystics. . .I believe that this thought is the truth, and that it today requires a modern and Western form of expression. That is to say, it should be expressed through the only approximately good thing we can call our own, namely science. This is all the less difficult because it is itself the origin of science. Simone Weil….Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, Random House, 1976, p. 488

"To restore to science as a whole, for mathematics as well as psychology and sociology, the sense of its origin and veritable destiny as a bridge leading toward God---not by diminishing, but by increasing precision in demonstration, verification and supposition---that would indeed be a task worth accomplishing." Simone Weil
Even the most primitive people looking at a sunrise or at the stars at night have the experience of awe and know there is a reality far greater than their own. This is the experience of God. Then the experts enter the picture and introduce all sorts of idolatry or man made interpretations of God which gradually corrupts the original experience

Science was initially dedicated to the impartial truths of material relationships but has become a tool to further political agendas by stressing partial truths.

Fortunately there is a minority who realize the importance of the religious truths which enable a person to experience the objective value or quality of what the partial truths of science reveal. Because they are open minded as opposed to being agenda driven they can experience revelation by intuition.

I believe Simone is right and science will eventually prove the necessity for a source of creation something like Brahman or the ONE written of by Plotinus. Modern culture is still too far for such inner freedom and caught up in opposing secular agendas so it will be up to a small minority to keep the effort alive and allow it to develop for the sake of human consciousness as a whole.

Man BELIEVES first by experiencing the awe of wholeness which arouses curiousity as to how the parts of creation relate; the calling of science to UNDERSTAND material relationships which serves our daily needs. Seems easy enough but society as a whole rejects it in favor of fighting over agendas.
uwot
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by uwot »

Nick_A wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:18 amEven the most primitive people looking at a sunrise or at the stars at night have the experience of awe and know there is a reality far greater than their own. This is the experience of God.
And that is what is wrong with everything you say. You have made up your mind about something that nobody has ever successfully demonstrated to be true. It is your belief and faith that it is the experience of god; rather than being open minded, you have closed off any possibility that god does not exist.
Nick_A wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:18 amThen the experts enter the picture and introduce all sorts of idolatry or man made interpretations of God which gradually corrupts the original experience
Even scientists can look at "a sunrise or at the stars at night have the experience of awe". They just don't automatically attribute anything they don't understand to some god.
Nick_A wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:18 amScience was initially dedicated to the impartial truths of material relationships but has become a tool to further political agendas by stressing partial truths.
Bollocks. Science has always been done by people, some of whom have political agendas, some have pet theories, the Lysenko affair was a notorious example in the Soviet Union and today we have religious nuts trying to push creationism and frankly woeful attempts to have intelligent design taken seriously, such as Michael Behe's Irreducible Complexity. None of those nutjobs have the power to change the way the world actually works.
Nick_A wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:18 amFortunately there is a minority who realize the importance of the religious truths which enable a person to experience the objective value or quality of what the partial truths of science reveal. Because they are open minded as opposed to being agenda driven they can experience revelation by intuition.
Intuition is a defining feature of the most brilliant scientists. Once they have an intuition, they are open minded enough to try and devise experiments that will test that intuition and brave enough to accept that they might be wrong. Cranks and conspiracy nuts on the other hand, start to weave absurd narratives to explain why anyone who knows what they are talking about rejects an intuition.
Nick_A wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:18 amI believe Simone is right and science will eventually prove the necessity for a source of creation something like Brahman or the ONE written of by Plotinus. Modern culture is still too far for such inner freedom and caught up in opposing secular agendas so it will be up to a small minority to keep the effort alive and allow it to develop for the sake of human consciousness as a whole.
Good luck to you, but yer ain't gonna get very far if you continue to rely on batshit phantasms like "The Great Beast".
Nick_A wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:18 amMan BELIEVES first by experiencing the awe of wholeness which arouses curiousity as to how the parts of creation relate; the calling of science to UNDERSTAND material relationships which serves our daily needs. Seems easy enough but society as a whole rejects it in favor of fighting over agendas.
The period known as the Dark Ages, roughly between the fall of Rome and the Italian renaissance, is the one time in the history of western science when a single agenda suppressed any challenge to the intuition it advanced - precisely that god is the answer to everything we don't understand. It's called the Dark Ages for a reason, you apparently want to go back there.
surreptitious57
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by surreptitious57 »

Science is interested in one thing and one thing only : the study of observable phenomena through the application of the scientific method
It may have become a tool for those with political agendas by stressing partial truths but that has got nothing at all to do with what it does
Furthermore it only deals in partial truth itself because it is an inductive discipline so it will never have a complete understanding of reality
Nick_A
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Nick_A »

surreptitious57 wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:26 pm Science is interested in one thing and one thing only : the study of observable phenomena through the application of the scientific method
It may have become a tool for those with political agendas by stressing partial truths but that has got nothing at all to do with what it does
Furthermore it only deals in partial truth itself because it is an inductive discipline so it will never have a complete understanding of reality
“True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.” ~ Simone Weil

I agree that science is interested in observable phenomena. However my question to you is why science has this interest? What is its motive?
Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch wrote: "Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies, its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys -if not the greatest one- of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must, be intellectually productive and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity for the man who has no knowledge of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy."
A chess computer doesn't feel happiness through a good move. It is an expression of the scientific method. What is it about chess that can inspire the emotion of happiness. IMO it is beauty which suggests the presence of a reality beauty masks. Beauty indicates something greater than ourselves which we are attracted to at the depth of our being.

It is easy to define science but not so easy to admit its essential attraction which is the source of curiosity. Doing so invites the experience of an ineffable reality society strives to remain closed to in favor of self glorification.
Walker
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Walker »

nothing wrote: Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:58 pm First Believe, Then Understand
who/what/where/why/when/how and/or if:
not to Believe.

First Know thy self, less one Believe
themselves falsely to be
something they are truly not.
There’s a Buddhist intellectual, a bit of a renegade in the eyes of the orthodoxy from I can gather, who has written: ”The eye awareness of a Buddha can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch.” Google can take you to the source for context.

What do you (pl.) make of that comment?
surreptitious57
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by surreptitious57 »

Nick wrote:
I agree that science is interested in observable phenomena . However my question to you is why science has this interest ?
Science is the study of observable phenomena by definition as that is literally what it does . The word is derived from the Latin scientia which means knowledge . Science is therefore the means by which knowledge of observable phenomena is obtained [ through the scientific method ]
And so there is no ulterior motive here with regard to interest as what it does is contained within the actual definition of the word in question
Nick_A
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Nick_A »

surreptitious57 wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 6:23 pm
Nick wrote:
I agree that science is interested in observable phenomena . However my question to you is why science has this interest ?
Science is the study of observable phenomena by definition as that is literally what it does . The word is derived from the Latin scientia which means knowledge . Science is therefore the means by which knowledge of observable phenomena is obtained [ through the scientific method ]
And so there is no ulterior motive here with regard to interest as what it does is contained within the actual definition of the word in question
A woman is an observable phenomenon which can be studied by use of the scientific method to acquire knowledge of what she is. There can be no other reason or method to study a woman as an observable phenomenon. All else is fantasy and demeans science.

This approach won't get you laid.
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