Knowledge vs. Belief

The one thing i have realized as a staple in our recent conversations has been the idea of knowledge and belief and how flimsily we sometimes interchange them. For the purpose of clarity as i continue this blog, knowledge refers to the things that we have evidence of; factual accounts of some sorts whereas belief will typically mean things we have strong convictions for and may sometimes lack the evidence to prove their validity. I know i am a man ( by man i mean of the male gender) and i can back this up from genetic research which prove that i have xy chromosomes and not xx ( which will make me female). I also have anatomical and sex roles that are associated with being males from my enlarged vocal codes to the fact that i can't give birth ( lack of a uterus) that confirm my knowledge that i am indeed male. Now to the question of belief, i believe that there's a God or at the very least a supreme being that is responsible for the creation of our universe and its entirety as we "know" it. The belief stems from my belief in the biblical recounts of the old testament to the new testament as well the accounts of the Qua- ran and the Kitab-i-Agdas as well as most historical books. Some may question this belief for there's no prove of a God but how many things do we belief in or rely on as true (knowledge) but can't prove? What we know or what we belief are two different things but philosophers like Ernst Von Glasersfeld have stipulated that there are some aspects of knowledge we will never attain; for the most part we will always believe in what we know as the truth.

Cosmological Theory of Philosophy

The cosmological argument is regards to the existence of a God; a supernatural omnipotent and omnipresent being in a nut shell postulates that "everything has a cause" thus the world has a cause or in this case a creator responsible for its being. The apparent flaw with this argument that many great minds have quickly pointed is that if God is the "cause" of the universe as we know it and if everything has a cause then what or Who created God? In other words is the cosmological theory self-contradictory? Well I'm not going to pretend i know the answer to this question that must have perplexed the advocates of the cosmological argument but let me run this by you all as suggestion. In the case of time, most scientist and philosophers suggested that time was a circular phenomenon rather than a linear function- a very large circle that will avoid any repeats in peoples' events and life in the same life cycle! So what if we apply this to the cosmological theory; maybe the cause and event function is more of a circular notion rather than a linear progression- wherein every cause has an event and every event in turn becomes a cause and vice versa. This probably differs from what cosmological philosophers might argue; that God has no cause but call me part of camp 2- i belong to that camp that suggest that the cosmological argument is sufficient in sort of proving the existence of a God if and only if He in Himself is created by something else as a result of the circular manner of creation and coming into existence. The next can or worms i might have left myself vulnerable to is who then is the creator of God or the cause of God? Well to me; " the lack of proof for the existence of God or in this case his 'cause' is not sufficient proof for his nonexistence"

Agnosticism: Human Nature or Skeptical?

Which is more practical? Is it more rational to believe that there's no God or be rest content that " no proof for his existence isn't proof for his nonexistence"! Some people attack the agnostic point of view towards religions because they think not having evidence or enough evidence to prove that there's a God is good enough reason to say that there isn't one while others think their stand is somewhat cowardly (for lack of a better word) since they remain open-minded and sort of middle ground between atheism and theism. In addition, the agnostic position to others is just a skeptic's approach to religion and the debate over the existence of a God or not. Personally, i think the agnostic position is more than just being a skeptic or a "coward" not being able to make up their mind as to which direction they'll take. Who said they have to be atheist or theist? They have already made up their mind and taking the stand that they would prefer more evidence in either direction before drawing a conclusion. I mean isn't that what we all do? isn't that what statistics and researchers do when they never say we reject a hypotheses thus accept the alternative. Better yet isn't that what we do on a daily basis when we don't believe things we can't comprehend at first mention because we would like more evidence. Atleast the agnostic is open-minded and ready to learn from evidence and not an atheist in disguise or as some think just on a middle ground so they can go either way and not be necessarily held to their previous convictions.

A pragmatic empiricism

According to Thomas Clark the society has to refrain from characterising itself by any epistemological belief or abide by any particular religion and in so doing maintain an environment where everyone can freely worship and belief what they want to. The same applies for policies, laws and rules that apply to communities and areas of the public including schools, universities etc. This is maintained by public schools not offering religious classes of any kind or particular doctrine so as not to put undue pressure on its students as to what way to abide. Then i pose the question of why then do we teach science like evolution in public schools wherein some people might object to that version of the origin of the world? If we make the argument that we have to expose the students to this scientific belief without any bias towards others or without necessarily asking students to question their faith and the knowledge of God creating the universe then we can make the same argument for religious classes. Why not teach history classes with the Bible as the text or better yet why not teach Islam to students from a historical perspective of the Mohammed's life, the jihads and the consequent segregation of Islamic followers or matter of fact we could just allow anyone with the authority to hold seminars or classes about whatever religious or epistemological belief they see fit as long as they have a certain number of interested parties? It will just be an extension of the real world empiricism maintained by catholic schools and other religious-affiliated schools in society!

Science vs Faith: What side are you on?

Before we rush into any conclusions, i am not asking that anyone choose one side because if you have been a staple on my blog you would realize that i always prefer a middle more stable ground rather than picking an extreme which requires that we constantly debate out stance against other extremes especially at times when our extreme theories aren't so convinving. So why do i pose the question then? Well i am asking that you tell what discipline dominates your thinking; what set of rules or justifications to you turn to when faced with a choice or otherwise moral decision. Do you look to facts in nature (science) or tend to the holy writings -bible, koran etc (faith) to justify your actions? Personally i choose neither one but use both of them choosing between each one depending on the situation at hand. I know what you are thinking; there he goes again settling for a common ground rather than sticking with one thing but honestly you can't rely on just on discipline to make who you are or at least the source of your justification. You need religion and science to go hand in hand for the a more effective society; a great mind once said " Science produces guns but religion tells you how to use it correctly". The same applies to our society today in respect to laws, rules and norms. We might want to advocate that our legal constitutions are strictly political or selected based on facts but i would disagree with that because it is impossible to have a stance on pretty much everything without appealing to you faith or believe. When a political figure or representative gives his or her stance on thing like taxes, abortion or firearms, their personal experiences as a tax payer, a conscious human with a pre-disposed knowledge on abortion as well firearm violence all come into play. They also call on their faith from time to time making them ponder if the right thing to do is to reform the tax policy, if abortion is murder and if making firearms easily accessible is the best thing for a society where gun violence is always on the news! We try to make out public space as free as possible from a particular religion, faith or belief but in doing so we open our public space to every religious belief and justification out there possible(on the basis of religion). I'm in no way advocating that our society becomes a strictly Christian or Moslem and therefore everyone has to abide to the laws of the Bible or the Koran. What i'm trying to expatiate is that we as members of a public society have to realize that others and us included have various religious beliefs we tend to call upon or use as a decision making rule book thus respect each and every one for that and realize that .....Different do not neccessarily mean wrong.

A supernatural realm?

Metaphysical realists talks about a true world; a world wherein thinks existed in their natural self. In this world, things exist independent of human interventions and perceptions thus apples here are "real" apples as Ernst von Glasersfeld puts it. We could also extend this world to include and support the objective theory of time supported by Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome which states that time " exists in reality as a mind-independent continuum...". It is my conclusion therefore that the true world independent of our perceptions is one in which time, real apples and the reality of the world exists as what they are; without out interpretaions and perceptions.So here is my question; if this world can't be accessed, can we therefore classify it as being supernatural? Is the true world that contains real apples and time( as a mind-independent entity) metaphysical (as in beyond physical space and time)? How then can we talk of this supernatural world or at least attest to its existence when we don't know it exist or can't talk of it without making it our percieved notion of the world especially since most philosophers and great thinkers would argue that there has to be people present for things to exist (subjective theory of existence and reality) or as Aristotle puts it in reference to time; "for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted...".

Mindful Timing: A reaction to Bejamin Libet

In 1970, Benjamin Libet performed experiments with the brain and he found out that the brain initiates free choices about a third of a second before we are aware of the choice therefore the person decides to act freely before the body initiates the action. This raised the question; " whether we can speed up our minds relative to physical time...[to] become mentally more productive and get more high quality decision making done per fixed amount of physical time". I don't know if i can answer that question but i could try. A 100mph major league fast ball is about 4/10 of a second faster than the blink of an eye and some professional players have made their living being successful fastall hitters. To get to this point softball and baseball palyers have trained and trained from pee-wee till the majors as the velocity of pitches have increased. To my understanding, it takes some mind ability to play baseball; you have to make a choice between swinging or not at a pitch does for a 100mph fastball your thinking or decision making or as the article from the internet encyclopedia of philosophy puts it "initiating free choices" has to be quicker. To follow this train of thought then i will have to agree that we can by practice speed up the decision making of the mind just as the hitter who progress along the ranks till professional baseball or softball has to, to become a better hitter.