What
Is Believable?
What
I believe is so determines what is reality. What one believes is central
to how one sees the world. The
question of knowledge vs. belief, what each is or isn't is a basis
for understanding what role theory has in answering our why questions
and what role faith has in answering how questions.
All
knowledge is belief. Things we encounter through experience, that are
described by others that are deduced or that are intuited – these
are merely information. Just as a CD needs a CD player,
information needs a filter. Every individual's filters are
unique, despite our overwhelming attempts to find commonality with
the filters of others and consistency in our own. We attempt to
transform information into facts, but fail because ultimately we
cannot know the experiences of any other person, and the communal
experience is just a strand or rationalized thread, when our internal
experience is a tapestry. What passes for science is a lattice of
hypotheses, or in layman's terms, reasoned opinion.
Anyone
who careful examines the fabric of their day to day experiences finds
many things that defy logical explanation, many things which are
inconsistencies, both in the self and in the world. We lie to
ourselves to make the earth spin properly on it's axis.
How
Do I Know Right From Wrong?
Belief
is an individual's attempt to fill in the void we face when we
examine our life as it is; we dread a universe that is a complete
mystery, that has no morality, logic or rules. Can existence be a
free-for-all? Most of us say some form of “God forbid.” So in
some sense, our gods forbid it.
I
accept, with some humility, the extreme likelihood that everything I
believe about the world may be wrong, in that the tale of history (a
tale, not a fact) is that of mankind again and again getting it
wrong. The best ideas men have ever conjured have proved erroneous
over time. Everything I believe may be hogwash, but someone has to
wash the hog, and belief in nothing has no claim to a better odds of
being right. That being said, I have very strong beliefs about the
nature of things.
I
think reality is a complex interweave, a push-me pull-you
universe where every action has complex, nearly innumerable results,
much too multi-layered to be anticipated by any schema. I cannot
responsibly predict the outcomes of my actions, so does that
exonerate me from responsibility? Can I even act responsibly to some
small degree?
Large
events rise from infinitesimal causes. Since a myriad of events
trigger my actions as well as arising from them, every event
within and without me is part of a greater chain of causes and
effects. Free will as such is an illusion. But what decisions
flow through me end up defining me, and so I have an essential
responsibility to make the best possible decisions, not because I
am accountable for them, but because they account for me.
One
component of me, as given, is a conscience. I must follow the
dictates of my conscience to be the person I am meant to be. If not,
then I was meant to be a villain. To some degree I am, automatically,
because again reality is a complex interweave and I am unaware of
most of the strands I am altering by my choices. Mandated choices,
but for me, very real choices. Just as I get excited by the final
battle in a movie even when I have seen it 100 times, I am invested
in my choices because they define me. Nothing is black and
white, but every shade of gray has a better shade and a worse shade,
and it is my job to better these gradations.
What
Is Reality?
Thoughtful
believers have always struggled with the concept of the infinite.
Stoics believed in infinite regression, that if the world is infinite
you are not one point but all points. At some point in an infinite
circle, 30 degrees becomes 31 degrees, and 90 becomes 0. Infinity
takes all the uniqueness out of things. Any point in an infinite
circle is all points and no point. When you have laughed on a
Tuesday, you have also cried on that Tuesday and felt nothing on that
same Tuesday. What difference how you react to anything today? All
ways infinity equals non-existence.
Think
of it this way. If you and your friends sit at a table that is
infinitely long and infinitely wide, where exactly would you sit?
Anywhere you could sit
you would be effectively alone. Now picture a table infinitely
long, but only 2 feet wide. All of your friends could sit at it, but
someone can still pass you the salt.
The
finite part of reality (the two feet wide) is the part that science
looks at. It is also the part that makes you you and not also a
strawberry. The infinite part of the universe is the meaningful
part of it, the realm of faith, is that which makes the difference
between you and a strawberry significant. Science handles the limited
universe and mythologies* address the rest.
*
I say mythologies because as I said above, most of what most people
have believed for most of history has been wrong. Until Jesus returns
or Shiva destroys the world to build a new one, I will define these
as mythologies, meaning diverse beliefs. In no way is the term meant
to be disrespectful or to cast aspersions on any belief system.
Copyright h.g.lowry 2013
