Belief vs Knowledge - The Force

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4 years 10 months ago #337977 by
I wanted to start this just to see something about how people view their reality and the real world around them. People believe in many things and have many reasons to do so.. but what do you know and how? What have you experienced and what did those experiences really teach you about life, people, or the world?..

Have they shown you there's higher function underpinning our reality? What some would call God or The Force?..

Tell me what you know, not what you believe.. and let's discuss our experiences and how we've interpreted them..

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4 years 10 months ago - 4 years 10 months ago #337979 by Adder
For me... belief is a fun vehicle for exploration , and knowledge is vital for the engineering of those vehicles - 'vehicles' being conceptual frameworks to interpret experience as if modes of reality).

Within that, any beliefs are assigned to vehicles rather then self identity or group identities. It allows one to explore a much wider gamut of experiences I think. For it is a living/evergreen self-renewing path, asserting that belief is entirely open provided it does not become delusion. My definition for delusion would be along the lines of 'a fixed belief not amenable to rational argument or evidence to contrary, and being distinct from a belief which might be based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or some other misleading effects of perception'. But the only extent a belief needs to align with reality is that to which is interacts with it, and any restriction to a vehicle beyond that is unnecessary IMO.If a vehicle interacts with a new aspect of reality and conflicts then it either updates itself to align or is not an appropriate vehicle for that circumstance and a more appropriate vehicle should be used. Otherwise it would be restrictive and close one off to the amazing diversity, power and beauty of the universe. In the subjective world nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted. The trick is not mixing the subjective world with the objective world (going either way) and then having vessels enough to make safe expedition!

Foxes and hedgehogs.

Knight ~ introverted extropian, mechatronic neurothealogizing, technogaian buddhist. Likes integration, visualization, elucidation and transformation.
Jou ~ Deg ~ Vlo ~ Sem ~ Mod ~ Med ~ Dis
TM: Grand Master Mark Anjuu
Last edit: 4 years 10 months ago by Adder. Reason: clarity
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4 years 10 months ago #337980 by
Replied by on topic Belief vs Knowledge - The Force
I do not accept belief as a means to obtain knowledge. Faith is rejected simply because it implies belief without evidence. However evidence is the only viable mechanism to achieve knowing of anything in our reality.

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4 years 10 months ago - 4 years 10 months ago #337981 by
Replied by on topic Belief vs Knowledge - The Force

What do you know and how?


I don’t know, I don’t know. I feel like there is a fishhook floating above me. I don’t know what I know. I think I know a lot of things. I’m not sure how/why I think I know those things. I just collect experience in this sack of meat and call it knowledge. Anyways, mostly I just feel things.

What have you experienced and what did those experiences really teach you about life, people, or the world?..


I’ve experienced a lot of things, I think. Here’s a specific one: Once upon a time I got laid off. I don’t think I had any control in the matter, but it taught me that if I’m going to subscribe to a system, I’ve got to accept when the system treats me like the number I’ve become to them. I don’t mean to sound bitter about that, it is what it is. And I don’t mean to say that I can’t or shouldn’t do anything about it, but it’s a waste to be bitter.

Have they shown you there's higher function underpinning our reality? What some would call God or The Force?..


That’s just the feeling thing I mentioned earlier. No specific experience has brought me any profound knowledge of this, but I feel it more when I’m away—out on the mountain, or far at sea. Maybe it’s just fear.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my liberal use of italics.
Last edit: 4 years 10 months ago by . Reason: Grammar

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4 years 10 months ago #337984 by Carlos.Martinez3
I know - that the more I learn the less I know. I know the more I explain things- personally - the less I wonder. I know that no matter what I do - I’ll never understand everything. My experiences speak to me often. I’ve felt more at home and comfortable in my enemy's home ( during time of war and peace) than in my own familys home some days. I know I’ve learned great character worth teaching my children from people of different faiths and walks and I tell their story - often. I know when I rid myself of my need to explain a lot of things I personally can appreciate them a bit more. I know I don’t HAVE to explain everything. I know my connections are there with others and the more I seek them and build them the more - me and my family can enjoy our life. I know my faith in the Force and the ability to help others to choose their own as I have - creates not a negative effect but one that can be felt even when those people are away. These are things I know from my own experience. These are things proven for me and to and my path. They can differ from path to path but what I do know is - it works for me. I am a benefit and a blessing to my family and friends rather than what I used to be. I know I’m not the same person as I was yesterday. I know what I practice now, is worth much more to me than when I started. That’s a tiny bit of what I know... but I don’t know much. There is still sooooo much out there left to be explored.

Pastor of Temple of the Jedi Order
pastor@templeofthejediorder.org
Build, not tear down.
Nosce te ipsum / Cerca trova
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4 years 10 months ago - 4 years 10 months ago #338067 by Gisteron

Uzima Moto wrote: People believe in many things and have many reasons to do so.. but what do you know and how? What have you experienced and what did those experiences really teach you about life, people, or the world?..

Have they shown you there's higher function underpinning our reality? What some would call God or The Force?..

Personal experience is in my opinion not a reliable path to knowledge if we want to make the sort of distinction between belief and knowledge that you are suggesting. I find that cross-confirming experiences with those of my peers - whilst by no means perfect - tends to produce a generally more accurate picture, at least of any sort of reality we seem to be sharing, whether that means something or not. After all, I find that the interaction with others is very essential to being human, and an experience that cannot be shared with anyone else is a lesser one for that reason alone. And so what I consider non-a-priori knowledge must come from data, from the experiences collected by a great conglomerate of my fellows and predecessors, and confirmed among them.

One of the things I know - not as a matter of personal experience or lack thereof, but as a matter of plausibility based on experimental data and theoretical predictions - is that what ever "higher function underpinning our reality" might be out there still hidden from our view, it would have to be so weak in comparison to what we already know about as to be essentially void of impact for our daily lives. What ever ghosts or spirits or gods or souls, or the Force, if one be so inclined, we can at best use as a label to describe things that exhibit none of the characteristic traditionally associated with those terms. There may be a Force that has an essentially impact-less will, flows as weakly as to be essentially not flowing at all. There may be a god that is has essentially no powers whatsoever and is as ignorant about things in general as we are.
We know this, because we already have quite a theory that is a kind of accurate of which there is no second instance... one might say it is one of a kind, that kind of accurate. As I say, it is not so much that therefore there are no magic powers beyond what we already know. Rather, the uncertainties, the margins of error where we can have any kind of expectation of finding any such thing have at this point become extremely slim. What ever hides in that tiny sliver of a shadow is so insignificant as to make basically no difference whatsoever. For all practical purposes, there might as well be nothing there at all.

Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
Last edit: 4 years 10 months ago by Gisteron.
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4 years 10 months ago - 4 years 10 months ago #338087 by Eleven
My personal experience is living it. My belief in The Force is because I've seen certain events in my life unfold whether explained or unexplained circumstances. My knowledge of The Force comes from my own views and the added knowledge of others. I believe were all connected EVERYTHING and EVERYONE in an endless web of life and events. Ones purpose ends another grows in its place endlessly cycle.

Do I believe The Force is God? Nope. I believe were infinite beings living in temporary vessels. Do I believe were God's? No I don't think so. I am not certain if there is a God or Goddess I think their is simply The Force and this temporary existence. Once we die we return to The Force and become one with it and experience Reincarnation with new life and purpose.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tl1zqH4lsSmKOyCLU9sdOSAUig7Q38QW4okOwSz2V4c/edit
Last edit: 4 years 10 months ago by Eleven. Reason: Didn't finish
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4 years 10 months ago #338204 by ZealotX
In my humble opinion the key is to acknowledge that we have 2 hemispheres of the brain for a reason. Therefore, one should seek a balance between evidence and feelings. Everything you see is interpreted by your brain and are just signals. When you dream you can still "see" but your eyes are closed so you're not physically "seeing" or interpreting patterns of light bouncing off objects. And what if light doesn't bounce off an object? Does it mean it is objectively not there? Of course not.

I don't have to see the air I breathe to know it's there. The same is true with belief. Some people discount it because they can't prove it. There are still scientific theories that haven't been proven but if the people trying to prove them didn't believe in them they would never try and those things would never be proven. How did we get here? How did life begin? I have beliefs about this that don't involve a "king of the universe" but these are beliefs... theories... To say that anyone definitely knows is a lie. And we can simply accept "not knowing" but that's very limiting on human thought if we're not free to wonder, to dream, to imagine. I believe life itself evolved from simple animation caused by physics; the rules created order and the order a system and the system the ability for members of that system to adapt and evolve.

Now if I don't know something for a fact then I don't try to pretend that I do. I don't pretend belief is the same as knowledge which is where I think a lot of people go wrong because then they start getting offended by knowledge that disproves their beliefs. But if beliefs are just beliefs then they shouldn't be held so holy and sacred that they cannot be challenged by evidence. By the same token I don't think what claims to be knowledge is complete and cannot therefore be challegened by beliefs because those beliefs could LEAD to evidence and fact-finding that sheds new light.

Belief/Faith can be very powerful tools. For instance, if I apply faith to myself then I can discover that I can do more than I think I can. Without faith I'm limited in what I can achieve. People use belief in every day life to "hack" their brains into allowing them to perform at a higher level. Maybe a runner believes they can push themselves to run just a bit faster or longer. If a scientist says humans can only run as fast as the fastest known runner at the time then you can see how belief could impact our basic understanding. For me personally, when I tend to think positive and believe things will work out they usually do. When I think negatively things tend to get worse. Belief, therefore, often depends on application.

The reason belief is so important in certain religions is because if you don't believe then you wont have the motivation to change your lifestyle. If "Sin" (for example) is a habit then you need something stronger than that habit in order to break it.
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4 years 10 months ago #338220 by Gisteron

ZealotX wrote: In my humble opinion the key is to acknowledge that we have 2 hemispheres of the brain for a reason. Therefore, one should seek a balance between evidence and feelings.

This is not to say that I disagree with you - in principle I probably don't - but this does not at all follow. Even if there be a reason our brains have two hemispheres (and by reason I assume you mean some kind of end goal rather than just a historical account of how this came to be), that by no means implies that therefore one "should" anything.


Everything you see is interpreted by your brain and are just signals. When you dream you can still "see" but your eyes are closed so you're not physically "seeing" or interpreting patterns of light bouncing off objects. And what if light doesn't bounce off an object? Does it mean it is objectively not there? Of course not.

I don't see (pun intended) that as quite so obvious. Sure, by a literal reading, just because I cannot see light reflected from air, as your example later goes, doesn't mean that there isn't any around. But surely you aren't trying to make the entire argument exclusively about literal light seeing. We have, after all, other ways of detecting things than that. For one, most EM waves are not visible to our eyes at all, and the colour resolution of what tiny sliver of the spectrum we see has long been surpassed by the instruments we built to resolve them by literally orders of magnitude. Gravitational and nuclear effects seem to be thoroughly orthogonal to interactions with electrical or magnetic fields as well, and we have means to detect those, too. But what if not only light, but no kind of particle at all "bounces" off an alleged object? What if the dragon in your garage is not just invisible, it is also inaudible, makes no smell, radiates no heat and cannot be touched? Saying a thing is not there just because you cannot see it is unreasonable, I agree. But how many detection methods does it have to perfectly evade before it becomes reasonable to shift the burden of proof where it belonged all along: To the ones making the claim that the thing "exists" in some way regardless?
Just because your dragon is invisible doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But just because I cannot logically prove that it doesn't exist doesn't mean that it is reasonable for me - or indeed for you - to believe that it does.


Some people discount [belief] because they can't prove it. There are still scientific theories that haven't been proven but if the people trying to prove them didn't believe in them they would never try and those things would never be proven.

Scientific theories are not a matter of proof. None of them are proven. Some are shown to produce more accurate predictions than others. But there is no such thing as a provable scientific theory. There is no such thing as a true scientific theory either, or a false one. These terms are matters of logic, of mathematics, not of science.


How did we get here? How did life begin? I have beliefs about this that don't involve a "king of the universe" but these are beliefs... theories... To say that anyone definitely knows is a lie.

A theory is not just a belief. A theory is a model that relates data collected in such a way as to make testable predictions about future findings, and that has made predictions that have been matching subsequent data sets.
Now whether having a model that consistently makes accurate predictions constitutes knowledge or not is perhaps a matter of philosophical debate. I for one am happy to avoid it by separating knowledge into matters of truth and matters of fact. That way we can "know" answers to the questions you posed just fine, by having well working models of these things.


And we can simply accept "not knowing" but that's very limiting on human thought if we're not free to wonder, to dream, to imagine.

I strongly disagree. I believe that it is the recognition of our fallibility that enables us to wonder ever more, to be yet more curious, yet more imaginative, in our pursuit of answers. To put it in the words of the great late Christopher Hitchens, "I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet, that I haven't understood enough, that I can't know enough, that I'm always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn't have it any other way."
It is, I believe, only by revulsing at our ignorance, by fearfully rejecting it, not through combat but through hiding from it, that we cease to wonder, and to dream, and to imagine. We are better off, I believe, embracing our limitations, and fighting to overcome them to what ever extent we can.


Now if I don't know something for a fact then I don't try to pretend that I do. I don't pretend belief is the same as knowledge which is where I think a lot of people go wrong because then they start getting offended by knowledge that disproves their beliefs. But if beliefs are just beliefs then they shouldn't be held so holy and sacred that they cannot be challenged by evidence. By the same token I don't think what claims to be knowledge is complete and cannot therefore be challegened by beliefs because those beliefs could LEAD to evidence and fact-finding that sheds new light.

With most of what you say here I agree. Allow me nevertheless this tiny nitpick: Yes, beliefs can lead to finding evidence. They especially lead to confirmation bias, where one filters gathered data through the belief, only to leave confirming - or indeed only disconfirming - evidence to be even acknowledged as such. I think what we believe should be dictated by what the evidence indicates, never the other way.


The reason belief is so important in certain religions is because if you don't believe then you wont have the motivation to change your lifestyle. If "Sin" (for example) is a habit then you need something stronger than that habit in order to break it.

A piece of information spreads more rapidly if people who get to carry it believe it to be true/accurate and important to spread and to remember. A system of ideas spreads more rapidly if it encourages those who carry them to keep on believing them, especially in the face of chalenge, and to share them and convince others. One might think it daft these days to liken religions to diseases, but as a matter of evolutionary fitness they are very analogous indeed. One might also liken them to genes - this is where the term "meme" comes from. The more convincing an idea is, the more successful it will be competing with fellow ideas for the minds of the individuals capable of having any. The religions that have stood the test of time, that have kept a number of adherents, or grown it, are religions that encourage adherents to remain faithful toward them and to proselytize them to the adherents' friends, family, or even strangers. It is no mystery why the most successful religions are ones that claim exclusivity of faith, or dominance over lifestyle, or even hostility towards those that couldn't be converted. A religion that tolerates or encourages mixing itself with others is just bad at competing for mind space against more "selfish" memes.
The reason belief - or faith, rather - is so important in pretty much all religions is the same reason they want to change the adherents' lifestyle. It is because religions that don't encourage commitment and devotion like that tend to be short-lived, "unfit", to put it in evolutionary terms. The ones that survive for any noteworthy time or grow to any noteworthy extent tend to do so precisely because they have religious zeal built right into them.

Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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4 years 10 months ago - 4 years 10 months ago #338221 by
Replied by on topic Belief vs Knowledge - The Force
Couple of quick points here to correct mistakes that most laymen make. A scientific theory is not the same as the common use of the term theory. A scientific theory is not proof of anything but the highest current conclusion on the operation of a phenomenon based on a wealth of evidence. It is a working explanation of how some part of the world works. It is not based on belief but on fact. Also scientists do not test hypothesis based on belief, they test them based on observation. They make no conclusions about that observation (form no beliefs). Instead they form hypothesis on what might be causing the observation and then set out to disprove each one until only one remains and that gets added to the data that supports the theory and that is used as a predictor of future potential proofs. If one of those future proofs is proven not viable then that theory (of version of that theory) is discarded. This process is not done from a stand point of belief but actually a standpoint of skepticism. (unbelief)

So no belief and faith are not powerful tools, they are some of the most impotent and unreliable tools anyone could ever use to arrive at a conclusion. Using scientific methods we can arrive at a reasonable conclusion as to whether or not there is an invisible dragon in your garage, however using faith does not have this power because you can just as easily arrive at the incorrect conclusion and never know the difference.
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