Religion & Spirituality: Who Knows?
Nobody Knows It All
God comes to mind when people think about religion, the divine when people think about spirituality. Each concept has variations and elaborations that tell more specifically what God or the divine are like – just how they operate and who their best representatives are.
There are also those who don’t think much of religion and spirituality. They believe that people make this stuff up. When they look at the world, they just see the universe, nature, life, or being-itself, with no added Energy or Entity.
Nobody knows it all; that’s why it’s called faith or belief, not certain knowledge. The atheistically-inclined don’t know it all either. Often they enthusiastically embrace science – but scientists are still doing science. It’s a process. They don’t know it all either.
You don’t know what you don’t know. The sum of all human knowledge may well be the tiniest fraction of what there is to know. Astronomers don’t even know if this is the only universe. If there’s more than one, we’d have to wonder whether universes would necessarily be the only kind or category of large-scale phenomenon to be found in all-nature. Either way, it’s not like we can stick our necks outside our universe to check up on it…
Existence Exists!
Despite these different ideas about reality, there’s one thing we generally agree on: some sort of big-picture or greatest-context truly does exist.
Sure, there’s that old “it’s all a dream and everything is subjective” notion that’s sometimes floated in philosophical conversations. But I’ve never known anyone to live by it – maybe because anyone who did would be dead! You’d definitely be a menace to yourself and others if you didn’t see fast-moving vehicles, for example, as having the potential to impact more than your subject impression. And people take their opinions and arguments about political, religious, work-related, and many other matters with a seriousness that belies the idea that they don’t really believe they concern things beyond themselves.
The big picture that we all see ourselves as being part of is the being in “being part of.” It’s the here in “What am I doing here” – or the world in “What in the world am I doing here?”
The existence of a big picture or largest context is as uncontroversial as it is obvious. Controversy arises when people have different ideas about the big picture’s working parts – especially when it comes to the inclusion or exclusion of divine or Godly working parts.
God comes to mind when people think about religion, the divine when people think about spirituality. Each concept has variations and elaborations that tell more specifically what God or the divine are like – just how they operate and who their best representatives are.
There are also those who don’t think much of religion and spirituality. They believe that people make this stuff up. When they look at the world, they just see the universe, nature, life, or being-itself, with no added Energy or Entity.
Nobody knows it all; that’s why it’s called faith or belief, not certain knowledge. The atheistically-inclined don’t know it all either. Often they enthusiastically embrace science – but scientists are still doing science. It’s a process. They don’t know it all either.
You don’t know what you don’t know. The sum of all human knowledge may well be the tiniest fraction of what there is to know. Astronomers don’t even know if this is the only universe. If there’s more than one, we’d have to wonder whether universes would necessarily be the only kind or category of large-scale phenomenon to be found in all-nature. Either way, it’s not like we can stick our necks outside our universe to check up on it…
Existence Exists!
Despite these different ideas about reality, there’s one thing we generally agree on: some sort of big-picture or greatest-context truly does exist.
Sure, there’s that old “it’s all a dream and everything is subjective” notion that’s sometimes floated in philosophical conversations. But I’ve never known anyone to live by it – maybe because anyone who did would be dead! You’d definitely be a menace to yourself and others if you didn’t see fast-moving vehicles, for example, as having the potential to impact more than your subject impression. And people take their opinions and arguments about political, religious, work-related, and many other matters with a seriousness that belies the idea that they don’t really believe they concern things beyond themselves.
The big picture that we all see ourselves as being part of is the being in “being part of.” It’s the here in “What am I doing here” – or the world in “What in the world am I doing here?”
The existence of a big picture or largest context is as uncontroversial as it is obvious. Controversy arises when people have different ideas about the big picture’s working parts – especially when it comes to the inclusion or exclusion of divine or Godly working parts.
Posted by Paul at 10:17 AM Permalink
16 Comments:
And I love how you said that we don't know what we don't know. That's one of my favorite phrases. I cling to it, and at the end of the discussion with my boyfriend, we both acknowledged that. It was refreshing!
Nasra - I think that may be where I'm headed in upcoming posts - thinking more about religious beliefs. As you mention here, belief in an afterlife helps many people face death.
“Despite these different ideas about reality, there’s one thing we generally agree on: some sort of big-picture or greatest-context truly does exist.”
Really? Has a poll been done on this? And even if it has, are ideas of reality determined by lowest-common denominator, or voting majorities?
You dismiss subjectivity on the grounds that those who live by it would be dead. But this is to confuse the inner and the outer life. The only agreed big picture is the outer world, whose features observed by the senses we generally agree on, and label “objective reality”.
The inner life is something which by convention of language we generally agree to call subjective experience, for it contains things not verifiable objectively, and not part of the common objective world.
If there is an agreed-on big-picture then it will surely acknowledge that each person perceives an objective world, and when communicating with another person finds general agreement on the components parts of that world when seen from the same point in time and space. Each person will also agree that the inner world of private experience is less easy to communicate and differs enormously. We don’t dream the same dream, think the same thoughts or feel the same emotions. If there is a big picture comprising everyone’s inner world, it is made up of lots of little private pictures (ongoing movies, you might say). Where is the big picture there?
“The sum of all human knowledge may well be the tiniest fraction of what there is to know.” “The sum of human knowledge” is a phrase people mean but does it refer to anything real? What is knowledge? What is knowledge? How do you add what I know to what you know? I could put my books alongside yours on a shelf, but I cannot assess or weigh my knowledge in that way.
What does it mean to say “what there is to know” as if there is some undiscovered continent? It is a truism that people will know things in the future that they don’t know now; because it is based on the more fundamental truism, that the future is unknown.
“Controversy arises when people have different ideas about the big picture’s working parts – especially when it comes to the inclusion or exclusion of divine or Godly working parts.”
Well, there are controversies about many things, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that these are for you or I to get bothered about. Suppose vested interests are involved? Pastors have to make a living. Their parishioners appreciate the benefits of being part of a congregation of the like-minded, with their lives given meaning in a traditional and perhaps unquestioned framework. Atheists have their own reasons for speaking up, instead of quietly going about their business and bothering nobody. So the controversies aren’t likely to be calm debates between open-minded truth-seekers.
So in total, I don’t see that this piece establishes a reliable or useful foundation for philosophical investigation. Perhaps you will demonstrate my error, as things progress.
Looks interesting and will get back to it when I have time to really read it... maybe meanwhile someone else will have some thoughts...
The latest Philosophy Bites post is kind of about this - link
We can acquire a lot of facts about something such as an engine for instance. In that sense then we know engine facts. But unless we are able to take those facts and interpret them in such a way that we come to understand how the engine is put together and how it functions, and we are able to verify that our understanding is true, we can not say we have knowledge of the engine itself....if that makes any sense.
Another way to say it is we can know all the facts there are to know about everything in the whole wide world, but this in itself will not necessarily lead us to an understanding (knowledge) of how all of it is put together and how all of it functions.
Paul, I am not sure what kind of "knowing" you are talking about.
I don’t think that what goes on in my own head is the only thing going on in the world. I’m pretty sure that most people don’t think that what goes on in their heads is the only thing going on in the world either.
Some of us believe that the world or reality – the big or complete picture of being – includes God or other divine aspects, but others don’t. This is an area where there’s a lot of sharp disagreement.
No?
Basically, it was a phiosophy teacher from UC Berkeley talking about the philosopher Berkeley (heh).
Berkeley believrd in something called subjective idealism ...
"When I open my eyes in the morning a world of objects greets me. But do these objects really exist ? Realism (or philosophical materialism) is the view that these external objects do in fact exist and are composed of a substance called matter; these objects are independent of me, and will continue to exist even if tomorrow I cease to exist.
The opposing philosophical theory to realism is called philosophical [subjective] Idealism .... the view that matter does not exist in its own right, that in fact it is a product of mind. So all objects are mental creations. In this view, since the whole world is the sum of all objects, then even the world is a mental construct ....
There is no experiment that can be performed to decide whether reality is formed by realism or by Idealism. Ultimately the test is in the explanatory power of either view: whichever one best explains the empirical phenomena of reality is the one more likely to be true. The individual has to think his way to the truth.
- Subjective Idealism"
Crystal's philosophy notes provide an apt comment on Paul's statement as quoted above.
You can talk about this collection of components and call it the world, all-that-is and so on, but you cannot demonstrate that it is anything but an imaginative construct, like a griffin or unicorn.
It's apparent that you want to introduce the idea of God, as some kind of leap of faith, further on in the argument.
But in saying that there is some kind of whole, which includes the entire visible & evidentially deductible world, plus the sum of all mental life (compressed as it were into some form of magnetic media, and stored in some gigantic database), you have already taken that leap.
And it reminds me of Matthew 10:30 - "But the very hairs of your head are all numbered".
You say "who knows?" as if we are on a journey starting from first principles, but you unquestioningly assume a God's-eye view as a start-point.
As my earlier reply to Vincent and Susie indicates, I’m making a few simple statements about how people generally seem to view the world, not trying to develop an epistemology.
Vincent – I don't believe that the world is limited to my own personal mental life/ stream of consciousness. My impression is that few people believe this of themselves. This doesn’t endorse or reject either of the philosophies Crystal cites.
I'm not following your thought that to see the world as an interconnected whole is to believe in God. Science views the world as an interconnected whole – that’s what makes the world potentially intelligible and leads scientists to look for universal laws, elemental particles, the manner in which cosmological events and processes relate to each other etc.
You are selective with your “don’t knows”. Your post – which by the way I admire greatly for setting things out in a way which allows such fundamental discussion – is about “not knowing”. But the one thing you are certain of, and suppose that most others are equally certain of, is “the big picture”, something beyond your perception, and mine, and everyone else’s.
I agree with those who are certain of God’s existence, because they see that picture, and – usually – I have an idea of what they are seeing and agree with them. Same with the atheists, most of them. I have an idea of what they are seeing and find it in me to agree with that too.
What I cannot agree with, and if I were a better philosopher might be able to identify as a logical fallacy, is your notion of a picture (your “big picture”) that exists out there, called “all-that-is”, which has a defined reality independent of any observer.
You may not be trying to set out an epistemology, but when you make the simple statement “nobody knows it all” in that context, you are making an epistemological assumption that there actually exists an “it all”, somewhere beyond people’s knowledge. Which instantly places you in collision with Bishop Berkeley’s esse est percipi. He says the thing (“the world”) exists to the extent that it is seen. You say that something exists before it is seen.
It’s not because of the way you have written this particular post, Paul; it’s implicit in almost everything you write, that there is probably a reality out there, corresponding to most abstract nouns! And I’ve been trying to challenge you on this fundamental point for months, probably years.
When I read the post, it reminded me of a Buddhist children's tale I recently re-read. Basically, a bunch of monks are arguing about some theological point, and so the Buddha tells another monk to gather all the blind men in the village, and an elephant. They do so and the Buddha has all the blind men touch the elephant, and then asks them to describe what an elephant is like. And of course the one who touched the tusks says, 'An elephant is like a smooth tree branch' and the one who touches the tail says, 'An elephant is like a long, tough rope', and the one who touches the hide says, 'An elephant is like a giant piece of sandpaper', etc. etc. You get the idea - the Buddha was trying to show them their theological differences just depended on what aspect of existence they had experienced.
But of course, in this case, everyone watching could see the whole elephant, so it's not exactly the same thing...
Or is it perhaps true, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, only discovered in the moment of seeing? (An unreflective person might talk of a beautiful painting that no one had ever seen, apart from the artist, who hated it and threw it into a cellar. Was it beautiful before someone recognised it as such?)
Does it make sense to speak of "all the beauty in the world" or "all the love in the world"? Is there such a thing as "unknown love"?
Vincent - Knowledge has grown over the centuries and humanity’s worldview expanded accordingly. The idea that there may be more to life than we now know is both reasonable and likely.
Post a Comment