Belief VS Knowlege

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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How come humans are so focused and get all bent out of shape about what they “believe”? Why isn’t more attention given to what a person “knows”? Keeping all philosophical “there is no such thing as real knowledge” stuff out of the conversation for a while. I’m simply talking about using the words “I know this to be true” versus “I believe this to be true”? Or even owning up to saying the opposite: “I don’t know if this is true”.

It seems like (given the way people toss around “belief” and “knowledge”) that any system of beliefs or any religion is some club you can join that will satisfy your need for comfort or whatever. Like say a skeptic attacks in a debate a Christian’s idea of god using the “problem of evil” argument. The Christian more likely than not will use the ever popular “Well we believe that god is mysterious and he has something special in store for us.” I don’t mean to over generalize here but this response is used very frequently.

Obviously in this case the Christian has no definitive answer and the only way out of the corner they are in is to state their status of belief and leave it at that. This is not a very constructive stance to take. It sounds like the easy way out to me. If all it takes is belief, if all it takes is faith, how come people don’t believe in things that either A) sound better than the present hypotheses or B) have a little bit more creativity or is more fitting for today’s society. Believe what you want to believe in. I mean that in extremely broad and general terms.

Seriously. The only criteria really (other than your physical behaviors and everyday life events) is to place this thing known as “belief” in God and you will be saved (or whatever you want to call it). Ok, fine. You believe in god. If that’s all it takes to make you see that it is all true, then why don’t you believe in Jasperilicus The Great, whom will grant you all your wishes as long as you believe in him and doesn’t even care if you hurt others or steal or whatever.

Jasperilicus sounds a heck of a lot better than the god of the bible. All it takes is a little BELIEF people… come on.

YES my new religion sounds stupid. YES i made it up. But think about it. If your only criteria for metaphysical truth is whatever you BELIEVE sounds true, well, believe in Jasperilicus and he’s true too.

In high school I coined the phrase “Choicism” for all this to mean that humans have the power to change their beliefs to satisfy their own version of reality, so they should be able to believe whatever they want and they should still be hunky dory afterwards. Of course this is all kind of useless if your criteria has nothing to do with belief. If your methodology for truthiness includes the phrase “I know this to be true” then Choicism is not really a factor. Your brain is set, your mind is unwavering.

But really, own up to your choices. Knowledge, as given by Greek philosophers, is a “true and justified belief”. If you feel your beliefs are true, and if you have the ability to justify them (whether it be to yourself only, or even to other people), grow some balls and say you know.

Now the key here really is your ability to justify your beliefs. If you can’t in any way shape or form justify your beliefs to yourself or anyone else (which also includes convincing others that you are right), then you owe it to yourself to figure out a better answer than the one you have. And if along the way you can’t convince others… don’t automatically assume they are stupid and that you are right… They’re probably smarter than you think, and you might not have the right answer after all. Think about it… if you DID in fact have the right answer, how come the entire world doesn’t think like you?

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All knowledge is arguably based on one belief or another.

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Thanks to the jerks like Hume ([On Human Understanding[/i]), Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations), and Plato (Meno and Theaetetus), we really can’t know anything. As such, most argue from their beliefs, which is a simple way of saying that one may be wrong because knowledge isn’t some nice absolute that we can attain and reach (sorry Hegel).
If you’re upset about the language-game people use, that’s a matter of opinion (or, if any Humeans read this, custom).

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Tell me more about Hume. He sounds lovely.

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Home argued (in a nutshell) that one cannot prove any correspondence through time. This was a direct response to Berkeley who had settled on that after making correspondence between one’s mind and the “outside world” impossible (what you see ain’t what you get!). Further, Hume argued that things like cause-and-effect can never be proven or reliable as they’re really just “two things happening really close together in time.” Because of the rejection of any kind of correspondence with an external world or even an internal one with itself, Hume concluded that we do things on grounds of it being custom (i.e. user preference).

6

Yes, but wasn’t his custom-based argument that it was on the grounds of experience, and that the basis of inferring cause and effect is through a trust in past experience (aka ‘custom’)? The effect can’t be discovered in the cause itself, so we must observe and find similarities and uniformity over time.

To be a little more specific…it’s in the area of religion where people get most bent out of shape about what they believe. It’s also the most consistently divisive element between ethnic groups, beyond tribalism or ancient grievances. Religion is a last bastion, the only part of our societal discourse protected from the expectation that evidence be offered in defense of beliefs. The consequences of this can range from the relatively benign, like when something bad happens in a believer’s life and he seeks comfort in his idea of a supernatural entity who gives meaning to it all (even if that entity chooses not to share with the believer exactly what that meaning might be) to the intolerant and even totalitarianistic. Even-well intended attempts at interfaith dialogue will necessarily leave important differences unaddressed. If we conducted science in this way (I mean the old fashioned, intellectual, empirical version), we’d still be rubbing rocks together to get fire. And, unfortunately, this inability to really explore the basis of religious beliefs has created isolation and polarization between groups. Because we can’t put these differences (and their foundations and rationales) up for study and debate, there are gaps in our progress to understand the complete range of human experience. Sometimes people end up trying to fill these gaps with violence.

It seems so reasonable and logical to me to seek societal (meaning the world, but probably starting with the more democratic societies) discourse on topics like morality and ethics not constrained by dogma and religious prejudices.

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That’s because there’s no evidence for anything in the area of religion. One guy says there’s an apple, the other says there’s an orange. Because neither can see the fruit, there’s no way of logically arguing for either position. If I am appleman, the only ways to convince orangeman are:

To lie and say I do see the apple (religious visions).
To act as though I have evidence that he does not (religious conviction).
To explain unrelated phenomena in a way that supports my position (to create evidence from the unexplained.)
To force him.
To bribe him.

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My favourite of Humes: ‘No ought from is’.

ie, just because that’s the way things are, doesn’t mean that’s how they should be.

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Similar or identical to the “fact-value gap”. I think this relates to my current issues against speculative mathematics.

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knowledge is a subset between Truth and Belief - Plato

If you see a bridge and you tell your friend “Hey I BELIEVE that if i walk over that bridge, It will not collapse because it looks sturdy.” So he walks over tbe bridge and it collapses. His belief was wrong.
Now Same scenerio, the next day you come across a bridge you always cross on a daily basis. Now you KNOW that bridge will most likely not collapse because you’ve walked across it before therefore you KNOW.
It’s basicly saying if you BELIEVE something exists you better KNOW it exists.

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re title:

plz change to “belief vs. belief”.

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To me your argument doesn’t add up. You are telling them to say ‘i know’, rather than ‘I believe’, while saying that God cannot be known and all that’s required for his existence is belief. People say ‘I believe’ because ‘I know’ is arrogant and assumptive. They hide in their beliefs because beliefs are things that aren’t proven. God isn’t proven, but people believe in him. Radical sects of Christianity say, ‘I know God is real and you’re going to hell for idoltry!’, while more liberal sects of Christianity say, ‘You can believe what you want, but I believe God is real.’ Belief is a way to state something you, personally, ‘know’ is true without stepping on the ‘knowledge’ of other people. It reduces conflict between groups.

And we call your coined term free will, the ability for humans to choose what to do or not to do to satisfy their own way of life.

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The enlightened man knows that there is no God.
He also knows there is no immortal soul.
He has a non-nomadic understanding of the world. Hence, he also knows there are no ghosts or spirits flying around.

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Hi Airex,

I think it may have to do with the fact that those who have experience with looking at what people “know” come to realise that with every bit of knowledge, an awareness grows that those things I do not know are even bigger than I had thought. The complexities of existence are so vast that in many fields of knowledge we can only speak of “interim knowledge”. Many ideas have had to be reformed and numerous questions still await answers. There are more questions than answers.

Here we have to ask whether you can actually discuss God at all, or whether you are stuck with discussing what you can see and grasp – namely the believers. You see, “God is Spirit”, that is, we are talking about a presence which is like a breath of air that you have no control over at a level which is not manifest at a sensory level. “Arguments”, as you call them, like the “problem of evil”, are aspects of our limited understanding of the universe. They are more questions than arguments and reflect our relative immaturity, whereas wisdom has a universal nature and contradicts us regularly.

Whether I, or anybody else for that matter, experience what you would consider is worthy of the name “God” is a question I can’t answer. I do know however, that the experience described by scriptures relates to my own experience and more importantly the experience of multitudes of people who practice mystical faith. However, how can I or anybody else discuss this with you?

Shalom

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Why is it so difficult to hold the definition of ineffable? There is distinct difference between what is spiritual experience and what is religion. The former is held in silence and the latter is the bulk of the blah blah blah in this forum.