Is there any fundamental basis that can be established for believing in an ultimate, fundamental basis? Of course some things depend on other things. We say that without a healthy environment, life on earth will no longer persist. But isn’t life on earth in turn a most important aspect of what a healthy environment is?
A tree has roots and branches. Is its existence then rooted in the earth? But a tree also takes nutrients from the air through its leaves, and captures energy from sunlight to produce food. And beyond even that, I have seen garden stakes sprout greenery!
Ultimately, “Faith” and “God” don’t mix. “Faith in God” is an oxymoron, as is faith in anything. There is either just faith, or just God. Either all phenomena are God – perfect and complete, or there is no God at all – nothing is complete in itself, nothing has inherent existence. Either way, the idea of substance – of a separate, unknowable reality - is fruitfully abandoned. And with that fundamental abandonment, we also get the added bonus of abandoning all kinds of crazy ontologies, such as materialism, idealism, dualism, pluralism… you name it.
Reality? What is that? The attempt to unite with or experience it is the problem. It’s not possible because there will always be a subject that recognizes it as an experience. If the subject does somehow become an integral part of reality, it will lose its individual property, it will not be able to distinguish itself anymore as separate.
Your final sentence suggests that you have the idea that individuals are separate from reality. So you seem to have an idea of what this “reality” is. So I’m not sure why you’re asking “Reality? What is that?”. I assume I’m misunderstanding you somehow - can you clarify?
I’m using a non-standard definition of faith. Looking up “faith”, I’ve reminded myself of just how non-standard my definition is. So I apologize for the confusion.
I think of “faith” as not requiring a firm foundation, i.e. letting go of fixation. For instance, a Christian might claim that because of doubt, faith is required. Faced with the absence of a trustworthy foundation to anchor to, “faith” is required. So I’m using “faith”, here, to mean that we don’t need to undertake the project of attaching ourselves to some supposed foundation at all. It is not necessary.
In another thread on this site, I said of “faith”, “If we look at its meaning in its most basic sense, I think perhaps there’s some sense of resilience in the face of life’s setbacks. Something like that. We are not finally at the mercy of the the variety of situations we find ourselves in. Our peace of mind in the midst of life’s struggles is both a result of faith (whatever that really is) and is faith itself.”
Hmmm, gotcha, anon. Although to be honest I’m still not certain of the oxymoron in ‘faith in god’. Perhaps you need to explain your idea of god further too. At the moment it seems like you are adopting a pantheistic idea of God, is that right? And combining the idea of Kant’s ‘transcendent’ (That which cannot be known) for substance?
Apologies for still not providing fruitful discussion.
I think I understand, based on your definition of faith, why “faith in god is an oxymoron” - faith being without the need for a foundation, and God being an artificial foundation. is that interpretation correct?
however, i still have no clue what you mean by the bolded words.
No worries, this is fruitful even if I’m so unclear. At least I get to practice making myself more clear, which is hopefully fruitful.
Isn’t to believe in “God” typically to split reality into the immanent and the transcendent? Yet what is the connection between a “substance” and its properties? What can a substance possibly be, separate from its properties? Does the idea of substance make any sense at all? I don’t believe such a split makes philosophical sense. Traleg Kyabgon describes this split well:
Yes, you got it. I’d add that to have faith in something (faith in its conventional sense) is to take a limited view. No problem there, but when we’re dealing with supposed ultimates, a limited view cannot work. Ontologies (i.e. materialism) can serve a purpose, but through merely serving a purpose can they really be considered ontologies? Ontology is supposedly “the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality” - that’s pretty ultimate.
By “just faith, or just God”, I mean that there is no substance that can be divorced from its properties, at least that we can coherently and sensibly speak of. What could such a thing (or non-thing) be? The idea is meaningless.
I don’t think “substance” “exists”. Like the real/unreal distinction, it is merely contextual distinction. A real Stradivarius is a violin built by a member of the Stradivari family. A real unicorn would be a physical unicorn - a biological entity that evolved in this world along with other biological entities. I’m taking issue with the idea of something being “really real” (see the OP), which is to say, context independent.
The first question is a perfectly astute way of describing what belief in God is. In terms of the connection between substance and properties (which I think has been a question for hundreds of years with the empiricists and Kant) I have always just come to the conclusion that the combined properties of something are substance. Apart from that, I don’t know enough about physics unfortunately to provide a better answer, which is another reason Kant or empiricists like Locke appeal to me, because they weren’t exactly scientists now, were they?
I’ll try. By “just faith” I mean that we can live in this world, and live well, without relying on (false) absolutes. By “just God”, I mean that if I grant that it can make sense to talk about absolutes, then whatever that absolute may be must necessarily share the same nature as what is relative. Otherwise, there is no connection at all between what is absolute and what is relative, and to discuss such an absolute is to discuss nonsense.
What it refers to is something contrary to many mystical traditions which claim a unity with the universe or reality: there cannot be any `experience’ of unity or union with reality. Imo, a claim to any experience presupposes not only an awareness of the experience as an object, but also a recognition of it as an experience. And these conditions are enough to destroy any possibility of there being a unity, let alone an experience of unity, because any recognition implies a duality or division between the subject and the object. How can there be an experience of unity where there is a subject left out of the object of experience?
I woukld make the distinction more between material reality that can be confirmed both substantively and substantially and thought contraptions that cannot.
Or maybe it is more along the lines of, “is there a Substance behind the substance that we know to exist from, say, a scientific perspective?”
But if there is how can it be related to “nothing at all”?
