Friday, September 11, 2009

Why Do We Believe What We Believe ?

Most people accept that a year is 365 days - but a year isn't 365 days. Well... not exactly 365 days.
Many people dismiss faith as superstition - but in reality, it may just be an approximation.

Ivory soap claims to be "Pure" even though it is only 99.44% so.

Gold and other metals can have a variance of 99.9%-99.99% to be considered the same.


Even simple equations (that many regard as a universal fact) break down at the quantum level.


And the value of Pi is just a very accurate approximation that works most of the time under most conditions.

So is faith just a belief in tendencies and not absolutes?

6 comments:

  1. Faith is not static and because of that, it cannot be precise if an attempt is made to measure or quantify it.
    The question is faith in what? Is the thing one has faith in precise, or constant, or "true".
    If one could affectively measure that, there would be no need for faith, it would simply be knowledge.

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  2. But many (From Plato to Calvin) have argued that faith and knowledge are the same thing.

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  3. Faith is a belief in tendencies. It's like the lottery you can't win if you don't play. So most people just have faith because who knows it can happen and it doesn't hurt anything.

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  4. we believe what we believe because of how little we strive to know, and, because of stupidity, laziness and suggestibility.

    verify everything....,

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  5. But is faith the belief in the 99.99% or the .01?

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  6. gurdjieff used an interesting term to describe the human habit of talking about unverified matters, he called it "wiseacreing".

    wiseacreing is a very pernicious form of lying. to the extent that humans get very caught up and closely identified with matters they've never verified themselves, e.g., matters of "religious" faith, they are engaged in this mind-killing form of lying.

    99.99% of "fighting" and "dying" words fall into the category of pure wiseacreing.

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