I'll Raise your Thread above so that others see it Graeme =)

I agree if we had "THE PROOF" as they say it wouldn't be Faith for people.

Tao/Wolfie

I was listening to a radio program the other day about how life can be metaphorized as a game of poker.  We are trying to make the best decisions we can with incomplete information.  Also, no matter how well or how skillfully we play, you can still be dealt poor cards or someone can get a better hand than you. Luck o' the draw so to speak. I found it to be a very interesting perspective.

The catch is that we have to act as if we're confident about our knowledge - otherwise, we'll get nothing done at all.

Like poker, it's luck and skill. But skill will almost always beat pure luck. That's what supports casinos.

indeed. Skill wins out most of the time. And skill is also knowing how to minimize the damage in being dealt a bad hand. 

Thanks for the pointer, Graeme. I'm not sure we have to act as if we are confident of our knowledge: we are far too good at that. Acting that way has estabished too many nurseries of social, economic,. political and personal catastrophe. It is the conceits of our cleverness that have fed our caprice, our demands and expectations of comfort, the confidence with which we assign blame and go to war, our political and environmental arrogance, Our supposed certainties justify our most base actions and attitudes, and obviate humility. 

What uncertainty should be pointing us towards are personal and communal concerns to act "well"... to withhold aggressive acts and work on effective moral and ethical systems that help us to sustain vital relationships and better cope with complexity.

We live in a highly interconnected universe and there are seldom single causes for the stuff we experience as "events". Events do not happen independently of their contexts; they all have multiple causes and complicated outcomes. Events, as discrete episodes in our lives, are illusions... or (more accurately) constructs of our consciousness..

I haven't read your pal's book, Graeme...  I plan to get a copy ASAP. 

But, possibly more important that inherent uncertainty are the pressing horizons of our human perceptual capacities, the ceiling on our intellectual abilities and the fluid vagaries of our consciousness.

We are not built for half as much cleverness as we pretend. Our feelings of cleverness are cultural constructs rooted in social management  strategies that have uniquely developed in the experiential  world created by "Westernisation". It's crafting runs back to ancient Greece and beyond into the particular yearnings for control and predictability that formed the myths of the Old Testament: all those laws and commands.

Cultures removed from that stream tended to go other directions, towards living in modified compliance with the environments they discovered and which, over time, shaped their perceptual anf cognitive conventions, environments even embedding themselves in language and psychology so that "our" kind of "progress" became conceptually irrelevant.  So, for example, all sorts of technologies, from wheels and levers to steam, water flow and explosives -- even acoustics, aerodynamics and optics -- have turned up in unexpected places without their having been applied to the economic roles we've given them in "the West".

Doubts are not a choice.... faith is.

If one ceases to have any doubts at all, then faith is no longer a choice, and is therefore, no longer faith.

IMHO

I never (or at least almost never) ask for proof from people who profess faith.

I do, however, believe one is perfectly justified in demanding evidence for an item of faith that is dressed up in the costume of factuality.

I don't think life is about certainty. And I'm certain about that .

Sure, some things are more certain than others. Newton's laws are fairly certain, at least in the realm where we live our everyday lives. I push; you fall.

Some things are less so. Quantum mechanics have uncertainty built right into them. Is it a particle or a wave? No way to be certain without looking, at which point it becomes whichever you are looking for.

Will I get up tomorrow morning? My latest medical information suggests the odds are pretty good, but there could always be an undetected aneurysm like the one that took out an old friend last year.

Will my son be successful? He's smart, interested in learning, and has his mother as a good role model. Odds aren't too bad, but it's hardly a certainty. After all, I'm his father .

Is there a God? In the absence of evidence (which is not evidence of absence), we can only say "we believe", "we don't believe", or "we cannot be certain". I'm in category 3 (agnostic). Even with mystical experience, being subjective and not necessarily repeatable, we can only say that we have experienced something that might be God and that we believe for that reason. It gives no reason for anyone else to be certain of God's existence.

The thing is to not fret the uncertainty. Live in it, look for the opportunities that come up and take them. If something unexpected sideswipes you, then deal with it then rather than constantly trying to control every variable. Because, in truth, you can't control every variable.

Mendalla

Mike,

Good to see you emphasising that events have multiple causes.

The media has a misleading habit of singling out a cause - and this is then accepted far too often.

In one sense we live in a highly interconnected universe - but I'm left with the thought that that applies to technology - and often stops there.

I asked a young man to help me get my suitcase down from a bus rack. He didn't hear me - as he was plugged into music.

It made me wonder about the massacre in Norway. Had the murderer played so many war games that he'd lost awareness that these were actual human beings he was killing?

PP raises the question of those who can kill without anger, without joy, and without feeling. I wish I knew more about psychology and/or psychiatry to understand that. A military requires such people.  Successful generals often are and have to be such types. So have national leaders - the obivous ones like Hitler and Mao and Stalin - and many of those on our side.- which is why history of all wars is full of accounts of killing prisoners and civilians. (I't shard to believe Bush has lost any sleep over  the million or so he killed.) You find the same quality in business leaders - as in the oil companies that cashed in on the Iraw war, or the mining companies in Congo.

They aren't evil. Evil suggests a desire to hard. They don't feel even that. They're just  indifferent.
 

Truly you are scraping the bottom of the barrel if this is best argument you can come up.

So your friend will tell us that, contrary to popular belief, in a right-angle triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is not equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

I have not read the book, somehow I doubt this is what he means.

Perfect comeback for students getting answers marked wrong on exams though!   Good thing you have retired, Graeme, you could be a victim  of your own reasoning.

The Principles of Uncertainty and Complementarity are basic scientific and spiritual principles.

I think both principles say that the universe is in a state of unity, inseparableness, or synthesis. In order to analyze it, we have to analyze it from a certain viewpoint, which is arbitrarily chosen by the analyzer or observer. Thus, the resulting truth is also arbitrarily chosen by by the analyzer or observer.

There is a virtually limitless number of viewpoints and analytical truths in the universe, every one of them arbitrarily chosen by the observer. Take your pick! If, however, you want to experience absolute TRUTH or the ultimate state of being, just be.

"I AM!"

-God

Of course, EO, you see things only from your own perspective. Very human. In fact, a right angle is a theoretical concept. Conclusions, like the length of the hypoteneuse can exist only in the context of the theory that defines a right angle. It's useful enough concept for engineering purposes. But that's all it is.

I can show you dozens of American history books - by authorities - which will tell you the American revolution was for freedom and equality. And most people don't wonder how that could be true ot a slave state. And one in which women were neither free no equal. Even today, t he notion that Americans are equal is a very theorieical one. Is a latino janitor in a sljum equal to the CEO of Exxon?

It all depands on what you call equality - a highly theoretical quality. Same for freedom.

And, yes, that is what my friend's book says. I've read it. Have you? (He's now officially an authority. .Aren't you the one who believes authorities?)

Similarly, we invent comic book figures to represent our theories about God and Satan. Superman is God. The Joker is Satan.  But why does Superman do good? And, more important, why does Satan do evil. Does he want to cause suffering? Or does he want something else, and is just indifferent to suffering?

You are changing the topic again.  

In any case, I am in complete agreement with you about the transport and slavery of Africans--it, in my opinion, was the absolute nadir of Western civilization, appalling even when you allow for different attitudes and different times.   I would never attempt to defend it in any way at all.

I have just ordered the book from Amazon.  However, it appears to be mathematics rather than history.  Still, I will read it.

You're right. Reading the last few posts, I thought I was on another thread I had begun on whether we invent Statan - under (off course) Faith and Religion.

The book is about mathematics because he is a mathematician. But math is generally considered to one field in which it is possible to find the real truth - because it is all abstract and clearly defined.

So if mathematics does not contain authoritative truth, where does that leave the rest of us?

After getting a doctorate, I thought I knew history. But when I taught it,  just hearing me made me realize that much of what I said didn't make sense. (That doesn't bother students. They must memorize it. That's why I changed the emphasis of my course from giving out information to developing intellectual skills.)