A man who believes in God can never find God. If you are open to reality, there can be no belief in reality. If you are open to the unknown, there can be no belief in it. After all, belief is a form of self-protection, and only a petty mind can believe in God.
As long as belief exists, there can never be the unknown; you cannot think about the unknown, thought cannot measure it. The mind is the product of the past, it is the result of yesterday, and can such a mind be open to the unknown? It can only project an image, but that projection is not real; so your god is not God, it is an image of your own making, an image of your own gratification.
There can be reality only when the mind understands the total process of itself and comes to an end. When the mind is completely empty-only then is it capable of receiving the unknown. The mind is not purged until it understands the content of relationship—its relationship with property, with people until it has established the right relationship with everything. Until it understands the whole process of conflict in relationship, the mind cannot be free. Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still —only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being— J. Krishnamurti
Now with the word ‘god’ there is nothing to which it refers, so each man creates his own image of that for which there is no reference. The theologian does it in one way, the intellectual in another, and the believer and the non-believer in their own different ways.
Your belief in God will give you the experience of what you call God. You will always experience what you believe and nothing else. And this invalidates your experience. The Christian will see virgins, angels and Christ, [a Heavenly Father] and the Hindu will see similar deities in extravagant plurality. The Muslim, the Buddhist, the Jew and the Communist are the same. Belief conditions its own supposed proof. What is important is not what you believe but only why you believe at all. Why do you believe? And what difference does it make to what actually is whether you believe in one thing or another? J. Krishnamurti
“Belief comes from fear and is the most destructive thing. One must be free of fear and of belief. Belief divides people, makes them hard, makes them hate each other and cultivate war. In a roundabout way, unwillingly, you are admitting that fear begets belief. Freedom from belief is necessary to face the fact of fear. Belief like any other ideal is an escape from “what is”. When there is no fear then the mind is in quite a different dimension. Only then can you ask the question whether there is a God or not. A mind clouded by fear or belief is incapable of any kind of understanding, any realization of what truth is. Such a mind lives in illusion and can obviously not come upon that which is Supreme. The Supreme has nothing to do with your or anybody else’s belief, opinion or conclusion”.
Hope is evidence of despair. Faith is evidence you’ve accepted that. Through this system of belief the trap is sprung and servitude to dogmas will forever divide us through that belief—any belief will do.
TheCommonAtheist 
I struggled to pick out the Krishnamurti quotes are only those paragraphs with his name appended quotations and rest commentary?
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The last paragraph is mine. Sorry for the confusion. Does it matter who wrote it? Is it any less a perfect observation of belief and it’s curse on the human condition?
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I’ve completely emptied my mind recently, and nothing enters. Hmmm. I have no fear of anything either, I’ve made a point to empty my mind of pre-existing cultural programming. It’s all fear based!
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“I’ve completely emptied my mind recently, and nothing enters. Hmmm”
Maharshi had many come to him for enlightenment and he would tell them they already had it. “Yes, but….” they would say. He would tell them to keep doing what they are doing because they apparently were satisfied in there practice.
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No need to seek God. You are God.
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The seeker is the sought. What is sought is the seeker.
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You cannot find what you are looking for just as your fingertip cannot touch itself.
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“There can be reality only when the mind understands the total process of itself and comes to an end. When the mind is completely empty-only then is it capable of receiving the unknown.”
This is gibberish. But that’s what almost all of this kind of esoteric thinking is: using fuzzy words to describe fuzzy ideas to reach fuzzy conclusions and then present the mishmash as if definitive, as if causal. It’s all a sham. This esoteric method is useless for anything other than an intent to obfuscate but appear ‘wise’ and ‘insightful’ with a word salad that cannot be understood. This is intentional. I dare anyone to explain what that first sentence I quote actually means. This method is a common one used by those who do have any real interest in understanding reality, who have little practical knowledge about how reality operates and by what mechanisms and forces, and who know little about connecting cause with effect using words, who care nothing for demonstrating likelihood of factual claims, but who rely exclusively on peddling ill-defined terminology with a mix and match approach to sell to those gullible enough to buy into it.
Come on, Jim.
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Come on Jim? I’m just illustrating that their are better ways of seeing the world than Christianity’s myopic ignorance of a doomed world. Even if is only imagining this is real, it is better than the divisive beliefs of religion and politics. One sees the black man, the gay man, , the foreigner, really every man as a divine presence. It is only by belief that they are not. Belief is the culprit. Even yours in your political meanderings are as divisive. Maybe humanity will surpass the limitations of belief mode, dogmas and nationalistic rage, but I doubt it.
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This is called, whataboutism when you compare Christianity as divisive and therefore worse than this gibberish but this justifies nothing. You have yet to define the term ‘belief’ in that you are assuming it means something specific that then causes a negative effect that results in people NOT recognizing the divinity of others. Yet, if one were to select any ideology that does exactly this, surely Christianity – all men created in the image of God – should qualify somewhat. But, nope.
Look, you offer no causal evidence of this assumption that beliefs automatically hide reality from us nor any means to be devoid of ‘beliefs’. (Yet we apply our understandings in applications, therapies, and technologies that work for everyone of all beliefs everywhere all the time, which is a pretty good indicator that our understanding about reality reflects a reality independent of our specific beliefs about it.) To take on board the assumptions about the negative role beliefs play in hiding reality in order to disqualify just about everyone from questioning this assumption is very handy in that everyone except the ‘truly enlightened’ can be dismissed.
Yet you see no red flags here in your mad rush to promote this crackpot idea that allows only the select few to ‘properly’ imagine some magical future untainted by ‘beliefs’ because the imaginer has already scrubbed the mind doing the imagination of all beliefs?! This is gibberish, in that it’s neither logical nor rational nor descriptive of the very reality this author tells us is the only ‘real’ reality we can find by eliminating all our beliefs – whatever that may describe!
That’s why I say, come on, Jim.
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“ “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.” Niels Bohr
You seem awfully sure of yourself. More certain than the greatest of scientific minds. Belief, maybe?
“ all men created in the image of God”. This is their misnomer. Nothing was created. There are two wrongs in that statement at complete odds with self esteem.
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The first stop on any woo train is… wait for it… quantum mechanics. Every time. Because QM is weird, therefore woo is reasonable!
Come on, Jim.
Yes, how particles and forces and fields interact at the quantum level is really difficult to model a cohesive explanation that comports with standard physics. In fact, standard physics and quantum physics doesn’t have a unified theory. So what? The fact that you are drawing upon QM – a study of how stuff works at very small or very large modeling – indicates you’re already a hypocrite if you also believe this examination of reality, of some things, isn’t real! Another red flag. This should show anyone that the thinking behind it has a problem. Remember, how you think determines what you think. Your method, your epistemology here, has something wrong with it. The conclusion you reach, therefore, has something wrong with it.
Justified true belief is the definition of knowledge. In a nutshell, the ‘justified’ part comes from adducing and assembling evidence from reality. The ‘true’ part is fitting this evidence into an explanatory model that accounts for the assembly. The ‘belief’ part comes from how much confidence can be rewarded to the explanation, how likely that explanation is the case based on applying it back into reality… namely, the role the explanation plays informing applications (and therapies and technologies) that work to account for what is and predict for what should be the case if true.
In physics, the standard model at our scale works for everyone everywhere all the time. You are justified to believe this model is true. At the quantum level, this model doesn’t work. But that doesn’t mean it has stopped working at our level. At the quantum level, we’re still figuring out how reality operates in its smallest (and largest) components. We’re at the level where particles and forces and fields interact in astonishing ways. But that doesn’t mean our understanding at our level is in any way reduced in likelihood because the Standard Model continues to work to justify it. This is the mistake you keep making over and over again, presuming a question from one model’s level automatically derails the explanation from another. All the cell phones didn’t stop working when CERN was able to demonstrate the Higgs boson. You assume they must have stopped because reality (as we know it and use it to effect) isn’t real if quantum theory can show us a different model of particle physics works at the smallest level. But guess what? IT IS REAL! And all of us have justified true beliefs about it if we function in it. Waving all equivalent human knowledge about a reality we all share because you want to empower a word game about some esoteric notion of ‘belief’ is not rational, Jim. It’s seductive but it’s not reasonable. It is an example of unjustified belief supplanting your own common sense about an independent and indifferent reality in which you live.
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Independent, or interdependent? What I am trying to demonstrate is that Christianity isn’t special. You can travel all across the globe and see very happy people in multiple ways of being human, that get along fine without the deprecating fallout of monotheism and belief in creation. How would the Christian ever know it’s limitations if they never see another philosophy?
And you, yourself, cannot separate yourself from the Big Bang sir, your it! And no amount of religious or scientific reasoning can split it into bits and analyze it into such. If there were a god, even by their own reasoning, there could be nothing that is not it. But that’s not very tidy when they want their god to be all good and omnipotent and perfect. It all goes together in a messy and amazing perfect and chaotic way.
I do however appreciate your grounding principles, but at any cost you will stop short in that reason. Push any philosophy past the comfort zones and they become what they claim they are against.
I have quite a number of Christian readers. Thank you for your comments.
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You’re correct to say that Christianity is nothing special. But neither are any of the other unevidenced religious and mystic claims. Plus you’re still skirting the issue, namely, that not all beliefs are equivalent. There is a stark contrast between saying, “I believe it’s raining outside” and “I believe Jesus rose from the dead”. The first claim can be verified by stepping outside, whereas the second one cannot.
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I skirt no issues. Believing it’s raining a belief in something no one can demonstrate are different levels. Really should be different words.
I would agree that not all beliefs are equal. All political and religious beliefs are equal though. It’s all about picking a side. And believing their dogmas without evidence.
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Yes, you are correct: there is a difference. And that’s precisely the point that Tildeb and I are trying to impress upon you. A religious proposition is untestable by design, whereas a scientific proposition is testable — by design.
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I really have no argument with either of you. I post a lot of differing viewpoints for discussion and reproof. I believe none of it and always appreciate your grounding comments. See how easily holes appear in the mushy stuff.
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Perhaps it’s just me, but in regards to your closing sentence, that’s not the vibe I’m getting from your most recent posts. To me it seems that you are still searching for some form of spiritual closure ( i.e. Christianity ain’t it, but there must be something better out there).
And if I may be so bold, I consider the Christian-bashing somewhat counter-productive, because not every Christian believer fits the stereotypical archetype of closed-minded believer. In fact, I’m inclined to argue that they now constitute the minority.
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I’ll see about refreshing the tone. I don’t have any negative feelings toward christians. No, I am not searching, but very curious why and how people believe and the outcomes of that belief. I already know the secret—there is no secret, but the game of the empty fist.
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If I may interject … To me, your posts are considerably beyond the “average” Christian’s level of understanding. Even I must often put on my thinking cap to get the point of what you’re saying. While your motivation is worthy, I wonder how many you’re actually reaching. The more intellectual individuals have most likely already examined some of the points you present and made their decisions accordingly.
NOT to be critical … just adding my two-cents to the discussion. And of course, if you’re writing for yourself as much as or more than readers … that’s quite understandable.
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Deepak Chopra has made a fortune appropriating scientific terms to sell his unscientific “Quantum Healing” mubo-jumbo.
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At least you didn’t say mumbo jimbo!
I know little about chopra. I really know little about Jiddu Krishnamurti as well, although I appreciated his stance on belief. That belief blinds us to reality.
He was groomed as a child because of his spiritual aura to be the next world teacher of Hinduism. At a certain young age he called BS on it and quit. He had no religion or belief, and many of his writings would fit well in my blog.
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So now we’re at the stage where you’re critiquing a misplaced hyphen? If that’s the case, then I’ll readily confess that I make a lot of grammar and spelling errors. However, none of that negates the fact that Deepak Chopra is snake-oil salesman. As was Jiddu Krishnamurti.
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Im not sure what you mean here. I’m no grammar nazi. Maybe we should finish our coffee first. It’s 5:24
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Ha! I’m already on my second cup of freshly brewed coffee — not that I really need it.
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Jim, you continue to say that “belief blinds us to reality.” This is not true. Reality binds us to it because it is independent of and indifferent to our beliefs about it. This is testable, which means you’re just waving reality’s role away and sticking to a faith-based belief that belief is in the driver’s seat when it demonstrably is not. This is one reason (among many) why woo always reaches for ‘evidence’ that is neither in reality nor adduced from it. This is why argumentation about the woo often introduces morality and ethics and tone about those who criticize its claims about reality. What the believer doesn’t do – which is what you’re doing here in this thread – is allow reality to arbitrate our belief… like about belief being in the driver’s seat. If you did test this claim, if you tested it with reality as the judge and jury, you would stop saying belief binds us to reality and chuck the whole rationalization that tries (and fails) to support this false claim out the window. That’s why I keep saying, “Come on, Jim.” Test it.” Find out for yourself. It’s easy.
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So you are saying, belief blinds us to reality.” This is not true. Don’t you see a problem with this? Essentially you are agreeing that the religious belief is reality, unless you are trying to play words of blind and bind.
Learning about belief is the end of belief. When the mind is free of belief then it can observe. It is belief, or disbelief, that binds, or blinds; for disbelief and belief are the same: they are the opposite sides of the same coin.
As James Rachel said; “To continuously evaluate whether a being is good requires moral judgment, which requires moral autonomy. Therefore it is not possible to continuously evaluate if a being is good while also worshipping it (or submitting to it) Therefore, worshipping necessarily requires abandoning one’s moral responsibility, which is immoral”
When you agree to allow another to dictate your dogma, anything can and does happen, as we’ve seen through history when good men do evil—by belief.
The lay scientist also has this problem. How many of you can test for yourself, in any discipline, the intricacies of any theory but by reasoning in the same fashion as a religious believer?
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I think you believe in the wrong Christianity, Jim.
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Which one is the right one, Frederic? Christianity is much more accurate if read from a Hindu perspective. It’s all in secret code with the presumptive boss. No such thing exists.
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I thought we already settled this Frederic
https://jimoeba.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/what-really-was-the-good-news/#comment-27166
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A bit pedagogic, don’t you think, Jim. Nothing is ever always something. Each person comes to anything, or everything in their own way. There are no musts and shoulds. Even my next sentence is pretty pedantic: When you are ready to change, change will come to you. It’s an addiction counsellor’s staple, stolen from some Eastern philosophy. Yet it has a lot of value. Depending on what is being changed, a change might not be real and permanent if one is not capable of accepting and understanding it.
You wrote, or quoted to be more accurate: What is important is not what you believe but only why you believe at all. The why is the understanding, the accepting.
And it is foreseeing my (hopefully) next post which I am working on, WHY AM I AN ASTHEIST? No idea how long it will take, or even if I will publish it (I’m hoping telling you about it will inspire me to do so!) because as of late I have started a number of posts, but finishing none–I lose interest in my own ideas halfway through, a hard admission to make public. Still, I think it somehow connects to this post.
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OT — I can identify with your start and stop and never return related to blog posts. I probably have at last a couple dozen in my “pending” file that will never be published. *sigh*
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Do you ever look back on them? I do sometimes. Then I ask myself one of two main questions:
1) Why the hell did you think anyone would be interested in that drivel?
Or
2) Well, you had a reason when you started, what was it?
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There is one exception that will alway divide humanity from its potential—Belief without intellect. It isn’t what one believes, but that they believe.
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Funny, my sister-in-law once told me it isn’t what you believe that is important, but that you believe something. Heads or tails? (I can see where the heads part comes from, but wherefrom the tails? Seeing as the heads are always human, why not heads or asses?)
Anyways, at the time she said that, I was a practising Tibetan Buddhist. She accepted that, even though she was Xian. I wonder what she would have said had she lived to see me turn atheist?
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Heads or tails, it’s the same coin…
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But which is the head? And is the coin important?
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There’s nothing wrong with a belief (i.e. trust or confidence that a proposition is true) if it comports with reality. It’s only a problem when it doesn’t. Belief that a rock will fall towards the ground or that the sun will rise tomorrow morning is backed by billions of previous observations. Belief that there’s a supernatural deity having a deeply-vested personal interest in the affairs of men — isn’t.
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“ Belief that a rock will fall towards the ground “. That is not a belief. It is a regularity
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Yes it is, Jim! It’s a well-justified belief, but a belief nonetheless.
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No, sorry. If you were to pull out a tape and measure an inch, would you have to believe it will still be an inch tomorrow?
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Yes, you would. Your confidence in the distance between the line markings on the tape measure and/or the item being measured is not a guaranteed certainty because either one or both could have have changed for any number of reasons (temperature change, physical alteration, etc.) in the interim.
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So does the speed of which objects fall. Relative humidity, altitude, wind variations. So what’s the point?
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The point being that religious beliefs are not based on empirical evidence — they’re based on wishful thinking. 🙂
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It’s called hope based on fear. Two sides of the same coin.
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It can be hope based on fear; but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Belief can also be informed by any combination of factors (confusing cause and effect, relying on a small sample size, corrupt or incomplete data, faulty measurements, poor statistical analysis, computation errors, etc.). Since religious beliefs are normally passed on to us by people we trust (i.e. adult to child), it’s fair to say that they are based on misplaced trust in the the source.
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‘I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.’~ Rumi🌷
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In my case, I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only myself. All searches come back to you.
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What does that make you?
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“There can be reality only when the mind understands the total process of itself and comes to an end. When the mind is completely empty-only then is it capable of receiving the unknown. The mind is not purged until it understands the content of relationship—its relationship with property, with people until it has established the right relationship with everything. Until it understands the whole process of conflict in relationship, the mind cannot be free. Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still —only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being—” J. Krishnamurti
Zoe: So no reality until death?
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No, I don’t see it that way. No reality until beliefs are purged.
I remember standing on the hill above my panama house and having this profound realization that everything I ever believed was not me. None of it. It was all regurgitated beliefs and expert opinions. The only thing I know is that what is sought is always found within. The sought is the seeker and the seeker is the sought. The mystery is there is no mystery and ultimately everything is one thing. Science or religion won’t go there.
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When you were standing on the hill Jim, was your mind completely empty?
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I would say no, not completely. I had spent three weeks alone while the family was in Panama City. Not only religiously but socially and politically I was overcome with a profound sense that I had been given two wrong choices and forced to pick sides. I suddenly loved everything and everyone without judgement. Nothing I had ever believed was me at all, yet neither was the other.
I certainly don’t claim any special authority but my own experience, but I do see that if you push any ideology beyond the comfort zones and accepted expert opinions, they all wind up in the same place. Right becomes left and science becomes esoteric, the esoteric sounds like a scientist. It all one process, not segmented by calculus or rulers and graphs, but a tremendously complex self governing ecosystem.
Much of the eastern philosophy resonates with what I have already observed. There are no separate events, the wake does not power the ship, the future and the past only exist in our minds.
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Could it be said that your experience then became your belief?
Here’s what I hear Krishnamurti saying.
I hear him speaking as though he “believes” he has the truth.
He is the one defining “reality” and lays out the parameters of “understanding.”
He presents the “process” and then the goal; “only when the mind is . . . ”
The conclusion is then presented “only then” is one truly enlightened.
Ultimately, I hear him saying, this is the way and “until” (ultimatum) freedom is and will be illusive.
All of it reads to me as a statement of belief.
“Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still . . . ”
Still reads like death to me with the caveat that there is no human alive that can attain this at any one moment in their life.
And this “… only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being—” ”
Again, a belief every bit as fundamental as my Christian fundamentals back in the day.
“Only then” can you be saved for all eternity in the after-life.
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Well, I don’t believe any of it. I do know that with myself and others, like Ben, it was like a switch flip. It made me laugh. They got me! But it was belief that blinded me from becoming myself. If you’ve noticed, by belief one can completely ignore facts and refutations of that belief. Conspiracy theories and divisive behavior isn’t them, but ideas and belief that came from another. Hijacked, really our own mind. Not original thought, but belief itself is the problem. It’s like a fucking anchor around the neck allowing one to dismiss every ounce of reason. Not Krishnamurti observation only, but many others.
You can’t believe and be objective.
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You keep using the term ‘belief’ without defining it. Both Ron and I have taken pains to explain there are different kinds of belief, different meanings to the term, that you are not addressing. Justified true belief is not the same thing as conspiracy belief, as religious belief, as factual belief. This wide claim you make about ‘belief’ as if one thing is therefore and demonstrably wrong.
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Your liberal beliefs vs Ron’s conservative beliefs? Are those not beliefs that are completely fallacious and defended daily by belief?
Ron’s gravity tidbit isn’t a belief. It can be demonstrated as fact. It is a regularity.
“In order to be effective, a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength—If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague. If neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable—
Eric Hoffer
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All of us have all kinds of beliefs, Jim – including political -but that’s my very point: you lump all belief into one term and then claim this defines reality. The term ‘belief’ is also synonymous with ‘likelihood’, with ‘confidence,’ with ‘assumption’, with ‘fact’ and so on. It is NOT one idea. You condemn all belief and then point out various results as if this substantiates your point. These do not do this. It’s a kind of confirmation bias to use this tactic over and over. You are failing to recognize that the term ‘belief’ has different and even contrary meanings. So, again, you need to clarify which meaning you are using.
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The type of the religious and political kind. You are point hacking an irrelevance and splitting hairs over things that don’t require belief—that can be easily measured and demonstrated daily across cultures and time. I would venture that Krishnamurti is more right than you would like. If you have a preconceived belief about reality, rarely can one see past that fog of belief. Try the conspiracy theorists, the religious believers or the devout politico (which point you so eloquently ignored) Because that part is 100% true!
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No, I’m talking about irrelevancies here at all. Actually, the point is essential. There are two kinds of beliefs: those that assumed to be true and then imposed on reality – this is called ‘faith-based’ belief (called a priori) – and those that are adduced from reality – this is called ‘evidence-based’ (called post facto). When we consider something and active our ‘higher’ cognitive functions, we deploy a way to this, a method. This goes under the title of ‘epistemology’, which is just another way to describe ‘how’ something is considered. If we know how the thinking is going to be deployed, we can predict the end result, what goes under the title of ‘ontology’, which is another way to describe ‘what’ is concluded. I sum this up with stating how we think determines what we think. So the method we employ – either faith-based OR evidence-based – is a central concern regarding what is going to be believed.
Here’s the brute fact: faith-based methodology has not, does not, and probably never shall produce one jot or tittle of knowledge. Metaphysics uses faith-based methodology. It assumes its premises are true first (a priori) and then uses logic to reach a conclusion (which more often than not is one of its premises!) This is the most common tactic for theologians to use to produce ‘proofs’ about its metaphysical claims. And probably the oldest is the assumption that things have natures, have ‘essences’. Fire rises because it possesses the nature of air; rocks fall down because they have the nature of ‘earth’. This is where the idea of the 4 basic elements came about and deeply affected by stifling human knowledge in all kinds of areas because the basic explanatory model was assumed to be true until Galileo came along and put a wooden spike through the heart of metaphysics… by using reality to arbitrate its claims. Revolutionary at the time and caused the Catholic Church to begin its long crumble (because the Church assumed the natural physics from the Classical period – the explanatory model crowned by metaphysics – were ‘true’ first and so fought tooth and nail to stop any serious questioning of it with alternatives that had the unfortunate ability to be a great use. (Of particular interest is the ‘nature’ of the eye which possessed the light necessary to see things. This is interesting in that Galileo – a true giant of an intellect – used (and became both famous and wealthy) lenses to bend light before striking the eye, which caused quite the stir when everyone ‘knew’ from their deep studies of Church-approved metaphysics that light came from the eye! If this were true, the lenses wouldn’t work. But they did. And so an industry was born that produced eye lenses. And if one looked through lenses that magnified light, why, one could draw the moons of Jupiter that couldn’t possibly exist if Ptolemy’s model were correct, or see the jagged mountains on the moon which couldn’t possibly exist because the smooth orb was necessary for the correct ‘tuning’ of the celestial spheres! And so on, and so on. This is why Galileo was the first to demonstrate using reality that the assumptions people had made forever about the ‘nature of things’ was absolutely and incontrovertibly wrong.
The conclusion is clear: relying on faith-based methodology will not produce knowledge. If anything, it promotes ignorance about obtaining and resistance to knowledge.
The method Galileo introduced to the world was evidence-based methodology that allowed reality to arbitrate our beliefs about it.
This method produces knowledge in that explanatory models that fit the evidence reality provides are more likely to be successfully applied in useful, consistent, and reliable applications. The longer and explanatory model continues to fit the evidence and produce results that work, the greater the confidence we can grant to the explanation. So this method produces a sliding scale of low to high likelihood, low to high confidence (the highest confidence awarded is what are called ‘theories’).
I hope you notice that the phrase ‘justified true beliefs’ depends on the evidence-based method. Faith-based methodology cannot be justified without this element of letting reality arbitrate the justification. And without reality to justify claims made about it, then such claims are gibberish because they possess no causal link to reality and so have nothing to offer us in the form of knowledge. Such beliefs may feel good but this justification is unrelated to knowledge and reality.
My beliefs across the board are evidence-based. The level of likelihood and confidence I have in them are directly related to what reality has to say in the matter. Should evidence come forward that reduces these means I have no problem whatsoever changing my mind. The principles I live by are derived from those with the claim to the highest likelihood they are the best case in comparison to all others, and so I award these principles with a very high level of confidence because reality informs them and elevates them to be worthy of my active support when threatened. Faith-based claims contrary to what is likely true threatens the method of allowing reality to arbitrate claims made about it. (This is how Trump and the invertebrates of the Republican party can deny reality and have millions of people go along with the charade, who think this is fine and worth their emotional support and loyalty and dedication. This is how the Woke can get the NYT and the Lancet to produce gibberish about critical race theory and transgender demands. This is how Goop became a thing, how astrology and transcendental ideology still sways people equipped with undamaged neurons, how religions continue to accumulate believers, how conspiracy theories gain traction, how reality-denying notions like anti-vax, anti-climate change, anti-evolution, anti-abortion ‘advocates’ can be willing buyers of this manufactured Doubt. 1% doubt is all that is needed to sell these ideas as magically equivalent to evidence-based consensus. Add the necessary element of public virtue to these reality-denying examples of faith-based methodology in action and you’ve set the stage for building never-ending social divisions and conflict.)
So please do not presume that I have less understanding of what I’m talking about than the multitude of people you can quote as if this creates authority. Knowledge creates authority, not assumptions.
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Wait a minute! I thought the expert opinions were important to you? Who is more expert on the nature of mass movements than Hoffer? You dismiss the comment because it counters your political belief. The truth is, you need Republicans and they need you as sure as up is to down, without them you wouldn’t know what you believe.
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I’ll admit to confusion Jim.
In my experience, my “belief” if we can let my atheism for the sake of conversation, be a belief, is a point that is used against me to suggest that I can’t be objective because of my non-God worldview.
But I’ve also had my mother, a conspiracy theorist, new ager and believer in reincarnation over the years imply I lack objectivity because I leave God out of the equation.
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It can be demonstrated across disciplines and data that the bias of belief (just look at the other side) makes it quite obvious. If you believed in god, would your mother believe you? Not at all. Her argument is without merit.
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Zoe – I don’t disagree with what you’re saying about Krishnamurti. From what I’ve read of him, I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t disagree, either. But we have an ever-present hurdle which we all, sages and simpletons, have been trying to get over, around, or through for thousands of years. Language.
He’s making assertions in a language, which is controlled by grammar and syntax, and sometimes there is no other way to say something than what they allow. This makes every utterance liable to be paradoxical and self-contradictory when on subjects like this. Particularly in Krishnamurti’s case.
Zen may be the purest effort to get over and around the limitations of language. Whitman didn’t do a bad job, either.
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Hi Flon,
My source for Krishnamurti is Jim. 🙂 Haven’t read or studied him at all. I am trying to understand how it is that Jim is using Krishnamurti’s words.
What is Jim saying through Krishnamurti’s words? Is he agreeing with him? Is he making a point to religious believers, notably, Christians? If so, what is the point?
Is he using it to prop up his belief that there is no God or is he using it to imply that there may or may not be a God and the discussion is futile?
Is he agreeing that the only way through it all is to “let go” and here’s how? Is he saying something completely different and how can I nail-down what it is that he is saying? 🙂
“Belief like any other ideal is an escape from “what is”. Krishnamurti
Would you say that “Zen” is a belief?
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no understanding of how beliefs are formed can come, if we don’t understand how mind works.
here is a most brilliant description of mind, quoted directly for the “Tibetan book of Living and Dying”, of Sogyal Rinpoche. i think we can identify ourself with this.
The Mind and the Nature of Mind
“The revolutionary insight of Buddhism is that life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else. Mind is revealed as the universal basis of experience- the creator of happiness and the creator of suffering, the creator of what we call life and what we call death.
There are many aspects to the mind, but two stand out. The first is the ordinary mind, called by the Tibetans sem. One master defines it: “That which possesses discriminating awareness, that which possesses a sense of duality—which grasps or rejects something external—that is mind. Fundamentally it is that which can associate with an ‘other’—with any ‘something that is perceived as different from the perceiver. Sem is the discursive, dualistic, thinking mind, which can only function in relation to a projected and falsely perceived external reference point.
So sem is the mind that thinks, plots, desires, manipulates, that flares up in anger, that creates and indulges in waves of negative emotions and thoughts, and that has to go on and on asserting, validating, and confirming its “existence” by fragmenting, conceptualizing, and solidifying experience.
The ordinary mind is the ceaselessly shifting and shiftless prey of external influences, habitual tendencies, and conditioning: The masters liken sem to a candle flame in an open doorway, vulnerable to all kinds of winds of circumstance.
Seen from one angle, sem is flickering, unstable, grasping and endlessly minding other’s business; its energy consumed by projecting outwards. Yet seen from another way, the ordinary mind has a false, dull stability, a smug and self-protective inertia, a stone-like calm of ingrained habits. Sem is as cunning as a crooked politician, skeptical, distrustful, expert at trickery and guile, “ingenious” in the game of deceptions. It is within the experience of this chaotic, confused, undisciplined, and repetitive sem, the ordinary mind, that, again and again, we undergo change and death.
Then there is the very nature of mind, its innermost essence, which is absolutely untouched by change or death. At present it is hidden within our own mind, sem, and enveloped and obscured by the mental scurry of our thoughts and emotions. Just as clouds can be shifted by a strong wind to reveal the shining sun and wide-open sky, so under certain circumstance, some inspiration may uncover for us a glimpse of this nature of mind. These glimpses have many depths and degrees, but each of them will bring some light and understanding, meaning and freedom. This is because the nature of mind is the very root itself of understanding. In Tibetan we call it Rigpa, a primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.” The buddha mind.
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I agree with Nan. Just reading all of this wears me out.
I get some of what is said, but not all.
I was gunna say that the mind filters reality; therefore, there can only be mindless reality. And if that is so, who cares?
This blog and the threads and comments defy simplicity. Yet I keep returning to read more. Then I need a drink and a nap. 🙂
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Naps are on the house!
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🙂 I stopped for a few hours and a cup of tea.
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