reason vs faith vs reality
July 21, 2013 at 9:02 am
(This post was last modified: July 21, 2013 at 9:04 am by wandering soul.)
ok in this ongoing debate there is no resolution when the terms are not defined. Even then there will be no resolution because it is being driven by emotion and survival instincts rather than informed comprehension.
First the problem must be addressed from the point of divergence which is not at the point of either reason or faith but of reality. Reality is not, as we always assume, some objective verifiable entity. It is an abstract concept created by the human mind.
Plants, rocks, water, air, and animals do not have Reality, they have merely existence. Even animals with mind and consciousness do not experience reality but only existence. Reality did not exist until the human mind worked itself up from manipulation of mental objects (as all sentient creatures do) to construction of mental ideas and thoughts (also common in sentient creatures) and then from thoughts and ideas constructed abstractions leading to abstractions as fully formed mental objects themselves to be manipulated to construct whole worlds and universes of philosophy, science, and yes, religions.
Both faith and reason are just mental tools we have constructed to manipulate and create our mental worlds and our realities - yes plural - one size does not fit all. We are all constructing and experiencing different realities based on different data sets, using different mental tools and different methods of construction of reality.
The thing is, you can't say one reality is more "real" than the other. Reality is an abstraction which we create, which corresponds to our subjective lived experience. We only trade in one reality for another when our current constructed reality starts to break down in the face of that business of raw existence itself - which can totally disrupt our mental abstract constructs at times.
First the problem must be addressed from the point of divergence which is not at the point of either reason or faith but of reality. Reality is not, as we always assume, some objective verifiable entity. It is an abstract concept created by the human mind.
Plants, rocks, water, air, and animals do not have Reality, they have merely existence. Even animals with mind and consciousness do not experience reality but only existence. Reality did not exist until the human mind worked itself up from manipulation of mental objects (as all sentient creatures do) to construction of mental ideas and thoughts (also common in sentient creatures) and then from thoughts and ideas constructed abstractions leading to abstractions as fully formed mental objects themselves to be manipulated to construct whole worlds and universes of philosophy, science, and yes, religions.
Both faith and reason are just mental tools we have constructed to manipulate and create our mental worlds and our realities - yes plural - one size does not fit all. We are all constructing and experiencing different realities based on different data sets, using different mental tools and different methods of construction of reality.
The thing is, you can't say one reality is more "real" than the other. Reality is an abstraction which we create, which corresponds to our subjective lived experience. We only trade in one reality for another when our current constructed reality starts to break down in the face of that business of raw existence itself - which can totally disrupt our mental abstract constructs at times.
having passed through many states of believing I was right I have come to the place of finding "rightness" rather irrelevant to the project of becoming human
