From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Nov 02 2004 - 14:30:54 GMT
Hi Steve,
Your wrote:
> My comment about reducing the dynamic to the intellectual level
> concerns the danger in saying that one knows what God wants. I'm
> pretty sure Pirsig said something about this issue but I can't find it.
> It is wrong for the same reason that we leave Quality undefined. God is
> an term that is supposed to point to that which transcends static patterns
> and thus cannot be contained by intellectual statements.
Thanks. I see your point.
> I'm not sure what you have in mind when you say, "That's what I
> experienced." Can you give me some examples of beliefs that may be
> supported by experiences such as meditation, prayer, revelation, etc?
Near death experiences come immediately to mind of beliefs supported by
revelation. Those who meditate report experiences of being fully joined
with Spirit. Of course, there are many accounts of prayers being answered,
confirming one's belief in a God who cares.
> I was defending Pirsig's statement that faith is concerned with
> believing falsehoods, and I still think that the word is often used in
> exactly that way. I don't think I am over-generalizing when I say that
> beliefs supported by "revelation, meditation, and contemplation of beauty
> are generally [not] what people are talking about anyway when they talk
> about having faith." I did say generally, not always.
I think many people use faith as a pejorative term based on a bias against
religion. Pirsig's definition suggests as much.
> I also think that "willingness to believe falsehoods" is not always
> what is meant by faith, but I think that the word has an important
> spiritual sense to it that is lost when you extend it to include all
> sorts of beliefs. Though I don't participate in an organized religion, I
> consider myself a person of faith in the sense that I try to trust that the
> world is as it should be and that it is good.
"Faith" has several meanings with a spiritual sense being among them. I
use the word meaning intellectual concepts that cannot be shown to be true
by empirical evidence. For example, Pirsig uses my meaning in the
following passage: "What the MOQ indicates i that the twentieth century
intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and natural is
disastrously naive." (Lila, 24).
> Again, I think that having axiomatic beliefs is too broad a definition of
> faith. I don't think this is what "people of faith" would say that they
> mean by it.
>
> I think faith applies only to those axioms that concern value, meaning, and
> purpose--how one lives his life and interpret events, not just any
> observation or statement or fact.
>
> I agree that there are scientific types who take the materialism to the
> level of faith since I have known people who seem to struggle to prove
> that all experience boils down to a bunch of atoms bumping into one
> another. Some preach as though we'd all be better off if we only could wrap
> our minds around how empty and meaningless it all is. But I wouldn't apply
> the word faith to just any belief. I think that to use faith in the way
> you are using it and to say that religious faith is the same thing is to
> confuse two different usages of the word.
To clarify our use of the term perhaps we should use "religious faith"
when we're talking about its spiritual connotations and "intellectual
faith" (as Pirsig does in the passage above) when referring to unprovable
intellectual premises, such as the postmodern faith that truth doesn't
exist.
Best,
Platt
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