RE: The subtle distinction between belief & faith

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2014 10:37 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The subtle distinction between belief & faith

 

 

On 16 Jul 2014, at 04:23, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:





Some quoted passages from Alan Watts (author of The Wisdom of Insecurity -
1951) regarding the distinction between belief and faith that seemed
pertinent to me to several of the discussion threads going on here.

Chris

 

Quoting him:




We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in
general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost
the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence
that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will
open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his
preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved
opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has
no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith
lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of
science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.






[...]






The present phase of human thought and history ... almost compels us to face
reality with open minds, and you can only know God through an open mind just
as you can only see the sky through a clear window. You will not see the sky
if you have covered the glass with blue paint.






But "religious" people who resist the scraping of the paint from the glass,
who regard the scientific attitude with fear and mistrust, and confuse faith
with clinging to certain ideas, are curiously ignorant of laws of the
spiritual life which they might find in their own traditional records. A
careful study of comparative religion and spiritual philosophy reveals that
abandonment of belief, of any clinging to a future life for one's own, and
of any attempt to escape from finitude and mortality, is a regular and
normal stage in the way of the spirit. Indeed, this is actually such a
"first principle" of the spiritual life that it should have been obvious
from the beginning, and it seems, after all, surprising that learned
theologians should adopt anything but a cooperative attitude towards the
critical philosophy of science.

 

Nice quote. Note that "Conscience & Mécanisme" gives Alan Watts all its due.
That guy saves my life and perhaps my afterlife :)

 

Bruno

 

Yeah... he helped a lot of minds escape prisons within.

Chris

 

 





 

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

 

 

 

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