Hi David M. B. wrote on 24 Feb:
> dmb says:Right. Faith, as it's defined in Pirsig's complaint, is a > willingness to believe falsehoods or, as Mark Twain put it, faith is > believing what you know ain't so. To put it more kindly, faith-based > beliefs are those we accept without evidence or even when the evidence > says otherwise. Naturally, the mainstream religions ask people to > accept the most miraculous claims on this basis; the virgin birth, the > resurrection and such. This sounds as intellect's (reason's) haughty objective-over- subjective view of the social level, but are we not to have our metaphysical view from the MOQ, not from any particular static level?. And the MOQ says (in this context) that if intellect's fails, we will all resort to the next safe latch which will be the social and its "faith" value. > But Quality isn't like that. It's impossible to not believe in quality. > You know it from it experience and requires no faith at all. Science, > obviously, is based on what is empirically verifiable and is open to > change based on empirical evidence. Yes, but all levels are stages of quality, thus (what intellect condescendingly calls) faith is what the MOQ calls social quality. It's impossible to deny that some "things" have higher value than other, dependent on the situation, but it requires some leap to believe in a metaphysics saying that Quality is Reality. > Now, if you use the term "faith" to refer to a religion generally or to > a religious person generally, that would be a different topic. Zen, for > example, is a non-theistic religion that doesn't require faith. It is > empirically based very much like the philosophical mysticism of the > MOQ. So if you get rid of the theistic elements and the other > faith-based beliefs, then the MOQ gives us a picture where religion and > science are both based in empirical reality. > But it seems to me that this sort of debate is perhaps best > illuminated by appreciating the historical situation. I mean, we're > all in this context together whether we realize it or not. The clash > between faith and science pre-dates Darwin and its not just a matter > of what you and I believe. The death of God is an historical event > that has already come and gone. There are reactionary forces that > would very much like to turn the clock back and undo this historical > development but reactionaries almost never determine the future. This pertains to the point I have tried to make the last weeks, namely that Christendom - through the Greek influence - developed an intellectual strain. Firstly it developed the material versus spiritual realm, next it felt compelled to describe objectively how God and the divine realm was organized (theology and dogmas) and when science began to discover things that clashed with dogma it meant trouble. This is the Christendom's curse, its blessing however is that it turns ever more "intellectual" - God is almost gone, it's all about Jesus as a Buddha-like figure - and coupled with the MOQ it may transcend intellect altogether and become a Western Wisdom. Judaism and Islam never had this encounter with intellect and will remain all "social". > I think the MOQ goes a long way toward explaining the SOM was and is a > potent political tool against faith-based traditions and that this was > a moral battle but it also explains how amoral scientific objectivity > goes too far and provokes the various reactionary movements such as > fascism and fundamentalism. SOM and theism are at odds with each other > in a seemingly irreconcilable way but the MOQ is at odds with both of > them. It is scientific without being reductionistic or materialistic or > amoral and it is religious without being theistic or faith-based. > I also like the way Joseph Campbell explains this same clash. In the > final section of his "Hero With a Thousand Faces", a section called > "The Hero Today", he says, "the invention of the power-driven machine, > and the development of the scientific method of research, has so > transformed human life that the long-inherited, timeless universe of > symbols has collapsed. In the fateful, epoch-announcing words of > Nietzsche's Zarathustra; 'Dead are all the gods'. ...It is not only > that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching > telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the > gods once supported. The said Jew and Muslim culture's societies are still effective "hiding places" for traditional social "gods". Campbell is a great authority on these matters, and when he superimposes the old myths on to present day and see them enacted in our social rituals he is right. Myths are the social cement and as necessary these days as it was in ancient times. Bo Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
