definetly

gravity is not a belief , it is known fact

knowing is not the same as believing

and knowledge is not simply a belief or an opinion , its a fact

edit : the point is -

Technically knowledge isnt fact, but present fact. Knowledge being the current understanding which can change at any moment when new knowledge is presented that gives a better understanding to the topic that was previously thought to of been understood. Without knowledge you cannot have belief.

Belief being a constructed understanding based on present knowledge. Knowledge can be incorrect which is why belief should not be held in high regard nor should knowledge.

We use knowledge to create a foundation for belief to stand upon. Without belief we would not achieve what we have as fast as we have. Now im not talking about religious belief, but the overall concept of belief. No human can have zero belief. If i ask you how you are feeling, you tell me you feel fine. This is because you believe you are fine based on the knowledge that how you feel tells you your current status of health. If your not fine there is usually a sign that you can sense physically.

This can be an incorrect assessment due to the fact that no physical signs of malady exist until symptoms of an illness have set in. You may have cancer but you just told me you are fine.

Zon, when i said you are over complicating your explanations it wasnt meant that your explanations are about complicated topics that some may not grasp. It was meant that you are over complicating something that can be explained in a less lengthy manner. It is unneeded and many people choose to communicate that way to make themselves sound smart. I am not assuming that is your intention, either way it makes your posts lengthy and unlikely to achieve anything.

what do we really know? well currently gravity is actually just a belief, I mean until a unified theory of everything i.e. string theory or something similar is proven and no longer a theory gravity is what we believe it to be. advancements in science could disprove what we believe gravity is. factual information is current and what we believe because we are shown and told?

2,000 years ago factual information was very different.

"nothing is true, everything is permitted" (I just liked the quote and it seemed to fit well)

what one person thinks he knows or believes to be factual can be different for someone else. I respect everyone else view and I find its best not to try and convince other strong minded people differently, if one design is true it should be inevitable that we all reach the same path no matter what path we choose

peace

that quote reflects the observation, rather than a belief, that eveything is subject to change (even beliefs, and so-called "truths" ).
believing strongly/wholeheartedly in anything, dismisses the possibility of alternative hypotheses.

@Everyone: Regarding various posts "pointing out" that knowledge is not the same as belief.

I KNOW it is not the same as belief. I specifically stated that knowledge is TRUE belief. I also stated that this definition was from Plato's Theaetetus, where he actually gave a slightly longer definition: "justified true belief." In that post I also mentioned that I left out the "justified" part in order to keep things simpler...however, I will go with the full definition, explaining exactly why Plato formulated it as such - and why it is a correct formulation.

Let's say Harry, and Tom are playing a strange game of "coin toss." One of them takes a coin and tosses it into a bucket on the other side of the room. From where they are standing, they cannot see the coin in the bottom of the bucket.

Harry says, "I have a REALLY strong feeling. I BELIEVE that the coin is showing heads." Then Tom says, "Well, I also have a REALLY strong feeling. I BELIEVE that the coin is showing tails."

Neither has a KNOWLEDGE of the state of the coin (heads or tails showing) but one of them is correct...it is EITHER heads or tails. So while one of them believes something true, there is actually one more step required to turn that true belief into actual knowledge...and that is justification.

They then decide to look into the bucket...and they see that the coin is showing heads. NOW Harry's belief is both true and justified...and he KNOWS that the coin is showing heads. Any claim he would have made to having "knowledge" of the actual state of the coin (other than that there was a 50% chance of it either being heads or tails) would have been incorrect until he had a "justified true belief."

@universecannon:




See the explanation above. (Also, in the same post I gave Plato's definition right above the dictionary.com definition.)




Yes...and not only to I admit that this is what people do, I make sure to point it out when they do, and also to point out that words DO have meanings, and that in the interest of both clear communication AND clear thinking, one should always strive to use the actual meaning of words and the concepts they represent. In fact, in a previous post I wrote:




So, while people are "free" to use words in any way they want, so to speak, if one is trying to debate a point, or even simply discuss something with another person, this is essentially impossible if there are not agreed-upon meanings applied to all the words used. And rather than painstakingly define each word individually, making up language as we go along every time one speaks with another person, it's really convenient to be able to simply say (or infer) that one is speaking (in this case) English, and therefore assume that all the words will have the definitions that are used in English.

@benzyme:




In a previous post I have already acknowledged that there may well be limits to the knowledge one can derive about reality, but this only means that one should seek to know where these limits lie and all that one can within these limits:




@jamie:




I actually think I have represented the term QUITE accurately...and I have also discussed AND justified my use of the term in a previous post:




A bit further down in the same post I also said:




I stand by my definition, also given in the same post: “Mysticism” refers to any sort of ineffective, non-reality-based methodology or approach to the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.




Beliefs in the supernatural would certainly be considered a "mysticism." And I never said that mysticism was something "outside the mind;" in fact mysticisms are false constructs existing exclusively within the mind, rather than as a part of external reality.




This may not be the "politically correct" way of phrasing it, but my purpose here is not "political correctness," but greater mutual understanding. I also understand that in the context of a course in religious anthropology such a definition would have "shot you down rather quickly." There may be a few reasons for that. Primary among these is that the vast majority of people are mystical in general, and thus don't like to have their mysticism exposed for what it really is...and I would suspect that this would almost be a certainty for someone whose life path lead them to teaching a course in religious anthropology. (As a side-note: I have had a couple of courses where I quickly detected the mysticism of the professor...and easily "aced" those courses by carefully using language designed to appeal to the professor's mysticisms, while also maintaining my personal integrity by never actually giving personal credence to the mysticisms.)

Also, there is the "political correctness" issue, which I touched upon above. In anthropological courses in general an acceptance of the idea of "cultural relativism" is essentially de rigueur; in other words, there is an emphasis on simply observing and recording cultural differences and not "judging" these differences as "right or wrong" in terms of one's own culture.

This, however, is not a class in religious anthropology.




I am actually not as unfamiliar with Greek mysticism as you might think, although I am sure that my understanding and interpretation of such mysticism is markedly different from yours. I will say that much of Egyptian and Vedic philosophy would certainly fit into exactly my definition of "mysticism," as would much of Greek philosophy as well...how much evidence do you need?




I essentially agree. People started with all sorts of approaches, many of which were essentially mystical...and then some of them started actually having real success in understanding the world when they began to use methods that eventually came to be identified as "scientific." Once they realized they power of this scientific approach in comparison with the essentially impotent approach of mysticism, mysticism was abondonded in favor of science.

Also, regarding the word "rationalism," this is a term that has been defined in all sorts of ways. (Philosophers are sort of notorious for giving words definitions which don't mean what may be expected, and often for different philosophers to give contradicting meanings to the same term.) Rationalism has even been defined as an approach to knowing reality using only the mind, without reference to empirical observation. (Certainly NOT something I subscribe to.) From your use of the term it seems that you mean something like "logical thinking or reasoning." (Something I DO subscribe to.) I think a much better general term for the scientific approach, as introduced in Scionics, is "empiricorationalism." This is the skeptical application and integration of both empiricism and rationality.




I never said that all Greeks believed in the gods, or that all Greeks were mystical...but many did and were.

And what was the "wisdom" or the "level of knowledge that was hidden from non-initiates" but an even deeper or more subtle or "secret" (but just as non-reality-based) form of mysticism? (I will say however, that there is speculation that the Pythagoreans actually had two paths: Both started essentially the same, with a mixture of mathematics, mysticism, and other teachings. Those who displayed an affinity for mysticism, or otherwise did not "measure up," were taken down the false, "mystical" path, all the while thinking they were recieving "the inner secrets." Those who rejected mystical thinking, and also "measured up" in other ways, were shown the true, reality-based path...again, this is just speculation, but interesting.)




See pretty much all of the above.

You have continued to use the term mysticism incorrectly.

Pythagoras was a mystic..pythagorean mathematics was part of a mystical tradition.

I don't get what is so hard to understand about this. You are not open to the fact that mysticism was not what many skeptics have tried to make it out to be. They should stick to what they know, and leave the defining of such movements to the classicists who know what they are talking about.

Don't get stuck on rigid definitions of things just because they might support your beliefs. It's illogical.

@jamie:



I don't confine my thinking to some narrow specialty. I happily integrate information from any field into my world-view. This does not mean that I blindly accept everything I hear, but that I evaluate it in terms of everything else I know. (Actually this is essentially what we all do, although some seem to do it much better than others.) Of course I have more interest in certain things, and less in others, which is natural. Furthermore, "mysticism" was not merely some movement left in the dusts of antiquity to be studied by "classicists"...it is still alive and well, sadly and to humanity's detriment, here in the 21st century.

Regarding the mysticism of Pythagoras:

What I said about Pythagoras was (as I said) speculation. His "mystical mathematics" is very well-known, as are his other non-mystical mathematical contribitions. (Although there is also some speculation as to whether the famous theorem which bears his name - the "Pythagorean Theorem," obviously - was actually discovered by him personally.)

Again, I reported that this was speculation...not fact. This speculation was that the Akousmatikoi (the "Listeners" ) were those who were considered to be "irredeemably mystical" and therefore rather than trying to "cure" them of their mysticism, so to speak, he found it more useful to simply provide them with alternative "higher" mysticisms which were "less harmful" than the ones they had previously held.

As for those who eschewed the mysticisms of the Akousmatikoi, and mysticism in general (the minority of individuals, by the way) IT IS SPECULATED that they were inducted into the TRUE non-mystical secrets of the Pythagorean Brotherhood, as the Mathematikoi (the "Learners" ).

Note that the Pythagoreans were a "secret society," so that it is hard to actually know from the historical record whether or not this was the case...and again, please note that this is SPECULATION, and that I only reported it as a matter of interest, not as any type of support for my argument...so I really don't want to invest a lot of time debating a mere tangential speculation.

The bottom line regarding my statements about Pythagoras, is that I am NOT saying that he actually WAS OR WAS NOT truly a mystic. I have acknowledged that he did teach mysticism...but that IT HAS BEEN SPECULATED that this was done for a higher, reality-based, non-mystical purpose. Whether on not this speculation is true is unknown...which is why it is called a "speculation."

I will say, however, that my use of the term "mysticism" is spot-on. In fact, we both agree that Pythagoras taught mysticisms...so are we both wrong in our use of the term "mysticism" as applied to these teachings...or are we both correct?

I think THE issue...the REAL issue, when all the chatter about definitions, and "absolute certainty" and all the rest is put aside is this:

NOTHING can exist which is inconsistent with its own existence.

Therefore REALITY and EVERYTHING IN REALITY is "existentially logical."

There may well be limits to our ability to know, but WITHIN THOSE LIMITS, the ONLY way to KNOW REALITY is to STUDY REALITY.

The most reliable method (by FAR) for studying reality that humanity has ever devised is SCIENCE.

Until such time as some method superior to science is discovered, all other methods for studying reality which are counter to science are simply unreliable or wrong.

THAT is THE point.

If one wants to collectively refer to those other methods as "mystical," or as "mysticism," or "mysticisms," these certainly seem like appropriate terms to me...but that is not THE point, although we could argue it forever...and at the end all we will have done is settled upon some proper term for inferior, unreliable methods of studying, understanding, or knowing reality, instead of using our time more wisely and actually studying, understanding and knowing more about actual reality! I can also say that HOWEVER you want to define "mysticism," whatever makes you "feel good" about the definition, this will not change at all the fact that mysticism is inferior to science, as stated.