I believe...
Yep, yep I do.
There are things I believe in, things that cannot be truly proven to be either true or false, but that I choose to hold as true. This set amounts to my own personal faith. In that spirit, I present BlackDjinn’s Creed, and all who follow shall recieve my blessing.
That seems pretty simple... and quite clear. However there are some subtleties that should be explained.. and thus I give you commentary.
The existance of an objective rather than subjective or consensus reality is generally a no-brainer, given that the alternatives, while valid, don’t leave a lot of room for discource on what is going on. Subjectively, the whole universe is somehow a produc of our mind and doesn’t really exist at all, or is so fluid as to put the discussion of what anything is beyond the domain of reason. By consensus, you just include more individulas in the mix but again, you yeald a system where the truth of anything cannot be determined. And oddly enough, this bit jibes fairly well with most religious ideas, given that a creation born from God would, to us, be anything but subjective.
The second is really my basic view as a physicist. It has a lot of evidence to back it up, but it is only true by assertion. Also, ‘simple’ is somewhat misleading. Quantum Mechanics is simple. Schroedinger’s Equation, the mathamatical law that describes the behavior of the basic building blocks of matter, is gloriously simple. That doesn’t mean it is easy to work with or solve. Even relatively simple systems are often beyond the reach of modern math to treat. So simple nos not mean easy to solve, it means easy to write down.
Lastly.. the catch is in the middle there. Deductive logic only allows you to form true tatements involving logical implication. That is sentances of the form: If this clause is true, then this next one must also be true. Conspiracy nuts use this mechanism to build elaborate webs of collusion and deciet but it breaks as ‘must be’... they replace it with ‘almost certainly’ which is like building a house with noodles instead of nails. The other abuse of this is leaving out the initial ‘if’ for things that really are not of necesity true.
So that is what I believe, the creed of my faith. It may be just a load of bull, or it may not be. At some level all three of them are unprovable, but they are also defensible against scrutiny and argument.
Faith is defined as ‘belief without proof’... but the ‘without proof’ line cuts both ways. Proof that a statement is false is still proof. If someone proves something I believe in to be wrong, then it stops being a matter of faith if I choose to believe anyway. It becomes delusion.
“Belief without proof” is also different from ‘belief without evidence.“ People should not simply accept anything. Question it, poke at it, see if it’s strong enough to build a foundation with... If it won’t stnad up to argument, then adjust it, or learn enough that you can.
Oh well... there he goes again...
There are things I believe in, things that cannot be truly proven to be either true or false, but that I choose to hold as true. This set amounts to my own personal faith. In that spirit, I present BlackDjinn’s Creed, and all who follow shall recieve my blessing.
- The world that is precived by our senses is Real and is not subjective.
- The functioning of the universe can be expressed in a finite collection of simple mathematical laws.
- Deductive reasoning is, when applied correctly, absolute.
That seems pretty simple... and quite clear. However there are some subtleties that should be explained.. and thus I give you commentary.
The existance of an objective rather than subjective or consensus reality is generally a no-brainer, given that the alternatives, while valid, don’t leave a lot of room for discource on what is going on. Subjectively, the whole universe is somehow a produc of our mind and doesn’t really exist at all, or is so fluid as to put the discussion of what anything is beyond the domain of reason. By consensus, you just include more individulas in the mix but again, you yeald a system where the truth of anything cannot be determined. And oddly enough, this bit jibes fairly well with most religious ideas, given that a creation born from God would, to us, be anything but subjective.
The second is really my basic view as a physicist. It has a lot of evidence to back it up, but it is only true by assertion. Also, ‘simple’ is somewhat misleading. Quantum Mechanics is simple. Schroedinger’s Equation, the mathamatical law that describes the behavior of the basic building blocks of matter, is gloriously simple. That doesn’t mean it is easy to work with or solve. Even relatively simple systems are often beyond the reach of modern math to treat. So simple nos not mean easy to solve, it means easy to write down.
Lastly.. the catch is in the middle there. Deductive logic only allows you to form true tatements involving logical implication. That is sentances of the form: If this clause is true, then this next one must also be true. Conspiracy nuts use this mechanism to build elaborate webs of collusion and deciet but it breaks as ‘must be’... they replace it with ‘almost certainly’ which is like building a house with noodles instead of nails. The other abuse of this is leaving out the initial ‘if’ for things that really are not of necesity true.
So that is what I believe, the creed of my faith. It may be just a load of bull, or it may not be. At some level all three of them are unprovable, but they are also defensible against scrutiny and argument.
Faith is defined as ‘belief without proof’... but the ‘without proof’ line cuts both ways. Proof that a statement is false is still proof. If someone proves something I believe in to be wrong, then it stops being a matter of faith if I choose to believe anyway. It becomes delusion.
“Belief without proof” is also different from ‘belief without evidence.“ People should not simply accept anything. Question it, poke at it, see if it’s strong enough to build a foundation with... If it won’t stnad up to argument, then adjust it, or learn enough that you can.
Oh well... there he goes again...