Epistemology
e·pis·te·mol·o·gy [ih-pis-tuh-mol-uh-jee]
noun
a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.
It's a fancy name, but this is really the most basic common ground among all thoughts: a topic that dealt with in every academic discipline, by kids on the playground, by gossipy soccer moms and professionals. Basically, Why is anything you're saying worth listening to? What makes me sure that what you say is true?
Let's take the example of the kid on the playground. He unknowingly exaggerates the distance at which he got a basketball through the hoop when he was playing the previous day, his ego slightly inflated with pride. Another boy calls him out on it, adamantly declaring that he'd seen him shoot from closer. This third grader has developed a basic stance on epistemology: the origin of his knowledge is experience, its nature is a basic descriptor of the experience, the method is... well, playing on the playground and gaining experience... and so forth. All knowledge is rooted in experience, and more and more directly so as the topic moves closer to the mundane. So when we're talking about the rationality of religious faith – meaning, the correspondence of religious beliefs to reality – it will ultimately come back down to the same premise. Even if experience is very doubtable on theoretical terms, when you know that you know something because you've seen it or felt it or seen it, it becomes just as valid as any other commonplace knowledge used from moment to moment (until called into question by a subsequent experience). It's possible to debate on a pure theoretical level, but I am slowly losing my interest in it because of its lack of impact on reality. As far as I have ever seen, people determine, confirm, and re-confirm their life philosophies through actions and attitudes, not through long, existentially-crushing internal philosophical struggles. So I choose to address knowledge as it functions practically: a set of assumptions people draw from their experiences and extrapolations from those experiences.
I should note that intellectual experiences are no less experiences than more ordinary things like shooting basketballs. Just like the boy might not have been watching closely enough and remembered incorrectly the distance at which his friend shot the basketball into the hoop, I might also have kinks in my reasoning that contribute to less accurate religious beliefs. But speaking practically, once again, despite the existence of a transcendent truth (the exact distance at which the ball was shot), it matters more in the end what each of the boys think happened.
(To quickly step back out to a framework meta-level, I insert another observation, that I don't even consider the next bunch of statements to be absolute or unquestionable. They are not descriptors of Truth, but instead descriptors of my understandings of Truth. It is a fine distinction, but it is to be regarded with importance, because it has such an impact on 1) the willingness of an individual to reconsider beliefs when they are challenged by new experiences, 2) the degree of humility with which we approach epistemology in general. Whether or not I succeed in applying this belief, it is of utmost importance to me not to treat my own thoughts as though they were on par with God's, and so I always try to leave room to re-establish that they are not.)
I. Ultimately, religious belief is determined by an experience that moves someone to believe. The process differs so much from person to person that the principle sounds airy when explained without application in specific testimony. I consider it a relatively futile effort to boil down billions of individuals' separate journeys to cold, absolute terms used by many philosophers. I can't speak to the transcendent validity of others' experiences because I am not present within their system and don't understand how they relate to the outside world. Furthermore, it is unnecessary to validate the transcendent truth of something someone says in order to affirm that it is existentially valid and to benefit from the interaction. (I know that those likely to read my essay will groan in rejection of the PoMo language, but I urge you to try to understand it on these terms.) So, without derailing into a dissection of my philosophy of communication, I'll say that for me, specifically, the most basic reason I am able to have faith in the existence of a supreme being is because I have always simply known it to be true. My understanding of the nature of the supernatural world has changed from time to time, but since I was a very small child, I have always understood without a doubt that there is a timeless, cohesive, peaceful Unity that is beyond what we know here, but that this thing is also present in our world the way we know it today. This very basic understanding was later explained to me by the Christian faith, and I have come to see it through that light. But it is because there is an inexplicable connection to something greater that I cannot ever deny that I have some kind of faith to begin with.
II. That leaves me with what kind of faith to have. Even if I know something or someone is out there and I feel a call to pursue it/him/her/them, it remains “it/him/her/them” until I have pursued the subject and learned more about it. (As a side note, it's interesting to me how vague my base experiential understanding of the divine can sound when it is put into words, but how concrete it is in actuality, even if it lacks doctrine or rational clarity.) This I have determined through experience with rational arguments – which once again, I regard as descriptors of my understanding of truth more than conclusions of truth in and of themselves. What this means is that when I adopt a new doctrine, it is not simply because that new doctrine is true, but because I am pursuing truth and my mind is geared towards accepting such doctrines as true, since it's internally-consistent with a pre-established framework. It is my understanding that God works within this limited framework in redeeming individuals. Once again, I can explain in terms of testimony how I think that has operated so far in my life, but I can't make categorical statements explaining the role of divine will in completely divergent theologies and life philosophies, since I have not experienced that redemption. We are taking part in a dynamic and mutable process that will never make total sense even to the individual until it is finished. And when it clicks into place, it will be neither rational sense nor emotional sense, but the same type of obvious knowing that I've experienced in very limited part already. While we are here, however, rationality, empirical evidence, deduction, and Biblical apology are tools I have used in my own experience to come to a greater understanding of how God relates to the physical world and to me. The logic that makes those arguments seem rational and valid to me is built up out of basic experiences and confirmed by complex experiences such as those I refer to in (I). This all functions in building the basic framework I have always had, creating a more and more complete internally-consistent and self-refining system.
noun
a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.
It's a fancy name, but this is really the most basic common ground among all thoughts: a topic that dealt with in every academic discipline, by kids on the playground, by gossipy soccer moms and professionals. Basically, Why is anything you're saying worth listening to? What makes me sure that what you say is true?
Let's take the example of the kid on the playground. He unknowingly exaggerates the distance at which he got a basketball through the hoop when he was playing the previous day, his ego slightly inflated with pride. Another boy calls him out on it, adamantly declaring that he'd seen him shoot from closer. This third grader has developed a basic stance on epistemology: the origin of his knowledge is experience, its nature is a basic descriptor of the experience, the method is... well, playing on the playground and gaining experience... and so forth. All knowledge is rooted in experience, and more and more directly so as the topic moves closer to the mundane. So when we're talking about the rationality of religious faith – meaning, the correspondence of religious beliefs to reality – it will ultimately come back down to the same premise. Even if experience is very doubtable on theoretical terms, when you know that you know something because you've seen it or felt it or seen it, it becomes just as valid as any other commonplace knowledge used from moment to moment (until called into question by a subsequent experience). It's possible to debate on a pure theoretical level, but I am slowly losing my interest in it because of its lack of impact on reality. As far as I have ever seen, people determine, confirm, and re-confirm their life philosophies through actions and attitudes, not through long, existentially-crushing internal philosophical struggles. So I choose to address knowledge as it functions practically: a set of assumptions people draw from their experiences and extrapolations from those experiences.
I should note that intellectual experiences are no less experiences than more ordinary things like shooting basketballs. Just like the boy might not have been watching closely enough and remembered incorrectly the distance at which his friend shot the basketball into the hoop, I might also have kinks in my reasoning that contribute to less accurate religious beliefs. But speaking practically, once again, despite the existence of a transcendent truth (the exact distance at which the ball was shot), it matters more in the end what each of the boys think happened.
(To quickly step back out to a framework meta-level, I insert another observation, that I don't even consider the next bunch of statements to be absolute or unquestionable. They are not descriptors of Truth, but instead descriptors of my understandings of Truth. It is a fine distinction, but it is to be regarded with importance, because it has such an impact on 1) the willingness of an individual to reconsider beliefs when they are challenged by new experiences, 2) the degree of humility with which we approach epistemology in general. Whether or not I succeed in applying this belief, it is of utmost importance to me not to treat my own thoughts as though they were on par with God's, and so I always try to leave room to re-establish that they are not.)
I. Ultimately, religious belief is determined by an experience that moves someone to believe. The process differs so much from person to person that the principle sounds airy when explained without application in specific testimony. I consider it a relatively futile effort to boil down billions of individuals' separate journeys to cold, absolute terms used by many philosophers. I can't speak to the transcendent validity of others' experiences because I am not present within their system and don't understand how they relate to the outside world. Furthermore, it is unnecessary to validate the transcendent truth of something someone says in order to affirm that it is existentially valid and to benefit from the interaction. (I know that those likely to read my essay will groan in rejection of the PoMo language, but I urge you to try to understand it on these terms.) So, without derailing into a dissection of my philosophy of communication, I'll say that for me, specifically, the most basic reason I am able to have faith in the existence of a supreme being is because I have always simply known it to be true. My understanding of the nature of the supernatural world has changed from time to time, but since I was a very small child, I have always understood without a doubt that there is a timeless, cohesive, peaceful Unity that is beyond what we know here, but that this thing is also present in our world the way we know it today. This very basic understanding was later explained to me by the Christian faith, and I have come to see it through that light. But it is because there is an inexplicable connection to something greater that I cannot ever deny that I have some kind of faith to begin with.
II. That leaves me with what kind of faith to have. Even if I know something or someone is out there and I feel a call to pursue it/him/her/them, it remains “it/him/her/them” until I have pursued the subject and learned more about it. (As a side note, it's interesting to me how vague my base experiential understanding of the divine can sound when it is put into words, but how concrete it is in actuality, even if it lacks doctrine or rational clarity.) This I have determined through experience with rational arguments – which once again, I regard as descriptors of my understanding of truth more than conclusions of truth in and of themselves. What this means is that when I adopt a new doctrine, it is not simply because that new doctrine is true, but because I am pursuing truth and my mind is geared towards accepting such doctrines as true, since it's internally-consistent with a pre-established framework. It is my understanding that God works within this limited framework in redeeming individuals. Once again, I can explain in terms of testimony how I think that has operated so far in my life, but I can't make categorical statements explaining the role of divine will in completely divergent theologies and life philosophies, since I have not experienced that redemption. We are taking part in a dynamic and mutable process that will never make total sense even to the individual until it is finished. And when it clicks into place, it will be neither rational sense nor emotional sense, but the same type of obvious knowing that I've experienced in very limited part already. While we are here, however, rationality, empirical evidence, deduction, and Biblical apology are tools I have used in my own experience to come to a greater understanding of how God relates to the physical world and to me. The logic that makes those arguments seem rational and valid to me is built up out of basic experiences and confirmed by complex experiences such as those I refer to in (I). This all functions in building the basic framework I have always had, creating a more and more complete internally-consistent and self-refining system.
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