Comments on: I know that I know that I know that I…

Comment by: George

2007-10-10T00:51:31Z

I don’t think that there is a human on the face of the entire planet who doesn’t have doubt or sin in their heart. Those who strive for perfection become exhausted and either break down or go against the world because the world is corrupt. We should accept our condition as humans and we shouldn’t arrogantly display that I know that you know what I know to be true…

Comment by: Jonathan Blake

2007-10-10T09:36:41Z

Mormons (and others, I believe) have a strange obsession with perfect knowledge. Those who believe that they’ve achieved it show their hubris.

Comment by: Cliff

2007-10-20T10:28:14Z

I think you’re too deeply into Hod(intellect) and are not allowing yourself enough Netzach(emotion). Your comment “How do we know that we know? ” is not simple, and has been around from the beginning.

Having experienced ‘Truth’ from God myself, I cannot answer your question, either. It just IS. Just like your life. I guess that’s hubris.

Comment by: LDS Anarchist

2007-10-20T21:58:43Z

Knowing is over-rated. Belief is emphasized in the scriptures, not knowledge. Mormon culture ought to emphasize it, too.

Comment by: Jonathan Blake

2007-10-21T07:12:02Z

Cliff,

I realize that rational thought (Hod) has its limitations and that it’s always balanced by more intuitive thought patterns (Netzach), but I guess my beef with this talk is that he gives the impression that perfect confidence = absolutely correct. Perhaps there is a kind of confidence that I have no experience with that only ever corresponds with correctness, but I have strong doubts about that. From what I have experienced, anyone who doesn’t believe that they can be wrong usually is.

LDS Anarchist,

Agreed. The first step is for people to start proudly declaring from the pulpit that they believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and so on.

Comment by: Cliff

2007-10-21T18:01:32Z

Some people have the gift to believe on another’s words. For them, that talk is a blessing indeed.

Yes, he seems to go a bit too far in his presentation. I can see that. Though we all are sheep, we don’t all thrive equally by eating the exact same stuff.

Doubts are ok as long as they don’t migrate into refusing the possibility. Your observation works 99.9% of the time, IMO. Makes life interesting, eh?

Comment by: Jonathan Blake

2007-10-22T09:58:20Z

As a skeptic, I don’t count believing on another’s words as a virtue. At best, it is something we do when we cannot verify something for ourselves; it’s a halfway measure.

Comment by: Jason Richards

2007-10-30T21:48:36Z

I can’t see any way to escape this trap. The honest must admit to themselves that they will never know something with absolute certainty. There must always be doubt, if we are honest. We may be very confident in our beliefs, but that doesn’t make them true.

Unless of course, she has been release from her chains and allowed to look back at the forms and the fire, and ultimately to exit the cave. Isn’t That what the mystics, poets, prophets posit? …that they have seen reality, and it is far more than the shadows on the wall that we call the phenomenal or empirical or material world.

‘Course they could just be deranged…. after all we’ve only ever seen the shadows on the wall. –substitute the Matrix analogy, or the Hindu/Buddhist concept of Maya/Samsara, or what have you for Plato’s Cave–

Hey I hope you don’t mind me posting to some of your earlier entries. I haven’t kept up with your blog like I would like to.

Comment by: Jonathan Blake

2007-10-31T11:09:16Z

Hey Jason,

No worries about commenting on older stuff. By all means, please do.

Not having had a full blown mystical/prophetic experience, I can’t comment from direct knowledge, but I can’t imagine an experience that would surmount the epistemic barrier to certainty. What about an experience itself tells the experient that they can trust their knowledge completely? How is this different than another person’s absolute confidence in their beliefs?

I just don’t see a way out of the Matrix. Once you leave one Matrix, are you sure you don’t inhabit another still?