Faith is necessary, profound, and more powerful than knowing.

I am typically a very logic and reason oriented person - Faith is a challenge for me, I move very slowly because of this.  I feel the need to reason my way through everything before doing something.  In doing this over the past year about Faith itself, I have taken the small (necessary for me) leap of Faith, that to ‘know’ anything, to do anything, to make a decision on anything, as much as I reason through it before - A leap of Faith is needed.  I reasoned my way to Faith, and have had and used Faith throughout this reasoning process (whether I realize it or not)

Let’s first define Faith:

Faith is the act of believing something that I do not, or cannot, know.

With this definition:

I cannot have Faith in something that I know.

Knowing cannot precede Faith, Faith precedes knowing.

I do not know something that I have Faith in, I have Faith in it so that I can know it.

The delusion of faith:

The delusion of faith is that faith = Knowing. This leads to heightened conviction, arrogance, and division through the inability to unite different faiths into a common Faith.  If I know (have delusional faith) in X and you know (have delusional faith) Y, we cannot exist in the same reality.

True Faith:

The true version of Faith is that Faith > Knowing.  This is to say that Faith leads us to knowing, allows us to know what we can’t, and yes is greater than knowing.  This version of Faith leads to the requirement of humility, compassion, and ability to agree to disagree.  If I have Faith in something, I am saying I do not know, but I have Faith so that I can know.  Now, if I have Faith in X and someone else has Faith in Y, we can exist in the same reality because Faith > Knowing (not equal to).  I know X through Faith, so I do not KNOW  X.  I have humility about my knowing of X, because it is through Faith, and no matter how strong my Faith is in X and someone else’s in Y, we are at minimum open to Faith in X+Y.  And X+Y > X or Y.

Incompleteness (thanks Goedel):

You may be asking, what about when Y = ~X?  Then X+Y = 0, so my definition is flawed.  To which I would say, you are correct, it is incomplete, and I need to think about that more (it wasn’t for lack of trying while writing this).  But that also it’s kind of the point of what I’m saying - I have reasoned to and have Faith in this definition, and now we have an exception to this definition (Y).  Now we can continue the conversation and incorporate new Ys into this X (even ~X’s maybe???) to make it more complete.

Notes:

There is a very similar delusion to reason that leads to the same delusional effects of arrogance, inability to unite frameworks, etc. reason also has a truth/necessity that involves the very reasonable requirement of humility, compassion etc. (as with True Faith). While it is not clear which comes first - the need for Faith, or the need for reason (or the delusion of one leading to the delusion of the other) - I don’t think it much matters, other than the acknowledgement that we need to use both truthfully.  My struggle falls more with Faith, and is what I see most lacking - the True version of Faith - and is why I chose to write about it.  It takes me so long to reason through things because I see all the variables, assumptions, etc. try to minimize them, but naturally instills for me the need to have a humility about my logic system.

I want to also state that while Faith is typically associated with religion and reason with science, what I am talking about here transcends these systems (i.e. True Faith and reason and delusional Faith and reason exist equally in all systems).  It is the delusion of knowing, regardless of how you claim know it, that is the crux of the issue.

Current ponderings (maybe future writings?)

Determinism vs. Indeterminism - can the universe be fully known or not?  Which way should we want it?

What is God?

Consciousness, theories of quantum physics, goedel’s incompleteness theorem

‘Good’ systems

expertise and authority —> how to teach/learn