What is the Force

Loudzoo wrote: Hmmm. Belief through faith and belief through evidence . . . there is often very little difference between these. How much of ‘science’ do we believe through ‘faith’? Almost all of it!

No, actually none of it. Faith is not used by science in the least to arrive at conclusions. Science does not make any claims of truth or absolute conclusion as faith does. It forms hypothesis based on observation and fact and then sets out to prove or disprove the reliability of those hypothesis. When enough of those hypothesis are proven conditionally accurate a theory is formed. A theory is the highest form of proof in science. Faith never enters into this process.

Loudzoo wrote: There is plenty of literature on religious / spiritual experience, plenty of proven techniques on how to have these experiences. If you like - the epidemiogical studies are done, and they are conclusive. Apply the techniques and see what happens . . . do the ‘science’. You can actually make it a remarkably scientific process!

The leap of faith is not a requirement. It’s only needed to keep investing time and effort in the ‘work’ before results become measurable! Once you have a mystical / religious / spiritual experience you will be left in no doubt as to how real it is.

Sure, but what do these experiences prove other than we can have these experiences? We can take Acid and have all kinds of experiences. I once experienced a fox follow me home. Was that fox real? Of course not, he was a manifestation of a misfiring brain due to LSD. But he was cute and fun to play with nonetheless! It didn’t make him supernatural though. Even though for me the experience was very real it was not an external function of reality but something in my head.

Loudzoo wrote: Kyrin said:
“That is the difference between working with physical reality and the metaphysical.”

The above sentence doesn’t make sense. The concept ‘physical reality’ is a metaphysical idea!! Metaphysical does not mean what I suspect you think it means! Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality e.g. physical reality.

Why does it make no sense? Are we not exploring the metaphysical here? The underlying fundamental nature of reality? Does it exist and if it does how does it exist?

Loudzoo wrote: Maybe you’re still considering your answer but I’d still be really interested to hear your answer to my earlier question: what is it that you are afraid of? Why won’t you let go of the tail for a bit? It’s very easy to find again should you wish to . . .

I’m not afraid of anything. I have proverbially “let go of that tail” countless times. I have held onto notions of incorporeal interaction and explored them to their innermost depths more times than I can count. I believed in Santa Clause longer than any of my classmates. I have conditioned myself to have faith in the Christian God after being told that would bring me to belief. I have done the same in other religious paradigms as well. I have done the rituals and explored the inner most sanctums of supernatural and paranormal. I was a Ghost hunter for a time, I have done experiments with mind altering concoctions so that I could explore the spiritual experience.

All of this and even more. I have lived a life of faith but belief never came. When I was honest with myself in every case, there is nothing there. I don’t know all the answers, I never will. None of us will. And sometimes I experience things that I can’t explain, but just because I can’t explain them does not mean there is no explanation. But I will not just make something up to explain them to make myself feel better. The minute you do that is the minute your journey ends. I don’t believe in destinations in this life, only the path.

What is the Force?

My definition:

"The Force" is a politically-correct, non-denominational, gender-neutral, conveniently vague term to describe an experience of being a part of an interconnected "being" greater than ourselves, a "feeling" classically described as "spiritual", a being classically described as "God(s)" and the acknowledgment of said interconnection manifesting as compassion, love and fate.

Thank you Kyrin - I appreciate your responses. I agree with quite a bit of what you wrote there. You may be the worst materialist I’ve ever come across (I mean that as a compliment)!!

You also missed the point I was making about faith in science - but that’s ok. We don’t each individually run all our own experiments across all of known science - we take those results on faith and build from there. That’s why scientific progress can be so rapid!

More importantly though you say that belief never came - and yet you believe all sorts of things. Please set me straight if I mis-speak, but from what you’ve written in this thread, you believe:

- that you are alone
- that a ‘you’ doesn’t actually exist
- that we can’t say anything about the Force because it has no properties
- that the Force is universal
- that the Force is all things
- that the Force isn’t a thing, it is an action

I’m not worried about the obvious paradoxes here - they come with the territory. I’m questioning your statement about not having any belief. You have a lot of beliefs!

It turns out they are the same beliefs / experiences / understandings that many of us have here. I can see / feel / understand the connection of belief we share. Can you?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

Kira wrote: I think we are basically in agreement, and are getting caught up in semantics. Your example of the unicorn in the garage isn't a really great metaphor here.

Actually I feel it is an outstanding metaphor and is contrasted perfectly with your idea of the piano. These two ideas describe the difference in belief through faith and belief through evidence. The unicorn must be believed only through faith because it cant be proven to exist. This is a belief based on emotional responses. And we all know how volatile and often times irrational our emotions can be!

On the other hand the piano can be something we come to believe because we can prove to ourselves that it will go through the door. This will be based on fact and not emotion. And even if we cant find that proof others may. That is the difference between working with physical reality and the metaphysical. But its not belief that causes us to try to get the piano through the door. Its the idea we possess and the setting of the challenge to prove that idea true. Once again this is a hypothesis, not a belief. The belief or lack thereof comes in proving the hypothesis true or not true.

Yes! Exactly this. It seems we both are chasing the piano, not the unicorn. The rest is a difference in semantics I think.

Loudzoo wrote: Thank you Kyrin - I appreciate your responses. I agree with quite a bit of what you wrote there. You may be the worst materialist I’ve ever come across (I mean that as a compliment)!!

LOL, yes quite possibly but I like to consider myself the most "honest" materialist.

Loudzoo wrote: You also missed the point I was making about faith in science - but that’s ok. We don’t each individually run all our own experiments across all of known science - we take those results on faith and build from there. That’s why scientific progress can be so rapid!

I would still say science is not taken on faith. Faith is belief without evidence. In the case of science we can read the evidence and we can review the process by which that evidence was arrived at and we could even test those things ourselves and reproduce those results. Something as simple as dropping a pen on our desk or working the mathematics to the law of Gravity. We don’t need elaborate labs to do any of these sorts of experiments. Given these abilities to review and test for ourselves gives us a reasonable and rational mechanism to accept these things as true based on evidence, not faith.

Loudzoo wrote: More importantly though you say that belief never came - and yet you believe all sorts of things. Please set me straight if I mis-speak, but from what you’ve written in this thread, you believe:

- that you are alone
- that a ‘you’ doesn’t actually exist
- that we can’t say anything about the Force because it has no properties
- that the Force is universal
- that the Force is all things
- that the Force isn’t a thing, it is an action

I’m not worried about the obvious paradoxes here - they come with the territory. I’m questioning your statement about not having any belief. You have a lot of beliefs!

I would not say I believe these things. I would say I am exploring the viability of these things. I guess you could say these are my current working hypotheses. I have had several others over the course of my life that I have tested and abandoned as unviable because the premises used to support them are fallacious. (Christian God for one) This is not to say I reject them either. Just that I don’t currently accept them due to a lack of evidence after detailed and careful analysis. But this is also not to say that someday that evidence wouldnt be provided. However until then I will not use faith to accept something as true if I can’t demonstrate its truthfulness.

Acceptance of these things must have a rational and reproducible basis. I don’t know that I am alone, I don’t know that “I” as a self don’t actually exist, I don’t know that the force is universal or all things. I explore the possibility that they could be these things, but I have not accepted the fact that they are or are not. I am trying to get that piano through the door, so to speak. I haven’t gotten it there yet but I am trying. And until I do get it through the door I can’t accept any of these things as true and therefore I can’t believe them.

Loudzoo wrote: It turns out they are the same beliefs / experiences / understandings that many of us have here. I can see / feel / understand the connection of belief we share. Can you?

I think the connection of belief you are speaking of involves the tail and the trunk once again. I think we share the connection of experience and that is all we can ever really agree upon. And as sentient beings we are aware of that experience and we share the curiosity to explore that experience. I think all humanity shares this and it is the source of myth. But is any of that real? I can never know for certain. However we all have to start somewhere, with presuppositions about our reality.

At the most basic level those presuppositions are that the reality we experience is existent and that we can learn something about it. We can never prove these suppositions though so we will never know absolute truth, even though we are aware it must logically exist. In this sense the answers you and I seek and the consolidation in agreement about those answers are something we will probably never arrive at when it comes to the esoteric. But it doesn’t matter because it’s not the answers I am after, it’s the exploration, it’s the experience itself.

But a lot of science is taken on faith.

Truth is one must discovers on ones own. If, say, I wanted to do experiments on some sort of chemical reaction, do I have to first go and discover the basic elements myself? Or can I read about it elsewhere, and go off the understanding of other people whom, in turn, stood on the shoulders of giants before finding a new truth of their own.

In essence, they had to act in faith on the discovery of others to find a new truth.

It doesn't even have to be because one is going about finding their own truth. We're taught about science, chemicals, the elements, atoms, et cetera in school. We cannot possibly know its fact, but we're told it is because 'wiser men said so'. Is that not faith?

There is nothing wrong with this faith. It is, often enough, peer reviewed.

And, in the society of faith, peer review is done by those that practise the faith. Yeah, the priest at my local church probably never met God. But, through practise (assisted by others) he has come to an understanding of his Faith. However, it is often through a certain lens, so it often aims in a certain direction and is static, unlike truth. So, it contains part of the truth, the real truth.

But, essentially, faith and science both depend on a level of faith before finding the truth within...

Arisaig wrote: But a lot of science is taken on faith.

Actually no, none of it is taken on faith.

Arisaig wrote: Truth is one must discovers on ones own. If, say, I wanted to do experiments on some sort of chemical reaction. Do I have to first go and discover the basic elements myself? Or can I read about it elsewhere, and go off the understanding of other people whom, in turn, had stood on the shoulders of giants before finding a new truth of their own.

In essence, they had to act in faith on the discovery of others to find a new truth.

What is the difference between discovering the basic element and reading about it elsewhere? Many people do, in fact, go through the process of discovering elements. It happens every day through the educational process. This is basic training in the sciences and an ongoing peer review of the discovery and knowledge.

Even if one did not go through this process and just “read about it”. But then when they went to take that information and use it to do experiments on “some sort of chemical reaction” but those experiments continued to produce inconsistent results then the underlying mechanisms would be called into question. The fact that you can read about elements and then do successful experiments based on that reading is once again a peer review of the information that was read.

No faith required.

Arisaig wrote: It doesn't even have to be because one is going about finding their own truth. We're taught about science, chemicals, the elements, atoms, et cetera in school. We cannot possibly know its fact, but we're told it is because 'wiser men said so'. Is that not faith?

Once again, no it is not. Because those facts can be reliably reproduced over and over and are every day. Facts are different than hypothesis and those are different than laws or theories. Facts are irrefutable. From those facts we develop hypotheses on why it is a fact. When we collect enough facts and proven hypotheses we form a theory, which is an explanation as to why a specific set of facts work as they do. As part of that theory there are laws, which are empirical mathematical proofs of the theory that can’t be disputed. None of this is faith based and no one has to accept any of these things on faith. They are accepted because they are proven to be true by evidence.

Arisaig wrote: And, in the society of faith, peer review is done by those that practise the faith. Yeah, the priest at my local church probably never met God. But, through practise (assisted by others) he has come to an understanding of his Faith. However, it is often through a certain lens, so it often aims in a certain direction and is static, unlike truth. So, it contains part of the truth, the real truth.

But, essentially, faith and science both depend on a level of faith before finding the truth within...

Yes and these sorts of “peer reviews” that produce inconsistent evidence, no evidence at all or even disprove the premise are the ones we can dismiss as unviable. And yet people will continue to believe the premise. That is faith. It has nothing to do with fact or science. There is nothing based in truth in this sort of belief system if it can’t be reliably shown to be viable. This leaves it as nothing more than a personally subjective cognitive bias. That’s all it is, honesty replaced by wishful thinking.

Ah yes... the educational process. Where they teach you what is, because those whom they've never met have 'proven' these things to be fact. Beyond that, a system that's fatally flawed because the teachers are undervalued and under great deals of personal stress, too tied up in personal problems to properly be able to teach.

Until one goes and discovers it for oneself to be fact, it is taken in faith. Well placed faith, I'll grant that, but faith nonetheless.

Even then, things we're not taught have to be taken in faith in order to look for them. Louis Pasteur theorised about molecular beings that caused illness, and through that, discovered a way to combat it through vaccines. He also theorised about what we now know as Biogenesis (Like produces like, and life produces life), as before, people believed in Spontaneous Generation, where things like, say, flies were born of rotting meat, rather than eggs left on said rotten meat.

Notice the key word there. They believed that. It ended up being wrong, but for ages, they believed this falsehood because of their ignorance. Why? Because that is what they were taught, and that is what they went onto observe.

It might be a good idea to keep in mind the critical differences between academic knowledge and existential knowledge. It probably isn't viable to charge the academic world with the burden of responsibility for existential knowledge. Both have their place and value for exploring and observing different parts of "what there is".

Proteus wrote: It might be a good idea to keep in mind the critical differences between academic knowledge and existential knowledge. It probably isn't viable to charge the academic world with the burden of responsibility for existential knowledge. Both have their place and value for exploring and observing different parts of "what there is".

An extremely good point, and cannot be understated. Thank you, Proteus.