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A Profession of Conviction A confession of a radical ANIL MITRA © April 21, 2013. REVISED April 22, 2013 Summary The text is about the power and use of professing or affirming. Experience is the ground of Being and knowledge. That the individual, the secular state, or religion should know the whole is error. The elements of Being have no limit on what they attain. The Universe has acute, diffuse, and non-manifest phases of Being and Identity. The last two assertions constitute a metaphysics that agrees with the secular and the trans-secular where they are valid. Together these disciplines are a means of understanding and negotiating our apparent limits. I shall not be ashamed to profess and live according to these truths. Contents 3. Promise, doubt, and certainty
I shall not be ashamed to profess my faith A phrase in the mold of ‘shall not be ashamed to profess his faith’ occurs at a number of places in Christian scripture and practice. My point of empathy with ‘professing one’s faith’ is that if one has views are against the mainstream then expressing them may be difficult. One may be shy about such expression because one puts not just the view but oneself open to judgment. There may therefore be a tendency to retreat or, in compensation, to overstate or state the views too stridently. What is the difficulty in expressing a counter mainstream or radical view? It is not just exposure. There is possible hyper-exposure for what is different is all the more visible and perhaps in proportion to the degree of difference. This is a consequence of exposure but the exposing is itself difficult because those in the mainstream will have difficulty even seeing something outside—it may not make any sense in their terms of seeing and understanding. The following quote is taken from The Catechism of the Catholic Church—‘Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie.’ I must add, therefore, that this is not my concept of faith. In fact I have two concepts regarding faith. The first is that there are certain regions of our experience that are beyond all question. These are parts of our animal being but as human beings they become beyond human question by questioning them. Every individual must do this for him or herself; every generation must ask the questions anew. A first and perhaps the central region of experience beyond question is the fact of experience itself. It could be said that while there seems to be experience there may in fact be no such thing; however ‘seeming’ is experience. This is an apparently fragile introduction to the solidity of something beyond all question but experience may be shown to be an ultimate ground of all of existence and knowledge of existence—see the home page http://www.horizons-2000.org for this website. A second meaning of faith derives from the first. When we start with the rock solid meaning above we may push forward from that initial point to a place where doubt begins. We may then continue to push forward while not contradicting what we know—common experience, science, logic and so on—and with reasonable address of doubt but without complete elimination of doubt. In that situation to act upon what we will have conceived is in the character of an experiment. Because the framework is not internally or externally inconsistent it is not an absurd experiment. When the framework reveals something of (immense) potential worth the value of experiment is also of (immense) worth. It may be catalytic of outcomes to have faith in the framework. What then becomes of doubt? I think it is in human nature to live that ambivalence that on the one hand is ambivalent but on the other and for some purposes suppresses ambivalence. In other words there is a higher level of ambivalence at which the lower level is sometimes ‘switched on’ (e.g. for truth and to enhance understanding) and at other times is switched off (e.g. for purposes of action and progress in absence of complete knowledge which is after all essential in human being). This is simultaneously truthful and pragmatic. This is preliminary to but not full justification of the following; for justification the reader may turn to narratives linked from http://www.horizons-2000.org. 1. Experience is the ground of Being and knowledge. There is no received article or discipline that overrules experience but learning—critical and receptive—stands to gain from what is received. There is experience. The limits of my experience show a world apart from it—there is a real world of existing things that includes my experience. Here solipsism shall be any view according to which a limited part is or knows the universe. To live in the shadow of solipsism—a view that a limited part is or knows the universe—whether individual, secular, or trans-secular is in error. Or That the individual, the secular state, or religion should know the whole is error. There is one universe that is all Being in the sense of ‘all existing things’. The Laws of nature are patterns. They have Being. The Universe contains all Laws. 3. As complement to the Universe, or any element of Being, the Void which is the absence of Being, exists, and is attached to every element of Being including the Universe. The Void exists—this is the single article of doubt even though this existence has plausibility. However, what is certain is that its existence harbors no contradictions. Therefore the consequences of this existence are plausible and consistent with all valid knowledge whether actual or potential. The Void which is the absence of Being contains no Laws. The Void has no limit on what it attains for the contrary is a Law. Every element of Being is similarly limitless—the Universe as well as every element of Being has no limit on what they attain. The elements of Being have no limit on what they attain. The Universe has acute, diffuse, and non-manifest phases of Being and Identity. Agreement with fact and logic is not a limit but a constraint on thought. That two distinct elements of Being do not simultaneously achieve what is always exclusive to a single element is not a limit but a constraint on thought. Limitlessness is consistent with common experience, science, and logic. Despite seeming limits Being has no limits. The ways of experience, science, logic, are available to negotiation of apparent limits. They are among the ways to realization of the ultimate from the present. Since the ultimate is potential but not manifest in individuals the ways must emphasize first and foremost break down and buildup—analysis and synthesis—of Being. The following is shown in narratives linked from http://www.horizons-2000.org. The last two assertions constitute a metaphysics that agrees with the secular and the trans-secular where they are valid. Together these disciplines are a means of understanding and negotiating our apparent limits. I shall not be ashamed to profess and live according to these truths. Journey in Being—http://www.horizons-2000.org. |