Believing 10/28/17

My policy is not to believe anything. 

That may be hard to grasp, and it was for me when someone asked, "Do you believe in love?" But I respond, "Love is better than hate, and I hope love never fails. However, in civic morality, appreciation is more important than love." It is less challenging to say, "Love conquers everything but religion," or "Having-sex defeats making-love continually," or "Empathy can't persist without forgiveness," or "Honesty is insufficient and 'my truth' may be honest." I really can't think of any other tough calls, though.  Hope is eternal , but I need to appreciate before I can either respect or love.

Since posting this, I completed Michael Polanyi's book, Personal Knowledge, 1958, and think he thoroughly considered my trust and commitment, which he refers to as "objectivity" as opposed to "subjectivity." I think on Page 324 of 405, he made it plain to me that his faith is in his Christian God. Whether or not that means he holds that Jesus created everything, as Agathon may have claimed when he described Eros, remains to be discovered. Regardless, Polanyi has already refuted my disclaimer about "belief," not recognizing that I accept his God for him and would not change it because I could be wrong. Thus, while my trust and commitment is to the-objective-truth, I do not claim to believe: I admit to myself that I could be erroneous to hold my trust and commitment, yet I do. I am grateful to Ed Smith (died?) for suggesting that I read Polanyi's book.

Polanyi died in 1976, and I saw no indication he had read Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Divinity School Address," 1838, at Harvard Divinity School (DSA). It is American underground literature, but should be required reading throughout the world. The lecture banned Emerson for thirty years, because therein he claimed Jesus was a man whose message was profaned when Christianity made him a divinity. Jesus' message, in Emerson's mind, was, "You exist to perfect yourself, low as you may now be." Some of us who have read DSA no longer think we were born in error. The potential for perfection is a good ideal, and practicing fidelity to-the-objective-truth may create the path to perfection. 

Post a challenge, please (excluding Pascal's wager or 2+2 can be 5). Attention in Greece in 2015 prompted this revision and is appreciated. Also, Descartes's idea "I think: therefore I am," does not address the-objective-truth. 


Copyright©2014 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included. Revised 10/28/2017