No.One
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I believe with the language I use with these differences..is that faith comes only from a ‘mindset’..and belief is to be your ‘being’ for.
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C
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Thanks. For me, as close as I can get, Faith is a state of being. Not sure exactly where it comes from.
All "belief" seems questionable to me. If you are saying it seeks to give direction to our lives by the exercise of our "will", I stay with the Pure Land way of "things being made to become so of themselves, beyond our calculation".
Meanwhile, as wil said somewhere, everyone is a potential mentor. Even "everything".
Hi .. I've just signed up as another forum I was subscribed to has been out of action for a few weeks..
Belief is something that we hold due mainly for social reasons. Our environment is one of the primary factors that determines our creed.
Faith, on the other hand, is something that we have to nurture. It waxes and wanes, according to our deeds.
The rememberance of God, the Most High, is the key to success in this life and the next
C
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Hi .. I've just signed up as another forum I was subscribed to has been out of action for a few weeks..
Belief is something that we hold due mainly for social reasons. Our environment is one of the primary factors that determines our creed.
Faith, on the other hand, is something that we have to nurture. It waxes and wanes, according to our deeds.
The rememberance of God, the Most High, is the key to success in this life and the next
My experience is that faith is pure gift. If it need be "nurtured" it is by a constant giving of thanks. My deeds wax and wane.
Just to add by "edit":- prior to Shinran (13th century), it was asserted that for faith to be "true" it must be "sincere", totally trusting, fully aspiring for birth (in the Pure Land)
Shinran, however, taught that the "sincere mind" is the mind of Amida, given.
In Christian terms, salvation depends upon grace and not on any finite condition or events/acts of time and space. Desmond Tutu, speaking of the verse in the NT (Ephesians) that "we were chosen before the foundation of the world", said that such meant that "nothing we could do could make God love us more, nothing we could do could make God love us less"
However understood or expressed, religion is therefore not a means to an end, for ego advancement or the gaining of benefits, but ideally simply a way to express gratitude for the compassion that supports all our life.
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Yes .. it certainly is a gift.
Nevertheless, what is the reward of goodness except goodness?
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A Cup Of Tea
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Over here both words translate into the same one, tro. I can sense the nuances of the English words, but they seem to be used synonymously a lot of the time.
We are talking about a religious context, would the meaning of the words shift if we stepped into a secular context?
C
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Hi, with the wondrous help of Google Translate, I see "tro" is Swedish for "believe". Obviously, no nuances on Google!
I have distinguished the two, faith and belief, ever since dipping into a book by the Christian theologian John Hicks. Can't remember much about it now, so long ago. Now, as I've drifted more towards the "east" and the Buddhist way of seeing, the two are totally distinct. Now, faith is virtually synonymous with Reality itself - the Ground in which we "live and move and have our being" (or "non-being"!) For the zen master Dogen, faith and enlightenment interpenetrate each other. "Belief" from this perspective corrupts faith, in as much as the Ground/Faith is radical freedom - as Dogen says, "purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless." Belief is the "self" clinging to the past, and inevitably dictating the future.
As Eckhart says, "Love has no why".
Yes, I suppose a religious context. Salvation - or in Buddhism, Enlightenment (in Theravada, "this unshakeable deliverance of mind", which in the texts also speaks of love as being the "liberation of the heart") is the bottom line.
Transposing the words into the "secular" realm, I flounder a bit (if I do not flounder already!) As I see it, anyone involved in the scientific endeavour must surely have some sort of trust/faith that Reality is intelligible, and whatever belief/theories held would be subject to change? I don't know.
Indeed, scientific theories rely on faith. They are based on a set of assumed definitions eg. time and space
In fact, I am often dubious about modern scientific claims .. not because I have no faith in scientific principles .. it's more about conclusions derived from statistical analysis.
We all know how statistics can "lie" in the wrong hands
Arif Ghamiq
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M Theory - the part at least about the two bunpy membranes rubbing together - is pure faith/belief.
C
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As I see it, faith/belief intrudes more with some of the authors of books seeking to link some of the current theories in Physics with various "eastern" cosmologies and teachings; again by those seeking to argue that the so called "big bang" was the initial act of creation of God.
String Theory, associated with M Theory, is a current THEORY that many - certainly not all - physicists see as offering possibilities for a Theory of Everything (currently the attempt to unify General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics) I would say "faith" undergirds the search for such a Theory of Everything, i.e. that one is possible, rather than being invested in any particular theory - which for scientists, is just that, and remains that, a theory.
Am I nit-picking?
Arif Ghamiq
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Not not picking at all
I see much of M Thoery as an idea - a theory in the common usage of the word, not an actual Scientific Theory - whereas the "Big Bang" is a Scientific Theory, based on mathematical calculations, at least back to the moments just "before" the singularity.
No mathematical calculations indicate these Primordial Membranes.
I see much of M Thoery as an idea - a theory in the common usage of the word, not an actual Scientific Theory - whereas the "Big Bang" is a Scientific Theory, based on mathematical calculations, at least back to the moments just "before" the singularity.
No mathematical calculations indicate these Primordial Membranes.
I believe a scientific hypothesis or theory must be 'falsifiable' -- it must offer a possibility that it could be proven wrong? The Theory of Relativity could be proven wrong, if it turned out that the speed of light was not constant? The possibility always exists, no matter how much evidence there is to support the theory?
You know, I think of music. There is sound, and someone chooses a particular sound and says: "Ok, let's call that middle C." From there the western music scale develops backwards and forwards, with seven full notes and five half notes -- and that becomes western music scale.
Very clever and beautiful. But other cultures have different scales and different systems. To one another, our music sounds weird, because we don't quantize sound in the same way.
So our human scientific quantization of reality may be just one of many ways of dealing with energy and trying to make sense of it -- it is how we mathematically box 'particles' of energy in a way that enables us find our way of understanding it and using energy, that is applicable to us? To our natural/material perception.
But really, it's not the only way energy can be quantized?
Someone may come along and find a new way of doing it, that also works? Or works better?
So yes, that's why science should not try to be god. Material science identifies energy patterns that work to assist our own natural/material understanding. It does so very wonderfully and effectively and with great human ingenuity and genius. But the patterns shift and change, inside and outside of what some of us like to think is all the reality there is?
You know, I think of music. There is sound, and someone chooses a particular sound and says: "Ok, let's call that middle C." From there the western music scale develops backwards and forwards, with seven full notes and five half notes -- and that becomes western music scale.
Very clever and beautiful. But other cultures have different scales and different systems. To one another, our music sounds weird, because we don't quantize sound in the same way.
So our human scientific quantization of reality may be just one of many ways of dealing with energy and trying to make sense of it -- it is how we mathematically box 'particles' of energy in a way that enables us find our way of understanding it and using energy, that is applicable to us? To our natural/material perception.
But really, it's not the only way energy can be quantized?
Someone may come along and find a new way of doing it, that also works? Or works better?
So yes, that's why science should not try to be god. Material science identifies energy patterns that work to assist our own natural/material understanding. It does so very wonderfully and effectively and with great human ingenuity and genius. But the patterns shift and change, inside and outside of what some of us like to think is all the reality there is?
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A Cup Of Tea
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I do apologize if I hijacked the thread with my secular ways! It was not my intent to steer away from Faith with a capital F!
I did enjoy the thoughts expressed!
I did enjoy the thoughts expressed!
C
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My own grasp of mathematics ends with addition and subtraction. Physicists speak of the beauty of the equations. I really would not know. Just how the equations, beautiful or not, actually express the reality "out there" again confuses me.
What fascinates me is that long before Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, exclipses, planetary positions, and more could be calculated quite accurately for any given time, this even though the picture (theory?) of the heavens was of an earth centered solar system, with the planets moving at a uniform speed in perfect circles - with a few epicycles thrown in. And ships plotted their way across the oceans.
What fascinates me is that long before Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, exclipses, planetary positions, and more could be calculated quite accurately for any given time, this even though the picture (theory?) of the heavens was of an earth centered solar system, with the planets moving at a uniform speed in perfect circles - with a few epicycles thrown in. And ships plotted their way across the oceans.
C
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Absolutely no problem. I love threads that meander about.
EDIT:- hey, what about a few lurkers throwing a few spanners in the works? All comments gratefully received.
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What? Please don't go away just yet ...
Ok. So what is amazing about the theory of relativity is that no matter how fast the observer is travelling and no matter in what direction, a beam of light will always be moving away from him at 'the speed of light' in all directions: in front, behind, sideways in all directions.
It doesn't matter where you are or what your speed, light will be moving away from you in all directions at the speed of light. Quite weird, huh? Miracle almost? The speed of light is constant regardless of the observer.
So it's (one of the) the science constants upon which our whole measurement of reality is based. Like: based on the western quantization of music, the relative minor of the chord C will always have to be A minor.
It's fixed. That's reality for us ...
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A Cup Of Tea
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I'm still here! I just have to give my tired mind a little time to absorb all of this!
C
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Thank you, I missed this before.
From my Pure Land perspective ( "perspective" not really the right word ) everything flows from Grace. In which I live and move and have my being. All else is made to become so of itself, beyond my calculations. Really I wish to have no consciousness of "goodness".
C
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Hi, glad you are still around. I have now absorbed your previous post about having a secular mind. Myself, in many ways, secular, religious, spiritual have no existence. All just "is". Having said that, I often feel uncomfortable in the company of the "religious", having this awful sense that they are just waiting to pounce.
For me, faith is Faith, capitals or not.