trc@houti.UUCP (T.CRAVER) (08/16/83)
Response to Laura Creighton on mysticism: No, I do not have a high opinion of mysticism. To quote Ayn Rand, mysticism is: "any claim to some nonsensory, nonrational, nondefinable, supernatural source of knowledge" [it can be explicitly or implicitly supernatural - trc] Nathaniel Branden extended the idea by discussing Faith: "Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof" "A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of *feeling* with *knowledge*" 'To practice the "virtue" of faith, one must be willing to suspend one's sight and one's judgment...One must be willing to repress one's critical faulty and hold it as one's guilt; one must be willing to drown any questions that rise in protest - to strangle any thrust of reason convulsively seeking to assert its proper function as the protector of one's life and cognitive integrity.' "Faith is a malignancy that no system can tolerate with impunity; and the man who succumbs to it, will call on it in precisely those issues where he needs his reason most. When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion." (N. Branden) In discussing the traditional morality that arises from faith: "the essence of morality, men are taught, consists of self-sacrifice: the sacrifice of one's mind to some higher authority, and the sacrifice of one's values to whoever may claim to require it" "A sacrifice... means the surrender of a higher value in favor of a lower value or of a nonvalue. If one gives up that which one does not value in order to obtain that which one does value - or if one gives up a lesser value in order to obtain a greater one - this is not a sacrifice, but a *gain*" 'if sacrifice is a virtue, it is not the neurotic but the rational man that must be "cured"' 'The answer given by many defenders of traditional morality is: "Oh, but people don't have to go to extremes!" - meaning: "We don't expect people to be *fully* moral. We expect them to smuggle *some* self-interest into their lives. We recognize that people have to live, after all." The defense, then, of this code of morality is that few people will be suicidal enough to attempt to practice it consistently. *Hypocrisy* is to be man's protector against his professed moral convictions. What does *that* do to his self-esteem? And what of the victims who are insufficiently hypocritical? ' That is a fair cross-section of the views on mysticism and its accompanying beliefs that I agree with. I should point out that there are several different types of mystics - those that believe in a god as the source of morality, and those that believe in "society" as the source of morality. In either case, it amounts to basing morality on the whim of something that is deemed to be beyond morality. Tom Craver houti!trc
liz@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/18/83)
Some of Tom Craver's quoted definitions of faith are accurate, but misleading. Others, I disagree with. From: Tom Craver <houti!trc> To quote Ayn Rand, mysticism is: "any claim to some nonsensory, nonrational, nondefinable, supernatural source of knowledge" [it can be explicitly or implicitly supernatural - trc] Nonrational is not the same as irrational. Nathaniel Branden extended the idea by discussing Faith: "Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof" You wouldn't need faith to believe something that you had rational proof for. Even though you may not have proof of something, you may have a lot of good reasons and support for it -- sufficient for you to commit yourself to believing. "A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of *feeling* with *knowledge*" Not feeling, but believing on the basis of evidence. 'To practice the "virtue" of faith, one must be willing to suspend one's sight and one's judgment...One must be willing to repress one's critical faulty and hold it as one's guilt; one must be willing to drown any questions that rise in protest - to strangle any thrust of reason convulsively seeking to assert its proper function as the protector of one's life and cognitive integrity.' NO!!! Actually, a little bit of doubt can be healthy to faith because if what you have faith in is really true, investigation to understand something better will inevitably come back in support of what you believe. If you believe something that's not true, of course, that's another story. I think there is an underlying assumption here that faith can only be in something that's not true. Isn't possible that something is true and unknowable at the same time? Didn't Godel proove that? "Faith is a malignancy that no system can tolerate with impunity; and the man who succumbs to it, will call on it in precisely those issues where he needs his reason most. When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion." Why can't faith and reason work together? If faith is unreasonable something is wrong with the faith. Now there are times when there are seeming contradictions between faith and reason. The best thing to do is to reexamine the issue from both perspectives and if the faith is true and your reason is true and you know all the relevant facts, why should there be a contradiction? Sometimes, there is a contradiction temporarily, and you may go with the faith because you have a lot of accumulated evidence from the past that the faith is true, but this doesn't mean you should ignore the contradiction forever. (N. Branden) In discussing the traditional morality that arises from faith: "the essence of morality, men are taught, consists of self-sacrifice: the sacrifice of one's mind to some higher authority, and the sacrifice of one's values to whoever may claim to require it" No sacrifice of mind, please. More on values below. "A sacrifice... means the surrender of a higher value in favor of a lower value or of a nonvalue. If one gives up that which one does not value in order to obtain that which one does value - or if one gives up a lesser value in order to obtain a greater one - this is not a sacrifice, but a *gain*" 'if sacrifice is a virtue, it is not the neurotic but the rational man that must be "cured"' It is a gain utltimately. Jim Elliot said "He is a not a fool that gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose" (or something close to that). But the giving up something you value (like life, comfort or convenience) can certainly feel like a sacrifice even if it is only made because of a higher value to consider. The reason (I think) people say sacrifice is that what you are giving up is something quite valuable, and it's often for something that other people either don't value or don't understand. 'The answer given by many defenders of traditional morality is: "Oh, but people don't have to go to extremes!" - meaning: "We don't expect people to be *fully* moral. We expect them to smuggle *some* self-interest into their lives. We recognize that people have to live, after all." The defense, then, of this code of morality is that few people will be suicidal enough to attempt to practice it consistently. *Hypocrisy* is to be man's protector against his professed moral convictions. What does *that* do to his self-esteem? And what of the victims who are insufficiently hypocritical? ' I don't give that answer or support hypocrisy. I think there are victims -- a hypocritical leader who "load[s] people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and ... will not lift one finger to help them" is definately victimizing those underneath him. That doesn't mean that what the leader believes is necessarily wrong, but his leadership certainly is. That is a fair cross-section of the views on mysticism and its accompanying beliefs that I agree with. I should point out that there are several different types of mystics - those that believe in a god as the source of morality, and those that believe in "society" as the source of morality. In either case, it amounts to basing morality on the whim of something that is deemed to be beyond morality. Not beyond morality but establishes morality. I'm not sure how to say this. Beyond morality seems to imply something that is not moral itself -- I don't think that is necessarily so. -- -Liz Allen, U of Maryland, College Park MD Usenet: ...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz Arpanet: liz.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay