Reflections on faith, and a question or even a challenge.

We recently explored "The Limits of Knowledge" and it covered some very important ground that is precursor to this brief essay.

One of the things it makes clear, is that we all must hold faith based positions in order to operate.

"I think therefore I am" is a faith based position. There is no way to prove that statement without infinite regress or circular reasoning. Anything you build off of such a proposition will be in part, faith based due to it.

Same with any of Aristotle's "First Principles" - they are all faith based, which even he acknowledged.

So we all, in order to operate, must believe some things we can't know to be true. It's simply faith based.

Faith is how we navigate the problems of Munchausen's Trilemma moment to moment. We can't function without faith. We'd be completely paralyzed intellectually.

The practical problem with putting your faith in something that other people can also put their faith in is it means you've created a honeypot for manipulation. Basically, let's say millions of people put their faith in Trump's words. Whoops, Trump turned out to be a liar. Bad idea to put your faith in men and their words. Even good men fuck up, and most of us aren't all that "good" to begin with. We could put our faith in religion (another of man's creation) but we see how that turns out. We could put our faith in something material, but that creates a market for that material, and the opportunists will come knocking just as soon as soon as you hang that shingle. You can put your faith in ideas, but all ideas have an expiration date. There is nothing --- NOTHING -- of this world that is free from corruption and the forces of entropy. Not ideas, not people, not things, not places, nothing.

That is so important to understand.

So when you put your faith in worldly things, and those things eventually fall apart, get outdated, break down, or get corrupted, what then? Changing grounding assumptions is like remodeling your mind. Very few people can do that on a whim.

What about putting your faith in something deeply personal, and to a large degree unknowable even to you? Something not of this world. Something that resists comparison to anything else? Something that is always "other", and is timeless?

Could it be advantageous to construct a theoretical entity that cannot be precisely and positively described and build faith into that?