>>>>A question - If I don't know and understand the advanced physics and maths used by the scientists who are at the very cutting edge of trying to understand the universe yet choose to believe that science will eventually solve all the universe's mysteries do I not also, therefore, have a "belief" in essence?
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>>>I would say yes. The difference though is that this 'belief' says you don't have all the answers. "Faith" on the other hand says that you have answers to things you can't possible know.
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>>And there's the rub; to say science doesn’t have all the answers is a cop-out. It is the scientific way to diminish the fact that in the final analysis we still have to believe. The short version is simply - I believe something until proven false. Then I shall create a new belief. Hence the scientist is a believer.
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>>Nietzsche, for example and amongst others, questions the very structure of knowledge that one is so convinced of and shows that it has no solid foundation at all. The very foundation of scientific inquiry, that there is a reality “out there” than can be understood and revealed without the interpretation or interference of the observer, is itself questionable.
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>>Faith does not require proof because it operates on a different level than the scientific method. The proof you want is at a level that cannot be applied to enlightenment experiences that mystics and sages have had and have tried to convey over the entire history of mankind the world over. A man or a woman has what we can call an enlightenment experience, a far beyond normal, daily consciousness experience and it cannot be conveyed in words because it occurs beyond thought (which is language). Subsequently the person can remember the experience but in order to convey it to another it needs to be interpreted and converted into language and that’s where the trouble starts because any interpretation will necessarily be done against the experiencer’s background, his knowledge, culture, language, religion, etc.
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>>The proof you demand of faith dismisses the basis on which faith occurs. You want to dismiss the foundation of faith (which is a spiritual experience) and demand that it be explained on the foundation of science (which is a physical experience). The two are not compatible. It is not that one is right and the other wrong but that the experience of the one is at a level of intuition or insight and the other is at the level of the thinking intellect, which is based on language. Sages throughout all time, from the east to the west, have said that these things cannot be conveyed in words, in language, and yet the thinking man insists that if it cannot be done then it must be fake.
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>As always, interesting and insightful.
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>I am dismayed, if not surprised, that the distinction is so often blurred between transcendental experience and the cultural context that tries to define that experience in the mundane. One is often required to accept or reject the validity or even reality of both or neither.
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>To "believe" through ones own experience that "there are more things in heaven and earth" is quite different from signing on to a dogma. Perspective of scale will tell us things like "solidity" are sensory constructs and properly tuned equipment will confirm the existence of high spectrum or radio waves beyond reasonable doubt but interpretation of what they "mean" will continue.
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>I quite agree that experience of the numena as opposed to the phenomena is not subject to the same "testing" as empirical fact. Some things can be comprehended and some things may only be apprehended. But apprehended they have been and apprehended they shall continue to be.
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>It is the cultural context and claims of ownership where people get hung up, that attempt to catch the lightning in a bottle.
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>Being "born again", for example, seems to be an experience that has always been potentially there in the human condition. Being "born again" in Christ (or Mithra or Erte or a shamanistic mushroom cult or whatever or whomever) is a cultural attempt to define the experience and thereby harness its power or magic.
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>The dogmas will never be proven but the experiences that are just part of Whatever is Going On will just keep coming.
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>But it is sad to base ones own cosmology on the reported and culturally interpreted transcendental experience of others and accept that as "faith"
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>That's the news. If you don't like it ... go out and make some of your own :-)

Yes I agree completely. The problem is in the human condition; I interpret what I experience through the filters of my conditioning. Here lies the culprit.