It’s Our ATTITUDE That Counts


Our choice of the words we use can tell us much about our attitude and what is going on in our minds. Some of the words which appear frequently in our speech and our journalism are “fight”, or “battle”, or “war”. We use them so frequently and ubiquitously that we don’t seem to be aware of their implication other than their appeal to the human tendency to place warriors on a pedestal and to assure the flow of the adrenal hormone, epinephrine which energizes us and prepares us for combat.

Warriors, brave as they are, are actually the victims of our basal instinct to protect ourselves by using force. It is the warrior who pays the price of death, or mutilation, or captivity and suffering. It is also the warrior who causes death and destruction, often not of his own choosing, but at the bidding of a commander or ruler.

Wouldn’t it be wiser for us to learn new attitudes and more civilized emotional responses to whatever challenges we face instead of the genetic flight or fight tendency with which we were born? A change in attitude must come first and this will enable a change in behavior. We must convince ourselves, through introspection and good will, that (a) change is needed if we are to reduce the incidence of violence in the world, (b) change is possible, and (c) less violence will benefit us all.

A good start toward changing attitudes and reducing violence might be to avoid using words which connote violence when rallying to face any challenge—social, political, or international. Does every effort to correct a bad situation need to be phrased in violent terms? Would it convey our message in more constructive fashion if, instead of “fight” or “battle” or “war”, we spoke of our concerns and our intentions as goals or ideals and stated our commitment to constructive effort/cooperation in order to improve? Rather than a “war on poverty” we might call for a ”common goal to reduce the incidence of poverty”. Instead of a “fight against terrorism” we might advocate “a united effort to reduce the likelihood of terrorism”. I know, I know---this sounds soft and uninspiring—until we do enough of it to make us feel the positive energy and power that comes from joining together and realizing that we need not be savages in order to be effective; we need not resort to killing in order to reduce the action of would-be killers. We need not execute murderers (capital punishment) in order to reduce violence—in fact just the opposite. By refraining from using violence in our legal system, we can set the example that violence does not solve anything other than self defense.

4/17/13


What Is Knowledge? How Do WE Know Anything?

What is the relationship between faith and knowledge?



I do find it difficult, if not impossible, to see any connection between faith and reason, or between religion and science. I realize that there are many who claim that there is no conflict between these ways of thinking. There is a professor here at the College of Charleston who sees no conflict because, as he says, religion and science are just two different ways of looking at life. One has nothing to do with the other. I do not follow his logic. He seems to make it work for himself by what I would call “compartmentalizing” his life. He avoids dealing with the conflicts by not taking up both sides at the same time. He apparently can explore, and give credence to, the scientific idea that humans are the result of evolution from earlier forms of life, then shift gears and say that God created man, and then woman, relatively recently. If a person does not want to discard either of these possibilities, then he may keep both—separately.

Would you call this a “reasonable” way of thinking--rational? logical? I guess that all of these terms are relative; thus there will always be disagreement. For myself, this professor’s way of thinking has no value, is not helpful. It feels like a cop-out. Rational?—not for me. Is he an irrational person? He might be rational when it comes to math or economics or biology. But as to philosophy?—not to my way of thinking.

Can any person “know” some truth that no one else “knows”? How so? If truth exists, why is it not readily accessible to all—without any need for a “leap of faith”? Doesn’t an idea, or concept, require “faith” in order to believe it only because it is not provable, or replicable, or unequivocal, or “Knowable”? If so, how is faith different from fantasy or wishful thinking?

I use the term “knowledge” to mean information that is universal and unequivocal. I do not include ideas or concepts which are not replicable. For example, we “know” that if an airplane’s engine shuts down, the plane will come down. We “know” that, if a broken bone is reset and held in place for a given length of time, it will heal. We “know” that, if we don’t eat and drink, we will die. But we don’t “know” the origin of life, and we don’t “know” whether any kind of existence continues after we die. We can only speculate, and, if we wish to draw conclusions, we do what we call “having faith”. We choose to believe (hope?) in the unknowable. Is this latter different from fantasy? If so, how?

All this is not to say that faith, or fantasy, has no use. It surely makes life more bearable for some, but I, personally, have no use for it. Further, there have been too many times when people have killed others because they did not hold the same “beliefs” and saw them as a threat.