What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?

[Mark Lapierre]

What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?

An old yet perennially pertinent question, and the answers given by a collection of distinguished minds.

Give your own answer here, or just have a read.

I believe that I can't prove anything, but I still do believe in the evidence I perceive, and that evidence is of a physical reality, and of distinct individuals inhabiting it with me, and it is not of any entity creating or governing or projecting it from beyond or as part of my perception.

[Shamou]

Hello Mark... thank you for that link... most inspiring... and I thought that the following excerpt from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig could be an interesting follow up on that article...

"If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.

About this Einstein had said, “Evolution has shown that at any given moment out of all conceivable constructions a single one has always proved itself absolutely superior to the rest,” and let it go at that. But to Phaedrus that was an incredibly weak answer. The phrase “any given moment” really shook him. Did Einstein really mean to state that truth was a function of time? To state that would annihilate the most basic presumption of all science!

But there it was, the whole history of science, a clear story of continuously new and changing explanations of old facts. The time spans of permanence seemed completely random, he could see no order in them. Some scientific truths seemed to last for centuries, others for les than a year. Scientific truth was not dogma, good for eternity, but a temporal quantitative entity that could be studied like anything else."


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[Simmiah]

That was an interesting read. Ideas from all over the place came out.

I like this question better than just, "What do you Believe?"

[Max Power]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

it is not of any entity creating or governing or projecting it from beyond or as part of my perception.

I like that and would have to agree, though of course I can't prove it.

There is no outside anything that has any level of control over me for good or bad. Too me that makes some, if not all of life pointless, where something can at will, affect and/or infect my being and existance for good or bad.

The only thing I feel certain of (and this could be a stretch) is that I exist in my present moment awareness, everything else is subject to faith.

Power to the Max

[Frans]

I like the vision of Kai Krause (the man behind "Kai Power Tools"):

I always felt, but can't prove outright: Zen is wrong. Then is right.
Everything is not about the now, as in the "here and how", "living for the moment" On the contrary: I believe everything is about the before then and the back then.

It is about the anticipation of the moment and the memory of the moment, but not the moment.

[...]

the beauty lies in the time before, the hope for, the waiting for, the imaginary picture painted in perfection of that instant in time. And then, once it passes, in the blink of an eye, it will be the memory which really stays with you, the reflection, the remembrance of that time. Cherish the thought..., remember how....

[...]

Bluntly put: spend your life in the eternal bliss of always having something to hope for, something to wait for, plans not realized, dreams not come true.... Make sure you have new points on the horizon, that you purposely create. And at the same time, relive your memories, uphold and cherish them, keep them alive and share them, talk about them.

Make plans and take pictures.

[Dragon]

I believe in God, elments of astrology, elements of psychic phenomena, creationism, and I cannot prove any of them without any shadow of doubt. I guess that's an OK first post.