Are We Capable of Not Believing?
In response to my last essay, the always fascinating Dr. Omed posted a heartfelt and compelling comment and apologized for its length. The apology was unnecessary--long comments are good. But for someone who disclaims any belief in belief, Dr. Omed found it difficult to speak without relying on quite a list of beliefs, from the explicit ("I believe in metaphor the way Archimedes believed in his lever: it moves things"; "I prefer living arts and dead gods"; etc.) to the implicit ("Belief is a very dangerous and addictive substance"; "The sane poet does not mistake his metaphors for reality"; etc.). It's my belief that nothing human is possible without belief, whether we're talking about belief in the scientific method and empiricism or belief in the moral value of another or belief in reality. You have to believe that you exist to do or feel anything, and you have to believe that something outside yourself exists to observe anything.
Dr. Omed wrote:
...the sane physicist does not forget that his equations are just equations, human mathematical constructs deployed to delineate a limited understanding of physical reality, not the reality itself.
Actually, quantum mechanics, String Theory, and the like are approaching the idea that reality itself is indeed equations. They seem to be saying that the screen you're looking at right now is only void inhabited by the faintest trace of mathematical activity that has no physical substance, but rather creates the appearance of physical substance by interacting with the mathematical activity of which you're composed, which has no physical substance itself, though it may suggest substance to still other "observing" sets of mathematical activity. Seen at that level, the statement that "belief is a very dangerous and addictive substance" is difficult to understand. Where in all of that sub-atomic activity is the belief? Where is the substance? What can dangerous mean in that context? Those ideas aren't there in reality--they're beliefs. The theoretical physicists are working their way toward the Buddhists, who believe that all is ultimately empty.
But at that level, discussions of belief (or just about anything else of human interest) is impossible. Instead, we have a massive set of ingrown and shared beliefs that we don't generally notice or have to agree upon to bring things from that level up to where they can hold our interest: Physical reality exists; we are definable (if complex) entities in that reality; we can observe and affect that reality; that reality is governed by rules that have held and will continue to hold true; and so on. But there's no inherent truth in any of those beliefs. There is belief and only belief, and to draw a line separating supportable belief (the empirical beliefs of science, say) from unsupportable belief (the transcendent beliefs of religion, say) seems arbitrary to me.
7:16:05 AM 
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