At 11:54 PM 12/27/00 -0800, you wrote:
>it is clear to me that "faith" is the only substantial link to metaphysics,
>morals and epistomology. can you "prove" that you exist? or is it (faith) a
>subconcious axiom that you implement before you eat a cheese burger; or
>offer advice;... or make love (exhibit charity). philosophy is not conformed
>to "closed" or "open" systems of thought. it (according to the greeks, from
>whence came the term) is ,simply, "the love of knowledge", and faith is the
>"thing" that all people begin thier days with and cover up with to sleep.
> to seperate faith from reallity is to seperate life from the body. do you
>know anything for sure? i do. [log in to unmask]
>
Here you seem to be voicing the position of the 19th Century Fideists, who
believe there is no certain or stable knowledge but that had by faith in
the divine.
But this is false as is clear from human experience. YES I can prove I
exist; and if you doubt that, then don't read my emails ;)!
On the serious side, human life is based greatly on human faith, that is
the trust we have in one another that what we say is true; our identity,
culture, society is all based upon this human faith; even science is based
upon this kind of human faith. But this is not a uncertain form of knowing,
since certainty is not constrained to scientific empirical observation.
In the Middle Ages those who radically doubted the ability of the human
mind to know with certainty were mostly Averoists, that is nominalists, who
held that verbal signs were constructs that did not truly depicit beings.
Occam, an anti-papal franciscan schismatic, popularized this radical doubt
into western culture; it was left to Luther, Decarets et al. to draw the
religious and philosophical conclusions. There is an insightful book by, J.
Maritain: 3 Reformers: Luther, Decartes, Voltaire, if I remember
correctly, which details the ideological connextions in the movement of
thought in western Europe during the post Medieval Period.
Sincerely in Christ,
Br. Alexis Bugnolo
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