[propolo]

Originally Posted by chrisfraas I have faith that karma

Hi Chris,

Yes, you need faith in the case of Karma because you do not know precisely how it works... it is speculative... but you can have confidence in the working of the four noble truths because they are precisely knowable... What Buddha taught is about to awake... to know... Religion is allways about faith and what Buddha taught is not a religion.



Hmmm... I would argue that both the four truths and karma are speculative on the basis of objective truth. However, on the basis of subjective truth they each have truth relevant to the person who perceives it.... Maybe I am splitting hairs here, but the only truth I can ever find is based on perspective and perception, which are subjective. Objective truth only seems to exist as much as people agree on it, which is really more of a collection of subjective truths.

For example, we generally agree that red represents a certain dimension of experience that specifies a color. With further investigation we can limit that definition to a certain frequency range of light and use that as a standard definition of red. This would be scientific and in accordance with our experience. However, we have no way of knowing absolutely if what you see as red or I see as red are the same at all. What you call blue I could experience as red and as long as the color ranges match up we could both call it red and never know our experiences were so different. Also, the original designation of the color red being within a certain range is entirely dependent upon the way the eye consciousness & eye organ interpret the visual data. There seems to be some consistency in our experience as humans about this, which leads to the conclusion that the definition of the color red has some objectivity to it, but if we had evolved seeing half of the color spectrum as red, the definition of red would be entirely different. Following this reasoning, all evidence based on experience is subjective and any sort of belief is based to some extent on faith that our subjective experience, or the collective subjective experience, is in some way valid.

Does it then follow that blind faith would be faith based on the words of someone else rather than one's own subjective experience? If so, then it is very difficult to define blind faith for anyone else besides ourselves with certainty...

comments very welcome plz