To realize the difference between knowledge and belief.

It is true that we can never (well, hardly ever anyway) know reality itself. We never can know for certain if what we think is real is just a more sophisticated and useful filter. BUT WE CAN LEARN TO TELL IF WE HAVE COME CLOSER TO IT OR FARTHER AWAY. That is where the distinction between what we know and what we believe comes into play.

While on the one hand I will say that we cannot know reality itself, I will on the other hand say that there are definitely things that we know, and know for certain. These "two hands" are referring to things on different levels.

On the level of pure knowledge we cannot know reality itself. On the level of practical knowledge, we can and must have a clear idea of what we know in order to function in the world. When we begin to get fuzzy about what we know for sure on the practical level, we impair our ability to be effective in the world. And the world is where we live, at least for now.

The whole matter of maintaining the distinction between what we know and what we believe is in the realm of practical knowledge.

Our beliefs are the most important tools we have in our quest to come closer and closer to knowing reality (the realm of pure knowledge). But most people either misuse or ignore them. Often we try to make of them something other than what they are, something which cannot be used for growth. Let me explain.

What is a belief? Is it something we know? Of course not. If we know something for certain we don't use the word belief at all...not if we KNOW it. Our beliefs are the things we don't know for sure, and which we have decided to "try on" for a while. The image of a clothing store may be useful here.

How many new garments would we get if we never tried them on. Not many, I suppose; and increasingly fewer as time and bad experience wears on. Imagine how we would be if somewhere in our lives we were told that we are a size 14 and that was that. Imagine how we would be if we accepted that as fact. We would never try anything on - it wouldn't be necessary. The thing has the size labeled right on it, and we know what size we are. If, after a while we got things home from the store that didn't fit right, but we stuck to our "knowledge" that we are a size 14, refusing to try out a different size, we'd eventually give up on new clothes at all.

That describes pretty well the intellectual and spiritual lives of many. If we take a belief or set of beliefs and begin to treat them as fact (on the practical level) we lose our ability to try things on. We become stuck intellectually and spiritually.

And let me tell you a secret. We are not here to find a defensible patch of intellectual or spiritual ground, occupy it, and defend it at all costs. We are here to grow, and to have as good a time possible doing it. That is what I have found to be true on this practical level.

The church, almost from its very beginning, has been very much inclined to take a set of beliefs, a creed, and elevate it to the realm of fact. Big Mistake. And although we have pretty much given up the habit of burning heretics at the stake, we still elevate belief to fact. Big Mistake.

AVOIDING BIG MISTAKES

What kinds of things can we know for certain on the practical level of existence? We know the things that we have experienced for ourselves. We don't necessarily know all, and we don't know that what we know will never change, but we know what we have experienced.

I know that tomorrow the sun will rise, whether I can see it or not (I live in Seattle). Now, in the midst of my knowing this, I allow for the remote possibility that by tomorrow either the earth or the sun will no longer be. In that case, I'll not be around to be proven wrong, will I?

Also, in the midst of my knowing the sun will rise tomorrow, I know that REALLY the sun will not rise, but will be travelling along its path through space, and that the earth will be traveling along with it, spinning around the sun and spinning on its own axis. The spinning on its axis will cause, at a certain time, the sun to be visible from my vantage on the surface of the earth. That becoming visible I call "rising."

When I say the sun will rise, I don't spell all of the above out; I don't have to. You already know that stuff, and you know what I mean when I say that the sun will rise. And I don't have to believe it, I know it.

Suppose an astronomer tells me, "Yes, the sun will indeed rise tomorrow, but three hours after it does, it will get dark again, because the moon will come between the earth and the sun, and cause an eclipse." If I have never seen an eclipse before, I won't know for certain that this will happen. But I will believe that it probably will. And the next day you can bet I will be paying very close attention, so I can verify with my own experience that 1, this person can accurately predict such things and 2, the moon coming between the earth and the sun will indeed cause it to get dark.

That's what believing is for. It takes us from the state of unknowing to knowing. To put the matter differently, our ability to believe is what allows us to add to our knowledge; and the more effectively we are able to believe, the more effectively we are able to add to what we know.

Knowing is an all-or-nothing proposition, yes or no. I either know this thing or that thing, or I do not. We may think we know something and be fooled, but when we are looking back on such a thing, we don't say, "I didn't know that thing well enough." We say instead, I thought I knew it, but I was mistaken." Almost all of such mistakes are a result of our too quickly considering a belief to be fact.

It is unfortunate, but not at all surprising, that such a critically important thing as believing is so easy to get wrong, and so commonly fouled up. The reason, I suppose, is wrapped up in what we generally call free will.

There are two main ways that we do believing badly. The first is, as already mentioned, to allow the difference between believing and knowing to get confused, and to consider what we believe to be something we know for certain.

This is not such a bad process when we are dealing with easily demonstrated realities.

If I think my electric range is turned off, act on that belief as knowledge, and lay a plate on the burner, I learn to either check the burner first or to not use cooking surfaces as counter top. Our mistaken assumption of knowledge becomes part of the learning process when the results of our error are quickly and undeniably demonstrated, and thus becomes itself part of our body of knowledge. But when it comes to such intangibles as politics or religion, watch out!

Leaving politics to the kid who delivers my Seattle Times, let me deal briefly with the problems which can arise when we combine bad believing with religion. This is something of which I know a little.

We're still on the subject of too quickly jumping from a state of belief to one of assumed knowledge. This is what typically happens with the creeds of any "orthodox" belief system. Most creeds begin with the two very significant words, "I believe."

"I" denotes who is being talked about. The one who is affirming belief is speaking for one person only. This point is not entirely on the subject, but is pretty important. When we start speaking for anyone but ourselves, we are developing bad mental habits which, I promise you, will lead directly to bad believing.

"Believe" means that you do not know this thing for certain. Care to guess how many people down through the millennia have been killed because of things that the killers didn't even know for certain? One would be too many, but the number is much higher than that.

So, you haven't killed anyone lately because of their beliefs. How many hours have you wasted, how many bad feelings generated, arguing over beliefs? Remember, these are things you don't even know for sure.

Far worse than wasted time or ill will are the children who are made the dumping ground for their elders' sloppy, and sometimes criminal, beliefs.

Innocent acts, which have somehow gotten on somebody's list of bad things, are transformed from belief to concrete fact when applied by an adult to a child. "If you do that you will go to hell, and burn forever!" is certain to turn most kids I know toward God. HARDLY! And God forgive any child who is so uppity as to ask what is wrong with doing it. I heard one being accused of being a tool of the devil for so asking. I call such children "spiritually abused," and I have come to consider this one of the most serious of abuses. And I don't say this lightly. I used to investigate child abuse complaints for a living.

THE APPROVED METHOD

Keep in mind, there is a right and proper time for beliefs to graduate to the realm of fact. This is when the thing has been through the hard school of our own experience - our own, and nobody else's.

The highest authority in earth or heaven, swearing the most solemn oath, is merely supporting evidence for our belief. If we accept such authority in place of our own experience and give a belief the diploma belonging to knowledge, we have experienced premature matriculation.

So much for the first way that we practice sub-standard believing: premature matriculation. The second way that we practice bad believing is nearly always the result of the first: it is to stop adding new beliefs, and to live with the beliefs which one had at the point of suspension.

"I believe this, this, this, and that. Anything else is heresy." A really "open minded" occupant of this patch of intellectual ground may substitute for the ending sentence, "...And anyone who believes differently has the right to be wrong."

Examples of folk who practice this type of bad believing are so common and so vocal (I very righteously refrain from adding "self- righteous") that I really don't need to describe them in detail. What I will do is identify a common variation of this practice that usually claims to be something else, and show how this variety of bad believing can produce folks recognizable to us as fundamentalists, pseudo-scientists, or "atheists."

Folks who allow no new beliefs and refuse to USE the beliefs they have (the New Testament term for that using is "exercising faith"), find themselves having to go to further and further extremes of one kind or another to keep out encroaching reality. Many successfully spend a lifetime of building higher and stronger walls, keeping this part of experience well separated from the every day experience. Watch out for businesses which display the Christian fish symbol. All are probably sincere, but, in my experience, a huge proportion of these business people are of this wall-building category and can give you a religious tract with one hand and an inflated bill with the other.

Usually, sooner or later, the wall gets breached. Some key facet usually gets torn to smithereens, and the whole thing topples. This never gets done by argumentation; the wall is argument proof - is, in fact built mostly to handle arguments. The destruction of the wall which allows bad believing is almost always by accident. Some little thing, some innocent and undeniable fact or experience does it when the person is least expecting it. What is a person to do then? Here is the range of possibilities.

CHANGE OR SWITCH?

The person can begin to practice good believing, sorting out what is personally known to be true and keeping that small, precious body of experience as an anchor. Then testing out the beliefs that remain, discarding or revising the ones which don't hold up to experience, and adding the ones which prove out in their own experience to their growing body of knowledge. Then, when there is room, adopting another belief or set of them for new testing. A few ex wall builders actually do this.

BUT, the largest share of them throw out the whole system, substitute another, and then use it the exact same way, building the wall around a new set of closed beliefs. They find the "true" faith.

The "true" faith may be another form of fundamentalism, or a theologically "liberal"closed system of beliefs. Some scientists are religious drop-outs who still haven't learned their lesson. They treat their specialism as fact rather than theory, and God help the researcher who comes up with experimental results which don't fit the accepted theory!

"Atheists" I have known, to a large extent, are of this number. The quotation marks are because that is what they call themselves, and that is probably the best name, with the quotation marks. They are not agnostics. Agnostics have the sense to know what they do not know. These folks do not have that sense. Neither are they atheists, who can tell you exactly what they do believe, and why; what they do not believe, and why. They are "Atheists," who claim to believe nothing, but who in fact believe just as exclusively in "Atheism" now as they did their narrow "Christian" belief before.

What is the alternative to bad believing? Good believing, of course. I have begun here to indicate what it takes to make full and effective use of our ability to believe. But you must supply the substance of your adventure into the realm of gaining personal experience yourself. The main requirement for this life-filling and fulfilling vocation is open-mindedness; but therein is the need for another distinction to be made.

Introduction, Ch. 1. What is Reality?, Ch. 2. Knowledge and belief., Ch. 3. What is being open- minded?, Ch. 4. Prudence and prejudice., Ch. 5. Simple and simplistic., Ch. 6. Creative and coercive., Ch. 7. Silence and absence

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