Is 'knowledge' a weapon?

[Michael19682]

I really feel badly for some of the people, particularly non Catholics, who are told that for some reason they have ‘no knowledge’ of truth, God, Jesus, etc. It seems to me that the field of epistemology is so wide open that we are doing these folks an injustice when we hurl the word ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’ at them. Yet of, course, I understand that many of them do the same thing right back. Indeed, many of them have been the instigators to begin with.

I once had a philosophy professor, a Canadian Italian trained in Germany, to whom I said in exasperation, ‘you either know everything or you know nothing’. I think his reply was ‘that’s the way it is in philosophy sometimes’.

Can someone explain to me what true knowledge is and if it is ever helpful to tell someone that they don’t have it?

 

[Nelka]

One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to instruct the uninformed!

 

[Whadyamean]

I really feel badly for some of the people, particularly non Catholics, who are told that for some reason they have ‘no knowledge’ of truth, God, Jesus, etc. It seems to me that the field of epistemology is so wide open that we are doing these folks an injustice when we hurl the word ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’ at them. Yet of, course, I understand that many of them do the same thing right back. Indeed, many of them have been the instigators to begin with.

I once had a philosophy professor, a Canadian Italian trained in Germany, to whom I said in exasperation, ‘you either know everything or you know nothing’. I think his reply was ‘that’s the way it is in philosophy sometimes’.

Can someone explain to me what true knowledge is and if it is ever helpful to tell someone that they don’t have it?

Nelka’s answer doesn’t leave us much, I;m afraid. But can we say that absolute Knowledge is God. Indeed in another religion Mind is a synonym for God. Therefore what we as humans call knowledge is vastly relative, even is some of it is consistent with repeated observation. What continually baffles me is that knowing the limits of human mentality and practicing what is admittedly a faith, adherents of the nearly 40K Christian sects and nearly every other religion claims to have not only “knowledge,” but “knowledge” sanctioned by Deity. Of course they are all right. ]

For instance, one can have knowledge of the Bible and its words according to the version they study. They might “know” the Bible, though even some such have provided bothe comedy and embarrassment in demonstrations of such. And there is continuous and vitriolic argument even among scholars and the religious as to meaning and intent. If you have studied anything significant about translation, meaning, collections, canons, nuance of tongue, etc, you know there is much to be contentious about. The George Lamsa translation provides some fascinating insights into this matter, he being a native speaker of Aramaic.

But that is all yet relative knowledge and internally referential. An “outside” study of the Bible might bring different ideas to light by treating it as a phenomenon as distinct from pre-accepted Divine revelation. So it fascinates me that people for the most part uncritically accept the tenets of their birth religion, even if it is the right one. And all the people in the “right” religion each, when it comes down to it, do not really have an encyclopedic understanding of what officially constitutes their faith. There are some incidents relative to practitioners of heavily Bible based religions that do not serve them well as far as knowing what actually is in the Bible and what it might actually imply. This is particularly true if one looks at the Bible through the eyes of some middle Eastern and Eastern philosophies that would render a radically different take on, for instance, the utterances of Jesus. According to some of those, and they are consistent, the original message of Jesus might have been something rather different than what it is taken to be by the vast majority of Christians today.

But as far as using “knowledge” as a weapon, one has to ask which knowledge about what and relative to what question. And does the speaker or listener confuse knowledge and faith, or take them to be the same, especially as pertaining to their own faith? A common refuge in arguments, usually unfounded, is “I know x is so.” Maybe, maybe not, and maybe both and in part depending on relativity. Or maybe it is true at one level and context but not another. But in any case, to use actual or purported knowledge as a weapon as distinct from an educational tool reveals low maturity on the part of the wielder, and perhaps even lack of knowledge, especially self knowledge.

 

[Curious_Seed]

What is true knowledge?
Christ: I am the Truth.

Should we tell those who don’t have it?
Yes: Go into the world and preach it.

 

[Michael19682]

Nelka’s answer doesn’t leave us much, I;m afraid. But can we say that absolute Knowledge is God. Indeed in another religion Mind is a synonym for God. Therefore what we as humans call knowledge is vastly relative, even is some of it is consistent with repeated observation. What continually baffles me is that knowing the limits of human mentality and practicing what is admittedly a faith, adherents of the nearly 40K Christian sects and nearly every other religion claims to have not only “knowledge,” but “knowledge” sanctioned by Deity. Of course they are all right. ]

For instance, one can have knowledge of the Bible and its words according to the version they study. They might “know” the Bible, though even some such have provided bothe comedy and embarrassment in demonstrations of such. And there is continuous and vitriolic argument even among scholars and the religious as to meaning and intent. If you have studied anything significant about translation, meaning, collections, canons, nuance of tongue, etc, you know there is much to be contentious about. The George Lamsa translation provides some fascinating insights into this matter, he being a native speaker of Aramaic.

But that is all yet relative knowledge and internally referential. An “outside” study of the Bible might bring different ideas to light by treating it as a phenomenon as distinct from pre-accepted Divine revelation. So it fascinates me that people for the most part uncritically accept the tenets of their birth religion, even if it is the right one. And all the people in the “right” religion each, when it comes down to it, do not really have an encyclopedic understanding of what officially constitutes their faith. There are some incidents relative to practitioners of heavily Bible based religions that do not serve them well as far as knowing what actually is in the Bible and what it might actually imply. This is particularly true if one looks at the Bible through the eyes of some middle Eastern and Eastern philosophies that would render a radically different take on, for instance, the utterances of Jesus. According to some of those, and they are consistent, the original message of Jesus might have been something rather different than what it is taken to be by the vast majority of Christians today.

But as far as using “knowledge” as a weapon, one has to ask which knowledge about what and relative to what question. And does the speaker or listener confuse knowledge and faith, or take them to be the same, especially as pertaining to their own faith? A common refuge in arguments, usually unfounded, is “I know x is so.” Maybe, maybe not, and maybe both and in part depending on relativity. Or maybe it is true at one level and context but not another. But in any case, to use actual or purported knowledge as a weapon as distinct from an educational tool reveals low maturity on the part of the wielder, and perhaps even lack of knowledge, especially self knowledge.

Thank you. Problem (for me) is still that, barring delusion, no two people can have contradictory knowledge…that is, unless you choose to embrace delusions in the definition of knowledge. When doctrine gets incorporated into a definitional knowledge of God, there then arises the situation of people having different definitions of God - especially in the Judeo-Christain world, where God is encountered by many solely in dependence on his words. Catholics believe we can know Jesus in the Eucharist. If this is true, if our sacrament gives us knowledge of Jesus, then what do we tell others who do not recieve the sacrament? Can we rightly say that they do not know Jesus? After all, they counter with an argument that attempts to pull the rug out from under our feet with regard to the knowledge obtained in the sacrament. By what authority do they claim to know this? If we grant them the delusion, then we change the concept of knowledge; and it is as if we speak a secret language among ourselves, one that others who do not recieve the sacrament cannot understand. Very confusing.

Peace and thank you!

 

[Whadyamean]

Thank you. Problem (for me) is still that, barring delusion, no two people can have contradictory knowledge…that is, unless you choose to embrace delusions in the definition of knowledge. When doctrine gets incorporated into a definitional knowledge of God, there then arises the situation of people having different definitions of God - especially in the Judeo-Christain world, where God is encountered by many solely in dependence on his words. Catholics believe we can know Jesus in the Eucharist. If this is true, if our sacrament gives us knowledge of Jesus, then what do we tell others who do not recieve the sacrament? Can we rightly say that they do not know Jesus? After all, they counter with an argument that attempts to pull the rug out from under our feet with regard to the knowledge obtained in the sacrament. By what authority do they claim to know this? If we grant them the delusion, then we change the concept of knowledge; and it is as if we speak a secret language among ourselves, one that others who do not recieve the sacrament cannot understand. Very confusing.

Peace and thank you!

Well, you point out some fascinating details. But those might be an opportunity to see that there are more facets to the diamond of Creation than we might imagine. But a diamond shines best in the sun, eh?

We might know what we call “Jesus” in the sacrament. But this is in a private sense, not verifiable in the way that we could introduce a third party to a friend and have that kind of introductory conversation. What you might be getting at here is the interpretative aspect of one’s mystical life, if that is what it actually is, barring the vast commonality of rote and habitual religious thinking.

Experience is, after all, as Ken Wilber conveniently diagrams, in four quadrants: the internal “I” and “We” and the public exterior “they” and “it.” Actual mystical experience wherein we might have perceptions of the several spiritual realms before Union all takes place in the “I” quadrant and is sharable only symbolically and by interpretation. And while religion attempts to codify this, it is far from successful, as you might or might not know, depending on the extent of your interior perceptions.

We cannot rightfully say that someone else’s interior experience denoted in the terms that suit them best is contradictory or delusional, even if is not “Catholic” or fit that well developed and parsed mode of categorization. That categorization system and it’s detailed, if piously modified, history, is in the exterior "it’ quadrant and has of itself not the depth of personal experience, while it can be shared, to appearances at least, by many. But if that is the only language you speak, certainly your experience, despite being beyond what we call mentality, is in that realm necessarily expressed in terms you know. But they may not, even if remarkably similar to someone else’s, be easily sharable if they are using a different system of intellectual reference.

We are all created in That image and likeness, so we each have at hand the complete picture, if we but look. But that is not an encouraged rout when there is much at stake in terms of politics and control, no matter how “holy” the purported intention, and even if that intention is in actuality to a large degree fulfilled.

So one has to be very clear as to what one means by “knowledge” and relative to what. Internally as one might know tenet and precept? Or intuitively as in a mystical experience? Certainly there is much room for contention in the worlds of codification of theological derivatives. But is that where religious experience happens? So, again, what kind of knowledge about what?

 

[Michael19682]

Whadayamean,

I like the connection you draw between the possibility of knowledge and mystical experience. Since you bring mystical experience into it, you refer to a kind of complete and total knowledge. The Church used to use the term “being” for this. Now the English are forced to understand the word ‘consubtantial’ which is latin. It seems easier to flow from ‘being’ to ‘knowledge’ than it is to go from ‘consubstantial’ to ‘knowledge’. Yet linguistically, this is the challenge the English world is faced with. We normally think of substances as unknowing. Does this change make it more difficult for the grandfathers to know Christ? I’ve been away from the debate

Finally, your post made me wonder if the only way that Jesus shares his divinity is through knowledge? The fundamentalists, with whom this debate is a source of great aggravation, claim that we have 100 percent knowledge of our salvation. Yet the Church has moved knowledge into substantiality – and the Eucharist is after all ‘substance’ if both Jesus and the Father are, too?

Are we reaffirming our peace offering to them? Are we moving towards recognizing their sacrament of communion and thus towards opening up ours to them? Or are they irrelevant and is this simply a reaffirming of an ancient belief in the spirit of natural substance – perhaps an influence of the feminine on doctrine. “Matter”–> Mater.

I admit that this might not be a tight association to your response, but it is what i thought of.