Conviction without concern

No worries, we are secure in our hope for salvation from the prisons spoken of earlier in this blog.

As a reminder, the prisons are due to: gravity, metabolism, time, society, perspective, thought, and death.

Conviction without conviction

 We are born prisoners.

Gravity

We are bound to the surface of our planet, by gravity. Leaping may give us a meter. Dreaming of flying gives some satisfaction, and has led to actual flying machines, now within the reach of many of us. For a brief moment — hours at most — we are off the surface. A few adventurous souls have reached low earth orbit, some for months. Even fewer have ventured further. All such altitude gains are temporary. We must soon return to the surface.

Communication without complexity

Last Sunday we talked in church (sacrament meeting). Partly to put off preparation, and partly because it was there, I was playing around with a little web page produced by a program that I wrote many years ago. The program's job is to display a random verse from the Book of Mormon.

The message

Most verses are short enough to display nicely on the screen of my iPhone, and I just pull one down — to cause the page to be reloaded — to see the next random pick. As I was doing this, I was galvanized by a verse that appeared (Alma 29:9) because it was precisely what I needed for the topic of my talk.

Consensus without Coherence

This is about some of the theories of truth, triggered by the previous post, "Concord without Confusion", during the writing of which this author discovered the consensus theory of truth, and marveled greatly.

The consensus theory of truth is defined on Wikipedia as, "the process of taking statements to be true simply because people generally agree upon them."

The author prefers the correspondence theory of truth in which, according to Wikipedia, the truth of a statement "is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world."

Concord without Confusion

A notation supporting a rational basis for peace. The notation itself, based on Popper's three worlds, was introduced in an earlier post, Contrast without Confusion. I'm proposing that this notation could be used by rational people to understand each other, even in the face of conflicting beliefs.

The purpose of the notation is to write down things that are true, and can be accepted as true, by both parties. From there, from that basis of shared truth, a discussion could ensue peacefully and clearly.

By "truth" is meant here agreeing to use the correspondence theory of truth, leaving aside other possibilities such as the coherence, consensus, or pragmatic theories of truth.

Coexistence without condescension

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The difficulty of this post is commensurate with the time it has taken in gestation. My topic, "humility."

Let's start with its opposite, a feeling of superiority. There is a pattern of thought that goes like this: I am superior to another in some way; therefore, I am of more value than than other person. Or, more important than that person. In other words, my superior attribute makes me actually superior.

This is incorrect reasoning in part because we are multi-dimensional beings. Scoring higher on one dimension means little when there are other dimensions where I score lower. In secondary school, I scored higher in academics than others of my peers, yet among the lowest in athletics. This allowed me experience at both ends of the superiority versus inferiority scale.

A brief personal experience to illustrate. Superior performance in my high school was rewarded by the presentation of a school letter, a piece of fabric in the shape of the first letter of the school's name, and in the school's colors. I was granted one of these for my academic performance. When I attended university, I proudly posted the letter in my dorm room. Others would see it and ask, "what was your sport?" The person would inevitably be totally confused when I answered, "academics." Apparently, most schools offer letters only for superior performance in sports. I ended up taking the letter down and putting it in a drawer. I live in a society which worships athletes and tolerates academics, even at a university.

The antidote to this malaise is the challenging attribute of humility.

Returning to this post, after a couple more weeks of gestation and a few servings of humble pie, I notice that the draft began on Armistice Day. This is an important holiday in Canada (where it is called Remembrance Day), where I was born, and is a celebration of coexistence without armed conflict. But that would be another post.

As of today's date, Wikipedia defines humility as "the act or posture of lowering oneself in relation to others, or conversely, having a clear perspective and respect for one's place in context." This is a two-part definition, which leads into my purpose of describing it as seen from the two different belief systems or world views with which readers of this blog are by now familiar: those of secular humanists and Latter-day Saints. See the blog post which introduced these, "Contrast without contempt."

[This post was started in 2014! So "today's date" has a different meaning today November 16, 2023. Publishing this as-is now (11:43 a.m. MST)]

Communication without Conspicuousness

A strange sequence of events happened eight and a half years ago (and today).

A U.S. Supreme court ruling was handed down on a Friday. That same day, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints responded with a press release, and a Facebook friend responded to both with a claim that, "They [the Church] will in time" alter their doctrine to conform to the court's opinion.

The following Sunday, I prepared a response to my friend, but did not post it to Facebook.

Today, I found my reaction as an unpublished draft!