Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:34:29 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> To this day, I know that I avoided a disaster that night.
>> No you don't. You just strongly believe it.  
> 
> Well, that's your read of it, but I know differently.

I understand what you're saying. But if you *know* you're Napoleon, and I 
tell you you just strongly suspect it, I think I'd win, in general.

"Knowing" isn't *just* a state of mind, is what I'm trying to express.

> Well, my specific experience was the reverse - I wasn't dreaming

No, because then you would have discounted it. :-)

> But I see what you mean and will have to think on that more as well.

Cool.

> Hmm, an interesting point, and something else to think about.

These are fun things to think about. I find it's actually kind of refreshing 
and liberating to realize that I might be wrong in my deepest convictions. 
It makes discussions of various philosophical stuff much more interesting.

> I think part of it with me is that I tend to attribute "faith" and 
> "belief" with "religion", so I shy away from those terms because of those 
> connotations, which I consider undesirable connotations.

I don't have a problem with faith, even of a religious nature. It's when 
that "faith" turns into "knowledge" and therefore "you should do X" that 
causes trouble, religion or not. For example, in college at one point my 
mother became convinced I was doing drugs, and she wanted to see all my 
class schedules and wanted me to come home promptly. (I was commuting to 
college at the time.) I, *knowing* I wasn't doing drugs, just laughed and 
refused. No amount of confidence, belief, or faith on her part was going to 
convince me I had to change my behavior to stop doing drugs I wasn't already 
doing. So maybe I'm a little oversensitive to people claiming something is 
true simply because they're really, really convinced it is.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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