How do we know?

You cannot know anything unless you begin by believing. This will mean opening your eyes, trusting in and being aware of a world beyond yourself. We can only begin to “know’ something when there is an initial act of faith.Oh, and yes there may come a point when we doubt some of the things we first believed. So what? We cannot believe everything, but doubt is only possible on the basis of something that we believe. So faith is primary and doubt is secondary.We are living in the midst of a culture where a whole pattern of beliefs is widely accepted and in general nobody questions. It is taken for granted that this is how everything is and everybody knows and accepts the situation. If something is proposed that is contrary to that “structure” then we doubt it.In this culture doubt is put primarily about faith, thus we tend to accept what everybody else believes. It is a profoundly conservative approach.In our modern society we have developed and relied upon the use of ‘science’ which,  of course, means knowledge. Science is another word for ‘knowing’ but we have spared science from other kinds of knowing in the belief that science gives us what is called ‘objective facts’ and that things which cannot qualify in that sense are of necessity purely subjective.The idea of purely objective knowledge is an illusion, but a most powerful one. There must be a subject to discover knowledge.I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who finally said to me, ‘Well, of course, that’s just what you think.’ I hesitated for a moment and then replied, ‘Well, did anyone ever find out anything without thinking?’The idea that there is some kind of knowledge which is not what you think, (something quite independent of your thinking) is absurd -- but it is a prime illusion of modern culture.There must be a “knowing subject” ( you or me ) and that subject is, by very definition, someone who is moulded by a particular culture and shaped by his or her own psychological make-up.Knowing is not just something that happens to us. Knowing is the results of thought. Thoughts that are the results of the accepted structures to which we have been exposed and that we have accepted.You and I are surrounded by established practices and conventions of embodied language. We learn as small children to speak a language. These languages area a way of perceiving or grasping reality and there is no way of knowing without it.How can we know that the things we ‘know’ are really true?John Locke asserted, belief ‘is a persuasion that falls short of knowledge.’ According to Locke then, when we stand up and affirm “I believe’ we are really saying I don’t know.In our social structure belief is therefore considered something other than knowledge. Knowledge is something that is absolutely certain on the basis of the methods that  have been determined by the so-called modern scientific world.I have come to see that the modern way of knowing has led to the deconstruction of our ability to believe. Our culture has slide into the kind of belief where people say, “Well, it may be true for you, but it’s not true for me.”How do we know that things we “know" are really true?Tag!!!