Belief versus Faith

Belief defines.  Belief about God defines God.  Even the very word “God” defines.  The 19^th century Irish poet Oscar Wilde quite correctly noted that “to define is to limit”.  Belief does not demonstrate faith but rather manifests its lack.  As definition, belief is an attempt to control and limit and set conditions on the Other in order to harness its power and influence for oneself. 

When a person asserts humility because of belief or belief because of humility, they are lying.  To themselves as well as to the receivers of their assertion, perhaps, but they are still lying and their subconscious almost certainly knows this.  So to have faith, one must first stop believing.  In anything.  To know is far better than to believe.

Knowledge is not belief, so do not get the two confused.  To put this difference into perspective, knowledge is the data gained from theory, which in science properly means a proposition has been tested several times over with the same or closely similar results.  Like Einstein’s Theories of Relativity, for instance, or Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. 

The proper name of the proposition with which Einstein, Darwin, and other scientists began to experiment until defining their theories is called a hypothesis, which is the “educated guess” of which the uneducated accuse a scientific theory of being because it threatens their beliefs, their attempts to control and limit and set conditions for the Other, their temporal power, their wealth, their service to their own avarice and ambition.

The sincere mystics of nearly all religions acknowledge that “nothing is higher than Allah”, as the story of the raggedy old man crashing the Caliph’s banquet puts it, and the flip side of that is that there is indeed a Nothing higher than “God”.  If there is such a Nothing to believe in, then there is nothing in which to believe. 

It is far better to admit “I do not know”, in essence the same as saying “I know nothing”, than it is to say “I believe”.  Because belief is definition.  Definition is the attempt to control.  Nothing cannot be defined and can therefore not be controlled. 

If you are truly to have faith, you must give up belief.  You must believe in nothing.  In Jesussy terms, you must give up your life in order to save it, so to speak.