Do You Find Ietsism a Likely and/or Plausible Belief?

[lewisnotmiller]

It appears that the term is Ietsism. Wikipedia notes:

"The name derives from the Dutch equivalent of the question: "Do you believe in (the conventional 'Christian') God?", a typical ietsist answer being "No, but there must be something", "something" being iets in Dutch."​

Then this is a fairly common belief in Australia. I've heard it many times expressed almost word for word how you've explained it here.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

"I feel there must be more to reality than the physical universe, but I have no idea what that 'more' could be."

I like this statement better: "You don't know until you do know." And so, if anyone believes there are "transcendent" aspects of the universe, they should be looking to find out if they are correct. Devise tests, poke at the nooks and crannies, look under all the rocks, etc. And if they aren't willing to do that to come up with anything useful to present along with their hypotheses? Then they should probably stop talking about it.

 

[columbus]

a form of nontheism that asserts there is some unspecified transcendent reality beyond the mundane. It is expressed in the statement, "I feel there must be more to reality than the physical universe, but I have no idea what that 'more' could be."

I'll assume we mean the same thing by words like transcendent, mundane, and reality.

I find it nearly inconceivable that ietsism is not accurate.
Humans have been developing our awareness and comprehension for all of human history. As our tools and methods have become more sophisticated we've discovered things that were unimaginable for most of human history.

Once, everyone "knew" that creation consisted of a gigantic, solid, flattish plane called Earth. It had a blue dome over it and the relatively small sun scooted across the sky every day. This was due to our limited perceptions and reasoning powers. We've gotten a lot more sophisticated since then. Truth that was beyond imagination then is taken for granted now. Earth is a tiny speck of mostly molten rock hurtling through a void, held in orbit around the sun by the same gravity that causes rain to fall. The sun orbits the center of the galaxy. And all of it is hurtling through a void more vast than ancients could conceive. 2000 years ago such understanding of Creation would have been transcendent.

I fully expect that as human awareness and sophistication continues to expand there are huge leaps of understanding yet to be made. I fully expect that they will include concepts we would now consider transcendent. I sincerely doubt that the materialist universe we are currently able to understand is all there is to understand. Just as there was more to the cosmos than people could learn with the naked eye. It's vastness and intricacy, awe inspiring as they are, was beyond their abilities.
Tom

 

[Samantha Rinne]

It's a founding principal of taoism: that we humans don't get to know the 'truth of what is'. But that we can nevertheless align ourselves with (the flow of) it, and thereby fulfill it, through honesty, humility, and spontaneity.

And since it's also aligned with agnostic belief then I can say that it's more plausible than atheism.

Theism would assert that they are sure a God exists.
Agnostic would assert they aren't sure.
Ietsism would assert that probably not a God but something there.
Atheism would assert they aee sure something doesn't exist.

Bur how can you ever be certain of that? Unicorns are always claimed not to exist by respectable science. Yet not only the Wesr had unicorns, but there was also the Qilin/Kirin of China and Japan. And until narwhals were understood, such horns were found, and understood as proof.

Obviously, some sort of horned creature inspired the unicorn.

 

[Ponder This]

Originally a Dutch term, ietsism is a form of nontheism that asserts there is some unspecified transcendent reality beyond the mundane. It is expressed in the statement, "I feel there must be more to reality than the physical universe, but I have no idea what that 'more' could be."

Do you find ietsism a likely and/or plausible belief?

Please Note: The spelling of ietsism has been corrected.





_______________________________
This has got to be one of the best character studies every composed as a song....

Yes, because ietsism appears to be the opposite of nihilism.
ietsism means "something" -ism
nihilism means "nothing" -ism

 

[BilliardsBall]

Originally a Dutch term, ietsism is a form of nontheism that asserts there is some unspecified transcendent reality beyond the mundane. It is expressed in the statement, "I feel there must be more to reality than the physical universe, but I have no idea what that 'more' could be."

Do you find ietsism a likely and/or plausible belief?

Please Note: The spelling of ietsism has been corrected.





_______________________________
This has got to be one of the best character studies every composed as a song....

I find some doctrine like this a fraction of all we know about the intimate, personal God of the Bible.

So ietsism be, iestsism be, there must be an answer, ietsism be!

 

[MNoBody]

some graphics to help illustrate the panentheistic idea

 

[BSM1]

View attachment 38495 View attachment 38496 some graphics to help illustrate the panentheistic idea

I have described 'God' as the known and the unknown; also the knowing and the not knowing.

 

[Revoltingest]

I have described 'God' as the known and the unknown; also the knowing and the not knowing.

Well, that is clear as mud.
But I don't have a better description.

 

[MNoBody]

the Tao that can be spoken..... is not the Tao

 

[BSM1]

Well, that is clear as mud.
But I don't have a better description.

I enjoy the sight of an evangelical's head exploding....figuratively, of course.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I have described 'God' as the known and the unknown; also the knowing and the not knowing.

Well, that is clear as mud.
But I don't have a better description.

Of course, since it doesn't mean anything, you don't have a worse description, either.

That's the problem that I so often find -- people love to describe their favourite fantasy in essentially meaningless terms. That tells me everything I need to know about them, but of course it also makes it impossible for me to argue against.

 

[Revoltingest]

Of course, since it doesn't mean anything, you don't have a worse description, either.

That's the problem that I so often find -- people love to describe their favourite fantasy in essentially meaningless terms. That tells me everything I need to know about them, but of course it also makes it impossible for me to argue against.

"Not even wrong", eh.

You might've noticed that's one of me favorite quotes.

 

[sew.excited73]

Hi,

I would quite like to know where the OP got the definition for ietsist from? Because it is not quite accurate. I am Dutch myself and an ietsist (pronounce somewhat like: eat-sist) and the statement that it’s a ‘non-theistic religion‘ is untrue.

I believe (personally know even through personal experience) that there is more to this life than what can be easily explained by science, but I don’t know what that is. It could be described as God, it could even be the Christian God, including Jesus and all the saints, but it could also be Allah, or Buddha or… something completely different that nobody on earth has ever been able to describe.

So, yes, it’s a sort of agnostic belief, but it is more firm than agnostism in that anything could be true, (even atheism - as I could be wrong in my current beliefs… but more unlikely), but I do believe there is something ‘greater’ than, or ‘more’ than, us physical humans. I just don’t want to pin it down to one specific religion, because all religions have bits that I believe and other bits I don’t.

As someone pointed out earlier ‘it must be frustrating to be an ietsist and not know’ that is very true, but I don’t want to claim to know something about God, or whatever, that I don’t. I can only speak from personal experience and my own perspective. As far as I am concerned, nobody really 100% knows that what they BELIEVE is the absolute ultimate truth and everyone else is absolutely wrong. Not even (people claiming to be) psychics or people coming back from the dead with an NDE know 100% what they experience is all there is to the exclusion of all other experiences and beliefs…

So, yes, you can derogatorily call me a ‘fence sitter‘, but I would rather be a fence sitter who is acknowledging they don’t know for sure, and might be searching for the truth until the day I die, rather than someone who claims to know for sure and forces their beliefs on other people with such vigor that they become aggressive or even violent.

After all… at its core, mostly all religions are about love and agape!
Live, and do no harm.

 

[sew.excited73]

Thank you so much! Funny story: I originally thought it was spelled with an "i". But after squinting for a while (perhaps too long) at my screen this morning, I decided it surely must be an "L" that I was looking at.

It’s a capital ’i’… you can stop squinting (it’s pronounced: eat-sist - eat as in , I eat a burger sound)

 

[Madsaac]

Yes, because there is already more to the world than the physical. And I don't even mean that in a transcendent sense.
To explain the world as a physical universe doesn't even work within the everyday world in practice.

Regards
Mikkel

What evidence to you have for these statements?

 

[Madsaac]

If it makes people feel better then that’s good but at the end of the day it’s just another imaginary belief that comes from that thing in between your ears

 

[sew.excited73]

Seems like it's related closely to agnosticism, or it's like an incremental step away from it toward some kind of theism. I guess it's useful, but the person practicing it is probably not pleased with their lack of knowledge. A good human goal is to know, we are surely here to find answers if we can



That fit in good with my morning I think

I agree with you statement to the extent that it is indeed frustrating not to know, and like anyone else I would love to know… but that doesn’t mean I want to claim to know, when I don’t; (and nobody really does until you are well and truly dead - and maybe not even then. (God, I hope not!)

If you think you know, because your parents told you, you teacher told you, your rabbi, your… (you get my drift) then good for you… at least you can stop searching for the truth. In a way, I am jealous of that, as it must give a cert peace in that certainty. But I just don’t have that… I have some things I personally have experienced and which form a basis for my own personal belief system, but it doesn’t neatly fit in a predetermined box of somebody else’s design.

So, I would replace the ‘we are surely’ in your last sentence with ‘we might be’, and although I agree that might Be a good goal, I can also understand if someone would say: “No, you are not supposed to know or even look for it, you HAVE TO act purely out of faith… that what your elders etc. tell you is the one and only truth, no if or buts about it… they know best.” I don’t feel that way at all personally, but if you do, and that makes you and the people around you happy (and it harms no one else) then good for you!

 

[Trailblazer]

If it makes people feel better then that’s good but at the end of the day it’s just another imaginary belief that comes from that thing in between your ears

Are you saying that any imaginary belief that comes from that thing in between your ears is okay as long as it makes people feel better?
I think that some imaginary religious beliefs are harmful to people because they prevent people from seeing the truth.

 

[sew.excited73]

If it makes people feel better then that’s good but at the end of the day it’s just another imaginary belief that comes from that thing in between your ears

Yes, quite possibly. But maybe there’s more than that and your brain is just a receiver part of your hardware (body) and your mind/personality is just the software to interpret information coming in… not just from the 5 senses, but also that 6th sense we all have (but maybe less developed in some, or just called ‘coincidence’/‘intuition’ by some)