OK.
G-d is the ultimate unchanging source of everything. How is this relevant?
It will be. Note your own use of "unchanging".
I don't know which one is true. Again, relevance?
It can be 'known'.
Not sure I agree, but, relevance?
Look below.
This is what I think ( assuming I understand what you are asking, of course )
Question: Can an "unbeliever" be a "knower"?
Answer: Not simultaneously. I think most people oscilate between the two. And rarely operate ( if ever ) in the extremes.
But the answer is YES, they CAN be. If/when this is TRUE, one who 'knows' is in a superior position to one who "believes" something which can be UNTRUE.
So for example:
Is the Qur'an the perfect, inimitable, unaltered, inerrant word of G-d?
Yes/No
If no, it can be 'known'.
If yes, it can be 'known'.
It can also be "believed", not known, and untrue.
What happens if it is "believed" to be true, when in fact untrue?
The Qur'an is *not* the perfect, inimitable, unaltered, inerrant word of G-d is rendered a FALSE statement under what condition(s)?
Any sign of manhandling/tampering.
Such signs are present in both.
Applies to Torah as well.
The rest is "BELIEF".
How many people "BELIEVE" any of these books came from a god?
Question: Is "knowing" superior to "believing"
Answer: They are like comparing apples to oranges.
False: they can both be placed at the core of a being as an object ie. ones "belief" defines/shapes his/her entire worldview vs. seeing the reality just the way it is.
Knowing is intellectual. Believing is beyond intellect. Both are useful in different ways and in different situations. It's really the same thing I said the first time you started a thread on belief.
False: knowing is not strictly "intellectual" unless one identifies with the body/mind, which is not the true being.
Question: If "knowing" is superior to "believing", is "belief" a virtue?
Answer: When knowing is superior, belief is not a virtue. When believing is superior, then belief is a virtue.
False: 'when' not needed. Knowing is *always* superior to "belief". "Belief" can never be superior to knowing.
This is the difference between my mindset and yours.
I know.
You are operating black vs. white. It's fundamentalism. Literal. Stereotyping. Generalizing. Over-simplified.
Fundamentalism has no polarity: if you associate it with bad/evil, you are eating from the tree and polarizing within yourself. Yes, fundamentalism can be bad, but it can also be good. It depends what one does with it. Like technology.
Yes/no question-answer strings are "fundamental" because they eliminate everything into the fundamentals which produce the most accurate worldview.
Applying simple yes/no question-answer strings yields the reality just the way it is. Then you use if-then:
IF:
The Qur'an is
not the perfect, inimitable, unaltered, inerrant word of god, while approx. 1.8 billion Muslims erroneously "believe" it is (ie. as sanctioned by the 'state')...
THEN:
Islam is a humanitarian catastrophe/crisis which perpetuates the most principle division humanity has endured for thousands of years: "BELIEVER" vs. "UNBELIEVER".
Christianity: same problem before it.
Judaism: same problem before it.
"BELIEF" IS NOT A VIRTUE
None of those meet your own criteria for questions with "yes/no" answers.
Those are the starting points - you're supposed to follow where they lead into to the yes/no result.
You don't believe in belief, yet you talk about "satanic" which encompasses nothing more than belief.
I 'know' what satan is and/or describes:
What happens when someone "believes" something that is not true, yes holds "BELIEF" itself to be the HIGHEST VIRTUE?
The beings' physical existence becomes an expression (ie. psychological, emotional, habitual) of his/her own binds which exist in an ongoing state.
This is where human suffering comes from based on the question I asked approx. 4 years ago:
From whence human suffering?
The most relevant finding/answer I have come up with so far:
"BELIEF" IS NOT A VIRTUE
If truth above all authority were made the highest virtue, humanity would begin to alleviate all forms of human suffering.
You should know since that is what you apparently have done.
You can't 'know' what I know, in the same way I can't 'know' what anyone else 'knows'. What I know, I know. What I do not know, I do not know.
I do not know there is a god, or there is not a god.
I allow the possibility.
But there is no explanation needed (esp. requiring a god/deity) to explain "from whence human suffering?". The answer doesn't require the assumption of god:
Human beings suffer themselves. When they start trying to appropriate their own internal source of suffering onto an EXTERNAL OBJECT (ie. it is this or that which causes me suffering) whence such things as enmity (ie. Cain and desire to spill blood).
I don't suffer other people: all of my own inner sufferings are mine. However only in acknowledging this and systematically testing the claims made by the various prophets (including chastity, which *is* a virtue) could I see the reality just the way it is.
I know what god is not, and there are many who "BELIEVE" in these gods. They are fixed to books (ie. Torah-Bible, Qur'an) and idols (ie. Moses, Jesus, Muhammad) still "believing" them to have been messengers from a god. I know this/these is/are not true - the rest of the "believers" project their own "belief" on me, and try to apply the principle of "belief" to me when it in fact is their own trying to defend itself.
I don't need to defend anything that is:
OK.
G-d is the ultimate unchanging source of everything. How is this relevant?
because what is
unchanging is
true, and it is true that human beings suffer themselves.
There are certain 'fixed axioms' which are never not true - these are the same as the laws that govern even the physical cosmos: from macro- to microcosm until quantum mechanics, which introduces the problem of "choice" (ie. superposition, probability, wave function collapse).
con - science
self - inquiry
+
choice
=
conscious(ness)
'I AM' is the key.