Bryan Melugin
“Once my brain has eaten all of the experience I give it, do I have knowledge or beliefs?” and I would reply that it is impossible to have one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin, The metaphysical nickel (which would be a cool name for a band or a coffee shop).
To Believe is to have confidence/faith in the Truthfulness of information one can recall and understand. To Know is to be able to recall and understand that which is believed to be true. If you do not BELIEVE an idea to be true, you will not say you KNOW it. And if you cannot remember or understand something, you cannot BELIEVE it to be true. Heads or tails, it’s still a nickel. For example, you would neither say you KNOW 2+2=7, nor that you believe it, unless you attended a Chicago public school (rim-shot).
Anything you believe, you also know.
Anything you know takes belief.
But it gets weirder. In modern culture, there has been a great deal of hoopla about the fight between belief and knowledge, or as it’s applied: religion vs. science. Those on the side of “science” try and stir up this fight to accuse religions of all being based on the blind, unsupported acceptance of ideas that cannot be verified. Science, they will tell you, is superior because it can be proven with the five senses (And expensive equipment, some of which gets shot into space!), whereas religions are all the subjective opinions of unscientific men, almost all of whom are DEAD.
Granted, when they put it this way, you can see why popular opinion tends to stray toward science. Shot into space vs. dead guys. You have to admit that it sounds kinda heavy in their favor. To sum up, as we walk about the metaphysical map, we see that Knowing is to Believing what North is to South- not because they are opposites, but because you cannot have one without the other. They are two sides of the Metaphysical Nickle. Whichever side you flip up, the other side is still there.
