“Faith and belief are often equivocated, as are Faith and Trust. Accepting either of these equivocations in terms of reasoning and truth seeking is tantamount to intellectual self sabotage. Faith is indeed belief, but of a certain sort. A belief is anything you have accepted as true, and in that vein it would be impossible to navigate the world at all without a significant amount of them active. If you don’t believe you need to eat to survive you probably wont last too long.
Faith, on the other hand, as per religious faith, is a specific sort of belief that is held without evidence, or in spite of evidence, and as such only serve to distract from the world as it actually is. Faith based beliefs are roadblocks on the path of any that seek bedrock wisdom. To accept this sort of faith as a legitimate form of knowing is tantamount to intellectual suicide. The acceptance of legitimacy for this sort of ‘knowing’ is one of the more powerful machinations of mental slavery.
Trust too is distinguishable from faith. The very nature of trust entails a belief that something will happen, yet sound trust will always be based on good reason, good evidence, or past experience. I trust that the sun will rise tomorrow, but only based upon mountains of evidence that such will be the case. The elimination of these equivocation based justifications for ‘just believing’ things are key and foundational to assuming the autodiabolic position.
Common knowledge is the enemy, for within are embedded many units of false ‘truth’ of this very sort. The very words ‘common knowledge’ should serve as a beacon of focus for autodiabolic fire, an offering to be obliterated by the internal manifestation of Satan himself.
Common sense also serves and insidious, magian purpose, for this untouchable idea cluster also contains many control memes, and as is the nature of ‘common sense’, as understood as a collection of axiomatic units of truth,is often wielded as a stick by societies white knights. Rooting out these unanchored beliefs is the primary purpose of autodiabolic scrutiny, of the fire. The enemy is legion, and each unit of untruth identified also identifies it’s method of destruction. Some faith based ideas, hiding within you can be burned away by simple research and thought like a vampire stepping into the light of day, some through intellectual conflict tempered by self honesty.
Others, more deeply rooted in the psyche, can only be cleansed through direct sinister experience, through pathei mathos. It is the nature of the mind to hold onto its boundaries and borders, and to use rationalizations and justifications to defend these positions or ideas simply because they are emotionally important. Sometimes it is only by placing yourself at direct odds with something, in a very physical and real world way, can you truly ‘defeat’ it.
As such, ADM is a causal form representing an overarching philosophical counterposition, which serves as both defensive entrenchment and a means of counter attack, to the continual barrage of memetic bombardment that constantly assaults us from every direction. A narrow pass at which the Persians are held at bay.”
– Dan Dread, The Autodiabolic Method