Religion and Meaning
Language is inherently a communal activity (feel free to disagree with yourself privately). Religion, so far as it goes, is also inherently communal. A religion as a language community (which is likely to have other communal features) seems a natural fit to me.
Thinking of meaning in a somewhat broad sense (but less broad than an investigation into the symbols/methods of language), meaning is a function of a language community - that is to say both 1) "meaning" has no meaning without a language community that uses it in a certain sort of way and 2) the content of meaning is constructed within that community. For our purposes, I am using meaning in an existential way (in awkward attempt, perhaps, at creating a shorthand for "things of ultimate concern") as part of the overall thesis that meaning is communal.
Besides the trivial nature of "religion is a type of language community", there are a few important implications of the claim. The general focus of this thread, perhaps, is the tension between what it means for religion to be just another language community and religion as a locus for the discussion of things of ultimate concern.
As an initial matter, I am not trying to define "religion" in an academic way nor I am particularly interested in ostensively going about defining it within the PF community by selecting groups that we tend to agree are "religions", those that are not, and ferreting out what commonalities we might find between those groups we include or exclude. I recognize that speaking of religion as the locus for the discussion/performance of areas of ultimate concern has a certain Western bent to it and that one might elicit examples of groups that some language communities would call a religion that do not concern themselves with such things. I am also hoping to avoid discussion of "for what purpose" am I adopting a functional definition of religion in this way or accusations of coinage.
Religion, as understood, is totalizing both of necessity and thesis. This isn't to say that everything is religious, but it isn't so dissimilar from the statement that all acts/speech is political speech. I am not going to try to explain away every example of a banal claim (e.g. "the sky is blue") as full of religious content, rather I am trying to place focus on the idea that communities as communities are engaged in meaning creation towards some end (however understood) and not just undirected behavior. I am not unaware that one might argue physicalism/determinism/etc. to account for behavior (from atom to cell to person to town to world), but I am taking for granted things like agency and minds outside of such a description.
So the stage is mainly set. On it we have "religion" and every other subdivision of thought in our language related to meaning. On one side of the stage we have those that would see religion used in this way and on the other side a variety of groups united in their opposition that religion is either a) not what is claimed because it lacks specific supernatural claim (or some other feature) or b) a shoehorning of an idea onto subject matter that is neither informed by such inclusion nor usefully described by such.
The foil - a freethinking absurdist named "Jim" who engages with people (who are typically within a particular sort of community) to discuss (or wrestle with) meaning.
The first question - is Jim's conduct religious?
By way of related reading (which is thematically related but not the focus of this discussion because the facts of his case are concrete while we will remain with the abstracted case to be changed as needed to explore the thesis). Harvard's Secular Chaplain
Thinking of meaning in a somewhat broad sense (but less broad than an investigation into the symbols/methods of language), meaning is a function of a language community - that is to say both 1) "meaning" has no meaning without a language community that uses it in a certain sort of way and 2) the content of meaning is constructed within that community. For our purposes, I am using meaning in an existential way (in awkward attempt, perhaps, at creating a shorthand for "things of ultimate concern") as part of the overall thesis that meaning is communal.
Besides the trivial nature of "religion is a type of language community", there are a few important implications of the claim. The general focus of this thread, perhaps, is the tension between what it means for religion to be just another language community and religion as a locus for the discussion of things of ultimate concern.
As an initial matter, I am not trying to define "religion" in an academic way nor I am particularly interested in ostensively going about defining it within the PF community by selecting groups that we tend to agree are "religions", those that are not, and ferreting out what commonalities we might find between those groups we include or exclude. I recognize that speaking of religion as the locus for the discussion/performance of areas of ultimate concern has a certain Western bent to it and that one might elicit examples of groups that some language communities would call a religion that do not concern themselves with such things. I am also hoping to avoid discussion of "for what purpose" am I adopting a functional definition of religion in this way or accusations of coinage.
Religion, as understood, is totalizing both of necessity and thesis. This isn't to say that everything is religious, but it isn't so dissimilar from the statement that all acts/speech is political speech. I am not going to try to explain away every example of a banal claim (e.g. "the sky is blue") as full of religious content, rather I am trying to place focus on the idea that communities as communities are engaged in meaning creation towards some end (however understood) and not just undirected behavior. I am not unaware that one might argue physicalism/determinism/etc. to account for behavior (from atom to cell to person to town to world), but I am taking for granted things like agency and minds outside of such a description.
So the stage is mainly set. On it we have "religion" and every other subdivision of thought in our language related to meaning. On one side of the stage we have those that would see religion used in this way and on the other side a variety of groups united in their opposition that religion is either a) not what is claimed because it lacks specific supernatural claim (or some other feature) or b) a shoehorning of an idea onto subject matter that is neither informed by such inclusion nor usefully described by such.
The foil - a freethinking absurdist named "Jim" who engages with people (who are typically within a particular sort of community) to discuss (or wrestle with) meaning.
The first question - is Jim's conduct religious?
By way of related reading (which is thematically related but not the focus of this discussion because the facts of his case are concrete while we will remain with the abstracted case to be changed as needed to explore the thesis). Harvard's Secular Chaplain
Comments (110)
I figure Jim will have to decide that question for herself.
In the context of the shared language we now use to agree or disagree, the expressions of religious differences generally refer to one personal view of the world versus another. The reason we can use theism versus atheism as a division that doesn't require much qualification is because of a broad acceptance toward seeing the matter through the lens of what a person accepts or denies to be happening.
That common ground is not a great fit with the "religion as a language community" that was expressed through centuries of mortal conflict with other "languages."
In the key of talking and the desire for language, I am reminded of my favorite prayer: "Lord, please situate a table between me and my enemies."
You'll find a deal of sympathy here for the notion that religion is all talk; but I would suggest that it is primarily a social (and occasionally unsocial) practice in the first place. In the good old days, the rituals of the Catholic Church were conducted in Latin, and incomprehensible to almost all the congregation -Kyrie Eleison and all that. But we peasants were illiterate even in our own tongue. We went through the motions with more or less devotion, and meaning was a very vague and fairly unimportant aspect.
Kyrie Eleison is Greek, sorry. For "Lord Have mercy." As for the rest of the mass, helpful translations into English were included in each St. Joseph's Missal back then, along with the Latin. I'm just saying. Old altar boy, you see.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Ah, those things. What are they, by the way?
As for Jim deciding for herself whether or not her conduct is religious, I wonder what Jim's opinion ads to our understanding. For instance, in the case referenced, the chaplain is a member of religious order, but there still seems to be quite the debate as to whether his atheism precludes his religiosity regardless of his views on the matter. If meaning is use and Jim calls herself religious, I suppose it is one more piece of evidence in favor of Jim being so, but as participants in the language community (or at least this forum), don't we get to evaluate Jim's conduct for ourselves?
The things of ultimate concern, Ciceronianus? I believe they include Epicureanism, Eudaimonia, and cats on mats, no? Or maybe it is desire is the root of all suffering and self-abnegation is the way out. I never can remember.
I take your point that Jim is presenting his case in front of a community whose language connects meanings in ways that include him and his listeners. I did not mean to introduce the element of the personal as an example suggesting otherwise but as evidence, of a kind, that might support your view.
I can accept some elements of your thesis while objecting to other parts of it at the same time.
I've re-read your posts a few times, but I'm still not quite sure how to respond. Do you mind elaborating the point you wish to discuss?
With food & wine on it if it's not too much to ask. :lol:
However, the great Ludwig Wittgenstein was of the opinion that meaning is use. :chin:
@Banno. Heeellllllp!
Cats, whether on or off mats, certainly. Epicureanism has its charms, but isn't what I'd call religious. Stoicism has a religious component, if Cleanthes is any example of a Stoic, and a Divine Reason is more attractive in a religious sense than Epicurus' sublimely disinterested deities.
But I suspect what is of ultimate concern to us is ourselves, our well-being, our continued survival in comfort (even after death), and our significance to others and the world, and these concerns aren't solely or peculiarly the focus of religious discussion.
As a historical matter, what community discussed these things besides religious communities? Even in philosophy, I would venture that much of the conversation was had in expressly religious contexts until fairly recently.
Far too big a knot to try to untie. Sure, treat religion as a form of life; then what it means is what it does.
Which in the main is fleecing the sheep.
Come now, Banno. Surely Alexander can provide some inspiration and a deft word or two will be the knot’s undoing.
Is it at least a pretty knot? There is more to the aesthetics of an argument than its ability to be readily scrutinized with analytical philosophy.
Although there are good reasons to abandon religion (or at least stop taking about stuff in a religious context), aren’t there some good reasons to go on using the word “religion” where it is accurately and efficiently communicates something of substance? Dismissing the idea with “language is what language does” is sometimes insightful, but maybe in this case we can at least pretend that there is something of value to be had.
What are you suggesting?
Nothing so fancy, Banno. I had hoped my allusion to the gordian knot and alternatives to untying would amuse you.
My suggestion is no more or less than my original post. If I am using a defensible sense of “religion” and it proves useful in our descriptions, should we apply it to contemporary situations where the word is not typically used? Do we lose something by calling humanists a religion? Do we gain something by it? Do we gain something by sticking communal meaning making into the religion bucket? If not a religion, what do we call a group of people engaged in meaning making regarding areas of ultimate concern?
Picture this - a group of people stand around a dead body and engage in pre-established pattens of behavior regarding mourning and disposing of the body. Without hearing a word or seeing their iconography, do we err in suspecting we are witness to a religious act? If it isn’t religious, what should we call it? And if we pick something narrow (like death rites), what larger bucket do similar sorts of lifecycle rites fit in?
On the one hand, this matter is likely of little philosophical interest to you, on the other, you may enjoy (or at least let me enjoy) the conversation about it if you pretend like it is worthy of your attention.
One might say that existential meaning is what we orient to while symbols are what we use to convey meaning. Symbols (or words) do not merely refer (i.e. point) - they can (and often) do something.
So yes, we can mean different things by the symbols we employ, but it isn’t equivocation to treat what meaning we convey with symbols as the same sort of thing that we mean by orienting (or living, if you prefer).
What use is calling this religious? What's the point?
The same as the point of calling it religious 200 years ago, no? What is the point of calling anything anything?
My use is hardly here or there, it is how the word is used at large. Why I think it adds something to the conversation is because it makes it clear that those people aren’t doing math, science, or calisthenics and that the context of the behavior is most usefully placed along with other religious behavior.
Why are my personal motivations instructive? Do we typically ask literature teachers why they call something literature or musicians why they call something music? We call things by certain words when we have communally decided that there is something useful about doing so, even if we can’t articulate all of the uses or completely account for all of the marginal cases.
I would call that a celebration. Religion is a word so poisoned by its associations that it may be better not to use it. In Australia we often call football a religion - mainly because people are irrationally devoted to their random team winning. It's ultimately meaningless but fanatical, so perhaps religion is suitable. I find a word like religion is best used ironically.
Such is the problematic nature of the word religion that even many believers deride it, as in, "I'm spiritual, but definitely not religious." Some words are unsettling and dubious.
I get the temptation to jettison religion, but isn’t there more than just Islam and Christianity? Like if we go into a department of comparative religions and strip away the West and near East, do we still have a subject matter? Is that element of culture that is the subject of study simply an artifact to be assigned to the dust bins of history as no longer relevant to any contemporary human behavior?
The idea of “spiritual” is really a major problem. It is the biggest bunch of non-sense one can imagine wrapped in a bit of anti-establishmentarianism. Besides the nonsense on its face (transcendence thrown in with some bad metaphysics), it is clearly culturally received conditioning that is not an independent invention (or experience) of the person espousing spirituality. Furthermore, what do the humanists do?
Someone is born, you want to celebrate. Someone dies, you want to mourn. Not because either event necessitates such a reaction, but because that is what we have been acculturated to do. You can’t go to someone’s memorial and say that you are doing math or psychology or counseling. You can’t claim that your activity is something else. And you surely aren’t celebrating (unless that is your thing - feel free to celebrate if someone dies). You are mourning and the space in which we have historically discussed mourning ritual is religious, not secular. Yes, some people have sterilized mourning and try to speak of it devoid of a particular sect’s perspective, but the source they go to is categorically religious practice. Just the other day I heard that some non-Jewish person was having a shiva for their non-Jewish family member because the person was non-religious but preferred the shiva format to their wake upbringing. It wasn’t as if they opened their book on “Being and Time” and suddenly knew how to solicit and receive community attention for their grieving.
There is an entire sub forum here with regards to the philosophy of religion and it feels more like an antiquities department mixed with a touch of world religion debate and god (typically the Christian god or the god of the philosophers) football. Once we get past the fact that Christianity sucks in popular imagination and Islam is terrifying, have we fully exhausted the field of what is to be said on religion?
Religion historically occupied the field for huge swaths of human conduct. When people go on about justice, rights, etc., and make an appeal to universal values outside of religion, are they any less universalists than the “religious” folk that claim that their god’s agenda applies to all human’s in all circumstances? And besides thumbing your nose at Christianity, what is the actual difference between saying, “God says be nice” and “Secular values say be nice?” Or that children should be taught one or the other?
I imagine that philosophy has something to say about whether the death of religious education and the rise of secular Maoist education share intellectual space. It isn’t as if the political theorists that advocated such positions were ignorant of what they were up to - replacing god with state and creating communal religious practice around state instead of god.
I am not asking the question from a sociological perspective (wherein I think the question of religion is not so readily dismissed as non-useful), but a philosophical one. The same sort of philosophical perspective that decides that metaphysics is now a waste of time and ontology is where it is at or that semiotics doesn’t belong in a discussion among serious philosophers. That is to say, do the methods of philosophy and the paradigms typically discussed include “religion” going forward? And if they do, what do you all think that looks like and what constitutes “religion” for your purpose?
If god is dead and religion is god talk, I don’t see where we are going.
@Banno
I wasn't trying to say you were equivocating as such. A frisson of excitement passed through my body when I realized that the question, "what is the meaning of life?" is to find one's purpose which is to discover how one might best use what is a brief sojourn in the land of the living. Needless to say, religion provided one of the most satisfying answers to that existential query.
However, this was not meant to last - religion lost ground and nothing substantive took its place and in that vacuum, life became meaningless but that's another story.
Now, juxtapose that with Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of meaning (of words) as use. A striking resemblance, no?
It's as if "what is the meaning of life?" and "what is the meaning of words?" were two different ways of asking the same question, "what is meaning?" I'm sorry but I'm experiencing analysis paralysis. That's all I got for you. Hope it's helpful.
Spirituality is more nuanced and generally refers to people's connection to place, people, culture or, if necessary, their idea of higher consciousness. It's what gives them hope and joy. Most people have a sense of the numinous and, as an atheist myself, I talk about people's spiritual life without irony. But I understand that some people are convinced spirituality is a synonym for God stuff and woo.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
The trend today is that both are celebrations. You celebrate the life that has ended rather than wallow in Victorian-style grief rituals. That said, remember, some cultures have very extensive mourning protocols (such as Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians).
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
God is dead is a saying purloined from a partially remembered/understood philosopher. I don't think it has the impact some think and it seems clear that religions and God are still a major and growing influence in world politics and culture - from Trump to the Taliban.
I imagine we agree on a variety of things, but don’t you think it a bit odd to divorce “spirit” from “spirituality” in a conversation where I am investigating what use some philosophy people might have for religion without god?
Here is Wiki’s take…
[quote=“Wiki on Spirituality”] Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organized religious institutions. This may involve belief in a supernatural realm beyond the ordinarily observable world, personal growth, a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension."[/quote]
So we’ve got people who are happy to do “spirituality” without animation/breath/soul but not religion without god. I wonder what is covered by “disorganized religious institutions” and if that constitutes religion in some way. I would point to my earlier posts and suggest that it is a pretty obvious extension that any communal spiritual activity is inherently religious and calling it non-religious is reactionary rather than descriptive.
Regarding current trends in celebration, I’m not sure what trends you are following. I’m curious if you have statistics showing that people with no religious affiliation have celebrations for death rituals as a rising trend or that people with religious affiliation are converting from mourning rituals to celebration rituals as a trend. I know that some people these days are dancing the dead off into heaven (or having “coming home” parties), but assuming for a moment that the focus of our conversation is on non-religious/secular culture, I’d love to see any sort of “movement” or “trend” that can be accounted for as other than individual fits and spurts.
As for god being dead, whence god? In any “serious” conversation in contemporary philosophy, can you point me to where god is actually alive? Not as an object of study, but as an animating principal for the substance of the conversation. Nietzsche is dead, too, so whatever he meant, he long ago lost claim to how that phrase is employed.
Oh, indeed - has the penny dropped?
If meaning is use, then the meaning of your life is what you do.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, I won't agree with that. Religion perhaps provides a cookie-cutter replacement for meaning. It's for folk who want a prefabricated answer, one that avoids having to be critical or think for oneself. that may be satisfactory for you, but not for me.
Indeed.
Quoting Banno
So let’s say I did this with the comment animating the exchange…
“ ...electronics provided one of the most satisfying answers to that engineering query.”
Does your re-contextualized comment sound like something you’d find compelling? Why is it that in matters of “ultimate concern” religion can’t be shorthand for most problems (a heuristic, if you will) while individuals tailor it to their unique circumstance as warranted? Like, “thousands of years of smart people have done a bunch of thinking and this is where things stand on the topic, so it is probably instructive in your case.” If there can be expertise in any other field, why not on issues of meaning? In the same way that fiat currency is just a social convention regarding monetary value (the meaning of slips of paper cut just so and dyed the right way), how is it that there is no social convention regarding meaning to which others might have better information than the individual in a vacuum of expressions of meaning?
I am not arguing that meaning for all people is the same, but that if meaning exists at all, it must be on the communal level (where individuals do with it what they will). So where is it that we give content to meaning besides communal practice regarding such? And why isn’t that communal practice religion?
Only privately?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Non-sense! Wrapped up in anti-establishmentarianism (what word!).
You could do so publicly, but then Banno would think you missed the joke.
When a small boy I believed in God. Then no more. And now again I believe in even more than one. They are there but I dont give a fuck about them (so basically, they dont give a fuck about themselves). I care about their creation though.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I don't know what 'serious' or 'contemporary philosophy' means to you but I don't think that is the right question. The point I am making is that gods and religions continue to have a hold on much human behaviour, choices, politics, culture and wars, regardless of what a few academics think. Nietzsche's madman can walk into markets all over the world tomorrow and find that there's a good chance he will bump into fundamentalists. So the right question (as far as I can tell) is how is it that the gods survive alleged secularism?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
This idea seems important to you. You already know I disagree with your choices. But I will ask you, what does it mean?
I'm reading The Darkening Age. Again, it seems to me that religion is a way of avoiding issues of ultimate concern rather than addressing them.
Again, and as others have implied, I still do not see a theme to this thread.
The blind faith, the ritual - it has all the hallmarks.
But if we are looking for exaltation in issues of ultimate concern, for Australians I think the sun is our spiritual centre.
I’m confused by this. The theme is pretty expressly that “religion” is the proper term to describe a language community engaged in meaning creation regarding issues of ultimate concern. I was additionally suggesting that there is a philosophical push to understanding religion in that way given the communal nature of meaning creation and how individuals (as individuals) seem incapable of creating meaning devoid of community.
It may be that you disagree with any or all of that paragraph, but I’m not sure how much clearer I can be without just being repetitive. My hope was to explore the topic through use of borderline cases where people include/lack certain sorts of traits typically understood as being religious and finding out whether there is a philosophical value in understanding a borderline case one way or the other. In particular, I wanted to see where religion is without theism so far as people on this board are concerned.
Given that posts go the way the go, there is some meandering going on, but such is the way of things.
As for avoiding issues of ultimate concern, I’m not sure how you figure that. I don’t actually care about Christianity, but to the extent that I do, it is typically around modern liberal Christian theologians that are existential in orientation, essentially atheistic, and uncommitted (or outright hostile to) the historical Jesus or other historical basis for Christianity (i.e. that the value of Christianity is independent of any particular historical claim). Suffice it to say, the only thing such people care about in the religious context are areas of ultimate concern (with whatever convoluted subject-subject rhetoric they have invented in the wake of Buber).
So yes, historically Christianity has sucked. But they aren’t the only religion in the world or the one that I intend to spend time discussing. It is sort of like discussing the Russians when discussing communism - flies in the ointment of utopia.
Not yet but I'm getting there. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer here.
Quoting Banno
Yes, and I find it fascinating how Wittgenstein's theory of meaning (of words) as use fits like a glove with existential meaning (of life) as purpose. In both cases, meaning is about how we use things, in the former, a word, in the latter, a life.
The reason why all of us do different things in life, find meaning therein, is because there's no single purpose/meaning to life. Words lack in the same way - missing essences - and thus their meaning changes with how we use them. That's as far as I could get.
Quoting Banno
All I can say is religion, since it's essentially cosmic in proportion and scale, provides the greatest meaning a life could have. What better way to purpose one's life than by contributing to, in some way, the universe itself and God it's creator? It doesn't get bigger than that, right?
:grin:
Not sure what you are asking here. What is spirituality if not religious? Besides saying, “Spirituality is not religious,” what is it that spirituality includes that is not within religion or that is of necessity included within religion that makes it exclude spirituality?
Quoting Tom Storm
I’m not sure where you think there is any disagreement on this point. But since this is a philosophy forum, I am talking to people putatively engaged in philosophical analysis, not fundamentalists engaged in something else. I cannot, and do not, account for why people believe what they believe or accept in the face of what I believe to be compelling evidence/argument to the contrary.
Regarding the difference in culture between us, it will certainly color our experience of the issue. You’ll go on holiday while I go on vacation and claim that your holidays are secular, I suspect, despite the obviously religious language describing your experience. I won’t speak for you, but the typical secular Christian going on about how secular they and their community are without considering the perspective of a religious out group to the experience provides special sorts of challenges in having them recognize why there is “secular Christianity” rather than secular anything else and what that means for what a society looks like. But again, that is a sociological matter rather than a philosophical one.
Wow! Well put!
:up: :100: !!!!!!!!!
Though I thought you were an atheist.
A religious community might engage in making shite up.
A philosophical community might enguage a more critical attitude.
Quoting TheMadFool
And how would you assure yourself that you are actually contributing to the universe, and and to god?
Faith? That'll work. But I suspect you are too critical for that.
I may be wrong.
Like the scientific community has done.
Gods made it possible in the first place. Without creation no fiddling around with physical matter.
You might say that; I wouldn't know.
But this computer does not work via prayer.
:rofl:
You can consider program language a prayer. And damned, how I curse this phone! Make a prayer to let it function properly! Sometimes it even works!
More precisely, meaning is use within a language game by players in a community (i.e. form of life).
Quoting Banno
Religion, n. A flock of sheep bound into a community (by imaginary fears & hopes) in order to facilitate fleecing by (a) shepherd(s).
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
From devout belief (onwards and then back) to make believe ... which Žizek calls "the sublime object of ideology".
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
It's undead. Like "spiritual, but not religious" – animated, but not alive.
Quoting Tom Storm
(See my replay to Ennui just before this one.)
My bad for the misunderstanding apparent. Religion, insofar as what I said earlier matters, stands for what seems to be missing in non-religious worldviews - that yearning to be part of something bigger as some like to put it. The closest such concepts free of religious baggage I can find are ecological movements and Niel deGrasse Tyson's Comsic Perspective.
Basically, I just picked religion out of convenience rather than anything else.
Indeed. However, I was wondering about the possibility of Wittgenstein's theory of meaning as use being an auxiliary to the more widely held belief of meaning as tied to the notion of an essence to words. I fail to see why this is an either...or... choice? Can't we have the best of both worlds? As it is Wittgenstein can't deny that a word has an essence within a language game, no?
Yep.
Quoting 180 Proof
The overlap with faith out be apparent; faith is belief despite the facts. Hence faith is the very stuff of ideology.
Don't mistake silence for absence. The secular world if full of nods and winks towards what we might call the numinous. The difference is not making claims to knowledge.
Puts me in mind of the Dave Allan joke:
Read the opening of the PI where Witty explicitly rejects "the more widely held" (Adamic / Augustinian) "essence of words" and thereby investigates 'usage-meaning' instead. "Use" is the broad alternative to the very narrow scope of "essence" and is not "auxiliary" as far as Witty is concerned.
Then that's Wittgenstein's problem, no? To have multiple referents doesn't imply that there are no referents - the arbitrary nature of how we assign meaning to words doesn't imply no essence was/is implied.
My hunch is Wittgenstein conflates the abscence of a single referent for a word with no referent for that word. That's like saying "John" could refer to any of 3 Johns in a room and so "John" doesn't refer to anyone. It doesn't make sense to me at all.
Wise words! The numinous, yes, that's the apposite word.
...and we were so close...
Quoting TheMadFool
Yet another hunch. God forbid that you ever actually get around to reading the damn book.
Quoting 180 Proof
:ok:
Yearning to be part of something bigger? Dunno bout them but Prishon donot wanna be part of bigger thing. Prishon wonders how all to be came!
Neil deGrasse free of religious bagage? His whole being IS the bagage he must carry everyday like a burden... like Jesus had to carry that Godd":$#d cross of his!
Sorry for noticing a spelling mistake, but is deGrasse comsic? Sick about his own com?
Whats PI?
March 14 obviously.
Prishon did looky looky in big book on net. Big wikibook says pi is very big number! 3.1415 and big number of numbers still coming. Prishon cannot write all. Prishon lasie this morning.
PI no 24 april! Rishon no stupid!
I don't know what it is but my gut instincts tell me that Wittgenstein's wrong. I know you idolize him (I read your profile) and I hope we can discusss Wittgenstein's theories once I have a good handle on his ideas. Until then, kindly excuse my comments on Wittgenstein as more funny than serious. Thanks. Good day.
Prishon likey likey this! Prishon glad to hear! Prishon WTF? Shut up now! I think you are right. I haven't read the guy but I dont think he manages to tickle me. Whats in a name? Everything: Wit like stone...Prishon say me li... Prishon shut the fuck up!
Niel deGrasse Tyson, in one interview, admits that the universe could be a simulation but then he takes utmost care to distances himself from religion. If God exists, isn't the universe a simulation?
Prishon! Don't go planet of the apes on us!
Why should that be? Did God(s) built a huge computer on which they simulated the universe?
Prishon say no wanna d... PRISHON! SHUT THE F. UP!
?
Tell me what I don't know Dr. Samuel, not what I already know.
:lol:
:rofl:
Prishon no fae! Prishon Prishon!. Prish... PRIIIIISHON! In your cage!
At the temple of Melanoma Trismegistus... :death:
In who's name we slip, slop, slap.
In the context of a shared language used in a community, what has permitted the discussion of religion with a relatively small amount of bloodshed has been the common investment in a secular world.
That world tolerates the personal views of people by a common acceptance of the uses of the personal. In Witt speak, the limits of a private language are not imposed but discovered. The secular world is not a denial of what can be believed or not by a person but a withdrawal from that sort of thing to the extent a difference can be recognized. The differences permit a Venn diagram where the over-lapping areas are not simply a single circle.
So, consider the scroll Pascal kept literally next to his heart that was discovered only after his death. One of the lines written there is: "My God is your God." I think that can be fairly counted as a religious conversation.
To characterize the primacy of this secular language as another kind of religion is like using a cease-fire agreement to gain a better position for one's troops.
That is an interesting pragmatic take on the discussion - that religion is such a loaded concept that applying it to the secular context would break the peace between sects. It is also a good historical reminder of why religion was moved from the communal to the personal, so that disparate religions could co-exist in public space in increasingly diverse populations in Europe (even it was just Christian diversity). There is a lot here from a sociological/political perspective, especially as "liberalism" spreads to populations that have truly diverse religions and/or traditional liberal countries have an inflow of diverse populations. Religion as primary and necessarily in the public sphere carries a certain danger.
It reminds me a bit of the particularism debate, i.e. if no religion has special access to knowledge/wisdom/etc., why pick one religion over another? To the extent that the scope of most religious theory is universal, it feels almost disingenuous to suggest that we can really move between religions in response to our aesthetic sensibilities. Perhaps it is a bit of a different take on the idea that all religions share the same ultimate substance, but just express it differently (a theory which I happen to reject), so we should be tolerant of others' religion.
Language is a game, so why not have fun?
But really, the post started off with a discussion of religion, language, and meaning, so I'm not sure how it is a criticism that that is the subject of my post. You've chosen to participate, so I assumed that you were interested in the conversation. (Banno, for his part, was dragged in and I asked him to pretend as if.) I'm totally happy to entertain other sorts of conversations about religion, but I was trying to have this one.
I can't promise you this is the best translation, but here you go...
And here we are - the modern men who turned away from god and left its corpse for the grave diggers. No longer do we deny the deed, but we have also failed to become god ourselves. The ubermensch is yet for tomorrow.
Let it be said that I am not looking for god, rather I am trying to build a lantern.
You are right, of course. We are in a culture that can't help but keep fighting the dead god as if it lives. And in some ways, it isn't just the undead god our culture fights, but the shadows and memories, as if these feeble things constitute some vital force that can reanimate god before our very eyes.
But you can't go trotting out Zizek as if I have any idea what he is talking about. The transcendent (or the negated impotence of human experience) is not the only sort of thing that matters nor is the relation of the finite to the infinite inherently the aim of communal meaning creation. A language community engaged in meaning making does not have to hint at the "divine" through the acknowledged limitations of the group. I guess if you are talking about the reality of religious talk in our culture (that religion is inherently about god), perhaps you are right. We will act as if our structures approximate (or at least aim towards) that which we pretend is sublime. The way you put it sounds less like absurdism and more like power brokers engaged in petty lip service to control the masses.
This is really more for Banno regarding the apparent criticism of religion as ideology.
Language is representational and, to the extent it is not the thing represented, it is inherently inaccurate/distortive/etc. So if the discussion is about a language community, it is of necessity about a community that has distorted the "thing in itself" or whatever phrase you wish to use for "the state of affairs" (i.e. that metaphysical stuff which I don't talk about). I'm not sure in what way physics (despite Banno's very functional keyboard, mouse, and keyboard) is any less ideology than some other discourse or how religion is especially ideology for this purpose. I also question why a religion cannot be as mindful of the difference between perception/thought, language/symbol, and metaphysics as any other language community.
Yes, talk in one way and you get a bridge. But talk in another and you get a reason to build it. Judging a language by its ability to build bridges seems misguided at best, but also emblematic of the issues I am trying to get to. Engineering is how we name conversations about bridge building. Tennis is how we name the conversations about hitting a yellow ball over a net with a racquet. There are professional tennis players, professional commentators, and people picking up the racquet for the first time - yet we describe them equally within the tennis bucket. What do we call it when people join in community to make meaning? Politics? Ethics? Is a parent speaking to their child about sharing because we want our friends to feel good an ethicist? Are they doing ethics? Is that what we mean in philosophy when we talk about ethics? Maybe they are doing axiology?
And what do you make of democratic lay lead religious groups? Who is doing the fleecing?
The inability to move between religions accounts for why most hold to the religion of their upbringing. The foundational mythology of most religions is too fantastical for most to covert to. I can buy into the Mormon ethic generally for instance, but literal acceptance of Joseph Smith's discovery of mystical gold plates is well beyond my ability to accept. I think an introspective person of faith should recognize the vulnerabilities of their own faith in that they are accepting beliefs that will be fantastical to others, all the while recognizing that those foundational beliefs do lead to the discovery of spiritual truths. It matters not that the foundational mythology is literally false in any religious tradition. Ideally, all of this should lead those of faith to greater tolerance of other's beliefs out of recognition that both are seeking the same answers, while both recognize that both live in glass houses in terms of provability of their myths.
Those who attempt to cure the problem of limiting themselves to their own religion in search of spiritual answers by abandoning the concept of literalism, likely find that solution not workable either. Openness to wisdom and spiritual advancement requires great trust and great attention to what is being taught. That trust comes naturally to the Catholic of the Priest and to the Jew of the Rabbi, but it's often difficult for those of different faiths to convince one another of their wisdom, even if the wisdom each ultimately is advocating is the same.
Because the keyboard works.
Th game of science has been set up so that if what we say doesn't work, we re-think it. We change what is being said so that it matches what happens. The theory is made to fit the world.
Religion changes what is going on to match what is said. The world is made to fit the theology.
That is, there are important differences in the way the games of science and religion are played. Science brings about the internet. Religion brings about the Taliban.
And yet science brings about climate change. So maybe it is people are shitty and you pick the narrative for why they are shitty that advances your agenda. Causation is a story we tell ourselves to account for experience and that story is judged good or bad according to our criteria. Different contexts lend themselves to different criteria, but capitalism (or other evolved systems of aggregation, manipulation, and distribution of resources) takes far more credit for your keyboard than science.
If science was merely an observational endeavor, I’d throw in the towel and concede the point of descriptive language verses something else, but what about the whole “experimental” bit of the experimental sciences? Do you really believe (or at least argue) that scientists don’t try to prove their theories by changing the world? Or at least change their pocketbooks? I find the idea that “science is this and religion is that” to be cherry picking. Not because I care if religion is somehow found lacking as a useful concept, but because science isn’t some disembodied process immune from the failings of the people that do it.
And without belaboring the science debate in this thread, the actual workings of science seem to favor reworking the facts until your theory is confirmed and waving away outliers or other inconvenient bits of the world for further study/dismissal. Paradigm shifts are hard fought in science not necessarily because of the method, but because of the people that employ it.
Saying that religion and science are both ideology is no more controversial than pointing out that both are inventions of people within the limited abilities of people. That doesn’t mean they are equivalent or even equally good in areas of importance, but simply that identifying a topic as ideology is not necessarily relevant to every exchange.
In any event, if all religion is to you is the Taliban, we clearly aren’t going anywhere. There are similar views of science that permit people to be equally as dismissive. The thing is, whether someone comes espousing the merits of their religion or their scientific world order, if they posses superior technology/techniques and the willingness to do harm, their ideology sounds remarkably alike.
Poetic nonsense from where I sit and I started an entire thread on this here. Of course this section of FN is also an obsession of Jordan B Peterson's. Nietzsche may have despised Christianity but Christians seem to love Nietzsche since he sets up atheism as the notion that without gods anything is permissible, hence Stalin and Hitler...
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
What I found is that you are stuck on certain words ('religion' and 'spirituality') as in some way codified so an ongoing conversation per say did not seem possible. But sometimes I do that too, so I don't hold it against you. Conversations do run out of dynamism and I am a believer in moving on when this happens.
Like two ships passing in the night. Our context is such that despite our willingness to play the game, we lack sufficient commonality to get off the ground. You don’t know me, so it isn’t unexpected that I am less well understood than if you did. It is mildly amusing that you’d take from this conversation that I believe language to be codified or believe that it should be codified. I even felt a bit like I was waving a flag yelling “Meaning is use, so how should we use this word and is there even a good reason to do so?”
Regarding Nietzsche, I posted the quote because you suggested that I misapplied the idea that god is dead. I simply wanted to highlight that the changing role of god in society (rather than the idea of god or the god object) was the target of the claim that god is dead. The trappings of religion survive the change of orientation, and it is for us to decide what to do with them. It may be, however, that even religion will survive the movement away from god and instead of the churches being the tomb (the place where the remnants of the god orientation reside), they will be the house for the community that comes after.
Indeed, for all we Indo-Europeans! Old "Dyeus Phter" has had more incarnations over the years than you can shake a stick at. In a roundabout way, this kind of makes sense. Without our weak little yellow dwarf of a star, there would be no life at all around here.
Hmm - so this is not what I thought. Simply stated, I found you too dogmatic - on two words particularly. But maybe you are a dogmatic person.
In my opinion, the most important function of religion is the lending of increased significance to the milestones of human lives. This, of course, is the function of meaningful ritual, and so it follows that in my view, common profound ritual is the most important aspect of religion. It also seems to myself to explain the ubiquity of religion in the human experience. As you note above:
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Perhaps strangely to some, I myself am an atheist who yet considers religion to be of great importance to the human experience, for precisely the reason noted above, the innate value of meaningful ritual. In a world of people who claim to be "spiritual but not religious" ( as absurd a statement as has ever been made), I define myself as "religious but not spiritual". I simply think that the future will ultimately prove to demand non-theistic religion.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
This dichotomy has arisen because the very idea of "spirit" has ever been ill-defined in our Western languages. What did the ancients mean by the terms "animus"/"anima"? The semantic field of "animus" is wide enough to build an international airport on, precisely because the Romans really didn't understand what they meant by the term...they were simply trying to describe phenomena the cause of which they could not begin to comprehend. In Latin, the term could mean: life force, soul, breath, mind, intellect, affect, strength of feeling, intention, and any of a slew of individual emotions (courage, vehemence, will, wrath, etc., etc.), and a few other things which I can't immediately recall. The word "spirit" is nearly the same in English: it means everything to the point that it means nothing, and that is the partial cause of the abuse and misuse of the term "spiritual" that we can discern today, as you note above:
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Yet, as you note,
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
...and the meaningful ritual associated with religion is of great assistance in lendi g increased meaning to that celebrating and mourning...
What to do with that. Do you think perhaps you might be blaming the messenger? Do you suppose that if you shoot all the scientists, that would solve the problem?
Science is a social endeavour that involves humans, and so involves all the messy convolute issues that implies. Yes, it functions to support the status quo, and so it has helped capitalism to thrive. It is also the reason we know about climate change, and the source of the solution, in renewable technology.
Blaming science for climate change is ridiculous.
Overall, your line of thought here remains concealed, even jumbled. It's hard to see if, let alone how, you differentiate religion from other activities, while your treatment of meaning as use seems half-hearted. The result is incongruous.
I don't think there's much more to be said.
Shooting the scientists alive today would be like closing the doors after the cows are out, no? Perhaps you think it was the Taliban that invented the extraction and processing of oil.
Technology/science provides tools, but not all tools needed to be provided. One might even spend some time considering whether the alleged purpose of science (some magical description of the world devoid of responsibility for what comes) is even a worthwhile human endeavor. The proof of science’s adequacy is in the destruction of the world before and the recreation of the world as we wish it (efficacious meddling, if you will). The proof of science’s worth is not nearly so simple. Selecting the parts of science that you cheer as emblematic of the worth of the endeavor and ignoring the rest is suspect reasoning at best.
Religion is not logic, for instance, even if logic can be put to use in furtherance of religion. The same is true of art, or science, or playing sports. There is lots of stuff not usefully described as religion or religious in virtually any context in which you might discuss it (just the same as there is lots of stuff that people do that is not usefully described as “human endeavor” at the end of each sentence). However, to the extent we are focused on the impact such stuff has on issues of ultimate concern (meaning), speaking of it as it relates to religion might be very useful. For instance, if a scientist is doing science because she feels that it is her best response to her obligation to heal the world and we are discussing her motivation, why wouldn’t we speak of if in religious terms? The lack of focus on “why” or any similar issue which invokes meaning should be a pretty reliable indication that talking about religion is probably unhelpful.
Knives, guns, machetes, should all be imprisoned.
A bad workman blames his tools.
Why should we speak of it in religious terms? Why not in ethical terms? Or psychological? Or social? Or political?
You appear to have religion as your only tool, and treat everything accordingly.
It's tedious.
Somehow that might make sense to you, but...?
:lol: Carry on...
To try and bring to light the flaws/downsides/disadvantages of science is not something worthwhile in any sense of that word. Why? EVERYTHING has pros and cons, even children seem to know this. So there really is no point in telling people what they already know or are aware of.
Quoting Banno
This is a muddled idea that I’m unsure how to clean up. We’ve got some agents (with undefined capacities outside of the ability to “mean” or perhaps “intend” coupled with apprehension). While I could try for something bigger with “community” in the long run, for this purpose perhaps it can mean something like “agents with regular contacts that engage in cooperative/coordinated behavior.” (Though I recognize in advance that language can be shared by enemies.) Language is a bit harder, but it probably can be something like “the proffering, acceptance, and interpretation of symbols.” Throwing it all together, I’d come up with a language community is a group of people that uses symbols in a way supportive of their cooperative/coordinated behavior. What is not essential on my definition is that people fully understand anything (whether in the group or outside of it). It is more about the general use of symbols in a way that tends towards the group’s continued use of those symbols.
I apologize if that is too mushy. Lots of big ideas and I don’t necessarily want to fully explore them.
Quoting Michael Zwingli
I am glad to find a sympathetic ear. Ritual is an easy aspect of religion to identify, but I can’t join you in seeing it as the most important part of religion. In part, the reason I am interested in religion is in response to the notion of alienation and the continued isolation of the individual. It is as if we had to go through things like existentialism where we rejected dictated meaning to find the freedom to give meaning to that which was previously imposed. Man is a social beast, after all, and so it may have been a fool’s errand to expect man to define himself against the world rather than to carve himself out from within it.
Without delving too far into my own circumstance, suffice it to say that I too frequently see people engaged in ritual devoid of personal meaning to them, badly espousing what other people told them it is supposed to mean, yet clinging to it like a life raft. It is as if they think that performing an act will by magic turn the moment from the profane to the holy - the meaningless to the meaningful. What I believe that they fail to understand is that the ritual is the fodder by which people join in community to share (and thereby transform) our individual experiences of the world.
And yet when we try to talk of religion we hear how science gives us keyboards and religion gives us the Taliban. Being aware that everything has its good and bad doesn’t mean that otherwise intelligent people won’t dramaticize in order to make it clear that they don’t like something.
I vaguely feel like that was the question I was trying to pose in my OP, but with a little less normative flair. I was trying to explore if there was something valuable in doing so rather than dictating how other people should use language.
Regardless, I will offer up a few reasons. The first - it is historically consistent. Until fairly recently, religion as the locus of issues of ultimate concern in the Western tradition is pretty unobjectionable. Where we came from, why we are here, what we should do, where we are going, etc. All of those areas relate to the human condition and people have a desire to answer them even without god. So when it is time for people to get together and make sense of them, calling the occasion religious is an authentic use of language.
The second - using a symbol invokes all other contexts in which the symbol was used. So there is a certain richness (and extended dimensions) to religious conversations that are not found in ethical conversations. Being able to make easy reference to a long tradition of thought allows an efficiency and facility of language that is not otherwise available.
The third - commitment. Ethical conversations strike as intellectual - ideas to be bandied about without asserting that something is actually good (cf axiology). For better or worse, religion is known for its commitment to an idea as a lived motivating principal for conduct and life. Here in the US, it is of such significance that it even gets special legal protection (however watered down such protections have become). By invoking religion, people understand that what is said is important.
The fourth - intergenerational conversation. By engaging in meaning making as a communal project, the current participants in the conversation join in with those that came before and those that will come after. It isn’t just about what you as an individual think in private judgment of everyone else, but rather a joint effort of disparate people.
There are more (and they will likely increasingly tend towards a particular religious perspective), but let’s see if any of those strike as a reason that works for you.
Again, my point was not so much to say why I think we should, but to suggest that within the context of philosophical language, it may be the best fit.
Had it not been for science (industrial revolution) we wouldn't have been in this mess. True!
Had it not been for science (climatology/ecology) we wouldn't have found out we're in a mess. True!
Had it not been for science (green technology) we wouldn't have gotten out of this mess. True/false, only time will tell.
It looks like science is both the disease and the cure, thr former confirmed but the latter pending results.
If you're using religion to understand how the physical world works, sure, that's a bad move.
Quoting Banno
And science the hydrogen bomb, and governments oppression, and charities manipulation, and ice cream sellers pedophilia, and pet sellers pet abusers, and on and on.
Some people suck. Some find their way back through religion. Some maybe find their way back through observing a well laid science experiment. Could be. Doubtful, but maybe.
Do you distinguish the Lutherans from the Taliban? What about the Mormons, the Catholics, or the Jews? Is your position that religion begets evil in all its forms, thus justifying your generalized attack on it, or do you just wish to remind us that the Taliban is a bad group of guys?
Good point. There are people who are oblivious to the downsides of science or, for various reasons, ignore them. They're like little children in a toy store, completely mesmerized by the shiny, colorful and brand new playthings, unaware that all that comes at a cost, a cost that their generation will have to bear in many unpleasant ways.
I am not quite so dismissive. Banno, for instance, knows what rhetorical devices are and he isn’t naively employing them. And the bashing of religion to the glory of science isn’t confined to one generation or another, but dignified restraint is certainly on the wane.
An interesting point that I think is misleading. In the late Roman period the educated elite espoused philosophical positions in addition to, and in place of, religiosity. that was destroyed along with most of classical culture during the period of the rise of Christianity.
So that we traditionally treat these issues as religious is arguably the result of the cultural vandalism of Christianity - it obligated folk to adopt that posture.
And in the mean time we have vaccination, air conditioning, interweb stuff, pain relief, surgery, vehicles. And fewer intestinal parasites.
I don't mind a bit of science.
Pretty much. It has few redeeming qualities.
I didn't imply science didn't have benefits but it comes at a cost, something we should've realized a long time ago given that we all seem quite familiar with the fact that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
It doesn't help that the cost I referred to above are in forms so subtle and yet so profound that we fail to make the connection between science and them. Having to breathe toxic air for driving a car is not something a normal person would count as part of a car's price. This is where our economic theories fail - they're too shallow, too limited, too simplistic for the way nature works.
So you are saying that I’m being misleading by using the English word “religion” in a way that would do injustice to a culture that died 1,000 years prior to the modern English language which has been around now for about 500 years?
To be philosophical about it, bashing is precisely what's in order, it's the essence of philosophy. The truth is impossible to establish, might as well devote our efforts in discovering whether a claim/system of beliefs is false. Falsifiability.
SO I will object.
I'd consider it a curtesy if, when you mention me, you use the "@" function.
Meh. I'm not bashing religion to the glory of science. I'm just bashing religion.
Pretty much like...
This is not too "mushy". In fact, I find it quite coherent.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I must admit that I had not considered that, even though I have personally bemoaned the paradoxical isolation seemingly inherent in modern life, the feeling of being "lonely in the crowd", but it is quite true. I myself have attributed this isolation to a combination of (a) the individual security which pervades modern western culture eliminating the need that we once had for one another, and (b) the psychological effects of product marketing, which seem to have increased self-absorbtion exponentially.
My intent was not to offer a pragmatic limit to religious language but to suggest that that the secular protection of the personal protects the expression of the religious in a way that protecting it as a matter of polity does not.
Here's a symbol for you to consider:
Aphrodite, disfigured and baptised during the period of the Christian destruction of classical culture.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
And an ethical dimension that is ignored as religions mythologise themselves.
After which ethics class did the sculptor make a statue of the goddess Aphrodite? Perhaps you can sing a nice hymn exalting act utilitarianism?
It was a discussion of Epicureanism. That was one of the ethical paths all but wiped out by those who disfigured the statue.
Religion distorts ethics.
Woe. Shall we lament the end of the culture of the conquerors, murderers, slavers, and rapists too soon eradicated by the followers of Paul? Perhaps a touch of stoicism is in order. But yes, I can see how the depravity of man is a feature of religion and not something else.