what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
Hello friends,
Have listened to Dawkins debate some Muslim guy and came to a few conclusions...
1. Dawkins focuses on the fact of Islam, or Christianity or any other religion being factually incorrect.
But what if the goal of a religion is not to be factually correct, but to give people moral guidance, thumos and social cohesion?
2. Giving moral guidance in a form of only 10 commandments or 4 noble truth, etc. just printed on a page would not have much interest, so it need to be wrapped in an intriguing story of a hero living out those believes.
3. The fact of the wrapper-story being factually correct or not has very little to do with whether the content is useful. After all, the 'secular humanism' Dawkins is promoting, is pretty much the same Christianity, just without the supernatural wrapper.
4. Looking at Afghanistan, it looks like the Muslims are winning. We might laugh about their religion being archaic, but they aren't the ones hanging from the helicopters. ;) So their religion, while being incorrect to say the least, gave them thumos and cohesion to take over the country in a week, yet Christians and atheists, while being much more powerful, don't have the balls to do anything about it.
Have listened to Dawkins debate some Muslim guy and came to a few conclusions...
1. Dawkins focuses on the fact of Islam, or Christianity or any other religion being factually incorrect.
But what if the goal of a religion is not to be factually correct, but to give people moral guidance, thumos and social cohesion?
2. Giving moral guidance in a form of only 10 commandments or 4 noble truth, etc. just printed on a page would not have much interest, so it need to be wrapped in an intriguing story of a hero living out those believes.
3. The fact of the wrapper-story being factually correct or not has very little to do with whether the content is useful. After all, the 'secular humanism' Dawkins is promoting, is pretty much the same Christianity, just without the supernatural wrapper.
4. Looking at Afghanistan, it looks like the Muslims are winning. We might laugh about their religion being archaic, but they aren't the ones hanging from the helicopters. ;) So their religion, while being incorrect to say the least, gave them thumos and cohesion to take over the country in a week, yet Christians and atheists, while being much more powerful, don't have the balls to do anything about it.
Comments (533)
Pretty much Dawkins' argument was exactly that religion is factually incorrect. ;)
Dawkins has no idea what he is talking about. Some religions that make particular incorrect factual claims are incorrect. Religion writ large doesn’t make any factual claims and so can’t be factually incorrect.
Picking on Christians makes for good sport, but bad philosophy of religion.
Dawkin's fight seems to be with fundamentalism not religion. I think he is right on most points even though I find him stentorian and tedious.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
I'm not sure anyone is laughing because the whole point is that fundamentalism is dangerous and leads to very unfunny violence and bigotry - especially when funded by Pakistan or the Saudis.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
This is an old notion and led to the idea of the Non-Overlapping Magisteria wherein Stephen Jay Gould argued that religion and science do not contradict each other because each have separate magisterial, or domains of teaching authority.
But who would think that moral guidance and social cohesion comes from throwing acid in the face of a girl for daring to learn to read and beheadings for apostasy? I'm fairly certain that if religions were tolerant and open minded people like Dawkins would vanish.
The problem is in the imbalance of powers. If Christianity/secular humanism is tolerant towards Islam, Muslims would feel empowered to throw acid on girls.
So the best solution would be to be intolerant of the intolerant and keep those animals behind a wall.
And so would religions.
Is it possible for any religion to offer nothing but calm and non-judgement?
? Albert Camus, The Fall
[quote=Lucius Annaeus Seneca]Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.[/quote]
Amen. :halo: :pray:
The objection that "religion is not factually correct" is, however, warranted whenever religious dogma's totalitarian infantilization (via odious fairytale bullshit) of a significant plurality of citizens and/or elites is endangering our descendants with the foreseeable, even imminent, threat of extinction or worse (e.g. global heating, pandemics, ... genocidal "holy wars", canonical misogyny, clerical pedophilia, etc). A critical abolition of slavery – the mind-forg'd manacles (i.e. philosophical suicide) of "faith" – by exposing the falsehoods of "holy writ" is, individual and collectively, the sisyphusean task.
So syncretic religions don’t exist? Or pluralistic ones?
Is that you are unwilling to consider anything besides regressive Christianity/Islam or that you really think that modern religions don’t exist and/or that no historic religion was accepting of other religions?
Take one of the countries with an enormous population and a history of religious versatility: India. There, all the various religions generally appear to coexist peacefully, mutually respecting eachother (with the occasional unrests). Take a closer look, and you'll see that the one belief many of them have in common is "Everyone should know their place and mind their own business". They don't care about eachother, they're just minding their own business and knowing their place. And the result is, arguably, better than what any ecumenical effort could bring about.
Then take a seemingly inclusive religion like Bahaism. Look closer, and you'll see that Bahaism has its own idiosyncratic view of each of the religions it is comprised of or sourced upon. So that, for example, what the Bahais believe to be Buddhism, no Buddhist would recognize as Buddhism. Further, while Bahais give some credit to other religions, they still believe that theirs is the supreme one. This view "All are good, but ours is the best" can sometimes be found in religions, and if one isn't careful, one could readily mistake it for religious tolerance, when it actually isn't.
Religions can seem friendly toward another out of socio-economic necessity as well. Take Germany, for example. With their numbers whittled down, scrambling for funds, German Catholics and German Protestants get along tolerably well, even though each doctrinally believe about the other that they will burn in hell for all eternity.
With enough mental acrobatics, certainly.
As long as we agree not to engage in a game of what is a true Scotsman?
Unitarian Universalists
A variety of liberal Jewish movements:
Reconstructionism
Humanistic Judaism
Humanism Generally.
Ethical Humanism
I'm sure I could find others with relatively little effort, but I'm not sure what a more comprehensive list would do for the conversation.
The problem of particularism (that a group has the "right" ethic/god/culture/etc.) is not unique to religious settings. Multicultralism hasn't necessarily gone so well in your secular liberal states. Interestingly, the argument that religion is an abstraction from culture by people trying to navigate multicultural settings is probably a good one.
You say this as if "religion" is a homogeneous category that we can speak of generally (at least wrt their emphasis on factual correctness). It is... not that, not at all. And clearly, religions differ on this point, with certain forms of Christianity and Islam in particular emphasizing faith/belief that certain propositions are true (i.e. are factually correct), while other religions or denominations emphasize a code of conduct, set of values, way of life, rituals that must be participated in, and so on.
So, better to speak of specific religions than religion in general, since there are very few things that can accurately be said of religion in general or all religions together. And its not especially controversial to point out that not all religions are concerned with propositional belief or factual correctness- this was mostly a novel development introduced by Christianity, a departure from how e.g. ancient pagan religions, Judaism, etc. had been operating for centuries. It mostly only became the norm, rather than the exception, as Christianity spread.
As an aside, this is a problem for religions interested in applying to everyone everywhere. Religions that are happy to constrain themselves to insular thinking (you do you, we do us, and we are the best) probably exist more than you might think. Not every religion intends to have everyone in the world agree with them or advocates that everyone in the world should agree with them.
Should terms denoting religious identity be exempt from being meaningful?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
They're not "friendly" toward other religions, they just don't give a shit about them. Duh.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
You're not saying anything new.
The ancient pagan religions of the Greeks and Romans were certainly friendly, even the so-called mystery religions. It wasn't unusual for someone to be an initiate of the Mithras cult and an initiate of Isis or Magna Mater. One could worship Jupiter, Asclepius as well as other gods. There was no problem of tolerance until Christianity began its relentless destruction of antiquity. The Abrahamic religions are inherently intolerant.
Maybe Promethean is more apt ...
I'm not sure what is intended by your remark, but you can flesh it out if you feel like it. I am personally familiar with these religions being friendly with other religions and even encouraging education about other religions to their members. There is "ecumenical" work, interfaith groups, etc. So "not giving a shit" isn't even close to right. Non-proselytizing religions exist.
I don't have to say new things to point out that intolerance is not a function of one group or another, just true things. :joke:
Quoting baker
Last I checked you aren't a sociologist, ethnographer, or any other thing that could provide a useful inquiry into what is properly classified as "religion." Hand waving about a lack of Jesus or Jesus analogs precluding a group from being religious is not of much interest to me.
I'm inclined to agree. I've had significant contact with a range of religious faiths - churches, temples and synagogues and running alongside ethnocentrism and in group chauvinism is also a vast wellspring of generosity, hospitality and solidarity, galvanized by best kinds of ecumenical commitments.
I agree with your sentiment about some historical religions being more or less tolerant than others, but I disagree that there is anything inherent about Abrahamic religions. The factual record demonstrates that pre-Israelites and Israelites evolved through time as they encounter other cultures (the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Muslims, etc.) and even changed names. Christianity itself went through radical shifts in the early periods and then again after the reformation. I can't speak to Islam, but two out of three radically altering forms from earliest appearance to the present is probably sufficient to make my point.
What constitutes a religion is subject to a variety of interpretations. Identity of religious groups through time is probably more about group cohesion and less about some doctrinal point or particular behavior. Particular groups (or individuals) claiming to get to define who belongs to one religion or another is not dispositive.
That's because you're those three monkeys, all in one.
Prove it.
The difference is in the intention. On the surface, two people can act the same way -- appear generous, tolerant, etc. -- but they differ in what motivates them to act that way. For example, one can be acting out of a genuine regard for others, another one out of pity. It can take quite a while to discern those motivations.
Have you, for example, never seen a mild, kind person explode in an, "I've been kind to you for so long, but now I've had it, no more! You ungrateful brat!" ? It reveals that they've been acting out of a transactional model of relating with others, that their kindness has been conditional all along.
A free lunch can usually only be found in mouse traps.
Aww, ye of great naivete.
Oh. So anything anyone calls "religious" should be considered religious?
Anyone who claims to be a Christian should be considered a Christian?
You see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The world is a good place for you.
Mwhahaha!
Well, it rather comes with the territory, doesn't it? If, e.g., Jesus is the only true God, and Christianity the only path to God, it's a bit taxing to be "friendly" towards other, pretend Gods and their ignorant worshippers.
I get it. I've just talked to Christian Ph.D. in theology kind of people who believe that Christianity survives a mythic Jesus and focuses on Jesus' message of love. They are not interested in Jesus as the only vehicle for the message of love, but that Jesus is their vehicle for that message and what they consider to be the best expression of it.
How does Christianity survive without supernaturalism or the fact of Jesus (either as historical person or son of god)? How does it survive without a claim to exclusive access to heaven? Those are great questions for Christians and they seem to be working on them. If/when they move on and the Christian community follows them, will they in that instant stop being Christians? I doubt it.
The difference between us, Baker, is that you probably don't know the religious people that I know. It is tough to have a serious conversation about modern religion with a person that is committed to fighting religious battles from prior to the 1950s. Yes, lots of people haven't moved on. Many in the intellectual community have.
I expect @180 Proof to pop in at any moment and dismiss everything I've said as the prattling of one those people who wants to play at religion and serves as mere diversion from the real boogie men.
:100:
Of course, this is the old mythological "hero's journey" studied by Joseph Campbell and other mythologists. It is a theme as old, perhaps, as homo sapiens.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
Yes! This is very good, an excellent observation. I have noticed, in discussing matters of "ultimate concern", eschatological issues, with certain Orthodox Jewish friends and acquaintances of myself, that there does not seem to be the same feeling of a need for escatological certainty, or for precise escatological definition, that I have noticed within Christianity. This fact begs a question: what, in your opinion, was the origin of the "dogmatic certainty" which seems to pervade Christianity, and appears so needful to Christians?
I would say they were unable to focus on the outcome, so they had to focus on the process. I.e. live a good and pious life, than God with reward with an afterlife in paradise and fry those pesky Romans in hell.
That was a beneficial mentality for an underdog, but once Christianity became dominant, unfortunately it failed to adjust its doctrine.
This is a tough historical thesis to maintain, as it would require not just a comparison to the ancient Greek religions, but to all prior religions. Historically, nations had gods and those gods warred with one another within the nation and gods from other nations warred against them as well, often having a contest of whose god was supreme, or so the mythology goes. Once you arrive at a monotheistic religion, you abandon the idea that your god is stronger than all other gods, but you hold that your god is the only god at all, and then the wars between gods end, but, of course, not the wars between the nations.
Consider as well:
"Some scholars argue that what is termed "religious wars" is a largely "Western dichotomy" and a modern invention from the past few centuries, arguing that all wars that are classed as "religious" have secular (economic or political) ramifications." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war
This challenges the notion that religion and the secular are so nicely divided, and I would expect that very ancient cultures that engaged in war did so with some reference to their gods, as they didn't have an epistemology that divided the secular/scientific and the religious/theological.
There is also an inherent logical problem with this statement by you:
"There was no problem of tolerance until Christianity began its relentless destruction of antiquity. The Abrahamic religions are inherently intolerant."
If Abrahamic religions are inherently intolerant, it wouldn't make sense that the intolerance would lie dormant for over a thousand years until the advent of Christianity, considering the Abrahamic religion of Judaism pre-dated it by that many years. Your argument then seems to be that you find Christianity in particular intolerant, which it historically was, but, as noted above, I don't think it's a fair analysis to lay that intolerance at the feet of the religion, as I see those conflicts as tied as much to the secular (power, wealth, control) as anything else. That is to say, with or without religion, I expect that our European forefathers were going to be a brutal bunch. Religion happened to be a wonderful mode to express it, and an argument can certainly be made (especially by our enemies) that we've hardly become less violent and warlike since becoming a secular state.
leads to
2. Buddhism [metaphysically trimmed down: no god but moral causation/law of karma (good, heaven/nirvana & bad, hell)]
leads to
2. Secular ethics [metaphysically empty: no god, limited moral causation (no to good, heaven & bad, hell but yes to what goes around comes around/you reap what you sow in this life and not beyond)]
leads to
3. My prediction: maturation of our moral intuitions [ethics becomes a branch of economics, making explicit what was always implied: quid pro quo (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours), favors/good deeds are organized into some kind of credit system and exchanged between individuals/groups, good for good's sake stops making sense].
People who claim to be Christians have been trying to reconcile the preposterous with the rational for a long time-from the early efforts to incorporate Platonism, through the time of Thomas Aquinas, who tried to attach Aristotle to Christianity, to the more recent efforts of folk like Karl Barth. It's an impossible task, I think. The effort to make Christianity "reasonable" requires the rejection of its claim to exclusivity and of the claim that Jesus is God. If neither claim is true, Christianity becomes something other than Christianity.
My "thesis" is simply that the Abrahamic religions are inherently intolerant. That doesn't mean that no other religions are, or have been, intolerant. As to the ancient Greek and Roman religions, we have good evidence that the pagans worshipped several gods, and that worshipping one of them didn't require that no other gods be worshipped.
Quoting Hanover
Judaism was quite intolerant and exclusive long before Christianity began. One need only read the Old Testament to understand that the Jews were violent towards non-believers--they seemed to have been particularly enchanted by the thought of the infants of non-believers being wacked against stone walls--this fond wish is expressed more than once in the Old Testament. The Jews always prohibited pagan religion and practices and wouldn't allow them in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Israel. Jews, of course, weren't allowed to worship any God but their own, jealous God. Riots between Jews and Greeks were frequent in Alexandria in the first century B.C.E. The rejection of attempts to introduce Hellenism and paganism into Israel resulted in the Jewish conflicts with Antiochus IV and later played its part in the two wars with the Romans in the first and second centuries B.C.E. The Jews differed from the early Christians in that they didn't try to impose their religion on others, and in any case lacked the power to do so.
This is is more a historical debate and so is far too involved to really resolve. I'm going to suggest that early "Christianity" (after the word had first been used) may not be the same as Paul's Christianity. Further, the early Christian's didn't necessarily see Jesus as god. I wonder why the counsel of Nicaea, for instance, had to establish dogma on the topic if it was so universally accepted.
I think one can accept that Christianity writ large has been a certain sort of way for a long time and still acknowledge that not all Christians were that way for all of time (at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end).
Christology
Trinity
Then why did you say:
Quoting Ciceronianus
Judaism was intolerant of other religions per the First Commandment. It was monotheistic, which necessarily entailed no other gods be worshipped.
Quoting Ciceronianus
That's because it was polytheistic, but that doesn't entail that non-believers of those gods were tolerated. It simply means that under the polytheistic structure differing gods had differing powers and some did battle with one another. Do you have evidence that the Greeks openly tolerated ridicule of Zeus by Greek citizens or that if a foreigner denounced Greek religion he'd be accepted into Greek society?
Quoting Ciceronianus
The context of those passages I'm familiar with relate to the horrors that will be brought against the enemies of the Hebrews, not specifically against gentile non-believers for their failure to believe. Regardless of the quibble, it is clear that the Hebrews who violated the commandments of God could face deadly consequences assuming one were to accept a historicity of the Old Testament. I'm not sure though that there is an actual historical record of God actually striking folks down or of little girls getting tossed against the rocks.
That is to say, there was no flood, no parting of the sea, and likely no baby tossing in ancient Israel.. To the extent the bible says otherwise, it's not true.
If you're interested, the Talmudic rules of the death penalty are attached, which are so cumbersome, that it's not clear that anyone ever received it. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-death-penalty-in-jewish-tradition/#:~:text=The%20Talmud%20endorses%20a%20similar%20position%2C%20saying%20that,without%20clear%20testimony%20at%20times%20of%20rampant%20sinfulness.
:100: :fire:
Then religions should admit it instead of clinging to the irrationality of their beliefs by making a virtue of faith.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
Ok, but then why not make it plainly known that it’s fiction? It isn’t like knowing that X book is fictional makes it impossible for it to provide meaningful moral lessons.
Pro tip: Buddhism preceded (Pauline) Christianity by five/six centuries at least. The latter could not have "lead to" the former. :roll:
In that case you get secular humanism. Basically Christianity without Christ. )
Because the intolerance of the Jews was limited, and primarily local (to Israel). Rome for the most part tolerated the Jewish religion because their weird, peculiar, god usually was just that--their (the Jews) weird, peculiar god. The Jews weren't inclined to compel everyone to become Jews (unlike Christians, who wanted all to be Christian). When the Jews and their god refused to accept Roman rule, then the legions were called in and annihilated them in 70 B.C.E. and 135 B.C.E., but that was a matter of the retention of Rome's imperium. Jews objected to pagan statutes, temples and practices in Israel, but unlike Christians they didn't seek to deface and destroy them wherever they were found.
Christian intolerance was imposed throughout the Empire after the imperial government had been assimilated by Christians. Constantine was relatively tolerant when it came to pagan religions, but under Constantius II laws and edits were issued prescribing the death penalty for those who performed or attended pagan sacrifices or worshipped pagan idols, pagan temples shut down and the Altar of Victory removed from its place of honor in the Roman Senate (around 353 B.C.E.) Subsequent Emperors like Theodosius I and II, Honorius and others continued to close pagan temples and prohibit pagan worship. It's believed that the Olympic games were closed by decree of one of the Christian Emperors. Pagan priesthoods were disbanded, the Vestal Virgins dissolved and Vesta's eternal flame extinguished. Pagans were prohibited from holding high office in government.
Of course, Christian prelates and ordinary Christians were essential to the destruction of paganism as well. St. Augustine exhorted his congregation to smash all pagan statutes and symbols "for that all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims!"
Not a cheery, easy-going, friendly folk, those early Christians. And not so early ones, as well.
Religions do admit it. Some religions don't. If you want to argue about what Christians believe, argue about Christianity, not about "religion."
But there are religions besides Christianity that have to confront sacred myth and the recognition that it isn't "fact" in that way. So as those religions acknowledge that prior "historical" claims were actually not historical, but something else, they don't become secular Christians.
Consider this - no one saw Moses part the seas. Yet there is a story of it that is central to various religious narratives. When did the author of the tale decide that it was a historical claim and the hearers believe him/her? It seems far more likely that what started in allegory has remained as such and it is only misunderstanding that leads to a literalist/facutalist claim.
It would be like people in a 1,000 years thinking that Superman was a real person because people discuss him to further truth, justice, and the American way.
That phrase is going straight into my "bag of tricks", thank you very much...
Quoting Ciceronianus
...and of the claim that there is a "big man in the sky" (or existing anywhere else, or existing otherwise) who created all, and who takes a part in human affairs.
That's the very essence of Christianity.
I didn’t bring up Christianity specifically. Which religions admit to being fiction? Pastafarianism?
Yes, quite...that and the Jesus bit, but you are right, the foundational premise of all monotheistic religions, especially those based upon the Israelite conception of God (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha'i, etc.), that premise which requires the initial act of self-delusion, is indeed that.
This just doesn’t feel like a good faith question. Are you asking to be educated, being rhetorical, or being dismissive? The statement was
Quoting Pinprick
I’ve mentioned allegory and religious myth already. I’ve also pointed out that literalism is probably ahistorical as to the actual people initially telling and retelling the inherited allegories. Literalism is a late comer to understanding, not just because there wasn’t codification of particular writings (with concomitant illiteracy among the “believers”) until after new faith communities developed, but because there was diversity of religious myth in a time before unification of those ideas (and even after those ideas).
Ignoring Christian interpretation of the Bible for a moment, what factual claims of religions are you referring to? Islam? What religions do you have in mind when you state so unequivocally that they are all making “factual” claims that they refuse to admit are re-told for purposes of wisdom rather than as an “accurate” account of some event?
Do you even know what a fact is supposed to be in this context? Or history? Have you considered truth outside of correspondence theory or its relation to “states-of-affairs”?
It is just lazy to suppose that people pass on sacred stories because they are “facts.” Narrative is editorial. Why do certain stories pass on instead of others? And why suppose that people who repeat such narratives don’t understand the purpose of repeating it?
I just don’t understand stuff like this. Christianity is not Islam, Judaism, or the Israelite understanding of God. The beardy head in the sky as creator of all IS NOT the Israelite understanding of god. The Israelites weren’t even monotheistic.
A cursory search of the internet will reveal stuff like this: How the Jews Invented God, and Made Him Great. It really is not so hard to get a religious education if you want to talk about religion. Not an education as a member of the religion, but a secular education where you learn about religions as a subject matter - their origin, their development, their evolution. Hand waving and treating a 3,500 year old story as if it can be summed up in a single sentence isn’t intellectualism or critical thinking.
Quite right. Nor do the Jews proselytize to this day. Judaism is not a religion which seeks converts to it, and proselyzation is universally considered by Jews to be contrary to Halakha. As a matter of fact, there is a tradition which some Orthodox Jewish Rabbis maintain even today: to thrice reject someone expressing an interest in converting to Judaism before finally accepting him or her as a candidate for conversion. The reason for this is quite simple, Jews (especially Orthodox Jews) consider their religion and their Tribe to be one and the same, and they understandably don't want anybody joining their Tribe of people halfheartedly. Among Jews, Torah (God's instruction) is only meant by God for members of "the Tribe", the Tribe of Judah. Jews consider that anyone who converts to Judaism is joining their Tribe. Despite the diaspora and despite living in the statist, democratic and scientific western world for centuries, Jews comprise one of the few remaining tribal societies in the world today. I know from personal experience, that when an Orthodox Jew wants to query as to whether you might be interested in converting to Judaism, he will not ask, "hey, Mike, I was wondering if you might be thinking of making a conversion to Judaism?" No, no...he instead will ask, "hey, Mike, I was wondering whether you might be considering joining the Tribe?" Jews are not opposed to someone joining their Tribe, they are simply opposed to someone joining their Tribe in a half-hearted or whimsical manner, who is not utterly serious about so doing, who is not "all in", said "all in" in this case meaning "having the proper philosophical orientation, and that in an absolute manner".
True.
Not sure about Chabbad though:
https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/584023/jewish/FAQ-Converts-Conversion.htm
The very concept of a solitary, omnipresent, omnipotent and onmiscient God developed first among the Israelites of old. Christianity, largely thanks to the fact of the first Christians being Jewish Christians, as well as the influence among the Greeks of Saul of Tarsus, took that conception of God directly from the Jews. Later, Muhammad created Islam and recited the Qur'an based solely upon what he knew of Jewish history, theology, and mythos, having learned it all from Jewish traders in the Hijaz. Islam is largely an imitative religion, tailored to reflect the values and sensibility of a seventh century Arab man. That is what I meant.
Yes, there was a certain corrupting influence from that quarter. A lot of said corruption, though, was first fed to the Greeks by Saul/Paul and his fellow missionaries, who had some extremely un-Jewish as well as...ummm..."religiously innovative" ideas. Make no mistake about it, Christianity as we know it today is far more the brain child of Saul of Tarsus than it is of Ye'shua/Jesus of Nazareth. This Saul is, with the exception of Prince Siddhartha over in India, probably the greatest religious innovator to ever have lived.
Just asking for clarification.
Perhaps we’re misunderstanding one another. You seem to be claiming that religions, at least some religions, admit that they are simply retelling a fictional tale filled with truths about life and how to live. And I’m using the term “truths” here very loosely. I’m just asking for evidence, because to the best of my knowledge, no religions make such claims. The founders of the Abrahamic religions made no such claim that I’m aware of, nor did the Eastern religious founders. Also, the vast majority of the followers of these religions make no such claim.
So why are you seemingly convinced that they were never intended to make factual claims? And by “factual claims” I mean claims about the origin of the universe, life, claims of the existence of supernatural deities, etc. In short, empirical claims. Do any of these religions explicitly say, or even imply, that these claims are meant to be metaphorical, allegorical, or fictional? I understand it’s possible to interpret these texts/claims metaphorically, but that isn’t evidence that that was the founders intentions.
Quoting Michael Zwingli
The Omni god is a GREEK invention largely attributable to Plato/Aristotle and imposed on the Jews by/during their Helenization after being conquered by the Greeks and Romans and then the Muslims.
What source do you have that Omni god was developed by the Israelites of old?
Besides that, the traditional Greek conception of the gods of their pantheon was as discrete beings, and decidedly not "omni" anything. I assume that in ascribing a Platonist/Aristotelian etiology to the concept of the Omni God, you are referencing a belief that the "monist" idea, as well as Plato's idea of the "demiurge", was applied to the God of the Jews. But, was not the God of the Yahwist the "Omni" God to begin with? Did this conception of God not gain in influence as those like Baal, Chemosh, and Ishtar dropped away with the passage of time?
This is the part that is most disingenuous. What evidence do you have about the “founders” intentions from 3,500 years ago? Tell me the basis/evidence upon which you conclude they must have meant it factually. So far as I know, there is no “evidence” either way and the most we have is some writings from about 1,000 years later. Here is Wiki on the topic:
[quote=“Wiki”]The oldest manuscripts discovered yet, including those of the Dead Sea Scrolls, date to about the 2nd century BCE. While Jewish tradition holds that the Pentateuch was written between the 16th century and the 12th century BCE, secular scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting these early datings, and agree that there was a final redaction some time between 900–450 BCE.[15][16][/quote]
It would be good if we could at least discuss people that you have some evidence about rather than compare unsupported theories about what the founders may have intended.
Here is a description of a guy in Judaism from not so long ago:
[quote=“Not a literalist”] As a sacred document, the Bible is a source of truth. While the truths contained in the Bible may not always be apparent, we know in principle that they are there if one wishes to dig deeply enough. It follows that if one’s interpretation ascribes to the Bible a doctrine that is demonstrably false, such as the claim that God is corporeal, the interpretation is incorrect no matter how simple or straightforward it may seem. Should human knowledge advance and come up with demonstrations it previously lacked, we would have no choice but to return to the Bible and alter our interpretation to take account of them (GP 2.24). Anything else would be intellectually dishonest. [/quote]
He only said that about 900 years ago. Is the argument that he is lying? Or that Jews don’t know who he is? That they disavowed him? That somehow every Jewish intellect that followed after him and acknowledge the non-literal nature of the Bible was just making it up?
Look around for evidence of what actual religious people besides fundamentalist Christians think and you may discover a rich history of religious thought where religious myth is happily understood not as historical fact.
What sort of evidence would you like? Do you want to read a few chapters later how god learns things? Or how god makes mistakes? Or god creates evil? Or god kills people for sport? Maybe we can read about the embodied god that walks or the disembodied god that needs to be carried from place to place. The descriptions of “God” in the Bible are inconsistent and evolving. The descriptions of “God” from Jews in later periods similarly move. Being omnipotent doesn’t make the Israelite god all knowing or all good. It doesn’t make that god all present.
The Israelite god isn’t even that good at being omnipotent.
As somebody noted above, the "Bible", a collection of diverse writings, contains many diverging conceptions of God. Even the pentateuch, which is redacted from several source literary traditions, contains conceptions of God which conflict. The God of the Yahwist is not the same God as the God of the Elohist, is not the same God as that of P1, is not the same God.... Even so, this changes not the fact that the idea that there is a "God of the universe" which is the "Omni" God, arose, along with other conceptions of the nature of God, amongst the Israelites, as can be discerned within the Biblical texts. It is this conception of God that has come down to, and is embraced by the Jews of today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism#:~:text=Rabbinic%20Judaism%20considers%20seven%20names,%5Bof%5D%20Hosts%22).
Well, there’s plenty of testimonial evidence. The Bibles I’ve seen have Christ’s words printed in red ink. What is the proper assumption here? That those quotes are inaccurate or correct?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Ok, I’m fine with agreeing with that. So then the question is one of the accuracy of the writings of disciples. To me, if there was ever any indication that Abraham, for example, didn’t literally believe Yahweh created the world in 7 days it would have been mentioned. IOW’s, I take whatever religious text you want to use at face value. Trying to twist or interpret scriptural empirical claims as metaphor seems like a post-hoc attempt at justifying believing the claims when they stand in contradiction to agreed upon scientific facts. Maybe it isn’t, but that’s how it appears.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
No, the argument is that a handful of people interpreting a text a certain way doesn’t mean their interpretation is correct. This also obviously applies to literalist interpretations as well. So, the question is which interpretation is better justified? So, what actually is the justification for a non-literal interpretation? That it doesn’t jive with established scientific facts?
[quote=Adapted from Wikipedia; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine] The Buddhist doctrine of the two truths differentiates between two levels of satya (meaning ‘truth’, ‘reality’, ‘that which is’) in the teaching of the Buddha: the "conventional" or "provisional" (sa?v?ti) truth, and the "ultimate" (param?rtha) truth.
The exact meaning varies between the various Buddhist schools and traditions. The best known interpretation is from the Madhyamaka school of Mah?y?na Buddhism, whose founder was N?g?rjuna. For N?g?rjuna, the two truths are epistemological in nature (what can be known). The phenomenal world is accorded a provisional existence. The character of the phenomenal world is declared to be neither real nor unreal, but logically indeterminable. Ultimately, phenomena are empty (sunya) of an inherent self or essence, but exist depending on other phenomena (Prat?tyasamutp?da).[1]
In Chinese Buddhism, the Madhyamaka position is accepted and the two truths refer to two ontological truths (what is real). Reality exists of two levels, relative and absolute. …
The ??nyat? doctrine is an attempt to show that it is neither proper nor strictly justifiable to regard any metaphysical system as absolutely valid. It avoids nihilism (nothing is real) by striking a middle course between naivete and scepticism.[/quote]
1. This has been referenced by physicist Carlo Rovelli in his latest book in support of the ‘relational interpretation’ of quantum physics.
That's a very important question!
Everything for you is an argument. Who is justifying what to whom? Actual members of the religious community don’t have to justify to you. And internally, they may not justify to one another - they simply receive what has come before. The question is not WHY they believe what they do, but whether religious people accept that their sacred myths are allegorical and not historical. You made the claim that no religious group admits that their stories are not making factual claims. When shown evidence to the contrary, you want to argue about why they admit it and whether their admission qualifies according to your as-of-yet undisclosed standard.
Even your red ink in a book that I am not talking about is highlighted in red precisely because the editors of that volume wanted you to understand the book in a particular way that was not necessitated by the standards of those that came before. Read about Christian literalism and whether anyone cared about the “facts” of creation before a few hundred years ago.
P.S. Did you ever question why Luther translating the Bible into the vernacular was such a major deal? Random quote.
[quote=“Random Website”]
Other translations of Scripture besides the Latin Vulgate were available, but Luther’s Bible was arguably the best. His opponents however, prophesied that a vernacular translation of Scripture, which allowed anyone to read and interpret the Bible for him or herself, would mean the end of Christian unity: the church would split and there would be as many interpretations of Scripture as there are interpreters. In the wake of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the ascent of human reason and emotion, Luther’s opponents were eerily accurate. Protestantism, as well as Lutheranism, is clearly fractured. Instead of the pope or the church councils lording over the Scriptures, now our own fancy has taken their place. Has access to the Scriptures really set us free? Or have we fled from one tyrant to another? Has the tyranny of the pope been replaced by the tyranny of our own reason, will, and emotion?[/quote]
I don’t think he cares, but maybe he will read about Jewish pluralism in the modern world. Much easier to simply treat “Jews” as a monolith. The synagogue he read that someone else doesn’t belong to is the Orthodox one (probably Chabad).
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/
That too ^^
I’m glad you were amused. It is crazy how the religiously ignorant non-orthodox world has bought the orthodox sales pitch hook line and sinker. Just wait till you tell him about Midrash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud
More stuff: link
The incorporeality of God and the eternity of God, which combined sound like omnipresence to me, are two of Maimonides principles. Look, I do not claim to be an expert on Judaism, and have myself ultimately had to resign myself to atheism, but I have many Jewish friends, and I don't know one religious Jew who does not concieve of God to be omni -present, -scient, and -potent. For chrissake, they will not even write the word "God" for fear of giving offense!
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Monolith, is it? Pluralism, is it? Now, you are unfairly putting words into my mouth. I thought we were talking about the conception of God amongst the ancient Israelites and the religious (particularly Orthodox) Jews of today, not about (for example) Noah Harari's conception of God... Of course, there are secular Jews, even atheist Jews like Harari, but they lie somewhat outside of the instant discussion, right? I would have thought this tacitly understood.
And even atheist Orthodox Jews, but who is counting?
What is understood is that you are making ahistorical claims about what people believed over 3,500 years of a developing religion and using it for the purpose of defining away a substantial sect of Jews that do not believe the “essence” of their faith is a misattributed god concept. If you want to claim that the essence of Judaism is something, I’d at least like you to be in the ballpark.
And who cares about Harari? Have you read Buber?
Israeli historian. :rofl:
Another guy from Israel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Mizrachi
I am utterly unfamiliar with that, but upon consideration, can imagine it, and can only imagine the difficulty of that situation.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Such a "defining away" of a segment of the Jewish population is not my intention. Rather, I was focused on addressing the origin of the concept of the "limitless" God.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Regarding this, I would be interested to read any exposition which you might provide. I find this highly interesting.
You are welcome to read about theology in that context if it interests you. But I am not trying to push Judaism. I am simply trying to bring nuance to a conversation about religion that seems heavily focused on the “Abrahamic” faiths as understood primarily through a secular Christian lens.
@Wayfarer, for his part, tried to redirect to a non-Abrahamic religion to see how it has traditionally conceived of factual claims. If we had a more religiously diverse crowd on the forum, I’m sure you’d have many expressions of how people understand their sacred myths in literal (i.e. factual) or non-literal ways.
This is excerpted without attribution because it is an old joke that involves all sorts of Jews. It can be told better or worse.
The point of the story in this context is that religion is about community at least as much as it is about theology. To be in a religious community is not to necessarily accept the dogma or creed. Many people simply want to be with their families and friends in a context of meaning. Problematically, people who discuss religion often focus on the dogma/creed/theology (regardless of whether it exists as such) rather than the community because we have been taught to divide religion from culture. Instead of defining ideas when discussing a religion, you may find it is a more worthwhile exercise to talk about the people.
My bad, I should've been clearer. "Leads to" was meant in the sense ideologically and not chronologically. That's how far-sighted the buddha was; he was way ahead of his time and struck a balance between religion proper (metaphysically heavy) and secular ethics (metaphysically empty). He was, in the end, all about the middle path.
Yes...with some relish, but a long time ago.
Quoting Wheatley
Maybe "speculative historian" is a more apt description.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Haha, just read it. Reb Eliezer would have made a poor litigator...all of his argumentation would employ circumstantial evidence!
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Well then, I'll call that adding nuance, and a great point of observation, especially at this hour (t's late here), and it actually addresses the OP more directly than the rather more historical tangent we have embarked upon.
Wanting to address the final two chapters of this certain novel, I'll sign off for now. More discussion later...
1. Sa?v?ti (provisional truth): about the world as it appears, Maya (illusion) is truth-apt. Kantian phenomenon.
2. Param?rtha (ultimate truth): about the world as it is. Kantian noumenon
?
What's so funny? I just started a book (Sapiens) by him. Should I stop? WTF?
:sweat:
Yep, :ok: It's hard to tell the difference. I thought you had something on him. It would've made for, at the very least, an interesting conversation.
Just mention/call all the anti-Israel people on this forum. lol
There are a lot of them...
Sorry to hear that but not that I'm anti-Palestine.
If you can get past the pap about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle being one of bucolic wonder, and the development of agriculture being one of the worst things ever to befall mankind, you've got "Sapiens" licked. But the follow up book, entitled "Homo Deus", is so highly and fantastically speculative, that one can only refer to it as "science fiction".
Much has been made about Harari by the 'vulgus', but the work in question is really not good academic history....popular history to be read as entertainment only, I would estimate. My assumption is that N.H., obviously possessed of a significant intellect, fully knows this, and having decided that populist solvency is preferable to academic insolvency, has decided to "give the people what they want".
That's an understatement.
:ok:
I gave that one up as a bad job. Definition
A lot of Buddhists would answer 'no'. But the first real in-depth book on Buddhist philosophy I read was The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T.R.V. Murti. He was an Indian scholar who had trained at Oxford, and the book has many in-depth comparisons between Buddhist and European philosophy, especially Kant. See this.
That said, this book was published in 1955 and many recent Buddhist scholars disagree with Murti's analysis on the basis that it's too 'euro-centric'. But the tutor who supervised my thesis on the subject (in 2012) still endorsed it.
[quote=T. R. V. Murti]Speculation does not give us knowledge, but only illusion. Neither the M?dhyamika nor Kant has any doctrine or theory of their own.[/quote]
:up: The no-doctrines way. That touched a chord in me. The notion of "factually correct" becomes meaningless.
That book is yet another attempt to incorporate non-western philosophy into western, highly abstract philosophies. To put a western umbrella on top of them. It's not a translation but an eating to digest them and shit out Kantian ideas.
Certainly not. ) I'm just making observations
It's a great book, a classic. Bet you knew nothing about it until this thread (and still don't).
Are there? Really? Who would have thought that?
Is Judaism an ethnicity? A race? A nationality?
Why do you think that I dont know the book? Its a typical book meant to assimilate.
Just a wild guess. Am I right? Go on, don't be bashful.
I many cases I can tell by physical appearance if someone is jewish. They are Kaukasian but have distinct features.
Yes, you are right. But I have a suspicion...
Whether Christianity can properly be called monotheistic presents an interesting question. The concept of the Trinity--three Divine Persons in a single Godhood--has always been something of a problem in Christianity. How could it not be? The good old Credo (derived from the Council of Nicea) spells out the difficulty, and the unsatisfying resolution of the difficulty, quite well. To use the English translation of the Latin: "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth....And in one Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, born of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father..."
For Jesus to be God, he must of course be consubstantial with the Father, and with the other Person, the Holy Spirit, but the "Three Persons" seems oddly dissimilar to "One God." Then there is, or was, the cult of the saints (who are sometimes strangely similar to pagan gods), and of course the status of Mary. All this has been explained, rather clumsily I believe, by apologists for centuries. But Christianity for me seems more like a hodgepodge of Judaism of the first century B.C.E., Greco-Roman religions current at the time, with a bit of pagan philosophy thrown in for good measure, than anything else. That may account for its astonishing success.
Dude, this is a philosophy forum. Do you not expect to be asked to justify your assertions? You’re asserting that the correct interpretation of religious texts is non-literal. I’m asking you why. I’m asking because to me the more logical assumption to make is that they mean what they say. So when they say the universe was created in 7 days, it’s literally what they mean, unless there’s reason to doubt this. I find no reason to do so other than to rectify its contradiction with science.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I’m not talking about beliefs of religious people at all. I’m talking about religious founders intentions. The question is why do you think these religious founders did not intend for their teachings, sayings, etc. to be taken literally?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
What evidence? We both agreed, or so I thought, that there was no evidence of what the religious founders intentions were. That means we’re both assuming what their intentions were. I’m asking why you’re making the assumption you are. But, regarding evidence, if the Pope admitted Christianity was fictional, that would fit the bill. But, my guess is that you could ask just about any Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. if their religion is fictional, and they would say no. Almost nobody believes that, because there’s no reason to believe that. That is never suggested by the people who started the religions, or by those who commented on religion in the beginning. My theory is that interpreting the Bible (and therefore Christianity), for example, in a non-literal way only began when the Bible’s empirical claims began to clash with newly discovered scientific facts.
The bottom line is that if religions are truly meant to be interpreted non-literally, then the people who created those religions would more than likely have made that intention known. There’s no evidence that they suggested that was their intentions. Therefore, it’s more likely that that was not their intent.
In any event, what people believe is not changed by their justification for what they believe. You might want them to justify, but they don’t have to and they may not have any answer that satisfies you. That won’t make them stop believing. So if the question is, “Does X believe?” it is a waste of time to engage in talks about why they do so.
Meaning is not inherent in words or traditions. Actual people give meaning. Discussing religion as if it is somehow different than the rest of meaning making (or interpretive contexts) is just silly.
Protestant Christians eliminate the Mary and saints problem quite handily, but having been raised Roman Catholic myself, I am very familiar with the issue, as well as the conundrum posed by Trinitarianism. The usual recitational formula is "three persons in one God". The problem with this for me is that the Church refuses to define what if means by using the term "persons". English "person" has a variety of meanings and senses, a wide semantic field, and the Church never specifies what sense it might be ascribing to the term in their use of it. "Three persons" here cannot mean "three distinct beings", as that would be tantamount to describing a pantheon. Perhaps by "persons", they mean "emanations"? This is never advanced as the meaning, though. It is a huge unresolved doctrinal problem for the Church, usually minimized or explained away as "a mystery of the faith". Not that I myself mind a little mystery, I just don't like it served as an explanation for an assertion which is irrational on it's face, and an apparent mathematical impossibility.
And for the record, you may want to consider something called “moving the goal posts” in your quest to be logical.
Quoting Pinprick
Quoting Pinprick
I simply pointed out you have no knowledge of what the founders’ intent was…
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Quoting Pinprick
No one who is religious cares what you think, Pinprick. You don’t control their interpretation of the sacred texts or their understanding of their sacred myths. So if you participate in a discussion about the point of religion (present tense), you need to look at what religious people espouse/believe, not what you do. It would be like watching porn and thinking that women enjoy what they are moaning to - you see what you want even though anyone that has a clue understands it is fiction.
The peculiarities of Christianity, and in particular those of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, are fascinating in themselves, and it's easy enough to lose oneself in them. But I think they can be relevant to the topic of the thread.
I think factual correctness isn't and shouldn't be the goal of religion, because its subject matter is largely ineffable (as is that of art). But I think that a religion should be at least reasonable to a degree, i.e. that it shouldn't require those who believe in it approve of and accept assertions, concepts or ideas that are clearly absurd. It's a personal opinion only, I suppose, but I think one of the goals of a religion should be to avoid being ridiculous.
For me, acceptance of sky-god religions, the Abrahamic religions, in their original form, requires acceptance of certain essential beliefs which clearly make no sense and are inexplicable. That seems to have worked quite well for a very long time, but any belief system which is incredible will provide no insight, no comfort, no joy, no contentment to a person inclined to accept what we encounter in life and the world. So we see apologists for that kind of religion becoming more and more inclined over the years to ignore if not reject those essential beliefs and claims of exclusiveness, or refer to them as metaphors, or as not to be taken literally.
But if a religion or philosophy is not correct (according to the opinion of most people) how can it give them moral guidance and the rest? If, e.g., I say inconsistent, nonsensical etc. things are you going to take my advices seriously?
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
Well, it seems they have and in fact a massive interest! (Not for me, of course, but for millions if not billions of people.)
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
(BTW, "living out those believes" -> "leaving out those believers")
That's an interesting idea. The believers would be certainly left out!
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
I'm not sure if we can talk about the correctness of a story. A story is just a story.
***
Because, I sound somewhat negative with my above remarks, I will talk now about something positive: :smile:
Reasoning can be evaluated as correct or not. So, I believe what can not only gain existing believers from various religions, but also gain followers from non-believers. To create a successful religious philosophy, it must be based on a sound ethical system. A system that is rational and will resonate as logical to people. Such a system could be based, e.g. on the principle of "major good for the most". Ethical behavior based on helping and enhancing survival and well-beingness, for oneself, the family, the society, the humanity. Such a system is objective, since it is applicable everywhere in the world. Behavior can also be evaluated, always according to the customs and values of the civilization to which such an ethics system is applied.
Other ethics systems can also be considered. But a religion and religious philosophy must be based on ethics and appeal to reason.
No, I would not take an advice seriously if it sounds like nonsense to me. )
But if I like the advice itself, I might ignore the fact that it comes from a 'not very credible source'.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
No, the interest is because those commandments are wrapped in a story.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I highly doubt that you can use logic to derive an ethical system. Also note that it needs to have thumos, i.e. its adepts need to be driven to action, not just nodding in agreement with some ethical ideas.
For example, look at Islam. We would consider the ideas archaic, yet their followers are full of energy to implement them with fire and blood. While all that utilitarianism stuff clearly won't drive anybody to wage a holly war on the non-believers in the holly head of Jeremy Bentham. :D
I quite agree with you, save that I would rather a 'high degree' of, though not necessarily absolute, factual correctness in religion. I feel thusly because of one of the three purposes that I ascribe to religion in general, namely the provision of vital purpose...of a sense of purpose in peoples' lives. The three valid reasons that I have been able to discern for religion are: (1) to bring people together as a community in a world of diverse nation states and mega-cities, both of which tend to thwart the formation of reasonably sized communal structures, (2) to provide significant and meaningful ritual to the observance of the milestones of peoples' lives, and so render those milestones increasedly significant, and (3) to provide people with a vital purpose which can make their lives more meaningful.
If we are to tell people that the purpose of their lives is to one day live in "heaven" (which, after all, is the old Anglo-Saxon word for "sky") with God, the angels, and the redeemed, which assertion appears to be unfactual for many reasons, then I think we do them a disservice. This, because we initially delude them, and because if they are eventually able to rationalize away said delusion, they are left with the horrible feeling of living an utterly purposeless life (this I know from experience, as I have experienced that "dark night of the soul"). Even so, it is for this last stated reason that I am not in favor of disabusing people of what Dawkins called their "God delusion" unless I have some alternate belief system to replace it, and so avoid the deficit of purpose which might arise as a consequence of my actions. All in all, I think it better to live with delusion than with purposelessness. So, when people tell me that they believe God, or Jesus, or Saint Jude, etc., is going to help them with some problem, I simply nod affirmatively, and tell them that "I hope so", since I have no "religion" to replace what I might damage.
For reasons involving the foregoing, I would rather we inculcate religion within our yor children which does not stand in essential opposition to any known or reasonably theorized fact of reality. What such relugion might look like, I am unsure as yet, but it is something that I have been giving much thought to recently.
I think we're generally in agreement on these issues. The need someone like Dawkins apparently feels to tell everyone there is no God strikes me as no more appealing than the need others feel to tell everyone there is a God.
As far as alternatives to what seems to be our common upbringing in the Catholic faith, for me, the immanent deity of the Stoics has an appeal, or some form of pantheism or pandeism.
I feel the same. To my mind, the Dawkinsian/Hitchensian imperative reflects the difference between atheism and antitheism. The atheist arrives at his stance based upon what I call "the (Bertrand) Russell rule": the acceptance of supernatural claims demands supernatural proofs, the atheist being he who has discerned no evidence for the supernatural claim of a divine being of any type (but in the instant case, one which is conveniently incorporeal...omnipresent...as well as omniscient and omnipotent), and so does not believe the claim for lack of evidence, yet allows for the possibility of the supernatural, including of deity, which has not yielded any evidence. In contrast, the antitheist is he who is opposed to the very concept of God, believes affirmatively that there is no such thing, and often scoffs at those who choose to believe, as well as those who allow for the unverified possibility.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Hmmm. I have been giving this problem of alternatives some thought recently, because I believe that religion adds a great deal to human life. Regarding the Stoic concept of deity, I have but meager knowledge, and even less understanding. I have read Seneca's De Providentia, but as I was studying Latin at the time, my reading thereof was more focused on the Latin grammar and sentence structure, and not at all on actively synthesizing the ideas presented into a coherent whole. My reading was of the Latin text, in an extremity of fits and starts, and with frequent but disjointed references to the parrallell English text. Luckily, I still have the Loeb Classics edition, so I can revisit that work by reading only the English text. I wonder, which other of the Stoic authors may I turn to for an exposition of this topic?
Certainly, there exist religions which present non-theistically. Buddhism, for instance presents itself as a non-theistic alternative in the eyes of many. It is not a theistic religion per se, but it seems to have it's own ideological and epistemological problems, nonetheless. For instance, it presupposes reincarnation, which itself is steeped in the concept of "the soul" as an eternal, incorporeal part of every living thing, something which we have no more evidence for than for God. Within Buddhism, the achievement of "moksha" involves the breaking of samsara, the cycle of reincarnation, and this is the ultimate purpose rendered to men by that religious observance. In addition, I feel that Buddhist ideology places an impossible task on it's adherents by injuncting them to renounce all attachment and all desire, even while there are evolutionarily established, genetically determined desires which are inherent in homo sapiens. In so doing, it is creating an imperative for men and women to renounce an integral aspect of their humanity, which I fear an impossible task for most.
As science exposes more and more of the nature of our universe, it appears that theistic religion shall become less and less tenable for many, the fact becoming more and more apparent that there is no evidence for the existence of any gods. My supposition is that the future of religion lies, ironically in my view, within the sphere of what would most aptly be called "neopaganism". I, as well, have considered the pantheistic idea, but the principle of deification, even of nature, inherent in that term throws me a bit. The tendency might develop to deify every star and mountain individually, which sends us from the apparent delusion of monotheism right back to the greater delusion of polytheism. Do you not suppose that the conception of Dyeus Pater, essentially a deification of the sun, by the Proto-Indo-Europeans proceeded directly from the pantheistic mindset? We all know where that led: Zeus, Jupiter, and all their preposterous colleagues. I think, rather, that an effective religion can be nature-based, universe-based, or existence-based without deification of any kind, perhaps by observing and reverencing nature and the universe that we can percieve, without engaging in any kind of "worship" of anything.
Such are my thoughts pertaining to this, to religion in general. Sorry for rambling on...it's not often that I have occasion to express these usually solitary ruminations.
I’ve already linked several of them. The gift of the existentialists to some extent is that modern people could use the same language/customs/rituals of their forebearers but understand them in fundamentally different ways, i.e. give them their own meaning. Existence precedes essence - the past is gone and has no claim to the meaning we make in the present. What was once a church is now a night club, no matter how deeply the buildiers of the church wanted it to be something else. Insisting that building is not a church is both right and wrong, but pretending as if it has no history is just disingenuous.
:up:
My, I didn't realize that I had so many typos in my post...partly the fault of a bothersomely autocorrective AI, and partly my fat fingers on a tiny keyboard!
I’m fine playing by your rules. But, I’d like to know what exactly your position is. Do you think religions were intended to be non-literal? Why or why not?
BTW, my personal religious views are irrelevant, as are yours. I’ve no concern in converting others, or what have you. I’m open to the idea that religions are meant to be metaphorical, but I just haven’t seen any good evidence of that. They do make empirical claims that I think most people would be hard pressed to interpret any way other than literal, but that’s just me.
I agree. That's what I would do too.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
This indeed may be true. However, I don't think that these commandments and the story behind them, work like tales for little children ... If I remember well, when I heard about them in a Religion course (in elementary school, I think), I felt a kind of awe ... Not pleasant though! A feeling of blind obedience or something like that. And this is maybe how they were intended for. Actually, the whole Old ?estament is base on creating such an awe, if not terror! (Biblical catastrophes, God's relentless vengeance and punishment, etc.)
On the other hand, I loved the stories about Jesus. The New Testament is much lighhter and inspiring!
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
Well, this sounds like a prejudice. It also sounds that you didn't read what I wrote on the subject! :smile:
They'll probably still call themselves Christians, but they won't be able to promise salvation anymore.
"Progressiveness" always comes with a cost: it works on the assumption that the original (or any previous version of the) religion is ineffective, impotent, that it cannot and does not deliver what it promises.
Given this, the progressives have two options:
One: they assume superiority over the original religion (or over whatever version came before theirs); as in "Those before us didn't get it right, but we do, and we can in fact deliver what is being promised".
Two: They relativize the whole project of religious/spiritual attainment (such as by suggesting there "really", "ultimately" is no attainment, or that it is irrelevant).
By "factually incorrect" you mean what?
That there is no heaven, no eternal damnation, and no nibbana?
And you get extremely inconclusive results.
Yup. Which is why attacking religion with a particular description of religion writ large is pointless. It doesn’t carry any weight with respect to what actual people believe or why they belong/self identify.
There's very little of the works of the ancient Stoics that now exist, and of which I'm aware, which address the Stoic conception of the deity. You'll find references to God (Zeus) and Providence in Epictetus' Discourses. Marcus Aurelius makes occasional references in his Meditations. Seneca addresses the deity somewhat. There are only fragments of the works of the three "founders" of Stoicism--Zeno, Cleanthes and Chyrisippus--that are now available.
So most of the sources are secondary, and are works of those who read what is not available now. Diogenes Laertius wrote on the lives of the philosophers, including the Stoics, summarizing their views. Cicero was sympathetic to Stoicism and his De Natura Deorum describes the Stoic and other conceptions of God.
A book I've been trying to get is God and Cosmos in Stoicism, edited by Ricardo Salles.
Essentially, according to my understanding, the Stoic deity, sometimes referred to as the Divine Reason, is immanent (the Stoics being materialists). However, it is pneuma, likened to fire or breath, and is the active principle which governs the universe. The Stoic maxim "live in accordance with Nature" is a reference to this divine principle which is a part of Nature but also that which guides it.
I envy you if you can read Latin. My knowledge of it is too spotty to do so.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Haha, I never got far enough along in Latin to bother with man's labyrinthine prose! English translation, though...
But he's considered the great master of Latin prose, or was considered so at least. Not that I've read him in Latin, of course, and so can have no opinion, but such was his reputation. He was admired even by Christians, like St. Jerome who was berated in his famous "bad dream"--Ciceronianus es, non Christianus. Erasmus wrote that intellectuals of his time were too inclined to imitate Cicero, and complained that Cicero as a pagan couldn't be a model for a Christian writing Latin (tongue in cheek, perhaps).
Pretty much. Also that Jesus probably didn't do any miracles, etc. And all religious teaching are scientifically unprovable.
Probably best example for this would be Nietzsche, who lived a rather miserable life himself, yet you feel tremendous energy and power coming from his writings.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Probably I misses something, but anyway, how do you derive an ethical system from an observation using logic? Without slipping some value judgement into it, such as "we should all live in peace"?
What constitutes a religious teaching? You can go to many a religious institution and find teachings on how to read. Do you think they are using ineffective methods based on science or maybe that they have bad metrics for verifying language is taught? What about when they teach the history of Germany or Italy? Do you think that history is a fiction inaccessible to scientific scrutiny?
What if they give a class on chemistry and teach that a spark plus oxygen and hydrogen yields water? Because a religious institution teaches it, it is scientifically unprovable?
In other words, besides teaching “science” what can be taught that is, on your view, scientifically provable?
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Einstein was a religious guy. It even inspired his view on quantum mechanics ("der Herr Gott w?rfelt nicht").
Nietzsche is a giant and very popular philosopher. I don't know anything about his private life. Rich or poor, is certainly of no importance to me. I would even accept statements even by Wittgenstein, who was heavily deppressive and looked like wandering curse --one the most depressive figures I have ever seen in my life!-- if he didn't say such shallow things as "The limits of my language are the limits of my world" (I have created a topic on that!)
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
You said "I highly doubt that you can use logic to derive an ethical system", which is quite general, although I specifically explained that the ethics system I was talking about relies on reason (logic) and that the basis of it, the main principle, is survival, which is something objective and logical (at least, it is accepted as such in almost all civilizations). So, If you meant that you doubt about the viability of the specific ethics system I described, then it's OK. But I would like --not require! -- if you could also tell me why. (I always like to hear things that challenge my reality! :smile:)
(Re: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/595946, second part, after the 3 asterisks)
I would totally agree with you here, that all ethics are based on survival. Pretty much Nietzsche's idea that ones instincts take into account his capabilities and select a best survival strategy. For example, a strong person would see it as ethical to fight the enemy, as he has a good chance of winning. While a weak person would whine about "let's all be friends", not because he is "ethical", but because it is his best strategy.
This clearly explain origins of Christianity - they could not win over Romans by force, so they opted for whining. But what is going on with modern Christians - why are they so reluctant at defending their values, while they kinda have the tools to do so?
My only opinion is that they want to live out their messiah, they want to suffer for their believes, not to win.
That's the whole point about religions at the end. That's their goal indeed.
What are religions? Simple human inventions and nothing more.
What people invent? What they need.
And they DID need a moral guidance as to live organized in societies. They still DO need it (the vast majority nowadays are theists) as a source of morals . That's pretty obvious from the fact that humans keep maintaining them and follow them. It's the most sufficient "moral glue" for human societies. So far.
What can replace it? I opened a thread some time ago about that and the sensation I got from it was that there isn't something that is able to replace it, yet at least.
Many had proposed better education. I found that most appropriate too. As one day, people might reach to the point to get their morals simply by Logic. And no need of any God.
Not sure how people can create morals by logic?
It does seem they need a 'supreme being' to live, be it Jesus and God and Karl Marx and Lenin. Doesn't really matter what, as long as it is something that gives them a noble goal to strive for, be it paradise or equality.
Like a husky dog needs to run 50km a day to feel happy and fulfilled, while the destination doesn't really matter. Same is with human, they need to peruse something they see as meaningful.
For me it's not that difficult when you realize that if you want to live in organized societies, it is for your own benefit at the end to behave "good".
But it might not be possible indeed. I'm not very sure about it either.
Well I m sure that simple Logic is really enough for that. But not so sure that Logic will be enough as to "convince" people for that purpose.As to reach to that point.
And this because of the active repression of Stoic ideas by Christians - the tragedy of their rise is the destruction of the literature and art of antiquity.
Sigh.
No different from some islamians indeed. Or Mohammedians.
No. It's the consequence of people being intolerant.
Gregory Paul has done a similar comparison, as well as one between states within the US, and found parallel results. Which way the causal arrow goes is an interesting question: does secularism foster healthy caring, or does religiosity die away in societies where people care for one another? Paul himself says, “once a nation’s population becomes prosperous and secure, for example through economic security and universal health care, much of the population loses interest in seeking the aid and protection of supernatural entities.”[/i] Times
Wasn't it brotherly love?
1765, "unwillingness to endure a differing opinion or belief," from Latin intolerantia "impatience; unendurableness, insufferableness; insolence," from intolerantem "impatient, intolerant" (see intolerant). https://www.etymonline.com/word/intolerance
Ask Hypatia.
Christianity wasn't the first monotheistic religion (see, e.g. Judaism and Atenism) and it's not universally accepted as monotheistic due to the trinity theology. Mormonism admits to polytheism, which holds itself to be a form of Christianity.
Hinduism is polytheistic but discriminates based upon a rigid caste system and isn't what I'd consider "tolerant."
The term "religious war" is a Western inventiion, creating a rigid distinction between secular ambitions (land, power, etc ) and religious ones. The two are always mixed.
My point being that regardless of the problematic history of Christian oppression, your quote above is factually incorrect on many levels.
Sure.
It was the first to achieve political power, in late Rome, and to unleash the logical consequence of monotheism - the repression of alternatives.
Which is why we have so few stoic texts from antiquity.
Not to mention intolerance against Muslims. Source
Quoting Ciceronianus
Pandeism (i.e. Spinozism sub specie durationis). :up:
"Ask Hypatia." :100:
I asked he?. She said people abuse religion to excercise their natural will to have power. Once religion (or any other culture, like science) becomes the norm, they can hide behind it. To overpower other people. Like a scientist uses science to impress with their so-called intelligence. Intelligence as a means to power. To keep others, the not-knowing, the non-intelligent, down and feel more than them.
Not to mention science's intolerance towards the non-scientific.
No it wasn't. Every religion(from the very first one) used and achieved political power. They are combined. And humans always used religions for other "purposes". Taking advantage of them.
It wasn't Christianity's privilege at all. It just seems that you find Christianity especially "guilty" for every humanity harm. It has to do with religions in general and not at all with Christianity itself.
You're just angry at the Christian right.
Was Marin Luther King JR intolerant??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
Here's an article about religious toleration. link
MLK preached tolerance!
Your position is that prior to Christianity, there were no oppressive regimes, but that oppression began as the result of monotheism? That's just obviously historucally false. Egypt is one example among many.
Something in the order of ninety percent of classical literature was destroyed in that period.
Christianity was the first of the Abrahamic monotheistic religion to achieve large scale political power. It immediately started persecution of non-Christians. Monotheism is an inherently intolerant doctrine.
Them's the facts.
Tell me the story about intolerance in Egypt. Let's take a look. Who persecuted who?
:up:
Quoting Banno
Passover!
I had taken you to be referring to Amenhotep.
Hmm. Looks to be supporting my contention rather than refuting it.
In the Jewish religion, the story of Passover talks about Egyptian slavery of the Jews. I was attempting to explain Hanover's post. I am sorry for not making an argument.
SO the argument here is; King was tolerant; hence all Christians are tolerant?
Yep. Yet the reason we have so little classical literature is that it was not tolerated by the Christians of the later Roman period, nor the Byzantines.
By who?
Ok, whatever. My point stands.
:up:
I find it often dishonest. I also think it presumes a morality it has often not demonstrated.
I find it disingenuous to group "all Christians" together. There are a lot of subsets of Christianity.
It's hard to follow your point when you didn't even bother to quote the OP!
Just for you:
What about that point?
@Banno Were you responding to the OP?
.
But Ciceronianius is worth reading. Quoting Ciceronianus
I actually hadn't read that until just then, when I tried to go back to find the post to which I originally replied. He's a clever fellow, our Tullius. Must be - he agrees with me.
I didn't say you did.
Yea you did, by putting your comment in my quote:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Thunderballs
...and so Christianity did not destroy classical literature. Is that your argument?
Quoting Banno
Your position is historically inaccurate, so there's not much to argue. Amenhotep is not representative of Egyptian religion generally, but an interesting example of short lived pre-Judaic monotheism.
In any event, to what I was responding to, oppression and monotheism don't correlate. They've existed independently of another as much as at the same time.
Monotheism and prostlisizing don't go hand in hand. You can believe there's one god without demanding others follow. If your objection is simply to the forced conversion of others, I'm with you, but there's nothing specific to monotheism that demands that, nor is that aspect of religious persecution any worse than declaring someone an untouchable, as in Hindu.
My contention that Christianity was largely responsible for the destruction of classical literature, and culture generally, is that presented by Gibbon, and one or two others since. You will need something more than just naysaying.
I have a spare copy of The Darkening Age, which I will happily send to you for your errudition. PM me.
I stand corrected...
Sigh...
Can you blame them after what Roman empire did to them? Sometimes only a Jesus can turn his other cheeck. Im not sure they were eaten asinging by the lions. Alife yes.
So?...
In that case you are taking "if you want to live in organized societies" as a priory. :) How those societies should be organized? Should you be good just to members of your society or should you also be good towards those, who want to destroy your society?
Well, besides being very subjective, instincts are quite vague both as an idea and in practice. And then, "best survival strategy"? It reminds me of chess and games theory! Even using pure reason (logic) I don't think that such a thing could be "computed". But this is a secondary subject, of course.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
There are a lot of reasons why people in history have started a war. Most of them were of course for pure domination purposes, which make them automatically "unethical": lifes were taken and the survival of whole countries was threatend. Other wars, were started to gain independence (liberated from the yoke of an oppressor, etc.) These were done with the purpose to pretect the survival of the oppressed. So they can be considered ethical endeavours rather than unethical.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
This sill complete my thesis that I started in the previous question, that is, considering now the position of the person who is under (the threat of an) attack.
If he is strong enough or has enough courage, he could fight back. And this would be to protect his survival, so it would not be considered totally unethical. That is, he would still be responsible for the loss of lives.
On the other hand, he could prefer peace (really or because of fear, it doesn't matter) as a solution and won't fight back but try instead to find ways to avoid the confrontation. This is the more clever (intelligence, reason) and ethical thing to do. No lives would spared!
You see, ethics and reason go hand by hand.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
1) Romans had conquered Greece about 150 years before Christianity was born.
2) Christians had no guns. How could they figjht Roman armies?
3) Christians have never whinned. They withstood mass slaughter, martyrdom and humilation with exemplary courage.
4) Christianity has finally won the whole Roman Empire!
(Not that I am some fanatic Christian ...)
Just saying...
Well yes. The other alternative is to go live alone in mountains and caves. If someone wants that, it's fine too. But if you want to live among others you have to follow some rules.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
If someone wants to destroy your society,i don't see being "good" with him very helpful. Of course the "threats" and the "ways to deal with them" varies in each occasion. But I think it's irrelevant with my point.
My point is that being "good" turns into your own benefit at the end in organized societies. Respecting others, realize that you should help if you want to get help when you need it also, don't harm others as not others to want revenge and harm you back etc etc. These are "morals" that can be provided by simple Logic.
But told you my main doubt is the way that people could be convinced to follow that path.Reasoning all people in the world (especially since the average humanity intellectual level is yet low) just by talking them about Logic without the "laws" of a powerful creature (God) might not be possible at all at the end.
Why? No, I mean I clearly see that you are operating from the point of view of "ethical = conflict avoidance, spare lives, etc." but why do you consider it ethical?
Well, by whining and ideological subversion. Romans had lots of slaves, who were not welcome into their religion. So Christians tailored their message so it would appeal to slaves an all sort of other outcasts and, basically, united them under their banned. Pretty much what the left is doing in the US/EU right now.
Easily, if they harm others, they go to jail and get butt-raped. :)
I quote myself: "Ethical behavior based on helping and enhancing survival and well-beingness"
So, doesn't preventing a war help survival? If so, isn't it an ethical decision and action?
Well, I hate to say this again (not esp. with you), but it's not OK to turn the discussion away from the main subject of the topic and start new discussions based on secondary subjects that were just brought up in the process. It happens too often!
No, but intolerance is not limited to or invented by Christianity. It's just a nasty human quality. Science is the most intolerant culture. Inconsistent? So be it!
I think you'll like this guy.
:point: https://youtu.be/JKHUaNAxsTg
I had one book of him! About panpsychism. The guy is great. In any case non-standard! I dont agree volatile stars are an explanation of dark matter.
Thanks for the link! :smile:
Ever consider the possibility that what really happened is that Christianity provided people with the freedom to do what they wanted? And what they wanted was to destroy classic literature. The reason? Because it was full of lies, deception, and immorality, being the medium of a deprived culture..
So perhaps, what Christianity really provided was freedom from a corrupted, degenerative regime, by enabling revolt. And destruction of the medium through which the oppressors have operated was the final symbolic rejoicing, as they reveled in freedom. It's not mere coincidence that the acts you refer to coincide with the fall of the Roman Empire.
What has she got to do with brotherly love?
To which modern slaves you refer? Loan slaves?
Say, Ennui, I just realized that Schwartz and I are "kindred spirits" of a type. I will be going with a friend later this morning to his church. I don't particularly like his church (ugh..."Evangelical Christian", meaning the service amounts to a particularly loud, particularly inane rock concert with a bit of vague sermonizing attached, all of it appealing to the emotions rather than the intellect), which doesn't offer any of the values which I find rewarding in a religious experience...such as "significant ritual" (as is represented for me by the Catholic mass). Even so, I, the "atheos ex catholicum", do find some value in going there, for while Schwartz goes to synagogue to talk to Goldberg, I go to my friend's church to look at the girls! :up:
I am thankful to Schwartz for seeming to validate my behavior, which occasionally serves to fill the weekly Sunday morning "dead spot" in the calendar. I personally have found, curiously, that when one has been raised to perform a religious ritual, such as is represented by churchgoing on Sunday mornings, it becomes difficult to enjoy other activities during that weekly time period, even if you no longer adhere to the religion in question. It is as if that time slot should be reserved for a certain type of activity, and to do something else seems a bit out of place. This means that for myself, Sunday mornings have long been a type of "dead spot" in the week, with me often unsure of what to do. Don't know if anybody else has experienced that phenomenon. Regarding the girlwatching, you are invited anytime...I'll provide the earplugs, and an affidavit verifying your non-participation. :wink:
If you take that route, you end up in the Humpty-Dumpty land of my-religion-is-anything-I-want-it-to-be-and-I-can-call-it-whatever-I-want-and-everyone-needs-to-respect-that.
And whose problem is that?
That's a more focused claim than made before, which was correlating monotheism to intolerance.,suggesting it was the monotheistic aspect of Christianity that resulted in its destructive nature.
Titus did destroy Judea and the Temple in Jerusalem, so to the extent the argument is made that polytheists stand for tolereance over their aggressive monotheistic neighbors, I don't see that. The act of destroying the temple dramatically changed Judaism and that culture forever.
I more generally see a violent human nature evident throughout history, not specifically related to any religion, but to power and politics, with religion being one method used to control. Whether the Christians were helpful to Rome or Rome helpful to the Jews, of course not, but identifying religion as the malevolent force, particularly monotheism, seems overly simplified and refutable by counter-examples.
The part of your quote I bolded doesn't make sense to me because I don't know what it means to be without culture. What happened perhaps was the replacement of one set of cultural values for another and you apparently lament that those you preferred were displaced.
That is exactly what is all about. And his false in the base that he builds his argument on.
Blames for all human nature weaknesses religions. As if behind them aren't people.
And after Christianity especially. That Logical row simply makes no sense at all. Add to all these, the historical error that Christianity was first to oppress others, be intolerant and seek political state and you will understand that there isn't much to argue about here.
Gibbon's work is a hallmark, required reading for the classicist, but one must be mindful of Gibbon's anti-religion bias, which has bled into the D&F.
Quoting Hanover
I think you see well. This violent nature, however, appears rather uncalculated, but rather instinctual. It is, again I say, the old "libido dominari", which evolutionarily developed as an integral part of all mammalian species. This is the reason behind why a male lion who has just killed or defeated the "alpha", and so become leader of the pride, will immediately engage in the macabre activity of seeking out and killing all of the previous alpha's Cubs, in order that the lionesses will more quickly come into estrus, allowing him to breed them. This instinct's sole end is to have the highest status possible within the social group, and to ensure genetic dominance.
And more should not be expected from humans than from some animals?
Depending at what cost. :)
Quoting Thunderballs
I believe all human qualities are build into us by evolution, therefor it served us well at some point. People are tibale by nature and being intolerant of the competing tribe, at times, might be very beneficial. It looks to me that most problems of the modern world are brought on by being too tolerant.
I am referring to lefists, who are promoting the victim-hood culture for their own political gain. who are splitting the society into oppressors vs oppressed and setting them up against each other, be it lgbt against straight people, blacks against whites, women against men, etc.
Are you referring to Social conflict theory ?
Do you really dispute who the original instigator was in each of these conflicts you've identified? It's not like blacks, gays, and women were all equal players in society and that they woke up one morning and spun a narrative that they were oppressed and wanted equal rights.
I'm not disputing that in any political fray either side might not be guilty of over-playing their hand well past its moral limits, but it seems fairly naive to hold one side blameless, especially when it's the side that threw the first hundred or so punches.
Yes, you could say so. i.e. Marxist ideology that tells some problematic group that all their problems are because the other group is oppressing them and, therefore, they should somehow oppress that group in return to make things even. Unfortunately, there are lots of gullible, bitter and resentful people, who fall for it.
Can you give an example?
It does seem that the current approach, i.e. for example, blaming current white people for slavery that they ended over 5 generations ago. Or blaming current straight people for some gay oppression generations ago. A healthy approach would be to see us all as people, who have our own interests and we should learn to live together in a society, trying to balance our interests the best way possible, so that the society does not collapse. Also understanding that life has struggles build into it, things very often do not go the way we plan, but blaming some class of people, who supposedly oppressed us generations ago, is a very toxic approach that leads to gulags and misery.
Critical race theory, for example, teaches black kids that they would not be able to succeed in life because of their skin color, so don't even try, white people will still hold you down.
Feminism, pretty much the same, telling women that there is a 'glass ceiling', that men won't allow them to succeed.
So, instead of taking responsibility and trying their best, they fail because of not even trying and then blame others for their miserable lives.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
Those are misrepresentations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
And what do you think are correct representations?
I would have to ask them in person.
whom? race hustlers? :)
Marxists.
Just know that their goal is to get political power, not "make things better".
For that they are happy to split the society into classes and generate artificial conflicts among them by blaming one class for all the misfortunes of the other.
It should, but we err if we deny our core nature
That's just your opinion...
Did it ever play out any other way? ;) whenever Marxists come to power, it always end in a totalitarian state and misery & concentrations camps for the people.
Do you have any confirmation for this claim?
[...]
Quoting Wheatley
AKA "progressive liberals".
They're all Marxists??
Russian October revolution rings a bell? Basically replaced a stupid Czar with a blood-thirsty maniac Lenin, followed by Stalin.
That's not confirmation.
like what do you want, a history lesson? :D use google for that. ;)
I'm not going to do your job. :angry:
LOL :D
Actually, they are not marxists, but functionally the same as pertains to the inevitable results of their exertions: the state as intermediary of all function and arbiter of all decision-making. The state as "the great father"...everybody's "daddy". This will happen over my dead body, or in my absence, should I choose to emigrate rather than fight what could only be a losing battle. Unfortunately, it seems to be the natural tendency in a nation which employs democracy, the "tyrrany of the vulgus", as a mode of determining political power.
And say goodbye to private business!
Oh, we'll still have private business, alright...in order that the state may take all the profits as tax revenues available for "redistribution". Remember AOC's stated hope: tax the wealthy at upwards of 70% of their income?
See here, a member of Congress behaving like some sophomoric high school debutante: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/aoc-dress-designer-owes-taxes-b1922909.html
...from which exhebition I am led to believe that the idea of "gravitas" being appropriate for a civic leader is dead, and gone from American society. In any case, AOC reinforces her stated goal by this display.
What we will lack is the "profit motive", unless business owners, corporate executives, and investors can become increasingly creative in their "offshore" activities.
What profit motive? Most people are just trying to make a living.
About fighting Marxism being a losing battle. I am from Eastern Europe, I was born in Soviet-occupied territory, so I know that culture very well.
And I can not understand why Americans ( republicans ) don't want to really fight Marxists, instead they just play on the defense, arguing for freedom of speech ( even for Marxists ) and basically let's all be friends attitude.
Probably their Christian value system is holding them back, as it sees suffering for ones believes as a good thing. While in reality you don't win a war by suffering, you win by making the other side suffer. ;)
Believe me, the battle, which is being called here in the States "the culture war", is raging, albeit at a low level of intensity. This country has never been so politically divided. When I was coming up, most Americans could have never imagined a mob invading the Capitol Building with members of Congress inside...terrified in their chamber while Capitol Police officers were killed in the building, but (it stretches my credulity to recognize it) it sure did happen recently. Americans were once quite uniformly patriotic, putting the country before the faction, but apparently no longer. All of this is the result of the progressive faction of the Democratic Party getting enough people "on the dole", receiving government benefits of one kind or another, and registered to vote, that they have become a permanent force in our electoral politics.
I should avoid these political discussions, they get me too ramped up...
I know it is, I'm watching the Daily Wire, Dinesh D'souza and such. The problem, as I see it, is that the right fails to use effective means. Instead of canceling leftist speakers and bullying leftist ideologues into silence, they tend to take the "let's all be friends" approach.
Even Trump, who was the president for 4 years, failed to use his powers to crush the enemy. :(
Trump was ineffective because he is such an asshole, in terms of personality, which alienated many, and because lacks the intelligence to employ political finesse in the attainment of political goals. Under our Constitution, the President must convince the populace of the best way forward for the country. He has no constitutional authority to "strongarm" the population, quite appropriately. The Republican party has become just as bad as the Democratic, now. As the Democrats have been co-opted by progressivism, the Republicans, once "traditional conservatives" in the George Will mode, have been co-opted by populism, and a vaguely heightened form of nationalism (not nearly fascist yet). There has been a steady movement towards the political poles. The situation does not provide a good aspect on either side, for a Libertarian such as myself.
So what? Everyone's goal is political power, at the end. But some also at the same time make things better indeed.
Not that I see Marx as right to everything but you can't condemn a huge communist ideology so easily and blame it that he didn't fight for justice with the right way . At least it was a fight. An effort as to try changing things. Even that it failed its "fingerprint" in humanity's map was positive. Imo at least.
Marx ideology with its wrongs (and they are many) moved humanity one step forward especially on human rights. The things that some communists did by "translating" Marx wasn't Marx 's fault. That's a story for another thread.
Don't get me wrong i am not communist and I find it as a "great impossible fairytale" but at least Marx PROPOSED something at last.
Humanity was and still is, full of philosophers who only do criticism to everything without proposing anything at all at the end.
Well Marx dared at last! So don't be so aphoristic about him. I find that unfair.
Would you say the same about, for example, Hitler? :)
What Marx proposed had led to gulags and murders of hundreds of million throughout the last century. If that is not the wrong side of history, I don't know what is.
Many people do that and I find it unacceptable and totally unfair to see these 2 ideologies as same. So I can never accept that.
If you are asking though if Hitler also proposed something. Of course he did! Even what it was is totally shit. Still many people buy it! It was a shitty proposal but still a proposal.
But come on I find it absolutely unethical to compare Marx with Hitler. And I repeat to you that communists translated Marx and did shitty things also. And yes as you say they murdered people too.
But if we examine them as just 2 pure ideologies. You can never claim that they are morally the same.
I don't agree but anyway that it's a huge different discussion.And not for that thread.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
No it isn't the same at all. And apparently you didn't get my meaning . if you want to compare Hitler with Stalin fine. But with Marx? No absolutely way. Anyway i drop it.
Marxism was good as an indicator of injustice. In some parts of the world, it was needed, just as trade unions were needed in the early industrialized West, England and America, where little children once worked their fingers to the bone for 14, 16 hours a day, six days a week, in mills and factories. But, too much Marxism proved as bad as too much unionism, with it's unreasonable demands, which deeply hurt alot of industry in the U.S. and was the destruction of Detriot, once a great city. When it's fat, middle aged men with a decent wage and a 40 hour work week making the demands, rather than the parents of starving overworked children, you know you have a problem. The fault is that once they gain a bit of power, human beings don't know when to say "okay, enough. If I want any more, I should do what I must to advance within the social system, and not use the politics of power to coerce it."
Sorry I m not interested in communist conversations at all anymore. Made it many times at the past. And now I find them endless and at that field most people (including myself) become most stubborn. I see no use in them anymore so as in my real life same here I strongly avoid them.
Wrote it. I don't agree at all with many things that he said and find them impossible to happen. Against human nature in fact.
Communism is horrible! :hearts:
Gibbon was the first to ignore the myths Christianity built around itself, and so to address the history. That doing so is seen as being "anti-religious" is zealotry. It can bee seen here again in multiple posts.
The temples were not just left to collapse; they were brought to ruin; the statues did not fall because of mere age; they were pulled down. The academies did not just wither, they were prohibited. The books were not just left to rot; they were stolen and publicly burned. This was done by empirical edict and with the active support of Bishops.
This is what occurred; but even now it is denied.
Gibbon was a Roman Catholic convert. If anything he is at pains to be even-handed . Any anti-religious bias is in the eye of the religious, in their need for comfortable lies.
It is pretty clear that Rome was at a loss as to how to deal with a group so set in their superstition. See Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan. Pliny is at pains to accomodate Christianity within the Roman framework, but at a loss as to how to go about dealing with what amounted to treason by a secret brotherhood.
Their monotheism was what led them to refuse obeisance to Trajan's statue. It was monotheism that refused to accept other gods, destroying their temples. Belief in the one true god implies intolerance towards those with other beliefs.
Consider Popper's account of how a liberal society can tolerate everything except intolerance, a justification used for example for the silencing of Holocaust denial and right-wing extremism. The logical structure here is that liberal tolerance cannot be extended to those who would insist on intolerance. That logical structure is found in the Roman capacity to accept and adopt religions from all over the Empire; the provision was that they accept the religious views held by others. Christianity could not play along. It refused to tolerate alternate views, indeed seeing this intolerance a a virtue. This is why Pliny and the Roman governance saw it as criminal.
A polytheistic religion can accomodate other religions by adding and equating the gods of one religion with those of another. This was a policy actively followed during the expansion of Rome. It is an option not available to monotheism, which instead proselytises.
Rome had no need for missionaries.
So I maintain with good reason that there is a distinct difference in kind between how polytheistic and monotheistic religions treat their rival beliefs.
Indeed.
"I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system."
Gore Vidal
Notice here the pile-on of apologists? Notice how they do not make reference to historical documents? Notice the ad hom nature of their arguments - that I hate Christianity, that Gibbon was anit-christian; the accusation suffices for them; no need for evidence.. Notice the non sequiturs - that there are tolerant Christians, hence Christianity as a religion must be tolerant.
What if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct? It isn't; no need for the "what if..."
I'd argue Christianity is polytheistic. I can arrive at no other conclusion unless I accept the mystery of the triunity is coherent, which it's not.
Polytheism doesn't suggest tolerance as it's just as logical for a polytheistic religion to be a form of monolatry or henotheistic, meaning the existence of lesser gods is accepted, but there is still a dominant God that is worshipped. Such existed among the Greeks and Romans with Zeus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism
As also noted, it is not logically necessary that monotheistic religion attempt to convert others or express hostility to others. Judaism, for example, posits a chosen status and a belief in a special covenant with God to obey his commandments, thereby eliminating a need to impose those rules on others. You therfore see intolerance and oppression toward Jews for lack of assimilation, not the other way around.
The irony is that as a survival mechanism, retreat inward appears more successful than outward attack, at least as evident by the Jewish experience and their continued survival.
To refer like you do, the specific historical documents that you pick only those who fit your position?That's ridiculous. Even the obvious fact with Egyptians oppressing Jews, you almost demonstrated that it was Jews fault! So what else to say?
Maybe you should notice that your base that you start your argument is fundamental wrong. You attribute human nature's weaknesses to religions and especially Christianity. Using historical errors like it was the first which was intolerant and persuade political power. So what to discuss here about? It's obvious that your mind is locked there and a conversation won't help.
One Capitol Police officer was killed, and apparently four other people. The officer died the following day after, from injuries sustained while being beaten during the rampage. The foolwing article elucidates:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.html
From the article:
"After serving in the Air National Guard and dreaming of becoming a police officer, Brian D. Sicknick joined the Capitol Police force in 2008. He died the day after he was overpowered and beaten by rioters from the mob at the Capitol."
I had thought, before checking in response to your post, Tim, that two officers had been killed, but one is bad enough, in my view.
That is indeed one solution to the incoherence of the trinity. Another is to simply reject it.
To my eye, and I suppose you will agree, the dive into darkness that followed the destruction of classical culture was tragic.
Gibbon was a Roman Catholic for exactly a year and a half, after which a threatened disinheritance caused his immediate recapitulation back into Anglicanism (which, after all, differs from Catholicism only by a presently defunct monarchial politics). This, of course, evidences a quite laissez faire approach to faith in general. Many historians have noted that Gibbon's general tone, even if his factual recording was true, displayed a certain bias against religion throughout the D&F. Certainly, they are not all Christian apologists. Perhaps his father's having bullied him back into the Church of England contributed to this tone of Gibbon in the work...who knows?
Quoting Banno
Oho, please don't take me for a Christian apologist, as I am quite firm in my atheism, and if anything, am more critical of Christianity than Gibbon ever was. I hope I was not included in your estimation.
Quoting Banno
But, it should be the goal of a religion to avoid being preposterous, as all theistic (of both mono- and poly- types) religions obviously are. We humans must be able to devise a religion which renders purpose to life, provides meaningful ritual, and incorporates a moral code, yet does not stand in obvious violation of reality, or of human nature.
That long? I thought it less.
Consider that the accusations of bias result from his choosing a close analysis of the documentation, as opposed to the myth of martyrdom and persecution promulgated by Christianity. That is it is the result of his insisting on doing history instead of hagiography. If his history needs revision, as it no doubt does, then that is a task for historians.
But of course this is in the end irrelevant. That the discussion falls back on the character of the writer and not to the case presented is itself telling. For the facts are there.
Your position is false from its very on foundation. I explained you why. So either you don't see it or you pretend that you don't see it cause it will hurt your Ego(I would bet on that case) . Either way it's pointless.
To ask me bring historical documents as to prove wrong your unspeakable claim that Christianity was the first to be intolerant, proselytize and seek political power it's like asking me prove you that sky is blue.
So no thanks, I m not interested in trying to convince you about something that obvious. It's a waste of time.
Repeat your claim as often as you wish; Quoting dimosthenis9
Where? Quote it here. All you have done is make an unfounded assertion.
But thank you for posting again, and I encourage you to continue, since you repeatedly support my pointing out that:
Quoting Banno
...to wich we can now add the misrepresentation of my view here:
Quoting dimosthenis9
Please, continue.
Your views are misrepresented on their own. Don't worry. I didn't change anything.
Quoting dimosthenis9
Quoting dimosthenis9
Quoting dimosthenis9
Nothing to add further.
Quoting dimosthenis9
Nothing there is inconsistent with the destruction of classical culture by Christianity, nor with monotheism being inherently intolerant when in power.
Quoting dimosthenis9
Obvious ad hom.
Quoting dimosthenis9
I don't see the relevance of the situation of the jews here; except to promulgate the glorification of oppression. And yet another ad hom, this one seemingly saying that my claim is too successful.
Quoting dimosthenis9
More disparagement of me rather than my argument, more irrelevancies.
I'm sorry if the historical evidence goes against you preferred myths. But that ain't down to me. I'm just pointing at what for you is an uncomfortable truth.
You don't see it but it's still there.
Told you already, it's obvious that your mind is locked there. So nothing useful to discuss about here. You fail to understand simple logical things or you pretend that you don't. Anyway so be then.
:up:
What kind of cost? Can preventing a war cost more than conducting it? What could cost more than taking lives?
Freedom! What if the cost of preventing a war is to surrender and live under an oppressive regime?
Clearly factual.
I have already brought this up the subject of freedom. I said "Other wars were started to gain independence (liberated from the yoke of an oppressor, etc.) These were done with the purpose to pretect the survival of the oppressed. So they can be considered ethical endeavours rather than unethical." Most probably you got the idea from me. But here it is out of the right context. Or, rather, it's not the right answer.
I called alternative facts when the talking snake showed up...
- Genesis 3
That's sounds like me. Ecce homo!
Outside of the Old Testament, there's very little evidence of Jews in Egypt, I'm afraid, before the time Egypt became a part of the Persian Empire in the 6th century B.C.E. There's evidence that certain Jews were serving as soldiers in Egypt at that time. There's no evidence they were slaves who built the pyramids; no evidence of the Exodus; no evidence of Moses being somehow affiliated with the Egyptian royal family, or even being there, for that matter, outside of the Bible. No evidence of Joseph and his amazing coat, either. These are simply the founding myths of the Jewish people.
It's apparent that Egypt held sway over what is now Israel from time to time, and it may well be that those who lived there then were oppressed in one way or another, or taken as slaves. But that's all we have, outside of the Bible.
Perhaps the most famous example is the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria, around 391 C.E. But the destruction of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus by order of John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople, which contained the great statute of Artemis considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, is up there as well. We're fortunate that the Christians didn't destroy the remarkable Pantheon in Rome, and were content merely to convert it to a church, as they did with many other temples.
It didn't extend to burning the non-scientific at the stake, though, and nobody expects the Scientific Inquisition. not even Monty Python.
The Roman's didn't lay waste to Judea and Jerusalem because the Jews were monotheists.
Nor did the Jews lay waste to various other nations because they weren't monotheists.
I'd also argue that the Christians laid waste to all sorts of nations (as did the Romans) for all sorts of reasons that went well beyond religious differences.
Well, Biblical accounts, and particularly the Book of Joshua, portray the Jews as laying waste to quite a number of cities and tribes in their conquest of the Promised Land. And though they may not have done so because they weren't monotheists, it can fairly be said they did so because they weren't Jews and didn't worship the Jewish God, who gave the Jews the Promised Land.
As for Christians, I believe you're right and other reasons are involved, but they have such a history of claiming they go to war because God wills it or that God is on their side in war--any war--it may be any reason is religious to them where war is concerned.
There's also the genocide of Amelek
I'm not making the claim the ancient Hebrews were a kind hearted bunch, but I do deny that their reasons for the wars were to kill infidels who wouldn't accept monotheism.
I also deny the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. That is, that didn't actually happen.
But anyway, since you brought up this story, the best I recall (and memory isn't always correct), was that the Amelek slaughter was ordered by God after the Hebrews were finally released from 400 years of Egyptian bondage at the hands of the Pharaohs only to be subject to an unprovoked attack by the Amelek tribe. God ordered the death of all their people, including killing all their animals. I think Saul spared the death of their king (Agag), but Solomon killed him the next day. Supposedly that failure eventually cost Saul the kingship. Fast forward 600 years to the Book of Esther and you'll note that the antagonist Haman (who attempted to slaughter all the Jews in the world) is referred to as Haman Hagagi, indicating he was of direct lineage of the king of Amelek. This means that Agag impregnated someone in the single day he was spared (or so the story goes).
What do we learn from this story? Kindness to evil is a sin. Compare and contrast to "turn the other cheek." Different ethical principles I guess, which is why the word "Judeo-Christian" ethics makes no sense to me.
Yeah, and I was taught in Yeshivah that we don't know who Amelek is. (I also happen to know some Jewish fundamentalists who believe the Germans are Amelek.)
I prefer the non-literal approach, where Amelek represents evil and the reminder that such actually exists. One shouldn't have sympathy for the devil I suppose it is to mean.
Good. :up:
I think that most scholars today doubt the conquest of the Promised Land was actually a conquest, and are inclined to think that the Jews didn't destroy the Canaanites, but actually merged with them, though many of them moved into the area now known as Lebanon.
The problem is that Christianity is presented here as to have a "privilege" in intolerance compared to other religions. Or that its teaching is worse than other religions.
People oppressing others is a global, continuous behaviour that you meet it everywhere! Religion, states, jobs, relationships etc.Everywhere!And throughout history. Based obviously in human nature. Human lust for power. And people express it with all kind of ways.
One of the best "vehicles"(especially in global scale) for that are religions. All kind of religions. To claim that Christianity(not even all religions but especially one!) is to blame for that, it's ridiculous. As if its teaching is more oppressive, intolerant than others.
Christianity of coursed used for that purposes also and became oppressive and intolerant. But it's how it was "used" for other purposes. Just an excuse for economic, political, power reasons as one group of people to oppress others! It was made VIA Christianity also. Not CAUSE of it. That's the whole point and that's why an argument like that is impossible to stand logically.
I think you're right. Most religions ask unacceptable behavior from followers and seek to impose their often bigoted and unsophisticated views on the world. Christianity comes up here most often because that's the dominant and priviledged religion of the West and the one that's crashed into us (often to our cost) the most.
But again I agree - human beings don't need religion to be dreadful - politics and business can produce similarly dire behaviors. But the difference with religion is it makes unverifiable claims about bettering the world. It persistently makes claims that belief in god is somehow a positive, transformative power and the evidence for this never stacks up.
Religions should stop playing the morality card and recognize that they have nothing to offer that any social club can't offer too. Although not all that many social clubs seem to institutionalize child abuse and misogyny to the same high levels... but you get my point.
Yes, I understand. But Christianity has a rather remarkable position in world history, in the West especially, but through European colonialism and imperialism and the priests and missionaries who followed its progression throughout other parts of the world as well. Christianity is, I think, unique in its commitment to expansion.
The Christian Roman Empire actively suppressed paganism and spread the Christian religion throughout the extent of the Empire. The conversion of the barbarian tribes in the Latin West and the acceptance of the supremacy of the Roman pontiff and Church assured its predominance even after the fall of the Western Empire, and continued in the West through the times of the Roman successor states established by the Vandals and Visigoths and Franks, into Medieval times and up to the Reformation. Even after the Reformation, Protestant Christianity was dominant along with Catholicism. The Eastern Orthodox Church was prevalent in the Eastern Roman Empire which continued Roman rule up to the time of the Arab conquests and it and the Eastern Empire held on for about another 700 years.
Priests and monks followed the conquistadors to the Americas, and then the French, and missionaries accompanied the Protestant colonial powers, English and Dutch, there and elsewhere. This led to the suppression of non-Christian religion wherever the Europeans went. Christianity sought converts, and Christians sought land, money and power. That suppression wasn't as successful in India, China or Japan, and Islam replaced it in other areas, but its success in assimilating is astounding.
Exactly.
Quoting Tom Storm
True. I agree. But is it the only field that you see hypocrisy all over around us? And more specific hypocrisy used as to remain in power? I m not surprised as to be honest. Well in fact if religions weren't making such claims that would surprise me!
Quoting Tom Storm
I do. Not that I disagree with what you wrote here about that morality card(it's their strongest one) . But the thing is that religions would never recognize such a thing. That would mean the end of their existence. It's like asking from a wolf to stop eating sheep.
He's the fellow who was ecstatic that the writings "of the Greeks have all but perished and been obliterated... Where is Plato? nowhere! Where Paul? In the mouths of all".
What is sickening is the way these Christian vandals gloried in the destruction; and now they deny it happened.
AH. So adhering to the OP. It's not meant to be factually correct, because we found out that it doesn't match the facts.
What would one think if we had an independent account of their destruction? Then it would be factual?
MIght be right. Seems convenient. SO we move to
Quoting dimosthenis9
The problem is the Christian denial of the less tasteful aspects of their history.
Quoting Tom Storm
But insufficiently so. I can't help but see parallels between these historical events and the stolen generations, the children in Canadian schools, and religious pedophilia. The claims to moral authority are bankrupt.
Quoting Banno
If we learned there were no actual Ebenezer Scrooge or Tiny Tim, would the moral that even the coldest souls are capable of redemption be impacted? That there was no talking fox means his sour grapes story is bullshit?
That our myths are fictional does not impact their truth. Those who smugly prove that Washington never chopped down a cherry tree really miss the point.
We use myths to advance ideals. Reality never lives up to the myth. It can't. The real world is complicated and nuanced.
Well it does if you are basing you entire life, and that of your family, upon literalism. No one looses anything if Tiny Tim is a fiction. It's a tall tale. If we lose Jesus, the cost is considerably higher (for most believers).
Quoting Hanover
True. But consider the ramifications if Washington himself was proven not to exist...
I agree. That in effect is the topic of my thread on Confirmable and influential Metaphysics.
Quoting Hanover
Quite right. It is worthy of note that this thread puts things the other way around - what was taken as historically veridical, when found to not be so, is re-interpreted as a moral fable.
There are all sorts of historical tragedies. The Roman destruction of the second temple that I referenced was considered a dive into darkness by the Jewish people and it is still commemorated to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av
Had it not been for the destruction of the temple, I would still be able to make burnt offerings to Yahweh, but, alas, I'm now stuck listening to sermons in synagogue.
Also, to throw this in there, the evolution to monotheism was a positive moment in the intellectual history of humanity. It moved us from a world of competing anthropomorphic physical gods to a single incorporeal conceptual god posited to offer meaning and generalized explanations for the our existence. I can buy into the idea that the political upheaval created by the emergence of Christian power wasn't an all positive event, but I can't see why one would harken back to the days of Mars and Neptune and think that represented advanced civilization.
There's nothing to keep someone from opening a church today that worships the Greek and Roman gods. Well, there's lack of demand, but other than that.
The object isn't to take Jesus. It's just to note that whether he actually walked the earth and did the things suggested shouldn't matter. So the claim goes, salvation from eternal damnation requires faith that Jesus died for your sins. I take that to mean that one should accept the tenants advanced by Jesus (e.g. peace and humility) should he wish to see the world a better place today and forever forward (i.e. eternally). It offers the building blocks for heaven, which is an ideal, which is why we create myths.
The literalism dumbs things down considerably, offering a single person some sort of eternal Disneyland if he says he agrees with the New Testament.
That's the fellow. John "Golden Mouthed." He was renowned for his eloquence, which he learned from his teacher, Libanius of Anitoch, one of the last pagan philosophers and rhetoricians. John turned on him and condemned him. But as a fifth century Christian zealot said, reputedly: "There is no crime for those who have Christ."
Well, they probably won't open a church, but there are people who worship the ancient Greek and Roman gods even today. The modern ethnic religion called Hellenism is derived from ancient Greek polytheism. The international organization called Nova Roma champions the Cultus Deorum Romanorum, a reconstruction of ancient Roman religion. There are various virtual temples on the Web, including those dedicated to Iupiter, Iuno and Minerva.
Thus erasing the tragedy brought about by the Christians by resurrecting the demolished ancient Roman culture.
This just feels so lazy. A story doesn't survive 3,500 years of transmission because it accurately relates what happened 3,500 years ago (gets the facts right). That people developed writing and wrote it down gives us a more reliable indication that the story has not changed (or changed little) from its first writing, but again, lack of change is not reason enough to keep telling the story.
People, in each successive generation, have their reasons for telling, re-telling, preserving, and transmitting that story between themselves and others. The interpretation of the story being passed is up to each person hearing it - there is no interpretation inherent in the words/symbols/history. Imposing your view on interpretation for all of those people for all of time is just that - an imposition. When actual members of a religion tell you that they don't read the words literally, you can't just dismiss them as if they aren't exactly what the religion is.
You know what exegesis is. You know what critical literary theory is. You even know what philology is. You understand that stories are used (religious or not) for lots of reasons independent of whether the story is understood the same way by the teller and the receiver, the invoker and the audience. How your brain goes to pot when it comes to considering religion isn't clear to me, but it would be nice if you took some of your critical skills and actually used them to understand what is going on.
Not even Christianity could utterly destroy ancient pagan culture. After all, Christians in attempting to provide some intellectual legitimacy to Christianity borrowed liberally from pagan philosophy (mostly neo-Platonism and later aspects of Stoicism and Aristotle's thought) where they could. Early Christians of the upper classes passed through the same cursus honorum and had the same education as similarly situated pagans for a time, until oppression began in earnest after the reign of Constantine.
But a great deal was lost, and there is much that we just can't know, especially when it comes to religious practices, as in most case the only sources we have are the writings of Christians who obviously had an enormous axe to grind. The tragedy can't be erased, unfortunately.
History belongs to the victor. cf Postcolonial theology
The destruction of 90% of classical literature is swept away, denied, and those who point to it castigated.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Indeed.
I acknowledge it's some serious sad shit. I cry with you. What do you need me to say?
As to the question of whether the pain they brought was because that's what religion do, especially the monotheistic ones, that's where we disagree. I'm also not sure the Romans were all kind folks either.
Nothing. You are not obliged to reply to my posts. It's your choice. It suffices to hear you acknowledge the issue.
To all, Christianity introduced charity is a way that was not found in other religions and philosophies. They built hospitals and freed slaves, things previously unheard of. They also smashed masterpieces of art and architecture that were hundreds of years old and persecuted all but to extinction any alternative ways of thinking.
if one allows religion not to be factually correct, to consist in metaphor and allegory, for the betterment of mankind, then does that mean it need not be honest?
The Abrahamic apologists on this thread have shown themselves to lack intellectual honesty and integrity on par with Holocaust, (US) systemic racism, anthrogenic climate change & pandemic deniers. :brow:
I concede your every point when you claim that horrors were committed in the name of religion, but blame always lies at the feet of people, not religions, not governments, not corporations, and not whatever mechanism they weaponize. The horrors people have commited in the name of religion go far beyond destroying literature and culture. Such is child's play in the scheme of things.
But I see the same horrors at the hands of government. How can you participate in government knowing what a past it has had? Might your response be "not the government I believe in"? Substitue "religion" in there for me.
This is boring to say the least. One doesn’t have to be an apologist to be a get-on-with-itest. We take what we want from our inheritance and leave the rest to the dust bin of history. People suck. They have always sucked. We all come from rape and murder and conquest. Our history is one of horror and stuff for which our ancestors should be ashamed (even if they celebrated themselves). We can look at the past and say, “They were assholes, we can do better” and still speak English without “apologizing” for the sins of our linguistic forbearers. The difference between those with religious education (in the secular sense) and those without is that those with education can look back and see the change and multiplicity in religion as an authentic expression of religious communities, not as apologetics. Stagnation is not something to be praised either in thought or religion. You live and learn.
People calling themselves Christian both proclaimed the legitimacy of slavery and fought for its abolition. Neither group was an apologist or any less Christian than the other. History (constructed as it might be) simply does not bear out an enduring strain of religion from early adoption through hundreds of years of people carrying on its name, iconography, or myths. Even in its foundation Christianity had multiplicity of thought with warring factions, some of which continued on and some which were snuffed out.
From
"The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church"
Presented by the Pontifical Biblical Commission
to Pope John Paul II on April 23, 1993
Again, I question the broad brush, but the number of Jews verses Christian and Muslims is insignificant - the inclusion of them in the JCI group is a cute move for the sake of inclusion I suppose. I do not disagree, however, with the notion that many religious institutions (including current ones) have much to apologize for (in the moral sense) and that too many people are quick to excuse bad behavior because of an institution’s association with the sacred.
What you say is true but I wonder is there a difference in the foundational nature of government and religion? Is religion not founded on and galvanized by notions of moral correctness and inclusivity and fairness and charity and righteousness, making religion's considerable violations all the more hypocritical and scandalous; while the business of politics is by nature conflictual and partisan? Religion also tends to maintain that it holds the truth, while government rarely gets any more totalizing than expressing broadly held community values.
:yawn: Not remotely. G'nite ...
So Trumpism doesn’t fit your faith form? Or it just that religion is somehow unique in faith because beardy head?
Then religion isn't saying anything at all. Is it a fact that I will be born again, or not? If you can't say either way, then you haven't said anything at all, so why bother making a religious claim if the claim isn't intended to point to some actual state of affairs?
Politics is the one domain where people aren't concerned about being factually correct to the point that listening to politicians speak is a waste of time. Listening to their critics is just as much a waste of time as they seem to whine about why the other side isn't using logic or making any sense. It was never their intent to make sense or be logical. Logic is the antithesis of religion and politics (group-think).
Your ideas about the value of honesty need to be supported. Being a philosopher, I'm sure you are aware of "the noble lie". That the noble lie is somehow wrong, or immoral, is a very difficult claim to support. We might support it with the principle of "equality", but equality isn't real so as much as it might provide a legal base, it provides no moral base.
We might try a Christian principle like love your neighbour, but for some reason we still see the efficacy in lying to those whom we love. Where do you derive the idea that the betterment of mankind might be accomplished without dishonesty?
Probably just over-reading your comment. Faith is neither a function of nor a feature of religion (though there is something catchy about a "faith community" as another description of a religion). In a thread about the goal of religion in the context of recognition of the abject failure of religious institutions (Christian in particular in the Western/colonialist context) to acknowledge their current and historic failures I didn't want the focus to move to a critique of faith as a proxy for either the critique of religion as a concept or the point of religion as a goal. Religion is not (despite what good Kierkegaard did not say) the will to faith.
Faith, as such, is something endemic to humanity (or so it seems). People just as often kill others in the name of patriotism (or nationalism or whatever you want to call it - "FOR GOD AND KING!" or "TO THE GLORY OF ROME!") as religion even if some religious language is invoked in the call to war (such as manifest destiny in the US). Vicious "irrational" tribalism may be a consequence of faith, but it is not the only consequence. (If you don't like violence, pick your sin - institutional coverups, cf police violence, sexual assault in business/education/sports, etc., are no less wide spread in non-religious institutions.)
Regardless, religion (as a social endeavor/feature) is both more than the failures of certain groups and meaningfully analyzed through its failures just the same as government or any other broad organizing category of people. The point is simultaneously that religion is not unique in its messiness but also that what makes religion unique as a useful concept in our language/thought does not necessarily lead to a worse outcome than other such concepts. One might even say that the point of religion is to make the world a better place. You know, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and visit the sick. Maybe a bit of spitting into the wind while remembering the injunction that justice, justice you shall pursue and that although you cannot complete the task of perfecting the world, neither are you free to desist from it.
Quoting 180 Proof
If I misread you as suggesting that "Abrahamic apologists" arrive that their defense of institutions through faith and thereby reflect the poverty of either religion or faith, I apologize. Perhaps you can expand a bit on what you intended so that I can write something you find non-trivial.
Those "snuffed out" and later views determined to be heretical make an interesting study, though. Arianism, which taught that Jesus was divine but lesser than the Father; Marcionism, which taught that the God was Jesus was different from the God of the Old Testament; Adoptionism, which taught that Jesus was born a man, but was so virtuous that he was adopted as the "Son of God" by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him; Sabellianism, which held that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three characteristics of the One God, rather than three "persons" in One God; Pelagianism which rejected the doctrine of original sin and held that grace wasn't required to achieve goodness. The "snuffed" seem to be rather unobjectionable, relatively speaking, in some cases, but were "snuffed" nonetheless. Perhaps this tells us something.
There were many more, of course. I'm not sure which you think "continued" but in the Latin West (and so in much of the Americas and elsewhere) it seems to me that after Nicea and prior to the Reformation one particular version was enforced, often violently. The Protestant Churches haven't been all that tolerant of differing views, either.
The thing is, it isn't necessarily the case that each person, each generation of person, looks upon the past and existing religious beliefs and makes a choice what to think and do. Religions may be instilled, inculcated--like that of Sancta Mater Ecclesia, which I grew up with--which developed an entire system of education from elementary school through college and beyond. Also imposed. This tells us something about organized religion, I believe. Perhaps the goal of organized religions is to teach its adherents not to question them, or at least to assure as much as possible they won't have the opportunity to do so.
I'm not sure that would be a goal of organized religion. So far as I can tell from the literature, lots of smart people tried really hard to question those religions in order to establish them as the right one and no one is running around telling adherents not to read the apologists. But then I am not Catholic ("universal") in any sense of the word.
I think you greatly over-simplify things when you attempt to draw a clean break between government and religion. This concept of secularism is fairly new, and it's hardly complete.
But to the idea of mythology, it's no secret that the original Pilgrims were less than open and giving to the Native Americans, despite what we might have learned about Thanksgiving. The American founding fathers were also not as interested in equality of man, considering they were actually part of an aristocracy who used a servile class of black slaves and white indentured servants to do their dirty work. The value in the myths we learn of government (like religion) is to advance an ideal and their deconstruction does leave a void. Obviously no myth should be advanced that denies another's suffering or that continues his or her oppression, but, properly understood, we need not go around screaming that the US (and likely every other nation) was built upon a lie. What it was built upon was an ideal that the people fell quite short of and that should now be better advanced.
That it is to say one can believe in American ideology, but be disappointed in American behavior. The same can be said of any particular religion.
I'm from Australia so blandly secular is the default in general, even if we currently have our first evangelical Prime Minister. Our politics was always pragmatic and built around property values. We don't even have a Bill of Rights...
Quoting Hanover
Using that measurement criteria you could probably say the same about any given institution. Perhaps it is in unpacking the nature of that disappointment that the difference is located. But I hear you.
Well, that's what threw me, Ennui: I didn't claim or even imply – "pejoratively" or otherwise – that "faith" is "the point of religion". On page 1 of this thread I wrote: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/593336
[quote=Hebrews 11:1]Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.[/quote]
i.e. believing is seeing. :pray:
Can't speak to how others use the term, but it's something I'd suspect has had a meaning that has varied greatly over the years.
The Bible doesn't reference disputes between atheists and theists, but disputes over whose god reigned supreme. It was a given there were gods, magic and the like. Back then, what we take as "faith" was taken for granted. They were not wedded to the scientific method like we are today.
In the early portions of the Bible, there would have been no need for "faith" as we understand the term today. They saw splitting of seas, manna from heaven, and all sorts of violations of physical laws. They had empirical evidence for the existence of God.
What we call "faith" today, I'd submit is an entirely separate epistemology that can co-exist with a scientific one only insofar as it doesn't attempt to respond to scientific questions. How the world works is a scientific question, but how I should live my life is not. There are obvious oversteps that occur when people attempt to offer Biblical interpretations to explain our origins for example, but I'd submit that is the fault of an unreasonable literalism.
Yep.
Now I have elsewhere characterised this as a distinction in the direction of fit. Science seeks to change what is believed to match the world. Action (Ethics) seeks to change the world to match what is believed.
Faith then is functional if it seeks to change what is changeable. An act of faith can make a hospital. AN act of faith cannot make the value of pi, 4.
There are those on this thread - and it turns out that you are not amongst them - who choose to deny the facts of early Christianity. They render themselves irrelevant to the main discussion here.
That's why @Ennui Elucidator and @Metaphysician Undercover find themselves advocating telling lies.
This comes back to the distinction between facts and beliefs discussed elsewhere. There were those who thought it a mere quibble. This thread provides an example of why it is important.
And here we have the answer to the question in the OP: if a belief is not factually correct it becomes an unstable base for our acts. IF a religion lies about its history then it may also lie about what it is doing now - it acts in bad faith. And indeed we see this in the many ways the various churches have covered over recent sins of maltreatment and pedophilia.
Quoting Hanover
If it is to co-exist with the facts then the religion must be consistent with those facts. Religion cannot be entirely separated from science, nor from history.
I’ve advocated no telling of lies, I’ve merely pointed out that myth need not be factual to be important. It might seem a hard distinction for someone that simply cannot understand metaphor or allegory as a dispositional trait, but I suspect you know the difference. As I suggested in another thread, when we invoke religious language we are signaling that what is being discussed is important. The factual accuracy of the language is not the least bit our concern.
I say some statements are true, some not.
I gather you do disagree?
I'm not sure who you have in mind, but I've read some of the apologists for Christianity, and if their work is representative, then apologists merely engage in special pleading. It's not easy to intelligently and in good faith question the doctrines of a religion you've already accepted wholeheartedly. C.S. Lewis is an example of the kind of apologist I have in mind.
The issue you brought up was whether or not honesty is necessary in the goal of the betterment of mankind. Those who believe in the value of the noble lie clearly believe that honesty is not necessary.
Whether or not you and I know the history of early Christianity, or whether we deceive ourselves in this matter is not relevant to the issue.
Quoting Banno
I'm still waiting for justification of your opinion, that telling lies is bad, absolutely. Until you provide that justification, all you are doing is playing on the emotions of those who do not like to be told lies. Playing the emotions is not justification. We do not like to be punished either, but very few say that punishment is bad.
So until you provide an argument as to why the dishonesty, which is believed to be carried out for the betterment of human existence (the noble lie) is for some reason bad, I'll consider that you are just voicing an uneducated opinion. You're just like a little child, arguing with your parents, that they ought not punish you because you dislike it. You insist that the authorities ought not lie to you, because you do not like being lied to. Betterment often involves pain. That it hurts does not imply that it is bad.
Quoting Banno
The noble lie is not an instance of bad faith so it ought not be compared with common instances of bad faith. Bad faith involves proceeding with an act which one knows to be wrong. The noble lie involves proceeding with an act which one believes to be right.
You seem to believe that the noble lie actually is wrong. Where's your proof? When the noble lie has been proven to be immoral, then we might class it as bad faith.
If you are happy to be dishonest to yourself, then then I will continue ignoring your posts.
Obviously, I am completely unaware of the purported self-contradiction within my posts. So where are you coming up with this idea that I'm being dishonest to myself?
Why don't you get down to the task at hand, and demonstrate why you believe that dishonesty for the purpose of bettering mankind, is supposed to be some sort of oxymoron?
, or the world as usual.
There are no true historical claims?
Then there is no point to your being here to discuss them.
Banno demonstrates a very strange and unacceptable notion of "fact", as if a fact could be separate from the knower who knows it. But we all know that facts are known bits of information, truths, which do not exist separate from the knower who knows them. And Banno is just is trying to force some philosophical hogwash on us.
I don't actually read them that way, but they can defend themselves. I'm a mouthpiece for a living, so I'm on break while here.
Just my observations, but among non-believers, there is often passionate negativity towards religion. Maybe it's borne in trauma, maybe it's a challenge to a competing worldview held dear, or maybe it's actually anger over ancient misdeeds as you've presented.
My view here is just to accept there have been and currently are truly fucked up stewards of our religious traditions. Like it or not though, the human quest for meaning and spirituality hasn't evolved away. We're still going to want to take a sabbatical from our Sisyphusian existemce occassionally (perhaps weekly) and sit back, contemplate, stop from our creating and working, and ask ourselves what is important and celebrate our creation from the past week.
That is to say, yes, I believe in the creation story (and the above only scratches the metaphorical surface of it), but it has nothing to do with the origins of the cosmos. It has to do with meaning, and it is most certainly true. The book is only about existential meaning. It's not an encyclopedia of worldly facts. That simple minds simplify it or malicious minds misuse it, doesn't make it simple or abusuve, and it surely doesn't give someone cause who is neither simple nor malicious to reject it.
But enough of my sermon. Reject it because it holds no allure for you, but that's really the only legitimate reason I can see for its rejection. That fucked up people saw the sway it held and used it for their advantage says something about them, not it.
Language is politics - not truth. Behavior is about something other than “reason.” You can have what ever standards you want for what you say, but that has nothing to do with what other people do or intend. When describing why people use religion, it would be nice to at least consider why actual people that you can speak to or interact with represent as the “point” of religion.
Depends on what you mean by inclusivity, fairness, charity, and righteousness.
Sure, religions are inclusive in the sense of, "Anyone can join our religion, regardless of their race, gender, background".
They are fair in the sense of Might makes right.
They are charitable in the sense that religious people let you live, even though they consider themselves entitled to kill you.
And they are righteous, because they are true to their convictions.
Funny, our government keeps saying how the vast majority of people in this country do not have access to the truth, and that they (the government) are the defenders of the truth (but that inthe spiriti of democracy, they let others have their opinions, however wrong).
I can't actually think of a politician who would not make a point of emphasizing the term "truth".
Quoting Tom Storm
???
I have never seen any religion make such a claim. Do provide at least three examples of it.
To the best of my knowledge, religions typically take a dim view of the world, don't view it as having potential for betterment. They have a fatalistic and deterministic view of the world -- which goes hand in hand with their doctrine of salvation. "The world is a shitty place, destined for doom, and this is why you need us, the religious, to help you get through life as unscathed by it as possible, and eventually be saved from doom."
Religions can offer metaphysical justifications. Something that sewing circles characteristically can't.
So our core nature is to kill, rape, and pillage?
If this is our core nature, then why take issue with killing, raping, and pillaging, whether it be done in the name of religion or not?
So "Christian" is a term like "white", "black", "Scottish", ie. it's not a term denoting a particular quality or set of qualities, but a term that is not specifically linked to any quality, but is merely a name?
Where you go wrong is in assuming that they secretly believe they've done something wrong.
They don't believe they did. From their perspective, they are not in denial. No, on the contrary: they are righteous, they don't believe they have done anything they should be ashamed of.
Quoting Banno
And at what cost!
We'll give you food, shelter, medical care -- and in return, you convert to our religion.
Christian charity always comes with the string of conversion attached. They may have destroyed the memory of Greek culture, but they surely preserved one item from it: the Danaean gift.
Yes.
Quoting Banno
That can't be, as the term "tragic", as it is used in Greek classical literature, can be used only in reference to royals, but not the commoners, and not even to aristocracy. Drowning a baby prince, heir to the throne, is a tragedy. Terrorists blowing up a bus of schoolchildren (none of whom is a royal), is not.
It's kind of ironic, the way the Greeks' conception of what qualifies for tragic turned out to their demise.
From not being a Mahayani or an Abrahamist.
No, it requires more than that. Belief in the historicity of Jesus is essential to Christianity. One has to believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead, or else the whole project of salvation becomes moot.
Quoting Hanover
What a strange idea. People don't believe that "even the coldest souls are capable of redemption" based on the story of Ebenezer Scrooge.
The point in religion is that particular moral tenets have to be believed for the right reasons.
Ie., e.g. you have to believe that stealing is bad not because your mommy told you so or because you don't like being stolen from, but because God said that stealing was wrong.
The type of problem you point to comes from reading literature primarily in a didactic, ideological sense, from reducing literature to a didactic, ideological message. It's a moralistic approach typical for American literary theory, but it is far from universal. It's not how we would read literature in continental Europe, for example.
Quoting Hanover
But this didn't do away with interreligious competition. On the contrary, it made it worse, far worse.
Quoting Hanover
Yet Jesus himself didn't turn the other cheek.
https://aleteia.org/2017/02/22/jesus-didnt-turn-the-other-cheek-neither-should-you/
I'm not sure what work "merely" does here, but yes, "Christian" is a word people use in reference to lots of different sort of things. Without going through problems of identity or group identification, suffice it to say that different people throughout a long course of history have used "Christian" to refer to a variety of things/people/concepts. Abstracting Christianity away from the people identified with Christianity is taking a theoretical position for whatever reason, not the way in which the term "Christian" is defined and/or used. Sure, for a particular conversation we can define a word however we want, but one has to be aware that they are doing so.
Unless we are religious ourselves, i.e. have a vested interest in who gets to define the word, it is more "intellectually honest" to both recognize and affirm the various uses of a term in the variety of contexts in which it is used. A claim of what is "essential" about Christianity is normative, not descriptive.
Which brings us deep into Humpty Dumpty land.
Of course. A discussion of religion should be about what is normative in it. Focusing merely on the descriptive is an exercise in politically correct futility, for that way, anything goes, and anything can pass for anything.
In that case, it's on you to prove that there is no heaven, no eternal damnation, no nirvana, that Jesus probably didn't do any miracles, etc., for you are the one making those claims.
Then Dawkins clearly didn't think this through.
If he wants to demote religion from any notion of facticity, then it's on him to prove, show, evidence, that the various religious claims are not true.
So when the Protestants claimed that the Catholics weren't Christian and the Catholics claimed that the Protestants weren't, one of them magically ceased to be Christian? Or maybe you think that the Catholics never created their own litmus test for what a true Christian was that is in opposition to what other groups defined as a true Christian?
For your reading pleasure - the Catholic Church in response to the Reformation...
I always take pleasure in reading such things. But I wonder why, given what you quoted and other such works, there is any doubt that religion or at least certain religions rely on claims purported to be factual, and true.
And while I'm (sadly) acquainted with the view that there are no historical facts, and have read academic works on history which are prefaced with what seem to be apologies if the author seems to come to conclusions of any kind regarding what took place in the past, I think it's quite possible, and reasonable, to come to conclusions given the best available evidence, with the understanding that conclusions are contingent and may be modified based on new evidence, when it comes to history and most everything else. It strikes me that maintaining that such conclusions can't be "factual" or that there are no "historical facts" is pedantry.
I'm saying that in order to have a meaningful discussion, we can't treat words like they can mean anything anyone wants them to mean.
We must agree on a meaning of a term (in this case, of "Christian"), or we better cease discussing.
We don't have to agree on what the word means for other people, we merely have to use the word in a way that facilitates further conversation. There is no meaning "out there", just whatever you mean in your head and whatever I mean in mine (if we even have a discrete idea about meaning in the first place). One can speak of Christianity usefully without drawing distinct boundaries around its usage. This is always the nature of language and your wish for it to be otherwise won't change that.
So in the name of the politically correct love of novelty and "moving on", we should summarily envision religion as impotent, ineffective, and most of all, non-factual, so that we can come up with a theory of religion that is currently fashionable and enables us to stay relevant in the current business of academic writing about religion?
And the limits of this approach have been reached in the OP of this thread.
Useful to whom? Someone who wishes to paint religion as impotent? To excuse it? To make it seem less formidable?
Why close our eyes to the obvious? Why not consider the possibility that religion is the way it is precisely because it is intended to be that way?
On a philosophy forum in the context of making broad statements about "religion" with a selective recounting of "facts", I am not sure that my highlighting that we can only look to things that exist now to support our claims about what happened in the past is being a pedant. Further, I am trying to steer away from a summary treatment of "religion" as a defined term in this thread that that is easily brushed because someone has a compelling objections to that definition that someone then takes to be a proper dismissal of religion in any other context. I have, therefore, attempted to introduce current information about the ambiguity of religion (or even specific religions) in order to force nuance and broader relevance of the topic.
In part, the contrast of historicity with historical fact is intended to demonstrate two things: a) that no claim about the past can ever be factual, so objecting that religion is non-factual is trivial, and b) that any serious contemporary thinker must acknowledge that the prevalence or paucity of information about a historical fact is a function not of whether it ever was a fact, but our current epistemic criteria and evidence. I am not trying to be anachronistic and insert historicity into the thinking of the 11th century thinkers, but I am pointing to writings of the time that make it obvious that they recognize the problem of reading religious texts as a literal recounting of facts. So while people like @Banno will insist upon seeing historic claims as facts and lies, that isn't the way that religious people (after all, such people will conflate Western religion with all of religion throughout the world for all of time) actually saw them a thousand years ago or today.
I am not sure why the mushiness of language leads you to that view of religion, but that is your choice. Again, there are people who identify as religious that actively participate in religious communities that do so fully aware that religious myth does not match the historic facts as we currently understand them (or are likely to ever understand them). So if you ask them what the point of religion is, they will not say that the point is to be factually correct in their religious myth. Holding up your definition of what religion (or their religion) should be is not critical thinking, philosophy, or good faith observation - it is mental masturbation. Speak to religious people about the goal of their religion and you will find that the goal is varied. The variety of the goals does not render that person (or that religious community) as a non-religion just because you have decided that "religion" must mean "makes factual claims that when shown to be false nullifies everything about them."
This is why "truth" and "Truth" are given nuance in some conversations. Whether someone sat under a tree in the past is "true" or not. Whether there is wisdom in the story of someone sitting under the tree is about "Truth" and that "Truth" doesn't change because the story does. People who find wisdom in the story do not find that wisdom impotent, ineffective, or non-factual just because you quibble about whether they are properly called Buddhists or posers or whether you think their community is a religion or not. They don't even care if you scream, "YOU'VE GOTTEN IT WRONG! THAT IS NOT WHAT BUDDHA SAID!" That isn't the point of their presence or participation.
But even if there was no wisdom in the story and no fact in the story, sometimes it is enough that it is the story that your mother told to you and that reminds you of her when you tell it to your children. Or that a familiar tune brings a smile to your face. Or that your favorite teachers are at a particular school. Or that you want to associate with a particular group of people but need a context. The reason to be in religious community may have nothing whatsoever to do with the doctrine of the theologians or the wit of the academics. And it may be utterly unreflected participation as simply that which the person has always done. You don't get to define people away so that you can feel comfortable that language does what you want it to do or so that some concept you lay claim to fulfills your requirements.
You simply cannot account for religion by pointing to dogma generally or dogma of a particular religion.
Would you say that it isn't a fact that he was the first president of the U.S., though, or that the claim he was is non-factual? This is what you seem to be saying if I understand you correctly.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I don't think that would make anyone a pedant. I don't think it follows, though, that our claims about what happened in the past are non-factual. In many cases the things that exist now provide substantial support for claims about what happened in the past. We have (for example) written records which have survived which are consistent with one another though from different sources; we have buildings or structures which have survived, though they may not be entirely intact, the age of which can be determined at least approximately; we have inscriptions, etc.
If absolute certainty is required in order for something to be factual, not many statements will qualify as statements of fact regarding the past or the present. But we can make statements regarding organized religions, what their adherents practiced and believed, what their authorities claimed or demanded or decreed, with a degree of certainty which I think makes it pedantic to claim that all such statements are non-factual--implying if not expressly stating that they're unreliable.
You shouldn't take Dawkins too seriously. He has his own view on God. He just calls it Evolution. Evolution has created us. He states litteraly, in The Selfish Gene, that all organisms are just vessels in service of the selish genes (and memes, in the case of people) to ensure their survival. What a meme! Lamarck though has a different interpretation of evolution, something that is a fact. But why take it seriously, this fact? Religion is not about this fact but about God who created it and made it all happen.
*sigh*
It looks like you're wed to the position that religion is ineffective, that it doesn't deliver what it promises -- and that this is perfectly okay.
It seems a whole lot like when you die you are dead and suffering ceases, so maybe Buddhism hits the nail on the head.
In any event, one need not believe in heaven or hell, reward and punishment, or any other divine judgment to be religious.
What makes human history even harder is that history is political - what exists today is directly related to what those that came before decided should be preserved and/or endure. For instance books are burned, stories re-written, buildings destroyed, cultures spread to the winds (or wiped out). Even those writings that survive were written with an agenda - to glorify, to demonize, to legitimize, etc. What we do today is try to interpret what is inherited in hopes that it gives a glimmer of information about what "really" happened. So yes, contingency is inherent in any discussion of facts, but not all facts share the same level of uncertainty. Historicty as a concept seems to be about intellectual humility and the recognition that we have special problems when discussing the past.
Intended by whom? Do you envision a committee having met thousands of years ago and arriving at all sorts of explanations about the universe, packaging it up into a concise book, and then peddling it to the masses so that thousands of years later they could use it to control the world? If that is what happened, then my hat's off to them, and I think they ought to control the world, considering their seemingly divine intelligence and foresight.
I also don't know what you mean by "religion is the way it is." How is religion? What is the essence of "religion" that you claim exists across the board, from the Wiccans to the Greek Orthodox to the Chasidim to the Amish to the Mormons and to the Hindus that makes them all so terrible? I suppose you mean the caricature religion where they yell at you about going to hell and then take all your money? Suppose that isn't religion as it must be, but is just one really bad form?
If you don't like the church you're going to, go to a different one. If you don't want to go to church at all, that's fine too, but I don't see where you have this great insight and knowledge into where I go and can make comments on it. All this talk about facts, yet here you're just factually incorrect.
Murdering raping and pillaging are rather hyperbolic examples of it, but yes, our core nature directs us to: (a) survive, (b) attain a position of social dominance, and (c) procreate well (better than others of our species group), in that order of priority. Every Biologist who has studied social mammals will see this nearly as clearly in homo sapiens as in any other social mammal. The sociobiological literature is full of this characteristically manmalian behavior. The innate desire/instinct to socially dominate is why men get into "bar fights" for percieved slights, why every man wants to be the CEO and otherwise be in command, why men strive after wealth in excess of their contemporaries, why they spend hours each week in the gym getting "jacked" (a visible sign of physical dominance), why they generally want to be with the most attractive woman in public, why they subconsciously posture and pose in social situations, why they all want the arbitrary "group" (whether their ethnicity, their 'race', their religion...) which they view as their own to be predominant, and yes, why they rape and kill. It explains much of human behavior.
Quoting baker
Because our core nature, the equivalent of Freud's "Id", our emotionally driven instinctive selves, is not the sum total of our nature. There is also the "Superego", the rational and idealistic aspect of our minds, with which the Id does constant battle, to varying degrees of success among differing people, to form the Ego, the objective personality. This Superego is the result of the continued evolution of our brains. Lions do not possess a Superego, and so they cannot view as immoral that a new pride Alpha will immediately engage in an orgy of infanticide to eliminate the previous Alpha's Gene's from the group, and more quickly bring the lionesses to estrus. Humans, though, do have the car to see immorality in this.
Whatever else can be said of the man, and he had his theoretical faults and inconsistencies, Freud's model of the mind, along with Jung's concept of psychological archetypes, appears to myself absolutely key in understanding why we humans behave as we do. We must encourage people to allow their rational and idealistic selves to hold sway over the primal, emotional aspect of their minds.
Are you citing to some particular Protestant dogma that prescribes the particularities of the faith required for salvation, or are you just telling me your basic understanding or what you think ought be the case?
Quoting baker
Now you're just making things up. It is not a universal tenant of religion that intent matters regardless of impact, and it is not universally considered sinful to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
It sounds like I'm just hearing a recitation of your recollections from Sunday school at this point and
you're presenting it as if they are universal axioms.
Quoting baker
The story was originally in Greek I suppose, but do enlighten me how they read the fox and grapes story in continental Europe? Do they get held up when the fox starts talking and start looking for archeological evidence for talking foxes? Could you itemize those European nations for me that don't understand metaphor?
Quoting baker
Religions don't compete. People do, so it's hard to blame the idea over the person. But in any event, ideological differences lead to conflict, whether that be religious, political, or just general worldviews.
Very good. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying earlier. I understand that inquiry into the past imposes special demands.
I think it's in the nature of certain religions to make factual claims, however, and claims of certainty. It seems that as time passes adherents are inclined to argue those claims are not to be taken literally or are subject to interpretation, but unless we assume that's always been the case, which would be a questionable assumption to make, the religion is being changed, not explained or justified. The more a religion is changed, the more likely it is that it is that it initially made claims which are incredible.
You wouldn't be the only one. :razz:
I agree with you that different people at different times have made claims of fact and certainty regarding religious myth/legend/etc. My point was merely that claims of people are different than the defining feature of religion generally or of a specific religion. The issue is one of descriptivism versus prescriptivism, perhaps.
With a screen name like yours, I expected better.
By religious people.
I am sure that I wrote a meaningful English sentence.
I was commenting to this post of yours:
"My view here is just to accept there have been and currently are truly fucked up stewards of our religious traditions."
You're talking about "truly fucked up stewards of our religious traditions". I'm saying that maybe they aren't "fucked up", but that what you call "fucked up" is precisely how religion is supposed to be, and as such, isn't "fucked up".
Why should we think that this isn't what religion is supposed to be like? Why assume some kumbaya?
What if religion is supposed to be about the proverbial killing, raping, and pillaging? Jesus brought the sword, remember.
Huh?
Minimal information, jumping to conclusions, and judging me for my failure to be as you expected. Seems like a pattern for your way of thinking. Go pat yourself on the back for correctly identifying that the world does not change just because you demand it.
Read the whole sentence.
Or do you think it makes sense to have a doctrine of salvation and eternal damnation, but without considering Jesus a real historic person?
Sure, there are even those who consider themselves "atheist Christians", but, to the best of my knowledge, they have no doctrine of salvation.
All along, I've been talking about factuality and efficacy of religious practice. This is my theme.
The "old-school" versions of religions (not just of Christianity) work with the model "Do x, y, z, and you will be saved". IOW, they promise something, they have a goal, and they propose a path of practice toward said goal. A person is supposed to do something, and then they will attain something. Ie. the religious path is considered to be something that is effective, that has potency, and a lasting result.
Contrast this with the modern politically correct variations of religions (who like to see ancient teachings as metaphorical, "non-factual"): They promise very little, if anything at all, they have no goal, no path of practice toward a goal, and the most they can offer is some hope that with them you might be better able to "make it through the day". They know no hell, but also no heaven, and no salvation. They tend to operate out of a one-lifetime perspective. Thus, they are impotent, ineffective.
And you're on board with that, epistemically and ethically?
FYI, I didn't go to Sunday school.
We read it as didactic literature, not as art.
It's the mark of a plebeian mind to read everything as if it were a didactic text.
Except that religion bolsters those conflicts with metaphysical underpinnings, thus giving the conflicts a dimension that is hard to master.
Provided, of course, that we take for granted, based on no evidence, that this trichotomy is true (and not merely a theoretical construct bolstered by an ideology), and that the division of labor between the three is indeed as proposed.
You talk about the new alpha lion killing the previous one's offspring, and stating this as evidence that the lion has no superego. Okay, so a lion doesn't have a superego. But there are other animals who adopt the offspring of other animals, including the offspring of other species. Should we say that those animals have a superego?
Educate me on the eternal rewards provided to the righteous followers of Judaism denied to the sinners. This should be interesting.
Not at all. What is apparent is that they deny what is before us all; the fact of the destruction of classical literature by Christian zealots.
SEP on Philosophy of Religion and Wittgenstein
SEP on Religion and Science
Yes; you engaged in special pleading. You accept some historical facts but not others, for reasons external to history - reasons of religion.
It's good to see you reading a bit about Wittgenstein. Do you think that the piece you quoted somehow supports your position? How?
But to them that's like burning a pile of trash. Ie., not a bad thing, not at all, but something useful.
Where you and the Christians differ is in the qualitative evaluation of some past events.
No. That is evolutionary behavior, naturally selected for behavior, which is probably reinforced by learning/imitation, not behavior based upon reason and the type of abstract thinking that it takes to concieve of morality. That same animal species...the Bonobo is it?...would not be capable of regret for having committed an act which we humans would call "immoral". As far as we know, we are the only species to ever have been capable of that type of thought, and so to be viewed as having a "Superego", which is what makes us so unique, so (dare I say?) special.
Freud's tripartate model is exactly that, a theoretical model, but like the theory of gravitation, it explains the intended phenomena and it has held under scrutiny. My personal opinion is that it is brilliant, and one of the most significant theories of the twentieth century, a century chock-full of theorization, as it helps us to understand that most mysterious of things...ourselves, and so fulfill the old Delphic challenge: "gnothi seauton" ("know thyself").
To reiterate the thrust of my argument, though: despite the evolution of our human brains, and our resultant development of the ability to think abstractly and idealistically, the same instincts that are within the infanticidal lion, those which urge him to his acts of infanticide, remain within a part of our human mind within all of us, kept in check only by our ability to concieve of right and wrong. The evolution of the Superego did not remove the Id. If we choose to deny that savage, primal part of ourselves, then we inhibit our ability to ever come to know ourselves fully...to see completely the creature that we are.
I don't think so. That the books were not transcribed, were thrown in the rubbish, and were burned is not a question of opinion. Again, 90% of the literature of the classical world disappeared over a few hundred years, at the instigation of Bishops, christianised emperors and their acolytes. We have the commands they gave. We have descriptions of their deed in their own words. And we have the hole in our literary heritage.
Are we really going to argue about ordinary language philosophy here? How I speak in a bar to people I suppose to be unsophisticated (or perhaps just uninterested) in things like epistemology is not the same as I would speak to you (even though I know better). It is called code switching and involves language communities rather than special pleading. Or if you prefer, it is jargon.
As for my reference to W, I think we are best off letting you decide whether anything W said would support my claim that when discussing a word, we should look for how it is used rather than how we wish it to be defined.
You raised the topic. When asked to explain, you appear to back down.
I am well aware of Wittgenstein's views on religion. Explain how it is you think they support your case.
Because I do not think that they do.
What you have done is provided further evidence of special pleading, of a double standard, a public conversation and a somehow distinct, evasive religious one.
It isn’t a religious conversation, it is debatably a philosophical one (but so far few people are interested in philosophy) or perhaps an anthropological one (what is religion as a human phenomenon?). In any case, what is being evaded? Why should “fact” mean the same thing in a bar as it does in this forum? What clarity of thought do we gain by impoverishing our thinking to the lowest common denominator of English speakers?
Better to strive for the heights of sophistry?
Facts are sort of like knowledge, Banno. I am well aware of what will satisfy someone in a conversation when they are speaking about whether George Washington was president and whether or not I know George Washington was president because I can provide that as an answer to a Jeopardy question. So is it a fact that George Washington was president and that I know that he was a president because I am able to play nice socially? Is there anything more to be said about the topic?
When discussing philosophy, I suppose there is more to be said. When playing Jeopardy I don’t. When speaking to you I am aware that invoking nihilism will result an eye roll and an accusation of incoherence, so if I want to speak to you, I am better off discussing cats on mats.
Now if you ask me what the point is of willfully maintaining multiple language communities, I could give you a variety of answers that may appeal to your sensibilities or may not. The truth is, you are studied enough to know most of what I will say and we will just retread old territory - a bit like playing a chess game where we know the opening book, most of the mid-game, and much of the end game. Sure, each game goes a little differently, but the end is the same - resignation, check-mate, a draw, or people stop playing.
So tell me what you would like me to say. The dictionary is replete with words that have multiple senses/definitions. There are words that sound the same and are spelled the same but are different words because they have unique etymologies and meanings. Even in ordinary language people found utility in what you might call equivocation. A mouse is a thing that moves a cursor and that scuttles across the floor. It would be nice if when I asked for the mouse when trying to use your computer you knew that I didn’t mean the same thing as when I asked for the mouse when feeding your snake.
“Fish fish fish fish fish.” Did we learn anything?
How is life different if we entertain the possibility that we are a brain in a vat? Does George Washington stop being the first president?
All of that is lovely, but has nothing to do with the topic - that not all religious people describe the point of their religion as being a source of accurate information about historical facts. The Romans were assholes. The Christian Romans probably no more so than the non-Christian ones, but the Christian ones burned your precious classics. Facts, to be sure, if we are in a bar. Why what religious people actually claim about their own religions is irrelevant to the “fact” of whether the goal of religion is to be factual but a scroll which has evidence of being from 1,500 years ago is evidence for the “fact” of the Christian’s destruction of the classics isn’t a case of special pleading on your part is a bit mysterious.
So make like we are in a bar and forget philosophy. Why is it a fact that Christians burned the classics but not a fact that goal of religion is not to be factual?
There does appear to be a factual question as to this, using the term "factual" in the usual ordinary way.
This is what Banno doesn't seem to understand. He seems to think that he can make universal value statements such as 'burning books is bad', 'dishonesty from the rulers is bad', and since they are emotionally charged subjects which will elicit agreement from others, he believes these statements must be correct. However, he seems to have no capacity to support these value judgements with principles or logic.
I think we should rename Banno "Moses", and let him shout out his commandments. Thou shalt not burn books! Thou shalt not lie to the subjects! etc., as if they are facts.
Quoting Banno
I can almost sympathize. I lost my copy of "Goodnight Moon". I think my evil brother left it out in the rain. Oh well, we're all grown up now, and we learn to get over such loses. As my mother used to say if I cried over such things, "it's not the end of the world". Get over it, Banno.
The quote above, taken as true, implies that without the facticity of God's existence, morality has no leg to stand on. In other words, religions - humanity's preliminary expeditions in the moral universe - have to be "factually correct" from beginning to end.
All religions, no matter how hard they try not to, ground their moral code in something beyond this world. The Abrahamic triad does that with God. The buddha too, despite how reluctant he was when it came to metaphysics, had to resort to moral causality, the law of karma, that applied to worlds and lives beyond this world and this life. It seems morality is utterly untenable if we limit it to one world and one life.
Why?
One simple reason is that claimed benefits/costs don't correlate all that well with good/bad respectively in this world and this life. Despite the belief that you reap what you sow and what goes around comes around, bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. These are valid reasons to reject morality outright - facts, the reality on the ground, do not, I repeat, do not support the claims of morality. Hence, God and karma become a necessity.
Secular ethics, intriguingly, aren't about rewards/punishments - they tend to emphasize the nature of thoughts/speech/acts themselves. Neither deontological ethics nor consequential entice or threaten good and bad people with happiness and suffering. I just found out. Good for the sake of good.
To sum up, secular ethics, all things considered, is a much better deal than religious ethics. The matter of factual correctness of religions is then moot, pointless.
I don't quite like where you're taking this. Morality is, at the end of the day, transcendence of the self and that's why, my hunch is, it's so hard to grasp - it's like asking a chimp not to be a chimp. Haaard!
Religion, though, serves other purposes than provision of a moral code...communal purposes, ritual purposes, ontological purposes...
Quoting TheMadFool
On that we can agree. Which aspect of my psychologically based take on ethics do you disfavor?
I'm more gut instincts than clear, logical analysis. So, I may not be able to pinpoint the problem I intuit in your statements but if I have to say something, morality isn't about Id, Ego, or Super Ego; it's something beyond all three and thus, to reiterate, neither of these 3 parts of our personality can get a handle on what morality is. Evidence? Check the morality section of philosophy - confusion of the highest order. Too, I recently discovered that deontology contradicts consequentialism but, interestingly, both make complete sense.
Yes, I absolutely agree. I did not mean to suggest that these aspects of the mind produce morality, or that ethics depends thereupon. I only I donate that it is the "higher mind" from which the individual sense of ethical behavior, subsequent to moral instruction of course, proceeds, and that the wanton violation of that sense weakens it, and strengthens the primal mind in comparison.
This is my offer of a psychologically-based justification for ethical behavior, but amounts to nothing more than that.
I fear you're as lost as I am. No point in either of us asking for directions from each other. Do carry on. One of us will stumble onto the truth, the other, probably me, will walk right into an elaborate trap. Good luck!
The statement "fiction is true" is paradoxical, and honestly, when that claim was first presented to me it provided a bit of an "aha!" moment. It made room for religion in a scientific world, where everything was either considered true or false in a lab experiment sort of way, but this paradoxical statement allows that meaning could be known though entirely fictional means.
How the statement "the false can be true" can only make sense if we're using two different epistemologies when we say "false" and another when we say "true" in that sentence. In that sentence, the term "false" means false in the scientific sense, as in there was not really a talking fox in the fox and grapes parable. But "true" means true in the metaphorical sense in that parable, as in it explains how humans find meaning in the world.
When I say "the Bible is false, but it is true," that statement makes sense and is not contradictory because that sentence does not use "false" as a negation of true within the specific confines of that sentence. So, Christianity can be false and true at the same time, if false references literalism and true the metaphorical.
On another note, I took for granted the validity of your claim that the Christians destroyed much of Classic literature, but upon looking it up, I see that claim is disputed somewhat:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age I truly don't have a dog in that fight and am no more or less concerned if the ancient Christians did or didn't do as alleged, but it does seem to be an issue of scholarly debate.
And finally, I do generally have an objection to punishing someone for the sins of his ancestors, and I'd apply that also to organizations, like religion. That is, if ancient Christianity (or any religion) did all sorts of brutal and evil acts, that doesn't mean that the modern day form of the religion must inherit that guilt.
Beware the fury of academic historians when an outsider presumes to write of history!
Nobody knows the true extent of the destruction caused by Christian zealots. But it's not doubted that they destroyed writings, temples and statutes, and defaced them, and that laws were adopted by the Christian Roman Empire outlawing pagan worship, the banning of pagans from high office, the closing of the schools of philosophy and rhetoric and imposing other restrictions. So it becomes a question of how much destruction of pagan culture was caused by those who undoubtedly destroyed aspects of pagan culture and were inclined and exhorted to destroy it. One can claim the only destruction which occurred was not that bad, of course.
:gasp:
Historians disagree with each other? Extraordinary.
That Christianit persecuted paganism is not in doubt. Have a look at Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire What disagreement there is, is to the extend and timing of this persecution.
False stories can be inspirational, enlightening, motivating. But calling false stories true is no more than rhetorical flourish.
What is at issue is not inherited guilt. It is an inherited denial of historical fact. It is an attitude that permits the churches to entrench the disenfranchising of women and to hide paedophilic predation. Should the destruction of indigenous lives and culture by Canadian residential schools also be whitewashed as saving souls?
Pretending that religion is not factual leads to the denial of the results of religious belief.
I've pointed to the discussion of Confirmable and influential Metaphysics previously. Religious beliefs can be assessed by their outcomes. Christianity resulted in charities, hospitals, schools, persecution and oppression.
We've previously agreed that it behaves much as any other human institution.
And that is the answer to the OP.
I really don't see any sort of systematic "denial of historical fact" which you are so bent on. We do not need to go back, 1500, or more years to find abhorrent misdeeds carried out by those in the higher levels of Christian religious organizations, as you say right here. But I really don't see the denial of fact. They tend to rationalize the incidents or refuse to speak about them, which is still not quite denial.
I see The Inquisition as probably the worst institution established by The Church, but at the same time, I see the terribleness of it as having the reverse affect of that intended, as propelling the downfall rather than sustaining The Church. But where is the denial of fact in all this?
Quoting Banno
I really cannot even imagine what you mean when you say "pretending that religion is not factual". How do you propose that an institution, a set of laws, or a code of ethics (which are all things similar to a religion), is something factual? How do you step across the ought/is divide as if it didn't even exist?
Can we agree that "a religion" might be defined as "an ideology"? How can an ideology be something factual?
And the enlightenment resulted in hospitals, schools, general enfranchisement and Hitler. Lots of ideas lead to lots of places, so judging by the results seems a selective exercise.
Science, for instance, lead to the mustard gas, the atom bomb, flame throwers, paper shredders, tnt, LRAD, and the electric chair. Or maybe science led to the whole scale destruction of most of the “natural” world. What candle does Christian destruction hold to the destruction wrought by science?
...what if the goal of a science isn't to be factually correct?
Religions - and ideologies - can be confirmable and influential; hence they may be judged.
too, for what it's worth.
"Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!"
The goal of science? Science (as a whole) is not a goal driven enterprise. Science is about making discoveries.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Funny thing is, I don’t think the goal is to be factually correct, I think it is to get funding and/or make money, but call me a cynic (not that we know if I would qualify since the Christians burned all their writings).
My issue isn’t with your judgment, Banno, it is with the scope of your judgment. When a starving man finds a barrel of rotten apples he might eat a few or spend sometime looking for one that isn’t rotten. A well fed man is likely to walk by and wait for a more obviously enticing selection. You aren’t wrong for calling it a rotten barrel and my finding a good apple or two is more a quibble than a convincing reason for you to have lingered longer before passing judgment. But again, if we care about an accurate description of the barrel (rather than our culinary preferences), my quibble may save the starving man from food poisoning or you a trip to a far off restaurant.
In the end this is political and probably not philosophical. Or maybe it is about a difference in approach to efficacy. Facts, to me, are uninteresting. What is interesting is what matters and whether we can accomplish our goals. To you, perhaps lingering on a fact is pleasing and observation and truth is inherently a worthy goal. I see all of philosophy in service to a purpose with no reason to invest in an idea beyond its utility. Is there a tea cup circling the sun? If it might hit our rocket ship it is something worth considering, if it is just a thought experiment meant to satisfy our need for there to be an out there there, I won’t linger.
So if a group of people get together and engage in meaning making via a story that flies in the face of what makes for good predictions about where to find more oil (geology is probably more sensible when you think of it as being the result of a process more than a few thousand years old), pointing out that the story won’t help them find oil is a distraction. Insisting that there is value in both positions - the story and the systematized observations and theories (“science”) - and using language intended to convey that value (like “truth”) is utterly unproblematic for me. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, they say. I think I once heard of a mind that observes everything at once so that when people look away those things don’t stop existing and so facts are merely the collection of things that the great mind observes. Good story to some. How is it functionally different than your world of unobserved facts? And yet, conflating the god story fact with your realist fact misses the point of the god story and why its explanatory functions are important in ways that your realist descriptions are not.
You see, religious communities are what people find important in ways that your types of “fact” fall short. And the people in those communities, whether they invoke the language of “fact” in a way that seems to smash face first into your “facts” or not, are not there to establish your facts as the point of being in those communities. Their use of fact language is in service to something else. And for people starved of meaning outside of community, chewing on the corpse of god may be enough even if they have to talk in ways that would make them sound like an idiot if they walked into a conference of geologists. (That was a call back to the rotten apple - I happen to think there are religions that have pushed the necrotic god bits out of the way and found some perfectly edible apples underneath.)
It isn’t that you have to agree with them (or me), Banno, but in your fullness of meaning in the absence of community (especially those communities feasting on putrifying deity), you can’t pretend as if your judgment (your aesthetic preference) is the necessary judgment.
So you think he would agree that statements are not truth apt, that historical facts don’t exist to make statements true, or that in the absence of a potential observer, we can’t figure it out?
I'm sure that religions can be influential, and that they can be judged, but I'm not sure as to what you would mean by "confirmable". The point I was alluding to is that the process for judgement of religious ideology is completely different from the process for judging something like a scientific theory. That's why I asked you to prove your expressed principles, that books ought not be burned, and that rulers ought not lie to the subjects. We know that scientific theories are judged according to the scientific method, but did you know that religious ideologies are judged according to metaphysical principles? We don't judge religions according to our emotional feelings, we establish rational moral principles based in solid metaphysics, and this is how we judge them.
We are lucky to live in a society where we can choose our religions, or ideologies. So we are allowed to make our own judgements, and we are not necessarily born into a religion. But still our governments impose boundaries, preventing us from crossing the borderline into hate, for example. That would be a case where judgement is based in emotion. So the governing forces always must have the power to prevent transgressions which they apprehend as substantial. And, what constitutes a substantial transgression is not consistent through time, due to changing historical conditions, changing ideologies, and the relationship between the ideology and the historical conditions.
However, it is very clear that the ideology of an oppressed people, which leads them in revolution is not in the same relationship with the historical conditions as the ideology of a ruling class is. And "facts" will mislead us if they are related to ideologies in an unreal way. This misunderstanding is the result of the inaccessibility of intention, to the observer. What you do not seem to be recognizing is that early Christianity is an ideology of an oppressed people, not a governing class, Therefore the actions promoted by the ideology were revolutionary in nature. Early Christianity is very intensely revolutionary, (that's why Jesus was crucified), and this 'fact' must be respected when judging the actions of these people. The intent of a revolutionary is on the flip side in relation to the intent of a ruler.
Consider now, later Christianity after factions have been consolidated and central ruling power has been established. Here we find the Inquisition. This is a case of a ruling class enforcing ideological boundaries on the members of its society. Notice though, that the rulers only have the capacity to enforce these boundaries inward, as punishment, against their own members. So they have no real means for dealing with competing ideologies, as they stand alone, only the means for preventing the competing ideologies from intruding or infiltrating into their own ideological system. This ideology of exclusion is contrary to fundamental Christian principles of compassion, forgiveness, and accepting the differences of others, it has now become us against them.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
You may have noticed that you can't always have what you want. The world is at times uncooperative in that way. It has it's own ideas about how things are.
Now we can express how things are in many different ways and in many different languages. Little of this changes how things are. In the end these amount to different ways of saying the same thing. There is a way that the world is, and we are able to express it. We can tell the truth.
The world inflicts itself upon us, allowing some actions and disallowing others. This of course impacts on what we can and cannot do, upon our goals.
This applies as much to politics as to physics.
There are those who seek their own gain by telling stories that are not true. It may be that they will succeed by doing so. It seems more likely that eventually there lies will stand exposed as the world shows that they were wrong. So it seems with the previous 'merican president. So it seems with those who deny climate change, or insist that vaccines are unnecessary, or that Covid19 is a conspiracy.
But that's not the point I would make here. The point I would make concerns the sort of person who routinely and deliberately lies.
You see, honesty is a virtue. It is worthy both in it's own right, and because of the implied trust one might be able to place in an honest person. An honest person can be relied upon. Further, an honest person has integrity, they seek consistency.
A person who would tell one story in a public space and another while with their confidants is not reliable. A person who engages in special pleading is not honest.
To be clear, this is a moral judgement. It is about the place of those who lack integrity, of the dishonest, of the liar, in a community. And community is where meaning happens.
That's science, too. Social science. Moral guidance and social cohesion are good survival tactics for societies. That's why people at universities conduct leading-edge, unbiassed research into these things.
I take your definition of "truth" then not to be a correspondence theory (to say the least), but a pragmatism that states the truth is that which is most helpful, not from a predictive perspective, but from a psychologically pleasing level. You anchor truth to subjective value, while, at the same time, admitting there exists an objective method of distinguishing truth from falsity (i.e. whether it corresponds to reality), but you just insist this objective method is "uninteresting" (your word, which I best understand as meaning "does not provide useful results" else you're just informing me it bores you).
To break this down to what I'm saying: If you say God created the world in 6 days, you claim that's a fact because it gives your life meaning, all the while knowing the actual world out there evolved over millions of years, correct? That is, you recognize clearly what is true out in the world, but your focus isn't in learning that, but in figuring out what you need to believe to get you mentally to the next day? What then to do with what you know the actual world to be like? Do you pretend it not to be? Does it obtain the status of all falsehoods, no different than theories that the world is flat for example?
That is: You call X a "fact, " and it is defined as a belief that succeeds under your utility theory even if it fails under correspondence theory. But what do you call belief Y that succeeds under corrrespondence but fails under utility? And, what do you call Z that fails under both?
Surely X, Y, and Z are deserving of different terms, with X and Y being metaphysically different. If you view Y and Z differently, you have to explain why, and that might erode your pragmatic theory if you are forced to admit it's because Y is a "fact," yet Z is not.
Also, how do meaningfully debate @Banno if he obtains psychological satisfaction from demanding that facts correspond to reality? How can you tell him he's wrong in his objections to you in this thread? Mustn't you afford him the same latitude as you did the starving man who needed to believe his apples weren't rotten and tell Banno all he has said is exactly right?
I do see our tacks being distinct here. I an committed to declaring there was no Noah's ark, that those who claim there was are wrong, but that the story itself is metaphorically true.
Have I understood correctly?
My definition of “truth” is that there is none, i.e. that when we say “is true” it adds nothing to the statement (uttered in the context of an assertion) - a position that is in the ball park of the redundancy theory of truth. So I am not saying that someone saying something makes it true in the traditional sense, but that the assertion of something is done because it advances the utterer’s purpose. I don’t want to go too far down this path because I think what I wrote earlier was about how people can use “truth” in multiple senses with the sense largely dependent on the context in which it is uttered.
What I said was uninteresting is metaphysics - that if we conceive of a fact as being what is out there ( a state of affairs), that fact becomes important only in-so-far as it interacts with our will. As we can only have theories about “out there” (which we can discuss elsewhere at length), we end up in a situation where what we think about/discuss is a theory and not a fact. If we theorize “wrong” (that is, our theory fails to adequately account for a fact) but accomplish our will, I am not sure what it is that would let us know that we got it wrong. (Consider the case of true belief with incorrect justification rather than no justification.). We could certainly try to theorize right and spend lots of effort at being right, but for reasons of testability/falsifiability I think you quickly run into epistemic problems that renders such efforts a waste of time.
“Facts” are similar to “truths” in-so-far as they are both just symbols. Facts are important things in our language, so things that are perceived as important tend to be called facts. “It is a fact that” and “it is true that” both accomplish the same sort of trick - to amplify the assertion that follows. It isn’t important to parse the word because in most circumstances, I am not sure that anyone cares what the difference is. So “it is true that X” and “it is a fact that X” when talking in a bar are not likely to convey a different message. Again, the context dictates what work “fact” does in that statement - is it the sort of statement that is about mining or about meaning? In my view, there is no reason to reconcile the two contexts and insist upon uniformity of linguistic function.
Getting to your question about X, Y, and Z, if I state, “It is a fact that my keys are in my pocket”, it isn’t immediately clear what that sentence does in the context in which it was uttered. If I am alerting someone where to find my keys, it tells them where to look. If I am trying to get you stop asking me where they are, it tells you to stop asking. So now I say it and my keys aren’t in my pocket, is the statement false? Sure. Did it accomplish the key finding purpose? No. Did it accomplish the stop asking me purpose? Sure. Could it be that there are other contexts that render the utterance more or less useful? Absolutely.
What does my utterance have to do with belief? Potentially nothing. I might have uttered it as a result of reading a piece of paper that I don’t understand. I might have uttered as a result of repeating what you just said to me. This all gets a bit complicated and far afield, but I am trying to highlight that language does something independent of what I think.
Now let’s say I believe out there is in some way but I want to accomplish something that either necessitates that out there is otherwise or is irrelevant to out there. The latter case is easy, my belief is neither here nor there. And the former? Well, that is where @Banno’s imposition of the world comes in. Either I can’t get what I want or if I do get what I want, my belief was “wrong”. The thing is, why I am frustrated may be because my belief about out there was right or that some other fact (which I hold a false belief about) is so. Frustration is not, therefore, a way to confirm my beliefs, just an obstacle to be overcome or moved on from.
I am sure this has confused things more than clarified them. I am absolutely not saying that statements or beliefs make things facts, I am saying that people use language how they want and that we can use language differently in different language communities. When we say that the story of Noah’s ark is true, it isn’t that we are parsing metaphor from non-metaphor and simply equivocating on the interpretation of the story, but that we are equivocating on what “is true” means. Noah’s ark being literally true is meaningless when discussing the balance of my bank account but useless (and even counterproductive) when trying to make a coherent narrative about the archeological/geological record. Using truth in the religious context in a non-religious context is like trying to move a bishop diagonally on his own color when directing a guy in a red hat down a hallway with a variegated carpet to the pope’s chamber. You’ve failed to change your language game.
Now telling @Banno he is wrong in this thread is easy, whether I’ve given him latitude or not. Banno, you’re wrong. My saying it doesn’t mean much and merely announces my judgement to people capable of making their own. Appealing to my own authority for getting you to agree with me that Banno is in error is likely a bad rhetorical flourish.
In the end, facts are not about me, but about us. Insisting that people use language the same in all contexts is amusing, but misguided.
Despite felling a bit loath to indicate a percieved error in someone I have come to consider my philosophical better, I must say, Ennui, that I think you wrong on this particular point. This type of consequentialist rationale, this Benthamism, inclines towards a general failure of consensus, for while a given consequence renders increased meaning for the other guy, it may diminish my own purpose of generating meaning for myself. Bentham's utilities only pertain to human happiness as an aggregate. The thing not considered by Bentham (I tend to consider such as Bentham and Marx to have been "soft philosophers", much in the way that psychology is a "soft science", and such as Aristotle, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer to have been "hard philosophers") and his sociologically-minded ilk, is that one man's happiness is often another man's sorrow, one man's utility is another's...not worthlessness, but contemptibility. More specifically, not all utilitarian claims are as universally beneficial as the claim that "there is a teacup orbiting the sun" might be to both yourself and myself, if you and I were both in orbit within our rocket ship. The result in this world of the condition wherein utilitarian propositions have exhibited differentialities of beneficience, has ever been to fight, and so let power decide which of competing utilities should obtain. In my view, the purpose of philosophy is to aid in the avoidance of this type of process. In a world within which man can never apprehend ultimate truth, is to evaluate the truth of propositions based upon sound modes of thinking, and so to distinguish those propositions that we can know to be true from those that we cannot, thereby enabling one to adjudge utilitarian propositions based upon the truths that we can know, and so to avoid at least some cases of competing utilitarian claims. The goal of philosophy, then, should be to impose a rationale for the implementation, or not, of given utilitarian propositions rather than allowing implementation based upon a popular consensus (which might itself be based upon fallacy) to take an unwarranted effect in human society. In short, the purpose of philosophy, again in my view, is not to evaluate the utility, but what is a more basic function, to evaluate the truth of ideas and how that effects the validity of propositions, leaving questions of utility to the sociologists and politicians, latter of whom we should advise on questions of truth and validity. Am I expressing my thoughts clearly? I'm not so sure...
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
This is true...
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
..but this seems not to be. Fact and reality exist apart from subjective valuation and agreement, and are the philosopher's object of scrutiny.
And yet at my thread "what can replace God?" you were doubting that most people even nowadays get their morals from religions.
Well I struggled to pass it over and not comment that but damn, my Ego grabbed me from my balls.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough but I did mention religious morals are acceptable but the reason for doing so seems to rather deplorable - want of reward/fear of penalty. That's just monetary logic - you're merely buying your way into heaven with good deeds as the currency of choice.
Secular ethics, if you take care to notice, is neither about reward nor about punishment. The secular moral theories out there are all about good for the sake of good.
Exactly. And unfortunately it's what humanity still needs. What "works" better, for most people at least. Or else people wouldn't maintain so passionately religions till now.
[quote=Steven Weingberg]With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.[/quote]
]
I thought I might help you finish what you started. :grin:
Well I don't agree with Mr. Steven on that at all. Being good or evil is a mater of personal choice at the end. And nothing else. If people use as an excuse religion to be good or evil that doesn't change that it is still a personal choice after all.
Religion isn't a magic pill that "transforms" good people into evil.
Thanks alot! Between my fat fingers, and the bright sunlight on my screen, I guess I didn't know what I was doing for awhile there.
You're trying to eat the cake and have it too. You can't claim religion has been a part of our lives and then go on to assert that religion has no role in evil.
You're welcome!
Religion has a role both in evil and good of course. And if you want to attribute evil in religions you have to attribute good also. If we wanna be fair.
But my point is that religion doesn't transform people from good to evil. It's always a personal choice what you will follow.
It is true that many people use religion as an "excuse" for being good or evil. But if someone chooses to follow evil (or good) he would use any other excuse also even if it wasn't religion. Some tragedy in his life, or anger for corrupted political system, or unhappy childhood etc etc. We can't take away the personal responsibility from each persons choices and just attribute it to religion. Blame "bad" religions for everything . Of course religion is a force that can affect and influence many people. But still we, ourselves, "pull the trigger" of our behavior, our acts and our choices.
And at my thread if you remember I was strongly doubted that religions make more evil than good at the end. That people who probably use them as a "reason", "excuse" to act good are more than those who use them for evil. Maybe that's why is still necessary for our societies. Imo it's still the best "worse" moral glue for humanity.Considering the average low intellectual level of humans worldwide.
Of course there are many reasons, some you've mentioned, why people turn to the dark side but you can't deny that religion is one such reason. History is replete with instances of religiously-motivated atrocities. We could, with great effort of course, forgive such heinous acts (genocide and more) but then to also have to accept that it was divinely ordained is a tad too much, no?
Yes it is too much indeed. And that's why you can never have a fruitful discussion with a fanatic (both sides fanatic, theists or atheists).
If a religion person denies these historical atrocities or excuses them saying it was "God's will" then you better turn your back and leave. Anything else would be a waste of time.
But then not all theists are like that. Some recognize them and realize how unjust these atrocities were.
True but what made "some (religious folk) recognize them (atrocities) and realize how unjust these atrocities were"? Can't be religion itself - scriptures have remained exactly as they were for nearly 20000 years. Ergo, this moral growth has to be the work of secular/atheistic forces.
To be fair, I feel both theism and atheism are, despite their antithetical relationship, partners insofar as ethics is the issue - they seem to work synergistically. Concordia discordis.
I so agree on that. For me, they are both working together as a continuous effort of ethical transformation. Like opposite forces which at the end work for the same purpose.
And yes moral growth is more possible to occur from atheistic forces. As long as these forces though respect theists and don't be aphoristic against them. Treating theists like "idiots" and laughing at them.
Unfortunately this is the common behavior that most atheists have against theists. And that's what creates more rivalry and more fanatics from both sides. Making the moral growth process moving slower and slower.
I fear this is a fairly wise quote. I think of the good citizens of a suburb near me who are Christians and good family people but are willing to condemn any others that are not part of their 'approved by God' group - gay and trans people, women with careers. But worse that that, think of the religious prohibitions against condoms that effectively spread AIDS, or the religious folks who think God will save them from COVID (no mask no vaccine necessary). They seem to be dying in notable numbers... As the quote suggests, one doesn't have to be a slip smacking sociopath to do evil - in some cases just follow the directions of your local preacher...
Thank god you are not one of them, Dimosthenis9.
Your theory would be fine, if only people wouldn't have such vastly differing ideas about what constitutes right and wrong.
Or those people weren't particularly religious to begin with. Religions have cracks, and some people who were boon into religions, fall through those cracks.
Oh, the irony of using language for saying this.
When you burn a pile of trash, do you feel sorry for doing so? Do you think you've done something bad? If someone asks you about it, will you indulge in their questions? No on all counts.
That's how the Christians feel about the matter of destroying other cultures.
But you've got an interesting clash of cultures here: You're sure of your position, and the Christians are sure of their position. And neither of you will budge.
Quoting Banno
Would you speak openly, truthfully, in detail if you were questioned by someone whose authority you do not acknowledge? You probably wouldn't. Same with Christians. They consider it beneath their dignity to discuss themselves and their church with outsiders.
Look, I'm not defending Christians or Christianity here. If the posters here had a competition as to who was most wronged by Christians, I'd probably be among the winners.
I can't quite tell whether you're just a stubborn authoritarian, or a romantic idealist, so I don't know how to tailor my responses to you.
Yes, of course. I recognize the differentiation, but also realize that it is, along with an individual brain's ability to produce a "higher mind", precisely that which accounts for the differing abilities of the "higher mind" (Superego) to counter the inner urgings of the "primal mind" (Id). It must also be recognized that differences in percieving right and wrong can themselves have differing etiologies: acculturation, malacculturation, organic brain abnormalities, "thinking problems" (mental illness) deriving from other than said abnormalities, etc. Regardless, I think the model holds.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
What if it is? I suggest that in the long run, the aim of "giving people moral guidance, thymos, and social cohesion" is well-served by promoting the value of truthfulness, and is impaired by promoting bullshit, lies, delusion, literal belief in fiction -- and generally speaking, a culture of unreasonableness.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
There's plenty of ways to make moral instruction appealing without asking people to believe "supernatural" fictions are literally true. If a) moral instruction, inspiration, and social cohesion can be effectively promoted by other means, and b) promoting unreasonable expectations and literal belief in fiction has negative consequences (e.g. for morality, thymos, and social cohesion), it would seem advisable to find another way to get the job done.
Quoting stoicHoneyBadger
I suppose secular humanism has something in common with a wide range of religious traditions, not just Christianity.
On the other hand, Christianity means different things to different people. Who gets to decide what counts as "content" and what counts as "wrapper"? This is one of the features of exegesis that people will disagree about. The wrapper, by its very design, is open to more or less fundamentalist interpretations of a great many sayings -- and under those interpretations, for the people who thus interpret, those features are part of the content of the religion.
Isn't there a downside to this openness to fundamentalist interpretation, that might offset the utility you have so narrowly emphasized? As I suggested above, if the "wrapper" promotes unreasonableness, we might expect it to have effects that in the long run are contrary to the goals you've selected, among other negative effects.
Is there an analogous problem for secular humanism -- or for any ideology that promotes morality, thymos, and community along with truth and reason?
Quoting stoicHoneyBadgerThis strikes me as symptomatic of a profoundly confused view of events in Afghanistan, of American foreign policy, and of the history of the past century or so, to say the least. I suspect it would take us too far off topic to clear this up here. I hope we can pursue the conversation without getting bogged down in such examples.
I would argue that our logic and reason can work only within some 'metaphysical box', i.e. what we assume as good or true without any evidence.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
What do you think would be the right view on the given conflict?
But there has to be something in a person that makes them follow those directions. Because not everyone follows those directions, only some do.
Don’t be so loath. I’m glad to have the chance to reconsider things as new information/view points become available. And as the saying goes, flattery will get you everywhere.
Quoting Michael Zwingli
Just as I do not discuss religion as being unified, I would also not discuss philosophy as being unified. In this instance, I was speaking for myself. As a general proposition, I think you will run into trouble if you consider philosophy (or philosophers) to think of fact and reality as their object of scrutiny. It isn’t so much that metaphysics (ontology and the like) aren’t fields within philosophy, but that they do not exhaust the fields of philosophy. Further, I think you’ll find that many contemporary philosophers don’t really focus on facts and reality as such, but sort of assume the contingent nature of theories/beliefs about facts and reality and adapt to the circumstance in which facts/reality are invoked.
In any event, I wasn’t intending to sound like a utilitarian/consequentialist (in ethical terms). I was speaking for myself and how I approach philosophy. I very much agree that people have different causes for being happy and that one person’s joy can be another’s pain. I understand the appeal to something like objectivity to settle disputes, but not everyone agrees about objectivity or that disputes hinge on a particular objective fact. Problematically, we only ever have language and people do what they do in response to it independent of whether that language accomplishes your purpose. Words about facts are never facts themselves (something like “the map is not the territory”), and so appealing to words as if they are facts obscures what is happening rather than providing additional information/warrant. In the end, we have symbols and behaviors. To the extent that we are in society (a world of other minds), we have symbols and behaviors that lead to mutual interest/benefit and symbols and behaviors that do not. All we can ever do is assume that our personal interpretation of the symbols and behaviors is sufficiently similar to other minds that we can organize our worlds. Saying that there is a “fact” in this context does little for me beyond adding rhetorical flourish.
It is hard for me, given the way I think, not to draw a delineation between what I personally call "hard philosophy", more traditional philosophy which deals with those matters of metaphysics, and "soft philosophy", which delves into and incorporates the understanding of other fields of endeavor, such as sociology (Marx and Bentham), economics (A. Smith, T. Malthus, Marx), cognitive science (Dan Dennett, Doug Hofstadter), and mathematics (B. Russell, A. N. Whitehead, Hofstadter). I don't disparage these "soft philosophies", not intending to use "soft" in a disparaging sense. In many ways, these are even harder, as the philosopher who practices them must be an expert in the collateral field in question in order to be effective.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Aaah. :up:
So truth for you has become either authoritarian or idealistic.
You've forgotten so much?
Yep.
@TheMadFool, what do you make of @dimosthenis9's first claiming that religion is needed to keep the common rabble in their place, then agreeing that folk must make moral choices?
Why deny choice to the rabble?
I think that is limited account of how religions work.
The point is that people of good faith and good intentions often do dreadful things because they think this is what god wants from them.
People may be so awfully brainwashed by religious dogma and, coupled with inadequate education and being socialized in certain religious cultures, may actually think that harming people and judging them is what god wants. They are sincere, not using religion as an excuse.
People could be brainwashed from many other causes too. Yes religion is one of them. But as I mentioned again if we want to attribute evil to religions. We have to attribute good also.It's only fair.
Except if you think that such a huge human "invention" such religions, which has survived all these endless centuries offered nothing good at all in humanity. Thing that for me at least seems illogical.
Many religion people are acting good using religions moral guide .We can't deny that. And despite being an atheist, I find them social useful.
What I mean when I say that they use religion as an excuse is that we can NEVER ignore the personal responsibility of each person's acts. At the end it is his and only choice what path he will choose. Even if he chooses an evil preacher as you mentioned at another post at the end is STILL his choice to follow him.
They are hundreds others peaceful great preachers who are also religious. But he chooses not to follow them.
Sure religions influence many people. But I prefer to focus on people individually at the end. We are the "core" for everything. Religions, our acts etc etc. We can't just blame "bad" religions for everything and pretend that corrupts "innocent" people. With that way we underestimate people themselves! Considering them idiots who just don't have any choice and religions force them into bad acts like robots without free will. I deny to accept that.
Exactly.
I'm not trying to describe religion in all its panoply of great and terrible - just the fact that people who think they do good can be doing bad things indeed. It's not that they need an excuse; they are actually doing 'gods' work.' The fact that religions also do good and that politics also gets good people to do terrible things has no bearing on this key truth.
For me that is an excuse.
"God's work" as to satisfy their evil instincts but at the same time to justify themselves and not take any blame at all! Hidden behind a "God" and with no sorrows at all. Win win situation for them.
Ah, so there's our problem. I don't see that as an excuse. I see that as someone practicing a faith. We need to be comfortable in the realization that some expressions of piety cause harm. Not all, I grant you. But some do and they are practiced with sincerity and not as a 'cover', which is what the word 'excuse' implies.
Yeah there must be cases like that for sure. I can't deny that.
But at the end as in everything else that is accused of "corrupting" and "brainwashing" poor innocent people. Governments, religions, Media, Internet etc that I keep constantly hear how bad they are and how they brainwash people. Well yes in many cases they do indeed!
But I don't hear anything at all ever about people who LET all these to brainwash them! Everything ok with them? No personal responsibility at all?? They allow them to brainwash them! Well no I prefer to focus on people and not underestimate their ability to choose what is best for them. And when they don't I accuse them,who let themselves being brainwashed!
I wanna consider people as proud creatures and not as idiot robots! That way, imo, we help ourselves to grow bigger. Personal responsibility is a huge matter for me.
I can respect that. Sounds like you're a romantic, but why not? Take care.
It exposes the paradox at the heart of religious morality - free will (ref: the problem of evil) and religious moral injunctions (no free will).
Religious ethics tries to eat the cake and have it too. To be good/bad we must exercise our free will but then it has a list of things (e.g. the decalogue) we're prohibited from doing i.e. our free will is rendered pointless.
It's like giving a slave his freedom but then preventing him from enjoying his freedom. The slave's freedom is meaningless.
Religion has to be factually correct for the simple reason that if it isn't, it's just a fairy tale and who takes fairy tales seriously? We're not children.
The "proud" part don't see it that often at all out there.
I don't think that religions focus on free will. They focus on God's will instead. Providing a "moral map" that people should follow.
My view is that at the end which "map" you will follow and for what reasons (excuses that you will give to yourself for that) that is our own personal choice. At the end choosing to follow or not a religion as also the way you will choose to follow it (being good or evil), that is free will.
People invented religions for 2 crucial reasons for me.
1.To give some answers to their existence and trying to "escape" from the final end that death brings
2. To have a "source" of morals that are so needed for organized societies.
As people grow intellectually, morals change too, religions also. If we want to get rid of "bad" religions one day, we should focus on people and how to make them grow bigger intellectual. Reaching at some point where pure Logic would be enough to take their morals from.
But being aphoristic with theists and accuse always religions for every harm(not recognizing anything good at all to them) doesn't help at all at that progress, imo at least. Just gives birth to more fanatics and making that progress slower and slower.
Prospective truth lover, heal thyself!
I have not forgotten how hastily you assigned me to the anti-vaccer camp. You've displayed there an amazing lack of critical thinking, empathy, and common decency. And you cry foul when Christians do the same thing?
At some point it feels like you are willfully misreading, Banno. I have not advocated a noble lie nor have I engaged in special pleading. It would be like saying that I am engaged in a case of special pleading because I call the guy in a red hat a bishop and a chess piece a bishop. Words are used different ways in different contexts.
Please demonstrate that "fact" is used in the same way in all cases and that any uses that differs from yours is special pleading.
And just because...
I'm so blessed that I have you to point this out.
You have engaged in pleading for a special case for religious discussions, here and here.
The noble lie was from .
Quoting Ennui Elucidator I've specifically argued against that, most recently here but also here.
There is a difference between arguing for a special case in the face of a universal and saying that there is no universal. You know this and it is why you avoid both the “ordinary language” point (reference to the dictionary) and the jargon point (reference to a philosophical discussion). “Fact” is neither well defined nor used in an exclusive sense. Different contexts use the word differently. Why is this so problematic for you?