Ennui Elucidator

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 ...

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 ...

I’m not sure that what I wrote matches what you have described, but I’m happy to respond to specific quotes if you find they deviate too much from wha...

Without going around the tree again, yes - we like virtue. But we (you and I) don’t agree about truth or that grunts (or other symbols) convey meaning...

It was a joke as you accused me of nonsense.

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 ...

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 kn...

And the enlightenment resulted in hospitals, schools, general enfranchisement and Hitler. Lots of ideas lead to lots of places, so judging by the resu...

How many new words do we have since Austin wrote that? Are each of them useless because they didn’t survive the lifetime of many generations? Facts ar...

It isn’t a religious conversation, it is debatably a philosophical one (but so far few people are interested in philosophy) or perhaps an anthropologi...

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 ...

And a bit more, because wouldn't it be nice of we did some philosophy of religion in the philosophy of religion section? SEP on Religion and Science

I think I said what is fine for a conversation in a bar is not necessarily fine for a conversation about philosophy. And since I was thinking about yo...

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 pa...

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 religi...

This is more a discussion for the other thread of what a fact is, but here is an approximation of what I might say in a more robust discussion. Facts ...

Soteriology? God secular Christians suck at talking about anything besides Christianity. Stop selling the shortcomings of Christianity. I get it. Why ...

What does it promise?

If you prefer, Baker, pretend like all of history were otherwise and someone said to you, suffering is unfilled desire, life involves unfulfilled desi...

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 relig...

If you and I were having a chat at a bar, I'd undeniably be a pedant if I denied that it is fact that George Washington was the first president of the...

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 i...

So when the Protestants claimed that the Catholics weren't Christian and the Catholics claimed that the Protestants weren't, one of them magically cea...

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 t...

This is where you become overly committed to nonsense and try to make it seem like you are somehow being rational while others are not. Put aside epis...

There is no point in you being here to discuss them when the very question is whether religions intend to be factual and the obvious “historical fact”...

On a non-philosophy forum his usage would be unobjectionable, but in this context where he is always going on about facts and truth and states of affa...

Whether I agree or disagree, tell me a non-vacuous meaning of “fact” when it comes to history. My claim is that we have extant “facts” from which we t...

And seriously Banno, either step up and advocate a block universe with no freewill or give up on your historical facts. There is no state-of-affairs t...

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...

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 ...

Also, I haven't the patience at this point to do any great googling for you, but I suggest you look into "evil" in other cultures and whether those cu...

I wouldn't make such assumptions. You didn't answer my other question. How are sinning and evil related? As an aside. Egoism Also, you might look into...

Have you studied all religions for all of time? What is the relationship between sinning and doing evil?

Who is being coy? I was rather direct with my objection to what you said (or so I thought). You used the word "faith" pejoratively in the context of t...

Is at the tip of my nose. If I misread you as suggesting that "Abrahamic apologists" arrive that their defense of institutions through faith and there...

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 com...

So Trumpism doesn’t fit your faith form? Or it just that religion is somehow unique in faith because beardy head?

You mean patriotism? Sure. Again, I question the broad brush, but the number of Jews verses Christian and Muslims is insignificant - the inclusion of ...

And not that it will help, but here are some important people writing to the Pope about literalism. From "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Churc...

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 th...

The OP could use work, but is there really anything he is saying that is so foreign to older ideas about happiness/the good? You just sort of naively ...

History belongs to the victor. cf Postcolonial theology

@"Banno" And as a "historical" matter, it might be nice to do some serious thinking about myth/mythology and how they function/ed in society. This wou...

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 fac...

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 ineff...

I did. You just missed it in you zeal to have me argue about something I don’t want argue about. An individual cannot assert a claim against another i...

And a group of cells isn’t a person. Is this really the quality of thinking that got you the title “professional ethicist”?

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 wh...

It’s like a broken record. Government policy should not be based on individual interests but communal ones. There is nothing in your analogies that ge...