Also, a comment on the title of the thread, on why religion 'still matters'. The implicit assumption is that the matter is resolved, that religion and...
Ah, but is it? The point about mainstream Christianity, in particular, was that it promised universal salvation, with the only requirement being that ...
You’re right - ‘contradiction’ means literally ‘opposed speaking’ (‘diction’) - so applies to propositions. Conflicts (and paradoxes!) occur in nature...
Not an assortment, an arrangement. And what arranges them? It is customary to believe nowadays that this arrangement is something that just falls out ...
A couple of points - first, as Terrapin notes, the idea of 'the cause of suffering and its end' is indeed central to Buddhism. Suffering (dukkha) is b...
The point about Heidegger, in particular, is that he really was 'a philosopher of the human condition'. I think of the other two as far more academic ...
?? What I'm saying is that, this is actually a pretty difficult thing to do. It takes a certain kind of mentality to question yourself that way. If yo...
That's a popular analogy, which I will now appropriate by comparing it to yet another. We customarily look at the world through a weltanschauung, a wo...
Encountered it in a shared house in London in 1972 (the year after it came out). Of course I was massively impressed by it, but I have never really fo...
Those that I gave in my initial response, among others: the nature of number (real or invented?); the status of 'natural laws'; whether the universe w...
As I have mentioned previously, this theme is rather similar to the teaching of Krishnamurti. From the current homepage: Very similar, right? So is Kr...
Well, at least that is more civil. I guess I'm reacting against this: That seems very much in the spirit of positivism, doesn't it? I mean, both the q...
But, contrary to what you appear to assume, evolutionary biology doesn't amount to a total account of human nature. Humans, unique among creatures, ar...
I'm drawing attention to the implications of 'empiricism'. John Locke's 'tabula rasa' - that we are born 'a blank slate' onto which all the knowledge ...
Sorry, but that is the definition of ‘empiricism’ in any dictionary. What I’m doing is obliging you to think through the implications of what you’re s...
Just remind us of the meaning of ‘empiricism’ again? The dictionary says ‘the theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses...
What does that have to do with it? The question is, if 'experience' is the sin qua non, the magic ingredient from which, as you say, all science is de...
No, I'm saying that they can't be answered - well, they can't be answered unequivocally. They're in some sense beyond adjudication, you can't appeal a...
Challenging this very assumption was the modern school of positivism: Positivism was enthusiastically advocated by A J ('Freddie') Ayer: Now, I can th...
Oh yes and that's really simple. Why, you've only got to understand a bit of ancient and modern history, cultural dynamics, depth psychology, anthropo...
That's something for you to think about! I agree the whole subject of authority is vexed especially in regard to religion. I think that's part of what...
The reason I didn't answer is that it is (pardon me) condescending in the extreme. Us moderns sit on our comfy perch, convinced that all the benighted...
Well, that’s what we’re doing here. I thought the videos you posted made some good points. I hope you looked at the John Hick article. There are many ...
A lot of people but not everyone. And I write jazz, myself. Jazz is continually being reinvented and reimagined. Avantgarde has always been a minority...
I'm not referring to the existence of trading and mercantile cultures, which, as you say, have existed for millenia. When I read the OP title, I immed...
It makes many indispensable things, and I wouldn’t contemplate living without it. However while science is neither philosophy nor religion it tends to...
Have you read Protestant Work Ethic? It's based on Calvinism, but Calvin and Luther were both part of the same movement, namely protestantism. I think...
The problem is, nothing is 'wholly objective', right? Science, scientific method, and indeed knowledge itself, runs up against limits. I mean, science...
This thread seems not to have mentioned the key, seminal work in this area, which is undoubtedly Max Weber's The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit ...
I went through a strong rejection phase against any form of organised religion and what I saw as 'consensus reality'. But my views have softened, beca...
In a general sense, metaphysics and religion overlap, in the space of philosophical theology, first principles, and the like. They're not the same sub...
What we never generally never see is the *religious* dimension to this issue. Put it another way: if 'the idea of the fall of man' is meaningless to y...
Speaking of Doctors without Borders, here's an excerpt from a 2010 open letter from Reporters Without Borders to Julian Assange: Re Wikileak's commitm...
But that is what has happened, on a very deep level. Post-enlightenment philosophy constructed a meticulous model out of 'anything but God'. The Frenc...
In my years of debates on forums, I have come to the view that most of what is written about this topic is a consequence of cultural dynamics rather t...
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