Well, as I have noted time and again, I created this thread because my own fractured and fragmented “self” is unable to move much beyond human identity as the embodiment of “I” reflecting political prejudices rooted in dasein as an existential contraption. Why? Because I speculate further that in a No God world, human existence appears to me to be but an essentially meaningless trek from the cradle to the grave. Ending in oblivion.
On the other hand, those who choose God and/or religion as a font onto/into which they can anchor “I”, think about these things very differently.
So, this thread was created in order for them to note just how differently they think about them.
If, however, connecting the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then is of little or no interest to you, I’d suggest you not participate in the discussions here. Because that is invariably what I will tug the exchanges back to.
What’s New About The New Atheism?
Victor Stenger answers the question.
Talk about an existential contraption. Talk about needing an actual context.
Sure, if your life is bursting with all manner satisfaction and fulfillment. If you are young and healthy and a million miles away from death. If you are in fact reveling in the freedom to think your own thoughts, to live your own life on your own terms, God and religion can be shunted off to the back burner.
But let things start to crumble and the diagnosis be terminal and what’s all that vaunted freedom mean then? It’s not for nothing that most churches attract the old and the infirm. When meaning in your life sinks down into the circumstantial hole that you are now in and the only alternative is oblivion, being a freedom loving atheist can itself be of little consolation.
As though this sort of “rational assessment” actually sinks in with those who recognize God and religion basically as an embodiment of Pascal’s wager. It just depends on how conscious one is that this is all it is. A leap of faith. A leap that really is just that: a leap of faith.
Again, and that’s before we get to the part that Marx preferred tp stress. God used as a political devise to sustain the interest of the rich and powerful. “Keep them doped with religion” as John Lennon once assessed it.
And any number of children in any number of communities around the globe continue to be indoctrinated to sustain a belief in one or another religious dogma. And, in part, because science and the secularists still have nothing even remotely as comforting for the kids as morality here and now and immortality there and then.
What’s New About The New Atheism?
Victor Stenger answers the question.
Let’s face it, given the gap between what we think we know about the ontological explanation for existence itself and all there is to be known, a God/the God is certainly one possible explanation.
And it is the existence of the gap itself that allows us to “think up” any number of possible solutions. And the beauty of situations like this is that all one need do is to believe that what one thinks up [or others think up for you] is true.
And nature here may as well be another God. At least when it comes to its creation. How can the world around us not exist and then exist? Or is it more mind-boggling still to insist that it has always existed?
On the other hand, can’t mere mortals be just as ignorant about the creator being God? For me it always comes down to that most profound antinomy of all: Why something and not nothing? Why this something and not something else? Let’s face it, this may well be beyond the capacity of the human mind [given its evolution to date] to even grasp. Or the attempts to grasp it may well be just an inherent/necessary manifestation of nature/God itself.
On the other other hand, given human autonomy, scientists at least work with the world around us: experientially, experimentally: phenomenally.
Still, the bottom line is that science to date is not able to calibrate “the final solution”. At least not to my knowledge. That they embrace the quest empirically may allow them to speak more substantively, but that ultimate gap between what they know now and all that there is to be known doesn’t go away.
And, again, this is all in relationship to “things as they are” in the either/or world. Most scientists [in their fields] are still averse to connecting the dots between what is and what ought to be – morally, politically, spiritually. Even political “science” is must contend with dasein, conflicting goods and wealth and power.
But why are you fractured and fragmented? What happened, that made you so and took you there?
Can you not think or feel beyond that fractured and fragmented state of self?
Yes… even as a (non-practising) RC, since birth, I am subconsciously tethered to that Faith, whether I like it or not. It played a major part in forming Me, my thoughts and feelings, and probably still does, well… I guess it does.
Iam said: “human existence appears to me to be but an essentially meaningless trek from the cradle to the grave. Ending in oblivion.“
Is that how you have lived your life? Did you not yearn to or seek out, anything otherwise and contrary to that?
Religion gives lives purpose and meaning, gained from being a part of That community, so perhaps that is the aspect you have noticed missing from your own life, that of belonging to a forming concept of self, so all you see is the end/oblivion/demise, where I instead see a continuation of I to where I am now and will be tomorrow onwards.
Have you ever sat in the back of a church, just to experience the experience?
Morality/immortality? Taking the sacraments I guess, to seal the deal with One’s god… ensuring a person their rightful place in heaven, sitting on the right hand side of Their god. That’s the primary reason for religion… following the rites and passages of your extended (religious) clan.
Dharma, rta, rights… not so much a solely religious thing as a societal one, initially spread through clans or faith-based systems… before the advent of mainstream State-ran societies and metropolises.
Over and again, I have made attempts to explain this. Encompassed in particular on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
Here in regard to abortion.
So, let me ask you this: In regard to your own views on abortion, how are you not “fractured and fragmented”? Because clearly the moral and political objectivists among us [left and right] have managed to think themselves into believing they are in touch with the “real me” in sync with the “right thing – the only thing – to do.” And then most religious folks among us connect this dot to the one that encompasses Judgment Day. Because they did the right thing in the course of living their life on this side of the grave, God grants them access to immortality and salvation on the other side.
Right? Isn’t that how “for all practical purposes” it works?
Sure: In my interactions with others in the either/or world.
Nope, not always. I was once myself a committed Christian. And, after “transcending” religion as a result of my experiences and relationships in Vietnam, I embraced any number of secular/political renditions of objectivism: Communism, Marxism, Trotskyism, social democracy, democratic socialism. Then came William Barrett, “rival goods”, existentialism, deconstruction, semiotics, nihilism, moral nihilism.
Okay, but from my frame of mind, this is religion as an “intellectual contraption”. Which was basically the manner in which I reacted to Zinnat’s posts way back when. Instead, the aim of this thread is to bring words like that out into the world of actual human interactions. In particular, interactions that revolve around conflicting goods in which various religious denomination have their own “scriptures” which very much connect the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then. These are the discussions I am interested in pursuing.
Yes. Only my interest on this tread is in reconfiguring that into discussions of actual chosen behaviors in particular contexts in which individuals “think through” morality and immortality in a philosophy venue. How are these “idea/ideality” dots connected existentially by individuals in the course of living their lives from day to day.
Dharma here [to me] is just another word that particular individuals come into contact with enabling some to embody it in lives that sustain meaning and purpose that sustains emotional and psychological comfort and consolation.
Here, for them, dasein doesn’t enter into it at all. And why would they want it to? After all, for me, dasein has become the source for my fractured and fragmented "person"ality in the world of value judgments and mortality.
I keep not getting your replies showing up in my ‘view unread posts‘ list, so only just seen it now… as I was scrolling through my ‘view your posts‘ list …will reply shortly.
What’s New About The New Atheism?
Victor Stenger answers the question.
Let’s face it, from the far left to the far right on the political spectrum, the best of all possible No God worlds will miraculously reflect the political prejudices of whichever ideological narrative you prefer.
But the point made by the more conservative advocates above is not at all unreasonable. Once God is taken out of the picture, mere mortals are more than capable of bringing about a world like, well, the one we live in now.
Is or is not the planet we live on owned and operated by those who eschew God and place all their eggs in the dog eat dog capitalist basket? The tyranny of capital for those who govern us by way of one or another rendition of “show me the money”?
As for secular ideology and morality? How about the 20th Century? Fascism on the right, Communism on the left. Let the dogmatic debates begin. Here for example: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=195888
Only here the squabbling tends to revolve more around genes vs. memes. Still, objectivism with or without God, embedded in either nature or nurture, the results are the same: one of us versus one of them.
On the other hand, when politics is involved, there is no getting around what is a stake: our actual lives.
Still, the world seems ever to be sustained by those who bet on God, those who bet on Reason and those bet on bank accounts. Not many folks here are “fractured and fragmented”.
Maybe, but conflicting goods going back to the pre-Socratics are no closer to being resolved. Instead, religious and secular objectivism has given way to democracy and the rule of law as [perhaps] the best of all possible worlds. Moderation, negotiation and compromise. Particularly in regard to many “social issues”. God is still around of course but most citizens are likely to embrace one of another rendition of “separation of church and state”.
Though there is always the danger that authoritarians – either God or No God, left or right – will bring this all crumbling down.
Here is one narrative:
Still, there are no doubt conservative narratives that can pick this apart point by point. Indeed, let the conservatives here among us – God or No God – do precisely that.
Abortion? It’s not something I think or worry about, either for myself or others. I have eliminated much in my mind, that is of no concern to me, so as to declutter my mind to make way for that which is… I’m constantly busy rewiring myself, you see.
What about in other worlds? I’m a neither/nor kinda type, myself.
My experiences have been more social than political… so gaining my worldly experiences through the Catholic church and in places of Catholic education, in Theatre and the Arts, in the workplace, in bars, in clubs, in exploring other countries and cultures, and now… dabbling in politics, which comes with a whole social sphere all of its own.
And now… for you, is? or you would like it to be…
Perhaps it’s an energy thing, so that our soul-energy departs the body and ends up where all dearly-departed energies are supposed to end up, in that, morality aids in achieving that mortality goal.
Even the Dharma/rta Practitioner is present/experiences dasein… albeit in various altered states of mind
[b]“When it comes to our brain waves, the key to authentic health and happiness lies in allowing each of them to work in their way, at their frequency and at their optimum levels. We should also remember that they aren’t static. Rather, they change as we get older. So, the point isn’t to get obsessed with improving our Beta waves for better focus or our Gamma waves to get into a spiritual state.
Delta waves (1 to 3 Hz)
Delta waves have the greatest wave amplitude and are related to deep but dreamless sleep. Interestingly, they are very common in babies and small children. The older we get the fewer of these brainwaves we produce. Our sleep and ability to relax gradually get worse over the years.
Theta waves (3.5 to 8 Hz)
This second kind of brain waves goes from 3.5 to 8 Hz and is mostly related to imagination, reflection and sleep. Fun fact: Theta waves are more active when we’re experiencing very deep emotions.
Alpha waves (8 to 13 Hz)
Alpha waves arise in those in-between, twilight times when we’re calm but not asleep. It’s when we’re relaxed and ready for meditation. When we’re on the couch watching TV or in bed relaxing, but before falling asleep.
Beta waves (12 to 33 Hz)
We’ve now crossed from low/moderate brain waves to a higher level. We’re now in that higher spectrum of frequencies that come from intense neuronal activity. They’re very interesting as well as complex. They have to do with times when we’re giving our full attention, very alert and on the lookout for stimuli.
Gamma waves (25 to 100 Hz)
Gamma waves are associated with high level cognitive processing tasks. They are related to our learning style, our ability to take in new information, and our senses and perceptions. For example, people with mental problems or learning difficulties tend to have less than half the usual Gamma wave activity”.[/b]
And around and around and around they go. The Bible used either to espouse or to eschew behaviors that fall all up and down the moral and political spectrum. You would think that this in and of itself would give pause to those who call themselves Christians. Instead, given what is at stake on both sides of the grave, rationalizations abound. Suggesting it is not what is believed but that something is needed to be believed.
But where both Christians and atheists are interchangeable in my view is in how they acquire their beliefs about God and religion through the embodiment of the actual lives that they live. Different lives, different beliefs. And only after philosophers are willing to own up to the existential implications [and complications] of that, do they become aware of just how impotent philosophy is when the discussions come down out of the clouds and address actual human interactions that come into conflict over God and religion.
Explaining perhaps why so few of them ever do.
Indeed, here at ILP we are bombarded with those who have concocted these extraordinarily far out “thought up” religious dogmas that almost never make contact with the real world at all.
Yes, that’s my point. It works the way it does for some because the life that they lived predisposed them existentially to one set of political prejudices rather than another. And they came to embrace one or another religious denomination [or No God at all] in much the same way.
Thus, based on this assumption, here, in my view, is your own subjective/subjunctive conclusion “here and now”:
But: in having a new experience, or in sustaining a new relationship or in coming into contact with new information, knowledge or ideas, it can become something that you think about. It can become an important part of your life.
Now, this thread was created for those who do find one or another moral value embedded in one or another “conflicting good” of such importance that they find it very important to choose behaviors that they deem to be moral or virtuous. Why? Because, in turn, their spiritual or religious beliefs are also very important to them. Thus they are especially intent on connecting the dots between “morality here asnd now” and “immortality there and then”.
How then does that unfold for them given a particular context in which both are intertwined? And how do they react to the manner in which my own assumptions about morality and immortality are rooted more in identity, value judgments and political power.
If, however, in regard to this, you are more a “neither/nor” person, this thread is probably not for you. Not that it should be. Your own frame of mind is as reasonable to you as mine is to me. But there we are.
As for this…
Perhaps. But how would one go beyond sheer speculation and describe how, given actually experiences that they have had, this can be measured or described in more detail? And, again, what to make of situations where others who share this frame of mind insist that the manner in which you have come to embody it morally and politically is the “wrong way”? With so much at stake on both sides of the grave.
…in the old, making way for the new? The unhelpful, giving way to newer, more helpful, ways.
I am sure that there is much, intertwined in our psyche during the decision-making process in our minds… though I would think that our formative factors changed over time, and so lessening their grip on the decisions we make, over time.
Things that I cared or worried about when young, are so different to the things I currently care or worry about, and the things I worry about are even lesser in number than ever before. The mind is it’s own recycling bin, that empties itself, when approaching capacity.
We are energy, and a part of the negentropic whole, are we not? and there-in lies the answer.
Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
Good point. But mine is that to the extent that particular humanists come to espouse one or another political ideology or one or another deontological/philosophical contraption, is the extent to which their own views might be viewed basically as a secular religion.
You just don’t die and go on to Glory.
Bingo!
Let’s propose “large, extraordinary truths about our unique nature and the human world we have built” that are not religions but that all rational and virtuous men and women are still obligated to subscribe to if the wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings.
Oh, and while we are at it, let’s take these truths and note how they would be applicable to all of the many, many conflicting goods that have rent the species going back to the very first philosopher. All we need to agree on are the contexts.
There you go…
It’s not God or No God so much as it’s my own sacred or secular font…or else. So ironically enough a “moral case” might be made for abandoning any and all moral cases that refuse to be tolerant of different sets of assumptions regarding the “human condition”.
On the other hand, that can be no less problematic to the extent that, in abandoning the “moral case” mentality altogether, one chooses to embrace nihilism. And while certain nihilist are ready, willing and able to accept “democracy and the rule of law” as the best of all possible worlds, others attach “rules of behavior” either to wealth and power or to the agenda embraced by the sociopaths.
Then those like me who are basically drawn and quartered, able only to make subjective “leaps of faith” to that which, say, their “gut” tells them is the right thing to do. This time.
Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
My point exactly. Or, rather two of them:
1] That an objectivist frame of mind rooted in God often germinates historically into a “Kingdom of Ends” such that any and all means are rationalized in sustaining it
2] That this flows in large part from of what is at stake: immortality and salvation
On the contrary, for many of the true believers, it is far from unclear. And that’s the point when we consider such things as inquisitions and crusades and fatwas waged again the infidels. And the beauty of faith is that such things do not have to be probed much beyond the belief that ultimately such things are inherently subsumed in the “Will of God”. Then it comes down to what any particular individual has come to believe about all of this. And it is his or her belief that propels/compels the behaviors they choose.
Nothing ever really has to be demonstrated beyond the belief itself.
And, of course, in regard to 1 though 3, for the true believers and/or the faithful, the irony here is completely lost on them. They call something evil because they believe that in not calling it evil their very souls are at stake. That’s what makes it evil. And if in pursing only good things that others construe to be evil then doing battle against them [where the end justifies the means] is anything but…nihilistic?
As for 4 and 5, trust me, reacting to them is rooted existentially in dasein. Not unlike the first three.
Right, like down through the ages the particularly fierce religious zealots [of any denomination] quietly give in to this entirely reasonable point of view.
As for the rationalist theists, well, are there any here? Accumulate your own set of assumptions upon which to draw your own conclusions so that syllogistically we can resolve all this once and for all.
Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
And here as well you would have to probe the extent to which individuals situated out in particular worlds, interacting in particular contexts, are or are not “predisposed” existentially to voice one rather than another opinion.
Only then can the philosophers among us go about the task of setting aside the subjective/subjunctive factors in order to come up with the most reasonable way in which understand why we continue to harm each other in so many diverse ways.
The key word then being “necessarily”. There’s what people do and there’s what they feel it is necessary to do. And there is what philosophers are able to determine all rational and virtuous men and women are [necessarily] obligated to do.
But: not just up in the clouds where everything revolves around how words are defined and then ordered into intellectual assessments.
That’s always been my own point as well. Religion is just one component of human interactions. And not nearly as important as the part that revolves around political economy. After all, only to the extent that social, political and economics interactions revolve around sustaining the means of production that sustain our actual lives themselves can the focus than shift to things like morality and immortality. The anthropologist Marvin Harris – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Harris – basically focuses in on the role that material interaction plays in regards to many aspects of the “human condition” that are often attributed more to other “spiritual” things.
So according to you life is meaningful existentially but not essentially. And, I suppose then, right and wrong can be differentiated existentially as Dasein but not essentially according to some absolute.
Ideals are significant psychologically whether or not they connect with ultimate Truth.
The specter of meaningless has got you. Maybe you’re possessed by it. Nietzsche said “if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”. I think that may be what’s ailing you. I’ve seen the image of the abyss too. The image is not the abyss any more than the image of a god is the god. Nor is the image of objectivity objectivity itself. Objectivity is an ideal.
Yeah, we try to label and pigeon-hole one another so we don’t have to deal with the ungraspable nature of the other. After all we’re mostly unconscious. We don’t even grasp ourselves.
Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
Talk about missing the point! Mine, for example.
This one:
[b]If you worship and adore a God/the God and your behaviors are thought to reflect this, how can anything that you do in the furtherance of that which you perceive to be God’s will, be seen as nasty.
Ironically enough God’s will becomes just the other side of the same coin. Given God and nothing done in the name of worshipping Him can be nasty. Given No God and there is no omniscient font around able to differentiate things that are nasty from things that are not.[/b]
This is the part where “serious philosophers” reconfigure into ordinary men or women who, in thinking about something they just heard on the news that appalls them, reacts subjunctively in sync with their own particular political prejudices. One person sees aborting babies as the unspeakable evil while another sees forcing women to give birth as the unspeakable evil. One person sees Trump and the conservatives as the unspeakable evil while another sees Biden and the liberals.
That’s precisely the reason why in my view Gods [and their secular equivalents] are invented in the first place. To establish the one and the only crucial oracle “out there” able to settle it once and for all.
Unless of course in the multi-verse this is actually already happening right now.
But: If it’s a No God multi-verse who gets to determine it? Our side or theirs.
No, more like this: based on my own experiences in life to date, combined with my efforts explore that life philosophically, I have come to conclude “here and now” that, in regard to my moral and political value judgments, “I” is the embodiment a subjective point of view rooted in an existentially evolving fabrication rooted in dasein.
And whether right or wrong can be differentiated doesn’t change fact that had my life been different I might have come to very different conclusions. Nor does it change the fact that whatever my value judgments are now as a moral and political prejudice, others can take the opposite point of view and come up with their own assumptions rooted in their own prejudices.
Thus, whereas I was once convinced as a Christian that abortion is objectively immoral [re God], as a Marxist I came to the conclusion that, on the contrary, it was objectively moral [re ideology]. Now I recognize that reasonable argument can come from both sides that the other side’s arguments don’t make go away.
And then the part where sociopaths argue that in a No God world they have chosen their own purely selfish wants and needs as the center of the universe morally. Okay, Mr. Ethicist, I note, how is that necessarily irrational?
And I’m less interested in the psychological parameters of moral and political ideals then in the extent to which, once they are taken down out of the theoretical clouds, they can be demonstrated to be values that all rational people are obligated to share.
Thinking myself into believing that my own existence is essentially meaningless and about to be obliterated for all time to come is hardly “spectral”. It’s based on my actual reactions to a world of conflicting goods, and seeming certainty that death commences only a journey back to “star stuff”.
Clearly, if someone is able to think themselves instead into believing in the “real me” in sync with an essentially meaningful life in sync with an objective morality that will reconfigure into an immortal soul on the road to salvation, they are probably less likely to be “ailing”.
That’s why I am always after them to bring this considerably more solidified Self out into a particular context so that we can explore our respective moral narratives/agendas.
For example, your point below:
Let’s zero in on a set of circumstances likely to precipitate different behaviors from us and examine our contentions above. There are any number of factors that can be grasped and communicated to each other objectively. About ourselves and others. It’s the parts that are more problematic – “I” in is/ought world – that are more of interest to me. After all, those are the parts that precipitate this feeling of being “fractured and fragmented”.
It still boggles my mind how after all these years he is still so far removed from grasping the answer to this question that I have given countless times.
Why are there endless conflicts regarding conflicting goods going back to the very first philosophers? Because there are many different meanings ascribed to many different behaviors when it comes down to judging them as either good or bad, right or wrong. Existential assumptions rooted in dasein regarding the killing of a human fetus. Existential assumptions rooted in dasein regarding forcing women to give birth. Existential assumptions regarding when the unborn become “human beings”. Even medical science can’t resolve this once and for all.
Ah, but suppose someone believes in God and God’s Scripture. Suppose she uses that to “resolve” it once and for all. Or suppose Buddhists and other No God religions go back to those who started their own spiritual paths?
Common sense tells me that if there is an essential font, it transcends whatever mere mortals might believe in their head “here and now”.
Same with oblivion. If you are on a religious/spiritual path able to assure you that, one way or another, “I” lives on after death [and is on the road to salvation], how is that not likely to comfort and console you more than believing that “I” will one day be obliterated for all time to come.
Now, some, like him, are not nearly as bothered that their own life is meaningless and destined to be snuffed out for all of eternity.
Fine. More power to them. But others are not like that at all. And, in my view, they are surely entitled to feel considerable more dread at that prospect.
Again, it always comes down to their own particular existential death. Their own set of circumstances and all they have to either gain or lose personally in dying. And how is that not embedded in dasein?
