This is a continuation of the discussion on a thread entitled “My Religion” by Mad Man P. Please refer to that thread if you are interested in the background for this discussion.
I propose several criteria for evaluating a theology. {I consider what you are calling your religion to be a theology.}
How well does the theology:
1)come to terms with ultimate reality?
2)understand human nature?
3)deal with one’s relation to others and the natural world
create/discover meaning or meanings that provide purpose for the human endeavor?
provide values that can be understood and made real in the life of a person?
Are these good criteria for evaluating a theology? Alternatives? How well does your religion(theology) stack up on these criteria? Any better ideas?
Here are some quick evaluations of your religion according to the above criteria:
1)Your religion seems to be limited to what is scientifically known… I think that any theology which does not take what is scientifically known into account is fatally flawed. I also think that a theology that does not explicitly recognize that what is scientifically known is NOT ultimate reality is also fatally flawed. That point is not clear to me with regard to your religion.
I would expect that you would incorporate evolutionary psychology into your theology. However, one need only view the recent diavlog between Robert Wright and Christopher Hitchens, both atheists with some commitment to evolutionary theory to get a sample of divergent opinons with regard to human nature possible within the set of all scientifically informed positions on human nature. Where you stand on this I do not know.
3)It isn’t clear to me that ethical positions follow from what is scientifically known about the universe. This is the Humean " ‘is’ is not ‘ought’’ problem. I’m not sure how your religion would deal with the problem.
I can imagine ways you could address [4] based on what you have said about your religion so far, but I don’t want to “put words into your mouth” and I don’t think you have explicitly addressed this.
This has famously been a problem for scientistically oriented quasi-religions of the past. Existentialism and post-modernism philosophies I submit as criticisms to this. How your religion would respond to these criticisms I can only guess at this point.
Most of my comments above may disappear if you choose to clarify your position on the five points. Until then, my own position, at this time is that we do not know what the best religion is. It’s an open question. That’s why I think that religious freedom remains the best way to go.
Edit: I corrected the title of MMP’s original thread.
I have always preferred the technique of religions that generally leave science to what it does, while claiming that science cannot find ultimate truth. Infact, I find it in bad taste when religion tries to appropriate scientific theory, as in the case of intelligent design, likewise I find it in bad taste when religion denies scientific claims. The road that I find most appealing, is the one that says science’s scope is the physical world of description, but the scope of religion is the spiritual world, and fundamental truth lies in the spiritual world. It sort of fills in the void of meaning caused by science.
If I was religious I would be that kind of religious.
I’m not generally partial to the idea of religion, but well said none-the-less. I would think that the luster of religion is usually found in its transcendental nature. To validate a transcendental concept like that by use of ‘reality’ based mechanics, or human logic, would almost seem to cheapen it. On the other hand, to deny science - or agree selectively as Christians seem so apt to - is to essentially allow your beliefs to become fairy tales. They will have no grounding, and thus no place, in reality.
The only thing about your idea though is that religion becomes the ‘fall-back plan’ (so to speak) for the unknown. Then, perhaps science will discover a theory regarding one of those unknowns, and one is left with the dilemma of choosing between science and religion. As much as people want to ‘know’ and be “right”, we hate to be “wrong” even more – which is probably why scientific breakthroughs were seen as heresy in the old’n days. To some, accepting a scientific conclusion (whether it seems more logical or not) in place of a previously held religious belief is seen as a loss of faith. Such a situation would take some credit away from the respective deity and cause questions/doubts that religious leaders are not prepared to answer.
There is this commonly held perception of a war between science and religion - born of human ignorance and stubbornness no doubt. In reality, religion began that war because science began to evolve much quicker. All some belief systems have left is to deny science, or give up some of their traditional beliefs in pursuit of logical understanding. I imagine religious groups do not look well upon that kind of change…
That was the general notion… To try and frame what is essentially an atheistic world-view/philosophy as a theology and to see how it might compare to traditional religions.
So this is an excelent way to start!
Those are excelent criteria to judge any world-view by.
I’m willing to look at it from any angle, so let’s go with this for now.
ultimate reality is the unknown, worthy of trying to get to know… Like how one might say perfection is worth striving for, even if it’s never achieved. Science does not provide “knowledge” in the sense of absolute truthes, but rather is a process of trying to narrow in on what truth might be. Probably the most important thing in my religion with regard to ultimate reality is being surrendered to uncertainty. Now what most people think when they hear that is likely a kind of highly skeptical disposition… which is not really the case. It’s more like a distinct detachment to ideas and concepts… viewing them as tools rather than truthes that have intrinsic value. Which you might notice is really just intrumentalism put in my own words.
If ever there were a kind of blasphemy in my religion, it would be to declare anything true with regard to ultimate reality… Not only does that disqualify you as a member, but it also stunts your ability to progress in your understanding, whether what you claimed happen to be true or not… why would you want to lose such an ability?
I hope that this manages to describes a sort of relationship with ultimate reality.
I think “human nature” is a term that has very little application. Consider that we are each equiped with a brain that it constantly evolving and learning new behaviors and such, and then try to capture every single member that qualifies as “human” in a description… the difficulty of It borders on pointless, and the danger of it is to think of some humans as “unnatural” or “corrupted” by the lights of an impefect definition rather than to continue to strugle with the idea.
Why bother?
My religion does not allow me to dictate right or wrong in absolute terms especially given what i’ve said about human nature… I might only comment on what is useful or useless or rather harmful/helpful given a goal.
However, goals vari from person to person, or from society to society… One might try to approach it by assuming that evolution has built into us, by now, a pretty strong aversion to death, such that most of us might agree that we’d like to avoid being killed by the other and come together on this to make a collective effort… but then again we have more powerful social instincts that allow us to face death for the good of the group… an instinct which often relate to a conception of what that good might be
So unfortunatly some ideas are considered worth dying for and worth killing for, and those ideas are not always compatible.
That pretty much negates what common ground we had to work with.
It’s a strugle to find a place where we can feel at peace, at rest, content. Some of us might do it by changing ourselves and our own dispositions… while others might try to do it by changing the enviroment to suit their disposition.
But everything is always moving… so what might be peaceful one moment, might not be the next.
I can think of no perticular reason to suppose that there should be an absolute answer that applies universally… But I can think of plenty of ways to live that one might view as a good life by ones own standards.
Personally I find that when I see images of our planet and it’s relative size in the universe, it suggests to me rather strongly that any concern of ours is rather petty in the greater scheme of things.
Our playground is much larger than this earth… we should be looking for ways to go play in it!
But that’s a little loopy, even for a religion…
Just living is purpose enough, I’d say. we’re not born so as to want to die, and staying alive (physically and mentally/spiritually) can be hard enough sometimes… I find that curiosity provides an excelent basis for mental vigor and spiritual health and can often lead to knowledge aiding physical survival as well.
I’ve listed quite a few already I think… The surrender to uncertainty coupled with curiosity and a desire to stay alive… try not to get attached to ideas but see them as tools instead… ect.
Do those qualify as values?
I would not suggest that we banish religious freedom… but that we consider and compare them critically such that we may notice where one might stand to gain by learning from another ect.
I believe I hold the best religion, which would be why I hold it… but I would welcome anyone willing to explained to me how it might fail and in what areas it falls short… Such that I may improve it.
My religion is a work in progress… and will always be.
This is a question in the middle, not the beginning, but…
I understand ideas as tools. They create those structures that allow us to make sense of the universe, but while they are just tools, I might ask: Tools to what end? I’ll accept that however you choose both structure and content is the “best” religion, but can you claim best for all or just yourself? The latter needs no explanation, but the former asks for justification agreeable to all. Without that agreement, isn’t “best” called into question?
It merely proves that we can turn this crank and get the right answers in a certain area. If you restrict yourself to these areas, your ideas naturally appear unassailable.
The goal is to comprehend… Why is that the goal?
Consider that things change all around us all the time, including ourselves… those ideas that are aproaching the true “rythem” will help us stay in sync, where others create a discord often harmful to us.
Alternative ends nearly always demand that you be guilty of that blasphemy I talked about… Declaring something true of ultimate reality… after which you stop dead while the world keeps moving without you.
The best example I can think of would be nihilism, that pit of meaninglessness, where a mind or spirit goes to die… in this case the declared truth is that nothing is true.
Often when we make such declarations we find that we don’t actually act on them… our mind can’t act on them… the world dosn’t act on them… and then we condemn ourselves, others and the world for going against “ultimate reality”.
This practice seems like a horrible waste to me.
The point of this whole thing is to call “best” into question… but there’s a misunderstanding as to who is calling it into question.
My religion does not ask that I convince others that it’s the best… But that I allow them to convince me that it’s not… such that it may be improved.
Define it.
I don’t bother defining human nature. Human nature is described by how humans act…
Trying to capture that into a definition would end up either being so broad that we couldn’t apply the idea to much of anything or too narrow to fit all humans.
Depends of course on how you wish to apply it… If we’re talking politics and trying to figure out how best structure society to maximize this or that, then I suppose one might talk about “human nature” as a way of setting limitations for the possibilities… But even then I think we’d be better served by thinking in terms of WHICH humans we’re trying to do what to, and their circumstances and history up to this point to see what might work and what might not, rather than refer to “human nature”.
It seems to me that man will act human no matter what… What humans act like is determined by what we can observe in man.
One factor that creates your nature is the constant utilization of thought to give continuity to it which also gives steadiness to a separate self. All outside influences are translated according to a set of mental constructs which uses the mechanism of knowledge to perpetuate itself, to create a permanence for itself. Thought can never know anything as it is. It has to distort what is given according to its predilections as to what is pleasant and what is unpleasant, pursue what it sees as pleasant, avoid what it sees as unpleasant in experience, and perpetuate itself in this process of seeking.
On a global scale, thought creates frontiers everywhere. That’s all it can do. …it is thought that has created the world; and you draw lines on this planet, “This is my country, that is your country”. So how can there be unity between two countries? The very thing that is creating the frontiers and differences cannot be the means to bridge the different viewpoints. It is an exercise in futility.
If what we wanted to do was unite two countried than we would have to face the possibility that the processes required to move the one country, say the French, to a position where they might think of the other, let’s say the British, as “the same people” can be very different to what processes are required to move the British to think so of the French… and that it would likely require a coordinated effort and allot of time to forget the old borders. Also we’d need to decide where the “middle” where they are supposed to meet on might be… and so on.
What use is the notion of “human nature” to us here?
I’m not sure I understand what you’re addressing… or what you would like me to adress.
well … you kind of hit on it with the “…that it would likely require a coordinated effort and allot of time to forget the old borders” part. It seems within our nature is a complex divisive element interfering with a more favorable process of cooperation.
Is there any one giant outstanding personage that can have a widespread effect and bring about cooperation? My answer is no. Prominent figures had/have contemporary value only.
Does any one religion or heritage operate in the lives of the people pervasively? Can it be of any help to solve the economic and political problems extensively? I would say no.
Just tossing comments around a little MMP.
Interestingly and ironically there is a sort of cooperation in the way the cells in the human body operate right there inside you and me. We each have an extraordinary physical/biological functioning proficiently going on within each of us and as do all people. It is a remarkable machine and the essential, fundamental purpose is a simple determined undertaking: every cell is interested in its own survival. It knows in some way that its survival depends upon the survival of the cell that is next to it. It is for this reason that there is a sort of cooperation between the cells. That is how the whole organism can survive. Its only interest is to survive. That is all it is interested in. The survival of a cell depends upon the survival of the cell next to it. If this were to percolate into man’s understanding, where would be the need to instill ideas of ‘what kind of human do we want on this planet?‘ into man’s nature?
Your thoughts on the matter closely mirror my own… But I see a problem here:
We have a social instinct that allows us to sacrifice ourselves for the good of our “tribe” and some ideas can and often do latch on to this instinct. You don’t even need a tribe or actual people who stand to gain from your sacrifice. But in order to relate an idea to a social emotion you need to associate the idea with the emotion through experience somehow… often involving people, with whom you are familar and on good terms, espousing the idea openly and often. A subsequent removal of such people would not necessarily rob you of the idea… nor diminish it’s association with that social emotion/instinct.
The problem with the notion that we could all work together for selfish reasons is damaged by the fact that a mechanism exists that allows us to become suicidal… and that there are plenty of ways to naturally trigger it.
Perhaps a better way would be to devide the global organism into individual organs… The way your cells are not all the same. They don’t all act the same. Some come together to form your heart, skin, brain, ect. And they tend to not mix very well.
Or perhaps not… I don’t know.
What I do know is that I had better stop now… my rambling are going totaly off topic…
So tell me, what is this “true rhythm” that helps us keep in sync? What is this rhythm comprised of and how would I know when I am in sync? In sync with what? This is sort of fuzzy talk if I’m to rely on the scientific method of inquiry to underpin my beliefs and my “religion”. In keeping, what are these “others” that create discord? Is one man’s discord another man’s bliss? Is what appears harmful to one the epitomy of benevolence to another? Or are you suggesting some sort of universal understanding of discord and what is harmful?
I see some problems for your religion at point four 4 [how well does your religion create/discover meaning or meanings that provide purpose for the human endeavor?] Concerning the scientific cosmology Bertrand Russell stated the following:
1 "That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving;
2 that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms;
3 that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave;
4 that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."
Felix, Nice of you to bring Bertie into the discussion. Russell was one of the most brilliant and accomplished mathemeticians of the last century. He was thoroughly convinced that mathematics (logic) could explain everything in the universe. He was wrong. He ran into the wall. It wasn’t because he didn’t try. Your quotation came at a time where he was giving up because he saw that logic cannot prove the absolute he was seeking. His friend A.N. Whitehead, who helped with much of Principia Mathematica, had given up logic as an ultimate solution many years before Russell finally gave up the idea. Russell’s nihilistic conclusions came because he wanted the ultimate absolute and failed to find it. His journey is a reminder that we still have yet to discover a perfect method of inquiry.
A metaphor… It means the “right” ideas are the ideas that work… and by “work” I mean they render our expectations such that they match the actual world we experience.
The closer your ideas are to “the true rythem” the less likely you are to “fall out of sync”, as it were.
There’s an assumption there that I can’t possibly agree with… Nothing “follows” from the scientific cosmology but what we take from it.
If someone should feel despair, I’d suggest talking to a psychiatrist, taking some happy pills and getting over it so that they can get on with life…
I am not in despair over being alive and getting to explore the full range of human emotion as well as the world! So what if it dosn’t last forever? It takes a mind expecting ANOTHER life to be thrown into despair by the notion that we’re “only” getting this one…
And even if circumstances should become so that my life have no joy left in it, then I can die and that’s that…
If this life is offered to us… free of charge… no strings attached…
I say take it!
that blasphamy of declaring something true of “ultimate reality” always plays a hand in these feelings. (as Tent pointed out)
You have to expect/demand something other than what reality presents you with to be disappointed by what you are presented with… or at least… that’s my contention.
So Russell’s conclusion that, “Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built” is wrong?
Not really…
But he framed it from the perspective of being in despair over our ultimate end… which I do not think “follows” but was contingent on his expectations/demands.
