Geez man and I thought we were about to wrap this up. 
Again:
Or was your question directed at Mr. Fun? This festive holiday season will soon be over. And he promises us never to return again. Unless of course making a fool out of himself is just too much fun to give up.
As Yoda would say “so earnest you are!”
Just what ILP needs now…another Mr. Fun. 
Note to felix, Bob, Ierrellus, phyllo and all the other God World members here:
What have you got to say to that?
Might I suggest an intelligent and civil exchange between you and Mr. Fun to explore it?
But please create it in a new thread. This thread still exists primarily for those who are on a religious and spiritual path to connect the dots [existentially] between morality on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” on the other side of it.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Of course my own preference here is not to focus in on the answers someone might give, but on how they came to arrive at the answers themselves. The extent to which their own personal opinions are more the embodiment of dasein than in answers that actually can be pinned down as more or less rational…more or less “correct”.
Debates about God and religion and morality in scientific journals? Conceptual confusions and limitations? Decompos[ing] “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded elements…?
I’d certainly be interested in links to those. Given that most scientists tend to steer clear of the is/ought world altogether. Let alone focusing in on ultimate explanations.
On the other hand, I’m all about the “complex interplay between cognition and culture.” Cognition and cultures rooted in historical variables that in many crucial respects could not possibly be more at odds when it comes down to sustaining “rules of behavior”.
Hmm, let me think…
What’s missing here? Of course: contexts!
Let’s see if they are to follow.
Thanks for posting that article. It’s interesting from my point of view. I’ll follow this thread to see if they do supply a concrete experiential context as you hope.
"The Origin of the Species"functionally replaced “Genesis” in our intellectual culture. Secular society generally believes in the lower causing the higher instead of the higher causing the lower as it did according to the perennial philosophy. So for us moderns information produces knowledge and wisdom does not exist. Matters of ought and value have no objective reality.
Traditionally wisdom is more ontologically primary than knowledge which in turn is more ontologically primary than information. What we call knowledge, Plato called opinion. It’s the basis of our technoscience. Who among us is not under its spell? After all, I’m sending this message on my phone.
But, by ceding centered intelligibility to technoscience, humanity has brought itself to the worldwide crisis of the present moment. The Faustian bargain was made before we were born. It’s part of the facticity of our collective Dasein. Will it save us? I think we need to rediscover wisdom for that to happen.
Hellenic asceticism…unlike Abrahamic or Buddhist asceticism - nihilistic asceticism.
Hellenic asceticism self–denial is a means to an end…in nihilism it is the end.
It can only contradict its own principles - self-decieve, lie - to survive in a world it denounces and denies.
See how Christianity makes-up a rule against suicide, which follows from tis own “logic”.
See how the Buddhist monk must rely on the generosity of his fellow man if he is to survive his self-denial.
Only here once again all I can do is to ponder “what on earth” you mean by this. Why? Because it is not intertwined in a context that would enable you to describe more clearly what you mean by the lower causing the higher and the higher causing the lower. Lower and higher in regard to what?
And how is your understanding of that intertwined in turn to the manner in which you connect the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then. The reason that I had begun this thread in the first place.
Same with distinguishing knowledge and information from wisdom. Given what situation in which one person makes this distinction such that it comes into conflict with how another person does.
And matters of ought and value are still embedded in contexts in which there are facts that all sides can agree on. And my point is that objective reality may well exist here. But that this would be rooted in the actual existence of a God, the God, my God. Or a secular facsimile.
And then from my frame of mind you really soar up into the clouds…
This [to me] is in the general vicinity of MenoSpeak.
Note more specifically what you mean by “our collective Dasein”. In the sense that Heidegger construed it? And save us…how? Note contexts here where this might unfold.
Then, to the extent that you believe we can “rediscover wisdom”, how might that be understood given the manner in which you connect the dots between morality and immortality?
See how none of this actually pertains to a set of circumstances where the intellectual contraption Hellenic ascetic and the intellectual contraption Abrahamic and Buddhist ascetics and the intellectual contraption nihilist actually discuss what they mean by means and ends given a particular context most here will be familiar with.
How about in regard to suicide and subsistence?
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Okay, discuss this in regard to your own God of choice. Given, say, a particular context. Indeed, even in regard to the either/or world it can be asked: Did God create the laws of matter because he chose them or did He choose them only because the laws of matter themselves offer no alternative.
At least that way if might be argued that God created our planet with its gruesome natural disasters, destroying countless human lives because He really had no other option. The laws of matter simply are what they must be.
Of course here we have an actual existential quandary. If a God, the God, your God loved goodness as encompassed in His Scripture, what of all the other Scriptures…where goodness might be construed in very different ways regarding the very same behaviors. Then [ultimately] we are back to the OP here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=197537
Only, again, given your own God of choice.
But I am inclined to at least accept that in the absence of God all things are permitted. Either given the nature of conflicting fonts or from the perspective of the sociopath.
Well, that’s certainly in sync with my own set of assumptions. No God, no morality. Or, if a mere mortal morality, one that is derived from hopelessly conflicting fonts. All of which would seem to lack in both omniscience and omnipotence.
And that’s the whole point of linking God and morality: He knows all so there is no getting away with it. And His reward is up and His punishment down. And for all of eternity.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Here of course the discussion can shift to purely sociopathic behaviors. What sociopath is going to pursue mayhem in his or her interactions with others if he or she believes in a God fully capable of sending them to Hell for all of eternity? But with sociopaths it can often come down to this: the extent to which their behaviors are “thought through” philosophically or religiously. Some can basically become thugs, interested only in stomping on anyone that comes between them and their own self-gratification. But others can become entirely more sophisticated in their rationalizations. Think Nietzsche’s Ubermen. A whole philosophy concocted in order to make that crucial distinction between the masters and the slaves.
And I am certainly one of those who does conclude that ultimately this does come down to God and religion…or religion but No God. For some, why would they not justify all behaviors if there is no omniscient/omnipotent transcendent able to hold them accountable. Instead, they shift gears from “don’t do that” to “don’t get caught”.
Please. The only way atheists can become the moral backbone of any nation is in treating atheism itself as a religion. Once the moral backbone itself becomes one or another objectivist font, the next step is invariably “one of us” [the righteous] vs. “one of them” [the wretched].
As for the softer line, okay, note a moral inclination of your own that you are convinced is deeply embedded in your own “evolved psychology”. This mentality is what those like Satyr use to justify their racism, their sexism and their heterosexism.
Even though all human behaviors must be natural because human beings themselves are an inherent part of nature, some are more natural than others.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
More to the point, is it even possible to come up with precise conceptions in connecting the dots between religion and morality? Let alone when we take our existential leaps off the conceptual assessments and focus in on the world of actual human interactions that conflate religion and morality.
Again, the easiest to understand is the “Thou shalt not” approach from those who embrace a God, the God, my God given one or another actual Scripture. Although even here these Scriptures are, to say the least, open to interpretation.
But what of connecting the dots involving religious paths that revolve instead around Buddhism or pantheism or deism?
And science itself is said to revolve around the “scientific method”. How exactly would that be employed in probing the connection between religion and morality. What mixed results in particular?
Yes, that would be my point. Only I would suggest that in order to at least attempt to clarify any possible disputes, we zoom in on actual “situations” where there are conflicting assessments. Even though for some here that has absolutely nothing to do with “serious philosophy”.
With plenty of actual existential contexts? We’ll see.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
And, for many, recognizing that if morality is to have any lasting relevance in our lives, believing in God is almost beyond all doubt the starting point. With [most of them] we have both omniscience and omnipotence. And how can morality be pinned to the objectivist, ontological assessment without that? If you can get away with doing the wrong thing and never be punished for it what kind of a morality is that?
What are these in turn but emotional and psychological states that we all have the capacity to experience because the human species, as with many other animal species, are preprogramed by nature to embody them in our interactions with others. But, unlike any other species, the moral dimension here is applicable to us in a way that it is not for these other species. There isn’t even really any comparison in terms of how individual members of the human species can be all up and down the behavioral spectrum. Which is merely to point out the obvious: Memes R Us.
Yes, that’s how it works. Given particular historical and cultural and interpersonal contexts [rooted in dasein] how each of us as individuals react to these things can be truly “vast and varied”.
How isn’t that exacly my point about your own value judgments? It is only the religious objectivists among us who insist that it’s their path or doom.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Isn’t it then obvious why supposed “insights” like this are ever and always bundled up in a “world of worlds”? In “conceptions”? In “general description intellectual contraptions”?
After all, you tell me: how, given a particular context, do you intertwine “doctrines, songs, and other culturally distributed networks of ideas” that you’re familiar with, with “outcomes of quite distinct psychological processes and functions”…given actual experiences from your own life.
On the other hand, this part…
“…both religion and morality can be endlessly assembled and reassembled in culturally and historically contingent ways…”
…makes sense to me as soon as you do begin to connect the dots between a “world of words ‘conceptual’ assessment” and the sheer convoluted complexity of all the ever evolving and changing variables tangled up in the life that you live.
Thus, when those like Fixed Jacob come here and start in with their “conceptual assessment” of astrology how is this…
“Like the constellations of the astrologer’s imagination, these assemblages of psychological and behavioral traits and tendencies may be artificial, contingent, and arbitrary, rather than grounded in any stable underlying regularities.”
…not basically my own point? Astrology, like religion is just another font to anchor the Real Me in. And “the celestial bodies” become just another God to yank your own responsibilities farther away. God and these heavenly bodies pull our strings in ways that are just “beyond our control”.
The point I often come back to. In other words, that historically, culturally and personally, religions are invented precisely in order to provide us with that font we can attach objective morality to “in our head”. But by no means futile if you simply sweep the “circular logic” under the rug and think yourself into believing that this is only the case with their Gods and their religions…not yours.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
On the other hand, given a particular moral conflict relating to a particular set of circumstances, where exactly does moral psychology end and the psychology of religion begin. Human psychology in a free will world clearly revolves around trying to figure out what any specific thing means in the context of grappling with what everything intertwined into the “human condition” means.
And, even given our own tiny slice of that, the relationship between them is going to be murky at times to say the least.
In fact, how do you make that distinction yourself given a situation in which your own moral convictions were challenged?
The bishop of course is the very embodiment of the psychology of religion: a God, the God, my God. But where does his moral psychology fit into my own assumption regarding dasein, conflicting goods and political economy? In other words, “politics” is but one more contributing factor to our collective “failure to communicate”. Maybe God should have thought that part through more when He created us.
And here’s how far that “failure to communicate” can go:
What objective moral truths would you impart to him in order to change his mind? After all, are there or are there not those among us who argue that rape is, in fact, perfectly “natural”? And God has been used to rationalize everything from slavery to genocide.
Consider:
emergencenj.org/blog/2019/01/04 … ne-slavery
focusonthefamily.com/family … -holy-war/
So, where exactly does one draw the line between moral psychology and the psychology of religion here?
You tell me.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
We need take no stand until those who oppose our own “moral concerns” put us in a position whereby, in challenging particular behaviors of ours, there are actual consequences. Think clitorectomies and sharia law and those who refuse to allow their children to be seen by medical professionals. Any number of moral objectivists [God or No God] are adamant in going beyond description to proscription.
Think this “clash of cultures” from Michael Novak’s The Experience Of Nothingness
[b]"Jules Henry:
“Boris had trouble reducing 12/16 to the lowest terms and could only get as far as 6/8. The teacher asked him quietly if that was as far as he could reduce it. She suggested he ‘think’. Much heaving up and down and waving of hands by the other children, all frantic to correct him. Boris pretty unhappy, probably mentally paralyzed. The teacher quiet, patient, ignores the others and concentrates with look and voice on Boris. After a minute or two she turns to the class and says, ‘Well, who can tell Boris what the number is?’ A forest of hands appears, and the teacher calls on Peggy. Peggy says that four may be divided into the numerator and the denominator.”
"Henry remarks:
“Boris’s failure made it possible for Peggy to succeed; his misery is the occasion for her rejoicing. This is a standard condition of the contemporary American elementary school. To a Zuni, Hopi or Dakota Indian, Peggy’s performance would seem cruel beyond belief, for competition, the wringing of success from somebody’s failure, is a form of torture foreign to those non-competitive cultures.”[/b]
“Stands” will either be taken given contexts of this sort or they won’t. Describing human interactions given conflicting cultural approaches to religion and morality doesn’t make Boris’s misery go away. Only efforts to actually change the culture to one less competitive will.
Same with God, morality and sex…
Clearly, in any number of nations where “appropriate sexual behavior” is a major moral concern, religion plays a fundamental role in sexual politics. The theocracies for example. And even in the West any number of ultra-orthodox and evangelical communities impose religious strictures in the form of sexual taboos.
Only with God, religion and morality comes Judgment Day. Immortality, salvation…Heaven and Hell.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
The “one of us”/“one of them” coin. And these coins have always been around throughout the entirety of human history. At times when different communities made contact with each other, and at times when, from within a particular community, conflicts arose over what exactly the “rules of behavior” ought to be even among our own.
Then it came down to the extent to which Gods and religious denominations were involved.
Yes, all of these things and more. But then the part where even within “our community” as a whole, these things were made applicable only to those we recognized as “one of us”. In regard to, among other things, race, ethnicity, gender roles, sexual orientation, religion. And of course class.
Right now HBO is airing the series, The Gilded Age. Lots of “warm fuzzy” virtues shared among those who are just like us. Old money vs. new money. And ever and always race and gender. God not so much. At least not so far.
Yes, that’s basically always been my point. There has never been a “one size fits all” niceness such that those like anthropologists or historians discovered that in community after community down through the ages certain behaviors were always deemed to be nice and there was no distinction made between “one of us” and “one of them”.
I just go beyond the historical and cultural differences and focus more on how even our individual lives with their individual sets of experiences can result in assessments of “nice” that vary considerably.
pardon the interruption (moo) but …
self=other
us=them
same same
Imperfect humans screw it up… That you can see it means there is a God that can fill your hole.
That’s what She said.
k bye