What are your religious views?
Do both religion and science matter? Or just science?
Where would religion fit in in an atheist world?
(I leave the meaing of religion open to your understanding of what the word means)
In history books and deconversion campaigns.
I would broadly describe myself as a Confucian. Since the problems of modernity are unavoidable and I am living in a cultural context outside of China, I think that the term “New Confucian” is probably most accurate, though the particulars of my beliefs are still being worked out. I am most influenced by Tu Weiming, whose philosophy draws from both the modern rationalist and idealistic schoools in Confucianism, though he errs on the idealistic side, and I seek to emulate his example. Whether or not this can be properly described as a “religion” is a different discussion, but I’m inclined to identify it as such based on the roll it plays in how I think about the world. The line between “philosophy” and “religion” has always been a narrow one.
Clearly both religion and science matter and have a vital role to play. Religion is a vessel of tradition, and exists to serve as a cultural stator. It binds its mutual participants together in the Dionysian experience, providing a continuity that extends across generations. Science, on the other hand, is very “of the moment”. The scientific understanding of today is very different from the scientific understanding of the 1800s. Religious understanding, on the other hand, should only be slightly and subtly modified between now and the 1800s. They operate on very different models and, as one would expect, they excel at encouraging different things. If religious experts built cars, we would perhaps now be unveiling the model A . . . But scientific experts veering into the realm of morality give us devices such as the Guillotin or automated whipping machine.
It is kinda like the rock band Oasis. One of them was pretty good at writing songs, but sucked at playing the guitar. The other was pretty good at playing the guitar, but was pretty good at writing songs. The tragedy was that each one was envious of the other’s skill, so they tried to take over each other’s roles and sucked because of it. At least, I have been assured that is the case – there is sometimes no accounting for taste, but let’s take that scenario as true because it makes a good story.
What role should religion play? The role of preservation and transmission. Now, this is just my silly Chinese cosmology, but those things that are strong and enduring tend to change while those things that are unchanging ought be supple and yielding.
Good post Xunzian.
can you explain a little more about the last comment
seemed a bit contradictory. not sure on your defination of enduring? I think I understand what you mean though.
I’m not terribly qualified to expand on that comment, really. I’ve only just begun a serious exploration of the Yijing (I Ching, under the older, generally more familiar romanization – I’m not trying to be affected here, just consistent but consistency can sometimes result in confusion). Anyway, the Yijing is an ancient text on divination that also serves as a catalogue of metaphysical assumptions that played a very important role in ancient Chinese thought, many of which continue into modern times. Central to this is the idea of yin and yang, which you are no doubt familiar with. Not only can the yin and yang be infinitely divided into yin and yang (that is what the black dot in the white side represents and a the white dot in the black side represents) but yin aspects tend to become yang aspects when they have reached their zenith and yang aspects tend to become yin aspects (you’ll notice in the structure, it goes from being very thin to very large, but once it has become maximally large [this is also where the opposite-colored dot can be found], it waxes and suddenly flips colors). This representation is no accident, where it is thinnest, it is most purely of the particular color that is is, whereas at its thickest, it starts to switch sides. Think lunar cycles, since that is pretty clearly what this cosmology is based off of.
Have you ever been to the Roman forum? When I was there recently, I was able to oberve a dramatic representation of the phenomenon I’ve described: those buildings that adapted and changed over time are those that have endured, those that were so quintessentially Roman/Pagan that they could find no purpose in the post-Roman/Pagan world decayed whereas those that adapted and became Christian Churches (for example) endured and are in fantastic shape given their age. To depart from the forum for a moment and use Roman examples that are more familiar, look at the Colloseum and the Parthenon. One is a pitted, decayed version of its former self, heck, even even the thing that gave it its modern name is missing entirely! The Parthenon, on the other hand, is as glorious as it has ever been. Sure, additions have been made, marble added, but the manner in which it has endured continues to emphasize its glory, it enhanses as opposed to diminishes it. One has been a living and breathing building from when it was made up until the present time, whereas the other was supremely important for a time, then faded into obscurity and now is only a landmark because Classists have made Ancient Roman glory something to revel in, but we are left with a faded and pathetic thing compared to what it once was. Likewise in the Yijing, weak yin and weak yang lines are unchanging whereas strong yin and strong yang lines tend to move and become something else.
So If things are bold and strong they tend to disbalence and change? Whereas things that are weak and supple don’t? That makes sense. I’m reading a book at the moment that has the Yijing in it, as in the characters of the book use it. The man in the high castle by philip k dick.
Do you consider yourself a taoist, in any sense, as well as a Confucian?
My understanding is limited. But from what I gather from what I’ve read and what you’ve said in eastern philosophy/religion theres less emphesis on absoloute knowledge but more on simple truths?
Ok not at all sure if thats true or exactly what I mean.
Apparently religion means “to bind”. So in that sense I would say Confucianism is a religion in that it binds people by giving a them a map of how way to be. Does that make sense?
But that is one side of religion. Then there is the whole question of truth? should we leave the search for truth soley in sciences hands? Then religions role is just to preserve tradition and culture. Or could we say the religion can find cultural and moral truths that science cannt find?
how does philosophy find moral truths? religion is largly just the name for the excepted philosophy which binds a culture together. Religion doesn’t have to abandon logic thats just your narrow view of what religion means.
I don’t know of any proof in logic for any moral truth? Philosophy doesn’t have to use logic anyway. Its just the pursuit of truth.
(I posted a reply in your ‘deleted’ post. I think we might be getting somewhere!!!)
Tortoise is right about this. If an argument is illogical (that is, not in accordance with logic) then we have no good reason to believe that the conclusion of the argument is true based on that invalid argument.
Fin666 is also right in this sense: We can continue to believe that the conclusion to an argument which does not accord with logic is true on the basis of that invalid argument but in doing so we are, in effect, declaring ourself to be a lunatic.
Eastern religiophilosophies tend to bleed into one another. The MacArthur survey of the religions in Japan is a classic example of this, where something like 180% of the Japanese belong to one religion or another. In the Chinese context, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, are all so closely woven together that one can think of them as the same thing from different perspectives as opposed to different entities. That is normally supplemented by local folk religion, which I am not a believer of and hence my atheism.
What you’ve gathered on Eastern thought is generally correct (like anything else, there have been exceptions to that rule, it is a very broad brush we are painting with here). For historical reasons, very early on in Chinese thoughts there was a debate on the nature of language and how it relates to the truth/Truth. If you are familiar with the post-modern concept of “word game”, it is a primitive articulation of that idea. The Confucians tended to be epistemic optimists because in correctly naming something, it was made real (the rectification of names); whereas the Daoists objected that naming was just a arbitrary label and had nothing to do with the actuality of the object. Much of this debate was fueled by Chinese proto-logic that, for lack of a better word, sucks balls.
In terms of the “search for truth” I think that religion should play a role in giving our philosophical bent a context. Metaphysics, and by extension religion, provide an abstract understanding of how the world works while science provides a concrete understanding of how the world works. Xiong Shili (a post-May 4th scholar who tried to bring Confucianism and modernity more into agreement) argued quite convincingly (I think) that science deals with phenomenal reality better than philosophy does, but at the same time science fails miserably when it enters the metaphysical realm. That doesn’t mean that philosophy shouldn’t agree with science (on the contrary, he argued that philosophy which disagrees with science is ultimately incorrect) but rather that philosophy is a better approach to this method.
Here is the tail-end of an essay that talks about his theory of causation and how it relates to science.
Can we not make statements that are neither logical or illogoical. We simply hypothesise there truth value then we use logic to find other truths. This is just axiomatic logic. For something to be illogical it must lead to contridiction. I can make a statement without any logic behind it and it not lead to a contrdiction.
I think your both to quick to shoot me down on the assumption of what I mean without understanding.