split the religion forum
Here is the idea.
Some people want to express themselves without being considered a nut or a bad person.
I was wondering if it would be a good idea to make a split in the forum categories.
One for discussion of anything spiritual or religious, and then another category for debating between the validty of modernism and any religion. Debate and criticism would be the name of the second half.
Does this seem like a good idea?
I Think it’s a good idea but not easy to come up with categories.
Even within religions and spiritualities you have a lot of different opinions and these can lead to arguments also.
IOW if you have one forum that is Science/secularism vs. religion spirituality
and then
Another for religious and spiritual people to share and explore, the latter forum still may end up with debates. And those debates can be good ones to have, but at the same time they do not quite fit in the first forum.
Some people consider the religion area of the forum as a crap house.
Does anyone know why that is and how to fix it?
I Think your idea is a step in the right direction. I suppose, I realized, I am suggesting 3 forums. 1) religion/spirituality vs. secularism/science forum 2) Religion and spirituality - Share and explore 3) Religion & Spirituality - issues/controversies between and within various religions.
It seems to me that what you’re getting at, Dan, is the difference between religion reigning supreme and religion under the supervision of philosophy. I vote for splitting the religion forum into these two.
As Moreno suggested, naming the two subfora is a delicate matter. Now as ILP is a philosophy site, I recommend calling the one where religion reigns supreme “Religious Philosophy”, and calling the one where philosophy supervises religion “Philosophy of Religion”. Both should have subtitles indicating what each subforum is for. For example:
Philosophy of Religion
Skeptical inquiry into anything spiritual.
Moderator: Dan~
Religious Philosophy
When thought is inspired by the numinous.
Moderator: Dan~
First of all congratulations Dan, The best of luck to you! I must say this appears like a very promising first step. I will leave all my doubts about how well youll be able to do this behind.
I think the mess in the religion forum is mainly due to that fact that within philosophy, within an arena where rational arguments count, religious discussion is the shithouse. It engages the non rational mind, and that is why it works… reason is hidden.
The skeptical mind is the natural enemy of the vast majority of faiths, so in most cases of pleasurable religious experience, the mind is totally subjected as an agent and only serves as a tool not an authority. So then it becomes a matter of sharing experiences and techniques that happen to exist and happen to work for whatever mysterious reason. I am deeply convinced that the only valuable element of religion is methods to exalt experience. “God” is comprehensive love, whch begins by transendental self-valuing. The aim of all religions is to attain that love but their methods often erase the possibility of transcendental self valuing and thus destroy God by praising him withut taking into account the praiser, who is an essential part of the circuitry of divine ascension.
Maybe I have another idea -
most religious debate in sites like this deals with totems, figures, heroes, idols. Whether Jesus is or isnt the savior, etc. That is so UNBELIEVABLY BORING AND DUMB that i think this whole kind of discussion should be restriced to a subforum.
Either berlieve in the guy or don’t, but don’t pretend there’s anything to say about the matter. Yes, on further reflection I figure that is the real cause of the mess in the forum. People discussing Jesus. It’s always about Jesus anyhow, it’s always roughly in terms of the Church, and never in terms that might actually help a person improve himself. If you were to restrict that kind of duiscussion, the orthodox kind, that would be supremely helpful.
So I propose another distinction:
Philosophy of religion
Where both of Sauwelios categories are included
and Orthodoxy
Where neither the numinous nor the rational play any significant part.
Well, isn’t the question whether Jesus is the saviour a specification of the question whether Jesus is numinous? After all, if Jesus is the saviour, he is numinous; if he’s not the saviour, he need not be numinous. This would mean that such questions belong to the Philosophy of Religion subforum, not the Religious Philosophy subforum.
Instead of “Religious Philosophy”, the second forum could also be called “Theology”; it should then have a different subtitle than “When thought is inspired by the numinous.” This would make it considerably less awesome, of course. Maybe Theology should be a third subforum–a sort of Rant House of the Religion and Spirituality forum.
So far there are only 4 votes, including my own.
I’m hoping the mods will voice themselves soon too.
I’ll probably vote against splitting, as I don’t see what good it would bring. People will discuss ideas either way, and since this is first and foremost a philosophy forum those ideas should be examined critically if people wish to do so. Even amongst the same denominations there are people who disagree so expecting that everybody will agree with your ideas and nobody will criticize them on a philosophy forum with major differences in opinions is unrealistic and I dare say impossible.
The reason religion is treated as a shithouse (or whatever term was used) is that it’s big on claims but small on evidence. Philosophy, science and similar fields of study have developed strict methods for attaining reliable, verifiable knowledge, accepting fallibilism and lowering the influence of our cognitive biases by means of strict epistemic rules which prove themselves over and over again. Religions just openly embrace our psychological biases and then treat them as if they were a legitimate means of building knowledge, proclaim that knowledge sacred and unquestionable and expect everybody to stand in awe of their divinely inspired wisdom.
I think that rather than unnecessarily splitting the religious forum and causing further confusion and dissension religious people should start presenting evidence and show the skeptics that they’re wrong instead of trying to hide from critical scrutiny, that would fix the problem much better.
Dan,
Though, i appriciate your intention but do not think that is a good idea.
We must not forget that itis not a pure religious site, but religious and spirituality sub-forum under philosophy. So, the underline intention is philosophy, not spirituality. It simply means that spirituality will have to be questioned by philosophy.
Creating non-questioning space of spirituality is killing the spirit of philosophy.
Secondly, if you do that, many insane people will come up with so bizarre concepts, that you will regret this idea.
with love,
sanjay
Let’s say miracles truly happened long ago. A lot of people could have witnessed it. Then it was written down. It’s not repeatable, you can’t just make a miracle. But you can record it. The person reading the record can either trust the author or not. It is faith of that kind, because a lot of things can’t be reproduced at people’s leisure. Another example would be aliens visited humanity very long ago. That is not a miracle, but it’s still not repeatable. You basically seem to want religion to become science, or you want all religions to undergo a universal reform. Is that the case?
Lots of people kill the spirit of philosophy all the time, all over the place. It’s also popular among some atheists to basically consider all religion evil. It’s possible to be insane and believe in science, for example.
I wish I could fix up the forum but I’m looking for good ideas and discussion about those ideas. Maybe ‘good’ is the wrong word, functional may be a better word.
People thought they witnessed a lot of things in the past. Don’t remember that a thousand of years ago if you were an old woman with a black cat you were an evil witch. There’s no good reason to take any of those stories seriously. At least not any more seriously than any other religion. Greeks thought that there were Gods on mount Olympus and that thunderstorms were the results of Zeus’s wrath and his ultimate display of power. At least Greeks had the sincerity to make their belief fallible, as men have climbed mountain Olympus and found no God.
Of course, the Kingdom of Heaven was supposed to be in the sky… but man reached the sky too. No heaven anywhere, just the vastness of space, which man ALSO penetrated and is exploring. What’s the next place the god will hide in? Oh yeah, he always hides in the unknown since the dawn of reason…
Khm, but to get back to answering you, if claims f.e. about Jesus were true and he truly is the son of God and did those miracles then he could EASILY reproduce them if he cares about people believing in them. Seeing as no miracles are being reproduced and the sick are still dying, people are still being killed, raped an tortured I’d say the world is just like it would be without god. Can’t imagine a good god standing by watching all these horrible things. Can you imagine that? Jesus, the good lord, instead of healing the sick watches them dying… able to help, but doesn’t do anything… for 2000 years… millions of people have suffered and died and went through more horrible suffering than even him. Besides, Jesus is the son of God, he could have easily not let himself be tortured and resist, right? Or he could simply choose to feel no pain so we’ve all been tricked that he suffered? After all, what SANE person would go through torment willingly? How does Jesus being tortured and murdered 2000 years ago save people, couldn’t he forgive without conducting that barbaric, cruel and pointless ritual? Besides, what should we be forgiven for? Acting according to how God designed us? Oops, got carried away again.
TL;DR: There’s no reason to believe such extraordinary claims seeing how many times people in past have been fooled by their senses and lied. Besides, if Jesus truly was the son of God and cares about reproducing those miracles then he COULD and he WOULD reproduce them. So, either he wasn’t son of god, he doesn’t care, or he didn’t exist.
Hmm, evil. No. I’d say that some religious people and authorities genuinely care and think they do good by spreading it, others just do it for power and control. Mostly, I think it’s a mix of both. But generally, yes, I’d say it’s harmful. And I definitely agree that it’s possible to be insane and believe in science, did somebody say it isn’t?
Wow zinnat I can’t believe we agree about something for once, though I guess we’re thinking of different things when you say “bizarre concepts” and “insane people” 
That is true, but at least they can be questioned.
Are you asking whether we should split R&E into two or how those different sections should be run?
with love,
sanjay
with love,
sanjay
I think this thread PROVES my point, it needs split, with restrictions on how you post in one section.
Why? We have a shit-headed sect of atheists and nietzscheans who drown everything with banality, and if we started attracting decent posters, like other sites manage, the rush to convert and dismiss one another be too high.
So… one section, if you dont have nothing to good to say, dont say it. In the other, be as cut throat and tactical as you want.
The reason why, is exactly because most here literally dont know any better. Dan… do you think I have the same grasp as you do about Magic? Or Sauwelios, Zarasustra? Nope… and if your in a deep presentation and discussion, last thing you need is a wolf waltzing in on a sheep pack.
I’ve handed the Nietzscheans their ass the last 5 years straight… you guys end up retreating to little forums where everything is private to discuss minutia under controlled, protected conditions. This provides it. I’ll ripe you a new asshole in the other section. But this protection would extend to everyone… not to be condescending, rude, or use vitriol in your approach.
A obvious clarification… if it is say, Hindus discussing conversion with other hindus, and one brings up the issue of say, christian missionaries are wrong, and its a sign of insanity to convert (seen this on some forums), its allowed, but a christian coming in to defend is not… but that christian can certainly copy and paste it for debate in the other section for later, or one on the virtues of christian ministry in india, whatever.
The non-competition allows for a much more indepth homogeneous platform for growth and expression, that should dramatically go beyond the rather mundane blah blah we get now. The latter, dialectic response.
Imagine Nietzsche trying to work through his ideas for Twilight of the Idols on this site, before the book was complete… and I just refuted and broke the back of every point by a counter point… he never would pf written it, and many of you never would of had the perspectives you do now. You have it because he was able to do it with very little opposition from the christians.
Hence duh… look at your posts above, and consider just how productive discussions actually have been. Pezer noted I never really discussed religious issues on this site… for good reason, like much of this site, it’s rather pointless, given the infertility of the soil for anything but weeds to sprout.
I’m going to answer this one question even though more than one thing was said in the post.
I used to consider myself a magician, then at a magic forum I realized I was merely an esoteric philosopher of some minor degree.
All I do is focus on lucid dreams, visions and energy meditations. This kind of thing is in many places and I know I’ve met some people more talented than myself. I have no clues as to where your own spiritual development is at. But I do believe people tend to be imbalanced in their spiritual development usually. One aspect being overdeveloped, while other aspects or energies are underdeveloped.
It’s a good point, but I think it misses he point. There are different types of philosophical discussion possible. Let’s say some people want to discuss what is meant by the Father, Son, HOly ghost in Christianity. They start and an atheist or a Muslim joins. The first might question the existence of God - which is not the topic. The latter might put forward the Islamic sense of the ontology of diety - this is also not the topic.
IOW different philosophy of religion discussions work with different axioms. For some to function well, certain axioms are being commonly accepted.
This would be true in politics. Let’s say conservatives were arguing with liberals about abortion and someone came in and started to argue that the world does not exist so it does not matter. Or determinism eliminates the moral issue. These valid philosophical issues are distractions IN THAT CONTEXT.
The thing is,however, generally people do not raise these types of philosophical questions in the politics forum. But tensions around what the issues are are common in religious forums.
Imagine Gib asks you to help him understand Hindu mythology and you are he are discussing this in a thread in religion and then other people join in and say
How do you know Brahma exists? Where is the proof?
This is not helpful and often leads to the breakdown of the discussion as intended by the OP writer.
You can still be critical philosophically in those forums. For example someone saying the Holy Ghost is x, can have their position criticized, can be asked to cite scriptural or other support and so on. It is not that one must simply accept the posts in such a subforum, but one must stay on topic which includes working with certain assumnptions. In the sharing, exploration forum we would be dealing with people’s experiences, what happens, what has seemed to work. In a sense phenomenology, and would be more like some of the more chat like subforums already present elsewhere here.