Well, that is where I will agree with you and would say an improvement could have been made; originality.
However, I cannot put too much critique against the collection either as he took a considerable time determining what to put in, how to fo it, and in what manner.
Notice in the interview he is discussing the lack of inline citation.
This isn’t running as a book of quotes aparantly, but rather an abridged run-on of grand human ideology.
Honestly…if you know that others have had far more profound ideas than you…this makes sense.
Actually reminds me of the Jefferson Bible.
Sorry I took so long to respond, but let me just address Stumps’ remarks using what someone posted as an interview with Grayling.
He said: “The Christian Bible, the Hebrew Bible, the Koran are all central to many people’s lives,” he says. “I would hope this would be on the same shelf -though it is not a religious text.”
O- Indeed it is central, but is that a positive or a negative in his eyes?
As for the reason behind his imitation of the Bible: If nothing else, said Prof. Grayling, the Christian Bible has a great layout.
It’s also a very accessible and inviting way of laying out text; it’s one reason the Bible is such a successful book.
O- It wasn’t so much his admiration of the Bible as his admiration of the layout of the Bible and it’s benefits for anyone trying to create book that will be successful.
Getting to the nity-gritty, he is asked: Q- What is the main purpose of The Good Book?
A- I wanted a book that was made out of all the non-religious literature of the world that addressed itself to the question of how human life should better be lived and what people should do to make something good of their individual lives.
O- What pray tell is the standard for deciding which is a religious or non-religious piece of literature? Was Plato religious or not? Was Newton? If you’re going to ask how a human life OUGHT to be lived, then even if you hold no gods, like Buddhism, your view can still be seen as religious, as Buddhism is generally regarded.
He is pressed to refine his view: Q- Some would say the Bible says the same thing. But you have said that part of the point of this book is to distinguish between the humanist tradition and the religious tradition?
A- The humanist view is that we have to start from ourselves and others. In that tradition we must gain our best and most sympathetic understanding of what it is to be human and the human condition. We have to recognize the sincere pursuit of good relationships with others, and the exercise of our better talents and capabilities is itself what it is to live the good life. Whereas the religious view is premised on the idea that there is a distinctive relationship between creator and creature, between God and man. The deity has imposed requirements on human kind to act and live certain ways in order to get into heaven and avoid hell.
O- The names might change but the categories that they reopresent extend between the humanist and non humanist narratives, because in the end you’re dealing with humanity. Both the humanist and the prophet have the same aim. God is just one of the ways to achieve the decentralization of the self. We start from ourselves…period. The others are favoured, if and when the become part of “ourselves”. As for his view of religion, it overemphasizes the relation between God and man when in fact the relation to God is dependent on man’s relation to mankind. You can’t love God and hate your brother, and you cannot love your brother simply for the sake of what God might say or do to you. The Book of Job is quite helpful in understanding this. And in Paul’s Christianity such a thing is alien. In his view there are NO requirements, for Heaven is a gift and Hell the fate of a certain portion, in fact, the majority of man. So much for the premise that there is a relationship between God and Man. One needed to only ask about the “relationship” between Job and God.
And here is a telling exchange: Q- There has been a recent negative reaction to religion. What’s driving that?
A- Before 9/11, people in the U.K. who had a religious commitment rarely spoke about it. It would be like talking about bowel habits or their sex lives. But 9/11 galvanized [humanists] and said it was time to stand up. In an ordinary mild Sunday religion, there is a big curtain and behind it a gradation all the way to violent extremism. And unless we pull that curtain back and think about religion we’re going to lose by default. And that in turn has made the religious people more vocal.
O- Is that what he is doing with this book? Standing up? Behind mild religious expressions, expressions about how central religion is in their lives, there is the hidden spectre of radical islam. Sure, what the hell does 9/11 have to do with religion as a whole? The humanist sees the altar to the Warrior God Yahweh in all these religions that are central in a lot of people’s lives. Is it really indifferent of him then to offer for the same shelf his thome? I can’t believe that, not when he brings up 9/11 and the call for humanists to “stand up”. This “Good Book” has as it’s aim competing with those others books and becoming central, for humanism to become central, in peoples lives so that the terror of 9/11 may never be repeated.
And I should have added that no one wants to see 9/11, but 9/11 could very well have happened because of humanist reasons. Timothy McVey did not invoke Allah when he blew up a federal building in Oklahoma. Religion is not the problem, nor is Islam the problem. Thousands go to Church on Sunday without secretly dreaming of martydom. Why do we give extremist that much credit, as if they were the spokespersons of venerable religions like Islam? Why can’t we simply say that the fuckers not only hijacked planes on 9/11 but also hijacked what Islam is actually about?
Instead this humanist wants to dump a counter religion, one that starts with ourselves and our relationship to others. Excuse me, but we have already tried communism and saw blood on the streets in it’s name just the same. Stop trying to invent, I would say to the humanist, new vices for true belivers and recognize man as he is, has been and will be, behind the masks that are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Communism and other forms of Humanism.
You cause me to wonder, Omar.
Do you dislike humanism as a whole, or is it just this particular fellow?
You just seem really riled up and bent on refusing permission of granting validity in people attempting to explore spirituality in alternative fashions other than the established traditions.
I wasn’t sure if this was something you hold in general, or just this particular guy.
Like I said earlier, I am approaching this from an existentialist bend. Think Kierkegaard. And this fellow is NOT exploring his “spirituality”…at all. He did not stand up and typed away what stirred his soul. He was motivated by 9/11, by the excess of religions, in short, by that which is lowest about these religious traditions, placed it at the gate of scripture, and procured a solution, a text that could compete, ideally even replace, scripture. From the beginning the whole thing smelled of ax-grinding.
But is he right? No. He is a man who is attacking his idol of religion without actually living a day in the shoes of those that find religion central in their life. He edits this book of his, probably just as he imagines the Bible was edited, parroting even the layout of the Bible. The product is called by a known moniker of the Bible and implied is the common quality of both his book and the Bible as works of men.Yet the reason why the Bible is central in people’s lives is NOT because it is a nice collection of human wisdom, which it is among other things, but because it is considered to be divinely inspired. How can you put what was inspired by a man’s appetite next to what was claimed to be inspired by God?
Don’t get me wrong.
The Bible may be indeed nothing more than a collection of human opinions, edited by men to suit their earthly ends. But if it was, would it be central in people’s lives? Perhaps not. Humanist’s principles, as embodied in our Constitution for example, have become central in our lives. We hold these truths to be self evident…but not because the forefathers began by simply considering themselves and their relations to others, but by trying to dicern the Logos, the language of God, the Will of God, or Deity, from Nature…our social relations that are revealed as self evident only come after a faith in a Deity that is dicernible in Nature. As such, these men thought that they were (including Newton for example) merely rewording what was already there in the Bible…and indeed they might have been. Such men had a different motivation that inspired them, as you see. They did not have an ax to grind. They did not see religion on Sunday as a risk that could foster terrorists.
I suppose what I’m wondering then is whether you think there’s anything of value in his concept; neglecting his motives.
See, I think this book is quite interesting.
Like I said, we’re bending around a turn culturally right now; just starting to.
Many are starting to “punk-rally” to atheism and anti-theism, which means we’re on the kick-off to spiritual “revolution” (using the term far less radically than normally implied; I’m using it to mean more, “to revolve”, or, “to turn about”).
These are the extreme reactions; “punk-rally a/anti-theism”.
Most are rather instead just starting to re-examine what it is that they think counts in spirituality; what it means.
Many are starting to think that religion does have something errant in it at this point; hearing the shouts of the extreme opposition; but aren’t, of course, interested in casting out religion.
Instead, folks are starting to examine and look for what religion should look like in a global community in the 21st century; we’re starting to check ourself.
One thing I think is interesting about this is that it produces things such as this fellow’s work.
It’s not a replacement for the Bible; I would never suggest that.
But I think it’s a great idea for a volume related to spiritual insights; indeed.
So I suppose my “bottom line” question is whether you see any value to this book as just a book.
Getting over the format and the author, do you see a value in a sort of Jefferson Bible of Human Wisdom’s?
I am curious as to how you would do that. Honestly.
If you are talking about cross-cultural analysis, I think that is a great idea.
Confucius once spent an entire day and night thinking. At the end of the experiment, he concluded that he would haved gained more insight after just one hour of conscious study. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t occasionally step back and think about things, but I believe that many people are overly given to labor-free “thinking” as opposed to conscious study. In order to be effective, conscious study needs to take place within a particular framework. Rather than trying to work with pre-existing frameworks, this guy seems to be trying to invent his own. That sort of an activity seems rather like hybris to me and I think that hybris creates all sorts of blindness when studying.
It isn’t that it isn’t allowed, I’m just not sure how effective it is and I question the motives. A history of humanist thought could be interesting but what, really, is humanism? It is a very broad umbrella term. I’d rather see some focus – and that is where the hybris enters into it, because I think this dude is trying to create his own focus, his own novel narrative. I’m suspicious of that stuff.
It was in response to, “Devoid of strict rules, poetry is just awkwardly spaced prose.”
And I could do that with any theological ontology.
If I strip it of its value, then it is just a running tangent of prose; ergo such concepts as the “Biblical Narrative” structure and form; to include entire studies of the poetic structure of such writings.
For random citation plucking, bible.gen.nz/0/index.htm
I haven’t looked that over, but that’s just one random site-group discussing such; there are entire classes in colleges and theological studies on a multitude of religious texts in similar tangent.
That too, but I just meant in general.
If you write something because you are provoked in spiritual compulsion to do so, I would absolutely read it.
My hope, silly as it is, is that all mankind values the writings of man from spiritual compulsion more than any acclaimed divine disclosure.
Sure, but in today’s world; the opposite is more the case.
We are more packed full today with study than we are in reflection because unlike any other age of man, we have more access at massively regular intervals of study and information.
I can study just about anything I want endlessly today; but silent reflection upon my own spiritual self?
Most people today don’t even know where to begin on that note.
Furthermore, I have absolutely no problem asserting that every major traditional practice of religion today is completely off-base from what spiritual experience is for; why they began to begin with; the provocation.
Today, most religious quandaries in the western culture center around proving to each other, of like mind in affirmation or of counter mind in conviction, of the rightness of our ideals in small tangents and large.
We are splintered into a ridiculous clutter of religious perspectives which each purport to be the best thing to work on or invest in for one given reason or another.
It is, quite literally, the religious equal to the issue that Bruce Lee was bitching about with Martial Arts in his day; a bunch of factions all fighting over who’s got the better instruction for the ultimate defense or attack.
Meanwhile, no one seems to actually be paying attention to what their own bodies and spiritual sensations are telling them much past ennui by way of finger pointing outwardly.
Personally, I’ve been quite interested in following the trend of modern spiritual standings and one thing I’ve noticed, aside from the increase in angry atheism and anti-theism, is the increasing amount of the population becoming more and more dissatisfied and unfulfilled by their predicated traditions in spiritual experience.
This guy seems to me to be nothing more than yet another in a running and growing tangent of such.
Religion, as it stands in traditional predicate, is completely opposite in mindset to the radically rapidly closing in world that is forcing the grasping of the reality of the global community mindset.
He’s been at it for around 30 years too, so it’s not like he just up and threw some crap together and called it good.
He took his time and did a variation of something I would say, again, to Jefferson’s rehash of the Bible - which was also really not popular in his own time and barely is now.
Is it better than the Bible?
I think that’s inertly dependent on the individual reading both books; if they were to even want to pick one over the other as there is no reason one would really have to.
“Alternative” doesn’t mean, “replacement”.
I think these lines really need to be truly reflected upon.
He has massive focus; 30 fricken years of devotion to one purpose!
He’s not making a novel narrative.
He took a very specific course of humanist approach, which he clearly described:
I think it’s interesting.
He’s getting so much flack for this in ILP, but I did nearly the exact same thing with Bomanism.
I did not negate what I knew about the format of the Biblical text in the presentation of Bomanism; which is a humanist spiritual ontology.
I mean, good lord…the considerations section on the Perspective of Teaching is dripping with influences.
[tab]Those teaching: do not provoke to anger, those learning; should they be discouraged.
Invite them to sit with you, as you would be accepting of children, and not cast them away.
Do not stand on your obstacles chanting for your brother to climb; do not place obstacles in your brother’s path.
It does not do good to try showing a path by covering it up.
If a learner wishes to not learn, then so be it for the learner; they are not interested in the path you show.
Do not force a learner down a path; should they be discouraged from other paths as well as yours.
Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as vile because of what you do.
Do not be proxy for creating contempt of what is good by showing good.
Do not hide a path to discovery in an effort to keep it from being worn for we ourselves once used that path.
How horrible it would be that upon their walk in the wilderness, a man in search does not see the path because we have hidden it beneath malice.
How greater our degradation must be if we lead seekers away because of our concern for the sanctuary of our Sacredness.
A man should burn his Sacredness and become spiritually tormented, rather than keep the Sacredness clean and sanctified at the casting out of all men that do not marvel in reverence at the Sacredness itself.[/tab]
Which, this concept was an inspiration that hit originally when I made a post a few years ago here at ILP to Shotgun, which highlighted 9 separate sections of the Biblical text which Shotgun would value, being Christian, and re-summarized them into a cohesive text with one singular tangent. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=166366&p=2040019&#p2040019
I thought about how effective it would be to do such a thing with the entire volume of every traditional religious text in one single canon, but I didn’t really want to even try that idea because I full well knew that such an idea would take at least 30 years, if not far more.
This guy did a version of the same exact thing but with non-religious texts (I’m amazed it only took 30 years actually!).
This is nothing new, aside from the fact that it was fantastically well done and carefully crafted and openly disclosed without apology.
Further, one would also note that the entire layout of the presentation of Bomanism is given in a double column format.
That was directly inspired by the effective method of traditional religious texts, such as the Christian Bible (as well as others, but for the point of this discussion, I’ll just mention the Christian Bible), being formatted in the same manner.
It really does make the rendering of the text far better when writing this kind of text because you can pair contexts side-by-side in manners that normal text formats just simply suck at accomplishing.
Not having read the book and not likely to, does it posit that “Truth” is whatever human’s determine it to be (assuming it acknowledges its existence)?
And I would say that my answer so far would no, that does not take place because it takes a moral stance; not a moral indifference stance.
For instance, it purports ideals like the following; suggesting they are truths by stating them:
Just from what you just quoted along with my original suspicion, I think I’ll accept my pre-judgment. But if it should ever explain anything we don’t already know (intelligently), do let us know.
It really won’t. That’s not the point of it.
It’s a collection of things people have written or discovered throughout history about things in a pseudo-ontological format without including theological indoctrination.
That’s basically it.
It’s a, “Why should we stop pulling our collective wisdom together in one tome like our early ancestors did just because we aren’t our early ancestors?”
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell…it won’t smack anyone on the head that is a thinker with a grand awakening of any kind at all.
It’s more like those little books of cute wisdoms for bathrooms; but instead, it’s meant more for a use like most people practice using holy books; pulling them out at some point in the day and reading a random passage from here or there and reflecting on the thought for your day.
Just…without all the religious overtone…that…well…that’s it.
It’s just that this, “that’s it”, hasn’t really ever been done…oddly enough.
Given that I find religion’s primary utility to be combating anomie, I’d argue that such an individualistic approach is counterproductive in the extreme. I guess that is also part of my problem with “humanism”. Back during the Renaissance that movement had cache, it was sexy and stylish, it had a following and a community. Nowadays it is just people banging on keyboards.
That’s where our disagreement must stem from.
I don’t see spirituality as anything of such at all.
Religion; perhaps so, sure.
Spirituality? Absolutely not, in my view.
Spirituality is a meaningless buzzword designed to make people feel good. There is religion. There is philosophy. Spirituality is just retarded philosophy or isolated religion.
Not in my view.
I don’t use the term to mean that it’s time to sip some fancy tea and do yoga before having your power lunch.
I use the term because if I am referring to the innate human emotional spectrum of ontological consideration, then I am referring to spirituality; much in the same way that Sam Keen refers to the same language.
I don’t need to say, “religion”, because that is actually not what I am referring to when I refer to spirituality as religion is a practice, not an emotional range of impulses that occur within our biology and neurology.
For instance, I am not the only non-eccentric person around that uses spirituality to refer to emotional ranges within our psyche.
And they are far from invalid whistle flops of bantering blabber.
For instance, ennui or existential gratitude are extremely spiritual core emotions that radically effect the more cognitive layers of emotions.
So when I speak of spirituality, it’s not because I’m talking over a cup of chi tea and talking yuppie wishful crystal talk.
It’s because it accurately helps identify the category of emotional ranges that effect the existential ontological state of a human’s psyche.
I guess it’s an emotion I’ve never really experienced. Or at least not one I have much of a need for. That is why discussions like these are so deeply alien to me.
