Yes, exactly, no truth value.
Contexts don’t get conflated with politics. Politics arises precisely from contexts.
Jesus, the original Jesus, Jesus God, wasn’t a moral message. He was a religious message.
For example, what moral message can possibly be gleaned from his whole episode with The Baptist?
It looks like a drive shaft of three gears that can be engaged, then again disengaged , but the connections may be forgotten in one sense, but the clutch is always there.
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Yes, we are attracted to archetypes and patterns because they are part of our own experience of life. We dream about them, witness them in others and we also take on various behaviours with which identify. Stories that have archetypes as characters are easier to connect with.
The Buddha myth has been compared with the creation myth inasmuch as Gautama is confined in a protected space, like the garden of Eden, and then breaks out in search of meaning. We can all identify with that because it also describes what many of us experience when growing up. Buddha, of course, takes it a step higher and awakes fully, whereas we tend to like the half-awake state.
… and yet our lives are full of symbols, even if we choose clothing with no symbols or refuse to wear symbols. Even the way we dress, the state of our room, the car we drive, and other aspects of life send a message out to others, and is in this way indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship.
I don’t see how this has anything to do with being sick or not. It is just the way we are made up.
Agreed
Spot on …
I can understand Harris though, because if you literally believe what Evangelicals and militant Muslims believe, there is enough explosive content there to destroy civilisation as we know it.
His ideas though, contradict his needs and so he has to come up with something that is like religion but not religion. I can understand that.
I wonder if the objects we make names for are also symbols.
They are definitely subject to a perspective.
Also i believe the lord’s evening meal was symbolic.
Yes indeed, Jonathan Pageau has the term “symbolic truth” which I find helpful.
Names are just labels, and therefore also symbolic in nature.
I watched Harris’s dialogues with Jordan Peterson. I have a greater affinity with Peterson. But not a hundred percent. I’m not aligned with anyone 100%. That’s what I mean when I say we’re each on our own path. I don’t reject God as a symbol. There is almost nothing literal that can be said about God including that God exists. Yet at times, like right now, I am aware of God’s presence. The Shekinah the Kabbalists call Her. The Immanence of God. The Sacred. I don’t belong to any formal religious organization. The last time I was in the church building was for the funeral of the wife of the drummer of the band I was playing in. That was a couple of years ago. I’m what the statisticians call a “None” as in “no religious affiliation”. Yet I feel I’m participating in something spiritual. And part of that is becoming aware of the images that fill my inner life. The Gnostic Christ contains all seven of the planetary spheres of the ancient cosmology. Those are the gods that make up the days of the weekly cycle. The last is Saturn. Then the cycle begins again with the sun. Everybody uses those symbols. Yet most of the time we’re barely conscious of them. To become more conscious of our symbolic world is to re-enchant it. Images are the lights of the soul.
It is quite fascinating to watch people ascribe such significance to the symbolism of made up fairytales and pretend they are doing anything more than seeking the very “distraction” they accuse others of seeking.
Just because you call it “spiritual” does not mean it’s any less vacuous than is being a member of a marvel movie fan club… the difference being marvel fans don’t generally make a religion out of it.
In so far as you can extract wisdom from within, as inspired by such symbols and stories, marvel movies or even cook books might serve the same function, as Sam pointed out…
That people have MADE these stories significant, is not being contested… that they ARE significant, otoh that’s what is being contested.
It is true that having everyone in society share values and stories does a great deal to help us cooperate by giving us common ground.
It’s also true that not all values or stories would result in a functional society if adopted.
But neither spiritual, nor religious pursuits need be that common ground, nor even the best option available.
It is not irrelevant what we replace religion with, this is true… but that we CAN replace religion with something better is also true.
What you’d need to argue is that in the absence of these “religious” stories or traditions we’d be NECESSARILY diminished.
Yet if you look at the most irreligious countries in the world (scandinavian) we often rank the highest in terms of happiness and wellbeing.
What gaping chasm do we need filled I wonder, what spiritual hole or religious vacuum is it that you insist must exist?
How is it that a culture more or less devoid of religious or even spiritual symbolism is the one thriving above all others?
You’d need to stretch the definition of “religious” or “spiritual” to a ludicrous degree to make the case that scandinavians fit either description by and large…
Yet here we are, perfectly content without silly symbols or a membership in some ancient fan-club.
so you argument boils down to an emotional response against the word “religious”?
i mean, surely you are not saying that scandinavians don’t have symbols
Not unless you engage in creative “interpretation”
Not sacred ones, no.
well you might notice if you pay attention that most, if not all people talking in this thread
are not religious in a traditional sense
there doesn’t seem to be anyone here “running around calling themselves zoroastrian” so to speak
they’re more like in a path in the harris sense
so what i’m saying is all you got is a strawman
i also didn’t mean to say that marvel heroes
are any less valuable than the mythological ones in which they are largely inspired
(mythologies that as you well know were once religions)
i’m saying that there is a necessity for symbols and people will find them
in fairytales if they must
or fish recipes
you don’t need to think about it as religion if it offends you
you don’t pray and sacrifice to old gods or whatever but that cultural heritage is a part of you
whether you like it or not
anyway
lets have some of that strawman, what do you mean by sacred?
I share your opinion of Peterson and it was Peterson who brought Jonathan Pageau into the limelight. Pageau says that there is nothing that can be taken literally because everything about life is complex and therefore, we need the spotlight to differentiate between what is important and what is not important. That means we have a purpose when we relate something and it is this purpose that we need to convey, not how we transport the message.
Having said that, what Judaism and Christianity have tried to relate, the purpose of taking the trouble, is not something very easy to put in words. That is something that came out of the conversation that Pageau had with Tom Holland, who wrote the book “Dominion – The Making of The Western Mind”. Holland says of St. Paul, for example, that his letters were transcripts of Paul’s struggle to make his churches understand what he had experienced and found backed up by scripture. That is virtually the problem anyone has, who has received some inspiration.
The thing that I believe Paul discovered was the power of his message, which occurred in solitude and in the community, and had the ability to make people take up a new way of life, even in the face of danger. Later, as the sacraments were established, Christians found a power in these too. The liturgy of Mass was enough, which is why it was left in Latin for so long. They feared that in the common tongue the magic would go out of it.
And it is magic in a way, invoking the Name of God in the trinity. Not sorcery, which was intended to be the opposite of the Christian magic. There were reasons for this, I understand this, but we shouldn’t forget the intention of the Christian message, which was far more transformative. I’ve experienced it myself and have seen people transformed. There still is contradiction and hypocrisy, these are traits of mankind and a shadow that we all have.
Gnosticism seems to me a special teaching for those privy to it. It wasn’t for the masses and was therefore rejected because the Gnostic churches found no agreement and the church was looking for a creed that all could speak. There are those who just cannot take up Gnosticism and this meant that it was against the teaching we see in the Beatitudes, which preached the love of God in Christ.
I still believe that we can all experience the presence of God, if we can learn to be silent long enough. But the atmosphere of a spiritual gathering, a communion of like-minded people, the spirit of people around a common goal for good, singing and making music, can all invoke that presence. It is all symbol, just as the creed is a “symbolon” of faith.
Like I said above, if you don’t have something profound, you just have anything in its place.
Well, is it any coincidence that Scandinavia has some of the most communist policies in all of western Europe?
You don’t know what communism is … and you don’t know what life in Europe is like.
Enlighten me then.