iambiguous wrote: Bob wrote: Isn’t there a danger that even if people do what you said they should do “on the one hand” that they remain within the particular? I find that for all of my experimentation, my arguments still use the symbolism, the metaphors and the allegories I grew up with. I think this is because we need a language within which we can make ourselves understood – and of course I’m not just talking about English, French or German etc.
Yes, but:
...pertaining to what particular context out in what particular world construed from what particular point of view? What happens when the contexts [experiences] change? What happens when, as a result of this, you bump into a conflicting point of view?
Relating to or not relating to God and religion.
Words like "faith", "sin", "justice" and "freedom" for example. Sooner or later the use of these [and so many similar] words are going to be misunderstood...or understood subjectively/contextually given the manner in which I have come to construe the meaning of dasein and conflicting goods.
This thread was created in order to discuss religious narratives as they relate to morality as that relates to one or another rendition of Judgment Day.
Or, if someone balks at the idea of God's "judgment", of reward and punishment of "the other side", how is he or she able to demonstrate that
this is a reasonable point of view?
I personally believe religion to be prescience, but I don’t use this term in a dismissive way. Science is definitely valuable in discovering the inside structures of material life or the measurable interaction of components of the macro- and micro-cosmos. Added to that, science tries to understand the reasons for human reactions within biology, measuring everything that can be measured. It tells us a lot about what the universe is made of and how things happen but less about why – especially when it comes down to human behaviour.
This is where psychology comes in and where the question pops up, whether it can be called scientific research in the same way. Where a clinical test can measure something and bring about similar measurements, it will work. Where people react intuitively without a scientific base, it becomes impossible, especially since more than 60% of what we do, we do without thinking about it. It wouldn’t work, would it, and we’d hardly get the masters of art or sportsmen and -women if we had to think everything through. Our Caveman learnt this quickly, because he had to master his life, or die. In fact it was this dilemma that gave us the intuition that we could call spirituality or the beginnings of religion.
Intuition gives us a working model with which we try to understand the world and react accordingly. It also gets adjusted to fit our experience, or what we perceive to be our experience, and develops as we go along. Being an introvert who is very intuitive, I have gone through life registering a vast number of adjustments to my outlook on life and can only be thankful that I haven’t often been in grave danger, otherwise I might not have survived. The lack of danger helps us progress in this area, and also allows us to develop science, but they both belong together. I have read that scientists and clinical doctors will often not live their lives according to what they know professionally. This suggests that science and intuition live inside scientists as much as in other people.
iambiguous wrote:My own entirely
existential understanding of dasein is encompassed here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529What are you own assumptions then regarding its meaning "out in the world" of human social, political and economic interactions?
Dasein at wiki:
Dasein is a German word that means "being there" or "presence", and is often translated into English with the word "existence". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasein Being there instead of here [culturally experientially]. Being here or there now instead of here or there before or later [historically].
What aspects of "I" is this most relevant to? And, on this thread, how that relates to the behaviors we choose "here and now" in order to be in sync with what we imagine our fate to be "there and then".
My understanding of existence culturally is that I have grown up in a cultural group with a set of values, which I adopted from early on in life. I have also lived within a certain moment in time, which up until now has been better for me than it was for my predecessors. My cultural values have developed over time, including in them christian ideas for some time, but then adapting to include other cultural traditions that I have encountered along the way. I am somewhat mixed, being born in rural Britain, having moved to the far east during my “impressionable age” and since having lived the largest part of my life in Germany.
This is relevant to how I look at myself. I feel that I am less a member of a single family, or cultural group, but rather part of the myriad of humanity. I am an individualist in one sense, but I need people around me and these people should give me room, otherwise I can be unfriendly. I am also the type of person that regards life as a mystery with unknown possibilities, and intuitively I feel that there should be some explanation for the fact that we are transient in a universe that doesn’t seem to care. This is probably why I have tried the various religious concepts that we have, in order to find out where there are answers. I have ended up with nothing scientific – if indeed there is such a thing with regard to the meaning of life.
I have adopted an existentialist approach in that I am aware that faith is a leap, rather than an explanation. However, this leap we all take daily when we get out of bed, assuming that life goes on in the same way that we have experienced it in the past. This leap of faith is an attempt to fathom what we know and make some sense of our existence. It is a contraption, as is any method of understanding and joining in with life. It is a concept, a hypothesis of what life could be about. Of course there are people who need other people to like what they like, and do what they do. Therefore they demand conformity, as the church and other institutions have done over time.
I, for example, can live with the fact that we all have our reasons for doing what we do, as long as we have a common understanding that helps us live together without killing or maiming each other. The more we interact the more we need agreements about that interaction, and we have to accommodate the variances of human character. We have extroverts and introverts; those who require concrete experiential information and those who can deal with abstract and conceptual information; those who generally think things through and those who feel their way through situations; those who are methodical and systematic and those who are casual, open-ended and spontaneous. The are umpteen variations on this of course, because we mix and move as we need.
Therefore these variances flow into what we call “I”, and they change. If we try to ascertain what “Dasein” means, it will be something else further down the road. It is similar to the allegory about the swirl in the river, it may always be there when you pass, but it is never the same because water is passing through constantly. Change is life and life is change. The more we try to hold on to aspects of life, the more it dies in our hands. The more we try to conserve, the more we take the spontaneity and vivaciousness or liveliness out of it.
iambiguous wrote: Bob wrote: The same happens when people talk about God. We may have a one-on-one conversation on God and still come away not knowing what the others concept of God is – if they do at all have one. I have always wondered at Evangelicals who have ridiculed my intuitive approach to spirituality because it is “fuzzy”, but talk to three Christians separately and then you know what “fuzzy” is, or you know who has been telling them what/who God has to be for them.
Yes, this certainly seems reasonable to me. But intuitively or otherwise, your own understanding of God and religion is [in my view] no less an "existential contraption". In other words, subjective/subjunctive fabrications [rooted in the actual experiential trajectory of your lived life] pertaining to that which you believe "in your head" that you either are or are not able to demonstrate to others as a reasonable thing
to believe.
If it doesn't come down to that
in a philosophy forum then anything that anyone claims to believe is true "in his head" becomes the bottom line.
It doesn't work that way among scientists though, right? So, where should the line be drawn among philosophers?
As I said above, scientists are known to seem to be oblivious of their research at times, because they act as though they don’t know the results of their investigations when leading their private lives. That is inconsequent, but very human. Philosophy may attempt to find “laws” that are so reliable that they can become the bottom line, but humankind is always able to surprise itself.
iambiguous wrote:Bob wrote: You know, this “caveman's God” has been bantered about for some time and I have doubts. Studies show that the brain of the “caveman” had enormous potential, and also that we fail to use the potential of our brains because we are preoccupied and distracted most of the time. The caveman couldn’t be distracted or he was dead and his distracted genes didn’t get passed on. He was focused and alert, and he was learning all the time. In fact, there is a lot of speculation going on today about this guys learning curve and consequently the collective learning curve. We seem to have simplified our outlook over time, rather than complicated it.
We can only speculate about what our "prehistoric ancestors" thought and felt regarding these relationships by interpreting the archaeological evidence. There are no written records. But it seems reasonable that any consciousness able to connect dots between "out in the world" and "in my head" is going to get around to "what's it all mean"?
But: back then science was not around to offer "natural" explanations. Today of course religion doesn't often go there. Instead the focus seems to be on this:
1] how ought one to live?
2] what happens after we die?
Which happens to be the whole point of this thread: intertwining the two as this relates to the behaviors that we choose from day to day to day.
First of all, science doesn’t offer “natural” explanations. Science observes, records, measures and then analyses what it has measured. It can’t say what it means.
Going by what I have written above, the connecting of the dots leaves us with an uncanny feeling and according to what combination of attributes a person may have, he or she will come up with varying answers, just as humankind has done depending on cultural backgrounds. We are, whether we like it or not, still blind to the information that will give us the bigger picture. That is why such emphasis has been placed on the two questions you mentioned. The question of afterlife is of course speculative, because we are still not completely sure what consciousness is. It would, however, seem as though aspects of consciousness is dependent upon areas in the brain. There are theories which compare the brain to a receiver, stating that a damaged receiver would also warp the message being transmitted. But where is the signal? And so, what will happen to our consciousness when our physical frame fails to function is still open to speculation.
How we ought to live is, to my mind, a question of interaction and consequently needs a basic agreement between those interacting to function. Again, humanity has over the course of history come up with eight basic requirements for living together, but has failed to keep it that simple. The complications of legislation just prove that human beings apply different aspects to their ideas of what ought to be done, according to their momentary requirements.
iambiguous wrote: Bob wrote: I think that the “caveman” will have been more a part of the collective than we are, with our imagined individuality and attempts to be unique in some way. Therefore, if the group had the concept of a singular or multiple Gods, our man will have too. If there is no God-concept, he will have none either. Therefore the interaction of our man is active and not reflective like ours is deemed to be. We forget that we can’t not communicate, we can’t not interact either. In one way or another we are always interacting, even though we might not notice or even forget where it was apparent.
Well, our earliest ancestors no doubt intertwined God into a rather primitive [prescience] understanding of nature. One imagines that the interactions in any particular community [and between communities] revolved more or less around might makes right. And then they either appeased "the Gods" or they did not.
Survival of the fittest [among themselves, between themselves and in conjunction with nature] would seem to be entirely more reasonable.
Films like
Quest For Fire explored this. But no one really knows for sure.
Imagine trying to explain "Pascal's wager" to them! Or Kierkegaard's "leap of faith". Let alone the appeal of Don Trump to evangelicals.
You have brought the understanding of nature into the question of how we ought to live, but I don’t see it as something that is as relevant to the question. The survival question was imminent in the competition for resources and food, especially if I was a food source to certain animals. Once this rivalry could be appeased by understanding that we have enough space and resources, and that we could even work together on safeguarding those resources, the interaction became completely different. Then it was a question of how to live together.
iambiguous wrote:My assumptions are rather straightforward:
1] we are all confronted [from the cradle to the grave] with the question, "how ought one to live?"
2] we all die
3] almost all of us will ponder the manner in which the two are intertwined "out in a particular world" from a "religious" perspective
This thread is here for folks to discuss that -- given the manner in which they choose to live their lives from day to day to day. One way rather than another.
I would almost agree, except that we don’t just die, but we suffer in many ways as well. We also suffer in different degrees under similar situations. So the dilemma of suffering is as important as the dilemma of death.
(Interesting that you now toss off people's posts as "general assessments". That's new. )
