You have a need to “resolve this once and for all”.
Why do you have that need?
Others don’t. I don’t. I’m pretty sure that KT doesn’t.
If there is no resolution “once and for all” in the universe then why are you fighting the universe? Why are you insisting on it?
Yeah he denies the validity of ideals but resolving difficult conflictual moral questions in the abstract once for all is an unrealistically high ideal. More likely he’ll settle for kicking it around on ILP with people he whose thinking he dismisses and disrespects as " three stooges". As Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
Again, nothing sinks in with him.
[Well, I do admit that months ago, I never would have thought I’d hear him claim that his own existence is meaningless and on the road to oblivion — neither of which bothers him]
The question isn’t why some have the need to resolve it and others don’t, but what are the particular factors in an individual’s life that might explain why he or she is more or less likely to want it resolved. My explanation for this: the arguments I make in my signature threads.
Then those religious objectivists – millions and millions and millions of them – who insist that through their own God or spiritual path it already is resolved for them. They do differentiate vice from virtue here and now based on their own interpretation of one or another holy scripture. Or based on those who crammed that interpretation into their heads when they are being indoctrinated as children.
And, if differentiating right from wrong behaviors in your interactions with others, along with the fate of “I” when as a mere mortal you die is important to you, then why wouldn’t a “once and for all” resolution [either through God or the universe] become important to someone?
And how am I fighting the universe? When have I ever insisted that either God or the universe owes me an explanation? I am only noting my own thinking “here and now” regarding the existential relationship between morality and immortality. But only for all of the reasons this is important to me. And never to insist those reasons should be the same for others as well.
Typical. He completely ignores all of the points and suggestions I raised with him just above and instead comments on something that phyllo posted.
Here, once again, I will explain how he gets this wrong. But I can all but guarantee you that down the road he will come back with much the same accusation.
I do not deny the validity of the ideals that others come to embody. Either as objectivists or not. Instead, I suggest only that in my view these ideals are rooted more in moral and political prejudices derive existentially/subjectively from dasein. And that they are likely not able to demonstrate why all other rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to in turn become “one of us” and share them.
And what on earth does he mean by, “resolving difficult conflictual moral questions in the abstract once for all is an unrealistically high ideal”.
If that is unrealistic how about resolving ideals down on the ground in regard to a context in which conflicting goods do precipitate conflicting behaviors precipitating conflicting sets of rewards and punishments.
I must be misunderstanding him. A little help from others please.
What does this have have to do with anything of substance in discussing God and religion. And a Stooge in my view is someone who generally eschews the points that I raise [let alone bring them down to earth] in order to reconfigure the discussion into a series of accusations about me.
And surely were Kurt Vonnegut still around he would not be content with looking at the world these days and reducing the terrible pain and suffering inflicted on millions from the pandemic, the economic travail and the social unrest [in America alone] as all of us just farting around.
Now, note carefully as he completely misconstrues this point too.
You’re then one who keeps bringing this up … “resolve once and for all”, “one true path”, optimum, obligations for all rational men and women.
You bring it up even when you are talking to people who don’t give a shit about any of it. In all sorts of threads.
You’re obsessed with it.
For two [very personal] reasons:
1] I, like many others here who follow the news, am confronted daily with conflicting goods that often result in enormous pain and suffering inflicted on many. But, unlike others, I am not able to neatly differentiate between “one of us” who are most likely to stop or minimize that suffering, and “one of them” who either caused it or make it worse. “I” am instead fractured and fragmented here in a way that [obviously] the objectivists don’t fathom at all.
Now, from my frame of mind, only to the extent that there does exist a font able to objectively differentiate good from bad behaviors, is aware of those who chose one or the other set of behaviors, and is able to reward or punish those on both sides of the divide, is there any resolution possible at all. Which, of course, most call God.
Though others attribute this to secular agents: ideology, deontology, science, philosophy, nature.
2] But: with the secular variants there is neither an omniscient nor an omnipotent point of view in regard to morality. And death is still oblivion. My own, for example.
Again, given my own particular set of circumstances, it makes sense [in a philosophy venue] to be rather preoccupied with it.
But this obsession only sticks around for a few hours a day. The rest of my time is given over to distractions.
Preoccupied with something that doesn’t exist.
Why not move on.
How on earth, in any definitive manner, could I possibly know what either does or does not exist in regard to the existential relationship between morality and immorality? Given either a God or a No God world. I only know what “here and now” I think is true. While allotting a few hours a day to the opinions of others. There’s always the possibility that my own frame of mind here might be shifted as a result of it.
You should be thankful that you are at least able to sustain a frame of mind that is not bothered at all by either a meaningless life or oblivion.
Indeed, given that, why on earth are you even here at all? Aren’t you taking a chance that someone might note something that causes you to be bothered by it?
You dump this into discussions where it has no place. You clog threads. You waste people’s time with these tangents.
And you wonder why you are accused of trolling. 
Yeah, I might learn something new but that’s not likely to happen when the same tired stuff gets repeated over and over.
I don’t need to keep reading about resolving something “once and for all”, when it’s been obvious for years that it won’t happen.
Has anything new come up in the last 10 years? No, right?
Is the point of this place to keep going round and round in the same hole?
Where you think it has no place, what you construe as clogging threads, when you insist is wasting the time of others.
Oh, yeah, I forgot: being a Stooge here settles it.
And, no, I don’t wonder why some consider me to be troll. It’s just that my suspicions here are not likely to coincide with their own absolute certainty.
Still, note for us examples of threads [not started and sustained by me] into which I dump my own obsessions, that I clog, in which I waste the time of others, in which I am a troll. So we can all see what you mean by that.
Try this:
1] you come into ILP
2] you note a thread started and sustained by me or one in which others have begun it but I post in
3] you remind yourself that reading my posts is only to endure the same stuff over and over again
4] you don’t read them
See how that works.
Same thing. Don’t read anything that I post relating to God and religion because I am likely to focus [selfishly enough] on the things that most preoccupy me about them. And my point is that what eventually becomes “obvious” for science in the either/or world, doesn’t often occur at all for ethicists in the is/ought world.
What option is there for me, but to try to be persuaded to think differently about God and religion? It’s a “hole” only because I find it reasonable “here and now” to think as I do about the relationship between morality and immortality. And it will never not be a hole if I don’t at least make an effort a few hours a day to see how others are not in a hole here themselves.
Or how folks like you who are in a “hole” that encompasses a meaningless existence that ends in oblivion, but are not bothered by it.
You’re in a social situation with other people. And you don’t care what impact the repetitive posting has on them.
It’s like you don’t know how to share the sandbox with other kids.
You’ll do whatever you want.
And Ironically, you promote moderation, negotiation and rule of law. Which is for other people and not you?
Yeah, I can do that.
But here is the thing … people start responding to your posts or they leave. The tread gets hijacked or dies.
Same thing.
You act as if you are the only one here. Or as if everyone is here to serve you.
I thought that you are short of time.
Then why use what time you do have, so unproductively?
Okay, so life is meaningful to you but you are aware that your moral and political judgments are based on your personal history and philosophical inquiry and that they lack final objective certainty. You think that’s probably true for other people too but that they [especially the objectivists] don’t recognize it.
Let’s just say that I am less likely to care in a situation where others are not obligated to read my repetitive posting. And what is of far more interest to me lies in whatever repetitive answers they might offer. Answers that might nudge or propel me up out of the hole that I have thought myself into.
Again, if it were a sandbox in which the other kids were required to share their time with me, I could see your point. And I do what I want but only in the sense that we all do what we ultimately do…but I am never really entirely certain as to why I have come to want that instead of something else. It’s rooted deeply in dasein. It’s just that when I suggest that perhaps this is true of the other kids too that some of them turn it all into me becoming the “problem”. I’m disturbing their far more solidified understand of “I” out in the world. I’m intruding on the comfort and the consolation that being in the sandbox brings them.
Again, note an instance on this thread [or another thread] in which this becomes more manifest.
Note examples of threads where this is the case. There are threads like these…
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=190138
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=195982
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 3&t=195888
…started by others in which I contribute posts from time to them. Have I hijacked the threads? Have they died? No, instead, some will respond to my posts and others will ignore them. And for any number of personal reasons. Which is fine by me. That’s the way it should be in venues such as these. Right?
No, you act as though your own assessment of how I act here settles it. As though I might not – ought not? – see myself as acting as you see me at all. Or that I do but for reasons that you yourself fail to understand.
Ah, so now you know how much time I should allot to discussing God and religion because you know the extent to which the time I do allot to it now is either productive or unproductive.
Yeah, something like that. Given the reality of human autonomy and the gap between what I think about this “here and now” and all that would need to be known about the existence of existence itself…in order to confirm how close to or far away from the whole truth I am here.
Also, that given new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas from others [here for example] I might come to change my mind.
Finally, that my own assessment here as it relates to God and religion is no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein than yours is.
Or, rather, here and now, so it still seems to me.
Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
Clearly, if you come to construe certain behaviors as “good” and others as “bad” and one or another religious denomination has over time favored/furthered those behaviors more in sync with your own moral and political values than, sure, in that sense religion can be deemed a good thing.
On the other hand:
time.com/5171819/christianity-s … k-excerpt/
washingtonpost.com/local/th … story.html
And, for others, the idea of egalitarianism itself is considered the abomination. And not just the Nietzscheans and the Ayn Randroids.
Similarly, Christianity can be twisted in defense of either socialism or capitalism.
Then this part:
Here I lump all of these basically authoritarian and/or dictatorial moral and political dogmas under the general heading of objectivism. Those who argue that there is but one overarching assessment of the human condition and it is their own. Then it just comes down to how far the adherents will go to sustain their own agenda. The part where the ends can come to justify practically any means.
And, since the “secular religions” are unable to provide the comfort and consolation that comes with believing in an afterlife, they have to be all that much more adamant about sustaining all the things they promise regarding human interactions on this side of the grave.
Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
Resolved in what way? Scientifically? Philosophically? Theologically? Empirically? Spiritually? Net positive or negative using “the greatest good for the greatest number” as a yardstick? Or one or another deontological assessment of good and evil? Or sheer numbers alone?
Instead, we are left with a jumble of religious denominations intent on proselytizing the Word. Scouring the globe to preach the faith. And why not given what is at stake? It’s only the fate of your eternal soul.
And history among the ecclesiastics is no less written by the winners. There are still only a relative handful of major religious denominations that [by far] sustain the largest flocks.
On the other hand, some have argued that religion here is more in sync with materialism. That in order to understand the role that religion plays in our daily lives it must be fitted into one or another historical evolution of political economy. Thus in the West as feudalism gave way to mercantilism and burgeoning world trade configured into full-blown capitalism, religion itself configured from focusing the beam less on the “next world” and more on “this world”. Protestantism and capitalism making a much more seamless fit.
As for “returning established religion to a central place in our cultures and power structures” just look at how this is unfolding in America now as Trumpworld forges an allegiance with the multitudes that encompass the evangelicals. That Trump may be playing them for suckers doesn’t make that demographic segment itself go away in November.
If my memory doesn’t deceive me, that’s the smartest guy in the whole wide world.
He’s not exactly a poster boy for the validity of IQ testing.
Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
Of course this is the part where the focus shifts from religion examined, assessed and judged by theologians, philosophers, scientists, politicians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, etc., to the fact that all of us as individuals come to embody it in all manner of conflicting and contradictory ways. Given all of the very different lives that we live.
We start with the part where the evolution of life on earth has culminated in a species able “think up” God and religion as one possible explanation for existence itself. The source one can go to for all things ontological and teleological. And given all of the profoundly complex and problematic contexts in which any particular individual might take this, sure, there are going to be any number of examples of what are deemed by most to be “good things” coming from the “vast, rich cultural legacy owing to, or inspired by, religious belief”.
On the other hand…
Of course: Assessments that only intellectuals are prone to dispensing. I try to to grasp it in terms of my own life but nothing really clicks. Yes, given the role that Christianity has played historically in the shaping of “Western culture”, there’s no getting around the manner in which it sinks into any number of relationships. But how on earth am I to connect the dots here between Christianity as a “schemata” and the manner in which my own unique experiences led me to abandon it in favor of moral and spiritual nihilism?
As soon as I make the attempt to translate this particularly abstruse “intellectual contraption” into something more substantive – existentially substantive – and make it more pertinent to the life that I live, it all just vanishes into thin air.
Though, sure, others might read it, and make considerable sense of it in terms of their own lives. And, if so, tell us about it.