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.
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…
…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.
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.
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.
I agree with Tallis. Religion is at the origin of every culture that becomes a civilization. Nihilism is a symptom of declining Western Civilization. Skepticism and cynicism are filters that keep people from transcending their egos.
And, again, religion is at the origin of every human culture because every human culture, given the evolution of biological life on Earth, consist of men and women with brains able to think up Gods/God/religion as one possible explanation for existence itself.
Assuming of course we interact in a universe that is not wholly determined. And assuming of course those who embrace the idea of an omniscient God can square that with mere mortals in possession of free will.
And my own understanding of moral nihilism isn’t a “symptom” at all. It’s a philosophical argument that I make given the assumption that we live in a No God world. An argument containing in the points I raise in my signature threads.
As for, “Skepticism and cynicism are filters that keep people from transcending their egos”, I’ll ask you to note an actual context in which you explain this in considerable more detail.
Previous attempts at dialogue with you have repeatedly broken down over your habit of dismissing other’s concepts as “contraptions” rather than showing that you made good faith efforts to understand what others mean. I’m not interested in proffering ideas only to have them summarily shot down as contraptions. Without a demonstration that you at least attempt to comprehend a proposition and your reasons for rejecting it, “dialogue” is a waste of time.
I don’t view gods as possible explanations. I view them as archetypal representations of being which is fundamentally unexplainable.
I don’t accept your three assumptions above as conditions for dialogue. The antimony of free will versus determinism is an open question. “Omniscience” is incomprehensible. “No God world” explains nothing.
A context for my statement about skepticism and cynicism is your thread and your use of the contraption dismissal. Whether or not I will supply more details depends on you convincing me that you see what you have been doing and demonstrating that you can change your habit.
Note a set of circumstances in which we exchange our current thinking about God and religion as this relates to our current thinking about morality here and now and immorality there and then
Then in this exchange you can note these accusations you level against me.
That’s the dialogue that I wish to pursue. God and religion as it relates to the behaviors we choose in regard to conflicting goods as that pertains to our thinking about “I” on the other side of the grave. That is the whole point of this thread.
Okay, so how do you view god and religion in regard to the behaviors you choose when confronted with a context in which others challenge those behaviors?
Instead, it’s ever and always up in the clouds with you:
Then explain the assumptions that you have accumulated in regard to free will, omniscience and the distinction you make between a God and a No God world.
Given a context that most of us are likely to be familiar with. Instead, we get this “context”:
Note to others:
What point is he making here that I am apparently unable or unwilling to grasp?
I was just asking you to commit to reasoned arguments against propositions you disagree with rather than merely dismissing them as contraptions. That shouldn’t be hard to understand.
And how hard is it to understand that my preference is to take intellectual contraptions like this and explore them more substantively in regard to human interactions that come into conflict as a result of different assessments of God and religion. And, then, insofar as these assessments lead one to choose a moral narrative here and now in preparation for one’s fate there and then.
Arguments I make in that discussion you can defend as either reasonable or attack as unreasonable.
Or, from my frame of mind, at least be more honest with yourself and ask why you seem so reluctant to go there.
Note to others:
Would anyone else be willing to exchange points of view regarding the main intention of this thread: to connect the dots between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave as that is intertwined existentially with their belief about the fate of their soul/self on the other side of the grave.
That way Felix can level his accusations against me as they pertain to a set of circumstances we are all likely to be familiar with.
