(Insert Title Here)
Of the Politics ... that was sort of my entire point. I can run any label or idea through the same wringer we run religions.
And here I'll take a detour and risk a few of my own words. You and I both know how to take a source like the Secular Humanism site. The point of nitpicking the semantics was merely to nitpick the semantics. Technically, we both are among the apparent (not necessarily real) minority of those at Sciforums who have critical reading skills. I'll skip the footnotes and disclaimers merely for the entertainment economy. But rhetorically, what do you do when considering an idea? Generally speaking, people do not, except for their pet notions, award strict credibility or rejection immediately. The idea exists as sort of a gray fact-unto-itself until more is known about it.
And just as one might have here a portion of ethic that reflects Kant, and there one that reflects a little of Marx and Engels, and perhaps a vibrant twist of Heisenberg's uncertainty vaguely and perhaps dubiously rendered to metaphor; just as we find value in other things we can nitpick, so can we find value in the religions we hack to pieces. It's part of the reason I'm anti-religion and indifferent to God.
("I've seen the face of God, and he hates me with disinterest. Just like all the rest, that evil face of God hates me like the rest." - Floater, Weary)
I made a remark yesterday in a thread somewhere about Pink Floyd that it's not just a musical experience, but if the albums are taken in the context of their times and the times of the people who made them, Pink Floyd is also a human experience.
There is value in religions. Within a religion there is a context and framework for history and also for interpretation. Within that history is a complex story of the human dynamic.
But in any sense that I respond to any notion of a higher calling, it is simply that I have decided that I will, come Hell, high water, or a Bush-Clinton-Gore dynasty for the rest of my natural life, discover what it means to be human. It has occurred to me that I might actually be the first person to do so. It has also occurred to me that I will most definitely fail, and that the attempt might likely bring about circumstances said to cause my death. If I could possibly explain to you how it is I blame my father directly for that, well, I would be a millionaire on that book alone.
But as far as source material? Religion is an open-book confession. Much can be made about just how much common belief there is or isn't among the faithful, but God is real insofar as It has a greater influence on the decision-making and resultant behavior of the believers than anything else in the Universe. And there are a few common presumptions of faith; belief in God, belief that God is external insofar as it is not wholly internalized, belief that disparate people may believe in the same God; enough presumptions exist that there can be a dialect reserved to the common points of faith and myriad subdialects ascribed to each sect or faction. Honestly: do religious people talking religion make any more sense to you than they do to me? I mean, I might assert to know more than you about what they're actually saying, but that assertion cannot be taken to imply that I understand them any more than anyone else. Where it's all Greek to someone else, I have to admit that on those occasions that I can read and understand the lexicon, the result is still nonsensical. Consider my fascination with the Sufis. Of course Idries Shah, in presenting Sufism to the West, hedges away from the Koranic faith ties in Sufism; of course he presents evidence asserting the separation of the Sufi from religious observance; of course the essays and histories he presents tend toward the clinical and therefore dry and removed. Because that's the more important part. How to deal with what we're not inherently prepared to deal with is a much more intriguing idea to the Sufis than singing hosannas on high. I tend to think that one must to a certain degree acknowledge the wisdom of that.
The psychologist's couch, when all the data is added up, will reflect a certain amount of functional agreement with the myths of any given society. This result can be reasonably expected, though what persists is a question of balance; to what degree do the myths influence the psyches, and to what degree do the psyches influence the myths? We might note that Christianity tends to cause people to dwell unnaturally on the idea of an afterlife, though the existence of the notion at all in the religion indicates that the idea was on people's minds at the time the myths were documented. That the myths exist at all seems proof that someone somewhere sometime paused long enough in the hurdy-gurdy to worry about dying.
I don't understand Jung well enough to continue this detour, thus it ends here.
Oh ... of your presumption #4 ... try a slightly more neutral phrasing. If I might be so bold, strike the last part and replace it with, . . . in relation to certain criteria. The nature of dependency seems unnecessarily presumptuous. How's that for a nit to pick? (I would have made such a cool chimpanzee ....)
You can't kill God, only render it impotent. And as humanity reinvents its gods, an enlightened civilization will take note of the patterns, and each emasculation of God will come more quickly and decisively. And here's a farging noodlescratcher: What is "enlightenment"?
It's a magic word, it seems. Perhaps the next deity. It has something to do with knowledge, and it has something to do with compassion, but history is devoid of an effective and rational assertion for compassion. But the Greeks attained certain philosophical heights marred by some unnecessary assertions put forth in relation to certain criteria; whether the conditions or the prioritization was askew enough to prevent actualization of the ideal is a separate question entirely. However, there was the idea that there was an Unmoved Mover, not even an Unnamed Namer; it was not a living thing, it was not an aware thing; it was not even a thing. It was merely first cause. An abstraction. Now, those pesky and meddling lower gods ... now they were problematic ....
Er ....
And that's all you need to do. Return God to its proper station in the Universe and it serves as something to understand through rational inquiry; an ideal toward which humanity strives. Humanity is imperfect. What is perfection? Hence "God". All you have to do is find a way to contain God to merely that.
I am actually glad that most atheists don't seek strict objectivity in life; such a condition renders humanity such that it's really not worth taking part. Artistic license and language would bite the dust; diversity would necessarily collapse in favor of efficiency; of course, that's presuming that people make efficiency for the species their new "god". And, no, I don't suppose that's fair, either ....
:m:,
Tiassa
Nay, nay. 'Tis mine. I haven't been enthusiastic about this reply because I feel I've somehow compelled you to waste words. Not that your words are inherently a waste. There is much value in them, but it seems that I've made more of my own point than I intended to, and perhaps a number of your well-spent words could have been kept for your coffers had I stated myself more appropriately.
Of the Politics ... that was sort of my entire point. I can run any label or idea through the same wringer we run religions.
And here I'll take a detour and risk a few of my own words. You and I both know how to take a source like the Secular Humanism site. The point of nitpicking the semantics was merely to nitpick the semantics. Technically, we both are among the apparent (not necessarily real) minority of those at Sciforums who have critical reading skills. I'll skip the footnotes and disclaimers merely for the entertainment economy. But rhetorically, what do you do when considering an idea? Generally speaking, people do not, except for their pet notions, award strict credibility or rejection immediately. The idea exists as sort of a gray fact-unto-itself until more is known about it.
And just as one might have here a portion of ethic that reflects Kant, and there one that reflects a little of Marx and Engels, and perhaps a vibrant twist of Heisenberg's uncertainty vaguely and perhaps dubiously rendered to metaphor; just as we find value in other things we can nitpick, so can we find value in the religions we hack to pieces. It's part of the reason I'm anti-religion and indifferent to God.
("I've seen the face of God, and he hates me with disinterest. Just like all the rest, that evil face of God hates me like the rest." - Floater, Weary)
I made a remark yesterday in a thread somewhere about Pink Floyd that it's not just a musical experience, but if the albums are taken in the context of their times and the times of the people who made them, Pink Floyd is also a human experience.
There is value in religions. Within a religion there is a context and framework for history and also for interpretation. Within that history is a complex story of the human dynamic.
But in any sense that I respond to any notion of a higher calling, it is simply that I have decided that I will, come Hell, high water, or a Bush-Clinton-Gore dynasty for the rest of my natural life, discover what it means to be human. It has occurred to me that I might actually be the first person to do so. It has also occurred to me that I will most definitely fail, and that the attempt might likely bring about circumstances said to cause my death. If I could possibly explain to you how it is I blame my father directly for that, well, I would be a millionaire on that book alone.
But as far as source material? Religion is an open-book confession. Much can be made about just how much common belief there is or isn't among the faithful, but God is real insofar as It has a greater influence on the decision-making and resultant behavior of the believers than anything else in the Universe. And there are a few common presumptions of faith; belief in God, belief that God is external insofar as it is not wholly internalized, belief that disparate people may believe in the same God; enough presumptions exist that there can be a dialect reserved to the common points of faith and myriad subdialects ascribed to each sect or faction. Honestly: do religious people talking religion make any more sense to you than they do to me? I mean, I might assert to know more than you about what they're actually saying, but that assertion cannot be taken to imply that I understand them any more than anyone else. Where it's all Greek to someone else, I have to admit that on those occasions that I can read and understand the lexicon, the result is still nonsensical. Consider my fascination with the Sufis. Of course Idries Shah, in presenting Sufism to the West, hedges away from the Koranic faith ties in Sufism; of course he presents evidence asserting the separation of the Sufi from religious observance; of course the essays and histories he presents tend toward the clinical and therefore dry and removed. Because that's the more important part. How to deal with what we're not inherently prepared to deal with is a much more intriguing idea to the Sufis than singing hosannas on high. I tend to think that one must to a certain degree acknowledge the wisdom of that.
The psychologist's couch, when all the data is added up, will reflect a certain amount of functional agreement with the myths of any given society. This result can be reasonably expected, though what persists is a question of balance; to what degree do the myths influence the psyches, and to what degree do the psyches influence the myths? We might note that Christianity tends to cause people to dwell unnaturally on the idea of an afterlife, though the existence of the notion at all in the religion indicates that the idea was on people's minds at the time the myths were documented. That the myths exist at all seems proof that someone somewhere sometime paused long enough in the hurdy-gurdy to worry about dying.
I don't understand Jung well enough to continue this detour, thus it ends here.
Oh ... of your presumption #4 ... try a slightly more neutral phrasing. If I might be so bold, strike the last part and replace it with, . . . in relation to certain criteria. The nature of dependency seems unnecessarily presumptuous. How's that for a nit to pick? (I would have made such a cool chimpanzee ....)
The transcendental and Gnostic conceptualizations help to render God without consequence. If you're connecting the dots, for instance, the picture doesn't look right without them. Of course, I also assert that you will never be able to eliminate the human religious assertion. People will always find something to worship, and I'm not sure if the deification of wealth or individual liberty will prove any less frightful than the deification of death. I mean, the deification of happiness would only result in a large number of unhappy judgmental people wanting to know why everyone else was being such a buzzkill.
You can't kill God, only render it impotent. And as humanity reinvents its gods, an enlightened civilization will take note of the patterns, and each emasculation of God will come more quickly and decisively. And here's a farging noodlescratcher: What is "enlightenment"?
It's a magic word, it seems. Perhaps the next deity. It has something to do with knowledge, and it has something to do with compassion, but history is devoid of an effective and rational assertion for compassion. But the Greeks attained certain philosophical heights marred by some unnecessary assertions put forth in relation to certain criteria; whether the conditions or the prioritization was askew enough to prevent actualization of the ideal is a separate question entirely. However, there was the idea that there was an Unmoved Mover, not even an Unnamed Namer; it was not a living thing, it was not an aware thing; it was not even a thing. It was merely first cause. An abstraction. Now, those pesky and meddling lower gods ... now they were problematic ....
Er ....
And that's all you need to do. Return God to its proper station in the Universe and it serves as something to understand through rational inquiry; an ideal toward which humanity strives. Humanity is imperfect. What is perfection? Hence "God". All you have to do is find a way to contain God to merely that.
Strict objectivity is symptomatic of any logical or rational rejection. And if the anti-Parrots choose to self-identify for any reason, yes, there becomes a word for it. But as atheism, which rejects the theistic assertion, depends upon the theistic assertion for its existence, is it not appropriate to seek objectivity elsewhere in life? Why go from the frying pan to the broiler oven?
I don't see this in evidence. In the end, I don't think such evidence exists. Atheists are human beings too. I know they know this, but they tend to forget it at certain moments.
I am actually glad that most atheists don't seek strict objectivity in life; such a condition renders humanity such that it's really not worth taking part. Artistic license and language would bite the dust; diversity would necessarily collapse in favor of efficiency; of course, that's presuming that people make efficiency for the species their new "god". And, no, I don't suppose that's fair, either ....
:m:,
Tiassa
