iambiguous wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 8:32 pm
Well, the heart of the issue seems rather obvious. Human beings interact socially. Human beings die. So, religions are born in order to provide mere mortals with a set of commandments to follow on this side of the grave in order to acquire immortality and salvation on the other side of the grave. God in a nutshell, right?
A reductionist assertion as this is can only be useful in an inverse proportion to the reduction itself, if you get what I mean. I take this to mean that this is your nutshell version of religion and its functions. Mine might include your core reference but would include much more.
AJ: There will never, ever appear the *proof* you ask for. All god-concepts are just that: god-concepts. There will not ever be a way to encapsulate the totality of existence -- what it is, how it came to be, and our appearance in it -- in any satisfactory form. A god-concept appears to be a sort of abbreviation for a sense of miraculous wonder. And then social rules & regulations, a way of explaining the world, etc. So what you are really asking about is how it has come about that people, mostly in the past I think, developed these sorts of conceptual-pictures.
Iambiguous: Let me guess: you know this as an indisputable fact going back to what you know indisputably about the existence of existence itself.
No, but certainly going back to what is possible within constructed arguments that are sent up in attempts to *prove* that god exists. Within
that realm -- argument through verbal constructs and verbal mathematics -- I do have a very strong feeling that those who have not accepted the existence of god, having arrived at that belief through various means (desperation, willed choice, 'leap of faith', etc.) will never be convinced by a verbal proof. In that sense "There will never, ever appear the *proof* you ask for." Yet you keep asking for it! And you keep not getting it.
Right. The history of religion. Of Christianity. And, no, I don't really care about it. I care about morality and immortality and salvation. I'll leave all the rest of it to pedants like you. You know, if you are a pedant. And I certainly think that you are. Well, in a "subjective, rooted existentially in dasein" sort of way.
"Fortunately, in a free will world" you can choose to focus or not to focus as you desire. I think I am gaining a sense of the purpose of your use of the term 'pedant' and 'pedantic' but I can't go along with it. What you seem to be trying to say is that you believe you can do away with all the background to Christianity and Christian belief and can simply take up the questions for consideration in the present without the benefit of that backgrounding? As you might guess I disagree strongly. It seems that you might come out and say that 'pedantry' is a depth education in these areas, or something like this. In my view that *fits* in with a tradition of American anti-intellectualism. That can be explored reading Tocqueville. In the *free world* you define you can of course make any choice you wish but those choices
can be discussed within a philosophical environment.
And my interest in Heidegger revolves only around the extent to which his Dasein is taken down out of the ponderous philosophical clouds and made applicable to actual flesh and blood human interactions.
You might not like this but my sense of your use of the term dasein seems less useful than it could be without references to Heidegger. Or in any case to people who have developed Heidegger's ideas. I am not fully sure about this though. But I do not get much more sense from the use of the word than that
each person, and any people, in different places and times, arrive at subjective existential positions.
the extent to which his Dasein is taken down out of the ponderous philosophical clouds and made applicable to actual flesh and blood human interactions.
Did Heidegger, in your view, make this effort? Who in your view has extended this project of exiting the ponderous clouds and bringing the issue down to
actual flesh and blood human interactions? How would you begin to speak about how that should be done?
I do not feel inclined to research your writing in other places though I have read some of your links. However, I can share with you this perspective: you turn over and over again in the same groove. You define a position from which you cannot move. I hope that you will not mind too much that I repeat that it is like a broken record skipping over the same track. There does not seem to be a great deal to gain from reading what you have written.
Of course they don't. After all, what's the alternative? If there is no God, no immortality and no salvation, you're left with just accepting that all the terrible pain and suffering in the world [especially your own] is just embedded in the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence that you endure for 70 odd years and then tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.
Here, in my view, you skip over the same track (if you'll pardon my metaphor). What you seem to be saying is there is no god, no immortality, no salvation, and thus there is no alternative
for you. You seem stuck on this point.
There are a range of alternatives however. In my own view, and I cannot of course be completely certain (it is hard to really know another person's thought in this medium) you are stuck in a post-Christian postmodern position. Since you can see no alternative, the situation you are in is presented as totalized and totalizing.
AJ: Again you miss the opportunity to link this observation/question to the events of the day. I get the impression that you do not pay much attention to the news, to contemporary discourse, to social conflict, to the deep divisions that widen at every moment. Do you read books and articles that deal on these issues and problems? I'd have to say "no" from what you write.
Iambiguous: Huh? What am I supposed to do, note things like the war in Ukraine, the covid pandemic, the latest mass shooting, the latest natural disaster, the countless contexts in which human beings suffer terribly and come here and ask, "hey, what about God here all you True Believers!"
Oh, I am making references to the very strange reemergence of a fighting Christian spirit that is occurring right now, today. The establishment of a view that the corruption has contaminated the very heart of America and that Christian believer need to come out of the closet and onto the ramparts of a fight to 'reclaim' America and redefine its destiny.
That is one aspect, one faction in the Culture Wars. But the other is (potentially?) one that you are more linked to as (I believe you described yourself) a 'radical Liberal'. And that is the finalization of a progressive and egalitarian America as a social, political and economic (and indeed a global) project.
There are a dozen ways that the themes or terms of the present conversation can be, and I think should be, brought down to that 'flesh & blood' level you referenced earlier. But of course these are my areas of interest.
You quoted Will Durant:
"In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company...he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him...He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist."
OK, so I do grasp better what you are trying to say by *pedant* and *pedantry*. I think though I can fairly say I am not 'dishonest' nor stuck in "sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation". In fact it is really quite the opposite. I have investigated all sorts of different views and perspectives, all of them very contemporary and each having immediate relevance and applicability to 'our present'.
It is a bit odd but what Durant describes as a needed Rx to that sterility is what I have endeavored to explore for at least a decade now.
One of the reasons I jumped back onto this forum is in the hope that I'd find more people genuinely interested in all of that and well versed in it.
What is odd from my view is I cannot see how you are genuinely responding to Durant's challenge. But allow me to ask you -- and I assure you it is a serious and sincere question -- to please outline for me what you think the major concerns for any one of us
should be. I am not asking an abstract question for all of the denizens of the Earth but about you and about us within the present American context. Or where else should be our point of departure?
"How ought one to behave morally in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency chance and change?"
Given a particular context.
Go ahead, pick one yourself and let's have a go at it.
I think I just did. Will you accept a rather bold set of ideas an concerns, expressed in a relatively short video presentation, that I find useful for breaking the ice about those '
important things' that must be defined and thought about? (I have posted this link numbers of times in the course of my writing -- it abbreviates areas that are of personal interest). I
definitely am developing an anti-egalitarian and a liberalism-critical outlook and philosophy so it is good to make it plain.
This is a great question so I'll highlight it:
"How ought one to behave morally in a world awash in both conflicting goods and in contingency chance and change?"
I certainly have ventured forth in the direction of resolving my own answers . . .
