I admit "ultimate goodness" is a vague term. But I'd say a universe without an eternal torture chamber is, at least, "not ultimately evil". In my view, we emerge from The One, the Ultimate Source of Existence, and eventually return to it. But The One is often said to be beyond good and evil so perhaps "ultimate goodness" isn't entirely justified.

Are you familiar with Clifford Geertz? If so what do you make of his definition of religion?

Got ya. Thanks.

I admit "ultimate goodness" is a vague term. But I'd say a universe without an eternal torture chamber is, at least, "not ultimately evil" — Art48

Or perhaps just evil (do we need ultimate?).

It sounds like you might be recovering from a harsh form of Protestant Christianity and, like many others, are trying to salvage part of the story by reframing some notion of the divine within an ethical system you can fully accept. If not, I apologise for this assumption. Not all Christians have believed that hell entails everlasting punishment. As David Bentley Hart reminds us (That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation), there were many strands of early Christian thought that held a universalist view: that ultimately all are saved, and that hell functions less as retribution than as a process of moral purification or the re-acquisition of virtue.

The Christianity I grew up with described hell not as a place of torment, but as a state or condition defined by the absence of God. We were taught that the Bible is largely a collection of pre-scientific myths and narratives, best understood allegorically rather than literally.

I was never able to accept or comprehend the idea of a god. From the moment I first encountered it, I completely lacked any sensus divinitatis, as Calvin might have it. The idea doesn’t help me with sense-making or everyday living, but I still find it very interesting.

The One is often said to be beyond good and evil — Art48

'Beyond the vicissitudes' is preferable. On the plane of born existence, all goods have their opposite - pleasure and pain, life and death, good and bad. But the One is said to be 'the good that has no opposite.' Paired with that is the doctrine of 'evil as the privation of the good': evil has no inherent reality but is the consequence of privation of the Good. Realising the 'good that has no opposite' is, in philosophical spirituality, the end of the search.

Maybe the word ultimate is the problem. — Tom Storm

I think you are correct. Just look how problematic ultimates like infinity are still in math and logic.

What is good and what is bad? You and I may agree on individual examples, but we also may not. The answer depends on us, it is a subjective answer.

No objective information just what reality is will answer this. So what's the solution for this that humans have come up with? That there's an ultimate subjective: God. How do you accept this then? By faith.

It's quite simply they're trick fucked by the grammar of the language they use that forces "BEING" in a world of "BECOMING." Being, and thus The True Form are empty fictions. Hence you have YOUR way, and I have MY way, but as to THE way, it does not exist.

Recent posts have made more of "the universe is ultimately good" than I ever expected.
The phrase in my mind occurs in the context of faith.

There's a faith that is fearful: if I don't do (or believe) the right thing something bad (perhaps very, very bad) is going to happen to me. So I'd better believe what I'm told about God, etc. and not question and not think too deeply about it because that might lead to questioning.

And there's a faith that has more confidence "in the inherent goodness of the universe" where the person questions, thinks for themselves, and isn't afraid to call out (or, at least, privately disbelieve) obvious B.S.

Here's a video that discusses those two types of faith.
32 – A Clean, Well- Lighted Place https://vimeo.com/1135111091

Here's a video that discusses those two types of faith.
32 – A Clean, Well- Lighted Place https://vimeo.com/1135111091 — Art48

:up:

Deus, sive natura (Tat Tvam Asi)

Deus, sive natura (Tat Tvam Asi) — 180 Proof

Sub specie aeternitatis, too.

But who are these originators? Can you actually sketch the process because it seems a bit vague? The founders are not generally in this vein: the Buddha, or Jesus (if he was a historical person), were not empire-builders. If we take Christianity, who exactly are the originators to whom this claim is meant to apply.

The originators of spirituality were ordinary folks seeking answers to unanswerable (with the level of knowledge at the time) questions. But my original commentary pertained to organized religion specifically (as opposed to spirituality). So the goals of those who parlayed individual beliefs in the metaphysical into an institutional heirachy (which, they would lead, naturally) centered on the topic of spirituality, is what you're seeking. My guess is those folks sought personal power and wealth. I'm not so cynical to not acknowledge they didn't also personally believe they were leading society to a better place and individuals to eternal life etc. Rather that they were pursuing both goals.

Individuals who make cold lemonade from scratch in their kitchen do it to quench thirst. Those who create bottling companies, do it to make a profit, regardless of their interest in quenching the thirst of their customers.

Not all Christians have believed that hell entails everlasting punishment. — Tom Storm

Abbe Arthur Mugnier, a French divine, was asked if he believed in hell. He replied, "Yes, because it is a dogma of the church -- but I don't believe anyone is in it."

Nice quote.

The originators of spirituality were ordinary folks seeking answers to unanswerable (with the level of knowledge at the time) questions. — LuckyR

Perhaps. But other theories abound. The "myth and ritual" school in anthropology argues for the primacy of ritual. Attempts to influence the natural world through ritual lead to myths explaining the rituals. Of course nobody knows for sure -- but this explanation makes sense since non-verbal animals practice rituals, and, with the development of language, it would make sense to explain them.

James Frazer, in "the Golden Bough" suggests that in many cultures' rituals remained constant, while in preliterate societies myths were constantly changing. IN the famous opening of that book he describes how the ritual surrounding the kingship of the lake at Nemi was explained by the "dying and rising God" stories.

IN the U.S., with so many sole scriptura Protestants, primacy has been given to myth, and with the advent of written stories, myth became more constant. However, in other religions (like Buddhism) rituals (practices) retain importance.

IN addition, most preliterate societies do not differentiate between "myth" and "history". Story tellers tell tales about the past and are doubtless motivated to embellish to entertain their listeners. The notion that myths are a form of "primitive science" seems less correct than that they are a "primitive (oral) history".

Speaking of disappointment, Ben, your comment addresses nothing specific in the video. — Art48

OK fair enough, but am I right about the initial impression? Is this just garden variety Reddit atheism from the 2000s or do you have a thesis which is actually new, or even somehow develops that premise further than others?

By the way, it's not required for your position to be new in order to have merit for someone else. Just for me to be interested in it personally.

OK fair enough, but am I right about the initial impression? Is this just garden variety Reddit atheism from the 2000s — BenMcLean

It's not atheism at all. The video I mentioned in the OP
>> 109 – Why Religions Fail https://vimeo.com/1135038855
is an excerpt from a much longer video
>> 108 - Religion 2.0 (Science+Religion) https://vimeo.com/1135038281
which explains my points in greater detail. The video rejects the "superhero/storybook" epistemological method of most religions and advocates applying something like science's epistemological method to the claims of the mystics (of any and no religion) to build a worldview that integrates science and religion.

do you have a thesis which is actually new, or even somehow develops that premise further than others? — BenMcLean

Religion 2.0 (as the video makes clear) is built upon the age-old Perennial Philosophy. In that respect, it's not new. It is new, I believe, in the way it applies the age-old ideas to create something that hasn't existed before (although it certainly contains many older ideas and points of similarity).

The 108 video is long (51 minutes). I'd love to get feedback on its ideas, especially because I'll be presenting its content (using its slides for a talk) this March at a local Quaker meeting I attend. I'm looking forward to the event with anticipation and some trepidation.

I don't see our two postings as opposing one another. Rather that they represent steps 1 and 2 in the (individual) preamble in the spectrum from spirituality to religion to organized religion.

Why do religions fail? I am not sure that they do. Much depends on what “failure” is taken to mean. Does it matter, for example, that within Christianity there are multiple interpretations of any given doctrine or dogma? Not really, because each Christian group sustains its own intersubjective agreement. Consistency across groups is not required.

Religions are inconsistent precisely because they are human artefacts: they manage fear, create meaning, and develop codes of conduct. It would be surprising if they were otherwise.

The idea that there is One Truth is itself part of the reason religions diverge. The attempt to codify doctrine pushes each group or sect to develop what it takes to be the correct path.

This is also how we arrive at perennial philosophy: yet another attempt to identify the truth that supposedly underlies them all. Perennialists themselves are divided into schisms in this same, ultimately vain, search for a single truth.

Perennial philosophy is itself neither unified nor internally consistent. Once one attempts to isolate a supposed “single truth” underlying religious and philosophical traditions, one is forced into acts of selection and curation that vary from thinker to thinker. Huxley’s experiential and psychologised perennialism stands in clear tension with Plotinus’ rigorously metaphysical hierarchy of being, while both diverge sharply from traditionalist accounts that insist on fixed metaphysical and social orders. In some cases, most notable in the work of Julius Evola, appeals to a perennial truth are tied up with explicitly reactionary, hierarchical, and fascist-adjacent politics.

Rather than revealing deep unity, perennial philosophy itself generates a family of competing constructions, unified more by aspiration than by substance. In this they are just like religions.

Why do religions fail? — Tom Storm

I would say a religion that has contradictory teachings about how to be saved fails. Suppose I really believed in hell. Then how to avoid eternal torment would be an important question to me. I was told as a Catholic I needed a Catholic baptism and all mortal sins forgiven at time of death. Some Baptists say Catholics are in need of salvation. I once heard a radio preacher say baptism by immersion is required to be saved. It's a ridiculous situation.And that's just Christianity.

Ask religions in general what happens after death and you get a variety of contradictory answers.

The video mentioned in the OP goes into greater detail but it's no longer on YouTube. It's here if interested.
109 – Why Religions Fail https://vimeo.com/1135038855

But as I wrote, it doesn’t matter if you are part of an intersubjective community.

Perennialism doesn’t avoid this either - the work of finding the One Truth generates a multiplicity of responses, as noted above.

:up: :up: