And really my main point was just that the discourse "everything is transient" is very confusing and likely to lead someone into the wrong view - nihilism, or absurdism.

The trouble is we easily become obsessed with its power, to a point where "wisdom" becomes an exercise in just how much we can deny ourselves and those around us. A philosophy of Nilhism which denies there is fulfillment in anything but our transcendent imaginings.

Our eagerness to fight demons of our world (e.g. greed, objectification, scientism etc.,etc.) has us confuse worship of the transcendent for the only fulfilment. We end up believing the lie their is no fulfilment in our world, be it friends, family, money or even consuming porn.

We want to be able to say: "follow the transcendent or you will have no peace in life," to hang the threat of meaningless over anyone who would dare not follow our transcendent tradition, so they have a reason to pick us over any other activity they might do or value they might have.

The greatest difficulty of virtue or ethics is the truth people are frequently happy or contented in doing wrong. It's what's do hard to give up to do right and so difficult to admit when concerned with stopping evil.

It was a three-word response to the question 'hey what's wrong with simply enjoying life'. It wasn't a philosophical treatise.

It was a three-word response to the question 'hey what's wrong with simply enjoying life'. It wasn't a philosophical treatise. — Wayfarer

Well the real answer I believe is that "nothing is wrong in simply enjoying life". Simply enjoying life is probably the best way to live. However - this does require a certain wisdom, most easily begotten from tradition, including the virtues. Someone who cheats on their girlfriend will probably not be able to "simply enjoy life", and good things will easily be taken away from him, making him pursue them even harder, and if he does so confusedly, he will make them even farther from his reach. It doesn't require philosophy - if philosophy was a requirement, the common man could never achieve blessedness. But I think the common man can eminently achieve blessedness, and often does so more frequently than the arrogant learned.

And these are deceptions precisely because the so called object of desire they identify actually frustrates the achievement of the authentic, underlying desire - they prevent the actual object of desire from being obtained. So yes - the desire for sex is the desire for intimacy, and it is good. The desire for food is the desire for a healthy and well-nurtured body and it is good, although a lesser good than the transcendent for example, because one wants a healthy and well-nurtured body in order to be able to achieve many of the other goods. The supreme good is the transcendent though. — Agustino

I like that you insist that desire is good. I think religion is often framed in terms of a set of prohibitions. Instead of virtue being its own reward, it's framed as a price that one pays (abstinence in various forms) for something higher. So religion "falls" into accusation and self-righteousness. Saint Paul isn't perfect in this regard himself, but "Christ is the end of the law" is a profound statement. I find a radical kernel in Christianity that is largely obliterated by the human tendency to create a system of law and therefore sin. Dogma also take on a "scientistic" framing. Instead of passwords toward mysterious or fundamentally emotional transformation, they are what one must believe as a good theologian. So theology becomes Christ, one might say, as the mediator of the transcendent. But then religion is just metaphysics. I read "in spirit and in truth" in terms of emotion or the "sub-rational" (also trans-rational). I think the heart (with the mind in what is actually a unity) evolves from a love of never-sinful-in-themselves things towards higher things or the transcendent or Good. The key point is that sin is just privation or clumsy desire. Prudence dictates that we make laws, cage the violent. But I think religion is best when it accuses nothing, forbids nothing, but points to the transcendent not as a duty but as an opportunity.

We want to be able to say: "follow the transcendent or you will have no peace in life," to hang the threat of meaningless over anyone who would dare not follow our transcendent tradition, so they have a reason to pick us over any other activity they might do or value they might have. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I agree. It's very hard to resist beating others over the head with our idiosyncratic packaging of the "sacred." For me there is "true religion" in loving one's lover or friends. We always already have access to the transcendent as love. So (again, just for me) it's a matter of trying to live in that place of love and generosity, but not as a sort of duty. For me, this duty would be the same, old alienation. For our own damn sake we seek this state. Every dogma and every law (in my view) buries something primordial and genuine beneath 'concept religion' or idolatry (Stirner is the neglected master here). But that's just my wacky prejudice...

I think religion is often framed in terms of a set of prohibitions. Instead of virtue being its own reward, it's framed as a price that one pays (abstinence in various forms) for something higher. So religion "falls" into accusation and self-righteousness. — Hoo

The original post was actually about 'truth', but became a discussion about religion after the introduction of 'I am the way'... which lead to a discussion about the idea of 'awakening to truth' and then to detachment from desire.

Of course it sounds censorious or abstemious to speak in terms of detachment from desire, but I think it is an unfortunate necessity, because human nature, if it follows its own instincts, generally is not going to home in on existential truths of any kind. It takes effort and sacrifice, and there are simply too many distractions, too many things to pursue, no more so than today.

As for sin - sin is the ultimately politically-incorrect word nowadays. Culture thinks it is liberated because it has ditched the idea. I wonder. I know on the Buddhist forum, one of their dogmas is that 'Buddhists don't have an idea of "sin" ' but I think that is basically because of the way it has been interpreted by the counter-culture (and also for marketing purposes, if you asked me).

I think, to be brutally frank, the hostilty to those ideas is because we don't want it to be true, we would just like to please ourselves - sure, be 'nice people' X-) , 'kind', and all the rest, but basically stay as we are.

And I am wrestling with all these problems, I'm not preaching from a bully pulpit - I aspire to be free from selfish inclinations and cravings, because I would like to think it opens the door to a higher kind of life, but it ain't an easy thing to achieve, and there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet.

Of course it sounds censorious or abstemious to speak in terms of detachment from desire, but I think it is an unfortunate necessity, because human nature, if it follows its own instincts, generally is not going to home in on existential truths of any kind. It takes effort and sacrifice, and there are simply too many distractions, too many things to pursue, no more so than today. — Wayfarer

How about the elevation of desire? I like Plato's Symposium. I relate to an erotic element in religion. Sex is at the heart of "life-death" as opposed to "undeath." The "fire and the rose are one."
Detachment from petty desires is great. I relate to the value in that. I suppose the danger is presenting these petty desires as bad in themselves rather than simply as obstacles or not the best that one can hope for.

As for sin - sin is the ultimately politically-incorrect word nowadays. Culture thinks it is liberated because it has ditched the idea. I wonder. I know on the Buddhist forum, one of their dogmas is that 'Buddhists don't have an idea of "sin" ' but I think that is basically because of the way it has been interpreted by the counter-culture (and also for marketing purposes, if you asked me). — Wayfarer

I think you're ignoring something here. Political earnestness involves the suffering and projection of "protestant" guilt. We are born in sin as always, but now this is sin is racism, sexism, homophobia,etc. on the progressive side. Surely you've seen the nail-biting obsession with innocence with respect to the terrible X-isms. On the conservative side it's a mixture of sin against God, sin against Freedom, and sin against objectivity. All this "hero myth" stuff I talk is an attempt to point out a general structure. There is duty or law in the name of the (generalized) sacred and therefore (generalized) sin. And the 'sacred' I'm aiming at here is narcissism's object. Contrast genuine empathy with altruism as a duty and therefore as a right to accuse. We have un-self-conscious love for others on the one side and the enjoyment of superiority in the humiliation of sinners on the other. And the worshippers of pure reason can look down on those who make irrational or non-empirical claims. The prohibition divides humanity into an upper and lower class. Liberals have their image of the redneck racist/misogynist. IMV, then, "Christ is the end of the law" only to the degree that religion comes from a deeper place than this (necessary and forgivable) compulsive or hardwired status-seeking "instinct."
Religious notions of an impossible object make this Law more attractive and mysterious, but I think this gets in the way or obscures the "kingdom of God" within. Blasphemy isn't even a sin, for any "living God" in the guts is beyond such triviality. If we think of folks killing in the name of the honor of their god, the "group ego" core of the impossible object becomes apparent.

And I am wrestling with all these problems, I'm not preaching from a bully pulpit - I aspire to be free from selfish inclinations and cravings, because I would like to think it opens the door to a higher kind of life, but it ain't an easy thing to achieve, and there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet. — Wayfarer

I respect that, and I respect your honesty.

I think it's understood as a duty though-- for your own damn sake, you will love your lovers and friends. You will rescue yourself from the ignominy of meaninglessness with love. The falsehoods of your idolatry are at least true for you. A truth which will rescue you from meaninglessness no matter how much we might understand it is falsehood. The duty to rescue yourself, "At least with my idolatry, I will have the truth which saves me."

Everyone is on the same level of seeking an idol with which to save themselves from meaninglessness. What an individual values becomes equivocated with idolatry. No matter out ideology, we are all the same in seeking a fiction which rescues us from our meaninglessness. It's our duty to hold onto a fictional idol just so we won't be a meaningless wretch.

I think it gets the "universal experience" backwards. Every dogma or law is something primordial and genuine. A value held, a habit performed or an action sought. In this respect, it's only hidden for us in as much as we pretend it is. Even idolatry, despite its falsehood, is an action or practice performed by the living. Any such practice is the play of the living and so part of a meaningful life. Not something sought for our sake, but ourselves living that which is valuable within our meaningful lives.

But I think the eros of Plato, is not hedonistic. Eros is a form of the spiritual. But, hey, it's a really confusing world right now, although I'll admit that this is one of the great things about it, in a way. (gotta dash, old family friend in hospital.)

I think it's understood as a duty though-- for your own damn sake, you will love your lovers and friends. You will rescue your meaningless self form the ignominy of being loveless. The falsehoods of your idolatry are at least true for you. A truth which will rescue you from meaninglessness no matter how much we might understand it is falsehood. The duty to rescue yourself, "At least with my idolatry, I will have the truth which saves me." — TheWillowOfDarkness

Maybe we're getting at the same thing. Duty and prohibition and innocence and haunt humanity. We are bound by our desire to bind. The impossible object still offers proximity and therefore hierarchy. This ubiquitous game (which could only be prohibited or judged from within this very game of prohibition and judgment) stifles authenticity. Even authenticity as concept can itself be taken up as a token in this game. Religion that accuses of sin against God is more or less the same thing as righteous politics that accuses of racism, sexism, etc. We can advise against and vote against fornication or discrimination in the practical realm, but religion that is "stuck" at this plane looks necessarily dead and alienated to me. It's just another hierarchy like wealth or education or looks or talent. Same old power play in terms of concepts.

Every dogma or law is something primordial and genuine. A value held, a habit performed or an action sought. In this respect, it's only hidden for us in as much as we pretend it is. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If I understand you correctly, I agree, but I'd say that dogma is thestain of something primordial and genuine while law is its descent into guilt, accusation, purity, alienation.

I was looking into Plato's notion of love and was shocked to see Hegel there -- or so much of Plato in Hegel.

The stories of all the other symposiasts, too, are stories of their particular loves masquerading as stories of love itself, stories about what they find beautiful masquerading as stories about what is beautiful. For Phaedrus and Pausanius, the canonical image of true love—the quintessential love story—features the right sort of older male lover and the right sort of beloved boy. For Eryximachus the image of true love is painted in the languages of his own beloved medicine and of all the other crafts and sciences. For Aristophanes it is painted in the language of comedy. For Agathon, in the loftier tones of tragedy. In ways that these men are unaware of, then, but that Plato knows, their love stories are themselves manifestations of their loves and of the inversions or perversions expressed in them. They think their stories are the truth about love, but they are really love’s delusions—“images,” as Diotima will later call them. As such, however, they are essential parts of that truth. For the power of love to engender delusive images of the beautiful is as much a part of the truth about it as its power to lead to the beautiful itself.
But because they are manifestations of our loves, not mere cool bits of theorizing, we—our deepest feelings—are invested in them. They are therefore tailor-made, in one way at least, to satisfy the Socratic sincerity condition, the demand that you say what you believe (Crito 49c11-d2, Protagoras 331c4-d1). Under the cool gaze of the elenctic eye, they are tested for consistency with other beliefs that lie just outside love’s controlling and often distorting ambit. Under such testing, a lover may be forced to say with Agathon, “I didn’t know what I was talking about in that story” (201b11–12). The love that expressed itself in his love story meets then another love: his rational desire for consistency and intelligibility; his desire to be able to tell and live a coherent story; his desire—to put it the other way around—not to be endlessly frustrated and conflicted, because he is repetitively trying to live out an incoherent love story. — http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-friendship/

That underlined bit is the "Hegel." Frustration/incoherence leads up the ladder to higher forms of love. So "sin" or "error" is necessary and the desired being or highest love is not timeless but instead utterly depends on time. There's no jumping ahead of the dialectic. We live forwards but understand backwards. (Or that's how I'm seeing it.)

This is what I originally had in mind when I thought of Plato on Eros:

First, if the Leader leads aright, he should love one body and beget beautiful accounts there” (210a6–8). At this stage, what the boy engages in the lover is his sexual desire for physical beauty, albeit one which, in firm keeping with the norms of Athenian paiderastia, is supposedly aim-inhibited: instead of sexual intercourse, it leads to discussions about beauty and to accounts of it. Here the beauty at issue is, in the first instance, the boy who represents beauty itself to the lover. That is why, when the lover finally comes to see the beautiful itself, “beauty will no longer seem to you to be measured by gold or raiment or beautiful boys or youths, which now you look upon dumbstruck” (211d3–5). One effect of generating accounts of this beauty, however, is that the lover comes to see his beloved’s beautiful body as one among many: if it is beautiful, so are any other bodies the accounts fit. And this initially cognitive discovery leads to a conative change: “Realizing this he is established as a lover of all beautiful bodies and relaxes this excessive preoccupation with one, thinking less of it and believing it to be a small matter” (210b4–6).
...
But love that is to escape frustration cannot stop with bodies. The attempt to formulate an account of love free from puzzles and immune to elenctic refutation must lead on from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, and so to the beautiful laws and practices that will improve souls and make young men better. Again this cognitive achievement is matched by a conative one. When the lover sees that all these beautiful things are somehow akin in the beauty, he comes to think that “bodily beauty is a small thing” (210c5–6), and so, as before, becomes less obsessed with it... — same

Great stuff...

Instead of sexual intercourse, it leads to discussions about beauty and to accounts of it.

nudge, nudge.

There's about a dozen postgrad seminars in those passages, which make me painfully aware of my utter deficiency of education with respect to Greek philosophy. But I think I'm on reasonably firm ground to say that Plato eschewed hedonism, unlike Epicurus.

Epicurus' 'hedonism' is not ours, though.

It must be remembered that Epicurus understood the task of philosophy first and foremost as a form of therapy for life, since philosophy that does not heal the soul is no better than medicine that cannot cure the body (Usener 1887, frag. 221). A life free of mental anxiety and open to the enjoyment of other pleasures was deemed equal to that of the gods. Indeed, it is from the gods themselves, via the simulacra that reach us from their abode, that we derive our image of blessed happiness, and prayer for the Epicureans consisted not in petitioning favors but rather in a receptivity to this vision. (Epicurus encouraged the practice of the conventional cults.) Although they held the gods to be immortal and indestructible (how this might work in a materialist universe remains unclear), human pleasure might nevertheless equal divine, since pleasure, Epicurus maintained (KD 19), is not augmented by duration (compare the idea of perfect health, which is not more perfect for lasting longer); the catastematic pleasure experienced by a human being completely free of mental distress and with no bodily pain to disturb him is at the absolute top of the scale. Nor is such pleasure difficult to achieve: it is a mark precisely of those desires that are neither natural nor necessary that they are hard to satisfy. Epicurus was famously content with little, since on such a diet a small delicacy is as good as a feast, in addition to which it is easier to achieve self-sufficiency, and “the greatest benefit of self-sufficiency is freedom.” — SEP

Instead of sexual intercourse, it leads to discussions about beauty and to accounts of it. — Wayfarer

Well, the context was men and boys, and Socrates was put to death for something like sin:

As a man who loves boys in an idiosyncratic, because elenctic, way, Socrates is placed in potential conflict with the norms of a peculiar Athenian social institution, that of paiderastia—the socially regulated intercourse between an older Athenian male (erastês) and a teenage boy (erômenos, pais), through which the latter was supposed to learn virtue. And this potential, as we know, was realized with tragic consequences—in 399 BC Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the young men of Athens and condemned to death. — SEP

I'm aware of the homoerotic implications in the Platonic eros, but did 'socially regulated intercourse' imply actual intercourse? Was that the grounds of the charges against Socrates? As I recall, from the Apology, the corruption was mainly intellectual, i.e. inducing atheism in the youth to the reality of the gods leading to atheism.

Epicurus' 'hedonism' is not ours, though. — Hoo

Indeed, by today's lights it was probably nearer asceticism.

I think religion is often framed in terms of a set of prohibitions. — Hoo

Yes - I think that's good because not everyone has the wisdom or the time to be a philosopher and understand how some particular may affect them especially in the long-drawn out future. The punishment/reward system, the traditions, the moral injunctions - these aim to maintain order even when most of the people do not understand how it is to be maintained.

So religion "falls" into accusation and self-righteousness — Hoo

A necessary fall in the government of men.

The key point is that sin is just privation or clumsy desire. Prudence dictates that we make laws, cage the violent. But I think religion is best when it accuses nothing, forbids nothing, but points to the transcendent not as a duty but as an opportunity. — Hoo

Yes but you see - some vices bear their effects on everyone else around. Religion doesn't condemn you in any strong form for gluttony - that is an evil that you do only to yourself (hence why you don't see gluttony in the 10 Commandments). But it does condemn you in a strong form for adultery or for murder - because those have serious effects in disturbing social order and profoundly affecting the lives of people around you. So it's not only an evil you do to yourself - it's a privation you impose on others as well. So don't forget that not everyone will be a philosopher, hence it is the duty of religion (and other power structures) to impose laws to control and prevent - by force if needed - those vices which do threaten the well-being of innocent others around you.

As for sin - sin is the ultimately politically-incorrect word nowadays. — Wayfarer

Whatever Became of Sin by Karl Menninger (a psychiatrist) discusses this idea in detail if you are interested.

I know on the Buddhist forum, one of their dogmas is that 'Buddhists don't have an idea of "sin" ' but I think that is basically because of the way it has been interpreted by the counter-culture (and also for marketing purposes, if you asked me). — Wayfarer

Yes agreed.

Of course it sounds censorious or abstemious to speak in terms of detachment from desire, but I think it is an unfortunate necessity, because human nature, if it follows its own instincts, generally is not going to home in on existential truths of any kind — Wayfarer

I don't think this is entirely true. I think those who have the time to think and reason about their impulses and desires will understand that those desires are really aimed at something good - all of them. For example the desire for sex - it's really aimed at the desire for intimacy. Usually what happens is that person X, for whatever reason, comes to the conclusion that the ideal of intimacy can't be achieved (for whatever reason - which could be his failings in love, his inability to find someone adequate, his broken heart, etc.), and therefore in hatred renounces it, and then goes full on in despairing indulgence of whatever is left. So something is wrong with the way people sometimes pursue it - that's their own ignorance of the true object of their desire. It's a problem for the rest of us because it doesn't only harm themselves - as a sin like gluttony would for example - but it also harms the rest of us. Thus we require ways to protect innocent people - either that they are cultural attitudes we have, or laws - and for this type of thing I think cultural attitudes are a lot more efficacious.

I think, to be brutally frank, the hostilty to those ideas is because we don't want it to be true, we would just like to please ourselves - sure, be 'nice people' X-) , 'kind', and all the rest, but basically stay as we are. — Wayfarer

Hahahaha! Yes being 'nice people'. I've abandoned my two year old son, I've let my parents die alone, I've disregarded and disrespected the love of my wife - but I'm a nice person, I send money to my son and my parents, I send a birthday present once a year to my wife, you know ;) lol (I have to now specify that this is a joke - because some people, notably John on this board, take every example I give as fact about me...) The problem isn't that we stay as we are, so much that we hide from the ways in which we harm ourselves and others.

I aspire to be free from selfish inclinations and cravings, because I would like to think it opens the door to a higher kind of life, but it ain't an easy thing to achieve, and there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet. — Wayfarer

Well - the elephant is swallowed with the teaspoon. Virtues (or vices) are cultivated by habit and understanding. Understanding of what? How they benefit or harm you from an objective point of view. A drug addict cannot renounce the drug until he understands how he is harmed. Sure, that understanding is not sufficient. Then will-power and training is also needed. But understanding is at least necessary.

Indeed, by today's lights it was probably nearer asceticism. — Wayfarer

Ah the pious atheism of Epicurus! >:O How I miss that atheism....

(Y)

That underlined bit is the "Hegel." Frustration/incoherence leads up the ladder to higher forms of love. So "sin" or "error" is necessary and the desired being or highest love is not timeless but instead utterly depends on time. There's no jumping ahead of the dialectic. We live forwards but understand backwards. (Or that's how I'm seeing it.) — Hoo

That sin and error are necessary for the progression of an individual is undeniable. However - a society, in order to maintain the stability required for the individual's progression must contain and restrain sin. It is impossible for the virtues to arise in a social environment which is totally corrupt. Why? Because the corrupt mechanism has its own power structures which restrain virtue, and prevent it from occurring. How do those power structures manifest? Let's look at a basic example - a child going to school. Now the child may be seeking to be virtuous - but the other kids bring alcohol to school, they encourage him to drink and isolate him if he doesn't, they encourage him to be promiscuous or at least not condemn promiscuity in order to even talk with them, and so forth. Now having friends is a good thing - so they are using that as a way to convince him to give up whatever interest he had in the virtues, by effectively saying "if you are interested in virtue, then you can't have friendship". This is a power structure, and a corrupt one too. Thus cultural elements are required in order to combat this.

This is what I originally had in mind when I thought of Plato on Eros: — Hoo

Keep in mind an important aspect. In Athenian culture, it was unfit for a young male to be interested in females. Why? Because if he put all his efforts into pursuing female beauty, he would not be able to develop the virtues. His mind would be obsessed about one thing only, and he would never manage to take control over his sexuality. It was both safer to spend time with an older man, and much more likely that he would learn the virtues. So this form of homosexuality had a very different aim than homosexuality does today. Furthermore, it is to be remarked that homosexual relationships between middle aged men were generally viewed with contempt - because at that age men were supposed to devote themselves to their wife. The "fear" the Greeks had regarding women were there because they understood what havoc women could have on the uninitiated man's mind (which is something we seem to have forgotten today - we do quite the contrary, we do everything we can to encourage women to use their body and talents to be attractive and to manipulate men - and same for men - a total lack of culture). Hence they developed the whole schema for young males that love of women was a lower kind of love - in order to discourage it.

That sin and error are necessary for the progression of an individual is undeniable. However - a society, in order to maintain the stability required for the individual's progression must contain and restrain sin. — Agustino

The vision I'm trying to share includes a chasm between prudence and politics on one side and access to a feeling beyond all politics and sin on the other side. Like anyone these days, I keep up with the "culture war." But what I get from what might be called a "symbol of transformation" is a space in my thinking and feeling that is beyond this war. I would never deny the need for laws, nor that children must be taught to obey the rules that they cannot yet understand in their ignorance. It's just that religion must offer something beyond politics and prudence and even theology and metaphysics in my view, and I find that it does.

It's just religion must offer something beyond politics and prudence and even theology and metaphysics in my view, and I find that it does. — Hoo

Could you clarify please in more detail what you mean by this? Thanks :)

As for sin - sin is the ultimately politically-incorrect word nowadays. Culture thinks it is liberated because it has ditched the idea. — Wayfarer

I've noticed that as well. One of the reasons I backed away from Atheist groups and got more interested in Philosophy, is because I broached the subject of sin in an atheist group and was met with hostile disapproval. I tried to get them to see sin as something other than disapproval from a Christian God, but that's the only way they could conceive of the concept.

When I think of sin, I think of it as acknowledging that I want to be virtuous, and acknowledging that I sometimes fail. I think of those failures as something I want to correct. The atheists I know appear to be of the opinion that morality is something bad that religions thought up, and that a better world is one in which people don't think of morality, except in terms of claiming that nothing is, our should be thought of as being immoral.

Even before I became acquainted with Stoicism, and after I rejected Christianity, I thought of sin as being a mistake that I wanted to correct, not something "bad" that I had done that needed or deserved to be punished.

The atheists I know appear to be of the opinion that morality is something bad that religions thought up, and that a better world is one in which people don't think of morality, except in terms of claiming that nothing is, our should be thought of as being immoral. — anonymous66

Yes; the difference between Sam Harris and Epicurus is that Epicurus honestly disbelieves in God, while Sam Harris uses his disbelief as a justification for his vices.

Epicurus honestly disbelieves in God, — Agustino

Epicurus did believe in the gods. He even had an argument to defend his belief. He just also believed that they had nothing to do with us, and that rather we are completely on our own.

Epicurus did believe in the gods. He even had an argument to defend his belief. He just also believed that they had nothing to do with us, and that rather we are completely on our own. — anonymous66

Sure, but in practical terms, he was an atheist. His behaviour did not hinge on the belief in gods, as gods have nothing to do with men. Whereas for Sam Harris, his behaviour does hinge on the non-existence of gods.

Sure, but in practical terms, he was an atheist. His behaviour did not hinge on the belief in gods, as gods have nothing to do with men. Whereas for Sam Harris, his behaviour does hinge on the non-existence of gods. — Agustino

I find Sam Harris' ideas about morality and free will to be odd and poorly supported. New Atheism (of which he is a part) has a political agenda with which I disagree.

I think there's an image or persona (Christ) or symbol of radical freedom and radical at-home-ness that can be "lit up" in a person's soul. For Blake, it was the "Human Form Divine." This "king of kings" is beyond the law, above the very notion of law and sin before the law. He's the son and not the servant of God. He's on intimate terms. He has God in his blood. He loves sincerely, with the heart and flesh, not self-consciously as a duty. He affirms the world. The totality is perfect or harmonized for him. He is wise as the serpent, aware of the whore and the killer in his depths. Purity and innocence-before-the-law are in the bonfire with all of the other idols. But these idols are still necessary in the world of Caesar and Newton. To be "in Christ" (from this perspective I'm relating) is not to instantly solve the economic or the social problem. It's just dipping in to an internal ocean of love, generous pride, and freedom, which allows us a profound irony and a "grounding" in this world. We were born in the right place at the right time. What seems finite and corrupt appears "infinite and holy." I think this radical vision of Christ is resisted because of an attachment to righteousness before the Law. "We are bound by our desire to bind." We are servants of an" impossible object" because we identify with the authority of this "impossible object." It's hypocrisy to accuse this power-drive, since this would be more righteousness before a new law (Thou shalt deny your will-to-power). This too must be affirmed as part of God's reality or just God as reality.

The main thing about this vision is take "the kingdom of God is within you" at its full intensity. It doesn't even matter if there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth. It doesn't matter what's in the Gospels or any other spiritual text that may serve just as well as a pilot light. Once this internal vision is lit, everything outside is just a candle in sunlight. I can switch into an objective mode and say that it's the mask on a Jungian archetype of the Self, etc. But I don't think anyone has to share my metaphysical/scientific commitments to enjoy this image. Others have their image entangled in metaphysical beliefs, which may dim its light but does not obliterate it. To mix Hegel/Plato in with this, I'd say that we grow by using "corrosives" to clarify the "Christ" within.

I find Sam Harris' ideas about morality and free will to be odd and poorly supported. New Atheism (of which he is a part) has a political agenda with which I disagree. — anonymous66

I agree with your views! :)