Yeah, a brilliant poet.

"Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together." — ZzzoneiroCosm

"Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather."
--English Standard

From the Introduction:

"I tried with simple words, as in confession, to trace the spiritual struggles of my life, from where I set out, how I passed over obstacles, how the struggle of God began, how I found the central meaning which regulates at last my thought, my speech and my actions."

At times Kazantzakis seems to take the god's eye view - seems to attempt to speak with the voice of god - the right of every poet.

Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. — frank

Eek. From eagles to vultures. How did that happen?

frank

Eek. From eagles to vultures. How did that happen? — ZzzoneiroCosm

You were quoting the King James Version. It's got a lot of mistranslations in it.

What’s striking about this graphic is how utterly egocentric it is, with man (even women are merely supporting characters) being the center of heaven, earth, and selfhood. How can these stories of sin and ignorance fit other lifeforms when most don’t even possess a central nervous system?

We’re all chained by ideologies and while some are better than others none are *great*.

You were quoting the King James Version. It's got a lot of mistranslations in it. — frank

I'm no biblical scholar, but Google gave me this:

“Eagles” is the literal translation of “αετοι” (Thayer, Strong’s).

https://www.kjvtoday.com/eagles-or-vultures-in-matthew-2428-and-luke-1737/


However, the original Greek does not use the term “vultures.” It clearly uses the term for eagles, “aetoi,” the plural for Strong’s #105, “aetós.”

https://www.defendingthebride.com/sc/mass/mat24.html


Also, I like 'eagles' better. :smile:

I'm not a biblical scholar either.

"αετοι" can be translated as either eagle or vulture. Vulture fits the meaning of the sentence better, so most contemporary translations use vulture.

Where people insist on using eagle, it's because they favor some esoteric meaning behind it.

Here.

Also, I like 'eagles' better. — ZzzoneiroCosm

That's good enough.

Somehow you tagged me without my getting a notification.

There is lots of great stuff in that article. It is difficult to land on just one part.

Why?

That is my take away. I wouldn't necessarily call language a heuristic and I don't intend to enter the broader discussion of what language is, but the article does such a nice job of tracing the edges of language within context. What is also nice is the end where words are generally shown to be wanting - that concepts seem to transcend words and that the focus on a particular word may be to miss the point.

I would not dwell on whether "religion" refers to anything (or even what it "means"), but the ostensive approach could be helpful in understanding what strikes as a "meta-religion" article. What other conversations about "religion" were excluded from the article? What voices are missing? Are the examples selected indicative of the bounds of what can be said about religion? Are there related conversations that should be included in the discussion?

. . .It is easy to imagine that if the way that a people worship their gods permeates their work, art, and politics, and they do not know of alternative ways, then it would not be likely that they would have created a concept for it. There is little need for a generic concept that abstracts a particular aspect of one’s culture as one option out of many until one is in a sustained pluralistic situation. . . . — SEP

Language and religion are relational and predicated on community. It is only in pluralistic situations where communities encounter one another that we have to concern ourselves with naming/categorizing the distinctions.

This, I think, is the rub for many conversations:

. . . A methodological individualist, Smith denies that groups have any reality not explained by the individuals who constitute them. What one finds in history, then, is religious people, and so the adjective is useful, but there are no religious entities above and beyond those people, and so the noun reifies an abstraction. . . . — SEP

Is religion a thing? When looked at on the individual level (i.e. the non-communal), the space between is forgotten. Reification, emergence, atomism, correspondence. . . the list goes on. The metaphysics is hard to avoid when we ask whether religion "refers."

(X v ~X) & ~( X & ~X)

Also, we get stuck in the dividing. Language, religion, and life are squishy.

. . . We might say that a bounded polythetic approach produces concepts that are fuzzy, and an open polythetic approach produces concepts that are fuzzy and evolving. Timothy Williamson calls this “the dynamic quality of family resemblance concepts” (1994: 86). One could symbolize the shift of properties over time this way:

Religion 1: A B C D E
Religion 2: B C D E F
Religion 3: C D E F G
Religion 4: D E F G H
Religion 5: E F G H I
Religion 6: F G H I J
…

Wittgenstein famously illustrated this open polythetic approach with the concept game, and he also applied it to the concepts of language and number (Wittgenstein 1953, §67). If we substitute our concept as Wittgenstein’s example, however, his treatment fits religion just as well:

Why do we call something a “religion”? Well, perhaps because it has a direct relationship with several things that have hitherto been called religion; and this can be said to give an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. (Wittgenstein 1953, §67)

Given an open polythetic approach, a concept evolves in the light of the precedents that speakers recognize, although, over time, what people come to label with the concept can become very different from the original use. . .
— "SEP

Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense. — Richard Polt, Anything but Human

The reason is simply that we are biologically a social species and therefore cooperation is vital to our survival, or rather the strategy our species has developed for gene propagation.

Also, there is a really good article referenced at the end (yes, it starts off a bit beneath the likely reader).

Religion is not a thing

. . .

Race is not a thing

A striking example of this is Laura Tabili’s (2003) argument that ‘race is a relationship, not a thing’ — itself playing on the famous phrase by the historian EP Thompson (1963) that [socioeconomic] ‘class is a relationship, not a thing’.

As Tabili shows, even though the concept/category of ‘race’ is considered to be rooted in physical differences, this category is itself historically (and thus socially) constructed. Thus, it is not the case of race (as a thing) causing racism, but rather the social construction of racism creates race. . . .


. . . .

Capital is not a thing

Going somewhat further back with this: in the nineteenth century the philosopher and historian Karl Marx wrote the influential book Capital, which of course set out much of his highly influential theory of political economy. Even though Marx had a lot to say about the idea of ‘capital’ (and with it of course the capitalist mode of production), he does throw in a brief comment:

‘capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons’ (Marx 1887, ch.33, p.533)

. . ..

Thus capital, class, and race are all not things despite being considered to be things. I could continue with other examples — the idea of gender talks about things (gendered bodies, clothes, dispositions) which are also social relations (see, of course, Butler 2002). The category is not the thing in itself, it is the means by which the ‘thing’ is made ‘thingy’ (that is, it is how the category comes to be seen as a thing). . . .


That is, for McCutcheon, and many other contemporary scholars in the field, religion is not a thing in itself, but is a discourse that has political uses within certain social and cultural contexts. People do not call things religion because religion is a thing in itself (that has some special core at its heart that makes it religion).

Instead, the discourse of ‘religion’ is a human construct that does certain types of work by the human actors that put it to use. No more or less, it is a powerful term, but what the term describes (the ‘thing’) is not necessarily what we assume ‘it’ to be from the label ‘religion’.

. . . — Malory Nye

What work do you intend the word to do when you use it? What work did the word do when another person used it? What work do you suppose they intended to do when they used it? Was the use efficacious?

Each of the examples in the SEP article were about the context in which "religion" was used, the intended audience, and the work contemplated. As any of these variable changed, the "meaning" of the word changed. Without context/relationship, we just have meaningless symbols.

The reason is simply that we are biologically a social species and therefore cooperation is vital to our survival, or rather the strategy our species has developed for gene propagation. — praxis

It doesn't look like selfishness has been deselected.

The claim is “there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense” and I gave a reason why it fits our biological strategy for gene propagation. As far as I know, freeloading is common to a wide range of species, if not most or all.

Right, so it's not

the strategy our species has developed for gene propagation. — praxis

I don't follow.

Basically it's simply that, according to our particular biology, cooperation generally propagates more of our genes than freeloading.

Basically it's simply that, according to our particular biology, cooperation generally propagates more of our genes than freeloading. — praxis

Oh. OK.

If Frank is too skittish to express his objections maybe some else knows what he’s talking about?

If Frank is too skittish to express his objections maybe some else knows what he’s talking about? — praxis

I don't have any objections. I didn't really get why we were talking about freeloading.

However, I feel as though yout DNA might be dispersed a little better if you were nicer to me.

Freeloaders take advantage of the cooperative nature of others for personal gain. That doesn't seem selfish to you?

Freeloaders take advantage of the cooperative nature of others for personal gain. That doesn't seem selfish to you? — praxis

You mean the elite?

What’s striking about this graphic is how utterly egocentric it is, with man (even women are merely supporting characters) being the center of heaven, earth, and selfhood. How can these stories of sin and ignorance fit other lifeforms when most don’t even possess a central nervous system? — praxis

It's not in the least ego-centric. In Buddhism, as an example, it is only in the human form that beings are able to hear and comprehend the Buddha's teaching. This is not 'egocentric'.The ego is only one aspect of the human being, the self's idea of its self. Humanity has a particular place, and also particular responsibility, as the living being that is able to realise its true nature, and also act as a ward for other creatures, even though we're conspicuously NOT doing that at this time in history. Modern culture's inability to recognise the unique station of human being is one of the major contributors to this.

Freeloaders take advantage of the cooperative nature of others for personal gain. That doesn't seem selfish to you? — praxis

I'm not sure what this is about, but isn't a type of freeloading built into the human experience in as much as we benefit from the work/ideas/civilization of all who came before us, without making a single contribution?

It's poetry. Open your heart. Read on. — ZzzoneiroCosm

But all I can hear is...

..a brilliant tune, don't you think?

The question is, then, what is there, in the world, that is the foundation of religion, and minus the historical accounts, minus the specious metaphysics, minus the comfort of authority, and minus everything that is merely incidental. It is a reduction that is sought. — Constance

That's half an answer. What is the other half? What is it that you have left, after you take the history, metaphysics, authority and all away?

...we are biologically a social species and therefore cooperation is vital to our survival, or rather the strategy our species has developed for gene propagation. — praxis

So if we would survive we ought cooperate. And yet one insists on our asking: Why ought we survive?

If there is no God, there is no teleos and there is no good. "Good for what? " is a meaningless question if there is no what, no aim, no objective.

There is no god. We make our own purpose.

That's half an answer. What is the other half? What is it that you have left, after you take the history, metaphysics, authority and all away? — Banno

The mind pondering the supermind*. That's a personal relationship with christ.

The circle of the self-messiah.


*Meaning the mind to come. Use your imagination.

There is no god. We make our own purpose. — Banno

Which is what? To help your fellow man and woman, love and educate your kids, be a force of happiness to all? Why? Seems meaningless to simply make someone's stay as comfortable as possible if you admit there was no reason for them to come and stay in the first place.

It's like being Sisyphus' water boy, tending kindly to him, convincing yourself your altruism and goodness matters, ignoring the fact that you're all involved in a meaningless struggle that will eventually end with your death and then eventually the destruction of the world.

nihil ultra ego.

Forever the same on thephilosophyforum.

There is no god. We make our own purpose.
— Banno

Which is what? To help your fellow man and woman, love and educate your kids, be a force of happiness to all? Why? Seems meaningless to simply make someone's stay as comfortable as possible if you admit there was no reason for them to come and stay in the first place. — Hanover

Forever the same on thephilosophyforum. — Wayfarer

Indeed.

I think this is a good summary of the ongoing debate here. And for all our rehashing of this theme I'm not sure we've really explored it in depth. Maybe I haven't been here long enough or paid close enough attention.