His account of god provided a type of poetic wholeness, coherence and perfection. Or so he thought. — Tom Storm

I think Schopenhauer did more than a fair job describing how this world isn’t even close to that description. In fact, if there is one, and it isn’t simply hyper-contingency all the way down, he may be even devilish, more akin to the Gnostic rendering.

It was Socrates who posed, “Is it good cause the gods like it or do the gods like it because it is good?” A world where suffering and hardship is supposed to be part of the cosmic game but is beyond the understanding of its participants, is not beautiful, perfect, or good. At best it’s as indifferent and amoral as a Cthulhu. Possibly unable to make much more than a suffering world. At worst, he wants this scenario. Is an entity that uses people thus good because it is godly to want to see people suffer? Even worse is the notion that the world could be worse and we should be thankful our world wasn’t made in an even more suffering version. Everything about it is suspect.

In an inversion of our norm, if humans are the cruelest animal because we know what we do, and do it anyway, how much more so is something infinitely more knowing? Again, if there is one, signs point to a cosmically indifferent Cthulhu perhaps.

I think this is part of the fake package religion tries to peddle.
They try to convince folks that their particular flavour/variety of deity, is the only way that a human can know and experience TRUE wonder, awe, happiness, security, purpose, morality etc.
There is a large aesthetic component to the fake shinies on offer. As Hitchens said:
"However, let no one say there's no cure: salvation is offered, redemption, indeed, is promised, at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties."

I think it's as simple as that, religion simply says, we will take care of all your worries, just trust us, give us a large chunk of your earnings, live exactly as we instruct you, don't question us, accept our story as regards your origin, purpose and responsibility. If you do, then you will be happy, within our community and our protected bubble. You will NEVER have to think for yourself again. The ignorance we offer you is bliss and any outsider is damned forever.

I always hate to quote a fascist terror monger, but Joseph Goebbels was correct when he said,
'the bigger the lie the more people will believe it, especially, if it is repeated many times, and comes from authority.'
I think you could add to that 'especially' part Tom, with your 'and it's reward system is very aesthetically pleasing.'

Thanks. I guess my question is pondering the extent to which people find theism and, for want of a better term, the 'supernatural' attractive because it appeals to them aesthetically. While the loose ends and incomplete circle of atheism is a turn off.

I get your argument, but I’m questioning their premise. How can they only see the beauty and not the other?

Well, they either don't see it or they choose aesthetic relief as per terror management theory. Most people I've met over the years think life is a privilege and mostly enjoyable. We can either say they are deluded, lying or living a different life...

We can either say they are deluded, lying or living a different life... — Tom Storm

Charmed life? Perhaps. But verbal accounts at the least provide contrary evidence. Selective data set allows for any number of false accounts. Try harder at seeing the full picture. You don’t see the spider ripping off that insects head? The homeless man having a meltdown? The terrible accident? The unwanted chore? The starvation of not doing X to get Y? Disagreement? Physical pain? Emotional pain? Ennui? The uncomfortable situation? The hostile situation? The annoying situation? The dire situation? The deadly situation?

I find the thing in life is to remember that people don't share my experiences, my views or my accounts of reality and why should they? I suspect that just as some people have a ginormous sex drive, other people have phenomenal zest for living, which cancels out the negatives. Maybe it's chemical... :wink:

While the loose ends and incomplete circle of atheism is a turn off. — Tom Storm

Absolutely, atheism is honest, its adherents admit:
1. We don't yet know the full story of where we come from or why we are here.
2. We have no inherent purpose other than the purpose we create for ourselves.
3. We see no evidence, that any existent in the universe, cares about us, apart from each other and maybe, at least some of our 'pets.'

Religion tries to fill these gaps and sate the human primal fears that such gaps intensify and amplify, in some cases, amplify to the level of horrible states such as nihilism or antinatalism.
I don't understand that. I think points 1 to 3 above make us FREE to make of our future what we will.
What an adventure!!!!
Leave a good legacy Tom and imo, you will have lived a fruitful life.
I leave the poor theists, in their forlorn hope that pascals wager is a good bet.
I also leave the nihilists and antinatalists to choose to live their lives as a curse.
You reap what you sow. Change is always on offer to everyone.

So you deny suffering exists because you don’t suffer? Don’t we expect infants to get beyond those views fairly early? Like there are fundamentalists who view dinosaur bones as no evidence for evolution and flat earthers think the world is flat. A wrong viewpoint of something doesn’t mean much just because they have a different viewpoint. Some viewpoints of what is the case about the world are wrong. A person who can’t see blue doesn’t mean blue doesn’t exist. Suffering exists. Some people explain it as necessary, not relevant or whatnot. But most people don’t deny the phenomena of suffering as at least a thing that is part of living.

Huh? I have not given my view on this subject, just an account of how some people think. I learned many years ago that some people adore life and celebrate it, even those who have been exposed to torture, trauma and tragedy. I have also learned that some other people hold the opposite view and will never understand that first group and will spend their days puzzling over the first group's ebullience with something approaching resentment and incredulity.

I learned many years ago that some people adore life and celebrate it, even those who have been exposed to torture, trauma and tragedy. — Tom Storm

This simply has to be true to refute the whole beautiful and good of the religious aesthetic. Suffering is a problem. What god wants this? Whatever answer you pick still means we have a god that wants this in his world. Not a beautiful aesthetic. Beauty in suffering is just playing with language to justify anything.

I don't think the point I am making about the aesthetic faithful is connected to the loving life people. Many of those confounding folk who love life do not hold any religious beliefs. They are not motivated by aesthetics.

Then explain what you mean by “aesthetic faithful”? There is no Beaty on suffering or having to “learn your lesson” by suffering :roll:. I’m saying their beauty in X thing has a lot of ugly aspects that they are ignoring.

The 'aesthetic faithful' was referring to the group of people we were talking about in the OP. This was a separate point to where we ended up - talking about people who love life. As I said of this second group most I've known do not have any religious beliefs.

I have no idea why you would raise idea of beauty in suffering or lessons to be learned by suffering. So far you are the only one to have raised this.

I don't think the point I am making about the aesthetic faithful is connected to the loving life people. Many of those confounding folk who love life do not hold any religious beliefs. They are not motivated by aesthetics. — Tom Storm

I think I would broadly fit into the people variety, you describe above Tom but the aesthetics of the natural world, that I came from and the aesthetics of a (non-light polluted) night time (naked eye) sky view of the universe, or the aesthetics of a scientist such as Carl Sagan, describing what science knows, in a TV series like COSMOS, is very motivational indeed to me.

The difference is that I take full, personal ownership, of the awe and wonder that such experiences inspire. I do the same for any resulting intent or purpose that manifests in me, as a result of the experience.
I don't allow any religious BS to take the credit from me.
I don't thank god, 'mother' nature or the flying spaghetti monster for the fact that the series COSMOS made me want to learn as much as I could, for the rest of my life.
I thank Carl Sagan and his team. All fellow humans.
I thank my own interpretations of natural vistas.

Some people feel insignificant and unimportant, when they view images such as the Hubble deepest field etc. (I have a big poster of it, on one my walls at home.) I fully understand that, but I also very strongly feel, (as Carl Sagan did, and many many other people do) that without lifeforms such as me or you, those vistas have much less meaning or purpose. Perhaps even none at all.
There is no point in being wonderous, if there is no existent that can witness and acknowledge such wonder.

You're a guy who loves life and has a sense of the numinous, whilst recognising the tragedies and pitfalls all around us, and you don't even believe in the Big Sky Motherfucker! Good for you, Cobber!

Bonza Mate! (Sorry Tom but I have lot's of expat Scots friends in Perth Oz and some REAL Aussie friends, that they are married to, or are the offspring of. They made me an honorary 'aussie baw bag,' so I feel I can use 'stereotypical terms' like 'bonza' without sounding too offensive.)

I remain unsure of your personal position as regards being an overall life celebrant or you remain on the outskirts of, or a significant distance from, that camp. What do the aesthetics of the universe do for you?

Feel free to use any Australianism you want, Mate. Enjoy.

What do the aesthetics of the universe do for you? — universeness

Occasionally, when I am in the outback, I am struck by the extraordinary star scape. The Australian bush is primeval and powerful and it often scares me. But nothing I've seen appears to have influenced my view of life.

I remain unsure of your personal position as regards being an overall life celebrant — universeness

I think life and humans are pretty dreadful, but what can you do? I don't whine. I don't celebrate. I have a tendency towards optimism which, try as I might, I can't suppress. Absurdism works for me too.

Ok, thanks for painting me a clearer picture of the world according to Tom.
'Ace mate, hope you can sink more amber fluid, as long as you don't have too many ankle biters to look after!'

Occasionally, when I am in the outback, I am struck by the extraordinary star scape. — Tom Storm

Oh, I am so jealous of that one! That 'outback' dark sky vista must be one of the best available from anywhere on the Earth.

I think "aesthetic reasoning" can be used, at best, to rationalize "morality and meaning". It's actually akin to fideism, no?

:fire: :100:

It's actually akin to fideism, no? — 180 Proof

Do you think reason and faith have nothing between them other than hostility?
Is there any value in faith being the equivalent of a measured credence level, you assign to a particular proposal? Fideism seems a bit unnecessarily inflexible to me, in as far as it can be called an epistemology.

I don't like the 'ownership' theism claims over words like 'believe' and 'faith.'

Do you think reason and faith have nothing between them other than hostility? — universeness

I don't understand the question.

Is there any value in faith being the equivalent of a measured credence level, you assign to a particular proposal?

 
It's not clear to me what you're asking here?

Some folk will also highlight the importance of ritual and spiritual practice which further serves to intensify what appears to be a form of aestheticism. They seem to be saying that their experience of the world, transfigured through the veneration of the divine is deeper, richer and more beautiful than yours (atheist). They see, or hope for, transcendent beauty. You see, or live in, ghastly nihilism. — Tom Storm

Oddly, transcendent beauty transcends faith or any particular value system. Even “ghastly nihilism” can be seen aesthetically.

My point here is not the Protestant professor's take on Nietzsche, but the way he seems to be positioning his interpretation around an appreciation of aesthetic grounds. — Tom Storm

Ironically Nietzsche rejected Christianity and God precisely on aesthetic grounds. And he thought most philosophy through the ages essentially boiled down to a rationalisation for morality, aesthetics :

"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of — namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown."

Aesthetics, morality, beliefs... all of them are in some way personally embodied and intertwined with what motivates someone as a living human being. Truth is not something we arrive at after some un-motivated dialectical process. Reason usually only comes in after the fact.

Can those immersed in the philosophical tradition tell me if aesthetic reasoning is used to justify positions on morality and meaning? — Tom Storm

It is, unconsciously... but usually no philosopher will admit as much consciously, that is the philosophers conceit, their pride in their reason getting in the way.

Can those immersed in the philosophical tradition tell me if aesthetic reasoning is used to justify positions on morality and meaning? — Tom Storm

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein treated morality as an aesthetic rather than intellectual matter. A matter of what one sees and experiences, of how one stands in relation to the world.

I remember once talking to an emeritus professor of religion and Nietzsche came up. — Tom Storm

Once for exams I had to defend Nietzsche in front of a bunch of Jesuit priests at Boston College. It was a long time ago. I don't recall what I said, but they seemed satisfied or maybe just placated. To my advantage, they are the bad boy trouble makers of the Catholic Church. I think I probably argued along the lines of seeing his attack on Christianity as something for Christian critical self-examination.

Can those immersed in the philosophical tradition tell me if aesthetic reasoning is used to justify positions on morality and meaning?

Personally I think the 'aesthetic' is too easily relegated to the sidelines of philosophical chat. Kant himself attempts in the least studied of the critiques to relate the 'aesthetic' to the 'teleological'. That is the area of opinion that you are ascribing to 'religion': that there is some wholeness, in this supposedly religious view, that integrates talk about 'meaning' and talk about 'aesthetics'. (Morality is another step on)

There is a division between the 'artistic' and the 'scientific' well-known in modern culture that is present in, for instance, ugly scientific (and indeed philosophical) writing. Sometimes there is a strange sort of pride in how nearly unreadable scientific work is, and how pointlessly elegant are artistic works which do not have 'truth conditions'.

Hannah Ginsborg has written about this (including a Stanford entry on the topic) but it is under-explored. One reason I love Wittgenstein, for instance, is that I think his works are beautifully written. Essays in the style of the PI would however be ill-rewarded in contemporary academe (and unreproducible by AI). This is an area that nags at me personally, although I do not have answers to offer. When I went back to study Philosophy at University in later life I went with a lifetime of experience of how to write, and I was shocked at how little good writing, as I understand it, was valued, compared to bullet-point essays that Google Bard can now reproduce (actually, more elegantly than most such essays are in the raw).

I am not that surprised by your response, as I am unsure whether the point I am trying to make is of significant importance. I will try again.

Fideism, described as:
Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths.

I think "aesthetic reasoning" can be used, at best, to rationalize "morality and meaning". It's actually akin to fideism, no? — 180 Proof

So, if I make a statement like 'I give a high credence level to the basic premise of string theory,' PARTLY because I am attracted to it's aesthetic (or it's beauty). Would I, in your opinion, be as guilty of being 'romantic' about science, in the exact same way that I might accuse a theist of being irrational/romantic/unreasonable, about the credence level they assign to the existence of their god?

I would accept that both positions are currently faith based and both have aesthetic aspects to them.
I use the concept of me having a faith in string theory, to deliberately walk the line, between those theists who try to claim science is a religion and a non-theistic use of words like 'believe' and 'faith' within science. That's what I meant by

Do you think reason and faith have nothing between them other than hostility? — universeness

Do you agree that some equations are more aesthetically pleasing than others?
If an aesthetic, inspires a person to learn more about a topic, is that an 'aesthetic reasoning,' that we should always guard against?

I don't care if someone states something like 'I chose to study astrophysics because I loved Carl Sagan's voice, and that's why I ended up discovering .........' or I BELIEVE science has more value that any religion etc.

Is Tom correct when he types:

You're a guy who .......... and has a sense of the numinous — Tom Storm

Hitchens saw value in the word numinous as well, whereas I have always associated that word with other rather woo woo words like transcendent.

So, I will always combat any claim that science is in anyway, a religion, but I think Tom's 'aesthetic reasoning,' concept you repeated in:

I think "aesthetic reasoning" can be used, at best, to rationalize "morality and meaning". It's actually akin to fideism, no? — 180 Proof

is not as problematic to me as fideism, and such aesthetic reasoning can go farther than rationalise morality and meaning.
Such can give an individual very significant new intent and purpose, to learn science, with a dedication level, which is at the least, the equal of any 'spiritual epiphany,' or 'born again' experience, based on some authentic calling a theist experiences, via the aesthetic (beauty) of the concept of a god.
Am I making any more sense in what I am trying to point towards?

Theists often claim a calling which is 'higher than any other calling,' including any call to human science, and I think we should NEVER forget to totally challenge that arrogant, unjustified claim.

Any views on this, — Tom Storm

Your OP made me think of a discussion @frank started a while ago - Occam's razor is unjustified, so why accept it?

Occam's razor says that if we have a choice between a simple answer and a compound one, we should pick the simple one.

It's widely accepted even though it actually has no justification. It's acceptance seems to come down to its intuitive or aesthetic appeal. Is that enough? Or should we just reject it? — frank

I disagreed with him in the discussion, but since then I've thought about it and I think he's right. It is an aesthetic standard, but I still find it compelling, or at least appealing. I'm not sure how that fits into your discussion, but it's what came to mind.