I’d like to answer that. To go directly to the point however, I think it would be most productive for you to say whether or not you’ve felt the promised satisfaction. Without checking, I think you’ve engaged the subject more than anyone else.

Understood. Ultimately, "I" will never feel the promised satisfaction. But I know that's not what you meant. Even in the more conventional way, no. You are correct, and now it "appears" I too was hasty. But it definitely helped me even on the finite road thereto.
And, anyway, the secondary function of my question was to illustrate one of the points too of the OP, as I read it. To wit: the what and the why of "perception" followed by action (including choice/belief) is of ultimate concern to "philosophy." And for the OP (entirely my reading) it can be understood philosophically; such understanding both derived from and flowing back into ethics or action/incl belief/choice. That drive and understanding are the essence of religion. For myself, uniquely, the essence of religion is to trigger us even beyond that drive to know and to act from knowledge. For me it is to awaken us to being and not knowing (the latter being ultimately empty of reality).

or to put the secondary function more concisely, the appearances we see and projedt to the world (incl our selves) are constructed by all relevant structures which happen to have crossed paths at a given moment. Religion awakens you to tge fkeetingness of becoming, and tge stability (hasty word usage) of being

the what and the why of "perception" followed by action (including choice/belief) is of ultimate concern to "philosophy." And for the OP (entirely my reading) it can be understood philosophically; such understanding both derived from and flowing back into ethics or action/incl belief/choice. That drive and understanding are the essence of religion. — ENOAH

You seem to essentially be saying that the essence of religion is philosophy. I must be misreading this, yes?

If I may step back into meta mode for a moment, I would like to point out that in the OP you promise to provide metaphysical satisfaction to the world, and despite my sincere attempts to feel this satisfaction I keep ending up in a thicket of obfuscating weeds and a Mick Jagger tune playing in my head.

It appears to be an empty promise. — praxis

Now, asking if knowledge claims are possible is not a lot of obfuscating weeds. And Mick Jagger is confusing.

A long story short, ask, what does it mean for something to be apodictic? It means the kind of certainty such that it is impossible to be gainsaid. Logic is like this. Value is like this, too: Unlike logic, the "proof" of ethics' apodicticity lies in the actuality, not in the formal and vacuous structure of judgment. Put your hand beneath an open flame and observe. Now, anything can be made the object of a verbal dispute, but the purity of the ethical "bad" that stands as the existential injunction not to bring this into the world constitutes the purity of the injunction itself. In other words, we are not measuring utility nor are we looking at the "good will" driven by duty. Rather, the suffering is a "stand alone" basis for the ethics that would center around such a thing. Like logic and its modus ponens, we are "shown" and are coerced into acceptance that one "should not" bring this into the world, and this will not be gainsaid! This latter is the key, the nature of apodicticity, that it is impossible to deny or argue such a thing. One can argue about the language that gives the injunction conversation and understanding, but the injunction itself is absolute.

Absolutes in dealing with ethics is something reserved for God and faith, generally. But religion is, at its core, just this: the metaethical insistence on the redemption of suffering and the consummation of happiness. Since ethics is at the basic level, apodictically insistent, we are coerced into accepting this redemptive and consummatory feature of our existence. A but like saying, apophatically reduce something like the bible, down to its essence, and you find the only residual religious content here, in the simple analytic of ethics.

I understand you to be quite upset at some opinions of mine. — AmadeusD

Anybody who is not a morally absent robot becomes upset by such hypocritic hurling.

Continental philosophy playing with language? Analytic philosophy has done nothing but play with English and conclude "Well, our creole is so semantically deformed and confused that there are no philosophical problems, it is just linguistic!". Then, shortly after some "enlightened" agents — possibly bilingual — figured out that words are not just strings of letters that go in sentences but actually refer to things in the world that we can think about, we have ended up in the same old problems of the modern period but instead framed through goofy thought experiments written in that same Marvel-tier "formal informal" writing style.

And it cannot even be called analytic philosophy because that is related to the Germans Frege and Carnap, that is just "cultural appropriation". I don't know what it is that the wannabe-linguists have been doing in those universities, but it might as well be grammar — alas, folks over there have not learned that that word is not synymous with 'syntax', maybe that is an opportunity for another 'enlightenment'.

Every game is played with at least two players.

PS: the modern period ended 230 years ago, there is no such thing as "pre-modern", that is a stupid phrase.

Here, I see some agreement with scientific metaphysics, in particular on how this is manifested in the debate of determinism and freedom. That said, in your very first post you said:

"My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption."

This smells of the odor of "determinism" from my humble nose. How does "freedom" and "logical coercively" exist where I can continue to feel human and not like the Mac I am typing on. — Richard B

Not really about freedom, but about a value ontology, or value-in-being. The nature of religion tells us nothing about freedom and determinism, for the analysis of ethics is not concerned with whether one is free to do what one should; this is a practical matter, one that has accountability written in the law of the land in order to make it appear that responsibility is real. Rather, the question is, what IS ethics in its nature? Yes, this creates an account of the origin of responsibility, obligation, guilt, and so forth, what it is that makes an ethical obligation meaningful, but to say one is obligated to do something begs the more basic question asked here, which deals with an analysis of what makes an ethical issue tick, so to speak. What makes something ethical at all?

Religion essentially is about this metaethical question dealing with the nature of ethics, as it is an expression of the indeterminacy of the good and bad of our affairs that demands closure or completeness. consider the rather mundane but nevertheness, profound question, Why are we born to suffer and die? It is a question that takes inquiry face to face with suffering: what is this? I claim it is an absolute. Wittgenstein knew this. He just refused to talk about it because he thought language and philosophical analysis had no place here. I beg to differ. We can talk about this in rigorous argument.

I cannot speak for tge OP. That may be what the OP is ultimately saying, but by further defining philosophy in an insightful way. I just personally think the OP stops short.

What I am saying is the essence of religion is to provide a glimpse/reminder/path "without" or "away" from all constructions of human mind. This necessarily includes philosophy as such a construction, notwithstanding its claims to access some universals purported to be independent of human construction. Such a path cannot be sustained with mind, and therefore cannot be the ambit of philosophy. It can only be accessed by a turning away from mind and awakening to being. Like the OP, I hypothesize this is unsustainable; but nevertheless, that is the essence of religion, awakening, no matter how infinitesimally, to Reality without the ego/subject. EDIT: and without the Subject necessarily means without the medium in which the subject exists, Mind (and philosophy also necessarily exists in tgat medium, so no, religion is not essentially philosophy, but rather, a thing by and concerning the body, and not the mind)

Two among maybe endless qualifiers/terms
1. That is not to say philosophy
has no function; nor that it cannot serve at least along side of religion's essential function.
2. Conversely, Religion is ultimately no less a construction than philosophy. Including the manner in which I pretend to speak for it. Its essence cannot be spoken. It can only be/do.

Hence, I am hypothesizing about the "essence," and to that word, I hypothesize loosely that such essence is either derived from a natural organic awareness or drive, such as, the natural awareness that the organic being is other than the constructions of mind; or it is an early mechanism evolved in mind itself, to preserve a reminder/link to, the reality of our organic natures, having evolved because it served a function which was/remains fitting.

Put your hand beneath an open flame and observe. — Constance

Observe how well it cauterizes a wound, proving its value, expressing its goodness.

It [awakening] can only be accessed by a turning away from mind and awakening to being. — ENOAH

Religion is a human construction, or as Constance described it, an institution. It’s squarely of mind, in other words. Mind is what you say must be turned away from. This suggests that religion may actually be anti-awakening. This tracks because religions, even the ones that are supposedly all about awakening, are so bad at fostering awakening.

Chiropractic care comes to mind. It’s against a chiropractor’s interests to cure a patient because they’d lose a returning customer and that would compromise their livelihood.

Religion is a human construction, or as Constance described it, an institution. — praxis

I agree completely, and with your chiropractor analogy.

Respectfully, agreeing with both* points quoted here does not nullify my points above, if that's your point.

*they are subtle distinct.

1. "construction" the essence** of religion might be a mechanism having evolved in mind to "remind" us that the evolving system of constructions is an other than our real natures. Why would such a mechanism evolve (become constructed) in/by mind? Because it served a function which allowed for its repetition such that it becomes conditioned. An e.g. of such function? Bodies feel the bliss of turning natural Aware-ing back upon its own being. How is this "religion"? Because Mind has brought us out of reality, we have chosen the proverbial tree of knowledge and forsaken life; and, with the former comes a knower, and thus ignorance, attachment, suffering. In being, the body, there is only variations and degrees of pleasure and pain, never lingering, always present.

**primitive purpose, why it arose, what it is before it is "corrupted" Or, as opposed to "religions" the institutions below.

2. "Institution" everything from its essence, it's mythical first projection, becomes corrupted. Why do we act like religion is special? Is Democracy to blame for the current cynicism infecting western democracies? F the institutions when they fail. Don't discard the essence.

Truth is in present being; not in the I's comings and goings — ENOAH

As an old prof used to tell me, you're not going to get that tart to your dessert plate. Hard to argue this because it has this uncanny quality in the meditation on trying to release value from agency. To me, it is a fascinating intuition. I simply cannot even imagine suffering (or bliss or some simple pleasure or irritation. The magnitude of the value experience is the the issue, but the most intense are the most vivid and telling) apart from agency. This is what, to use a term I use repeatedly, picked up from Edith Stein, Husserl and Heidegger, primordial: It is apriori true that suffering cannot exist apart from agency.

As I see it, philosophy's job is criticism at the basic level, so of course one can ask why, find no explanatory basis and then proceed to deny this. I CAN argue this position, I believe, but the strongest justification for this apriori claim lies in this intuitive affirmation. What is not being discussed here is the language construct, the Kantian transcendental unity of apperception as he calls it, that sythesizes the world into general terms. This is the "I" that has its stamp on each thing perceived, and while this is right, I think, and wherever my attention goes, it encounters the me and mine of what is witnessed, the me and mine here, and this is critical, is, entirely unlike Kant, existential, palpable, the very core of meaningful engagement.

If I were to argue the case, it would in the direction of affirming the local nature of an experience and hence the horizon of value events, showing that it is not a disembodied object, floating among the debris of the journeywork of stars. Next, the matter would turn to the quality of what is in play and how it presents entirely novel relationships with the world. And so on.

But just to give emphasis: the argument would inevitably find the inextricable bond between agent and value. Value issues from us; we bring it into the world.

Observe how well it cauterizes a wound, proving its value, expressing its goodness. — praxis

This kind of thinking is inevitable. One has to make the move from the way contingencies create multiple contexts of engagement. When we observe suffering in our regular affairs, this is what we witness. The argument is here apriori: Just as we see logic played out in such affairs, and abstract from these to conceive of the purity of symbolic logic (or Kant/Aristotle categories), so here we abstract from all of the contextual variations in which we find the good, bad, should, shouldn't, right, wrong of ethics, and inquire about the nature of what is in what is observed.

you're not going to get that tart to your dessert plate — Constance

I completely understand the challenge. I even accept that the point may be inescapably moot because we cannot get the tart onto the plate. However, that we lack the capacity or tools to locate the reality while in the shoes of the agent, does not mean the reality does not exist. Another explanation is that the agent only exists in its world of construction, and has no access to reality. Maybe the goal isn't to get the tart onto the plate but to start chewing, trusting that the tart is already in our mouths.

Who is willing my heart to beat?

The fact that we, following Aristotle, ascribe that particular event of the Body to an autonomic process, gladly accepting that there is no agent there; but refuse to categorize mind as an autonomic process without an agent simply because therein is produced the so-called agent, does not mean our ascriptions and categorizations are even most functional, let alone capital T Truth.

so here we abstract from all of the contextual variations in which we find the good, bad, should, shouldn't, right, wrong of ethics, and inquire about the nature of what is in what is observed. — Constance

Exactly. Entirely agree. You think I go too far in abstracting from the contextual because I abstract from the abstracter in the end; I think you do not go far enough because you leave the abstracter in place; you do so because the result is absurd otherwise. A compromise? At least admit the abstracter is a necessary fiction, because ultimately the abstractions are done in its name and for its sake.

One has to make the move from the way contingencies create multiple contexts of engagement. — Constance

But it’s not in the least bit a contingency. Pain is good. Pain, like pleasure, moves life to homeostasis.

But it’s not in the least bit a contingency. Pain is good. Pain, like pleasure, moves life to homeostasis. — praxis

Because it moves life to homeostasis? This is the very meaning of contingency here: Pain is good IN the context of moving life to homeostasis. Remove the contextual contributions to meaning making, then all you have is the pain, the pain as such. pain simplciter, pain that stands as its own presupposition, therefore presupposing nothing for its existence.

Homeostasis? What "good" is this? It encourages survival and reproduction? What good is this? Eventually, after you've put enough of questions like this forward, you find that you are chasing language around. You have to make that fateful move out of language and into actuality. There is the pain now free of contextual presumption. What IS this? This is the question. It does not issue from established thinking about evolution, biochemistry, or anything at all. It is about something that issues from the givenness of the world, "outside" of language (yet, concurrent with language, in us).

You think I go too far in abstracting from the contextual because I abstract from the abstracter in the end; I think you do not go far enough because you leave the abstracter in place; you do so because the result is absurd otherwise. A compromise? At least admit the abstracter is a necessary fiction, because ultimately the abstractions are done in its name and for its sake. — ENOAH

Abstractor? But consider that it is just the opposite in the case above: It is not the abstraction of thought and the imposition of an interpretative identity called an ego or a transcendental ego. The basis of the idea presented here is not the abstract idea of a self. When you observe a value event (the very substance of ethical concern) you observe something altogether "tout autre" from what language can do (keeping in mind that all along as I defend the notion that there is nothing abstract about language, I have been trying make clear that when we turn to something "tout autre" like this, we are committed to a language setting that makes this possible. I have been saying that when we encounter anything, it is affirmed in language, notwithstanding it being entirely OTHER than language. This is the paradox of deconstruction.

These conversations about deconstruction and theology are very weird, but it is Derrida that takes the argument to this very place I have been trying to hammer out: me and my language standing before a world that is not language, telling me this is a tree and that is a computer, but entirely mute when these are delivered from their explicit knowledge claim (recall Kierkegaard's riposte to Hegel's rationalism: Hegel has simply forgotten that we exist!. This is essentially what his infamous absurdity turns on). I use the term tout autre because Derrida does, and this wholly other is, I am confident, what you have in mind, here and there, in your thinking.

Language is NOT abstract. Rather, abstraction is conceived IN language. And it depends on what one means by the term. Often it is meant to refer to something that is just an idea, and ideas are not like furniture or fence posts. Here, it is intended that ideas do not exist. You insist that the self argued about here is like this, a fiction conceived in nonreal ideas, and there is a lot about this I agree with (you might say I "half" agree with this) but it is not the language that is unreal, but the ideas conceived IN language that are in error. If I say the moon is made of cream cheese, I am wrong.

Just to repeat the essential point: I do not argue an abstract transcendental ego. I argue that caring and its value dimension, because it is entirely other than language (perhaps joined at the hip, as Heidegger would have it) affirms the transego's "existence" exactly because it lies outside of language.

Truth is in present being; not in the I's comings and goings — ENOAH

Just to add: This turn from the "comings and goings" to "present being" is not a turn away from language. One has to incorporate language into the revelation of presence to be on meaningful ground. This turn is away from prereflective engagement, prior to the question of being that throws everything off course. The matter of ontology only rises up if the ontology of everyday affairs is thrown into question. The question abides throughout, for the question is the very openness you stand in as you stand before "presence". Apophatic philosophy is the philosophy of negation, negating, that is, the autonomy or free flow of conscious matters, and stopping them quite vigorously, if you are a serious Buddhist. But that "space" that opens up to the Buddhist is the same space of the epoche's deconstructive movement toward the impossible affirmation, that is, your "presence"; as John Caputo puts it, "The voice of “negative theology”—one of them, for it has several—is deeply, resoundingly affirmative. Oui, oui."

There is the pain now free of contextual presumption. What IS this? — Constance

Neither good nor bad, or both good and bad. I don't think it matters which way it's conceptually considered.

THIS is what the OP is about. There are things you that belong to opinion and things that are certain, putting aside the aporia that questions can heap upon a statement like this can bring up. What if ethics were grounded in the same apodicticity found in logic? Then opinion would yield to certainty.

Religion makes this claim about ethics when it talks about God. Here, we eliminate such fictions, and abide by only what is in the world and the presence of what is before inquiry. An apriori analysis of ethics shows, I argue, and fortunately for us all, that the redemptive and consummatory features of religion actually issue from existence itself with the apodicticity equal to that of logic. That is, one cannot even imagine the bad being good and the good being bad, taken as pure expressions: the meta-good and the meta-bad. — Constance

I don't know what you are getting at here. You are discussing redemption, and then this looks to be about the notion of "inherent good and bad" or so it seems.

but it is not the language that is unreal, but the ideas conceived IN language that are in error. If I say the moon is made of cream cheese, I am wrong. — Constance

This and your subsequent reply, are opening doors to new ways of thinking of this. Or, to be more precise, you are addressing the same issues having focused in more precisely. I need to re-read. For all I know, you have addressed my concerns.

However, prima facie, this comes to mind.
1. Yes, obviously I agree that in common sense, or in conventional thinking, it is not the language but the ideas which are in error; however,
2. Are we not trying to "transcend" /Reduce /abstract from common sense and convention? Is your point not failing to see (assuming Saussure is making a reliable point--I have never fully contemplated it) that language, is one mechanism: Sign is Signifier and Signified? Even if I were to say the moon is made of minerals; I might be factually and functionally "correct," but ultimately I have used a representational tool to construct another representational tool, and so on without end. Does this not suggest that signs, though they function to construct useful "truths," are necessarily empty and devoid of ultimate truth? And is not the Subject just such a sign for the Body? If I were to say, "I am I," that might be functional, but is it True? Isn't it unavoidable that ultimately what is this I purporting to be I; and what is this I it is purporting to be. We are compelled to find the unrepresented truth not in representation. Language is, and I say, only is, representation; reality is in the acting/being/doing/feeling/sensing cleared of all language. Impossible for humans? Maybe? But reaching conclusions only because they are functional, i.e. possible and free of absurdity, just proves my concern; that is, that all of our so called truths, including myself, are simply functional tools.

ADDED: I understand and appreciate your recent focus on value (I did see its seeds in the beginning of the OP but note how you have developed it). It is perhaps a "high end" fictional assessment of the human condition, higher than leaving value completely out of it; but it is ultimately fictional too. At some point, to arrive "where" the essence of religion arose to lead us, those high ideas need too, to be abandoned or set aside at least.

Neither good nor bad, or both good and bad. I don't think it matters which way it's conceptually considered. — praxis

It is about putting conceptual considerations aside. This is the point. Suffering as such is not a concept.

It is about putting conceptual considerations aside. — Constance

Like putting aside the concepts of good and bad, right?

F the institutions when they fail. Don't discard the essence. — ENOAH

To discard the essence of religion (meaningful connection with a community) would lead to a very lonely and unhappy life, in my opinion.

meaningful connection with a community — praxis

meaningful connection with a community if not only available in and through institutions, but also there is no reason why meaningful connections are discarded when a failed institution is discarded.

Like putting aside the concepts of good and bad, right? — praxis

P.S., for me, for what it is worth: right.

there is no reason why meaningful connections are discarded when a failed institution is discarded. — ENOAH

Disillusionment with a religious institution is often experienced as nihilism, for instance. That may not always be the case and it’s probably only a temporary condition. We are all saturated in meaning, after all.

Disillusionment with a religious institution is often experienced as nihilism, for instance. — praxis

Yes, and as you say, not necessarily so. While I believe that ultimately, even the so called essence of so called religion is a construction and projection: and, more, that religion is patently so, at the institutional level, and as it is practiced conventionally; and, that, therefore, all is "corruptible;" I believe that at least, at the level of so-called essence, religion can work as a tool, no matter how fictional, for "seeing" corruption in institutions, the ego (an established "law" under which this animal is bound to function), no less such an institution; and, therefore, no less corruptible. How? It promotes, nudges, provides, a glimpse into the contingent nature of all such constructions and projections, and that "liberation" or "salvation" may come with a recognition that there is a Truth or Reality "outside" of our "selves."

I don't know what you are getting at here. You are discussing redemption, and then this looks to be about the notion of "inherent good and bad" or so it seems. — schopenhauer1

I think you have it. Redemption is a fairy tale, as is consummation of faith, unless there is an absolute decree making it so. What would this be? Traditionally, God. But what is God once the traditions and bad metaphysics are removed? I am arguing that the surviving metaphysical residua of a God reduction down its essence is metaethics. Metaethics, in the continental sense (not the analytic vacuity) refers to "the good" and "the bad" and we all know how these are played out in the metaphysical Christian fiction, but this reduces to, simply, the good and the bad as absolutes. Now, what is an absolute? If something is apodictic, it is an absolute, is the claim. Can't even imagine, say, an object moving itself, as its own cause. This is not logically possible. One can argue about the apodicticity of logic, and I am willing to do so if you like, but for now the idea here hinges on this: in logic we have apodictic truth (again, Derrida aside. But then, you will find Derrida's position VERY interesting here, though). If this apodicticity were a feature of ethics, then ethics would be just like God's decree. After all, what is the basis for the absolute authority of God? In popular religion, it is pure dogmatics, but what does the dogmatic position say? It says one cannot even imagine a greater authority that could gainsay God. The greatest possible being is Anselm's idea. I.e., apodicticity. Cannot be gainsaid on pain of a contradiction. I am arguing that the good and the bad cannot be gainsaid, just like logic.

So, your question about redemption: What is redeemed? Suffering. What is the necessity of the redemption of suffering that makes it apriorii necessary, like logic? The apodicticity of "the bad". In logic we have the conditional form, the affirmation, the negation, the disjunction and so on. There are rules to their concatenation, expressed in symbolic logic. In ethics there are two "rules" which have to do with the good and the bad. There is here NO toleration for evil. One has to observe this "logic of ethics" which is primordial just as one observes the logic of modus ponens. The "form" of ethics, if you will, is the good and the bad. Just as a contradiction in logic formally upends an argument (the reductio ad absurdum), so in the "argument" of our ethical lives is upended by evil.

Which is a way to say, the evil must be redeemed by necessity.

Keep in mind here the simplicity of this. Logic itself is simple in its basic rules (Kant's categories). But for ethics, we are NOT directed toward an argument and logical form. We are directed toward the world, existence, the real. This has always been the jurisdiction of God: an absolute grounding of our ethics. But God, divested of the usual anthropomorphic features and all the absurd narratives, reduced to its essence, remains, as does the authority it possesses.

Like putting aside the concepts of good and bad, right? — praxis

On order to take metaethics seriously, one has to look, not to the concept, the understanding's counterpart to the living actuality, but to just this actuality. The proof for this lies in the pudding: putting one's hand of a pot of boiling water, for example: NOW you know the REAL ground for the moral prohibition against doing this to others.

Redemption is a fairy tale, as is consummation of faith, unless there is an absolute decree making it so. What would this be? Traditionally, God. But what is God once the traditions and bad metaphysics are removed? I am arguing that the surviving metaphysical residua of a God reduction down its essence is metaethics. — Constance

There's an expression encountered from time to time in perennialist circles, 'the good that has no opposite'. It is distinguished from the our conventional sense of what is good, which is defined in opposition to, and so in association with, the bad. The 'good that has no opposite' is a true good beyond the opposites. That is what must be discerned. The 'doctrine of evil' that flows from that is 'evil as privation of the Good', which is associated with Augustine, but similes of which can be found in Advaita. This is that evil has no real existence, it is real in the sense that shadows and holes are real, as an absence or lack of knowing the true good. Redemption consists in coming to awareness of the true good, which is concealed or obscured by ignorance (in Advaita) or the original sin (in Augustine.)