Then tell me: On the grounds of what should one still have faith and still trust them, against facts?
— baker

Well, consider you examples. Similar examples could be drawn up to undermine faith in the scientific establishment, modern medicine, the liberal state, Marxism, or Enlightenment rationalism itself. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Those are irrelevant in comparison to the scope of religion. Whether one is wrong or right about science, medicine, the liberal state, etc. has no bearing on one's eternal fate. But with religion, everything and eternity is at stake. Which is why the secular and the religious are not comparable.

Yet none of these traditions claim they are immune to corruption

When it comes to religion/spirituality, the possibility of "corruption" is either off the table, or it has got to be deliberate.
Genuine mistakes are not possible when it comes to religion/spirituality.

You can't go around killing people in the name of God, and then say, "Oops, looks like I was wrong after all."

You cannot seriously expect people to believe that a religion can preach, say, abstinence from alcohol (to give a less loaded example), and then their exponents get drunk -- and to then write this off as a genuine mistake. Doing so demotes religion to yet another expendable ideology, as opposed to being the source of (one's connection to) eternal life and happiness.

As it happens, I was in a bookshop in October looking at DB Hart’s translation of the New Testament when a couple of fellow browsers asked me about the text. They were young Christians and we got talking. And guess what? In their view, liberalism had failed, Nietzsche was right about the death of God, secular culture had collapsed, and people were flailing in contemporary culture because their lives lacked a spiritual dimension. The solution: Christianity and Trumpism. — Tom Storm

Trumpism is already happening anyway. Look at a forum like this: even his fierce critics are using the same methods he does.

Maybe. The quesion I keep asking is if there's a big hole in modernity, just who chooses what we fill it with? — Tom Storm

Again, Trumpism. Who chooses it? The hunger for power, for stability, for domination.

The problem is that religion asks people to believe things for which there is no evidence.
— Janus

So says A J Ayer. There is abundant evidence for the efficacy of religious beliefs and practices in the lives of the religiius. — Wayfarer

Of course there is abundant evidence of such efficacy. But what exactly is it that is efficacious, is another matter.

On the other hand, there are also many studies and reports of people saying how religion makes them miserable.

Moreover, it is questionable whether the positive effects of religion and spirituality can be replicated by people who first turn to religion as (young) adults, as opposed to people who were born and raised into religion.

David Bentley Hart says, in Atheist Delusions, that after the Roman Empire’s pagan social order collapsed, Christianity stepped in and changed things in ways that many moderns take for granted—human dignity, equality (in some form), charity, care for the vulnerable, the idea that the strong have moral obligations toward the weak, the notion that human beings are more than cogs in an imperial machine.

You have got to be kidding. Or your baseline for human interaction is very, very low.

Furthermore in religious epistemology, knowing is not merely an act of detached cognition based on third-party observervation, so much as participation in a transformative way of being. Truth is verified not only by correspondence between propositions and facts, but by a reorientation to the nature of existence towards that which is truly so in the holistic sense — the change in being that follows from insight. As Gregory of Nyssa or the Upaniṣads would say,
to know the divine is to become like it.

And so what?
So you know the divine. Then what? Are you beyond paying taxes? Beyond traffic laws?

Isn't it the case though, that almost everyone already agrees about what is morally right when it comes to the really significant moral issues such as murder, rape, theft, exploitation, torture and so on? — Janus

Not generally and not universally, though.
That is, people tend to be tribalistic in such matters: "It is wrong to rape _my_ daughter, but why should I care about what happens to your daughter?!"
People tend to condemn an act as wrong when it happens to them or someone of the same category as they are, but are far more relaxed when the same act happens to someone whom they consider to be outside of their category.

For Ayn Rand, for example, and don't underestimate her influence, lower class people should just endure oppression and exploitation by the upper class. Something she would never approve of for the upper class.

Or look at the concept of tragedy: historically, in ancient Greece, tragedy was reserved for the royal family. Whatever happened to commoners could not qualify for "tragedy", even if it was nominally the same action.

As to how many people change their minds, have you ever heard an argument to support the position that murder, rape, theft, exploitation or torture are morally permissible?

It goes along the lines of, "It's morally permissible when they deserve it". And they "deserve it" when they are the wrong skin color, the wrong socioeconomic status, the wrong age, the wrong whatever.

The problem is that religion asks people to believe things for which there is no evidence. — Janus

No. I think the "problem" with religion is that it requires a level of street smarts that few people naturally have.
In order to successfully navigate religion, one has to have a refined sense of what to take seriously and what not, how to read between the lines, how to have a private life that is completely detached from one's religious life.

I think the pushback is the natural reaction to test someone's claims to authority. Especially religious people seem to think that they can go forth into the world, make claims to authority, and the world then owes them submissiveness.
— baker

That is how quite a few here will inevitably categorise any discussion of what they consider religion. As I said upthread, I think much of this stems from the oppressive, indeed authoritarian, role of ecclesiastical religion in historical Western culture. After all, religious authoritarianism is what Enlightenment humanism so painfully liberated itself from.

But on the other hand, that requires an implicit acceptance of that this is all that religion or spirituality can mean or amount to. — Wayfarer

No, it doesn't necessarily operate out of such acceptance.

I'm talking about this: If someone can come along and challenge me, why shouldn't I challenge them in return?

Can you answer that?

Why is it that when religious/spiritual people make claims, especially when they claim to be the authorities for making claims about our inner lives, why must we bow our heads and be at least silent?

Why is this not a conversation, but an ex cathedra lecture??

Consider this passage from Edward Conze, a Buddhologist who was active in the mid 20th c in his essay on Buddhist Philosophy and it’s European Parallels.

Until about 1450, as branches of the… "perennial philosophy,” Indian and European philosophers disagreed less among themselves, than with many of the later developments of European philosophy. The "perennial philosophy" is in this context defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted, than others; and [3] that the sages have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct insight into the nature of the Real --through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the Sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is

based on an authority which legitimizes itself by

the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.

Ah yes.
If only religion/spirituality wouldn't be so much about coming up with excuses for why its exponents don't live up to the standards they themselves preach and claim to have attained ...
For example, just look at how the local authorities and the Buddhist community interpreted the recent sex + extortion scandal in the Buddhist monastic sangha.

Of course, this is highly politically incorrect and I wouldn’t expect many here would accept it - but I still believe that there are such degrees of insight and understanding, and that not everyone has them by default, as it were.

Sure, I'm not disagreeing. But I question the value and relevance of such "insight and understanding". In short, what if someone's "profound spiritual insight and understanding" is actually simply what it's like when one lives a comfortable life where one doesn't have to work for a living, as is the case with many religious/spiritual people? If a person gets to spend all their waking hours thinking about things and writing them down, yes, they better come up with something "profound".

Of course it is also true that spiritual hierarchies have often been the source of egregious abuses of power, but they’re not only that, even if that is the only thing that some will see when they look at them.

Then tell me: On the grounds of what should one still have faith and still trust them, against facts?
I've been around religion/spirituality for over twenty five years now. I just got tired of inventing excuses and going along with the pretenses as to why the teachers and the "spiritually advanced" don't and don't have to live up the standards that they preach.

But I think there are disciplined structures, methods, and practices in these traditions that do traverse and replicate recognised states and stages in a way that popular devotional religions do not. Agree that these practices are not scientific in the third-person sense but I don’t know whether that makes them automatically and only doxastic (matters of belief).

They are matters of education. Practicing a religion/spirituality works in the exact same way as going to school or taking up some other course of education or training. It's supposed to transform the student, and in a standardized, predictable way.

I asked this because I face this question daily, even in my everyday life. The point is that any assessment of a system you find yourself in from the inside is very difficult. I even have a rule – not to provide legal services to my relatives (even though I'm a lawyer myself). Why? Because it's incredibly difficult to distance yourself from your own reflections on a legal issue when it affects your own life. With ordinary clients, it's easier – you can simply be honest, presenting the picture as objectively as possible, and then leave the solution to them. I think I'm not alone in facing this problem. — Astorre

This depends on the local laws; some legal systems have laws or regulations for state officials and lawyers to exempt themselves from a particular case.

Returning to the topic of the thread. For example, when we find ourselves in state X, is it possible to challenge its dominant approach to understanding reality, while essentially being an element of that state X? As you indicated above, it's possible (using the method of comparison with other states or history), but is it possible to purely compare, and are you capable of immersing yourself in a different paradigm just as purely?

The question is whether one should do that in the first place. How much (philosophical) sophistication is really necessary?

I wasn’t just talking about religion; — Tom Storm

Notice I begun that part of my comment with "For example" and concluded it with, "And similarly with so many other things."

I know so many people who drifted from socialism to Buddhism, to Hinduism, to cultural Christianity, to New Age, to hitchhiking, to fruit picking, to unemployment, to drug use, to university, to sexuality, to military service, to music, etc, etc, and none of these things provided any real satisfaction. They were always looking to see what else they could explore what other beliefs were open to them. In the modern world (here at least), in the absence of certainty and clear pathways of tradition everything is "open". Even for those less wealthy, the cities are full of poor country folk who left their towns to experiment with different lifestyles and options.

The theme was whether the apparent multitude of options are in fact realistic options.
You can buy yourself a nice pair of shoes, but which don't fit you, they are too small. You can have them in your hallway along with all your other shoes, and have them for ten, twenty, fifty years, but they still don't fit. In other words, physical proximity does not automatically make for a realistic option. In the same way, people can approach religions or careers or marriages etc., stick around for decades, be miserable, but still fail to realize that they weren't ever a realistic option for them. I'm again referring to William James' heuristic for deciding what makes for a realistic option as he presents it in his essay "The Will to Believe", already mentioned here.

The case can be made that it is precisely this failure to realize what is a realistic option for a person or not is the "predicament of modernity".

And in the realm of feelings, in the deepest interpretations of this event by the viewer — Astorre

I'm really curious if this was the creators' intention. — Astorre

I agree with you. In "Lolita," the aestheticization of evil (page after page of beautiful descriptions) doesn't lead to "redemption" or normalization, as in BB, but rather emphasizes its emptiness. — Astorre

I actually majored in literature, but I never understood such formulations.

Speaking of the audience as "we", or how "a viewer" understands or interprets this or that. Or claims about the author's intention (without actually asking the author anything). Or what a text does or doesn't do.

Can you, for example, cite an actual passage from "Lolita" that emphasizes the emptiness of the aestheticization of evil?
And where is the "redemption" or normalization of evil in "Breaking Bad"? Can you quote an actual text from there to this effect?


I find that often, when people interpret a text, they often externalize their feelings and ideas in regard to the text, and assume a type of supremacy over the text and objectivity. As in, "This isn't just how I see the text, this is how it really is, this is what it really says." An often, they cannot actually support their interpretation with actual citations from the text.

In the end, so much of what counts for "reading literature" actually has to do with internalizing and strengthening a particular ideology and value system. The individual books or films etc. are just means for that.

For example, many books or films are characterized by critics and intellectuals as being "anti-war". And yet in the book itself, there may not be a single sentence to that effect. Yet culturally, we are often expected to read it that way.

After watching such films or TV series, it feels like morality has been completely sidelined in decision-making today. — Astorre

It's been an ongoing trend to demote morality to the domain of mere "feelings" or "emotions". Psychology has a lot to do with it, with its emphasis on "dealing with emotions". For such psychology, the problem isn't that you were wrongfully terminated from your job; it's that you feel sad or angry about it.

Perhaps @Count Timothy von Icarus can say something more about this.

The troll in many cases sees themselves (not without justification perhaps) as a victim, either of society or of metaphysical realities (of truth, the truth of valuelessness oftentimes) themselves. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not without justification perhaps?

Imagine you become the one who gets scapegoated, a witch hunted. How do you cope with that?

What is a healthy way for coping with being scapegoated?

There is a sort of spiritual and emotional constipation at work here.

Have you noticed that accusations of trolling often occur in communities that are highly politically correct (lots of spiritual and emotional constipation at work there)?

It seems to me that when the President of the United States posts a video of himself on X defecating on his opponents, then our culture has crossed over some kind of event horizon.

We might say in fact that this is the first Trolling President in our history. — Colo Millz

Trump can't be accused of trolling, simply because he's not a minority, not an outsider. For something to be considered trolling, it has to be done by someone who doesn't belong, an outsider. Trump is definitely not that, for he was democratically elected by vote. Possibly the majority of people admire him, and are like him, even if they don't necessarily express themselves in the same way (and even if they officially oppose him).

You can see that even at a philosophy forum, the prominent members, even though they are officially against Trump, nevertheless use the same methods he does: the same patronizing, the same contempt, the same misrepresentation, the same demand for one-way respect (others need to respect them, they shouldn't have to respect others), the same dismissiveness, the same ease with which they interpret the words and actions of others in such a way as to make those others look like idiots or evil.

It's difficult to insist that that Trump is somehow rare in his ways or that he has crossed the line, when his critics are often actually doing the same things as he.

So yes, trolling, whether it is a symptom or a cause of the culture, is very much central to my cynicism.

But you don't have a problem when people profess to hold a particular standard, and yet demand to be respected all the same when they don't live up to that standard?

Maybe it is like a feedback loop, to use a favorite concept from cognitive science. I.e. the environment shapes the behavior, the subsequent behavior feeds back into the environment. — Colo Millz

If you loook at online forums, the way an accusation of trolling comes about, it's a pattern like this:

A community professes to hold to a particular standard, usually codified in the form of its terms of service.
The leadership of the community and the core members routinely fall short of the ToS themselves; deliberately or as a genuine failing.
Someone who is not part of the leadership or of the core members of the community points out this failing. (This could be for a number of reasons, from naivete, to having been on the receiving end of injustice by the leadership or core members.)
The leadership and/or the core members accuse this person of trolling and punish them.


It's the same process as with scapegoating. People feel the need to externalize their failing to live up to the very standards that they profess to uphold. People normally expect that they can profess a particular standard and yet not live up to it -- and that everyone needs to be okay with this, especially those to whom injustice was done in the course of others not living up to those professed standards.

Namely, a critical examination of a paradigm would require stepping out of that paradigm; but such stepping out would be in conflict with one's committment to said paradigm.
— baker

Yes, that's exactly how I put the question. And moreover, what needs to be done to "go beyond the boundaries," to see from the outside? Is it possible? — Astorre

I'm not sure why you're asking about this; in reference to what are you asking this?


The problem can be formalized in the emic-etic distinction:

Emic (/ˈiːmɪk/) and etic (/ˈɛtɪk/) refer to two kinds of field research done in anthropology, folkloristics, linguistics, and the social and behavioral sciences, and viewpoints obtained from them.[1]

The emic approach is an insider's perspective, which looks at the beliefs, values, and practices of a particular culture from the perspective of the people who live within it. This approach aims to understand the cultural meaning and significance of a particular behavior or practice, as it is understood by the people who engage in it.[2]

The etic approach is an outsider's perspective, which looks at a culture from the perspective of an outside observer or researcher. This approach tends to focus on the observable behaviors and practices of a culture, and aims to understand them in terms of their functional or evolutionary significance. The etic approach often involves the use of standardized measures and frameworks to compare different cultures and may involve the use of concepts and theories from other disciplines, such as psychology or sociology.[2]

The emic and etic approaches each have their own strengths and limitations, and each can be useful in understanding different aspects of culture and behavior. Some anthropologists argue that a combination of both approaches is necessary for a complete understanding of a culture, while others argue that one approach may be more appropriate depending on the specific research question being addressed.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic

Even if the origin of trolling is not malicious, it results in a breakdown in trust and in cynicism. — Colo Millz

Rather, it's the other way around. The breakdown of trust and the cynicism can lead to various socially unacceptable behaviors. Tellingly, the breakdown of trust and the cynicism are not considered socially unacceptable, but reacting to them in a negative way is.

OK, why not, as well as references to common sense decency where some semblance of humility holds. (You wann'a go all Western religion/tradition about it, it's also what JC seems to have meant by "meekness" ... as in "the meek shall inherit the earth"... kind of like those small, warmblooded and furry rodent-like creatures did after the last great extinction of them oversized, pompous dinosaurs — javra

I don't know the Buddhist book about dating that you mentioned earlier, but from what you said, it seems to be a humorous approach to explaining Buddhist teachings.

You said earlier:

The sophistic BS part was a separate issue to me: pivoting on the issue of ego and its desires for fame, fortune, power, etc. by mimicking (but not emulating) what good faith philosophers do

I'm not sure what you mean here.
What do good faith philosophers do in regard to the ego and its desires for fame, fortune, etc.?

In what way do you think that Buddhism is sophistic here?
Here is a scriptural reference to the eight worldy conditions: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.006.than.html

I really want to understand this; I want to know how an outsider sees this Buddhist teaching.

Well, as far as poetic metaphors go, add some Hindu context to the expression and, yea, that's kind of part of the main point. Wouldn't it be swell if a nice lotus were to emerge from the swamps of filth so as to benefit all of humanity without exception, hence each human within their own perfectly individual contexts of existence (such that their own individual wants and needs get optimally satisfied),this rather than having humans suffer the swamps of filth (wherein nothing pleasing to anyone ever takes place) ad nauseam?

Put differently, is philosophy writ large about every ego perpetually being at odds with all other egos such that only filth results from the endeavor and interactions, as per in a mad house where everybody whats out? ... Or is it about best arriving at a communally-endorsed understanding of the world, of being itself even, which is accordant to all known facts while assisting all sapient beings in actualizing their individual purposes? This such that the filth no longer occurs due to this new understanding's growth. Yes, yes, the latter can all to easily easily be misinterpreted as endorsing and requiring authoritarianism; but, then, this would not only be contradictory to what was just explicitly stated in this paragraph but also to the aforementioned notion of common sense decency in the face of the first quote within this post. And yes, we all at times have our cockish authoritarian turns (some a hell of a lot more than others), but this too speaks to the same ideal of philosophy to me.

One of the Eastern ideas about lotuses is that they need filth, mud in order to grow; lotuses don't grow in the neat conditions that many other flowering plants do. What is more, the lotus plant has such a surface that the filth and mud it grows in doesn't stick to it.

Of course, feel free to disagree. But, if so, I am curious to learn on what grounds.

On the grounds of the lotus analogy above, I'm inclined to disagree. Conflict is the way of the world, a given, the natural state (also see agonism). The solution isn't to overcome conflict, or to banish it; but rather, not to be affected by it. Like a lotus, which grows in the mud, but mud doesn't stick to it.

What I see are people faced with a smorgasbord of choices: religious, political, and social, with almost no barriers to access because, for the most part, everything is permitted. That abundance of choice seems to make people freeze: what do I do in a world where culture is so varied? How do I focus my life when there’s a multiplicity of choices, faiths, and lifestyles all available to me? All potentially true or rewarding or superior. — Tom Storm

I think what makes them freeze is that they still haven't realized that they don't actually have all that many choices, realistically.

For example, we have a constitutionally granted "freedom of religion". But this has no bearing on whether one will actually be accepted into a particular religious community, or whether one will be able to understand a particular religion; it also doesn't obligate the various religions to explains themselves to outsiders in a way those outsiders can understand. It doesn't obligate the state to force a religious community to accept a particular person. For all practical intents and purposes, "freedom of religion" is about such things as employers not being legally allowed to discriminate against (prospective) employees on religious grounds.

What is actually available to one in terms of "freedom of religion" is extremely limited; often, it's actually zero. And similarly with so many other things.

The multitude of options is illusory.

When traditions speak of “higher knowledge,” the term “higher” need not imply rank or authority - something that seems to push a lot of buttons! - but rather a difference in mode, scope, or reflexive awareness. — Wayfarer

Sure, but the socio-economic structure of religion is still hierarchical, and it is all about rank and authority. Even if the people involved are all loathe to openly admit it.

However it has to be acknowledged that Buddhist (and in general, Indian) philosophy has a soteriological dimension (aimed at liberation or ‘salvation’), which is mainly absent in Western philosophy. And this is one of the reasons that any mention of ‘higher knowledge’ produces such a lot of pushback. ‘Ah, you mean religious’ And we all know that religious authority is something to be disdained. Why, it’s dogmatic!

On the contrary. I think the pushback is the natural reaction to test someone's claims to authority. Especially religious people seem to think that they can go forth into the world, make claims to authority, and the world then owes them submissiveness. Just like that. "I am king and you owe me!" Of course at least some people are going to be skeptical about this.

It’s my view that for the most part the “meaning crisis” is a case of too much freedom. For some, that freedom is crippling. — Tom Storm

I think it's not about "too much freedom" or freedom being "crippling". It's that the institutions that we are expected to trust and rely on don't care about us -- and yet we're supposed to pretend that they do. It's this latter part that seems to be modern. That the institutions that we are expected to trust and rely on don't care about us is nothing new; what seems to be new is the expectation of the pretense that they do care. This is what adds the insult to the injury, and this is a source of a crisis of meaning.

Freedom becomes crippling when acting on it cripples one. For example, one has the "freedom" not to have health insurance. But what kind of freedom is that?

I found embodied cognitive science, and later phenomenology, to be very helpful here, since they deal both with questions of how one should live and what is the case. — Joshs

Actually, it seems it was/is your general hopeful/positive disposition that is the most helpful factor for you.
The cognitive science and phenomenology are just tools in your particular case, while for someone else with a similar general hopeful/positive disposition, other tools might be relevant. (And I do so hate to use "tools" in this context ...)

Still, there are many like Vervaeke who grew up relying on a rigid belief system and found themselves in existential crisis when they abandoned that faith and had nothing to replace it with. The craving to replace one totalizing purpose with another is one explanation for the attraction of cults, and Verveake’s project does have some cult-like characteristics.

It can also explain the particular shape/structure of one's existential crisis. That is, an existential crisis is not the same for everyone who describes themselves as having an "existential crisis". For example, an existential crisis will look different for someone with a Christian background, as opposed to someone with a Hindu background; and their respective solutions to those crises are going to be shaped differently as well. (For example, one can recognize whether a self-described atheist has a Christian or a Hindu background, even without mentioning anything about them having such a background.)

"Ultimately your brain is not static, it is adaptive.
But it only adapts when its predictions are challenged.
And those challenges cannot come from within your own preferences.
They must come from participation.
From otherness."[/quote]

But he fails to point out that the baseline for most human interactions is hostility, or in the best case scenario, indifference. The move to individualism (that he criticizes) is actually a defense against the indifference and hostility of others, especially when it comes to religious/spiritual others.

But you're not really engaging with main thing i'm wondering. — ProtagoranSocratist

I said it depends on the audience with whom in mind you're writing.
If you're writing a children's book on some philosophical topic, the standards and expectations are going to be different than if you're writing a doctoral thesis, and so on.
Do you expect us to work out the details for each of those possible categories?

Lotuses that get drowned out in filth on account of the filth having far more connections. — javra

Lotuses grow in the filth, and they kill everything else in the bodies of water where they grow. Ever seen how lotus leaves cover the whole surface, so that nothing else can grow? Ever seen the underside of a lotus leaf?

The sophistic BS part was a separate issue to me: pivoting on the issue of ego and its desires for fame, fortune, power, etc. by mimicking (but not emulating) what good faith philosophers do — javra

Actually, those are references to standard Buddhist doctrine.
See the Index at Access To Insight, under "desire", for example.

1) Lower-status people = unemployed, homeless, First Nations, gig workers — ask tough questions of their bosses, or of police, or other authorities, local government workers, welfare workers, etc.

Insolent = rude — e.g., “Hey, you fuckin' pig, why don’t you do some real work instead of bothering us? You're a fuckin' dog!” (Food delivery guy on a bicycle to policeman.)

There you go: they harass.
— baker

I’m not sure why you write “there you go" as if you believe that you are indirectly 'proving soemthing. Say what you mean. — Tom Storm

Like I've been saying all along: Speaking up, when one is the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, can have grave consequences for one. Like your food delivery guy above: he's very lucky if he didn't get arrested for saying what he said to a policeman.

care to discuss that? Or is that too hard? — Mikie

You just answered some of my above questions.

It's the basis for all social decisions we make. Why do we pass some laws and not others? Why do we build some buildings and not others? — Hanover

Because some rich and powerful people decided that way. Mostly because they wanted to be even more rich and powerful.

My point is that we decide whether to be religious

This is absurd! One cannot "decide" to be religious! This is the height of solipsistic, egotistical madness!
And not because of some issue of collectivism or whatever cheap Randian excuse you want to throw at me.

One cannot "choose" a religion. It would be like "choosing" one's grandparents and parents. It would be like "choosing" the country one was born in. It would be like "choosing" one's native language. It would be like "choosing" which company to work for. Or like "choosing" the weather.

One cannot choose such things because they 1. precede one, 2. contextualize one, 3. require the concurrent action of all parties involved, 4. are beyond one's control.

Choosing to live in a way that accepts a reduced significance for human value

My experience with religion has been that it is the most dehumanizing, demoralizing experience I've ever had.

Doing what is most consistent with scientific grounds is a choice and is not a requirement. That goes to my original statement. The value of religion is not rooted in the scientifically arrived at truth values of its claims.

I'm not coming from a position of valuing science over religion. To me, it makes no difference whether I go to church or whether I go to a science lecture. In both cases, I am supposed to be quiet, bow my head, give them money, and don't ask any real questions.

One thing I've consistently observed in religions, theistic and atheistic ones, and especially in the ones that aim to make adult converts, is that they operate by the motto, "Talk the talk and walk the walk", whereby the talk and the walk are usually two very different things.
— baker

I don't follow the relevance. There are some horrible religions, horrible governments, and horrible people.

I'm saying that I have observed in many religions that there is an unwritten, unspoken rule that the official religious tenets should not be taken all that seriously. I've seen too many times religious people ridiculing (and worse) other religious people from their same religion for taking religious tenets "too seriously". Like when the same religious people who preach abstinence from alcohol also ridicule those who actually abstain from alcohol and consider them "zealots".
And if anything, the whole point of religion seems to be precisely that: a smokescreen, dust thrown in the eyes of the opponent.

my position,
which is that the value of religion is based upon its outward manifestations.

I'm not disagreeing. It's just that religion is "good" in ways that make Machiavelli look like an amateur.

As in, does it lead to a happier more productive person and society.

While we're at it, for illustrative purposes, shall we discuss the Asian idea of "social harmony"? Or the Stepfordian ideal?

What this means is simply that if Joe Blow finds great meaning and value in his religion and he has a community and friends he has built around it, all to their mutual satisfaction and happiness, it would not be a valid basis to dismantle it due to the fact it's claims are false. That is, whether there is a god up high as Joe Blow preaches is wholly irrelevant to whether the religion is of value.

Don't forget that you, as a religious person, are helping to create the image of religion that other people have of religion. Being glib and absurdist like you're above really isn't helping your case. With what you're saying above, you're basically making a case for atheism!

Religion does delve obviously into origin stories, but those must be judged (again) on how well they provide for a meaningful life by their sanctification of humanity, not by their propositional truth value.

In that case, religion is no different from what some wannabe positive psychologist says on his blog.
Do you really want to argue this line of reasoning?

If you want to kill people in the name of God, then that God better be real.

And just because his books were banned doesn't mean anything. The RCC also opposed general literacy and reading the Bible for a long time because it thought that the ordinary people could not properly understand it without proper guidance.
— baker

His books were not generally banned due to concerns about limited literacy. They were officially and specifically banned for all readers because they were considered heretical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

Also, the Catholic Church never banned the Bible for anyone. They banned certain translations they thought inaccurate.

Descartes wasn't banned because Catholics just didn't like books generally. They chose him and others to ban, but still let people read other works. — Hanover

Interesting reading skills ...

My view is that there are many instances where belief in God offers greater meaning — Hanover

Sure, there are such instances. The problem with belief in God is, though, that one cannot actually choose to believe in God.

God is, by definition, a being that contextualizes one. As such, one cannot unilaterally declare anything in relation to God, without this necessarily being also a denial of God (unilaterally -- ie. without waiting for God for his take on the matter). And since God doesn't seem to be all that interested to communicate with us directly, personally, we're left to this solipsistic, unilateral, one-way "relationship" that is no different from talking to walls.

How time flies!

My definition of tedious research is busywork, made necessary not because it is an intrinsic component of creative thought, but because it is an interruption of creative thinking — Joshs

Robert Greene was once asked how he defines creativity. It’s a word that gets thrown around. It gets mythologized and romanticized. “People have all sorts of illusions around the word that aren’t the reality,” Robert said. “The reality is that creativity is a function of the previous work you put in. So if you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading, hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you…It comes to you, but only after tedious hours of work and process.” I like this definition because it means creativity is not some mysterious form of magic. It’s not something some people simply have and some people simply don’t. It’s something rewarded to those who put the work in.

https://billyoppenheimer.com/august-14-2022/

The rich countries should be helping the poorer ones electrify responsibly with renewables, but the rich countries (e.g., America) can't even fund food assistance programs for their own people. — RogueAI

Such is capitalist paradise.

This level of naval-gazing approaches satire.

“Before we turn on the air conditioner, certain fundamental questions must be addressed— like whether we all really want to not be sweltering, and if we want to even go on living.”

Good thing you’re not in charge of anything. — Mikie

And you wonder why people aren't eager to combat the deterioration of climate!

This is supposedly a philosophy forum ... not Twitter ... ...

But I shrink from saying ‘objectively true’, at the same time. That’s part of the dilemma. — Wayfarer

Then, clearly, you've still got some work to do.

Do you have any openness to (radically?) changing your views? It certainly doesn't seem that way. — Janus

@Wayfarer has the attitude of an old swami, that's what the problem is, as far as a philosophy forum goes. It's not that people resent the idea of some "higher truth" per se. It's that those who claim to know the "higher truth" are a dime a dozen, but they refuse to acknowledge this, what to speak of upping their game.

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm?
— Astorre

The same processes that embed individuals within social paradigms shape the nature and direction of ‘reflection’. The split between the purely private and inner (reflection) and the socially constructed (paradigm) is artificial. — Joshs

I think @Astorre is asking about something else, something along the lines of,
"If a person is fully committed to a particular worldview (or paradigm), can they critically examine said worldview/paradigm?"

Namely, a critical examination of a paradigm would require stepping out of that paradigm; but such stepping out would be in conflict with one's committment to said paradigm.

There's the saying that the difference between a philosopher and a religious man is that a philosopher deals in expendable theories, while the religious man puts his life on the line for his ideas.

I think it's strange to think about questions like, "How do I know what I think I know? How do I know what is real?", and then turn around and go about one's business as if one hadn't thought about those things.

In the spirit of taking one's reflections seriously, and taking seriously the act of reflecting, it seems rather natural to also wonder about things such as a justification for one's existence.

Although I have seen professional philosophers dismiss particular themes as being simply a matter of "poor self-esteem" or some such "psychological problem" that doesn't warrant a philosophical exploration.

are you saying this in a "leave that poor guy alone" way or in a "He has a point" way? — Dogbert

The latter.
Not to make this personally about you, though.

Speaking for myself, being bullied and told I should die wouldn't convince me I don't exist. — Ciceronianus

Indeed, but it just might push you into looking for a justification for your existence.

Not to say that this is what is happening for the OP. There is something fair-weather-ish about so much of philosophy. As if someone could spend one's days trying to figure out things like "Oh my, I don't know what's real!", and then close one's notebook, and then go and have a beer as if everything was totally fine.

Part of the issue is that the audience is much vague as someone without a university position or who isn't a student. — ProtagoranSocratist

Then such is the predicament of the would-be philosopher.

By the time China makes a meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use (say half), we'll be well into uncharted territory, and they'll still be pouring GHG's into the air. — RogueAI

Why blame China?

Why buy cheap Chinese stuff?

Stop buying cheap Chinese stuff, and China will have no reason to burn so much coal anymore, or even none at all, for that matter.

It's not the Chinese who need to change; it's the rest of the world, esp. Westerners, who are eager to look wealthier than they are and so they buy cheap Chinese stuff.

These and further related questions tend to be taboo when it comes to discussing climate change deterioration and how to counteract it. Climate activists are often displeased with people's aparent indolence, or they criticize people for not trusting science. It seems that for many climate activists, it should be taken for granted that climate change deterioration is something that should be combatted, not merely accepted as yet another fact of life over which we have no control.

I think that for successfully taking action against climate deterioration, the above questions, and then some, would need to be openly discussed.

Writing about philosophy: what are the basic standards and expectations?[/quote]
Who is your intended audience?

A habilitation committee at a university?
The editor of Philosophy Now?
The editor of Reader's Digest?
People who post a lot on Twitter?
People at an online philosophy forum?
Your family at a dinner table?
Who?

For what reason are you trying to present your philosophical thoughts to some particular audience?


If you skip these questions, you're implying some universalizing, generalizing, absolutizing theme to your argument that might actually run counter to the argument you're explicitly making.

Oh, the US is the biggest oil and gas producer? Let's look at coal instead. Why do we still have to waste time on this nonsense. We have to phase out all the fossil fuels, and the sooner we do it the less disruptive and catastrophic it will be.

And adaptation is what we also have to do anyway, and the slower we are at stopping making it worse by stopping burning fossil fuels, the more stringent our adaptation will have to be. And none of this is remotely controversial. — unenlightened

How many people actually want mankind to survive?
How many people actually want all the currently living people to die of natural causes?
Is mere survival even a universally desirable goal? Does everyone want it?
How many people are even willing to survive even if that meant a significant lowering of their quality of life?


Efforts to combat climate deterioration are doomed as long as people in general would rather die than merely survive.

There's something extraordinarily compromised about a view that seeks to demonstrate "existence". — Banno

It seems like a rather normal reaction of someone under strain.

Have you never been bullied? Have you never been told that you should do the world a favor and die?
What do you think are the metaphysical implications of having been bullied, or otherwise experiencing duress?