:up: Can't wait to get my paws on it.

Yeah, I can’t believe he left after being shot. Crazy. — NOS4A2

It doesn’t live up to the cult fantasy, but that won’t stop them from fantasizing that he was forced to run away.

But the image of Trump pumping his fist after an assassination attempt will reverberate through history. It’s quite profound to be privy to all this stuff. — NOS4A2

If he would have refused to leave or at least resisted fleeing, that would have been remarkable. But he acted exactly like someone in his entitled position acts. Run away, stay safe and protected.

Everyone may agree that one plus one equals two but in ethics, for whatever reason, people's values don't always align.

Isn’t our will not free because of limits, constraints, and entanglements?

A better question is: have you been able to shape your world so that it's a paradise you roam in? Or is it a hell you constantly fight against? — frank

Makes you wonder. If we had free will it seems like we wouldn’t make so many bad choices.

@Vera Mont

Have you read Sapolsky’s book? Pretty convincing.

I would reject a "soul" "spirit" and the "spiritual." — ENOAH

I know what you mean but the term doesn't bother me. I guess that I think of it as simply resolving existential crisis. Philosophy, science, religion, and other disciplines can all help, in my experience.

what is the difference between natural facts (as Husserl called them) and value facts? — Constance

The former is supposed to be free of ethical principles, values, or goals.

If we are even thinking of approximately the same thing, not regarding the "whole" so much, but in what we mean by "realizing"? — ENOAH

Make real. Realizing that you’re awake, for example.

For the rest, maybe it’s enough to say that I make a distinction between religion and spirituality. You and Constance don’t seem to make that distinction. I think religion can begin with spirituality, but it can also be entirely contrived.

Judging from your post I’d say that you’re spiritual but not religious.

To say that value is an absolute, and that it’s IN existence, that it’s exactly what God in its essence IS, is completely meaningless to me. If it has meaning I don’t see why you couldn’t express that meaning.

It is "equiprimoridal" in its essence. It is an odd sounding word, but I think the idea rather clear. All of our cultural institutions are like this. What is the essence of, say, marriage? Or science? A library? A restaurant? Anything you can name sustains multiple candidates.

What would it be like for something to have its essence in a singular primordiality? I am arguing that religion is like this. This is the primordiality of value. — Constance

I don’t recall much about it but years ago I read something to the effect that the death of religion is due to the categorization of value. Your one candidate became many.

You say "... the essence of religion was...". Is it no longer the essence, or was realizing the whole not religion before? In any case, religion isn't needed to realize the whole, and it's not essential for religion to facilitate realizing the whole. I would argue that religion is anti-enlightenment in nature because enlightenment leads to independence. Moral development leads to independence so that is also opposed to the essence of religion.

What is religion beneath all of that all of that historical contrivance and bad metaphysics? Something truly primordial, like logic is primordial to thought. — Constance

If religion is “bad metaphysics” and such, then isn’t it a step away from what you claim is the primordial beneath it?

Is the essence of a car the materials it’s composed of or the function is serves, namely locomotion.

For religion it is existential, and this requires inquiry to move into an existential analysis, not merely a practical one. — Constance

I’m sure you’ve noticed that religions tend to be dogmatic and not very open to analysis. It’s dogmatic for essentially the same reason that GM is dogmatic in its branding.

Do people think they need to be "saved" from something? — Constance

We want to be saved from our suffering, don't we?

Yes, religion is an institution like anything else, and it has it's utility. But one can say this of ANY institution. GM makes automobiles and UPS delivers packages. These bind, have narratives, rules, as well. The question is, what is this institution religion all about? — Constance

GM and UPS can brand themselves in various ways, whatever it takes to capture a segment of the market. Religion is all about branding too, just at a grand scale and backed with ultimate authority. It promises salvation but it only needs to deliver meaning.

We don't seem to be going anywhere.

If the whole affair were not entirely set against radical indeterminacy, then I would agree. Caring in a truly finite setting only has a finitude of redress, a foundation that could be spoken and laid out clearly as one would talk about the nature of a bank teller or fence post: just look in the dictionary and there it is. — Constance

A fence post has identifiable qualities that define it as a fence post. Some qualities are essential for something to function as a fence post. A post must be rigid enough to support a fence, for example. Other qualities are not essential.

For a religion to function it must provide meaning, which it supplies with grand narratives, shared values, moral codes, etc etc. The ‘binding’ is desirable and meaningful. Transcendence, on the other hand, is not essential, and transcendence does not require religion.

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 latter is the essence of religion, and I further claim that in proving such a thing, I am giving the world and our existence in it exactly the metaphysical satisfaction is seeks. — Constance

Moral redemption doesn't require religion, and religion may or may not provide it. The essense of religion is simply binding a community in shared values, narratives, etc.

Maybe Trump and Hunter can be cellmates. :flower:

Look on the bright side, NOS, Trump will be perfectly color-coordinated in an orange jumpsuit.

Yes, currently one of his short story collections also, South of the Border, West of the Sun. I like his novels much better so far. Just checked and his new book will be available on November 19th.

Paul Auster.

Have a cold and binge-watched almost two seasons of Tokyo Vice. Didn't skip through any of it, and I normally skip through series like that.

Also, the new Dune II didn't disappoint.

I made an omelet with three pasture raised eggs, organic spinach, and cheddar cheese. Turned out great except for the pepper. My electric grinder ran out of peppercorns. :brow:

What evidence or experience would convince you that (e.g.) "the God of Abraham" at least one personal God/dess (of any religious tradition) exists? — 180 Proof

For me, the question is what evidence or experience would convince me of the nature of the universe. Ultimately I don't know if I have the capacity to comprehend that, like an ant can't comprehend the larger world beyond its capacity.

It appears to me that everything is interconnected and in a constant state of change. That indicates to me that emptiness is the nature of the universe. But I can't be certain, maybe somehow souls and such can exist.

When Moses asked for God's name, God just said "I am". Sounds very Eastern. — Fire Ologist

Not in my experience. "I am" and "I am not" both express a duality that many Eastern traditions seek to transcend. I once joined such a tradition for a short while, seeking a transcendent experience or 'revelation'. I've had what I might describe as intellectual revelations with the help of Eastern and Western philosophy and perhaps science, and shallow experiential revelations. I hope to someday have a deep experiential revelation, but it's not imperative because though I think it would be beneficial, at the end of the day it's just a transient experience.

Short answer, yes. — Fire Ologist

That very interesting because it seems to imply that your revelation was of a nature consistent with the Catholic faith, as opposed to, say, an Eastern faith which is quite different.

The OP asks what religion and why.

Long story short, if I’m reading it right you seem to be saying that you’re a Catholic because of a revelation. If that’s the case, did this revelation occur prior to becoming a Catholic?

Irreligious because spirituality and moral development are too important to be degraded by religion.

One simply cannot look at a symbol and find meaning in it, and there lost languages to prove this. The reason someone cannot decipher the meaning of a lost language is precisely because there is no meaning in the words. — NOS4A2

Oddly, this seems to show the opposite of what you intended. The symbols of an ancient language do have meaning even without knowing the language. We have no choice in recognizing the symbols as a language, for one thing, and depending on the context they could have much more meaning. For a symbol to be meaningless it would need to be completely unrecognizable as a symbol or anything else and not attract attention. Only then could it not affect us.

I think the image reveals a desire to fit into a place where there isn’t really a good fit. I do think that I’m a ‘thinker’ though, and that I’m perceived as a thinker.

I’m always pleased to see your posts because I appreciate good writing and rational thought. Kind of a rare commodity in this day and age.

Aha, my plan worked after all. :grin:

:up:

You’re supposed to offer me compliments to bolster my self-esteem.

Apparently I’m not as funny as I think I am. :sad:

Hate to think what people think of me. I have very low self-esteem and tend to think the worst.

Reconsidering, I did mistakenly think of Stormy Daniels as a prostitute.

Just bought an audiobook copy. Always been a sucker for Kafkaesque stories.

I don’t know about drugs, but we know Trump has patronized prostitutes and engaged in high-level corruption. Of course you will disagree because you know his activities were all innocent, just like you somehow know that he didn’t sexually assault E. Jean Carrol.

I think it is relevant that these sorts of accusations magically appear during such a time, even if it's over 30 years after the fact. — NOS4A2

I think a presidents past is relevant and they should be deeply scrutinized. Isn’t Hunter’s laptop relevant?