jean
Madrigal Member 
Posts: 8,546
|
Post by jean on Jan 31, 2012 21:46:50 GMT
Not Jesus, no - he expressed even the most profound ideas with pellucid clarity.
Love your enemies - that sort of thing
|
|
jean
Madrigal Member
Posts: 8,546
|
Post by jean on Jan 31, 2012 22:09:10 GMT
Absolutely!
Unless, of course, it really means something else.
|
|
jean
Madrigal Member
Posts: 8,546
|
Post by jean on Jan 31, 2012 22:24:11 GMT
That's nothing - what about 'enemy'?
|
|
jean
Madrigal Member
Posts: 8,546
|
Post by jean on Jan 31, 2012 22:44:30 GMT
Sarcastic's a bit hard - I'm just being playfully ironic...
|
|
|
|
Post by Synonym on Feb 2, 2012 20:52:47 GMT
As it stands, ''God'' is no more a scientific theory than "Leprechauns" are. Leprechauns are possibly more scientific as a theory because we've seen rainbows, and Synonym has noticed them messing about with gravity. No, not messing about with, they are gravity. Bit convenient don't you think, that there just happened to be some mindless gravitational force which keeps us anchored and therefore enables life to be possible. It is the Leprechauns that are holding us down and keeping us from floating off into space in random directions. |
|
|
|
Post by ncsonde on Feb 8, 2012 12:03:11 GMT
We trust some ''rational'' explanations as if they were ''true'', that's fair to say. Yes, with no agreed idea about what such "rationality" and "truth" means, vis-a-vis a "real" world supposedly independent of them. A very significant section of the academic world escapes this fathomless mystery by arguing that there is no such world, or if there is, that is not what we're attempting to understand. Instead, what rationality and science consists in is an attempt to make our experience as coherent and economical (in terms of the models required in order to account for and predict it) as possible. It has no basis in a "reality" apart from that experience, and our principles of reasoning have no basis either, except insofar as we conventionally agree to them. Clearly such an overarching conception of our experience can have nothing to say about any truth or value of religious belief, or its opposite. For a start, anoyone who claims to have religious experiences are perfectly entitled to expand their conceptual models to take account of them, and there is nothing in this analysis of rationality to say they're mistaken, or irrational in any way. And what is a "religious experience" anyway? For some, it's the beauty of a blooming flower, or the colours of a sunset. Now, not all rationalists accept the above relativist or instrumentalist understanding of rationality. Most scientists, in particular, are too ill-versed in philosophy to be aware that the problem it attempt to answer even exists. They are, that is, simply "naive realists", as the jargon goes. This is as far as I've read the relatively unthinking position of Dawkins and Hitchens. The problem with it is not the realism, but the naivety. It simply does not make any intellectual sense to dismiss the entirety of religious belief on the grounds that it is not rational, when they themselves have no idea what they mean by rational, or why anyone including themselves should "believe" in that instead. This would be the ideal, but is in fact very far from the actualite. Listen to a lecture by Brian Cox, for example; or the prognostications of the IPCC about global warming. Contrary to the above, most scientists' default position is absolute certainty. I don't think it does, as I've tried to argue above. Explanations are not its business. I don't say that there aren't religious people who make this mistake, of course, or get confused about what their "Faith" consists of. It's a deeply confusing matter, after all. But look more deeply into the greatest thinkers in any religion and it's clear that the "Faith" required is not in any set of empirical propositions - or, at least, it's about the same fundamental assertion: we are not yet what we can be, we are confused and misled about the nature of the universe and ourselves, and that there is a means by which to dispel this illusion. This basic premise of all religions is not an explanation, as such: it's an experiential insight that needs to be taken on trust, but which nevertheless there is abundant evidence for. Hmmm...I don't think even Augustine took this quality as proof. If you insist on taking religious assertions as empirical explanations, you're right of course - it will mostly be guff. Exactly the same must be said about science, you know. Everything we think we know now will before long be shown to be deeply mistaken. Only factual observations will remain, reinterpreted and reframed - as they do within religions. This analogy is far more appropriate to what science does than to what religions attempt to do. Well, you're a woman, you should do. He should know! Have you ever read Dennett? |
|
|
|
Post by ncsonde on Feb 8, 2012 12:27:25 GMT
Yes, something like that. Denying that there is a "why" is not a satisfactory riposte. Do you mean ''denying there's a reason''? No one would deny there's a why question, but they might deny that there's a reason; the answer to the "why" might be ''why not?" or ''no reason''. I mean that denying there is a reason is not addressing the question: it is not a query for a functional explanation. Not why does the world exist, why are we here, etcetera; but why does my heart feel so bad? Why have I gone so badly wrong? Why are others so clearly mad, bad, and dangerous to know? Is there any way to truth and genuine worth in such an existence of misery and suffering, crammed meaninglessly between unasked for birth and incomprehensible death? Even if it is the truth, it doesn;t answer the question the religious impulse poses. That is not asking: what is the world like, or what is the world here for? It's asking: how is a healthy human being to be? The more fruitful comparison is not with physics but with psychotherapy. One of Freud's few genuine insights was his: "as soon as a man asks what is the purpose or meaning of life, he is already sick." And as study after study has proven, every form of psychotherapy yet invented comes nowhere close to achieving its avowed intent as the same psychological benefits acheived by the adoption of religious faith. I don;t deny this. It's a favourite standby of atheistic scientists - they all come out with it, at great length: the wonder, the awe, the majesty. But what has this to do with their subject? Nothing. How do they explain it? They don't. It's a pleasant side-effect of pursuing their interests, like train-spotting, presumably. What they oddly fail to realise is that this wonder and awe, which their subjects have nothing to say about whatsoever, is precisely the experiential basis of religion. How do you pursue this feeling of being at one with the universe? By studying science? No, of course not. By studying religion? Of course not. By doing religion: that's the essential nature of religious belief that every atheist overlooks, wilfully or merely because they do not understand the nature of the phenomenon they're talking about. It's an activity, a process, a matter of psychological evolution and spiritual orientation to fundamental change. Don't start going all virginal on me now, Doris. |
|
|
|
Post by ncsonde on Feb 8, 2012 12:53:21 GMT
I know. That's why I said it. But a lack of all the facts does not negate the rationality of the thinking, it just hampers the chances of being absolutely correct. In terms of our rational theories, it's doubtful there is such a thing. No one would be so foolhardy to claim that any theory that they assume to be the most correct is absolutely correct, anyway. Leaving the youthful over-confidence of zealots like Cox out of it for the moment. Rationally, here's the flaw. Unless and until we have in our possession such an absolutely correct overall theory of the universe, down to its origins and mechanics and including a fully comprehensive account of everything that we do (for we, with our intentionality and emotionality and aesthetic and moral values, are part of that universe) then rationally we have no evidence whatever for declaring that a belief in God - even an intelligent, purposive, personally caring God - is untrue. Still less irrational. To claim that such a belief is untrue or irrational is merely a declaration of preferred procedure - of Faith. There are other choices, but let's look at just these two for the moment. The first is not rational, as you admit - there are no grounds for such a deduction. It's instead an induction based on habit and hope. So Dawkins' assertion this is a better form of Faith than the alternative is not founded on anything rational at all. Is it better in any other way, then? I can;t think of one. On the contrary, the latter set of chickens seem far more likely to be a happier bunch than the former - less anxious, more optimistic, more carefree, less inclined to be anti-social and led by purely selfish short-term thinking... The better more realistic option to either of these options would be an attitude where the chicken says, I don't know whether the farmer's going to feed me or not, I might get my neck wrung instead, but that's not what I need to know to be a healthy chicken. |
|
|
|
Post by ncsonde on Feb 8, 2012 12:59:40 GMT
It isn't. We've been through this before. The board, I mean. Me and LibJoe, I mean. That's why I started this thread in the first place, I think. The Theory of God is a philosophy. Or a concept. Or something ethereal, something relating to psychology, or tradition, or ritual, or intuition, or .... ....... ..... (fill in the blanks). Yes, all of that and more. But it's also a scientific theory. I can, indeed. Do you want me to? Of course, it depends on what you mean by "God", precisely. I'm trying not to get distracted in this conversation by discussions revolving about what any one or other religious sect might assert about it. Instead, I'm using the concept in an all-embracing way, to include what all religions say about it. Call that the Ground to Being, if you prefer. There is no point in getting hung up arguing about this or that imputed psychological property, clearly derived from specific cultural contexts. |
|
|
|
Post by philippa on Feb 9, 2012 9:48:44 GMT
LMH - suggest you have a listen to 'in our time'. Melvyn Bragg discussing the humanist christian scholar Erasmus. you will find that, even if the great scholar himself was ultimately rejected by the the church after his death, that 'humanist' and 'christian' are entirely compatible terms. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bmlsyalso available as a podcast i believe. |
|
|
|
Post by philippa on Feb 9, 2012 12:49:06 GMT
LMH - it wasn't his personality i was recommending but an extremely well informed discussion involving others. and it pinpointed your dilemma about the man of the cloth you described being referred to as a 'humanist'. educational in it's entirety - rich pickings but up to you of course, whether you choose to reach them.
|
|
|
|
Post by philippa on Feb 9, 2012 13:06:59 GMT
but he wasn't just a christian see - he was a great humanist which to my ear sounds so much more expansive and encompasssing.
|
|
|
|
Post by philippa on Feb 9, 2012 13:08:40 GMT
oh and.... try to resist your christian urge to patronise. Thanks.  |
|
|
|
Post by ncsonde on Feb 10, 2012 14:27:24 GMT
Fraught with ghastly difficulties though, isn't it? Isn't that the gravamen of your imputed charge: if Christianity is so f*cking great? I gather your congregation was a mixed one. In Ireland. A place where what defines a "Christian" let alone a "great" one is a matter of some dispute?
It's a sad fact of history that the West has been burdened with an attitude to religion that is so readily prey to this sort of dispute. It's a legacy of Jerusalem, where the sacred divinely inspired origins of texts, and qualified interpreters of them, is so crucially important; and Athens, where the determination of rational propositions that have a truth-value is of equal significance - goodness and virtue being explicitly intrinsic to the pursuit and discovery of such empirical truth. In the East religion is not tied up with these distractions, and so what they're really about, what makes them distinctively valuable, is far clearer - the reason that Dawkins and Hitchens and Dennett go nowhere near them.
Of course, there are other countervailing benefits to this legacy. The rule of Law, democratic polities, and the scientific attitude, for example.
My guess would be that the good man being praised as a "great humanist" had the wisdom and insight not to have confused the essence of Christianity with our pre-scientific habits to intellectuality in this way. My guess is that he would have had no difficulty in recognising a Zen Buddhist or Taoist, for example, as just as much a "Christian" as he was. As Erasmus would have done, I think.
|
|
