I am asking, beyond any one specific view or interpretation of religion, whether the symbolic ideas in various religions traditions have any relevance for consideration in the widest scheme of philosophy. — Jack Cummins

What is the purpose of religion as you see it?
What is the purpose of studying the philosophy of religion?
Religious philosophy is speculative philosophy and as such analytic philosophers or logical positivists will have none of it.
Whiteheads definition
Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of ‘interpretation’ I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. Thus the philosophical scheme should be coherent, logical, and, in respect to its interpretation, applicable and adequate. Here ‘applicable’ means that some items of experience are thus interpretable, and ‘adequate’ means that there are no items incapable of such interpretation.
Thus an adequate speculative philosophy should include religion or at least values, purposes and goals.
You could also start out with a particular theme like life after death in comparative religions.

We certainly don’t know however we can speculate on Gods attributes all knowing all seeing. Creator of chaos and order … likes to roll the dice — Deus

Time and chance happens to us all.
I always question the first premise all knowing, all seeing, all powerful as giving intractable problems with free will and divine benevolence.
I like to think maybe creation is hard work and maybe the laws of nature are the method of achieving it.

There are many threads on this site which do look at varying viewpoints, ranging from the Taoist to Buddhism, but, often, these are separate from the scope of philosophical analysis. So, in this particular thread, I am probably looking for analysis of how these ideas can be compared critically, in the overall formulation of a way of seeing life and philosophy. — Jack Cummins

It is not clear to me what you wish to discuss?
Things like: What are more common or useful notions?
Immanence vs Transcendence
Supernatural Theism (miracles and interventions) vs. the Laws of Nature
Revealed Religion vs. Meditation and Rational Inquiry
Personal vs Impersonal Notions of the Divine

Certainly, familiarity with religious conceptions from around the world and history are useful to philosophers of religion. Also certainly the advances in our understanding of science and nature gives us cause to review our religious conceptions and try to avoid the cognitive dissonance that occurs from separating our notions about how the world works from our religious inclinations.

I do not have nearly as much to say about "God" as you.
I am always skeptical of too many and too detailed claims about the divine reality.
If there is a god and god creates then the universe must be part of god's creation.
So to study, observe and regard nature with a certain amount of awe and appreciation is a form of religious practice.
I see no evidence of a God who intervenes in nature by supernatural acts or who reveals him/her/itself through special revelation to selected individuals or tribes.
If there is a god it acts through nature and the processes of nature. I regard the self organizing features of nature and the progress from clouds of interstellar gas to stars and planets and simple bacteria to humans capable of regarding all of nature as evidence of some divine reality. The true purpose of the universe is hidden from me, but I like to think of it as novelty, creativity and intensity of experience. I don't think God is a petty moralist primarily concerned with human behavior.

If there is going to be a section on philosophy or religion it would seem some discussion of various religious conceptions and the role they play in human affairs should be permitted without absolute derision.

Humans are meaning seeking creatures, religion has been with man as long as recorded history.
Religion stills plays a large role in the lives of many people and is a major influence in their lives.
It is true that the more educated a person is in the scientific method and the findings of science perhaps the less likely they are to believe in traditional or supernatural theism.

Many people have turned away from traditional Western religious thought and towards Eastern religions and mystical practices. The religious inclination is still strong worldwide.

I don't see any problem with religious notions like panentheism or even outright pantheism. Regarding the universe with a certain amount of awe and consideration of it in holy, numinous or scared terms seems within the realm of rational behavior. It is even for those not entirely conceptually committed to an entirely mechanistic, deterministic and reductionist view of nature to see some self organizing inherent capability resulting in creatures capable of such considerations.

We don't all have to ascribe to Christopher Hitchens views:
As Hitchens put it so eloquently, if also partially, during his debate with Blair:
“I come before you as a materialist. If we give up religion, we discover
what actually we know already, whether we're religious or not, which is
that we are somewhat imperfectly evolved primates, on a very small planet
in a very unimportant suburb of a solar system that is itself a negligible
part of a very rapidly expanding and blowing apart cosmic phenomenon.”
Hitchens here emphasizes the absurdity of our purely empirico-physical understanding
of the larger cosmos. Based only on sensory observation of primary qualities like mass
and motion, and mathematical analysis of them in terms of measurable quantities, the
universe reveals no apparent purpose. It is only the poetic indulgence of the human
imagination that fools us into believing otherwise.

Some of us can ascribe to the views of Whitehead and other religious philosophers
Philosophy attains its chief importance,” according to Whitehead, “by fusing the two, namely, religion and science, into one rational scheme of thought” (p. 15). The revelations of modern science concerning the regularities of nature have made belief in miracles seem antiquated and superstitious, but the religious impulse itself seems to run deeper than the need for magic tricks offering proof of the divine.1 As Hitchens admits, humanity’s sense of the numinous and transcendent—of “something beyond the material, or not quite consistent with it”—is what distinguishes us from other primates. We are not only the wise, but also the uncanny species. To be human is to participate in both time and eternity, to be embedded in history with an intuition of infinity, our birthright an experience of what Thomas Berry called incendence.
The vast majority of human beings feel compelled to respond to this feeling of incendence religiously, either as evidence of a personal deity (as in the Abrahamic and some Vedic traditions) or as evidence of an impersonal creative plenum or ground of being (as in Buddhism, Taoism, and many indigenous traditions). Whitehead's dual conception of the ultimate in terms of God and Creativity, respectively, helps us understand these cultural differences.

Not all religious conceptions lead to bad behavior or to rejection of the utility of science in understanding our world.

The only reasonable conclusion is that there is no god. — Banno

If our only choices are God as defined above and your conclusion, I have to agree. It just seems traditional theism and atheism should not be the only possibilities in the philosophy of religion section.

And the main attribute of God seems to be that he is omnipotent or powerful:

God is usually conceived of as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent as well as having an eternal and necessary existence. — Apollodorus

Being that this is a philosophy forum maybe we should try a little philosophical theism and dispense with preconditions or presumptions which cause us profound cognitive dissonance regarding science and experience. Religious discussion on the forum is too often just a repetition of medieval scholastic theology as though the advances of science could or should have no influence on our religious views.
Man is no longer the crown of creation and the earth is no longer the center of the universe, other views of deity seems necessary for the modern time.

From Wikipedia
Philosophical theism is the belief that the Supreme Being exists (or must exist) independent of the teaching or revelation of any particular religion.[1] It represents belief in God entirely without doctrine, except for that which can be discerned by reason and the contemplation of natural laws.

Philosophical theism conceives of nature as the result of purposive activity and so as an intelligible system open to human understanding, although possibly never completely understandable. It implies the belief that nature is ordered according to some sort of consistent plan and manifests a single purpose or intention, however incomprehensible or inexplicable. However, philosophical theists do not endorse or adhere to the theology or doctrines of any organized religion or church.

From the Article in the Opening Post:

It is a very detailed article and a nice review of the physics and physiology of color perception including variations and cross species comparison. It might be good to note one of the authors is from Linguistics as I think language is a big part of the problem in reading about the philosophy of color. I spent a few hours on the SEP and other sites trying to sort out what the problem is with little clarity resulting.

Abstract: The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are "subjective" or "in the mind." The article has two other purposes: first, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate.

The first part explains the problem of color realism and makes some useful distinctions. These distinctions are then used to expose various confusions that often prevent people from seeing that the issues are genuine and difficult, and that the problem of color realism ought to be of interest to anyone working in the field of color science. The second part explains the various leading answers to the problem of color realism, and (briefly) argues that all views other than our own have serious difficulties or are unmotivated. The third part explains and motivates our own view, that colors are types of reflectances, and defends it against objections made in the recent literature that are often taken as fatal.

It seems it all depends on what one means by stating “objects are colored”. They are clearly not colored in the way we perceive them, when no light is shining on them, when there is no perceptual observer and under numerous other circumstances. Objects have reflectance, a physical property but it is confusing to assert that reflectance is identical to perceived color. I maintain color (as perceived and spoken of) is not an independent property of the object or a mere production of the mind. Color is the result of the interaction between, incident light, the reflective properties of the object and the perceptual system of the organism. Thus color is not a fixed independent property but a relationship, a process. This incidentally holds true for all perceptual process although color makes a nice example.

The thing that seems to make the subject so controversial and difficult is the temptation to think of color as a fixed independent property rather as a relationship, interaction or process. The various uses of language and terminology also appears a source of needless confusion and controversy. Color is not present independently in the reflective object or present just in the mind. Color is the result of a process, a chain of causal efficacy which results in the production of “presentational immediacy” in the mind to which we give a color name. Color is neither here nor there but is only present in the interaction and relationship. I am even after reading through the SEP and other sources unclear as to how to classify this point of view but it seems relational.

↪Shawn Whilst neurotransmitters have an effect on moods, they are not moods themselves. Moods are a function of consciousness, they exist regardless of the levels of neurotransmitters. However, changing the neurotransmitter balance, will have an effect on mood, as will changing the balance of any of the information that contributes to a moment of consciousness. — Pop

It all comes back to the problem of treating the observer, the experiencer, the perceiver as though they were not part of reality itself. As though there would be any science at all without them.

That is not the question. The questioning presupposes goodwill. Then the existence of suffering is illogical.

If God is not benevolent, then it is a different question. — SolarWind

If you ask the wrong question you will inevitably get the wrong answer.
Other than wishful thinking and human anthropomorphism there is absolutely no reason to assume god is omnibenevolent or for that matter omnipotent.
Given the assumption of both omni's (all Christian apologetics and other theological hand waving aside) there is no convincing or satisfactory response to the religious "problem of evil". Thus it becomes a major problem for religion and a major source of disbelief in any form of deity, sacred, holy or numinous entity. That paves the way for a souless universe devoid of any inherent value or purpose. IMHO bad philosophy and bad religion combined.

Generally one has to combine omnipotence with omnibenevolence for natural disasters and suffering to create a theological conundrum. The question is (medieval metaphysical logic aside) why does god have to be omnipotent or omnibenevolent (human anthropomorphic wishful thinking aside)?
God (if one exists at all) may have entirely different goals (like creativity, experience and novelty) and different methods of achieving those goals like natural process and physical law.
Try the title of Charles Hartshorne's small treatise "Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes"

A. Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics that do not consider fundamental consciousness, and if so, what is this handicap? — Eugen

The notion that consciousness can arise from particular arrangements of entirely non experiential matter seems a particularly difficult metaphysical barrier. One subject to the charge of "mysterianism" as much as any form of pan or proto psychism. Modern physics suggests a much different view of "matter" than traditional mechanistic determinism.

B. Are there rational arguments to circumvent the hard problem in other types of metaphysics, or does neutral monism / panprotopsychism collapse into mysterianism? — Eugen

In general the various forms of panpsychism suffer from the "combination problem" how do primitive units of experience combine to produce minds, experience, qualia and consciousness but from an ontological metaphysical point of view this seems less of a barrier or a form of "mysterianism" than A.

s you know my views are somewhat similar to yours in some ways. I know you like to reserve the word 'conscious' for creatures with brains, and use some other term 'experiential' perhaps, to refer to the fact that, perhaps, there is something it is like to be a molecule, or some kind of simple system or process. You think this is more consistent with typical usage and is less confusing. Is that right? I think the exact opposite. In philosophy 'conscious' is typically used to refer to that faculty (whatever it is) the possession of which is necessary and sufficient for that thing to have an experience. So I object to your usage as not being consistent with standard usage in the literature. You have adopted a more typically scientific/medical usage which obscures the relevant philosophy. — bert1

I do understand your point of view. I am familiar with Nagel's "What it is like to be a bat" and with his suggested definition of consciousness "something it is like to be", something not captured in any scientific description or external observation. I do take issue with your suggestion that Nagel's definition is the one that predominates in philosophy, in fact the term "consciousness" seems used in so many different way by so many different authors that it seems in my mind to lend confusion not clarity.
Nagels definition is definitely not the one used in medicine or neuroscience.

To some extent we will probably have to agree to disagree but that should not obscure the large area of common ground we share in our approach to the metaphysics of mind.

Is there anything wrong in stating that neurotransmitters are scientifically assumed to play a role in the regulation and experience of affective behavior? — Shawn

No nothing wrong with that statement at all.

Yes, we can delve deeper and state that there are obviously more factors at play in the way we experience moods, but, that's not relevant to how we can talk about moods in an ordinary manner that (as I see it) is pragmatic. — Shawn

Actually we do not talk about moods ordinarily in terms of neurotransmitters (scientists, psychologists and psychiatrists might) but we usually just talk about about our affective experience, not the underlying neuroscience, neuroanatomy and neuropharmacology which correlates with our experience.

I don't see this as a reason why I should give the entire discourse into the what moods are composed of. It's almost commonsensical to state nowadays that moods are neurotransmitter levels working in the brain. — Shawn

When you state it this way it causes problems.
One correlation is not causation. Two correlation is not identity.
So "moods" are correlated (loosely I might add) with neurotransmitter activity in the brain.
Hence the clinical utility in some cases of drugs which alter neurotransmitter uptake or release in treating clinical mood disorders.

You have adopted a more typically scientific/medical usage which obscures the relevant philosophy. — bert1

Well that might be because I come from the scientific/medical background. By your definition comatose patients would still be "conscious" and jelly fish and humans would share similar mental experience.

Consciousness is hard not because of materialism, but because of the way we think about ordinary matter, which is fine for everyday living, but extremely inadequate when looked at in detail. — Manuel

Yes, what is the nature of ordinary "matter" when looked at in detail. Quantum events, Quantum fields?

Well that is part of what "moods" are but certainly not the entire story. Limits of both language and scientific description probably apply.

↪prothero So before life forms evolved, what sort of experiences existed? Was color still a kind of proto-experience of lighted events? — Marchesk

There is the notion that most of the worlds experience is not "conscious" and the confusion engendered by the anthropomorphic nature of language. Most of human mental processing is not "conscious" say the chain of causal efficacy in vision or other senses. So on reflection the notion of primitive forms of non-conscious experience should not be too hard to entertain.

Yes, it is the form often called panexperientialism but it arises from process philosophy notion of process (becoming) as the essential feature of the world not being. The events of process are necessarily unifed (physical and experiential) events. Has to do with relationships, interactions and continuity with the past and creative advance into the future.

↪Marchesk But I don't understand what the fundamental difference between materialism and neutral monism would be in order for the latter to be able to give rise to consciousness since they both lack consciosuness as fundamental. So why is matter incapable to give birth to consciousness, but another substance (whatever that would be) is? — Eugen

Depends on the particular type of "neutral monism" one might ascribe to. I favor the process philosophy view that the fundamental unit of nature is "an actual occasion (basically an event)". Such events are dipolar (netural) in the sense that all events have both physical and experiential (mental) poles. Thus mind and consciousness are higher forms of integrated and unified experience but this is not a leap from completely non experiential matter to experiential process. So called matter is experiential as well as physical at is fundamental ontological level. Thus the various degrees of experience in the world are matters of degree, integration and unificiation not matters of ontology.

Well, time and chance happens to us all. The universe, however, with its self organizing process does not seem entirely like random chaos at all.

↪prothero I agree it is, but that means the real world is more than physics. In the case of color realism, it means that colors are not physical, even if the thing they represent in the world is. — Marchesk

To paraphrase Whitehead, physics is a dull, lifeless, souless affair without taste, color, sound or feel.
Too much physics can infect your worldview and not in a good way.
Having said that, there is much in the realm of quantum physics that would indicate, even physics at its most fundamental level is composed of processes or events, and perceived properties are relationships as the result of process and interaction, not inherent or fixed. The world is also connected in ways that suggest deeper interweavings than local causality or fixed determinism. The world is definitely more than physics especially more than the mechanistic deterministic reductionist brand of physics so commonly assumed..

Yes, but take vision for example. The ancient view of vision was we are looking out at the world through our eyes. And that's how it seems to be when we're not taking the science of vision into account. But we know that vision goes the other why. Light comes into the eyes and starts the perceptual process. It's also 2D and upside down. — Marchesk

This starts into the area of so called hard core intuitions. The correctness of the chain causal efficacy and the interaction with a "real" external world is not altered by these minor nuances of the process. The ancients were right in their intuition just not in their details.

If bees and birds see the world colored in a different way than we do, then what makes color objective? — Marchesk

The problem is in trying to make "color" the fixed property of an "object". It is not. Color is the result of a process of interaction in the world but that "process" that "result" is as much a part of the "real world" as any abstract concept like "wavelength". In fact more a part of the real world.

Yes, but we're not aware of that chain. We're aware of things being colored. That chain is something science carefully teased out using properties of wavelength, frequency, molecular surfaces, cones, electrical impulses and neuronal activity. Color only comes into play as the resulting experience of all that for visual perceivers. — Marchesk

A further comment on this is what you mean is we are not "consciously aware" of the underlying chain of causal efficacy. The body (the organism) is aware and we intuitively know contrary to Hume and other skeptics that we are perceiving things in the external world. Without causual efficacy there is no explanation for "experience" whatsoever, it is implied in the very process of perception. Most awareness and experience of the world (by a variety of creatures and systems) is not conscious experience.

Yes, but we're not aware of that chain. We're aware of things being colored. That chain is something science carefully teased out using properties of wavelength, frequency, molecular surfaces, cones, electrical impulses and neuronal activity. Color only comes into play as the resulting experience of all that for visual perceivers. — Marchesk

This is what Whitehead refers to as "the artificial bifurcation of nature". The artificial division of the "world or reality" into so called primary qualities and secondary qualities.

From the SEP Whitehead
. In practice they rely on sense data, but in theory they abstract from most of the data of our five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) to focus on the colorless, soundless, odorless, and tasteless mathematical aspects of nature. Consequently, in a worldview inspired not by the actual practices of physicists, but by their theoretical speculations, nature—methodologically stripped from its ‘tertiary’ qualities (esthetical, ethical, and religious values)—is further reduced to the scientific world of ‘primary’ qualities (mathematical quantities and interconnections such as the amplitude, length, and frequency of mathematical waves), and this scientific world is bifurcated from the world of ‘secondary’ qualities (colors, sounds, smells, etc.). Moreover, the former world is supposed, ultimately, to fully explain the latter world (so that, for example, colors end up as being nothing more than electromagnetic wave-frequencies).
Whitehead spoke of the “bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality” (1920 [1986: 30]) to denote the strategy—originating with Galileo, Descartes, Boyle and Locke—of bifurcating nature into the essential reality of primary qualities and the non-essential reality of “psychic additions” or secondary qualities, ultimately to be explained away in terms of primary qualities. Whitehead sided with Berkeley in arguing that the primary/secondary distinction is not tenable (1920 [1986: 43–44]), that all qualities are “in the same boat, to sink or swim together” (1920 [1986: 148]), and that, for example,
the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon. (1920 [1986: 29])

Sure, when we take into account perceivers being part of the world. The problem is that warmth and redness are not part of the scientific explanations of the world, except as labels for temperature ranges humans typically find warm, or EM wavelengths humans can detect. If we say the world is physical, but physical does not include warmth or redness, then that is a conceptual problem for physicalism. — Marchesk

And this is the so called "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" where mathematical formulas and conceptual abstractions like wavelength and taken to more real than our experiences in and of the world.

From the SEP
Whitehead’s alternative is fighting “the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness”—the “error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete”—because “this fallacy is the occasion of great confusion in philosophy” (1926a [1967: 51]). The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is committed each time abstractions are taken as concrete facts, and “more concrete facts” are expressed “under the guise of very abstract logical constructions” (1926a [1967: 50–51]). This fallacy lies at the root of the modern philosophical confusions of scientific materialism and progressive bifurcation of nature. Indeed, the notion of simple location in Newton’s scientific materialism is an instance of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness—it mistakes the abstraction of in essence unrelated bits of matter as the most concrete reality from which to explain the relatedness of nature. And the bifurcating idea that secondary qualities should be explained in terms of primary qualities is also an instance of this fallacy—it mistakes the mathematical abstractions of physics as the most concrete and so-called primary reality from which to explain the so-called secondary reality of colors, sounds, etc.

The use of these two common fallacies in thought and philosophy results in what Whitehead describes
“The reason for this blindness”, according to Whitehead, “lies in the fact that such science only deals with half of the evidence provided by human experience” (1934 [2011: 66])
Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly. (1926a [1967: 54])

It seems to me that Byrne and Hilbert are unwittingly defending the popular idea that colors are in the brain, by acknowledging them to be perceptual representations of some physical property in the world (productance or reflectance). — Marchesk

It seems to me that color (perception in general) is a process, a verb, not a thing or a noun.
There is a direct chain of causal efficacy involved in the color perception of any species that can perceive that wavelength.
I am not sure the division of properties into primary and secondary has been all that useful to philosophy or for that matter to physics. Most properties are in fact relationships produced by interactions and color in a philosophical sense seems no different. So the warmth or the sun and the redness of the sky are as much properties in the world as our descriptions of wavelength and molecular motion.

That does not seem to help."knows the existence of".
After all, I can just reframe the same questions using "what does it mean to know the existence of".
We overvalue the "conscious" part of our mental activity.
We overvalue being able "to name" things.
True, language is probably responsible for our future planning and abstract mental abilities.
But "aware of" and "experiencing" are pretty widespread,if not ubiquitous, in nature, I would say.
Most human mental functioning and much awareness never enters "our consciousness" as we typically use the term.

Consciousness: the set of things an agent is aware of — Hello Human

What does it mean to be aware of?
Are plants aware of the direction of the sun when they turn to capture its radiant energy?
Are jellyfish aware of currents and water temperature when they advance and withdraw?
Are iron filings aware of the earths magnetic field when they align with its orientation?
Equating "awareness" with "consciousness" creates some confusion in terminology?
What things are "conscious" in your view? Do you really wish to equate "aware" with "conscious"?

What this feeling is precisely is very difficult to resolve. My thinking, very roughly, is that all systems self organize due to this feeling. That all systems self organize suggests they do so for a common reason. This reason might be the integration of the laws of the universe ( anthropic principle ). The laws of the universe in ordered pockets of the universe converge to cause self organization. I believe we may be feeling these converged forces. — Pop

This comment and intuition brings to mind the following passages from Steven Shaviro (after Whitehead) and his conception of "prehension" and "lure for feeling". You may find the below interesting or not but I will post the link and some passages from the longer article for you.
http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Pulse.pdf

According to Alfred North Whitehead, “the basis of experience is emotional”

Every experience of perception involves an “affective tone” (176), and this
tone precedes, and both determines and exceeds, cognition. We do not first per-ceive what is before us, and then respond emotionally to these perceptions. Whitehead
says that the order is rather the reverse. For “the direct information to be derived
from sense-perception wholly concerns the functionings of the animal body”
(215). Perception is first a matter of being-affected bodily. Contact with the outside
world strengthens or weakens the body, stimulates it or inhibits it, furthers or
impairs its various functions. Every perception or prehension thus provokes the
body into “adversion or aversion” – and this is already the “subjective form” of
the prehension (1929/1978, 184). It is only later that (in “high-grade” organisms
such as ourselves, at least) “the qualitative characters of affective tones inherent
in the bodily functionings are transmuted into the characters of regions” in space
(1933/1967, 215), so that sensa can be taken to qualify (or to give us information
about) objects of knowledge in the external world. We respond to things in the
first place by feeling them; it is only afterwards that we identify, and cognize,
what it is we feel.

Whitehead’s account of perception as feeling is a refinement, and an extension, of
William James’ (1983) theory of the emotions. James claims “that we feel sorry
because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that
we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may
be” (1065-1066). Emotions do not cause bodily states; rather, the bodily states
come first, and the emotions arise out of them. Strictly speaking, this is more an
argument about expression than about causality. Our “perception” of an “exciting
fact” takes the form of “bodily changes”; and “our feeling of the same changes as
they occur IS the emotion” (1065). James’ real point is not to reverse the order of
causality, so that (contrary to what we usually think) the bodily state would be the
cause and the metal state the effect. Rather, he asserts the identity of these conditions,
in a radical monism of affect: “whatever moods, affections, and passions I
have are in very truth constituted by, and made up of, those bodily changes which
we ordinarily call their expression or consequence” (1068). There is no separating
body from mind, or the (bodily) expression from what it (mentally) expresses.
Perception is already, immediately,12 action in the form of “bodily changes”; and
the way that I receive a perception, or apprehend its “sensa,” is the way that my
body changes, or has changed. Perception or excitation, action or bodily changes,
and emotion or response, are all one and the same event. It is only in subsequent
reflection that we can separate them from one another (just as, for Whitehead, it isonly in subsequent reflection, and by a process of abstraction, that we can separate
the “subjective form” of a prehension from the datum being prehended, and both
of these from the “actual entity” of which the prehension is a “concrete element”).
James describes emotion as a particular sort of experience. Whitehead radicalizes
this argument, and expands its scope, by describing all experience as emotional.
This includes bare sense-perception; it also includes modes of “experience” that
are not conscious, and not necessarily human. Indeed, Whitehead’s philosophy
“attributes ‘feeling’ throughout the actual world” (1929/1978, 177). For Whitehead,
“feelings” are identical with “positive prehensions” in general, which are
all the ways in which entities interact with one another, or affect one another
(220).13 To feel something means to be affected by that something. And the way
that the feeling entity is affected, or changed, is the very content of what it feels.
Everything that happens in the universe is thus in some sense an episode of feeling:
even the “actual occasions in so-called ‘empty space’ ” discovered by modern
physics (177). Of course, quantum fluctuations in the void do not involve anything
like consciousness or sense-perception. But when we examine these fluctuations,
“the influx of feeling with vague qualitative and ‘vector’ definition is what we
find” (177). Overall, there is “a hierarchy of categories of feeling” (166), from
the “wave-lengths and vibrations” of subatomic physics (163) to the finest subtleties
of human subjective experience. But in every case, phenomena are felt, and
grasped as modes of feeling, before they can be cognized and categorized. In this
way, Whitehead posits feeling as a basic condition of experience, much as Kant
establishes space and time as transcendental conditions of sensibility.

12“Immediately” here means in the same undecomposable present moment. Of course, James
insists that such a “present moment of time,” or what he prefers to call the “specious present,” is
never literally instantaneous, but always possesses a certain thickness of duration (573-574).

Abrahamic religions focus vastly more on having the right thoughts in your brain. — Bylaw

In theory that is true but in practice I am not convinced. The majority of Christians do not understand formal Christian theology very well in my experience. They know the slogans "born again", "Jesus saves", and have some vague notions about "life after death" and "heaven and hell" but their knowledge of official church doctrine or fundamental Christian theology is weak. So for them faith is about community and about belonging to something larger than themselves and their daily life. There is as you say too much emphasis on correct belief or belonging to the right church and not enough on correct action and following the example and teachings of Jesus or other prophets as opposed to paying lip service to the theology and orthodoxy which the Church later imposed.

"Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science." By Alfred North Whitehead.
— prothero

Should it regain its old power? Is it good thing to happen to the world we live in?
Is it possible to achieve? — Corvus

People want to believe in some larger purpose and meaning and I think there are far worse things to believe in (QANON, conspiracy theories) than a religion based on love and compassion, the golden rule and service (feed the hungry, shelter the poor, tend the sick, comfort the afflicted).

I do not think traditional religious dogma is compatible with modern science. I think if religion wishes to survive it must change its conception of “God” and the relationship of “God” to the world (universe).
— prothero

How should the conception of God changed? Can the old traditional religions do that? or do you want to see totally new religions born and manifested with the new concept of God? — Corvus

Well the Catholic Church could start by allowing women to serve in the priesthood, dropping their opposition to family planning and acknowledging the validity of other faiths.
Theologians could drop the God is Omnipotent and release God from being responsible for evil.
We could also drop God as Omniscient and return free will and responsibility to the people.
Yes, I know there are complicated theological arguments for the above.
Creation is an ongoing process not a completed act. Creation is hard work. Creative Advance requires God and man to work together.

‘When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers…The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly. In the official formulation of the religion it has assumed the trivial form of the mere attribution to the Jews that they cherished a misconception about their Messiah. But the deeper idolatry, of fashioning God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.’
Process and Reality 342 Afred North Whitehead

We can make a distinction between "Suffering is evil" and "Making someone suffer unnecessarily is evil". Even as an ardent antinatalist, I don't think parents are being "evil" by having children, even if they know that the result of their action will be some form(s) of suffering for the future child. I am purely using the term as "Suffering is an evil", as it is a negative state which we must endure. — schopenhauer1

This becomes about language. When you say something is evil it (for many anyway) imparts a sense of intention and agency on the part of the cause. We can say floods, hurricanes and disease are evil but it seems to anthropomorphize an agent that is without agency.

1. How have you arrived at your belief that God exists? Was it after some theoretical or logical proofs on God 's existence or some personal religious experience? Or via some other routes?

2. Why do you try to prove God in a theoretical / logical way, when already believing in God's existence? — Corvus

I think the fundamental religious impulse is one about there being an overall purpose and direction for the universe or world as a whole (a teleology), part of the human search for meaning and purpose.
Lots of people function just fine without being concerned about universal meaning; they find meaning closer to home in their work, their relationships, their hobbies, etc. Some people have larger goals, world peace, curing cancer, ending discrimination, stopping climate change or any of numerous worthy goals, pursuits and endeavors.

Lots of individuals think that science has all but destroyed the notion of the universe having any larger purpose and meaning. In ancient times it might have been reasonable to think of the earth as the center of the universe and man as the crown of creation. Copernicus displaced the earth and later astronomers made the earth a small planet orbiting an ordinary star in a universe too vast to comprehend. Darwin and associates made man one creature among many in a natural system where mass extinctions repeatedly happen and Homo sapiens (modern man) is but the sole survivor of several species of hominids who had evolved. Resistance to the implications of these scientific findings and their conflict with literal interpretations of religious texts gives us the Young Earth creationists and anti-evolution, anti-science movements among some adherents to organized and established religion.

"Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science." By Alfred North Whitehead.

I do not think traditional religious dogma is compatible with modern science. I think if religion wishes to survive it must change its conception of “God” and the relationship of “God” to the world (universe).
Despite all this, and despite my education in science, I would still refer to myself as having religious inclinations and consider myself religious in some degree or form.

I do not accept that science dictates that the universe must be accidental, purposeless and without value. Science and evolution certainly change, limit and dictate what any reasonable notions about the divine, the holy or the numinous might be.

When I look at the universe I see immanent principles of order and self-organization, I see “forms most wondrous and beautiful” evolving from primordial chemical soup. I see planets and galaxies and stars forming from clouds of interstellar gas. So I name this self-organizing ordering principle which leads to creativity, experience and aesthetics “God” or the divine. My view of the divine is not anthropomorphic (God is not a person) and I don’t think the divine concerns itself much with human survival or human morality. Some would not even consider this a religious conception and certainly not a traditional conception of God but in philosophy of religion, in Eastern religious traditions and among the process theology school which evolved primarily from Whiteheads process philosophy and chapters on God and the World in Process and Reality, I find some company.

You asked, I answered to the best of my ability.

We don't have a good standard yet for determining what the chemistry of percepts is, but if a quantum theory of perception supplies that, it will be possible to classify exactly how conscious many much simpler species or divergent structural forms are by comparison with humans, just as we use the presence of metabolism, membranes, reproduction etc. to decide whether a creature is living, and of course borderline cases occur. — Enrique

I think experience and consciousness can only be found in the systems and processes where they occur. Sufficiently complex computer neural networks may become indistinguishable from conscious organisms especially if they can alter their own hardware configuration as well. Although reductionist approaches will yield much interesting and useful information, consciousness will not be found at the quantum, atomic, physical, or chemical level, it is found are the level of sufficiently complex organism or systems and the processes which they produce.
Consciousness is a process not an material object..

Prothero, is x conscious if there is something it is like to be x?
Is x conscious if x is capable of experience?

I think neurowhatsits have a lot to say on what we experience, but nothing at all to say on how experience came to be. I just haven't heard anything remotely convincing. — bert1

As one variety of panpsychist to another:
Terminology and use of terminology are an area of both confusion and disagreement.
In general I think overly broad use of the term “consciousness” engenders strong resistance to considering the ideas or metaphysical theory underlying panpsychism.

Most people think of the kind of self- awareness, self-reflection and internal dialogue that we as humans possess when they read, hear or use the term “consciousness”. So panpsychists who go around asserting that “electrons” are conscious engender immediate resistance to their theory and speculative philosophy. Nagel’s “What is it like to be a Bat” introduces the “something it is like to be a bat”, something presumably not captured by any materialist, reductionist scientific explanation, description or investigation. I agree that there are aspects of “being a bat” which will never be captured by external investigation or descriptive language. I am not sure those aspects should be classified as “consciousness” given the way we typically understand or use the term. I do think bats have “experience” and given the presence of a CNS ( a system for unifying and integrating the experience of the organism or system as a whole), bats could be said to have mind.

So for me, primitive (non-conscious) experience is the basis on which all higher forms of mind including consciousness are constructed. These are variations in form and degree but not in metaphysical kind.
It roughly goes experience, then minds , then consciousness in the evolutionary history of mind in nature.

Are electrons conscious? I would say no but they have a primitive form of experience (Whitehead’s prehension) which ties them to the future (possibilities), to the past (continuity) and to the external world around them (observers or interactions). Thus I am a panexperientialist (a particular form of panpsychist). The scientific explanation of an electron no more captures its inner realities or aspects than does the scientific description of a bat capture the inner reality of "being a bat"

Are rocks conscious or do they have minds? No, rocks are simple aggregates or composites which do not have structures to unify or integrate the experience of their more primitive elements or units. It should be remembered the most primitive elements or units of reality are quantum events which are fluctuations in the quantum field of space time. I could go on but there is no point because we probably became separated somewhere long ago in our use of language and our metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality.

I'm not saying everything the brain does is consciously aware, and that's why my view is panprotopsychism. But I do regard consciousness as relatively fundamental. How frequently during the day are you unconscious yet functional? Probably only while in certain sleep stages, and it is a very constrained functionality. — Enrique

Do you distinguish between experience, mind, awareness and consciousness? How do you define consciousness, because definitions become important and these terms are bandied about like synonyms. Human consciousness must have its evolutionary antecedents and thus there are varying degrees of mind and experience throughout nature. All may have the same ontologic or metaphysical source which is where speculative metaphysics may come in. However,, any speculative metaphysics which ignores or contradicts the recent findings in evolutionary biology and corresponding interspecies neuroscience is I suspect heading in entirely the wrong direction.

Animals can be cold, hungry, in pain, jealous, etc. Perhaps it is not so much that animals do not suffer as that they suffer in silence. I agree that animals are much more in the present moment than humans but perhaps we would do much better to emulate that in so far as possible. Some humans seem much better at that than others, intellectuals seem particularly poor at it.

it seems a high price to pay to preserve determinism.