@WayfarerGreat post. Not as uplifting as some would've hoped or liked. Thank you for your time.

I was driving through the city just a few moments ago and saw this young lad with a jacket that read "STYLE" and this seems to be right word for the occasion. After all, as Thomas Kuhn believed, there's "normal science" and "paradigm shifts" to consider and he thought of the latter as changes in fashion (style).

I suppose what this calls for is an appreciation on our (me included) part for the marvel of "normal science" the Perseverance Rover is. It seems I've been rather preoccupied by "paradigm shifts" to notice that.

Science is a series of exercises in imitation (normal science) punctuated by changes in fashion (revolutions) — Anonymous

Actually I didn’t post this for a philosophical debate, really - my bad. — Wayfarer

My humble apologies.

Especially considering if something goes wrong out there, there’s no roadside assistance - there’s your 10 billion dollars gone. It has to work, and when you look at what it has to execute, it’s awe inspiring. — Wayfarer

Indeed! The everything went off smoothly without a glitch is a testament to the Perseverance Rover's team's mastery of the ins and outs of technology.

That said, not to burst your bubble here, "all that's required" as far as I can tell is simple number crunching which even a highschool grad can do given the right set of formulae which are probably three centuries old (Newtonian mechanics). That's a bit of a reality check for people, me included, who feel that there's something wondrous going on with any of these highly-publicized space launches. But of course credit must be given where it's due. Great Work Perseverance Rover Team!!! Keep up the good work!

As far as the East v West dichotomy goes, I know I’m one of the kind of eastern-oriented people here, but when it comes to this kind of tech, the West has it all hands-down, no contest. Where I really think the archetypal ‘east’ has a contribution, is in helping developing a philosophy which is NOT based on endless growth, expansion and acquisition. In other words, to make a value proposition out of renunciation, to develop a lifestyle and economic philosophy which provides a real alternative to endless stimulation. They should have some chops there, right? But western techne is an indispensable resource in our day, it’s gotten us into this mess and it has to help find the way out, which I’m sure it will. — Wayfarer

I was just referring to the celebratory mood such technological feats puts us into and how it might overshadow, at our peril, to our disadvantage, an equally great but inverted affect that seems to be in order as there never has been an equivalent project, not even on paper, for what I've referring to as "inner space" which quite fortunately you seem to get.

That said, I’m a space travel sceptic — Wayfarer

What I said above should find a home in that sentiment then.

A term invented after the fact for an approach to philosophy that began with critiques of the obscure language of the Hegelian thinking of the 19th Century and the discursive narratives that it produced, seeking a return to analysis. The critics held that philosophy should focus on being clear and coherent. There were two threads to the linguistic turn. One was formal, seeking to use the newly developed logic of propositional calculus to set philosophical issues out clearly. The other used natural languages such as English, seeking to clarify issues of ambiguity by an analysis of the complexity of words.

It's roughly congruent with analytic philosophy. — Banno

:ok:

There seems to be something going on between language and logic. As far as I can tell each is a system in its own right and how can I tell that's the case? Well, I can easily come up with an illogical sentence e.g. C = "I'm a man and I'm not a man" - there's nothing linguistically incorrect about sentence C but logically, it's a cardinal sin. But, what is correct about sentence C and what is incorrect about sentence C? Well, C is syntactically and semantically correct but logically, because sentence C's a contradiction, it's a big no-no. In fact it can be said that language is wholly about syntax and semantics and logic is about semantic relationships. I suppose an entirely new set of conditions apply when language is employed in logic as logic deals with semantic relationships, an entirely different ballgame, instead of plain old syntax and semantics.

Philosophy then with its intimate ties to logic must perforce demand clarity, coherence, avoidance of ambiguity, etc. for these invariably cause problems in working out semantic relationships which is just a fancy way of saying how propositions relate to each other, the crux of arguments, the lifeblood of philosophy.

I'm sure you're in the know about what I'm about to say but I'll say it any way if only to stimulate some discussion.

The east-west dichotomy of thought can be roughly summarized as introvered (looking within) and extroverted (looking without) if one ignores some inconsistencies here and there.

The Perseverance Rover is at the bleeding edge of the world's technological capabilities and is the newest representative of the West's extroverted personality. I don't mean to denigrate the West's approach to reality of course as the results (overall improvement in the human condition even if for some it's only in the short-term) seem to be particularly relevant to the East's introverted tendencies. After all, some level of physical comfort is sine qua non for the mind to do its thing.

In stark contrast, the East's interest in the "inner wolrd" has, over the centuries, waned and is, as of this moment, either merely repetitive or is entirely nonexistent. In other words there is no Perseverance Rover counterpart that's been launched into "innerspace".

It looks like the East has given up its introverted nature and is now in the process of copying a Western mindset. This is a shame because as we all know "innerspace" is as mysterious and unexplored as is outerspace and should deserve at the very least equal if not more attention.

That said, I do feel some degree of optimism with the way things are going because it seems possible that answers to questions about ourselves maybe found in the world beyond ourselves and vice versa. Despite clear evidence of neglect and abandonment of the Eastern way of thinking, I anticipate that just as if we travel east far enough we end up in the west and conversely if we travel west long enough we end up in the east, the two different ways of coming at the world will reveal each other's deepest secrets.

I did mention that:

life, even the very simplest forms of life, seem to possess an intentional aim, namely, to survive and propagate
— Wayfarer

But do read the passage I quoted from Barbieri again, he makes a great point about the ontological distinction between life and non-life, in scientific terms. — Wayfarer

:ok: You seem to have your hands full. I'll get back to you later when it gets a little quieter. G'day.

Yes, even better stated. — Amalac

:ok: Thanks for the thread but I feel something's off somehow, somewhere.

then non-existence is a perfection, and in the subject of said perfection said attribute must be expressed without any limits, which would imply that not only does it not exist outside of the mind, but neither does it exist as an idea in the mind. Therefore God does not exist as an idea in the mind. But God does exist as an idea in the mind, therefore the assumption that the subject of all perfections has the perfection of not-existing led us to a contradiction. — Amalac

For my money, everything rides on this part of the argument. It's necessary that the greatest being conceivable but nonexistent should lead to a contradiction forcing us to accept that the greatest being conceivable is one that exists.

1. Either nonexistence is a mark of greatness OR Existence is a mark of greatness [premise]

2. Nonexistence is a mark of greatness [assumption]

3. If nonexistence is a mark of greatness then the greatest being cannot exist in any way possible [premise]

Ergo,

4. The greatest being cannot exist in any way possible [2, 3, Modus ponens]

5. God is the greatest being [definition]

6. God cannot exist in any way possible [4, 5 Substitution: The greatest being = God]

7. If God cannot exist in any way possible then God cannot exist as an idea

Ergo,

8. God cannot exist as an idea [6, 7 Modus ponens]

9. God exists as an idea [premise]

10. God cannot exist as an idea AND God exists as an idea [8, 9 Conjunction, contradiction]

11. False that nonexistence is a mark of greatness [2 to 10 Reductio Ad Absurdum]

12. Existence is a mark of greatness [1, 11 Disjunctive syllogism]

13. If existence is a mark of greatness then the greatest being must exist [premise]

Ergo,

14. The greatest being exists [12, 13 Modus ponens]

14. God exists [5, 14 Substitution: The greatest being = God]

Am I on the right track?

del

It's one of those questions, like, 'what is the nature of time', which seems obvious until you try and answer it. I mentioned a NY Times article on the Corona Virus which points out how difficult it is to define the difference precisely. If all those white coats can't work it out, buggered if I will be able to.

Philosophically, I claim an ontological distinction can be discerned between mineral, plant, animal, and rational beings. That harks back to the 'great chain of being' which is not favoured by modern thinking.

But there is some support for at least the first distinction in current science:

Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern [evolutionary] synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of biological thought, p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’

The idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’ implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry, but can we prove it? Perhaps the strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey, one of the organizers of the first congress dedicated to the introduction of Shannon's information in biology. In a long series of articles and books, Yockey has underlined that heredity is transmitted by factors that are ‘segregated, linear and digital’ whereas the compounds of chemistry are ‘blended, three-dimensional and analogue’.

Yockey underlined that: ‘Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message … There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences’ p. 105.

Yockey has tirelessly pointed out that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world of life, and concluded from this that the origin of life cannot have been the result of chemical evolution. This is therefore, according to Yockey, what divides life from matter: information is ontologically different from chemistry because linear and digital sequences cannot be generated by the analogue reactions of chemistry.

At this point, one would expect to hear from Yockey how did linear and digital sequences appear on Earth, but he did not face that issue. He claimed instead that the origin of life is unknowable, in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecidable.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2015.0060 — Wayfarer

Now I feel bad that I threw a difficult question at you. Anyway, it was worth getting your opinion on the matter.

How about this: Since defining life reductively as a chemical process or even in terms of physics is problematic and other approaches to life are equally unsatisfactory, isn't it worth exploring other alternatives?

For instance, life could be defined in terms of intent - that's the closest concept to what I have in mind. All life seems to exhibit intent, living organisms seem to want to do something as opposed to following the normal course of events either chemically or in a physics sense. What I'm getting at is in some sense encapsulated in the expression "a life of its own."

This is only an attempt at a sensible definition of life and, for better or worse, it doesn't seem possible to reduce this notion of life to chemistry or physics.

I second your view on how there's a enormous gulf between the inanimate and the animate and that our attempt to explain the latter in terms of our knowledge of the former is at best confusion and at worst a delusion.

I like to look at reality as a staircase rather than a ramp. Like a staircase there are "jumps" in the nature of phenomena instead of smooth progressions like on a ramp. I've identified two such "jumps: 1. inanimate to animate and 2. non-human life to humans. The first "jump" is what's been troubling biologists all this time and needs no introduction. The second jump too is well-known and it was recognized very early on in human history as by the likes of Aristotle who defined humans as rational animals.

I say all this only from what I can intuit from my general knowledge which sadly ain't that much. A question to you: what exactly is the difference between the living and the non-living? When I ask this question to myself I draw a blank - nothing springs to mind as if I don't really know the difference between the inanimate and the animate. It seems I'm not alone in this though as the question "what is life?" posed to biologists elicits responses that are marked by an equal degree of ignorance and that's ironic since they've constructed a whole corpus of knowledge which they claim is about life. Perhaps, as it appears to be, we know what life isn't but are uncertain of what life is. That should be good enough for government work.

The next thing I want discuss is what you've labeled as "experience". All I can comment is that the way the non-living and the living encounter the world should be different, that difference being a correlate of the presence/absence of a "life force" if I may be allowed some leeway here to use that phrase.

This difference is, at the human scale, what the hard problem of consciousness is all about. Am I right to interpret your beliefs in this way or am I barking up the wrong tree?

By the way...what is the linguistic turn? :chin:

I thought we were discussing philosophy and its "...failure to create a better world..."

Another point worth mentioning is philosophy is left with the really difficult problems that other formal disciplines can't handle or won't touch with a barge pole in a manner of speaking and creating "...a better world..." features in the top 3 of world's currently unsolved problems. My suggestion, for what it's worth, is to announce a million dollar cash prize for anyone who can tackle this problem. I'm fairly confident that should get people's, philosophers' juices flowing. Why hasn't somebody already thought of this?

all Libet's experiments teach us. — Bartricks

I must disagree. The point of Libet's little experiment is to demonstrate an, here physical, event that has bearing on free will, happens before the relevant intention forms. This would blow the notion of free will out of the water as there's a causally relevant brain activity that precedes the formation of intent. After all, if my intention to do something is not the first in the chain of events that lead up to my doing that thing then my intention is not the point of origin for not only that particular action but possibly everything else I do. All that sums up to no free will.

Democritus et al did not conceive of atoms as 'grains of stuff' ... but rather merely as indivisible 0-d point-particles. — 180 Proof

How could nothing (0/zero) add up to something?

I've generally not seen theism as providing ethics or moral thinking at all but it does have commandments or codes of conduct, which are vastly different and no more than traffic lights to obey. — Tom Storm

Nicely worded.

For

I wish that were true. — Tom Storm

to muse over.

which accusation exactly are you referring to? — TaySan

No accusations were made...I was spewing nonsense.

Let's discuss "philosophy has failed to create a better world"

First off, science is a rather ungrateful child of philosophy. I just got a call from my mother and something clicked. If some scientists are to be believed philosophy is now either obsolete or if not has no business in scientific affairs. It appears that the child (science) would like nothing better than cut itself loose from its parent (philosophy) and take all the credit for stuff like being the mitigating force in the current global pandemic without mentioning, even in passing, its origins in philosophy. What do you make of that?

Think of it, the Bible touches upon subjects as mutually exclusive, apparently, as sexuality and cosmology; that, if anything, suggests that the authors of the Bible intended to have a finger in every pie so to speak. The idea was to present some unified understanding of the world as was then and even beyond, I definitely see an attempt to "...reach for the stars..." In other words, there's room in the Bible for an interpretation that it's purpose was, no matter how flawed, to offer a theory of everything. Morality was/is, can be thought of as, just a chapter in that book. A similar argument may apply to other holy books except, intriguingly, Buddhist ones.

A good government is one that imitates/mimics anarchy to a T if possible.

There are two things to consider here. One is genius as measured with an intelligence test and genius in terms of a person's usually groundbreaking work. The two don't seem to correlate as expected or hoped for and the belief or claim that "genius is a myth" lives somewhere in between these two measures, one formal and the other casual, of genius.

In short we have to make up our minds whether we want to put stock in IQ tests or performance in real life and stick to whichever of the two makes more sense. To not do so would be like measuring in inches and reporting the result centimeters.

As per Cartesian skepticism, the only thing we can be certain of is our mind, the rest, the physical world included, could be nothing more than an illusion. How does physicalism or materialism respond to that?

The bottom line is that we're more confident of a mind than a body. That should mean something.

I wish that were true. — Tom Storm

Speaking relatively of course. Requesting for a charitable interpretation of my words.

An intriguing fact that Libet needs to consider is that in all cases we feel the intent preceding the act i.e. even for the subject in his experiment it must be true, when asked, that the subject will report that, as far as fae was aware, fae first intended to flex faer hand and only then did fae move faer hand.

The experiment's findings contradict the universal experience of intents preceding acts.

Something's wrong. Any ideas?

We could set up an experiment in such a way that the subject tells us when an intent forms and we record when the act intended is performed. I'm certain that in this case intentions will precede the actions intended which is exactly how we feel/know the whole business of intent-action plays out.

Perhaps Libet shouldn't just stop at recording brain activity before the subject offers to reveal that fae has formed an intent but also check what the instrument registers after the subject reports an intent has formed and during the actual act of what was intended. The brain scans or whatever method Libet's using to keep track of brain activity should hold a clue to solving this mystery, no?

Do you suppose that the Abrahmic religions are not about morality and are about something else entirely and we've completely missed the point of these faiths. I'm considering the possibility of morality being only incidental, a side show of sorts, for these religions and the real message is something else.

We've, for reasons such as our own plight in a universe that's indifferent to the misery of our condition, latched onto moral aspect of these religions and failed to see the real import contained therein.

That description just assumes that the mind is the brain and that mental events are brain events.

What is recorded is a brain event. — Bartricks

We don't have a choice or, more accurately, it doesn't help the case for free will based on dualism for the simple reason that brain activity precedes thoughts and causality as it's understood leaves no room for thoughts causing brain activity which would've been the preferred outcome of Libet's experiment for free will proponents who want to argue from dualism.

You've lost me a bit with that (rhetorical) non sequitur, but ok. To be continued whenever. — 180 Proof

It's not a non sequitur. There's little to disagree on when it comes to the matter of the prophets of the Abrahamic triad being pioneers in ethics in re the existing moral paradigms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That can't be denied unless these three religions are not about morality (something worth exploring) or that Moses has nothing to do with Judaism, Jesus has nothing to do with Christianity, and that Mohammed has nothing to do with Islam.

So, what we have here are basically two events:

1. R = The brain recording of an intent (to flex a hand) as observed by the experimenter

2. I = The intent (to flex a hand) as reported to the experimenter

R precedes I and so, the experimenter concludes, we lack free will because brain activity to perform a certain act occurs before the intent to perform that act. So, for example. my brain initiates the action to eat a banana much before I intend to eat one.

I suppose the free will wouldn't have been subverted if it had been the other way round - I intend to do something and only after that the instruments register brain activity correlated with whatever that something is that I intend to do.

Two important aspects to the problem:

3. The time delay between recorded brain activity of a particular action (R) and the intention to perform that action (I)

4. The temporal sequence between recorded brain activity of a particular action (R) and the intention to perform that action (I).

Well, from 3, it's clear that time is of the utmost importance and the experimenter has to make sure that errors don't creep in from, say, nerve conduction speeds/time. For instance, how does the subject of the experiment report faer intention to do something? Does fae have to press a button or does have to say it out loud? Do the neural pathways involved in this part of the experiment require a duration of time that matches the time lag between R and I?

What's interesting though is that 4, R precedes I, and that's what we should expect if neural signals take time to do whatever it is that they do - there should be a gap between brain activity and whatever it is that that brain activity is about.

If you ask me, there's an issue/a problem with that approach - the one where we look for a "cell" - because such a project functions under the assumption that cells are the basic, fundamental, units of life. Of course it's true that current biology makes that claim, the claim that cells are the building blocks of life but one could, without sounding crazy, question that assumption/claim.

Think of it, how convenient and thus unlikely that life should give up its secrets - what it actually is - to a man/woman with just a simple microscope? Cells are microscopic features of living organisms and though they do appear roughly brick-like as if living organisms are like houses built of them, I still question the conclusion that cells are, well, it!

To illustrate my point I offer an analogy and I suppose it'll fulfill its purpose of getting the message across. If you look at the biosphere, most of the action - life - takes place at the boundary between air and the earth i.e. life seems to like the interface between the atmosphere and the lithosphere. The air itself and the ground itself are relatively lifeless. Likewise, I imagine life to be that which is between cells, where cell membranes or cell walls meet and definitely not inside of cells. It's a kinda Buddhist take on biology - we feel a cup is the empty space but the actual "stuff" is the wall of material that surrounds the space. :joke:

First and foremost, a particle is an idea, the idea that matter is composed of tiny allegedly indivisible units. This idea is ancient and harks back to the laughing philospher Democritus who named them atoms.

The atomic theory was revived sometime in the 18th to 19th century by figures such as John Dalton and then by Neils Bohr et al. The theory fit observation and experiment to a T except, if memory serves, for some discrepancies that scientists seem to have swept under the rug (I'm unsure how far this is true though).

Anyway, what bears mentioning is that up until a certain point, particles or atoms were conceived of in a non-mathematical way. The first thing to cross our minds when we hear "atom" is our solar system - the nucleus (sun) in the center and electrons (planets) in orbit.

What followed next was quantum physics and, I'm only guessing here, it opened up the possibility of a mathematical formulation of particles/atoms and, as you already seem to know, what came out of it was that particles are actually waves. In other words, for/in mathematics of quantum mechanics, particles/atoms are/appear as waves.

The accusation would be meaningful only if it were true that philosophy - its core lessons - were as commonplace as the TV - to be found, without exception, in every home save in the huts and shacks of the poorest of the poor. It's ironic that this is the way things are because I recall watching what is probably a TV series that TV and its ilk are the modern version of Plato's cave.

what comes after the linguistic turn? — Shawn

The linguistic turn isn't over to my knowledge. Perhaps a transformation it underwent in recent years makes you think that way - it may have changed so much that it has become unrecognizable. The importance of language can't be overstated for the simple reason that it constitutes the very thing philosophy deals with - thoughts. My hunch is language has its own structure, rules, idiosyncracies. limits and these will, if I'm anywhere near the ballpark, turn out to be of utmost significance wherever, whenever, we employ language and that's literally everywhere and every time. In short, language has its own thing going on and that will, in all likelihood, matter to philosophy. Think of it, a certain tool has its own peculiarities that make it perfect for a certain task and hopeless for another. It takes great ingenuity, as many great thinkers have amply demonstrated, to use a tool for a task it isn't designed for.

While I think @fishfry's answer is the best I wonder whether "may include" has an independent logical meaning that would require separate consideration. Look at the argument below:

1. The choices may include Hitchens' razor
2. If the choices may include Hitchens' razor then the panel may include an Imam
Ergo,
3. The panel may include and Imam

As far as I can tell, the phrase "may include" has no logical significance, at least in the argument as I crafted it above.

Well, that music and suffering are connected at a deeper level seems, from my musings for what they're worth, plausible. Joy, in my humble opinion, is too complete a state of being to require reinforcements - it would be gilding the lily in a manner of speaking.

Sorrow, on the other hand, needs a helping hand, it cries out for help and music, the right kind, does, in a way, soften the blow.

ok but why? — 180 Proof

This, my friend, is the right question. Morality doesn't make sense even for the best philosophers as you must already know.

Let's get the facts straight. We know, almost to the point of certainty, what to do and what not to do. The evidence for that comes from ubiquitous moral codes we have at our disposal even though we seem rather reluctant in following them and this reluctance which sometimes takes the form of open rebellion if I may describe it as such is telling. For my money, such a state of affairs comes about for the simple reason that we have no good answer to your/the question, "ok but why?"

This is not to say that people haven't tried answering that question. However, for mutliple reasons the answers have failed to do their job. This, I suppose, means something too but from where I stand it looks like we're going to open up a can of worms and I, for one, am not in the mood for helminths at the moment.

That's about all I'm willing to say at this moment. Have a good day. I'll get back to you when I can, if I can.

No. I'm resistant to your claim, Fool, because (a) it's incoherent and (b) is inconsistent with the mediocrity principle without sufficient warrant.

Thus, even if it's true that "The Bible fails egregiously in terms of moral values" it mustn't be forgotten that it counts as one of the first steps made by humanity into the world of morality/ethics ...
So what? Astrology was "one of the first" attempts to explain the world in terms of the wider, encompassing cosmos. Nonetheless it's useless for scientific or ethical inquiry. Like biblical religion.

The story I prefer to tell myself is one of metacultural development from mythos (infancy) to logos (adolescence) to ethos (adulthood) to philosophos (maturity) ... such that biblical religion aka "divine, or sovereign, right" is nothing but atavistic, infantilizing, (therefore eusocially effective at religare) mythology. Doesn't ethics as a secular discourse begin with the dialectic of mythos & logos, or the latter as critique-epochē of the former? — 180 Proof

I'm simply pointing out that the the beginning of anything, including ethics, will consist of missteps, faltering, stumbling, fumbling, teetering and tottering and this rather colorful description fits religion like a glove does it not? Doesn't religion look like a clumsy attempt at ethical philosophy? It does to me and so there's nothing surprising let alone shocking or appalling about the results - a poor performance on the part of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, was simply unavoidable and the reasons for that could be that they, in a way, themselves stumbled upon the subject of ethics and they had nothing to go on but their intuitions - philosophizing was never a part of their world so, couldn't be brought to bear on what were probably simple gut-instincts on ethics.

The bible fails egregiously in terms of moral values. Within its books ethnic cleansing, genocide, patriarchy-misogyny-marital rape, homophobia, slavery, authoritarianism, self-abnegation, poverty-masochism, neurotic guilt, superstition, scapegoating (purgitive lynching), vicarious redemption via human sacrifice, denialism, etc are advocated and even in some cases ritually memorialized. Bronze Age barbarism co-opted by – transfigured into – Iron Age statecraft. — 180 Proof

This is what I meant by how Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed were limited by extant social, cultural, political paradigms. They all had a vision of greatness - a being/state of perfection which they called Yahweh, God, Allah - but this idea of greatness was, in a way, severely constrained by the environment in which it was born.

It's quite apparent, if one gives it some thought, that religion was/is a reaction to the familiar misery of human existence - all the myriad ways in which we could be and were/are inconsiderate, selfish, greedy, hateful, etc., in short evil/bad - and what is really depressing about it all is that all these alleged prophets ended up endorsing the very practices (your list above) that they should've been condemning.

At this point what I'd like to do is offer a suggestion; don't take it as an indictment of religion itself but as an unsurprising case of man's imperfect nature. We can't throw out a good idea just because the person who thought of it wasn't, and the people who adopted it weren't, perfect exemplars of whatever that idea is.

My take on religion, at least in the way it's presented in the preceding paragraphs, seems to hint at, if not openly assert that, religion is man-made. What else explains the many flaws, suspiciously human-like, that litter the theological landscape? However, for me, even if I'm severely rebuked for it, the very fact that someone, that too in the bronze age during which people probably had other pressing matters to deal with, took the pains to think of a ethics/morality, its complexities notwithstanding, redeems all the flaws religions suffers from. It's a feat as miraculous as a blind man acquiring the power of sight.

Thus, even if it's true that "The Bible fails egregiously in terms of moral values" it mustn't be forgotten that it counts as one of the first steps made by humanity into the world of morality/ethics and that being so, mistakes should be the norm rather than the exception. The Bible means something - it's a record of the pioneers of morality - and for that it must be given its due recognition/respect/admiration.

Agreed.

And yeah, I subscribe to absurdism (Zapffe/Camus) with respect to moral judgment, though the 'genealogy' of my ethical naturalism (e.g. Spinoza, Peirce-Dewey, Philippa Foot) begins with epicureanism and then extends through spinozism with refining detours through humeanism, nietzscheanism & pragmaticism. Immanence sans transcendence (i.e. cranes, not sky-hooks). Moses & Jesus, Plato & Augustine have nothing to teach that isn't 'otherworldly' (i.e. nihil as per F.N.), or, as Dennett might say a 'sky-hook' for tyrants and other (malignant, bad faith) fantasties. — 180 Proof

Bravo!

... we - humans - are the ethical foundation of the universe.
I'm not gonna leap off that faith-heap with you, Fool. Not only doesn't this statement follow from your naturalist observations, but Nature, of which we're a part, long precedes and far exceeds 'human existence' so much so that saying we're it's "foundation" (of any kind) is like saying birds gliding on the wind are the aerodynamic foundation of the sky or mating fish are the procreative foundation of the sea. :sweat: This 'immanent sky-hook' you're desperately grasping at, Mad Fool, is oxymoronic and anachronistically violates the mediocrity principle. — 180 Proof

I don't see the point of denying an obvious fact - morality was born in the human mind, perhaps heart is a better word. Before humanity entered the world stage good and bad didn't exist. Nature, as we know it, is red in tooth and claw, the law of the jungle is a no-holds-barred fight to the death. In other words, like it or not, we, humans, are the foundation of morality, we're the representatives of good in the world, we're the source of goodness, we're the torchbearers who bring or, more accurately, are supposed to bring light into an otherwise dark universe.

Perhaps your resistance to the idea that humans are the foundation of morality arises from the fact that humans, despite how I've presented them above, are also the worst offenders - no other living organism can be attributed with as much needless violence and cruelty than humans. I have no choice but to accept this of course but at the same time you'll have to concede the fact that no other living organism has a sense of right and wrong, the so-called moral compass is distinctly human. Thus, drawing from the latter half of the preceding sentence, I take the position that humans are the foundation of morality, we are the moral face of the universe.

Politics and religion, the nexus between them, is not what I want to discuss. What I want for you to do, if you feel yourself up to it, is give your views regarding what I said about how the Bible could be a sincere attempt to ground a simple ethical insight as embodied in the golden rule in that which elicits in us a "...sense of awe and wonder..." If memory serves you subscribe to a view that considers the universe to be disappointingly indifferent to our plight which means that the Bible's failure was a foregone conclusion - there's nothing about the universe that hints at the existence of a moral dimension to it.

That said, take into account a simple fact - we, humans, are a part of the universe, and morality/ethics matters to us and ergo, the universe has, through us, an ethical side to it. In other words, the search for a foundation for ethics/morality begins from our doorsteps and terminates at that very spot; we - humans - are the ethical foundation of the universe. In a sense then though our "...sense of awe and wonder..." is directed outwards, to things external to us, what actually is most awesome and wonderful is that very thing that experiences the "...sense of awe and wonder..." We need to look inwards, the answer is, in a way, the question.

Why do you say this? How do you know? Whether the "Ten Commandments" at Mt. Sinai or "Nicene Creed" at the Council of Nicea, those scriptural religions were templates for social-political organization. (Islam even more explicitly political and martial from the start, btw.) I'm not talking about minor eccentric cults but organized systems of worship-control (re: sacrificing & scapegoating). Remember that the Catholic Church produced its bible & creed tailored (in part) to the requirements of Caesar – power before dogma – not the other way around — 180 Proof

From what I can gather, it looks like people were fed up, exasperated as it were, by the continual appearance of tyrants, bigots and despots in the political arena and a few of them decided enough was enough and invented a system - religion - with an ethical theme as a counterweight to unlimited power in the hands of man and what it can do. To achieve this, power wasn't taken out of the equation but rather transferred from man to a celestial being, god. I know not why? Perhaps power is one of those things that fall into the category of necessary evils; suffice it to say that the founders of theistic religions wedded power and goodness in god as a failsafe against tyranny, despotism, and bigotry. The irony then is that in exchange for an assurance against human dictatorships, we accepted a celestial one with god as paramount leader.

The late Christopher Hitchens would've approved.

All that you mention - the politicizing of religion - came much later, after religion was an entity in its own right. Of course, given how useful it is as a means of control, rulers and regimes were quick to associate themselves with the divine - the marriage of religion and politics was inevitable, the two were, in a way, made for each other. But, we digress...

I seem to have trouble finding the proper descriptive word for the non-ethical side of faith that I referred to. All I can say at the moment is that it's the ineffable aspect of reality, the one thing scientists like Richard Dawkins and religious hardliners alike see eye to eye on viz. that there's something about the universe that evokes in us, as many know it, "...a sense of awe and wonder..."

And so ... ? — 180 Proof

It just seems so out of character for a book compiler even at that time to include in a tome mutually contradictory accounts, beliefs, positions, whatnot unless there existed a very good reason for what is, any way you look at it, a very confused book (I'm talking about the Bible). We have a problem - the good book is in chaos. We have a conclusion - the good book is false. I proffer an explanation - they were tackling a problem that leaves even the greatest minds speechless viz. the profound mystery that the universe is.

And so ... ? — 180 Proof

You need to take it from there. Where does the trail end?