I have a lot of respect for that thought process - where most people just accept those biases they inheret, *not everyone does*. — flannel jesus

Having come from a family of apostates I am well familiar with this phenomenon. But I still think that when people leave religions, it is just as likely because religions fails to satisfy them emotionally first. I think the reasoning comes post hoc. My Dad, who left the church in 1937, put it like this - 'I wasn't satisfied by any of the stories anymore. Then I looked into the arguments and found I wasn't the only one. Then I left.'

There are arguments against naturalism from perspectives other than the theistic. But from a theistic perspective the problem with this argument is that it makes of God one being among others, an explanatory catch-all that is invoked to account for purported gaps in naturalism. In other words, it starts with a naturalist conception of God which is erroneous in principle. Quite why that is then turns out to be impossible to explain, because any argument is viewed through that perspective, for example by the demand for empirical evidence for the transcendent. I think the proper theist response is not to try prove that God is something that exists, but is the ground or cause of anything that exists. That is not an empirical argument. — Wayfarer

Nicely put. I think that's a fair response to the argument from a more sophisticated theistic perspective. David Bentley Hart explores this in his essay, 'God, Gods and Fairies'.

To speak of “God” properly—in a way, that is, consonant with the teachings of orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Bahá’í, much of antique paganism, and so forth—is to speak of the one infinite ground of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.

God so understood is neither some particular thing posed over against the created universe, in addition to it, nor is he the universe itself. He is not a being, at least not in the way that a tree, a clock, or a god is; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are. He is the infinite wellspring of all that is, in whom all things live and move and have their being. He may be said to be “beyond being,” if by “being” one means the totality of finite things, but also may be called “being itself,” in that he is the inexhaustible source of all reality, the absolute upon which the contingent is always utterly dependent, the unity underlying all things.

Imagine a person who values truth, logic and reason. Imagine this person believes the best way to have true beliefs is by applying logic and reason to the things that he may read, hear, see or otherwise experience. — flannel jesus

Most people self-describe in this way. I was just talking to a man who said precisely this and that this is why is is a Muslim. Reason demonstrates the Koran is true. Which is obviously not the case.

Now imagine, unbeknownst to this person, that he's actually *bad* at applying reason and logic to things. Perhaps this person has a really poor intuition for logic. — flannel jesus

I suspect most of us are bad at this. We have 'reasons' for everything but I'm not sure how rational our thinking is.

And then, suppose he does come to understand that he's bad at reasoning - what then? If he still cares about the truth, but he has come to accept that his tools for discovering or filtering truths are compromised, what should he do? — flannel jesus

I'm not sure many of us are overly concerned about truth. In relation to what? Speaking personally, I navigate my world through intuition and experince rather than logic. There are a few subjects where I will employ reasoning per say, but generally this comes post hoc if I am pushed. We are emotional creatures who inherit most of our beliefs and capacities from the culture we are reared in. Post hoc justification is a wonderful thing.

Remember the gospels are anonymous accounts, written many years, in some cases many decades after the supposed events. Most reputable biblical scholars today would say that the stories in the NT were likely inspired by someone, perhaps more than one person. Myths are often inspired by actual people.

Of course, there is no shortage of similar miracle stories even today. Sathya Sai Baba (who died in 2011) to name one, healed the sick (cured cancer, etc) raised the dead, he materialized gold and jewelry for followers. Indeed some followers even now are awaiting his resurrection. You can talk to scores, thousands of first hand eyewitnesses to Sai Baba’s miracles.

I understand there are no contemporary extrabiblical eyewitness accounts of Jesus. Some writers like Josephus writing 60 years later, references the belief and it's origins story. This is not evidence of Jesus himself or any events described. There is also scholarship to say the Jesus reference in Josephus was put in later by others.

Whether people were willing to be martyred for their beliefs (and many of these stories are unlikely to be true) is irrelevant to the truth of those beliefs. Suicide bombers and martyrs to religious or political causes are not uncommon. Hinduism. Buddhism and Islam all have martyrs. So? People do astonishing things for belief, whether true or not. Note also that the early church probably fabricated martyr stories. Candida Moss, a Christian scholar, writes about this in The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

CS Lewis said that the options one had for one's conception of Jesus were "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord". I believe there is a 4th option, which I have described here. It is "Misunderstood." — Brendan Golledge

Most people I have heard address Lewis go with ‘Myth’ as the fourth option. Given we know virtually nothing about whoever the real person behind the Jesus stories might have been, we can't claim to know enough to offer liar, lunatic or lord. I do think myth covers off on this one pretty well.

Would you still take the pill when you're together? — Vera Mont

Yes, we often joke about what a drag having to rustle up a lunch is. I can see us popping a pill in the car together then going about our business without the need to disrupt our activities with a sit down meal. Wonderful.

How about family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas, or social events, like weddings and charity fund-raisers? Or just plain dinner parties with friends and colleagues? So many human bonding rituals are centered on the sharing of food. — Vera Mont

Well, I am a little different to some people. I don't generally attend parties or dinners. Last dinner party I went to took place years ago. But I do sometimes go out to a restaurant with a friend. I have already written that I would reserve eating for the occasional 'recreational' meal. So if I wanted to celebrate something with good food, I would happily eat then.

Medication is necessary, but I don't think we could make a daily occasion of taking a pill together. — Vera Mont

I don't generally eat meals with others as it happens. My partner and I maintain separate homes - I could never live with someone. Fortunately she feels the same and it has worked for many years. We eat together 2 or 3 times a week.

the formative forces of art (which he distinguishes as Apollonian and Dionysian) are the same forces that form the reality of the existence in which each and everyone of us lives each and every waking (and dreaming) minute of our lives. — Arne

I wouldn't disagree. I think everything humans do probably comes from the same source and impulses.

"The person of artistic sensibility stands in relation to these formative forces and the reality of art
as does the person of philosophic sensibility to these formative forces and the reality of
existence."

Where does this 28 year old professor of philology get off telling the rest of the world about the reality of art AND the reality of existence? And in such an unequivocal way? — Arne

Who knows? What does the quote mean? I have no poetic imagination , so prose like this is just grey sludge to me.

I am not a big fan of eating. I eat a couple of meals a day and sometimes just one. I enjoy 'recreational' meals but mostly eating is drudgery for me. If I could just take a pill I would love that. I told my mum this about 30 years ago. She laughed and told me that my grandfather had made the same point 30 years earlier.

Yes, I have read and heard a lot about N and tried to read several of his works (Kaufmann's mainly) - including Zarathustra, Human All to Human, On the Genealogy of Morality, Beyond Good and Evil. I just can't do it. Possessing an abbreviated attention span, I find philosophy pretty hideous reading no matter who the writer. So I take full responsibility.

There is a significant difference between saying my understanding of Nietzsche is X and saying I understand Nietzsche. — Arne

A reading of him. Yep, ok.

What is it intrinsically about making a claim of understanding Nietzsche that you take issue with? Also, are they all necessarily liars? Or are some merely mistaken?

And when anyone claims to "understand" Nietzsche, I try not to make eye contact and slowly walk away. — Arne

That's an interesting comment. Can you say some more?

Perhaps one can say of many of Nietzsche’s followers as well as of his more shrill detractors that they are gauche and insufferable in their inability to read him well. — Joshs

Could well be. It's unknown to me since I have no reading of Nietzsche. :wink: I suspect he's probably very interesting if you can get through him, which I can't.

Thanks. Yes, some Nietzscheans can be gauche and insufferable.

Nietzsche is not much to my taste, why do you dislike him?

Keeping it to themselves could be seen as permitting ignorance, propaganda and delusion to wreak havoc on the world when one clearly knows better. — Benj96

Sure, but my hypothesis is what if their omniscience allows them to see that people are not ready for knowledge and that if it were made available, much suffering and chaos would result. Sometimes the the truth is better left unsaid. Remember Sophocles - "Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise! :wink:

It seems interesting to me (at least superficially) that some people seem to participate in philosophy primarily to understand the history of philosophical ideas over time (sometimes lingering in the classical, analytic or continental pools), while others see philosophy as an aid to personal development and critical thinking. The approaches seem quite different and seem to address different personality styles and needs. Thoughts?

I suspect the Omni would keep their powers to themselves. They would know precisely the reactions of the human killer ape.

CBT, regularly used as I understand it to treat trauma and with some success it appears, is based in large part of Stoicism. So, I wondered what was meant when it was claimed Stoicism fails to by "address trauma." — Ciceronianus

Yes, I have worked in the trauma space for many years - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was developed as a way to assist people with their responses to trauma and particularly to manage their behavioral reactions (what some like to call their triggers). It seems to work well. Albert Ellis, a seminal figure in this area, drew from Stoicism especially Epictetus.

his embrace of Marx's view of the ideal and the real as invention rather than as discovery. — Paine

Ok. I can see that.

To do your questions justice Tom, would require a book length response. — Rob J Kennedy

Sure, that goes for most things here. :wink:

I'm still not sure why existentialism not, say, Stoicism (which might be of similar use). Or other more accessible schools of philosophy.

When I read existentialism back in the 1980's, for me it felt more grounded and practical and focused on real world behaviors. If philosophy seems overwhelmingly theoretical and abstract, existentialism seems like a good way in. When Sartre writes, 'We are our choices" to me it seemed an immediate and vivid account of what it can mean to be human. Of course attempting to read Being and Nothingness, I got bogged down in the phenomenology and psychoanalysis which seemed incomprehensible and stultifying. Sartre seems to oppose the idea of an unconscious which is fixed and drives our behaviors (our histories and experiences) and posits a kind of total freedom which I find unlikely. Thoughts?

The freedom of the individual to exchange his commodity labour-power on the market requires his individual freedom. In this respect, the concept of freedom is directly linked to the capitalist mode of production.
 
 Now one may ask what is wrong with that. — Wolfgang

Plenty of people have thought there was something wrong with this ( with very limited freedom present) hence unions and progressive parties and reformers in most capitalist lands.

I’d say the dominant value in the west is probably neoliberalism and as for values like rights and inclusion, etc aren’t these often just for decoration? They are the stories we tell ourselves. Isn’t hypocrisy and conflict what lubricates culture?

How do you tell the difference between theoretical values and what happens in practice?

I'm struggling to get around to it, being in a perpetual backlog of things I ought to read. — Wayfarer

I hear you. I've been watching Braver on youtube but I work 50 plus hours a week, so I really don't have it in me to read anything except for the labels on shampoo bottles.

A couple of questions for you, if you don't mind? What would you say is the difference between someone who is influenced by existentialism and someone who is an existentialist? What is it about the approach that appeals to you - is it solving or managing any particular concerns you've had?

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger are two of the most important—and two of the most difficult—philosophers of the twentieth century, indelibly influencing the course of continental and analytic philosophy, respectively. In Groundless Grounds, Lee Braver argues that the views of both thinkers emerge from a fundamental attempt to create a philosophy that has dispensed with everything transcendent so that we may be satisfied with the human.

As you might guess, given the content of my posts, I tend to recoil from the very idea. — Wayfarer

I saw that review or article. If that is in fact what their project involves (and perhaps the wording is wonky). My quesion is what exactly does 'dispensed with everything transcendent' mean? Do they mean this is the sense that their ontology makes transcendence inaccessible or incoherent? It's one thing to bracket something away, it's another to say it is meaningless. I'd love a bit more on this.

How does that compare to the average person? — Beverley

36% more than the average. :wink:

Candyland sums up their relation... Camus was not an existentialist. — Banno

Didn't matter in 1980's Melbourne.

Existentialism only works until you take it seriously. — Banno

We'll that's not much different from most ideas, I'd suspect.

How do you take existentialism seriously? That seems to be the real quesion that the OP leads us towards.

In the 1980's there was a reemergence of existentialism around Melbourne and many people I knew would walk around with copies of Being and Nothingness and Camus' The Outsider, with no more commitment to the ideas inside them that they would have a few years later to the ideas Foucault and Derrida, when copies of their works were carried about.

No idea. Most people who use the term to describe themselves seem to pronounce it more like a magic word than with much knowledge about it. I find it ironic when someone claims to have captured the essential existentialism.

To be blunt - my specialist area - those who have answered "yes" to the question in the OP have thereby shown that they have not understood existentialism. — Banno

Say some more - only thing I came away with from Sartre was the familiar - existence precedes essence.

Can one call oneself an existentialist without irony?

:up:

Well if so, name at least one non-contingent, or impossible to change or be changed (i.e. necessary), fact. :chin: — 180 Proof

You're exactly the person to ask this of in relation to the old, something from nothing trope. My question is: as far as we know everything in our universe is contingent - but what of potential realities outside of this, outside of our knowledge? Or before the singularity, etc? Do we know enough about reality to know if contingency is a necessary phenomenon?

I think so.

Trump and Clinton for example have been attending the same events and power groups for decades. So, you get a slightly to significantly loose cannon elite member when you vote for a populist. Why is this so? — Bylaw

From my perspective anyone who can be in a position to become president is an elite. Left and right mainstream are just differently wings of the same neoliberal elite.

I would imagine that one form of populism might also embrace wanting to end wars, invest in schools, housing infrastructure and health care, reduce military spending and tax the wealthy, That form of populism seems to be quashed.

Well, for starters, it's unavoidable and, for the most part, out of our control, so why worry about it? Given death's inevitability, make the best use of your time here and now. Hence: “It is not death that a man should fear, but rather he should fear never beginning to live.” —Marcus Aurelius

I'm not a Stoic - more an Epicurean if I must have a classical orientation - but I intuitively arrived at the above position on death when I was still a boy. I revisit it every now and then (as friends and relatives die) but I can't move past this.

Good idea, although on a secular forum, it's rather like tossing bits of bloodied meat into the Piranha River. ;-) — Wayfarer

Yes, I was wondering about consequences too. But it might be good if in the OP we specify that this is not for secular polemics or atheist grenade throwing. As an atheist, I would appreciate a more nuanced awareness of the various notions of god in more accessible language. I found Paul Tillich very interesting back in the 1980's but I have forgotten most of what I read.

I've also often thought that some atheists and theists could form an 'alliance' around a more sophisticated understanding of god and take an assertive but respectful anti-fundamentalist position together. Bishop Shelby Spong did a good job of this a few decades ago. We really need Christians and Muslims to come out against this stuff, rather than just atheists. But that's another matter.

I'm sorry if you are not aware - I did not make this up. — AmadeusD

I referred to this phenomenon already, so I must be aware, right?

And then you proceed to dismiss my awareness of this issue as per below. Are you in a hurry?

It is extremely important to the crux of this issue. Ignoring the factor of mental illness, delusion and the violation of others rights based on it, is, ironically, the half of the story you refuse to acknowledge in the discussion. — AmadeusD

Half the story? Or 35%. Or is it 10%, or...?

I've already said in my view the fact that there are people who are unwell and make other claims based on identify should not impact upon those people who are trans with their specific claim. I don't think this is hard.

There are adult babies. They claim their identity in exactly the same way trans people do. — AmadeusD

The key point you are missing is that they are not trans. So it actually has nothing to do with the specific claim of trans people. You're invoking a slippery slope fallacy again. Many people go to the doctor and claim back pain without having any in order to get out of work. This does not mean that there are people don't experience back pain and need support. As my doctor will tell you physical evidence for the cause of back pain is not always available.

THe fact that you have some store of 'trans bigotry talking points' makes it absolutely clear you are not being reasonable or sensible here. You've taken a position, you're afraid to mvoe from it and you're now deploying buzz words of social opinion to impugn a position based on fact. — AmadeusD

Nice attempt to turn it around. You are 'absolutely clear' about nothing in relation to my opinions on this issue. I was identifying that a well known anti-trans talking point was raised by you. How do I know it is a well worn anti-trans talking point? Because it comes up almost every time people have anti-trans conversations - on line, on TV, in the media, in person. You're not the only one to pull this out.

I also think that your attempt to psychologise my approach is unprofessional. You are in no position to know my motivations, so please don't do this. Stick to the arguments. I'll try to do the same.

But this discussion is interminable.

I'd be interested in understanding what is your opinion should society do in relation to transgender issues? Can you provide a few dot points regarding a useful framework. For me, the issue is trans is here, how do we support people?

But then for a great part of its history, Biblical religion was addressed to illiterate agrarian and farming communities, and had to be presented through myth and allegories that this audience would understand. It's anachronistic in our post-industrial technocratic culture. The mystical stream within Christianity is somewhat detached from that, which is why the mystics often skirt with, or even are accussed of, heresy. — Wayfarer

I wonder if there should be (if there isn't already) a thread on (dare I say it) alternative accounts of god which are not personal or anthropomorphic? Is your sense that most of these are likely to amount to versions of idealism - cosmic consciousness/eternal mind? Or even Leibniz's ultimate Monad idea of god?

I'm trying to understand your position by posing questions to you that your position entails an answer to... Why does not extend to the age, race, weight and height one 'considers' themselves to be? This exact logic is why 'adult babies' are a thing. I would assume you note the patent mental arrest involved in that notion? — AmadeusD

A familiar argument from trans bigotry talking points. When people straw man trans using exaggeration to argue that - 'next people will want to identify as an air conditioning unit or a maidenhair fern' - that's just bigotry wrestling with social change.

The fact that there are some people who are delusional or make other strange claims is irrelevant to the crux of this issue. Trans depicted as a type of Pandora's box is a popular trope. I heard the same sorts of things said about decriminalising homosexuality (it will only encourage deviancy) and gay marriage (it's not natural). Some people still believe these things.

As I've said, I have no interest arguing against the anti-trans talking points and biological essentialism that are all over the internet and here in this thread. As I said, I'm not a biologist or a social theorist. Happy merely to support the trans community. I arrived at this through years of talking to trans people. And no doubt my view on this will continue evolve.

I accept that there are individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. People who are denied the ability to express their gender suffer greatly and may even suicide. It's not a simplistic case of 'hurt feelings' that would be a trivialising of the matter.

Are there some trans people who are aggressive or mentally unwell? Sure. We would find this amongst almost any group of human beings. So what?

So I don't mind at all if you disagree with me. Your view is likely to have strong support. I have no interest in some interminable debate on this issue.