But religions have that dimension of the radical unknown, the metaphysics. I can think of many ways cultures take of the world and systems of thought as a utility, true, but religion is a "utility" or perhaps a complex heuristic (a provisional dealing with) that has as its object no object at all, and the constructed object, its rites and symbols, are these weird, threshold institutions that deal with this foundational position of our indeterminacy in all things. — Constance

It's not clear that actual religious people think that way about religion. They are not relativists and doubters like that.

It's Easter time. The local Catholic parish sends out a monthly newsletter to everyone living here, including the non-Catholics. "This is the time of celebration, of the victory of life over death", "Christ has risen", and so on reads the newsletter.

To suggest that the people who wrote this newsletter believe that they are dealing with something merely constructed about the radical unknown???

Is it the mistake of confusing the body of knowledge science produces with the process of uncovering that knowledge? — Banno

And with the processes of teaching and learning that knowledge.

..and then I read this:
But as you know with all serious thinkers, all ideas are presented in context.
— Constance
:wink: — Banno

Why the wink?

I'll just say if you're honestly aiming at a deeper understanding of religious notions and practices, anxiety is the key. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No, but commitment to a particular religion.

The way you're framing your "honest aiming at a deeper understanding of religious notions and practices" is already done with the assumption that religions are human constructs with which humans try to overcome existential problems, while you automatically exclude all possibility of divine revelation, quite ignoring that divine revelation is key to many religions, esp. some major ones, like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.

All this to say that one must convince oneself of one's religion; kid yourself into it, so to speak. — Banno

Only desperate prospective adult converts do so.

It is the ultimate control, watching air hunger rise, then calming it down, but it insists, but there are moments when the massive energy of thought and feeling fall away. — Constance

A.k.a. hypoxia.

[

I'm trying to counteract your dominance and your externalizing, etic approach.
— baker
...as am I. — Banno

No, you're not. You insist on the external, on the perspective of an external, uninterested observer.
You're like someone trying to discern the taste of the proverbial pudding 1. without tasting it, and 2. by dimissing the accounts of those who claim to have tasted it.

Moreover, you appear to deny that the distinction between the emic and the etic approach even exists, or at least that it is not relevant.

(I've noted before that you're a semantic atomist, or at most, a semantic molecularist.)

That's the point of following through on the search for a "stipulated anchor". I do not think that such a thing can be found.

Neither do I think such an anchor exists. But this is not because "religions" would have nothing in common, or because a term doesn't have an essence, but because the term"religion" is often used as a product of secular religiology that has its own needs, interests, and concerns, while other times, it is used in a specific intrareligious context.

I don't think you've understood what is happening here.

It's Humpty Dumpty land.

why are we born to suffer and die? — Constance

Why should I be content with someone else’s answers to that?

Actually, Buddhism of all schools stridently rejects the charge that it is nihilistic. It is a charge that was frequently made by its Brahmin opponents and was also characteristic of the early European intepretations of Buddhism. It's not 'annihilation of the world' but a clear insight into clinging to the apparent reality of sensations and concepts as inherently real. It's a subtle skill, and exceedinly hard to master - I don't claim to have mastered it in the least.

The point I tried to make, which I'm afraid has not come across, are the convergences between that characteristically Buddhist discipline of 'choiceless awareness' of the contents of consciousness and the idea of 'bracketing' that is found in phenomenology. That has been the subject of considerable commentary i.e. in the 'embodied cognition' movement. — Wayfarer

But nihilism can be taken both epistemologically as well as ethically. When I say annihilation of the world, I refer to language and culture that constitute what makes our existence what it is, It is not like the common thinking that all there is, is unity and particularity is just an illusion. I consider this to be, well, bad metaphysics. Annihilation is a temporal concept: I sit quietly doing nothing and in this I rush of thoughts and feelings fall away. I call the world these thoughts and feelings, speaking generally. The self as a constructed historical entity falls away, is forgotten, if you will.

I do think those "sensations and concepts" are inherently real. But they are interpretatively missing the mark, and the mark is invisible, so any kind of Hegelian, is you will, convergence is impossible to conceive. Presently I think we acknowledge it in "indeterminacy", which is the way I see metaphysics as a concept. As a lived experience, it is wonder and grief thrown upon the abyss from which all things come. But re. the reality of sensations and concepts, generally speaking: this has to be given existence as a presence. Important to see that, to put it all too simply, perhaps, they exist but they are wrong, or merely interpretative or indeterminate. The rub: the term 'reality' too is wrong, or indeterminate; that is, when I say a concept is real, I am simply saying there is something there.

Final definitions? All things are hermeneutically in play. Annihilation to me is saying, look, when we terminate thought and attachments, an extraordinary stillness emerges that intimates something the usual engagements obscure and distract from. Many want to describe these engagements indifferent ways, and they are, many of them right. But the intimation cares nothing for this. It simply beckons with profound irresistible presence, and when one actually follows, s/he annihilates the world.

Finally, the idea of bracketing: As I see it, this is a momentous kind of thing to do. Why others don't see it this way I will never know. I read Rudolf Otto's Idea of the Holy and I am instantly interested, while others are repulsed. I can't go into why this is.

Now that humankind has appeared on the scene we can begin to evolve more consciously. Certainly this can be done on the individual level: this forum is evidence of a will to psychical evolution. It may be a Morlock-Eloiesque evolution, but it always is. We found an okay body so now we can start to upgrade our brains and imaginations, wordskills and emotional life. On to homo misteriosus. — ZzzoneiroCosm

But then, one can put aside this kind of thing altogether, not dismissing it, just affirming it likely true in one way or another, then ask another question: This "evolutionary plateau" in which we find ourselves, what is this? What is the foundational description of it? This is phenomenological. The basic givenness of the world. Here, I would add, one discovers that all theory, certainly including that of evolution, is constructed out of the matrix of thinking afforded by this very givenness. In other words, evolution is a construct of the very thoughts that are supposed to explain things, itself included. The question is begged.

It's not clear that actual religious people think that way about religion. They are not relativists and doubters like that.

It's Easter time. The local Catholic parish sends out a monthly newsletter to everyone living here, including the non-Catholics. "This is the time of celebration, of the victory of life over death", "Christ has risen", and so on reads the newsletter.

To suggest that the people who wrote this newsletter believe that they are dealing with something merely constructed about the radical unknown??? — baker

I think you are right about that. But then, a newspaper deliverer does think of herself as, say, a pawn in the grand capitalist game. There is "living in" without pause or question, then there is stepping away into a broader context, and giving an account.

Religion is the broadest possible context, which is without form itself, brought down to earth, if you will, through the rituals and the candles, and the spooky dark church interiors (which I like), and so on. But ask aunt Betty who sits in a pew on Sunday, and she will tell you about Jesus and redemption, or the like.

No. Evolution is happening now. As long as environments with organisms change, there will be selective pressures to adapt in some way to those changes. For things to happen by accident implies that there was a goal or purpose in things being a certain way that somehow wasn't - as if the universe has a goal or purpose as existing without the existence of opposable thumbs, yet it still happened anyway. It also implies that you know how the universe was suppose to be (without the existence of opposable thumbs) yet they exist despite how you know it was suppose to be. Nothing happens by accident. What happens now is dependent on what has happened before. — Harry Hindu

It sounds like you are saying that by calling something accidental we imply the nonaccidental, and the nonaccidental is just presumptuous assumption the calling it accidental is supposed avoid. By calling something structureless, we assume structure in the calling.

But this is true, of course. The term accidental is defined in a contextual embeddedness, and it plays off other terms for its meaning. You speak from a position outside of this?

A.k.a. hypoxia. — baker

Ahhh. But what is hypoxia? It is not a deficit of oxygen outside of the physiologist's lexicon. And there IS an outside of this.

Why should I be content with someone else’s answers to that? — praxis

You certainly should not be. I take this question to be truly primordial, issuing form the the world, if you will, not the church. The church invents "answers" with its robes and solemn initiation rites, etc. Beneath all this is the question that is buried, It is a terrible impossible question the more it is pondered, something we loose a sense of while staring at our cell phones. Not to be cynical of modern life, which a like. But it is very, very weird, not to put too fine a point on it, to pull away from it and reclaim that original territory of wonder and terror.

As an example, there is a state-of-affairs of objects orbiting the planet Jupiter. — Harry Hindu

This is a good example of the leap I am discussing between states-of-affairs and facts. What is is - the state of affairs. What 'is'? Those are facts (or perhaps the subject of metaphysics). How we speak/conceive of the states-of-affairs does not change what 'is', but we still have concepts about what is and those sorts of concepts are things like process ontology, substance ontology, etc.

Although there is a bit of irony in the critique that I am using a label for a concept (mereological nihilism) in a thread about "religion", I rather don't care what you call your ontology. My critique is about whether the relationship of "stuff" creates new stuff or if the relationship of stuff has no impact on what exists.

You write

Facts, as such, are not socially constructed. — Harry Hindu

But does Jupiter exist? Is it a state of affairs? Is the naming of a particular assemblage of stuff related to the state of affairs or merely to our intersubjective discussion? What I am trying to point out is that ontology (or our particular ontology) does not suddenly get us from language to the states-of-affairs and calling things "facts" is a linguistic turn.

Pretend for a moment that Jupiter is a fact. Does Jupiter have parts? Are Jupiter's parts facts? As those parts change, does Jupiter cease to exist? Does Jupiter endure regardless of the constituency of its parts? These questions of identity are not about language games (though to some they strike as such). They might take place within the context of a language game (after all, where else would they be asked?), but they are intended to be about the states-of-affairs in precisely the same way that you think "fact" is about the states-of-affairs. I am asking you to provide what in the states-of-affairs, if anything, constitutes a fact.

The generalized claim is that a social group is just as much a candidate for being a fact as a planet, a person, or a particle. The fuzziness of when something is a fact that is constituted by an assemblage of stuff does not preclude you from calling Jupiter "Jupiter" or saying that it is a "planet" and it should not preclude us from calling Christianity "Christianity" or saying that it is a "religion".

I don't see why we would need to use the term, "metaphysical" here. It's just a fact that I would be a citizen of X because being a citizen of X is a human conceptual invention - not something discovered in nature that has existed prior to humans, like planets vs dwarf planets, or life vs non-life when talking about the origins of life.

It also seems to me that more than one person would need to agree upon the definition of "citizen" and "X" for us to then agree that I am indeed a citizen of X, or else being a "citizen of X" is meaningless. Words are only useful for communicating shared experiences and understandings, or else what is the purpose of using a word that only you understand the way you are using it? What is the purpose of using words, or any external symbol for that matter, if there are no other humans alive? — Harry Hindu

Picture a time one billion years from now when humans are long since gone. Was George Washington the first President of the United States of America? Is it a fact that survives humans? Or perhaps human memory? The question here is whether social groups can create facts independent of the underlying "facts" (you'd likely agree that George Washington had arms and legs regardless of whether people with language ever existed). In this context, can you, as a matter of fact, be a member of a religion without your consent/agreement? As in, do your personal beliefs have any relationship to the fact of the matter of you being a member of X?

Put differently, is being Christian a state-of-affairs?

Ahhh. But what is hypoxia? It is not a deficit of oxygen outside of the physiologist's lexicon. And there IS an outside of this. — Constance

I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation.
The only things that do "fall away" in oxygen deprivation practice are your cells and tissues, specifically, your brain cells. It's an ascetic practice that doesn't lead to any noble attainment.

Again, I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation.

I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation.
The only things that do "fall away" in oxygen deprivation practice are your cells and tissues, specifically, your brain cells. It's an ascetic practice that doesn't lead to any noble attainment.

Again, I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation. — baker

Fear not, I breathe. It is not as radical as it sounds. But you are invited to wonder what the experience is about.

It sounds like you are saying that by calling something accidental we imply the nonaccidental, and the nonaccidental is just presumptuous assumption the calling it accidental is supposed avoid. By calling something structureless, we assume structure in the calling.

But this is true, of course. The term accidental is defined in a contextual embeddedness, and it plays off other terms for its meaning. You speak from a position outside of this? — Constance

By calling something accidental, you are implying purpose. By implying that inanimate objects, like the universe, have accidents you are projecting purpose (anthropomorphism) onto things that have no purpose. There is no purpose outside a mind's own goals, therefore there are no accidents outside of some mind's goals.

There is "living in" without pause or question,

then there is stepping away into a broader context, and giving an account. — Constance

That's what religiologists, culturologists, and the like do. Not what religious people do.

Fear not, I breathe. It is not as radical as it sounds. But you are invited to wonder what the experience is about. — Constance

This is a philosophy forum, it is not a theology forum. I've tried joining a couple of comparative religion forums, they were a real mishmash. The thread topic is about the 'concept of religion' which I think is a valid topic and I'm attempting to address from the viewpoint of comparative religion. — Wayfarer

What is the aim and purpose of comparative religion?

Only much later in life did I begin to realise that what I was considering 'enlightenment' and what goes under the heading of 'religion' might have something in common. And that was because, when I started trying to practice meditation in order to arrive at the putative 'spiritual experience' sans artificial stimulants, mostly what I experienced was pain, boredom and ennui. So I gradually came to realise that this 'enlightenment' I had been seeking was not likely to be a permanent state of 'peak experience' after all, that, if there is such a thing as religious ecstacy, that it is a very elusive state indeed.)

That's because you didn't start off with purification of bodily actions, and purification of verbal actions. Those are an absolute necessity, without them, "meditation" cannot bear noble fruit.



* * *

I have to go now. I threw my back out the other day. I'm in so much pain I can't sit upright anymore.

while you automatically exclude all possibility of divine revelation, — baker

Do not.

"Divine revelation": breathtaking, inspiring, inspirited poetry; uncannily wise instruction or insight.

Let's wait till we know god exists before we start calling things 'divine'. An unkown by any other name is still an unknown.

Yes, it can look like this. It can also look like my uncle Raymond who has a phd in geology. Do better!

By calling something accidental, you are implying purpose. By implying that inanimate objects, like the universe, have accidents you are projecting purpose (anthropomorphism) onto things that have no purpose. There is no purpose outside a mind's own goals, therefore there are no accidents outside of some mind's goals. — Harry Hindu

Still too slippery, Harry. How is this different from what I said?

Yes, I think you’re right about purification. I hope your back pain abates, if it’s any comfort, I’ve had that occur twice in my life, both times it was excruciating but it passed after a day.

thank you.

That's what religiologists, culturologists, and the like do. Not what religious people do. — baker

I know what they do and how they think. Philosophy's job, as I see it, is to take this, and give a reflective analysis. What is going on when we pull away from the participation, and see it in a broader context?

What is the aim and purpose of comparative religion? — baker

Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions concerned with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes and impacts (including migration) of the world's religions. In general the comparative study of religion yields a deeper understanding of the fundamental philosophical concerns of religion such as ethics, metaphysics and the nature and forms of salvation. It also considers and compares the origins and similarities shared between the various religions of the world. Studying such material facilitates a broadened and more sophisticated understanding of human beliefs and practices regarding the sacred, numinous, spiritual and divine. — Wikipedia

I explained earlier in this thread my motivation for studying it was to understand what was meant by the 'enligtenment' promoted by figures in the popular media at the time, such as:



I entered University through a 'mature-age student exam' (no longer offered). A large part of the exam that day was a comprehension test on a long passage from Bertrand Russell's essay, Mysticism and Logic - which was just the kind of thing I was interested in. I was to learn that there wasn't much discussion of it in philosophy or psychology, but there was at least some discussion of it in Comparative Religion, which had a broad curriculum. (The first class of comparative religion was taken up with the question, can religion be defined? which we failed.)

The point of that study was, as the quoted section says, to understand the common themes in different religious traditions, through a number of perspectives. It was as near as you can get to a kind of scientific study of the subject. I found the anthropological and sociological perspectives particularly interesting.

The 'old school' approach to comparative religion was very much 'beetles on boards' - the attempt to classify, summarise, describe, very much as laboratory specimens. That was exemplified by the Head of Department. They weren't really into 'finding yourself' or exploring enlightenment as a spiritual quest. That has begun to change in the later part of the 20th c with the advent of the 'scholar-practitioner' types (who often hailed from the sixties generation.) One of my classmates was the very interesting Harry Oldmeadow who has a good reputation in 'perennialist philosophy' circles.

And that was because, when I started trying to practice meditation in order to arrive at the putative 'spiritual experience' sans artificial stimulants, mostly what I experienced was pain, boredom and ennui. So I gradually came to realise that this 'enlightenment' I had been seeking was not likely to be a permanent state of 'peak experience' after all, that, if there is such a thing as religious ecstacy, that it is a very elusive state indeed.) — Wayfarer

The first ten years are the hardest. For the average Joe, I don't think there's anything like a permanent peak. There are peaks and valleys, and, by and by, loftier peaks and not-so-deathly valleys.

For religious ecstasy, I think the pentacostal phenomenon - which can be de-Christified - is a quick, easy path. I found a path to pentacostal energy by way of obsessive, passionate, insistent mantric meditation. Constant repetition of the word 'god' until the pulse of continous prayer set in.

I should say there is a suffering in this kind of ecstasy. So I mostly do the zen thing lately. It's more peaceful than ecstatic.

There are peaks and valleys, and, by and by, loftier peaks and not-so-deathly valleys. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I did realise some real home truths through that engagement. Sticking with it is difficult, though.

I did realise some real home truths through that engagement. Sticking with it is difficult, though. — Wayfarer

It is. I had the gift of desperation.

A.k.a. hypoxia. — baker

Paraphrasing

Spock (bleeding): I'm pondering upon the meaning of life.

Dr. Leonard McCoy (applying compression to the wound): Feeling philosophical, eh? That's what massive blood loss will do to you.