- Okay, thanks. :up:

Institutionalized religion seems always to become politicized, and hence corrupted, coming to serve power instead of free inquiry and practice. — Janus

:100: And the greater the political power, the greater the likely corruption. It's what checks and balances of power counteracts ... when it's not merely lip-service that gets itself corrupted: Like foxes self-appointed to guard the chicken roost.

So would the efforts of Schiller, Goethe, Schelling, etc. (and later echos in the 20th century) then be a sort of inversion of the bolded, an attempt to clear space in an increasingly mechanistic and instrumentalized world for a sense of "enchantment" that was ever less vivid?

[...]

But I might ask of the lifecycle metaphor if we might not perhaps still be in our adolescence (we certainly seem to be grappling with uncontrollable passions, courting ecological disaster for instance). And with adolescence can come greater levels of clarity, but also greater levels of self-delusion (normally a mix of both!). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed on both counts. That's very nicely put. We indeed are in a difficult predicament.

Thank you; that’s very succinct and helpful.

If one wishes to be an excellent human being then they must have the virtues, and the virtues are had by practice or familiarity. Then, for Aristotle happiness is had via excellence, but excellence is not sought as a means to the end of happiness. It's almost as if Aristotle would say that happiness is excellence seen in a particular light. For a simple example, the man who is an excellent soccer player is brought joy by playing soccer, but the joy and the activity of playing soccer well aren't really two different things. It's not as if he plays soccer well and then goes to the sideline to wait for someone to bring him his joy as a reward. — Leontiskos

Nice.

I don't sponsor authoritarian religions. — javra

I agree with you, but I already acknowledged somewhere in this thread (can't find it now) the role that ecclesiastical Chrisianity had in spawning atheism. Paul Tillich said the same! The inevitable consequence of 'no other God beside Me' and 'I am the Truth.... no other way but Me'. My way or the highway, and woe betide unto anyone who differs.

But again, there are literalistic and esoteric ways of understanding. The Gnostics had a completely different way of understanding these things, but they ended up on the wrong side of history - which is, as you know, written by the victors.

And the jealous God dies hard! A great deal of atheist polemic is clearly derived from its Christian forbears. No other substance, but matter energy, and no way of interpretation, save by the Method! Woe betide unto anyone who differs.

But again, there are literalistic and esoteric ways of understanding. The Gnostics had a completely different way of understanding these things, but they ended up on the wrong side of history - which is, as you know, written by the victors. — Wayfarer

Yea, I very much agree, and find the Gnostic interpretations I've so far read to be far more coherent. Which reminds me: "Turn your other cheek". From what I've gathered from documentaries and such, turns out the Romans had two ways of slapping: with the back of the hand toward inferiors and with the palm toward those deemed of roughly equal worth. Interpreted in this context, to stand in front of a Roman soldier that slaps you as an inferior and turn your other cheek was a horrendously courageous act, in effect telling the armed other "hit my like an equal, not as an inferior". This in keeping with non-violent resistance, in line with that of, for example, Gandhi or MLK. And it makes a hell of a lot more sense than "repeatedly hit me till I die if you want". This being an easy to express alternative interpretation relative to common current culture.

But I wouldn't say the Gnostics were on the wrong side of history. When it comes to history, the fat lady hasn't yet sung, as they say.

A note on Tillich (various sources)

Sure. :up:

And I should say that there is no reason to believe that Aristotle sees this as an overly programmatic or even conscious process. He seems to think that people naturally emulate those they admire, and naturally begin to reflect on the qualities of those they admire as they grow older.

I think that’s actually a keen insight.

:up: Nicely said.

Hence, as historical facts go, paganism at root was (and yet remains) very tolerant. — javra

Might I suggest that this is an overly rosey picture? For instance, across the Roman Empire vast numbers of people were tortured to death, publicly executed, or enslaved because they wouldn't offer sacrifices to the state gods and worship the emperors. Likewise, the Seleucids engaged in similar practices. And of course, aside from the well known attempts to genocide Christians out of existence there is the suppression of the Bacchic cult, Egyptian cults being made illegal on pain of capital punishment for essentially being demonic, etc. This is hardly an analog for modern religious pluralism and secularism.

More pointedly, the Near East had numerous genocidal wars that were framed in religious terms, where foreign peoples were exterminated and their idols and temples destroyed in honor of the dominant groups gods, often with victims explicitly sacrificed to the gods (Assyrian monuments being a fine example). The practice of the "ban" under which all men, women, children and even livestock were massacred as a sort of holy war is a prime example. There is for instance a Moabite monument celebrating the capture of an Israelite city and the sacrifice of all adults and children to Chemosh as offerings (this is not wholly out of line with even later Pagan culture, where Aeneas sacrifices many victims to the shade of Pallas, although here we are at least almost certainly supposed to see this as a lurch towards the beastial; yet it is still something a premier Roman hero could engage in and remain a hero).

Also, re Athens, consider why Socrates was executed. Anaxagoras narrowly escaped similar punishment for calling the sun a flaming stone and Protagoras supposedly had to flee the city for similar reasons (there being other mentions of people executed or exiled for "athiesm" as well).

From what I've seen, Tacitus and Juvenal are not outliers in referring to foreign cults as degenerate and immoral, or effeminate and tied to sexual deviance. A common propaganda point against Mark Antony was that his relationship with Cleopatra had led him to degenerate and essentially demonic foreign gods whose rituals involved sexual deviancy. The idea of foreign gods being malevolent is not new to Christianity; there are plenty of references to evil gods even in the Pagan philosophers. So too, the invective and propaganda leveled against Christians in antiquity wasn't something new, but more of a redirection of old bigoted tropes previously aimed at foreigners.

Pagan religion could be inclusivist, particularly in terms of rebranding existing foreign gods under the dominant pantheon. It could also be brutally repressive. And in between it could be merely bigoted. The Norse had no qualms with justifying the mass murder, rape, and enslavement of the Christians for instance. But in part, this is merely because many religions called for no justification for wars waged explicitly for conquest, slave taking, rape, and pillage so long as they belonged to an appropriate out-group (often defined by religion in the East, less so in the West). Whereas, if such acts are considered inherently wrong, because all humans have dignity, some other sort of justification is required (and religion can be mustered for these ends).

The norms in question are often quite alien though. For instance, a villa decoration at Pompeii features Cassandra having her clothes torn off to be raped by Ajax; IIRC this is a feature picture for a dining hall. Hence, even outside the realm of religious tolerance, and especially in the realm of sexual norms and sexual violence, it's difficult to hold many "Pagan" cultures up as forerunners of modernity.

And yet, this view I uphold of itself can well be labeled heretical, if not far worse, by many if not the majority of Christians who "keep the faith", so to speak. I say this form experience. And it's not quite what Jesus Christ had in mind, such as via his parable of the Good Samaritan. — javra

I don't know what you mean here. You don't think that Jesus had in mind that the God of Israel is God and that, say, Jupiter is not? At any rate, "heresy" normally describes false teaching within Christianity (or is applied similarly outside this context). An Arian who denied the divinity of Christ was a heretic, a Hindu cannot be a heretic because they are not advocating for false teachings related to Christianity.

Anyhow, how can it be that people who hold to a creed (Islam, Christianity, etc.) are in error for judging others to be in error in rejecting that creed, but you are not in error for judging them to be in error for subscribing to that creed? This is a difficulty with various sorts of perennialism too. To say that "everyone is right," but only if they agree that everyone is right, is actually to say that almost everyone is wrong (or to not take their claims seriously).

Might I suggest that this is an overly rosey picture? For instance, across the Roman Empire vast numbers of people were tortured to death, publicly executed, or enslaved because they wouldn't offer sacrifices to the state gods and worship the emperors… — Count Timothy von Icarus

… not to forget Socrates….

This is a difficulty with various sorts of perennialism too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s not all ‘lazy syncretism’. Consider for example Fathers Bede Griffiths and Raymundo Panikkar. Both exemplified Christian virtue in close companionship with Indian religions. And I would think that the ability to accommodate a plurality of outlooks is essential in cosmopolitan culture.

Hence, as historical facts go, paganism at root was (and yet remains) very tolerant. — javra


Might I suggest that this is an overly rosey picture? — Count Timothy von Icarus

And you could add more vilifying examples to your list. You address a lot of details, yet many details could in turn be presented against Abrahamic cultures. As just one example specific to rapes: Currently, we’re living though a silent crisis of sex slave trafficking in the West, a large portion of which are children, and our current western culture is by and large Abrahamic. Rape by clergy? Epstein and associates? But I doubt this approach might bring about any constructive ending. So I’ll try to keep my argument generalized:

I did say “at root”. What is it of polytheistic religion as a grouping—rather than the people that make use of it for their own political or else egotistic gains—which instills intolerance for different and new religious perspectives? Perfect tolerance, no, granted. But then, in contrast, can it be soberly affirmed that Abrahamic religion does not at its core, at root, maintain intolerance for different and new religious perspectives?

And yet, this view I uphold of itself can well be labeled heretical, if not far worse, by many if not the majority of Christians who "keep the faith", so to speak. I say this form experience. And it's not quite what Jesus Christ had in mind, such as via his parable of the Good Samaritan. — javra


I don't know what you mean here. You don't think that Jesus had in mind that the God of Israel is God and that, say, Jupiter is not? At any rate, "heresy" normally describes false teaching within Christianity (or is applied similarly outside this context). An Arian who denied the divinity of Christ was a heretic, a Hindu cannot be a heretic because they are not advocating for false teachings related to Christianity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I meant is that if my views regarding the Good are not considered heretical, which they could be as you've defined the term, then they have been labeled demonic, with little ol' me being devil-possessed. And this having zilch to do with either my momentary of lifelong conduct as regards ethics.

At this point, I’d like to draw attention back to a book page mentioned by @Pierre-Normand - Hillary Putnam on Facts and Values. The cover description:

If philosophy has any business in the world, it is the clarification of our thinking and the clearing away of ideas that cloud the mind. In this book, one of the world's preeminent philosophers takes issue with an idea that has found an all-too-prominent place in popular culture and philosophical thought: the idea that while factual claims can be rationally established or refuted, claims about value are wholly subjective, not capable of being rationally argued for or against. Although it is on occasion important and useful to distinguish between factual claims and value judgments, the distinction becomes, Hilary Putnam argues, positively harmful when identified with a dichotomy between the objective and the purely "subjective."

I’ve noted this time and again in debates here. But the problem usually manifests around the issue of the criteria for what can be considered good, because those criteria are not necessarily scientifically adjudicable. Meaning that an argument and an explanatory framework has to provided for what can be considered good, true, or ethically meaningful. And this is where the ever-present ‘who says?” or “by what authority?” enters the fray. At this point, appeals to Kant (deontology) and Aristotle (eudomonia) are considered philosophically acceptable, but if you bring an appeal to religion into the picture, then look out! (@baker) This is because scientific rationalism provides something like publicly-available normative standards, in a way that neither religious nor philosophical judgements seem to. It’s objective -whereas philosophical and religious arguments are too easily seen as resting on the individual faith commitments or philosophical proclivities. That is where the false dichotomy that Putnam is describing originates (or so I would surmise, not having read the book.)

So I’m trying to break this down in terms intelligible to analytic philosophy. I think the simplest way to portray it is in terms of a vertical axis - the axis of normative value judgements.

Consider the previously-discussed example from John Vervaeke. Vervaeke argues that normativity doesn’t need to be imported from a cosmic telos or moral law and that it’s implicit in our very capacity for rational, self-corrective cognition.

Our “is” — our biological and cognitive architecture — already entails competences that can be exercised well or poorly.

“Ought” simply names the direction of self-correction toward more adequate realization of those competences.

It might be asked, why then does this not apply to non-human beings such as the higher animals? The reason, I think, is that higher animals, though clearly intelligent and affectively rich, lack the capacity to imagine things being otherwise than as they are. They inhabit what Vervaeke might call an unbroken salience landscape — a world of immediate affordances, where meaning is lived rather than reflected upon. Humans, by contrast, can step back from the immediate field of relevance, entertain counterfactuals, and evaluate our own salience-mappings. It also means that things matter to us in a way that they don’t for animals. This reflexivity is the root of both our freedom and our moral burden.

As I understand Putnam’s book, from reading abstracts and reviews, his is not an entirely dissimilar type of argument - Vervaeke’s from cognitive science and Putnam’s from analytical philosophy.

Our “is” — our biological and cognitive architecture — already entails competences that can be exercised well or poorly.

“Ought” simply names the direction of self-correction toward more adequate realization of those competences. — Wayfarer

In considering this in manners devoid of a “cosmic (ultimate) telos”, how would ethics not reduce to evolutionary processes of natural selection? Something I so far thought you were opposed to.

Right, but I think there is a quite robust argument to be made that it is secularism and liberalism that has spawned fundamentalism, elevated fideism, etc. The two are not unrelated. It's not unlike how the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and the Gilded Age spawned socialism. Even if one sees socialism as largely or wholly negative (and many do not), it would still be the case that it is precisely deficiencies in the existing system that strengthened it.

I don’t think there is much of an argument to be made there. The main reason is that liberalism hardly took off in the first place, and was never present in any of the formative years of modernity. The many-pronged attack against liberalism was effective enough to give us so-called “social” or “modern” liberalism, which is liberal in name only (Neosocialism would be a better term). Herbert Spencer, for instance, documented how this occured in England in the mid-to-late 19th century, but classical liberals will attest to it as well.

In fact, any advance towards the freedom of individuals, like laissez-faire economics, is consistently met with a much stronger ideology. That ideology is a mixture of the fear towards the freedom of other men, the manorial love of order and obedience, and the glorification regarding the status of the arbiters of our lives, the state. Illiberalism, the opposite of liberalism, spawned the political aberrations of the 20th century, including so-called social liberalism. Illiberalism is the common thread of modernity and beyond.

And that, I think, is the thorn in the communitarian and ethno-nationalist’s argument: that their common enemy, liberalism and individualism, never took off in the first place, and indeed was actively supressed wherever it emerged. It simply isn’t present anywhere, as a politics or a philosophy. As such, its persistence as a theme of modern decline is largely a bugaboo.

- This is a very cogent and well-marshalled post. :up:

Our “is” — our biological and cognitive architecture — already entails competences that can be exercised well or poorly.

“Ought” simply names the direction of self-correction toward more adequate realization of those competences. — Wayfarer

Quite right.

The objection that is sometimes directed to the Aristotelian position which says, "Why ought I be virtuous rather than vicious?," could be rephrased, "Why ought I be competent rather than incompetent?" Once we move out of philosophical la-la land we see that such questions make little sense. Either they have more to do with eristic than genuine inquiry, or else they rely on a strong distinction between a moral ought and a non-moral ought that the objector refuses to define.

The objection to the Aristotelian, "Why ought I be virtuous rather than vicious?," could be rephrased, "Why ought I be competent rather than incompetent?" Once we move out of philosophical la-la land we see that such questions make little sense. — Leontiskos

Back in the la-la land of rational philosophy, many a human is, or can become, quite competent at committing so-called "perfect crimes" where all negative repercussions are evaded, including those of theft, murder, and rape, amongst others.

To most, this then again turns to the issue of "competency at being virtuous" as the standard for ethical conduct--such that crimes, perfect or not, are all deemed unethical irrespective of the competency a human has in committing them.

The objection that is sometimes directed to the Aristotelian position which says, "Why ought I be virtuous rather than vicious?," could be rephrased, "Why ought I be competent rather than incompetent?" Once we move out of philosophical la-la land we see that such questions make little sense. Either they have more to do with eristic than genuine inquiry, or else they rely on a strong distinction between a moral ought and a non-moral ought that the objector refuses to define. — Leontiskos

Just saw that you modified and expanded the paragraph I’ve quoted in my previous post. Assuming no further modifications to your previous post will be made:

In life as lived, many an honest enquiry will be eristic, at least to those who hold inconsistent positions.

As to “refusal to define”, myself, I was never asked, but if I were to be asked, I’d succinctly reply thus: Those oughts which further one’s proximity to the cosmic ultimate telos of perfected and complete eudemonia (one that is not just personal at expense of others, but globally applicable ... such eudemonia being interpretable as the ultimate good in both Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophies) will be oughts that are virtuous and hence ethical (though not necessarily moral … as in slavery being moral in certain societies yet still unethical). On the other hand, those oughts which don’t so further, aren’t virtuous and, hence, aren’t ethical.

Back in the la-la land of rational philosophy, many a human is, or can become, quite competent at committing so-called "perfect crimes" where all negative repercussions are evaded, including those of theft, murder, and rape, amongst others.

To most, this then again turns to the issue of "competency at being virtuous" as the standard for ethical conduct--such that crimes, perfect or not, are all deemed unethical irrespective of the competency a human has in committing them. — javra

This looks like a strawman coming from a contrarian position, and you seem to have been on a contrarian streak of late.

There is a sense in which competence is neutral with respect to certain ends. For example, the medical doctor's competence provides him with the ability to heal the body and also with the ability to harm the body. His knowledge of how the human body works provides him with both abilities.

Now if someone says, "Would you rather be a competent doctor or an incompetent doctor?," and your answer is, "I would not want to be a competent doctor because that would also make me competent at harming the human body," then I don't see that you've taken any of this very seriously. Instead of quibbling, the serious person would say, "I would rather be a competent rather than incompetent, even though someone who is competent in medicine also understands how to harm."

The deeper point is that indifference to competence or excellence is not a rational position, and only exists in philosophical la-la land. Humans do things, and humans want to do the things they do, well. That's all you need for an Aristotelian approach. The relativist will want to say that there is nothing normative about any human "doing." They would be forced to say, for example, that humans have no reason to prefer "doing" survival to "doing" death, and therefore the medical expert has no reason to prefer healing to harming. But this is irrational in the extreme. There are ends that are intrinsic to humanity, such as the gravitation towards pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Only philosophical la-la land is able to claim that there are no intrinsic human ends, or excellences, or competences. Only philosophical la-la land is able to claim that, "For all X and for all Y, X is not preferable to Y in any complete sense."

-

In life as lived, many an honest enquiry will be eristic — javra

That's just not true. In fact it looks as though a very strange word game is being played.

As to “refusal to define”, myself, I was never asked, but if I were to be asked, I’d succinctly reply thus: Those oughts which further one’s proximity to the cosmic ultimate telos of perfected and complete eudemonia (one that is not just personal at expense of others, but globally applicable ... such eudemonia being interpretable as the ultimate good in both Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophies) will be oughts that are virtuous and hence ethical (though not necessarily moral … as in slavery being moral in certain societies yet still unethical). On the other hand, those oughts which don’t so further, aren’t virtuous and, hence, aren’t ethical. — javra

I think you'll find that if you privilege the most common good or telos in this way (as globalists do), then you end up fumbling the subsidiary goods and ends that are constitutive of the "cosmic ultimate telos." More simply, if individuals do not seek competence, then societies do not flourish. Saying, "Worry about the societal flourishing rather than individual competence," is a kind of non-starter. Aristotle links up individual ethics to the communal whole in the second part of the Nicomachean Ethics, namely the Politics. There is a two-way interaction between the individual level and the communal level.

In any case, if you admit that there is an ultimate telos that defines ethics, then you've failed to avoid the notion of competence or excellence, for competence will just be competence in relation to your ultimate ethical telos. Thus despite your contrarian objection, you too will prefer competence to incompetence.

This looks like a strawman coming from a contrarian position, and you seem to have been on a contrarian streak of late. — Leontiskos

The deeper point is that indifference to competence or excellence is not a rational position, and only exists in philosophical la-la land. — Leontiskos

You have not addressed the issue other than by now conflating "competence" with "excellence". Which is a red herring.

Competence: 1 (uncountable) The quality or state of being competent, i.e. able or suitable for a general role. 2 (countable) The quality or state of being able or suitable for a particular task; the quality or state of being competent for a particular task or skill.

Excellence is far more ambiguous a term. All the same, the two terms are not synonymous.

Sorta frustrating that I need to explain this, but so be it.

That's just not true. — Leontiskos

Reality? Because no one ever found Socrates's questions eristic, i.e. provoking strife, controversy or discord? Or maybe he didn't engage in "genuine enquiries".

In any case, if you admit that there is an ultimate telos that defines ethics, then you've failed to avoid the notion of competence or excellence, for competence will just be competence in relation to your ultimate ethical telos. — Leontiskos

It was part of the definition I gave:

"competency at being virtuous" — javra

This, in contrast to being competent at performing vices, such as those of perfect crimes.

You have not addressed the issue other than by now conflating "competence" with "excellence". — javra

The relevant word in question is aretē (ἀρετή).

Reality? Because no one ever found Socrates's questions eristic — javra

You're engaged in an equivocation between what is eristic and what is falsely believed to be eristic.

"competency at being virtuous" — javra

Virtue = aretē (ἀρετή).

The relevant word in question is aretē (ἀρετή). — Leontiskos

And yet the word used was "competence" not "virtue" (be it the Ancient Greek term for "virtue" or otherwise).

You're engaged in an equivocation between what is eristic and what is falsely believed to be eristic. — Leontiskos

How do you figure that one. Socrates was condemned to death for ...

Virtue = aretē (ἀρετή). — Leontiskos

Yes, which is, what in philosophical la-la land is termed, begging the question.

higher animals, though clearly intelligent and affectively rich, lack the capacity to imagine things being otherwise than as they are. They inhabit what Vervaeke might call an unbroken salience landscape — a world of immediate affordances, where meaning is lived rather than reflected upon. Humans, by contrast, can step back from the immediate field of relevance, entertain counterfactuals, and evaluate our own salience-mappings. It also means that things matter to us in a way that they don’t for animals. This reflexivity is the root of both our freedom and our moral burden. — Wayfarer

:100:

There is something unique to the human. I call it the personal. Reflexivity. Willing reasoning.

This power creates the predicament. We can’t always be right, and even if we are right, we can’t always (or maybe ever) know we are right.

So we flounder.

Being a person is to be in a predicament. Modernity thought we might be able to reason our way out of who we are. Post-modernity gave up on that, and instead just likes to wallow in our predicament and tries to call it good progress to do so.

In considering this in manners devoid of a “cosmic (ultimate) telos”, how would ethics not reduce to evolutionary processes of natural selection? Something I so far thought you were opposed to. — javra

Excellent question! Broadly, it means humans are confronted with the fact of their own mortality, in a way that animals are not. (This is not to say that some animals aren’t aware of death and dying, as elephants clearly are.) But it means wrestling with questions of meaning again in a way that animals do not.

(Speaking of ‘wrestling’, this is where John Vervaeke comes closer to a kind of spiritual longing. He speaks of ‘strong transcendence’ comprising a noetic insight into a more integrated and in that sense ‘higher’ level of Being, akin to the unitive vision of Neoplatonism. He’s trying to stay within the naturalist lane in all of this although to be honest I think his trajectory the last two years, in dialogue with many religious scholars and philosophers, is drawing nearer to a religious understanding.)

How this relates to evolutionary theory is a big subject. I will observe that in some important ways evolution has become a secular religion, a kind of naturalist creation myth in its own right (See Is Evolution a Secular Religion?, Michael Ruse, incidentally no friend of Intelligent Design.) But one of the consequences of this is the vanishing of the cognitive and existential facts that pertain to the human condition. I think it is because it enables us to see ourselves as a part of nature but in a scientific rather than religious sense. While the basic, empirical facts of evolution are undeniable, the question has to be asked, what philosophical resources does evolutionary biology provide us with? After all the aim of the theory is to demonstrate how species, including h. Sapiens, evolved. The drivers for those processes are biological, genetic and environmental, but it has long been appreciated that we’re genetically hardly different than our early h.sapiens ancestors of 100,000 years ago. And yet, look what has transpired in those aeons.

All kinds of meanings have been read into it from the theistic (Pierre Tielhard du Chardin) to the atheist (Richard Dawkins.) Without venturing into those difficult waters, all I will say is that the facts of evolutionary theory do not really comprise an existential philosophy, and that this can be said with no disrespect to those facts. Within this ambit, all manner of possibilities present themselves, including the possibility of transcendence.

Amongst all the themes emerging from this debate, one that has struck me is the insight that in h.sapiens, the evolutionary process has become aware of itself. No lesser light than Julian Huxley said the same:

Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately.

However, I am closer to his more spiritually-inclined brother, Alduous, author of The Perennial Philosophy. Within that context, there are also expressions of the idea that we are ‘life made conscious’ but set against the understanding that physical existence is but one phase or facet of the totality of Being.



:pray:

I can’t find argument with anything you’ve said, and it was a very nicely expressed.

To succinctly add my own perspectives to its contents: What Julian Huxley refers to as the “destiny” of man I for one cannot differentiate from what was previously referred to as the “cosmic (ultimate) telos”. As to Tielhard’s “omega point”, from everything I’ve so far read of it, it appears to hold an understanding of this very same cosmic ultimate telos, clothing the understanding with verbiage of a highly Christian aesthetic (and yet one that does not deny natural selection): “where all life becomes one with Christ” or something to the like. While from previous discussions I presume you’d disagree, to further, this same cosmic ultimate telos can also, in my comprehension, be at pith deemed one and the same with what in Buddhism is termed “Nirvana without remainder” (or else certain Hindu interpretations of Moksha). As I previously mentioned, to me, these being different paths of different cultural and semantic scaffolding, each with its own unique understandings, toward the very same cosmic ultimate telos as absolute good: "The Good". Which also jives with Tillich’s notion of “to affirm God’s existence is to deny the reality of God”—this such that “God” is here not a supreme deity/being but the very ground to being itself whose perfection, again, is the ultimate cosmic telos. Such that this cosmic ultimate telos is either directly or indirectly, to use Aristotelian terms, the unmoved mover of everything within the cosmos. (Nor does the Gnostic esoteric interpretations of Christ that I've so far read appear to contradict any of this, to add one more example.)

I’ll leave this as a roughly expressed food for thought as far as philosophical hypotheses go. (Justifying all this on a forum platform is a bit of a stretch … but I can hardly find any logical inconsistency in all this were the premise of a cosmic ultimate telos to be at least hypothesized as true, such that this cosmic ultimate telos is of itself real: thereby entailing that its reality of itself is then the "is" which establishes all ethical "oughts".)

For example, we've seen bad faith accusations of "Christian nationalism" for a long time, and now we're getting bona fide Christian nationalists. — Leontiskos

What do you mean? Are you talking about the US? Are you talking about phenomena like national Catholicsm?

In several traditionally Catholic European countries, there is a type of national Catholicism. It's the belief that a particular nation has the right scope of Catholicism and is superior to other nations who are also under Catholicism. So there are Italian national Catolics who believe they are superior to all other Catholics; and Austrian national Catholics who believe they are superior to all other Catholics, and so on. This was especially popular in the 1920's and into WWII. Officially, the Vatican is against it, but some people persist in it anyway.

So one learns about virtue by recognizing particular people who are excellent and happy people, and who one naturally wishes to emulate. — Leontiskos

In other words, your description of "excellent and happy people" doesn't help to unequivocally identify particular examples of "excellent and happy people".

Institutionalized religion seems always to become politicized, and hence corrupted, coming to serve power instead of free inquiry and practice. — Janus

I can see why you’d say that, but as it says in Matthew, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” That sentiment applies equally to politics and religion. It’s a fair question to pose: if religion is a superior alternative to the secular, where might it be found operating in a way that appropriately demonstrates this? And I am open to the fact that this can be demonstrated. — Tom Storm

How about we follow the money and suggest that what is going on is not a politization of institutionalized religion, nor a corruption -- but a correct, exact, adequate presentation of religion/spirituality.

That when we look at religious/spiritual institutions and their practitioners, we see exactly what religion/spirituality is supposed to be.

this same cosmic ultimate telos can also, in my comprehension, be at pith deemed one and the same with what in Buddhism is termed “Nirvana without remainder” (or else certain Hindu interpretations of Moksha). As I previously mentioned, to me, these being different paths of different cultural and semantic scaffolding, each with its own unique understandings, toward the very same cosmic ultimate telos as absolute good: "The Good". — javra

From my dealings with religious/spiritual people, I surmise that the purpose of religion/spirituality is that it's a way to have power over other people and to live a comfortable life, without actually having to work for it or deserve it by virtue of one's high birth.

And of course, there are levels to this, not everyone has the same natural talent for it.

But then, in contrast, can it be soberly affirmed that Abrahamic religion does not at its core, at root, maintain intolerance for different and new religious perspectives? — javra

It naturally has to, or else it couldn't be a separate religion.

Might I suggest that this is an overly rosey picture? For instance, across the Roman Empire vast numbers of people were tortured to death, publicly executed, or enslaved because they wouldn't offer sacrifices to the state gods and worship the emperors. Likewise, the Seleucids engaged in similar practices. And of course, aside from the well known attempts to genocide Christians out of existence there is the suppression of the Bacchic cult, Egyptian cults being made illegal on pain of capital punishment for essentially being demonic, etc. This is hardly an analog for modern religious pluralism and secularism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is wrong to think, though, that the modern religious pluralism and secularism is "more tolerant" because of some profound insight into the inherent worth of all human beings or some such.

The pursuit and punishment of misfits depends on pragmatic considerations: how much effort and money it will take to pursue them and punish them, and whether such effort and money are available.

The difference between, say, a Scandinavian prison and a prison in some banana republic isn't that the first is incomparably more humane in nature than the latter; it's that the Scandinavians have the money and other means to treat their prisoners kind-of-nicely, as opposed to the poor folks in the banana republic. The motivation --pursue and punish-- is the same in both cases, one side just has far more money and other means.

If modern-day religious/spiritual people don't burn people at the stakes this isn't because they would think that all people have a right to live or some such; but because it would be tedious to burn people like that, given the modern circumstances. But the intention to destroy people who don't fit and who don't obey, the contempt for them is there all the same.

"It is wrong to rape _my_ daughter, but why should I care about what happens to your daughter?!"
— baker

I don't believe that is characteristic of most people at all. People are outraged at the rape of other people's daughters or sons, are generally outraged by any rape at all. — Janus

You left out an important part of what I said:
"People tend to condemn an act as wrong when it happens to them or someone of the same category as they are, but are far more relaxed when the same act happens to someone whom they consider to be outside of their category."

For example, for a long time, violence against indigenous women was far less investigated than violence against women of other categories. Hence initiatives like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_and_Murdered_Indigenous_Women.