All these types of question seem to be quite well accepted and yet I'm still in the dark as to what the question of purpose would even mean for a creator of the universe. I'm quite happy with the distinction Wayfarer highlights above between science describing the states and rules of the universe but remaining silent of the question "why?", but I really have no idea what anyone expects an answer to such a question to look like. — Pseudonym
In social science, disenchantment (German: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of mysticism apparent in modern society. The concept was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society, where scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and where processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, where for Weber, "the world remains a great enchanted garden". — Wikipedia
I think that perhaps the question of "why?" wasn’t even really articulated in such a bald form until the modern period. I don’t think culture was capable of conceiving of the question in the abstract until modernity - in fact I think that being able to frame the question in the abstract is one of the hallmarks of modernity. — Wayfarer
You always seem to be saying that something has been lost or forgotten. I think, on the other hand, that something has been overcome, surpassed. Of course a loss of illusions will always be accompanied by its attendant traumas. Perhaps it could be said that humanity is in its adolescence. Should a return to the innocence/ ignorance of childhood be recommended? — Janus
Do we? How? — Pseudonym
This is a strawman, though, because the feeling of connectedness is not dependent on any anthropomorphic, and much less any anthropocentric, worldview; in fact I would say it is quite the reverse now, once we have seen the lurking dualism that is inherent in such thinking, and since it is now impossible to authentically return to any such 'childlike' view. The challenge now is to go beyond simplistic 'subject/object', 'substance/ accident' and 'internal/ external' dualistic thinking and allow for the fullest feeling for the numinous, for art and spirituality as well as science, without returning to the ignorance of reificational thoughts. — Janus
What has been lost is precisely a sense of related-ness to the cosmos, and also a sense of purpose and meaning. — Wayfarer
This is writ large all over Modern Culture, and manifests in the form of many social ills and ailments, such as anomie, depression, addiction, compulsive consumption, and so on. This is how the belief that you're the outcome of an accidental collocation of atoms manifests, in my view. — Wayfarer
The challenge now is to go beyond simplistic 'subject/object', 'substance/ accident' and 'internal/ external' dualistic thinking and allow for the fullest feeling for the numinous — Janus
Numinous: having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.
Numinous: having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.
A sense of the mysterious, a sense of the holy and a sense of the beautiful, senses that require no particular knowledge or intellectual mastery to drive them. — Janus
I'm tempted to draw attention to the lack of intellectual mastery here. :naughty: — apokrisis
Your thinking is reductionistic, not in the atomistic materialist sense, but in the sense that you want to objectify and reduce everything to being understood by science and mathematics. — Janus
I think this is probably due to the fact that you lack a feel for the other three senses of the numinous, you have a kind of 'tin ear', I think. — Janus
What we are at root is all about what we feel, not what we think. — Janus
Jacob Boehme, considered by some to be the greatest of the Christian mystics was a shoemaker when he experienced his visions; he had no formal education at all. — Janus
If mystical or religious experience were taken to demonstrate anything particular about metaphysics, then there would indeed be a problem, since the different metaphysical conceptions associated with the major religions disagree with one another. — Janus
I am not suggesting that we should not develop a good comprehensive intellectual understanding based on that essential affective life, if we feel so moved. — Janus
You seem to think the sense of the numinous is something simple, direct, unmediated. I reply that it seems very much the product of cultural learning, a sense of awe and rightness that can be reliably evoked from within a well-developed conceptual frame. — apokrisis
Otto was one of the most influential thinkers about religion in the first half of the twentieth century. He is best known for his analysis of the experience that, in his view, underlies all religion. He calls this experience “numinous,” and says it has three components. These are often designated with a Latin phrase: mysterium tremendum et fascinans. As mysterium, the numinous is “wholly other” – entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life. It evokes a response of silence. But the numinous is also a mysterium tremendum; It provokes awe [i.e. 'is awful'] because it presents itself as overwhelming power. Finally, the numinous presents itself as fascinans - merciful and gracious.
But woe betide anyone who does — Wayfarer
I've taken the opposite message. It is so easy to socially construct our states of feeling that one has to accept a post-modern absurdism about them. We have to wear our emotions lightly because they are not authentic in that root Romanticist sense. — apokrisis
Was the universe created by purpose or by chance?
The question has two possible outcomes so we should initially assign a 50% probability to each outcome. — Devans99
Start by examining the universes origins. The Big Bang. A huge explosion in space of a least 10^53 kg of matter that created the universe. Was this by chance or the work of a creator? I’ll conservatively assign a 50% probability to each outcome. Combining this probability with the initial staring probability:
50% + 50% x 50% = 75% chance of creator — Devans99
Will you ever articulate this view so that its meaning becomes less nebulous and then back it up with actual historical and anthropological research? — Πετροκότσυφας
You don't explain what that means and so on. — Πετροκότσυφας
As if I were to believe that abstract theorising about the origin of existence itself, which most haven't even thought about, is a more straightforward cause of depression, anomie and any other social ill you find in our "modern world", than unemployment, division of labour or whatever. — Πετροκότσυφας
When man lived securely under the canopy of the Judeo-Christian world picture he was part of a great whole; to put it in our terms, his cosmic heroism was completely mapped out, it was unmistakable. He came from the invisible world into the visible one by the act of God, did his duty to God by living out his life with dignity and faith… offering his whole life—as Christ had—to the Father. In turn he was justified by the Father and rewarded with eternal life in the invisible dimension. Little did it matter that earth was a vale of tears, of horrid sufferings of incommensurateness, of torturous and humiliating daily pettiness, of sickness and death, a place where man felt he did not belong, “the wrong place,” as Chesterton said…. In a word, man’s cosmic heroism was assured, even if he was as nothing. This was the most remarkable achievement of the Christian world picture: that it could take slaves, cripples, imbeciles, the simple and the mighty, and make them all secure heroes, simply by taking a step back from the world into another dimension of things, the dimension called Heaven. Or we might better say that Christianity took creature consciousness—the thing man most wanted to deny—and made it the very condition for his cosmic heroism.
The evidence indicates that the universe was created before human beings existed. If we accept that evidence then a human being could not have created the universe. — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, the universe was either created by a rabbit or it wasn't, so 50% chance rabbit, 50% not rabbit. — Hanover
The problem with this complex math equation you've devised is that the chance of it being random chance is also 75% — Hanover
If mystical or religious experience were taken to demonstrate anything particular about metaphysics, then there would indeed be a problem, since the different metaphysical conceptions associated with the major religions disagree with one another. — Janus
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.