Respect?..understanding?.. what does it matter?...it's all just personal opinions, anyway...Jesus!
:-}. :s

incidentally, I have told this anecdote before - some years back, there was a sensational news story that an archeologist claimed to have found physical remnants of Jesus. (in the form of an ossuary, although it was discredited very quickly). — Wayfarer

I think that Mormons believe Jesus came back from heaven and settled in North America with his followers. Perhaps they know where his remains are.

Respect?..understanding?.. what does it matter?...it's all just personal opinions, anyway...Jesus! — John

Do you think that the philosophy taught in universities is just "personal opinions"? If so, couldn't we say that the science taught in universities is just personal opinions as well?

Mormons believe a lot of crazy stuff in my view. When a schoolchild, we used to sing Jerusalem, by Blake - stirring hymn, but never believed for an instant that 'those feet did walk in ancient times', etc.

Do you think the idea that concepts are nonphysical existents, is incoherent? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. The idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent in general.

Why then is this idea taught to us in university, in philosophy classes?

There's never been any shortage of people believing absurdities, nonsense, etc.

It never appeared incoherent to me when it was taught to me in school. Do you think that philosophy, in general, is incoherent, because this appears to be one of the fundamental principles taught in philosophy?

Not in general. It depends on the particular idea.

It was an ironic statement, MU.

Do you have any respect for philosophy whatsoever Terrapin? — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, for work that I feel is good. Obviously I don't feel that all philosophy is good just because it's philosophy.

Acquiring a degree is no guarantee that one won't believe ridiculous $h|t, it's not a guarantee that one will even have or retain a grasp of the fundamental conventions of the discipline in question (for example, scientists talking about proving empirical claims), and it certainly is no guarantee that one will have any acumen in a field other than one's degree field.

But certainly some people do some good work that deserves respect in my opinion. I have a list of some of the philosophers I tend to be more fond of on my profile here.

I've been directly exposed to Catholicism and Pentacostal slain-in-the-spirit Christianity. I was told as child of a place of eternal torture created by loving God. I could read the good book myself and see that only a tiny minority would be spared the greatest sadistic fantasy thinkable. Adults are rarely monstrous. They are good at compartmentalizing and only half-believing these tales. God (as presented crudely) is like Santa Clause for grownups. He knows if you've been bad or good. Then there's the homophobia, the sexism, etc. It's very strange that ancient texts should be taken so literally by those who work in skyscrapers and heat their dinners in microwaves.

I don't believe in a Jehovah.

Never said you did, but let's not pretend that religion has been so innocent.

It's very strange that ancient texts should be taken so literally by those who work in skyscrapers and heat their dinners in microwaves. — Hoo

Actually in a way I don't see why that should make any difference. Science doesn't tell us anything about the mystery of existence itself. If anything, to the contrary, the kind of modern scientific prejudice that says that all realities must be empirical realities, might be seen to produce more of a tendency toward a simplistic fundamentalism when it comes to religious beliefs as well as scientific ones.

As I said before, it's 'the finger and the moon', i.e. 'religion' is the sign. And religion doesn't have a single meaning, either, there is brutal, repressive and stupid religion, and sublime, liberating and intelligent, and many points in between.

Yes indeed 8-)

I agree that we can err on the other side, too. But I wonder whether the sophisticated defender of religion really wants to hang out with an evangelical voting for Trump, for instance. Worse, you have people holding up "God hates f*gs" signs. They don't have the guts to hate in their own name. That's the sort of dude they worship, and they want their big guy to toss strangers in a lake of fire for getting off the way that their ancient instruction manual, inherited thoughtlessly and apparently by chance, prohibits.

I never said otherwise. The Incarnation idea is profound. Generally, religious myth is profound. It's a deep well, worth serious consideration. But it's valuable to see how religion could look exclusively "bad" to someone not yet exposed to more sophisticated traditions/interpretations. I was really into T.S. Eliot and Auden (in their Christian phases) as my cruder notions of God were fading. I knew there was still something in the tradition. These great poets were looking for that, holding to that.

I agree, I think that people carrying such signs are appallingly gutless maggots who themselves deserve eternally recurring buggery at 1,000.000,000 degrees centigrade [nah, just kidding]). (Think Heironymous Bosch on hyper-crystal meth for a depiction of this). I love a wee bit of lurid imagery; you don't think it is a sin, do you? Could God be that cavilling?

Re your response to Wayfarer; I think the tradition is still as inexhaustible as it ever was. Right now I am reading a truly astonishing work by an anonymous 20th C Catholic author; it's called Meditation on the Tarot. I can't express how utterly inspired, profound and brilliant I think this book is. It may very well be the best book I have ever read.

I've got that book. Are you sure the author is Catholic? I have a strong feeling it is actually by Stephan Hoeller.

@Hoo - will respond later, I'm *supposed* to be working.

Well, hell, I may have to look into that book myself. (I'll google it now) I love Bosch.

On the maggots: I despise their position, but I remember being raised around racism and homophobia. It's the air one breaths. There's no awareness of the cruelty one participates in, especially if the black people are just on the news and the gay people are shrewd enough to hide or move away. At my small town high school, gay slurs were the most aggressive insult. You just had to fight at that point or...fufill the "prophecy" that you were d*ckless. I'm very fascinated by this sex/power connection and the "religion" of being a Man (not being a woman, and yet desiring one exclusively). How does even porn or fantasy intersect with the sacred? I like this about Norman O. Brown,a prudently living man who was in theory "polymorphously perverse." Camille Paglia reads Western literature and art as a sort of flight from the Mother. Jung reads the cross as a matrix or mother. Hence my association of Christ with primal energies (an ocean of ancient blood). I think of the two Mary's at the foot of the cross (symbolically) the mother and the prostitute.

Because art seeks to reveal and it applies itself to this in a magical manner.

One has to demechanize to become a mage. For sacred magic is through and through life --that life which is revealed in the Mystery of Blood....It is the fullness of voice with which sacred magic is concerned; it is the voice full of blood; it is the blood become voice. It is the being in which there is nothing mechanical and which is entirely living. — that book

Wow, this is my cup of tea, man. The blood become voice! The "demechanization" of the spiritual...

This is the Amazon link to the Hoeller book: https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Pilgrimage-Kabbalistic-Meditations-Tarot/dp/0835608395

And here is the link to the anonymous book: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Tarot-Journey-Christian-Hermeticism/dp/1585421618/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=695RNJG1MFQGX4NA05P8

On the maggots: I despise their position, but I remember being raised around racism and homophobia. It's the air one breaths. — Hoo

Yeah, I know what you mean; and that's why I said "Nah, just kidding". I just like to make dumb, lurid, inflammatory jokes sometimes...a personal failing, I suppose...
O:)

Oh, of course. I wasn't trying to accuse you or anything. It's just strange to contemplate how badly programmed we can be by our home communities that were themselves so programmed. I brought the books into my book-less home as young, alienated, precocious lad. What a difference it can make to learn to read, pick out one's own books, follow the string. Can anything beat the drama of a sequence of "dangerous" ideas? I've felt pretty ripe for awhile. Life is better these days. But I can imagine the thrill of living it all again, this journey of self-consciousness and liberation. That alone helps justify death. "Play the scary drama again, please, and wipe my memory. " (But not yet!)

Imagine this. A demon or a god tells you that you are going to die in 24 hours. You have that time to think over whether you want to do it all again, every moment, with memory wiped. I imagine that 24 hours the second time around, when one knows that one had chose it all before. (Close to Nietzsche, of course, but I pondered this on a late night walk and it had a new vividness.)

the latter contains this gem:

I believe in a single substance, the mother of all forces, which engenders the life and consciousness of everything, visible and invisible. I believe in a single Lord, biology, the unique son of the substance of the world, born from the mother substance after centuries of random shuffling of material: the encapsulated reflection of the great material sea, the epiphenomenal light of primordial darkness, the false reflection of the real world, consubstantial with the mother-substance. It is he who has descended from the shadows of the mother-substance, he who has taken on flesh from matter, he who plays at the illusion of thought from flesh, he who has become the Human Brain. I acknowledge a single method for the elimination of error, thus ultimately eliminating myself and returning to the mother substance. Amen.

I am confused as to which book you are referring to Wayfarer. That certainly doesn't sound like it comes from Meditation on the Tarot, which is the only "latter' in the post you are apparently responding to. :s

Sorry I got the threads mixed up, I thought I was in the Mysticism thread. I think it is from that book, but I would have to retrace my steps to find exactly where.

//it is there - p 212 - thanks for reminding me to finish the book!//

Correction - that passage is similar but not identical

There's never been any shortage of people believing absurdities, nonsense, etc.

..

Sure, for work that I feel is good. — Terrapin Station

There's no shortage of prejudice in the wold. And you demonstrate it well. Unless another's belief feels right to you, you deem it absurd nonsense.

It was an ironic statement, MU. — John

Terrapin doesn't seem to think so.

There's no shortage of prejudice in the wold. — Metaphysician Undercover

Especially in the sense you're using that term, I agree with you. I don't believe that a lack of bias is possible. That's an upshot of my ontological "perspectivalism" or "reference pointism."

And you demonstrate it well. Unless another's belief feels right to you, you deem it absurd nonsense.

I deem things absurd or nonsense when I believe that they're incoherent, basically. It's not at all the case that just in case I disagree with something, I think it's incoherent. But some things I believe are incoherent.

I don't believe that a lack of bias is possible. — Terrapin Station

Well that's a nice way of rationalizing being prejudiced, by saying that you don't believe a lack of bias is possible. I suppose you could rationalize any form of immorality in this way, by saying that you don't believe restraining from such an immoral act is possible.

I deem things absurd or nonsense when I believe that they're incoherent, basically. It's not at all the case that just in case I disagree with something, I think it's incoherent. But some things I believe are incoherent. — Terrapin Station

So you're saying that you believe things which are incoherent, and also, incoherent things you deem as absurd, and nonsense. Why do you choose to believe things which you deem as absurd, or nonsense?

1. Was Jesus' resurrection only a work of literature with no physical grounds that such a thing occurred? — saw038

Impossible to say.

2. Was Jesus' resurrection a true story that transcended the realm of physical laws as we currently perceive them? — saw038

Impossible to say.

Option 3: The resurrection of Jesus is a component of faith - faith in the written testimony found in the Bible. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead and walked again - by faith. I'm not too concerned about things that I cannot know - how this happened, what was the mechanism, whether there is undeniable proof of it etc. It's called faith for a reason.

And before anyone hackles with this - remember, you want to know. I don't. Knowing won't bring me bread tomorrow. Neither will it help me treat others more fairly, or make society more just, nor yet improve the condition of my soul. But I do want to believe. Why? Well I find it to be a very beautiful story - as I said before, the most beautiful that can be told. It inspires me - it does improve the condition of my soul. And that's that.

I googled that passage you quoted, and referred to as a 'gem' (I must presume you were being ironical) to see if I could found out where it came from. It is from Sam Harris. No wonder I disliked what it said and felt it could not come from Meditation on the Tarot!