Which social truths are you thinking about? The reason I ask about that is because there are ones which are just about conformity. I definitely believe in communicating with others, and you say it's a bit like art, but I see art and the arts as one of highest forms of communication. — Jack Cummins
Yeah, unless you're an Orwellian. As the song says
"When you believe in things
That you don't understand,
Then you suffer ..." — 180 Proof
That's a pretty good non-sectarian definition of Religion. So, in that case, Albert Einstein was a religious person. But I would distinguish between a personal unofficial Philosophy and a communal doctrinal Religion.
I call my "belief in an unseen order" in Nature, and my attempt to "harmoniously adjust thereto", merely a personal philosophical worldview. However, most people are not so rationally or philosophically inclined; hence their "need" for a religious community of faith & feeling, may result from the cognitive dissonance between their intuition of "Order" in the world, despite the obvious Disorders of life, and their uncertainty about the ambivalent "Unseen" organizer. Having a scriptural authority for your belief, releases you from responsibility for personally resolving the "need" for assurance that someone is in control, and that things are going to be alright.
Those who are philosophically opposed to any form of Supernaturalism or Religion though, may either deny the inherent order of Nature (emphasizing randomness instead), or place their trust in Science (to reveal the self-ordering powers of evolution). :smile:
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
____Albert Einstein
"there is found a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in a pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought."
___Albert Einstein, Religion and Science
"We're hand-wired to avoid uncertainty, because it makes us feel lots of negative emotions,"
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/17/coronavirus-psychology-of-uncertainty-not-knowing-whats-next.html — Gnomon
My own perspective is that of being brought up in the Roman Catholic tradition of Christianity. I was an extremely religious teenager and began attending Christianity Union at university, but found that I was at odds with others because I was interested in the whole panorama of comparative religion and could not believe that any one tradition had a monopoly on truth. I am currently outside of any tradition and have a certain sympathy with the deconstruction of religious beliefs, such as the critique offered by Nietzsche. — Jack Cummins
I wish to suggest that the main idea which I think is central in the individual mythical and spiritual pursuit is that of transformation. — Jack Cummins
The whole idea of transformation which I am talking about is ways we can work on ourselves, including meditations practices and seek out achieve states of peak experiences for ourselves, rather than just follow rituals. — Jack Cummins
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