As you celebrate Jung, you want to drag Freud down as pseudo-science ignoring the fact anyone who finds the old atheist Freud too flaky is likely to consider Jung an outright crypto-fascist fraud. — T H E
Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity. — Freud
Well, okay, then let's talk "ultimate reality".All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you love
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give
And all that you deal
And all that you buy
Beg, borrow or steal
And all you create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet
(everyone you meet)
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the sun
is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed
by the moon — Eclipse
Some call it heavenly in its brilliance
Others, mean and rueful of the Western dream
I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft
We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping
This is the land where the Pharaoh died
The Negroes in the forest brightly feathered
They are saying, "forget the night
Live with us in forests of azure
Out here on the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we is stoned, immaculate"
[ ... ]
I'll tell you this
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn — The WASP
Whatever it is, or that is, I think "ultimate reality" is unknowable in the way random events are unpredictable. We are proximal beings limited to ap/proximate knowledge and understanding. — 180 Proof
TO THINK LIKE GOD focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C.E. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the Gods.
At our best we strive to be worthy of calling ourselves "Promethean". I can't imagine a more ethical struggle than stealing fire from heaven. As for "ultimate reality" I've not given up; I told Jack that it ineluctably encompasses us as it ever-recedes from our comprehension and draws – calls – us inside-out in all directions in a kenosis-like process of civilizational hubris to the very utmost end of everything. Down Heraclitus' river and over the falls into Epicurus' atomic void: I'm an ecstatic materialist, Wayf :point: *apotheosis or extinction!*Modern science still attempts to arrive at a perfectly detached and objective viewpoint, but due to the loss of the ethical dimension, it has become Promethean, 'stealing fire from the Gods'. — Wayfarer
It’s perfectly true that Biblical religions originated in the ‘childhood of humanity’ and are full of ‘bronze-age tropes’. But they can be re-intepreted, there are layers of meaning. That is what hermeneutics are for. Rather than just written off. — Wayfarer
He notes the ethical commands require ‘some other foundation’ - well, what? What has ‘organised atheism’ come up with in that department, since Nietzsche declared that God was dead? — Wayfarer
We have ideas like individual rights, the common good, democracy, etc. I'm not saying this is perfect, but I don't think humans need God or gods to have communities. I think we both live in secular societies (I imagine rightly or wrongly that Australia is more like the US than any other nation that comes to mind.) — T H E
What's going to happen if people let go of God? Will they collapse into nihilism? — T H E
Unlike America, God is almost totally absent from Australian cultural life. There are small pockets of 'faith' within conservative politics. — Tom Storm
It's not like historical religion produced a culture that was morally superior. There is no golden era of religious moral virtue we can point to in the West. — Tom Storm
Whatever it is, or that is, I think "ultimate reality" is unknowable in the way random events are unpredictable. We are proximal beings limited to ap/proximate knowledge and understanding. "Ultimate reality" can't mean anything to us in the sense of informing or empowering our lives. It's completely alien to human experience, encompassing our reason and intuitions and, therefore, necessarily cannot be encompassed by our reasoning or intuitions (Jaspers). Whatever there is presupposes this encompassing, ever-receding horizon. "What is it exactly?" That question makes no sense to me.
And if you call this encompassing "God" then "God" doesn't matter to human existence, its the farthest away from us an entity can possibly be. If you don't call the encompassing "God" then it too is encompassed and not "ultimately real" (or is just a Feuerbachian figment of our mass-anxiety/hallucinations). So, I suppose, that's the paradox of theism. — 180 Proof
But if people need it, I have no problem as long as they are not using bronze age tropes to influence politics and legislation. — Tom Storm
IMO, this is our current meta-religion (democracy with individual rights.) — T H E
Freud's theory of repression does, indeed, seem to postulate the existence only of people who, being too moral, are continually repressing the immorality of their natural instincts. According to this idea, the immoral man who allows his natural instincts an unbridled existence should be proof against neurosis. But daily experience proves this is obviously not the case; he may be just as neurotic as other men. If we analyse him, we find that it is simply his decency that has been repressed. Therefore, when an immoral man is neurotic, he represents what Nietzsche appropriately described as "the pale criminal," a man who does not stand upon the same level as his deed.[232]
The opinion may be held, that in such a case the repressed remnants of decency are merely infantile traditional legacies, that impose unnecessary fetters upon natural instincts, for which reason they should be eradicated. The principle "écraser l'infâme" would be the natural culmination of such an absolute let-instinct-live theory.[233] That would obviously be quite phantastic and nonsensical. It should, indeed, never be forgotten—and the Freudian School needs this reminder—that morality was not brought down upon tables of stone from Sinai and forced upon the people, but that morality is a function of the human soul, which is as old as humanity itself. Morality is not inculcated from without. Man has it primarily within himself—not the law indeed, but the essence of morals.
After all, does a more moral view-point exist than the let-instinct-live theory? Is there a more heroic morality than this? That is why Nietzsche, the heroic, is especially partial to it. It is natural and inborn cowardice that makes people say, "God preserve me from following my instincts," thinking that they thus prove their high moral standard. They do not understand that following one's bent is really much too costly for them, too strenuous, too dangerous, and finally it cuts somewhat against that sense of decency which most people associate rather with taste than with a categorical imperative. The unpardonable fault of the let-instinct-live theory is, that it is much too heroic, too idealogic for the multitude.
There is, therefore, probably no other way for the immoral man but to accept the moral corrective of his unconscious, just as he who is moral must come to terms as best he may, with his demons of the netherworld. — Jung
Is Tucker Carlson a knight of faith? — T H E
We have ideas like individual rights, the common good, democracy, etc. — T H E
IMO, your position only makes sense in a secular context. The right to be hermeneutic about the sacred texts was hard-won. — T H E
As strange as Q-anon is, it's not so far off from the Apocalypse of St. John, which I understand to be the first text of untamed, primitive Christianity. — T H E
[Prometheus] was an immortal – it never ended at all for him. :smirk: — 180 Proof
The Greek poet Hesiod related two principal legends concerning Prometheus. The first is that Zeus had been tricked by Prometheus into accepting the bones and fat of sacrifice instead of the meat, and so hid fire from mortals. Prometheus stole it back and returned it to Earth once again. As the price of fire, and as punishment for humankind in general, Zeus created the woman Pandora and sent her down to Epimetheus (Hindsight), who, though warned by Prometheus, married her. Pandora took the great lid off the jar she carried, and evils, hard work, and disease flew out to plague humanity. Hope alone remained within.
Hesiod relates in his other legend that, as vengeance on Prometheus, Zeus had him nailed to a mountain in the Caucasus and sent an eagle to eat his immortal liver, which constantly replenished itself; Prometheus was depicted in Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, who made him not only the bringer of fire and civilization to mortals but also their preserver, giving them all the arts and sciences as well as the means of survival.
Religion gone bad is an awful thing, but it's not the only thing. — Wayfarer
And the concept we have of individual rights originated with the Christian principle of the equality of all before God, a concept which was utterly alien to classical culture — Wayfarer
It's possible that I'm what many religious believers would take to be an atheist anyway. For instance, I find a lot of meaning in Schopenhauer's philosophy, and he was scathingly critical of Biblical religion. But at the end of the day, he also said that religious ascesis was the only real path to peace. — Wayfarer
He wrote a book called the 'heretical imperative' which was about the fact that in the ancient world, 'having an opinion' about religion was the root of heresy. The supplicant (i.e. me) was supposed to simply turn up and trust the process. Whereas in the modern world with its plethora of cultures and choices, a choice has to be made - which he posed as a choice between Jerusalem and Benares. — Wayfarer
It is true that there are apparently crazy or far-out ideas captured in some of the Biblical texts, but I'm sure Q-Anon is simply common delusion, the consequence of very badly informed and malformed minds — Wayfarer
Like being blonde and being bald? Do explain. — 180 Proof
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