So critical intelligence is the cause of literal-minded ignorance? Freethinking causes unthinking violence? Logical thinking causes magical thinking? — 180 Proof

In this case, critical intelligence is literal minded ignorance, because its is directed at questions of what is and what is not, when the topic is how to live.

"Foxes cannot speak, therefore the fox did not say that the grapes were sour."
"Foxes can so speak, because Aesop says, and Aesop is the fount of all wisdom."

Literal minded ignorance producing literal minded ignorance. This exchange did not happen, and therefore can be ignored.

Thanks for your interest everyone; excuse me for not responding to all individually. I hope to have covered above the two main themes of the responses: the attempt to understand the primitive mind, and the attempt to defeat the primitive mind.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much appetite for the reflexivity of critically understanding modernity itself, or the roots of its catastrophic destructiveness. The topic arises as I reflect on the question - "how has humanity gone so terribly wrong, that we can control everything except ourselves?"

Well that's put me in my place, Cartoon god. Leaving Irony to reign supreme.

Do you have a view about what Christianity was like before this period of reaction against atheism? Was its concern with how people should live exercised with more tolerance and open mindedness?

Was its concern with how people should live exercised with more tolerance and open mindedness? — Tom Storm

We burned witches and apostates, as I recall, and enslaved the heathen. More tolerant and open minded than who, though? Are you seeing the triumph of open-minded tolerance all around you?

I'm seeing supposedly civilised countries that are poisoning the world and so concerned with perfecting their weapons that they cannot even feed and house their own citizens. I tolerate it, though.

I hear you. I just wondered what the difference might be in behaviours between literalism as reaction and how to live as direction.

Are you seeing the triumph of open-minded tolerance all around you? — unenlightened

In the world I experience directly, yes. In the world provided to me through media, not much. Although tolerance is a funny word; do I want to be 'tolerated' or understood and accepted?

I'm not saying that Christianity has the answers, or that any religion has the answers. I'm not saying that things were better in the good old days. Humans live in conflict because conflict lives in them. Mainly what I am attacking is the implied moral superiority of the modern mind. It is the same mind as the primitive mind, but has lost the language with which to even talk about the conflict, never mind resolve it.

The language of human psychology is always mythological, because psyche cannot contain a complete understanding of itself. The scientific mythos is so impoverished as to be useless - mind as malfunctioning computer. Switch yourself off and on again, or take yourself to a technician.

I'm not saying that Christianity has the answers, or that any religion has the answers. I'm not saying that things were better in the good old days. — unenlightened

I'm not saying that you did.

The scientific mythos is so impoverished as to be useless - mind as malfunctioning computer. — unenlightened

What do you mean by scientific mythos (and perhaps avoid fundamentalists like Dawkins in this)?

The language of human psychology is always mythological, because psyche cannot contain a complete understanding of itself — unenlightened

I often think all language is metaphor, whatever it might be.

Mainly what I am attacking is the implied moral superiority of the modern mind. It is the same mind as the primitive mind, but has lost the language with which to even talk about the conflict, never mind resolve it. — unenlightened

This is an interesting thesis. I've often argued that we replaced the worship of god with the worship of 'reality' and I don't think we have access to reality or can even define it, except in the shallowest terms.

Where do you see the solutions to these problems you have described?

I don't think we have access to reality or can even define it, except in the shallowest terms. — Tom Storm

What do you mean by "reality'?

If we are real, how can we not "have access to reality"?

Any reason to doubt that you are real, Tom? :eyes:

IME, all atheists seek "how to flourish without gods ghosts demons & magic?" and some come to "Begin by learning 'how to discern what is from what is not and then align expectations – beliefs – with what is'". In this regard, as far as I'm concerned, 'religious fundamentalism' – like e.g. psychosis or incontinence – is non sequitur. :mask:

I often think all language is metaphor, whatever it might be. — Tom Storm

I agree. It's all pattern recognition; a cat is a thing like another thing called a cat, and a big cat is another thing like a cat, only bigger. An engine runs like man runs, with rhythmic movement.

This is an interesting thesis. I've often argued that we replaced the worship of god with note worship of 'reality' and I don't think we have access to reality or can even define it, except in the shallowest terms.

Where do you see the solutions to these problems you have described? — Tom Storm

The way I sometimes put it for modernist consumption is that something or other must be the most important thing in your life, or else nothing is important. That thing, or nothing is your god. From there, I will say that the worst thing to put at the centre of your life is Self, and the best is Love.

And then I would like to forbid any discussion about the existence or non-existence of these, because the game is to realise them in one's life. One might believe in 'truth, justice, and the American way', but no serious person could claim they exist, only that they seek to manifest them in the way they conduct own life. Gods such as Sophia, that we claim to be lovers of here, are our own potential, aspired to, and sought after.

"Where are these gods?", the literalist asks; and whatever answer they are given, they will go and not find them; not in the sky, and not on Mount Olympus. For the literalist, wisdom is the belief in its own non-existence.

Thanks. That's a sophisticated lens you are applying. I'll need to think it over.

And then I would like to forbid any discussion about the existence or non-existence of these, because the game is to realise them in one's life — unenlightened

This reminds me of my friend John (who is a priest) who says 'Forget Jesus, be Christlike!' Is this the kind of thing you mean?

One might believe in 'truth, justice, and the American way', but no serious person could claim they exist, only that they seek to manifest them in the way they conduct own life. — unenlightened

Ok, there it is again. I think I get it. Does this come from a broader philosophical system or school? It seems to be focused on practice and virtue.

"Begin by learning 'how to discern what is from what is not and then align expectations – beliefs – with what is'" — 180 Proof

That's where we differ. I come from a family of architects, and the architect functions by imagining a building that is not and then seeking to realise it.

'What is' presupposes whatever is not impossible to realize.

'Forget Jesus, be Christlike!' Is this the kind of thing you mean? — Tom Storm

Yes indeed. If you love historical research, you might look into the origins of the Jesus story, why not? But the meaning of the story is that love is taking pains; painstaking research, or painstaking self-sacrifice. The results of research do not change the meaning.

Does this come form a broader philosophical system or school? — Tom Storm

Not really. I might wave vaguely at Maurice Nicoll, and J Krishnamurti, along with the usual philosophical suspects – there's nothing very original in what I'm saying.

:up: I've always had time for J Krishnamurti - the anthology Think on These Things was revelatory in my youth three decades ago. But of course now I'm a somewhat tedious atheist and philosophical neophyte. :wink:

I agree difficulties with the self are leveraged by Cartesianism and the subsequent history of instrumental reasoning. The modus operandi of homo economicus is manipulate–for–advantage rather than engage–with. It's to look to ends / goals for satisfaction rather than processes. It's a mindset that fuels boredom, frustration, and emptiness especially as it spills into social relations.

Psychologically, the problem with belief is that even this becomes a tool for manipulation and exchange--commodified. So that we believe what we ought because we know what we ought believe and whether or not what we believe is worth, in a more holistic sense, believing in, the formula seems to work, and what works becomes the yardstick for belief. E.g. Atheism in its most unsophisticated form works. Snakes do not talk, as you said, and there is no old man with a beard in the sky. "Everyone" knows that.

And such that we have a self left in that morass of oughts, we're positioned more and more to believe against it so that even when we do do the right thing we often do it for the wrong reason and lose the value in doing it, the good-in-itself of it. This is the peculiar modern perversion as I see it. We rattle around without reason because at least we know how one rattles around. What we seem to have lost is the sense of how not to rattle around. How to do the "wrong" thing for the right reason.

It's a Moloch-type situation applied to self-relationship. There are material advantages to compromising the self and so it becomes a social necessity. But so is a belief in freedom. We believe against ourselves because we must believe in a "freedom" that negates the self, but the self really is freedom. This dynamic serves to make us feel responsible insofar as we are "free" for the increasing unfreedom that it itself fosters. And as "free" individuals we perceive ourselves as ill and the solution a means / end one. And we are ill because we neither understand freedom nor the solution to unfreedom because we "ought" not. Our oughts are a closed system that's obscured from itself. So, yes we are responsible but not in the way presented to us, as if we must repair our social wrong of not being happy; on the contrary, we must repair our happiness at being socially wrong.

I might wave vaguely at Maurice Nicoll, and J Krishnamurti, along with the usual philosophical suspects – there's nothing very original in what I'm saying. — unenlightened

+ Kierkegaard, e. g. The Sickness into Death. Currently reading. Very apropos, it seems to me.

Edit:

From there, I will say that the worst thing to put at the centre of your life is Self, and the best is Love. — unenlightened

Christian existentialism, as I understand it, solves this by dissolving the distinctions between Self / love/ freedom.

:clap:

1. Make a strong fact/value distinction, as per Hume.
2. Establish the scientific method with truth as the only and unquestionable value. — unenlightened

The meaning of some words may change over time, and it could be that we have a shifting in the principal significance of "truth" here. This is indicated by Ciceronianus' quotation:

. "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." — Ciceronianus

Notice here that "truth" is represented as a way of life, a way of being, instead of as fact . This is the distinction we find today between the two basic definitions of "true". The primary definition today is 'fact, corresponding with reality', while the secondary and sub-definitions are 'genuine, honest, faithful'.

So what is at issue is your primary premise, the "strong fact/value distinction". This distinction drives a wedge between the two definitions of "true" by associating it with "fact", and assuming that facts are independent from values.

We can see the very same issue with the separation between moral "values" and quantitative, or mathematical "values". It is often assumed, or simply taken for granted by people, that mathematical values are completely distinct and unrelated to moral values, instead of being seen as two different members (types) of the same set (category), "values". This way of taking for granted that mathematical values are completely distinct from other values, like moral values, and are somehow objective while other values are subjective, thereby categorically distinct, contributes to this delusional fact/value distinction.

The Christian fundamentalist movement, which is a naive literalism that tries to limit interpretation to the actual text, specifically denying that it requires special understanding, is a new idea. — Hanover

In response to college educated liberal Christian theologians. It was a backlash of illiteracy. Atheists as a class of scapegoat hadn't been invented yet.

This reminds me of my friend John (who is a priest) who says 'Forget Jesus, be Christlike!' Is this the kind of thing you mean? — Tom Storm

That approach I think works for any religion, and I think it adds tremendous depth to the religious text and it removes the simplistic objections from the atheistic camp.

Taking what you say further. If you ignore the physical, actual Jesus, but instead focus on what he represents, you have to ask yourself what to do with all the theology surrounding his existence. That is, God supposedly literally gave his only son to assist humankind in cleansing itself from the original sin of Adam eating from the tree of knowledge, a rejection of which results in eternal damnation.

This changes the discussion from a simple tale of snakes in a heaven like Eden to an elusive metaphor, asking why consuming knowledge casts one out of Eden, and why the possession of knowledge without an acceptance of an object of absolute love from a creator would lead to such a condemnable existence.

And this story I've just told is uniquely Christian. Jews, reading the same text, don't place signficance on the fall of man, continue to believe humans are born into perfection, believe atonement for sins occurs by asking for it and not by accepting any Jesus like messiah, and they have no theology of eternal damnation, traceable to inherited sin, personally caused sin, or otherwise.

So this is the same story, but with very different results, begging the question of what the text actually means. And this is where I think the atheists miss the point. They either say the text is absurd in its literal sense in that it demands the acceptance of talking snakes or they think the text is meaningless because it means whatever anyone says it means.

Thousands of years spent analyzing a text through different contexts is certain to yield varying results, but the point is that everyone is using it to consistently find meaning applicable to their existence, which is how the interpretation should be judged, not the literal words of the text. So, when you say "be Christlike," what you mean at a more meta level is to search for our purpose and meaning, whether that be through figuring out the metaphor of Christ, figuring out the necessity of following the legalistic rules of Judaism, or understanding the metaphor and underlying purpose of any religion.

So, when you say "be Christlike," what you mean at a more meta level is to search for our purpose and meaning, whether that be through figuring out the metaphor of Christ, figuring out the necessity of following the legalistic rules of Judaism, or understanding the metaphor and underlying purpose of any religion. — Hanover

That's the search fundamentalists - the real literalists - are all about rejecting. "Don't ask questions. Don't think abut it. Just obey the rules." In fact, the modern ones more or less ignore or actually despise the whole notion of christlike behaviour and go directly to stoning blasphemers.

That approach I think works for any religion, and I think it adds tremendous depth to the religious text and it removes the simplistic objections from the atheistic camp.

The simplistic objection from atheists is not about the fanciful language, it's about the moral and legal aspects of imposing 1500BCE laws on post-Enlightenment societies.

It X a dogma when X is demonstrably true? I don't think so. — 180 Proof

Isn't this the pattern pointed out in the OP?

I think I'd accept that dogma is truth-apt, and therefore can be true -- at least insofar that it's a declarative belief.

So a piece of Christian Dogma may be "Jesus Christ rose from the dead". What makes this dogma? I think I'd say that its position within the web of beliefs is what makes it dogma -- it's the sentence that, if you flip its truth-value, you also flip the truth value of a large section of beliefs which holds the way of life together.

And then there's a social component to dogma, which I suspect is how we all excuse our own beliefs as not-dogmatic. Insofar that we subject them to questioning, we might say, then our beliefs are not dogmatic. But I'm not sure. Because of the social nature of belief, in terms of enactment, the act of questioning doesn't really change dogmatic activities. There's this other, non-truth value which keeps the dogma attractive: which is a way of life.

So the ancient texts, if we follow Alasdair Macintyre, don't have a strong fact/value distinction -- and for those reasonable theists who do care about such things, they'll integrate the values that are important with the facts as we learn them. That's part of the tradition is to re-interpret the ancient texts with respect to how one lives in an everchanging world.

Does that make it clear nowhow truth, while important, isn't at issue?

And I thought I was guilty of bad logic.

None of this is the fault of atheists. Religion hasn’t had a good track record of allowing people to live as they please and those who stood against it generally paid the price.

Religion is about control, that seems to be the nutshell here.

Except you’re just wrong. Life today is arguably better than in the past, especially when it comes to religion.

Now that it doesn’t hold such a strong position anymore I can not worry (well not so much these days) about being gay. If anything it’s religions fault that it’s even a problem today.

Also IMO Religion doesn’t answer how to live so much as tell/force you to live as such or else.

This just sounds like making excuses for the text or religion. Never mind that the text itself contradicts itself multiple times and makes exceptions for followers that it doesn’t for others. Not to mention preach some awful things.

Even Christ wasn’t exactly a good guy in the book itself. There is a reason a lot of atheists say they became atheists by reading the Bible.

Personally I think we’d be better off without religion as I think it’s done more harm than good. But at least today you have to option to practice or not unlike the past.

also the problem with interpretation of a text is that people can use it to justify just about anything they want to so you’re not really helping your cast but more illustrating a huge problem with religion.

I am necessarily oversimplifying so I take your points. But another way of saying this is that the progress of human social life has involved the gradual outsourcing of meaning and connection that tended to characterize smaller and more isolated cultures largely because ideologies were more easy to control and more crucial to immediate survival (not to say that we can find an obvious reason for every ritual or superstition but that they tended to have crucial functions in allowing for coherent joint understanding to maintain social cohesion and/or direct practical consequence). The downsides were plenty, of course, and their rigidity ossified the negatives along with the positives.

I think what the OP is pointing to is not a romanticization of historical alternatives but a recognition that progress along one axis: technological / scientific / logical = "rational" thinking can leave behind and obscure other human values and part of the reaction to that may be phenomena such as modern religious fundamentalism. If you look at it that way, the dogmatic atheist and the religious fundamentalist can be seen as dual symptoms of an imbalanced/asymmetric form of progress.

Does that make it clear how truth, while important, isn't at issue? — Moliere

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean. Is it something like "the importance of truth is not at issue" (which I agree with)? But surely it's obvious that what is true - whether a particular proposition is true or not and even which propositions are capable of truth or falsity - is often at issue?

It seems to me that the distinction between religion and science is usually over-simplified. Religion often includes claims that are supposed to be facts about the world which provides what is most important to it - an account of the world that provides purpose and meaning - I prefer structure - to life. Science includes ideas about what is valuable, primarily truth, of course, but a great deal about how to live life, what is worth pursuing and how it is to be pursued (which, of course, is the stock in trade of religion). Incidentally, how far modern capitalism is an outcome of science is unclear to me, but I would like to think that alternative outcomes of the primacy of science are available.

But anything that provides a basis for a way of life and justifies certain practices and is available to large numbers of people, is going to find lots of different kinds of people amongst its followers. So whatever was originally proposed or recommended is going to find different tendencies developing. So all religions have fundamentalist tendencies, liberal tendencies, intellectual tendencies, practical tendencies, missionary tendencies, quietist tendencies, and on and on. That includes the way(s) of life that exist around science. So I'm inclined to see dogmatic atheism as a tendency within the practice of science which is bound to develop.

I find grand narratives like the conflict between religion and science very difficult. They tend to evaporate when looked at too closely.

If you look at it that way, the dogmatic atheist and the religious fundamentalist can be seen as dual symptoms of an imbalanced/asymmetric form of progress. — Baden

I would go along with that. But let's not be too pessimistic. Perhaps progress happens by over-correcting imbalances.

This just sounds like making excuses for the text or religion. Never mind that the text itself contradicts itself multiple times and makes exceptions for followers that it doesn’t for others. Not to mention preach some awful things. — Darkneos

This objection is irrelevant to my point, which is that the intepretation is what is relevant, not the text. I highlighted that point in my last post.

That you can show me the text is contradictory says nothing of the interpretation, which is where humans are deciphering meaning. If your point is that the text in inconsistent, vague at points, and clearly the result of a cobbling together of many ancient documents, I know that.

also the problem with interpretation of a text is that people can use it to justify just about anything they want to so you’re not really helping your cast but more illustrating a huge problem with religion. — Darkneos

Interpretation necessarily involves imposing some sense of wisdom and logic upon the text in order to obtain palatable results. Do you not impose your wisdom and logic when describing your ethical conclusions? Can't you manipulate whatever secular means you use in determining your ethical conclusions to justify whatever result you want? It's not like religion has a monopoly on justifying bad acts.