For sake of inquiry,
we suspend the standard conversational themes generally presented here, themes that center on concepts like faith, atheism, theodicy, God, first cause, teleology, and so on; and certainly authoritative texts like the bible or the koran, and the personality cults these inspire. I mean, we put out of inquiry all, or nearly all, that circulates though typical religious mentalities, in an effort to determine if there is something "real" that religion is truly about; something that is not simply a historical fiction conceived in an ancient mind. To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world, forgetting even the word 'religion' — Constance
Look for “something real”, that later gives rise to the words "religion" or "God", but not yet. Great metaphysical question for this forum.
I hold that religion actually has a foundation discoverable in the essential conditions of our existence. Something PRIOR... — Constance
"discoverable" "foundation" "essential" "prior" - these are all objective references, almost empirical. Good for metaphysical inquiry.
Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. — Constance
The "indeterminacy of our existence." That which is prior, that which is the condition of our existence, involves indeterminacy, and to us, as a condition of human existence in particular, a condition of "our" existence, we find ourselves thrown into an ethical indeterminacy. And this begets religion.
Am I in the ballpark?
I would break it down like this: "religion arises out of our sense of the indeterminate. It does so in three steps: We sense the indeterminacy of things. We sense ourselves, like the other things, are indeterminate as well. And we sense an ethical indeterminacy when those other things are humans like ourselves."
But I now changed it to "a sense of" the indeterminate. I use "a sense of" the way you use "our". It is the human part that particularizes "existence" into "our existence." Human sentience applied to the thrownness of objects, creates a particular sense of things. We sense in a particular way. We sense "our" meaning ourselves, in existence. Our mere presence in the universe is the presence of a particular sense of things, and this is tied up with the prior reasons we use the word "our" when discussing existence.
So along with indeterminacy, comes the "our", or the sense of indeterminacy, or the discovery of indeterminacy, which only arises in ourselves, as humans.
Our mere human presence in the universe, brings with it a sense of the indeterminacy. The indeterminacy of things, for us, must therefore include the indeterminacy of what we ourselves are. This, to me, now makes a radical indeterminacy.
And all of these beget religion. I like it.
I obviously love the word "thrown" you use later, and the seeking something "prior". Every good metaphysic must incorporate thrownness.
I do not see the thrownness itself as something determinate or indeterminate. You might bias it towards the indeterminate, but the thrownness itself doesn't create the indeterminacy. The determinate and the indeterminate jostle for position in the thrownness, but the thrownness is just there, it's the prior, the condition of existence itself.
The indeterminacy, is ourselves thrown in the mix - we are the introduction of indeterminacy in this mix.
So something human starts to look prior to the indeterminate. This creates circular reasoning. We use "our" existence to discern "radical ethical" of the "indeterminate." But if it is "our", it might automatically include the "ethical" - and existence itself might beget the indeterminate from "our" presence in existence. So I still have to wonder what was prior, what is the condition of existence at all that begat the "our" - the self-reflection in the thrownness that found radical ethical indeterminacy.
For now, we are already thrown, among the given, subject to the prior condition, and where the human and so many humans are thrown in such condition, at least, there is ethical indeterminacy.
To do this, one has to ask basic questions about the world — Constance
I want to keep the sense of indeterminacy as one facet of our existence that begets religion, but see other ingredients to the bread of religion (pun intended).
I would add that religion arises not only out of our sense of indeterminacy, but also our sense of impossibility. We have to sense it, as a real object, like the indeterminacy. But it is a sense not of the indeterminate, but the determined impossibility.
We've all experienced something that cannot be, yet it is. It's anything we can't explain, such that every explanation we construct may be impossible. Those moments of paradox, where you can say "I don't believe it!" while staring at it. That real sense of the impossible, gives rise to religion.
Both the indeterminate, and the impossible, can be called the mysterious. They both give birth to "why" and "how" and "what" and "whether real".
Both of them make a predicament out of action. Ethical indeterminacy undoes any sound ethical judgment of how to act. Impossibility undoes any commitment to taking action as well.
Impossibility deserves more consideration, along with indeterminacy, and ourselves in it.
Another prior condition may be our sense of time. Seems too simple, but somehow, we sense the eternity of time itself. Now we have a sense of time that is opposite of time, something always present instead. This is an impossibility contained within time. This makes the beginning and end of time indeterminate. The present, as eternity. We may find every eternal thing impossible in all of this changing motion and thrownness, but we sense it as part of the mystery.
The eternal and the impossible equally give rise to science. We ask how about the impossible, to understand it and show how it is possible, how it fits with the eternal laws that allowed it to be possible in the first place.
There is much that needs to reworked here and developed, but I was being too ambitious for a Tuesday night. Maybe you can make more of this.
Indeterminacy, impossibility, and time as eternity - human senses of what is thrown before ourselves taken as a community (therefore ethical indeterminacy) - giving rise to religion.
I think another missing element is language itself. Without it, we have no way to distinguish the indeterminate for the other ethical relata (other humans). It's all too indeterminate without the anchor of language to make the community. Language itself becomes a prior condition of shared indeterminacy. Language is part of the thrownness.
So indeterminacy, impossibility, maybe time as eternally present despite change itself, and the language that captures these things among the various communal selves as in "our existence" - all beget religion.
From the radical ethical indeterminacy, we get the ten commandments and the laws.
From the impossibility, we get walking on water and rising from the ashes
From eternity we get Omni-presence.
From language we get the word of God, prophesy and a way to mediate all of this.
Good post. Hope I gave you some things to think about, because you did to me.