Ugh, I'm disappointed you associate your avatar with GD symbology. Shame — schopenhauer1

What is GD symbology?

Well said.

No worries. I think I am going to reread the several religious texts I mentioned since it has been a few years. I think I will start with The Bhagavad Ghita.

I agree I think. That said, do you feel I have been guilty of this?

I’m a late gen Xer. My dad was a Christian with some very literal interpretations of the Bible. He did also for a time dabble in eastern philosophy, viz. Buddhism and Taoism. My mom grew up Catholic but hasn’t been religious since her days at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I have a Bachelor of Science in philosophy degree, and I have read Genesis, the Gospels, and Revelation a few times each. I have also read the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, and a book called The World’s Religions by Huston Smith. I have also read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but only once. I really love Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and someone once told me that I have a Hamlet complex. I took that with a grain of salt, though.

Anything in particular you recommend that I read next?

Well, for one I’m not really strictly a Christian. I believe in an ineffable God, and I believe in Jesus’ teachings, but I am not a fundamentalist. I also found value in the Bhagavad Ghita, the Upanishads, and the Tao Te Ching. I also believe in science and western philosophy.

I don’t have a problem with premarital sex per se. My wife and I engaged in it. I do believe monogamy if only serial monogamy is most virtuous.

Most clerics don’t view Christianity as involving astrology. Furthermore, you haven’t refuted that the Scandinavian countries have remnants from their religious past that influences their normative ethics.

If so, what are these extra religious things that these atheists would keep? — VoidDetector

The story of the Good Samaritan is one example that comes to mind.

Because that my theistic friends, is how you get modern science and modern civilization. — VoidDetector

Care to justify this with an actual argument? I’m open to one.

No. As I mentioned earlier, the myths and parables have morals or lessons that also have value.

Do unto others as you would have done unto you (by others).

Their Christian remnants wouldn’t involve the Law of the Torah.

They have remnants from their religious pasts.

I’m saying they probably borrow from religion’s normative teachings, e.g. the Golden Rule or Buddha’s moderation, without being theists or religious.

That thought-experiment, though, of you being the same person in a different world and making a different choice - I can easily imagine that. One interesting analogy here would be twin studies. As you probably know, twins often share very many elements of their life-stories, even when they’ve been separated at birth. But it’s still not hard to envisage cases in which one twin makes a decision that causes their life to diverge wildly from that of their twin - like, kill someone, or something. So what is choice being ‘determined’ by? — Wayfarer

But they occupy different spaces and aren’t treated the same and will necessarily have different experiences, shaping each of their respective constitutions.


I have been trying to flesh out a worldview that accommodates my spiritual experiences. I’m learning more everyday from the people on this forum, but no outside leads yet. Any suggestions?

Mental states have to be consistent with brain states for them to be fully determinative. Mental states supervene on brain states, each having fully determinative causes that line up so that a change in one necessitates a corresponding change in the other. However, I reject reductionism because it seems to imply that consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon. This goes against my spiritual experiences. I believe consciousness is just as real as matter. I believe this through spiritual experience that I can’t explain away as hallucinations. That said, my ontological experience of mental states strongly suggest to me that LFW is not true. I can’t conceive of myself in another possible world choosing something different given the same exact outside circumstances and the same exact inner mental states as I have in the actual world. To posit that I could seems to me strange, and I don’t understand the mechanism of how this would work.

That’s sound advice. However, I tend to get so immersed in something (currently this philosophy forum) that I soon get burned out on it. Then I don’t want to touch the thing, sometimes for long stretches, sometimes for good. I think I could learn some moderation in my interests and vary them as well. However, that seems to go against my nature. At least it feels that way. I know Sartre would disagree about having an inherent nature. I just can’t seem to break the cycle... Any advice for me?

Your claim about religion is wrong. Religion should be thought of as dealing with the normative, i.e. what people ought to do or how they should behave. It should not be thought of as an explanatory framework for the cosmos. That is fundamentalism. Science does the job with that. Science, however, can say nothing about what we ought to do (the normative).

I disagree. Epistemic uncertainty doesn’t entail metaphysical chance.

Im not one of these people who thinks you cannot trace the root cause of plently of terrorism or other horrors directly to religion. — VoidDetector

I believe terrorism stems from nihilism, not true religious beliefs.

I thought I had it all figured out, too, when I was an atheist for twenty years. I learned a little humility. Now I am open to different world views without thinking that I must always be right.

Simply put, you likely won't hear a person condemning a nation, and threatening to destroy said other nation in the name of nothing.. aka in the name of absence of belief. — VoidDetector

Didn’t you learn the world’s religions in your high school World History class? I know I did at my public high school. It enriched my education rather than being a detriment to it. I doubt the Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia had such a class.

I think his point was that religion’s purpose isn’t to build computers, just as it isn’t the domain of marine biology. Why limit yourself to just reading and studying science? Ever read fiction, for example?

What data?

Not really. I feel compelled by my mental states to practice philosophy and not, say, run marathons. However, experience is always rich with the new, novel, and awe-inspiring. That’s what keeps me interested.

Sure it would. We have memories of the mental exercise of deliberating. If one is punished or gains no value from a decision, then one can learn to not decide that again. The next time a new memory is formed from the mental exercise (which is fully determined by this and previous memories, beliefs, moods, and needs). People can learn from experience without the need to posit LFW (which I just can’t make sense of).

beliefs, memories, moods, and needs collectively fully determine subsequent mental states. We can in no way be metaphysically responsible for these, but as long as we are not being coerced by anyone, then we can be said to have free will and be held responsible in the conventional social sense.

Perhaps you didn’t read further down the thread or in other threads I’ve participated in. That’s okay. I believe brain states as well as mental states are fully determined. The mental states supervene on the brain but are determined as well. This gives me the pleasure of giving consciousness real existence while not falling into the physicalist trap. The person anticipates feeling better because the doctor imprinted on his mental state that he would feel better. The doctor’s imprinting and the patient’s belief and openness determine that the patient will be mistaken about a qualitative difference.

So why then don’t we treat headaches with sugar pills instead of Excedrin? It seems to me the patient is mistaken about qualitatively better states simply by being told it is medicine. Not that the qualitative state really is perceptibly better.

You’re an interesting bloke.

I don’t claim to know if the tribe was religious or even if anyone has studied their maybe religion. I attribute the Scandinavian’s happiness to their economic systems foremost. There is low inequality and the population is relatively homogeneous. America has an education and inequality problem with a heterogeneous population. Religion is not a problem as long as ALL religions are tolerated, which unfortunately they are not usually in practice.

The Christian wasn’t violent. Furthermore, my claim was that knowledge of science is necessary but not sufficient for a good life.

I fail to see how that bolsters your argument and falsifies what I said.

Most religions don’t advocate violence. At least not the ones I’ve studied. The dolts who pick out verses from religious texts out of context to justify violent behavior are the problem. Religions’ true purpose if it was understood by the unthinking souls is to shape your life into a more meaningful one. I believe religious studies aren’t sufficient, however necessary, but science and philosophy studies are necessary as well. I’m not denying the value of science. (I have a Bachelor of Science degree.) However, a well rounded education is necessary if one wishes to one day become wise as I hope to.

I like that

The Internet can’t give you a guide on how to live a good life by itself, nor can science for that matter, but a religious text can teach one wisdom. I’m not saying I’m wise, but I like to think I’m actively working towards it.

I like what you said there. Although I don’t think there is reincarnation, and I think heaven is a state of consciousness not a place, one should try to be beneficial or at least harmless for its own sake.

I suspected that’s what the tweeter meant, too. However, a case could be made that it is also a metaphysical claim, i.e. no one actually goes completely with the flow in life. We all have our individual aims/goals/desires.

In other words, is it describing something that ought to be done or how we should behave, or is it describing the way things really are?

I think TS’s objection is “why call it ‘mind’?” when the unconscious doings may not be anything like mind. At least we have no good reasons to believe so.