Are you asking those questions for purely rhetorical purposes or are you genuinely curious?

So far in this discussion, I have not opposed your thesis but only remarked upon where your observations did not satisfy my understanding of matters. That does not mean I am representing Torquemada or apologizing for the sins of an institution. You said something was easy-peasy for Christians. It isn't for all of them. — Valentinus

My relationship with Christianity has changed many times over my lifetime. I went through a period when I believed it was a challenge that brought out the best in us and I still believe that is psychologically true, but I do not like literal interpretations of the Bible. I came to prefer Eastern philosophy/religion.

I do not recall ever having a concept of the City of God, but since you didn't answer the question I googled to see if it is mentioned in the Bible and I see it is, and after reading the explanation, I have a big problem with that notion because of the religious/political nature of it.

That's true. But there are questions that come out of this. Why is it that Christianity - and let's face it, so many religions worldwide - so effortlessly undertake evil actions?

Is it just a matter of believe oneself to be God's favourite? Might it not also be what happens when you think you have access to special knowledge that comes from an uncountable, extramundane source that is the origin of all morality. — Tom Storm

The Christians I know attempt to resolve every problem with prayers and they have complete faith that God/Jesus will answer their prayers. Obviously, if that is what one believes, God, will take care of everyone and all we need do is pray. Those who survive the hurricane, flood, landslide, or whatever, will be reassured God takes care of them. Those who don't, won't be here to worry about it. The religion is going to help in so many psychological ways, but it does not work as well as science. :lol: However, many Christians do not trust science and put their faith in God. When that can lead to thousands of people dying and suffering, I have a BIG problem with that!

My Christian friend kept approving of Trump and enjoyed believing her prayers helped him be "a good father to our country". She even approved of children being separated from their families and that was the last straw for me! Bottom line, faith has wonderful psychological effects, but it can also be the worse source of evil we have.

What a complex question. I think happiness is just moments we live along our lives. I going to sound pretty pessimistic but life in general is full of sadness. Even when you are getting older. So I guess this is why we are so obsessed to pursue happiness because it is so ephemeral — javi2541997

:lol: You all are reminding me of the years when I was lost in Hades. Hades is a place where we all must all go, from time to time, to get a sense of meaning. However, we should never go there without the help of the gods because it is so easy to get lost in Hades.

For a long time my life was so painful I really did not want to live and then I saw a cartoon of a man standing at the customer service desk in heaven saying, "I don't like life. Do you have something better to offer?".

I know suffering and maybe I am over-exuberant now because I can avoid it. Not that there is no pain in my life. But there is nothing I can do about the family problems. Everyone wants to make their own mistakes and they don't want to know what an old woman thinks. So instead of focusing on what can make me very unhappy, I focus on what can make me happy and that works. It is the benefit of no longer being responsible for family.

PS I would not know happiness if I had not stumbled onto philosophy! If it were not for philosophy I would still be one of the most miserable people on earth. I clawed my way out of Hades, thanks to philosophy and gaining a sense of purpose.

Lived, reflective, experience. — 180 Proof

And is that different from having knowledge?

↪TaySan
Ultimately philosophy is a personal orientation regarding our place in the universe. Since everyone is free to believe as they will it is unlikely that enough people will orient themselves in a way that will bring consensus on collective actions- no more than religion or politics can. — Proximate1

Well the US is about to experience a huge transfer of wealth. This is on top of feeding everyone, providing free medical care to many, subsidized housing, free education, affordable internet service, and instant communication with people around the world. How much more do people want?

My family has been very involved with the homeless, so it is not that I lack knowledge of less fortunate people, and am very thankful at this time I am not one of them. My granddaughter manages a camp for homeless people who have been given army tents, heat, and sanitation, and I am very proud of her. We are aware that what is being done is far short of what needs to be done, but compare to our past, what we are achieving today is pretty awesome. When I began advocating for the homeless, we had almost nothing for them and treated them like criminals. We have not been assuring people food until relatively recently. I see positive changes along with problems, but ignoring the good because of the bad, might be a mistake.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.....................................................

Do you believe that good moral behavior depends on good moral thinking? — T Clark

So you think Cicero was wrong about us choosing the right thing when we know what that is? Science is very important to knowing the right thing. What is the difference between knowledge and knowing the right thing?

:lol: It helps to read history. Compared to our past, we are very fortunate people. Perhaps where I live has a lot to do with my positive attitude. I gather other states do not take as good care of their citizens as the state that is my home. I live in a small city, large enough to provide the benefits of a city but not like L.A., California, where I grew up and would not return. And I am past the most difficult years. There was a time when my life was not nearly this good. I am a very fortunate person to have such a good life, in a small city with a beautiful river path that goes for many miles and I don't think there could be a better place to be than along the river, or if I want, I can sit on the beach and watch the tide roll in, just an hour away.

Hum, as I understand democracy it is constantly unfolding, preferably with the education the prepares each generation to resolve the problems of their time and that is not education for technology. Our most difficult problems today are human problems. The US had a Capitol Building that was open to the public because all citizens treated it like was almost sacred. It was not an armed fort. Bad actors have damaged our reality and the Spirit of America and if we do not resolve this problem with education, the democracy we were, will not be known to those born today.

I brought up the matter of taking responsibility as an objection to your statement: "That is, unlike Christians believing we must be saved by a supernatural power, our development is a matter of our own effort."

However one considers debates over being saved by works or faith, the command to love your neighbor as yourself requires that one become such a lover. While there are sharp disagreements amongst Christians, they all accept that the one who obeys the command will have to struggle and suffer for having done so.

Running through the many ways this effort is expressed is that one is revealed and witnessed as a result. There is no place to hide if one bears witness to themselves. The City of God compares the City of Men on the basis of this visibility. By their fruits you shall know them. The Imitation of Christ is a very personal devotion I cannot characterize. But it asks for a lot. Written as a Catholic reflection, it can be heard echoed in Kierkegaard's Works of Love. — Valentinus

The love thy neighbor as thy self doesn't seem to work so well when the other is different. We have not been too nice to those people who have a different faith or look different and do not know God and morals. :lol: The only people I know who were in favor of separating children from their families at the border were Christians. :rage: I am sorry but I can not tolerate people who think they are God's favorites and what they want is what God conveniently wants too. I am not sure if there have been any atrocities that were not justified by religious people?

City of God? Where is that? Jerusalem, Rome, someone's imagination? Like really who has been to the City of God and how do we know about it? How is it different from the good life people get to enter if their hearts weigh right when they are judged by Isis of Oris?

I am not sure if that is one of the mandates of Philosophy: to create a better world. There is a trend that subscribes to that, but I don't think philosophers do. The closest philosophers come to this, is moral philosophy, but that in and by itself tells you only (if at all successfully) how to behave morally, and not how to reduce carbon dioxide or how to reduce the accelerating population explosion.

So yes, the title is right, except philosophy never said it would do that. — god must be atheist

Never? I think it has been a goal of philosophy and the Enlightenment. Good moral thinking depends on knowledge of science. Cicero, we do the right thing when we know what it is. Maybe if the Bible had advanced knowledge of science, we would be doing better? I feel frustrated by our apparent failure to understand what science has to do with good moral judgment and democracy. From the time the West refound science and began improving on it, we have made incredible progress.

At least we are replanting trees with we cut them down, instead of waiting for God to give us our forest back.

Science and religion are just expressions of human nature projected onto a world where the don't, can't fit. Humanity doesn't have such a good history in the sense you mean. — T Clark

Wow, this is so on topic! We have both the good and the bad. :grin: Never before have so many people enjoyed so much security and so many pleasures, and developing technology holds out the hope that we can do even better than this.

Excuse me, I am a believer in the New Age and I get really excited about what is possible. I am sure this is the excitement many of the US founding fathers felt with their education in the classics. We have to acknowledge our past wrongs and the truth of what you said, but I think we also need to acknowledge our progress and the possibility that we can do better. I think we have created a better world.

Right now we might be in the Resurrection with archeologists, geologists and related sciences bring the past into the present. If reincarnation is a possibility, the human mass on earth today would be reincarnated souls, another possible form of Resurrection but not scientifically supported.

Now if we had not been thrown out of the Garden of Eden, the abundance of the Garden might have brought out the best in us, as abundance is bringing the best in us now. There are some pretty unpleasant things happening, but a lot of this is a demand that we do better. If we get education back on the enlightenment path we might come out of the present transition okay? But first, we have to do something about the nihilism we are dealing with now. Nihilism is probably part of the transition process.

happiness — javi2541997

How do you understand happiness? In the US because we turned our backs on the classics we think it is a frivolous pleasure. That is not what Jefferson meant by the "pursuit of happiness" when he wrote our Declaration of Independence separating the colonies from the king of England.

Coming from the classics the pursuit of happiness means gaining knowledge because knowledge is power and power leads to having things go our way but this is not self-centered because of the morality of cause and effect. As Socrates pointed out, if we make life unpleasant for others, sooner or later they will be our problem, and boy oh boy, the practice of slavery has lead to a serious problem in the US. That is exactly what Socrates was talking about. Too bad Jefferson and his peers ignored Socrates. :grimace:

I'm not a theist, but I don't see it that way. — T Clark

That appears to be the only argument we could have. I see a few nuggets of wisdom in the Bible but Creationism is not one of them. I don't think Christianity has such a good history, and today, to me it appears one of the worst problems we have. Not because Christianity is so bad, but without education in the classics, it is really bad. How people interpret the Bible depends largely on how they were educated. How we understand God depends a lot on if we are concrete thinkers and abstract thinkers.

I hate the mythology that Christianity and God's blessing is what made us so good great. Our history and the treatment of Native Americans, immigrants from China, Japan, Ireland, Italy, people of color, and women in general, has not been that good. Our greatness has been very worldly and it was built on exploiting human beings and taking from them what was not ours to take. This failure of philosophy is a failure to see the whole picture and storytelling that excluded our wrongs. This is a new day and we need to value philosophy to move ahead without doing more damage.

am not sure if that is one of the mandates of Philosophy: to create a better world. There is a trend that subscribes to that, but I don't think philosophers do. The closest philosophers come to this, is moral philosophy, but that in and by itself tells you only (if at all successfully) how to behave morally, and not how to reduce carbon dioxide or how to reduce the accelerating population explosion.

So yes, the title is right, except philosophy never said it would do that. — god must be atheist

In my world, which is probably different from everyone else's :lol: a moral is a matter of cause and effect and that makes destroying our planet immoral. In the US, we had education for good moral judgment but religion retarded our sciences and we were not working with the sciences essential to preserving our planet and having a high standard of living. That education was for everyone, not just those who choose liberal education at the college level and while we needed to prepare for a high-tech society, we made a mistake by dropping the education that turned everyone into more or less philosophical creatures. Now we have the science we need, but preparing everyone for a technological society, has short-circuited their ability to think and they no longer associate morals with cause and effect, so we continue to destroy our planet and put profit today above the future and health of our planet.

I am very impressed with your knowledge of Spinoza and his separation of vocational education and education for the humanities. However, I disagree with the notion that education must be one thing and not both. The argument for each side of this division is made in many books about education.

Technology advancements made vocational training very important but in the US and England, but it was ignored in favor of a classical education, the humanities. When we mobilized for the first world war, the mistake of ignoring vocational training was obvious because not only did industry need people with vocational training but so did the military!

Industry tried to close schools in the US as Europe had closed its schools during the war. It argued the war caused a labor shortage and they were not getting their money's worth because they still had to train new employees. Only a few years earlier child labor laws kept children out of industry, and industry lost its supply of really cheap labor.

Teachers argued an institution good for making good citizens is good for making patriotic citizens. The book of all the speeches at the 1917 National Education Association, explains all this and how education was used to mobilize the US for war and sustain the war effort.

So education for vocational training was added, but education for citizenship remained the priority purpose of education until the military technology of WWII. Clearly, we can have both. What is not so obvious to those who have not read the books about war and education is the US adopted so much of German bureaucracy and education and philosophy, it is now what defended its democracy against. A new commission is now looking into returning to education for citizenship. Such an education is the first-line defense against social problems and we seriously need to get back to that. It is the only way to have liberty and avoid becoming an authoritarian police state.

More to the point of this thread, we need to return to Greek and Roman classics and might want to question if storming the Capital Building has something to do with German philosophy?

A dictatorship of the proletariat? Am I reading you right? — fishfry

I am not sure but I think a dictatorship is rule by one person? At best, it might be a rule by one party. A democracy is rule by reason, and everyone has a part in the reasoning. Totally different from a dictatorship.

Completely agree with you, Sir. What a solid statement. It remembered me when politicians of Athens asked to the Sophist why they do not have the rule of governance and then answered "we are not here to solve the problems. We debate and theorise about these. Without them we cannot develop philosophy itself"
Nevertheless there are people who criticise Sophists. lol — javi2541997

The Sophists were equal to our education for technology. A totally changed purpose of education with a focus on being technologically correct, with the need to prepare men for bureaucratic positions resulting from Athens colonization of new territory and perhaps the natural result of focusing on proofs, a kind of word of God, and the evolution of democracy. A totally different way to perceive the value of a human being.

Whether or not technology has saved us is open to debate, but we'll leave that for now. Science by itself doesn't help anyone. It has to be turned into technology by engineering. Engineering is applied science.

And science is applied philosophy. — T Clark

Technology is not science. Humans have had technology since they lived in caves. The Egyptians obviously had technology but they did not understand universal truths, such as a triangle has three sides on earth and every other planet in the universe. As far as we know, not until the Greeks did philosophers start working on proofs. That is technology, plus philosophy, equals science. We understand not only what works but why it works.

Religion is a stumbling stone for science. Even today, Christians oppose the science of evolution and the 2012 Texas Republican agenda was to prevent teaching the higher-order thinking skills and teachers had to take Texas to court to end forcing teaching creationism as equal to science. We are not as controlled by the church as we once were but for thousands of years it has been a stumbling block. Since 1958 we have had education for technology and that is not education for science.

Liberal education was well-rounded education for well-rounded individual growth and independent thinking. It was the basis of education in the US until 1958 and we made a lot of progress before the military and industry hi-jacked education.

Individually, people are usually quite nice. We can be, sometimes, quite nice in large groups, too. Think of a church picnic. But it is when we get into large groups and are not nice, like the Republic Party or Nazi Party, that we become really awful. — Bitter Crank

That is interesting and it makes culture very important. Jefferson devoted himself to public education because he saw it as the way to make our republic in the US united and strong. That was the focus of our education until 1958. The National Defense Education Act ended the transmission of that culture and liberal education from the first grade on that lead to good moral judgment and left moral training to the church. A big mistake. Now we are not united and don't know morals have to do with liberty.

Things were not perfect back then, especially when it comes to racism. We should have stayed on task after the civil war to prevent the racist problem that is also a cultural problem. I think we still have important changes to make. No child should grow up in a neighborhood where people are killed on a regular basis and schools in those neighborhoods need to as well funded as all schools. This means doing something about poverty. People didn't move into cities for a welfare check. They moved to the city for industrial jobs and a better standard of living. The industry left and poverty is an economic problem that needs to be resolved. When we feel safe I think we behave better.

The theory being, that the powers that be needed to deflect attention from class issues, so they got everyone worked up about race. You ask the kids on campus what's wrong with society and they sace racism. They never notice the class issues, that the global elite are sucking all of the wealth of the nation and destroying the middle and working classes. — fishfry

Until we replace autocratic industry with democratic industry, I don't think any of us will have much meaningful power. When we gain power by being united by industry, perhaps then we can take on banking and politics.

Lives were much better after WWII for those who happened to survive it. But it is extremely true: Humans are just not very nice. Seriously. It always seems to surprise us when fresh evidence of our deep-down-awfulness is revealed. — Bitter Crank

:lol: That is not exactly how I would word things. I do not think of myself as a bad person, and doubt that many people think of themselves as bad people. Most of us are too busy with our own lives to know much about anyone else's. We are not exploiting people or taking advantage of them. We are just hanging in there doing the best we can to keep our heads above water.

I am not saying that wrongs were not done, but we are not the ones who did them, and in many cases we had no idea that injustice was happening, and if we did know of injustices, how many of us knew what to do to correct them? Do we vote on banking policy and industrial decisions? We might have more power, but we have done almost nothing to change the fact that we don't. Can we fall back on the example of Occupy? If there ever was a time of terrible injustice, the housing crisis and Occupy was one of those times, and Occupy was a huge failure. White folk could do nothing to say their own asses, so how many stones should throw at them for failing to resolve other social problems? Who knows how to make a real change? It is easy to blame others and to hate them, but it is not so easy to resolve problems.

It's safe to say the if Occupy had been really effective, the powers that be would not have stayed the hands of the police. It was very much amateur hour at the OK Corral. — Bitter Crank

That is a nice way to put it. I got on board before it all fell about, and rode through to end following someone being killed in our camp. As I have learned more about the 1% taking advantage of the housing crisis, and what has happened to property values since then, I strongly regret what happened to Occupy. Which is a story that really could add to this thread.

If we don't end the race wars we will all loose. Ignorance and stupidity are our worst enemies. Most of us were fighting too hard to just survive to tackle the social problems we think are important today. WWII was a big game changer. And throwing stones at people as though we always had the abundance we have today might be a reflection of a lack of information?

According to Pew Research, slightly less than 7% of children have racial mixed parents. I assume that figure does not include the children of Irish/Italians. Advertising agencies like to people product ads with mixed-rave couples and their children. Maybe this is just a cheaper way to advertise to white and black audiences at the same time. — Bitter Crank

I would say those mixed racial commercials are just jumping on the bandwagon. It is the politically correct thing to do, unless a person is a racist bigot. I am waiting for the couple to be gay.

My experience of Occupy is it got taken over by the homeless and the message of Occupy was lost. It was too many young people who were clueless and not enough mature and experienced people. At least the meetings I attended spun out of control and accomplished nothing. Everyone wanted to be a leader and no one wanted to follow nor were they fighting the homeowners' fight with the banks and politics.

The Oregon Broadcasting Station has filled its schedule with shows about how badly all people have been treated, Chinese immigrants, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, fleeing Jews, Native Americans, all Asians, as well as people of color. Far too little is said about how badly all poor people have been treated and how bad life was for females who were not part of the privileged class when women had no rights, not even the right to their own clothes and could legally be hit when they displeased their husbands.

However, to the credit of OPB, it has mentioned some former slaves became slave owners. It was like owning a car today. People who could afford it owned a slave, and many of us came from slaves because we came from Europe where feudalism sold people with the property they lived on, and they had no freedom to leave that property. Aristotle said a man should have an ox and wife and a slave, those wives did not have the freedom of women today. Or we could turn to India where girls are married off at 8 years of age, so their parents don't have to feed them, and may even benefit from the marriage. In the US the age for marriage for girls was 14 and the husband was not necessarily the man of her choice and forcing a wife to have sex was not considered a crime.

We need to be fully honest and swallow the fact that humans have not been very nice and we did not have such good lives until after the second world war. No group of humans is better or worse than another. Humans are humans. Our abundance since WWII has given us the best period in human history, but back in the day, no one had indoor plumbing and a supermarket full of food year-round, no matter how wealthy they were. Mental retardation was a result of malnourished children and that reality was not that long ago.

I would tell the story with the intention of convincing people another reality is possible. I think if we are moral or not is a matter of culture and that education and media are forces of shaping culture. I would like the book to be inspirational, not sour and dour, amoral or nihilistic.

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame seems pretty intent on doing good, and philanthropy is very old with citizens paying for great public works wanting to be well thought of since ancient times. But that, at least to some extent, depends on culture.

Disney is no longer the creator's manifestation but itself is a commercial hijack. Walt Disney died in 1966. Hum, I can see if I were to write the book, I would have to deal with the difficult challenge of continuing the enterprises these people begin and preserving the integrity of the creator.

:lol: God creates the Garden of Eden for humans, and then throws them out into a wilderness that is not so pleasant. How can this maintain the integrity of God in His creation? How could they remain gentle when their reality is brutal?

Many criticisms of Christians are framed as putting too much responsibility upon individuals for their choices. Your description does not account for the thought in the City of God or the Imitation of Christ. — Valentinus

Do you think the City of God or the Imitation of Christ are more important than other philosophies and mythologies?

I can understand how some factions of Christianity are criticized for putting too much responsibility upon individuals but doesn't that tend to be more so for Protestants than Catholics? I am not sure what is wrong with putting responsibility on individuals because that is saying we have a degree of power over our fate. It is compatible with Hinduism and Confusious.

Thank you. And the Church was not all wrong when it objected to putting the Bible in the people's language and being interrupted by laypeople.

Das Kapital is not exactly what I in mind. I am an old-fashioned female and my concern is much cultural than political. If it had been Dr. Seuss's goal to profit from writing I don't think he could written a book. He wrote because he had something to say and wanted use language to help children learn to read. Profiteers using his name to sell books that are not Dr. Suess's books is wrong to me, Random house buying Golden Books is wrong to me. What the managers of the Hersey town have done to name and the town is wrong to me. My book would be about people with values succeeding and people taking a ride on their success and destroying the geese that lay the golden eggs.

Don't forget that many forms of Christianity do not accept the idea of a devil or demons or any of the cartoon violence in Revelation. For many Christian theologians the Bible is allegorical and not to be taken literally under any circumstances. — Tom Storm

What are the names of those theologians, so I can look them up?

As for revelation being allegorical, the allegory of the beast is one of my favorites! Wasn't Rome dominated by military men when that was written? The economy of Rome came to depend on its ability to conquer people who had the resources Rome needed, and that made the taxing citizens to pay for the military essential, and military men were able to take over the rule of Rome. To me, that is the beast, and the reality of the US. Our consumer economy is worshipping the wrong the God and yet Christians seem to strongly support this? It is all rather confusing to me.

Hi Athena. We have been discussing myths but, unless I missed it We have not been looking at specific myths. When I grew up we had several myths for children, mostly for entertainment but sometimes acting as warnings. Godilocks and the 3 bears I would say is entertainment but the boy who cried Wolf was definitely a warning.
But what about current children's myths? Do any exist in competition with TV? A modern child hearing of Peter and the wolf would think: Why weren't the parent in jail for child neglect?
Do you personally know any myths? — Ken Edwards

Back in the day, we read children the classic stories which we also call moral stories and folk tales, and then we asked "What is the moral of that story". The answer would be a cause and effect. The Little Red Hen didn't share her bread because on one would share in the work. The Fox didn't get the grapes because he gave up and comforted himself by saying the grapes were probably sour anyway. The Little that Could made it over the hill because he didn't give up and kept encouraging himself by saying "I think I can. I think I can." I deeply regret this did not remain part of education with parents understanding the importance of reading these stories to their children, but I have seen indication of education picking them up again.

Golden Books for children added to these stories with modern tales and popular characters. However, when Random House bought Golden Books in 1998 I think they lost their focus on virtues with a focus on money. Hum, if I had the money for travel and research, I would enjoy doing a book about how money has corrupted the forces of morality we once had. This being the result of organizations based on values, being bought up for by people only interested in profits.

Among other things, this means loosing our culture. For sure cultural changes were necessary but the complete loss of our culture could lead to the fall of our civilization?

I want to pick up what you said of other religions and philosophies such as Confucius and Hinduism. Eastern philosophy/religion begin with a belief in "The Basic Goodness of Man" but it seems to me they also assert that we need to work on letting go of our lower selves and developing our higher selves. That is, unlike Christians believing we must be saved by a supernatural power, our development is a matter of our own effort. I seriously do not believe if we are racist bigots here, we will not also be racist bigots when we cross over. Like if Christians think we should not be racist and bigots, here and now is when to correct the problem and clearly being saved by Jesus has not worked the miracle that needs to happen.

That explanation of the creative process is beautiful. :clap:

Spinoza's argument against free will was not to say there was nothing to be done about changing one's experience and of those around you. Consider the following proposition: — Valentinus

Thank you for that contribution. :clap: The similarity between Spinoza and Hinduism and Buddhism has been noticed by many. I find your post quite agreeable with my own thinking.

I think if we all knew Eastern thought, we might see an end to religious wars because to me it makes perfect sense.

And if we consider the gods to be concepts, instead of supernatural beings, then there is no problem with pantheism. Civilizations with a pantheon of gods created more and more gods as they realized new concepts. This got out of control, resulting in Amenhotep IV's grandfather ordering a search of the archives for the true god, and Amenhotep IV then declaring there is only one god and attempting to end the worship of other gods. Which I explain to support my opinion of gods being concepts. We also have knowledge of the Greeks inventing gods as they needed them, and changing the nature of Athena when Athens became a democracy.

in the Christian tradition it was often viewed as the war of good against evil. — Jack Cummins

The notion of evil is curious to me. Doesn't it go with a belief in a supernatural being of evil and demons? I can see a big problem with ignorance and things like drinking from a polluted well spreading disease, but what is evil? Do we need a concept of evil or will the notion of ignorance service?

thinking hurts a lot more than just making shit up. — 180 Proof

For sure, the notion that we can fly is making up shit, right?

You maybe right but I doubt whether there is a well-defined line of demarcation between the two. To my reckoning, the fact of the two being, in a sense, out of phase - technology preceding science - has no bearing on what many have acknowledged viz. that at the heart of every piece of tech we've invented lies a scientific principle. Take for example the wheel - it's a good way to get around the problem of friction. — TheMadFool

Sure there is science behind technology, but when the science is not known it doesn't matter. It matters a lot when the science is known. That is when we step away from superstition and realize our power to overcome evil.

We have culture wars in the US between those who trust in science and those who don't. There are real consequences to this, such as over a million avoidable deaths, and a huge avoidable economic problem resulting from following a leader who lies to us, and I am blown away that someone who lies to us can be very popular. But it is more than this. It also involves having faith in what we can achieve, or faith in supernatural beings of good and evil, and rushing to self-destruction like lemmings rushing over a cliff. It is a barbaric criminal justice system, versus a correction system that actually corrects the problem. So much changes with science that I think the difference is important. Technology without wisdom is a very dangerous thing. Our morality is higher with science and our reality can be very bad without it.

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

Not when they are beautiful things because it is as we make it and when we believe in beautiful things that is what we make.

//and I’m not saying that as a preamble to saying that ‘God did it’, only to highlight how superficial our knowledge might be.// — Wayfarer

How do you justify that statement? It seems a little sour and dour to me? I really don't think my love of discovery and science is superficial, but rather what makes being alive so much fun. How much fun would the game of life be if we knew everything and there was nothing left to discover? I mean like, you just pissed in the wonderful hamburger and now no one wants to eat it. :vomit:

It isn't just about facts, but every much about our spirit.

It may be that philosophy can make use of blending as a concept for putting ideas together, rather than being just about refuting arguments. — Jack Cummins

If that is not the result of philosophy it is not worth doing. :grin: What you said speaks of complex concepts, and truth often is this and that. I hate arguing with an argumentive person who treats the act of communication as a war to win rather than the path to enlightenment. Being put on the defensive is a sure way to end developing thought.

↪Gregory
Nor is there any mention of the word 'soul'. I did an MA thesis on this topic, if you like I'll PM you a hyperlink. Your thinking is muddled. — Wayfarer

Trinity of the soul. The first part of that trinity dies when our bodies die. We are judged and may or may not enter the good life (heaven) and the third part of the soul trinity returns to the source, no matter what.

Spirit, how we feel. Our spirit can be up or down, angry or peaceful. The Spirit of America is a high morale, the feeling we get when we believe we are doing the right thing.

We can pursue spirituality without religion, I agree, but the reason I was asking about the value of myths is because I believe that the value is in reenforcing social truths, and social truths are necessarily social, so what role would they play in a individual pursuit? Perhaps it’s like art, where we can both discover and express ‘truths’ with others? — praxis

Democracy with liberty and justice for all.