The cure for all existential doubt and for all the distress that might befall the philosophically oriented is to not be philosophical, but to be superficial. That is, ignorance is bliss. So, if you wish to cure your wandering and confusion by refusing to look behind the fact that the goal you're pursuing actually has no meaning, I guess you could temporarily deceive yourself into thinking you had real purpose and that would get you through the day. — Hanover

Relative socioeconomic wellbeing shouldn't be underestimated. Not as a goal, nor in its consequences for the person's metaphysical outlook. It seems such people actually are happy.

Talk about rigidity.
The point is not to lie. You seem to think the point is to have the conversation on the other person's terms.
— baker

No, I'm pointing to the fact that truth telling can kill people. If we ignore potential consequences we are a fools. — Tom Storm

No. When it comes to people deliberately killing people, this is because the killer had the means the motive, and the opportunity to do so.

The Nazi scenario is emotionally loaded, but grossly unrealistic. If you think a Nazi patrol looking for hidden Jews would simply take a person's word for gold, and move on after a No ..

Theological fatalism is the view that we cannot make any free choices because God already knows what we are going to do. — SwampMan

You seem to think that your choice can only be free if nobody else knows about it.
But why?
As long as their knowledge of your choice doesn't interfere with it, where is the problem?

The origin of humor is existential complacency.

This is a philosophy forum, it is not a theology forum. I've tried joining a couple of comparative religion forums, they were a real mishmash. The thread topic is about the 'concept of religion' which I think is a valid topic and I'm attempting to address from the viewpoint of comparative religion. — Wayfarer

What is the aim and purpose of comparative religion?

Only much later in life did I begin to realise that what I was considering 'enlightenment' and what goes under the heading of 'religion' might have something in common. And that was because, when I started trying to practice meditation in order to arrive at the putative 'spiritual experience' sans artificial stimulants, mostly what I experienced was pain, boredom and ennui. So I gradually came to realise that this 'enlightenment' I had been seeking was not likely to be a permanent state of 'peak experience' after all, that, if there is such a thing as religious ecstacy, that it is a very elusive state indeed.)

That's because you didn't start off with purification of bodily actions, and purification of verbal actions. Those are an absolute necessity, without them, "meditation" cannot bear noble fruit.



* * *

I have to go now. I threw my back out the other day. I'm in so much pain I can't sit upright anymore.

So religious doctrine with regard to morality is to act as a past record of what people had found out about it.

Now. Why do we need a past record of what people had found out about it? Why not a current one? There are more people alive now than have ever been, so more people now should be directly in touch with god than have ever been.

Keeping a past record seems little more than archiving. If we want to know what's moral according to divine rule we'd be statistically better off consulting the current crop of religious cults than the written record of the previous crop. — Isaac

That would be religious moral historicism. But that's not the point of religious doctrine. Religious doctrines tend to claim to be "timeless", "not bound by time", "for all times" (also for all places).
The point of refering to religious doctrine as a source or justification of morality is that only religious doctrine has the potential to provide the metaphyiscal framework needed for an action to be judged as moral or otherwise.

The point is there are more people alive now than have ever been. So if some small portion of humanity are open to enlightenment or divine revelation, then what those people are saying about morality right now is a better guide than what a far smaller group said about it in the past.

In other words, why are you privileging ancient people's access to god (which they then wrote down) over modern people's access to god. — Isaac

There's thousands of cultists, gurus, prophets and Messiahs right now. You (or Wayfarer) may not personally like what any of them have to say, but that doesn't make it hard to see how morality from divine revelation could work without religious doctrine. On the contrary, it's easy to see how, we just need to ask one of thousands of cultists, gurus, prophets and Messiahs we have with us right now what's morally right and what's immoral. — Isaac

And when we compare those new accounts to the more traditional, older ones, we find the newer ones usually wanting.

But for this comparison to make sense, one actually has to study both the old and the new. If you, for example, study the Pali suttas on the one hand, and what some modern mainstream Buddhist teachers are saying on the other, it's clear as day that the latter are inferior. The difference is as evident as the one between hot pizza and cold pizza. But to see that difference, you just need to do the homework yourself, summaries done by other people don't work.

Fear not, I breathe. It is not as radical as it sounds. But you are invited to wonder what the experience is about. — Constance

There is "living in" without pause or question,

then there is stepping away into a broader context, and giving an account. — Constance

That's what religiologists, culturologists, and the like do. Not what religious people do.

My point isn't what you think it is. It is about lying. Kant says you don't lie to anyone just to achieve a consequentialist greater good. Maybe I should have said Kant would recommend you tell the Russian troops where the Ukrainian women are hiding because lying is wrong. — Tom Storm

Talk about rigidity.
The point is not to lie. You seem to think the point is to have the conversation on the other person's terms.

The same way a theist demonstrates the existence of his diety. He doesn't. Such is a foundational faith statement, from which all sorts of conclusions derive.

I'd submit without that faith foundation, nihilism and amoralism results.

You've got to have faith in something I suppose. — Hanover

Not necessarily faith, but a goal (although, arguably, this can involve faith). By pursuing a goal, nihilism and amoralism are not options anymore. Because by pursuing a goal, a person's actions are directed toward that goal, meaning that the wandering, confusion, inconsistency etc. associated with nihilism and amoralism are eliminated or at least minimized.

I objected to your saying

Not knowing what is morally demanded of us is something that causes most moral creatures occasional distress, and we do resort to others and our own reflections to try to figure it out, meaning we must be accepting there is some objective standard for what that moral reality is. — Hanover

because it goes too far.

It remains that the choice of creed is yours. It remains that you cannot just dump your moral responsibility on to god /.../

Your systems have a gapping hole in them. — Banno

Again, it remains that you have to choose your creed. Unless you rely on your creed to decide your creed for you... — Banno

Only for the desperate prospective adult convert.

Don't forget that most religious people didn't choose their religion, but were born and raised into it. It's become part of their sense of self, part of their sense of right and wrong by default. They internalized it before their ability to think criticially has developed. Your above objection does not apply to these people.

It only applies to the undecided, the "seekers", who are a minority, and in reference to religion, an aberration. So they're not a relevant population as far as religion goes. Even if they are the ones who experience the moral and other doubts most intensely.

Existentialists would say that accepting a creed as one's moral guide is an act of bad faith.

Faith as bad faith. Go figure. — Banno

Find an existentialist who
1. has not renounced his existentialism or otherwise moved away from it,
2. has not died by all acounts prematurely (so that the point of how long they would stick to their existentialism is moot).

Because if the past record of existentialists is anything to go by, they either ditched it eventually, or died relatively young.

Not knowing what is morally demanded of us is something that causes most moral creatures occasional distress, and we do resort to others and our own reflections to try to figure it out, meaning we must be accepting there is some objective standard for what that moral reality is. — Hanover

This goes too far.

By relying on others to clarify moral questions, we're only assuming that someone else might know better than we do, or, at most, that someone else knows better than we do.


I propose that the idea of objective morality has to do with
1. confusing power for authority,
or
2. a justification of particular actions that is intended to protect one's tribe or one's ego.

In short, the concept of objective morality has the function of one person or group of persons having or presuming to have power over other people.

How is "This moral view is objectively right" different to "this moral view is right"? What does "objectively" add? — Banno

It introduces the dichotomy objective vs. merely personal/subjective.

"You may think you look good in that dress, but you're not being objective."

Ahhh. But what is hypoxia? It is not a deficit of oxygen outside of the physiologist's lexicon. And there IS an outside of this. — Constance

I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation.
The only things that do "fall away" in oxygen deprivation practice are your cells and tissues, specifically, your brain cells. It's an ascetic practice that doesn't lead to any noble attainment.

Again, I strongly urge you to stop experimenting with oxygen deprivation.

How would I know? — Tom Storm

I assume that people are goal-driven, purpose-driven beings, and that therefore, they know why they do things, esp. when those things require concerted effort and resources. The way "taking on greater philosophical nuances and self-reflection" and "enlarging one's perspectives" require concerted effort and resources.
I assume, you, too, are goal-driven, purpose-driven as well.

Whys, as any child soon learns ends up in an infinite regression of answers followed by more whys.
/.../
It's whys all the way down.

Only for a child. The wise person knows how to think properly, thinks properly, and thus makes an end to aimless, useless thinking.

[

I'm trying to counteract your dominance and your externalizing, etic approach.
— baker
...as am I. — Banno

No, you're not. You insist on the external, on the perspective of an external, uninterested observer.
You're like someone trying to discern the taste of the proverbial pudding 1. without tasting it, and 2. by dimissing the accounts of those who claim to have tasted it.

Moreover, you appear to deny that the distinction between the emic and the etic approach even exists, or at least that it is not relevant.

(I've noted before that you're a semantic atomist, or at most, a semantic molecularist.)

That's the point of following through on the search for a "stipulated anchor". I do not think that such a thing can be found.

Neither do I think such an anchor exists. But this is not because "religions" would have nothing in common, or because a term doesn't have an essence, but because the term"religion" is often used as a product of secular religiology that has its own needs, interests, and concerns, while other times, it is used in a specific intrareligious context.

I don't think you've understood what is happening here.

It's Humpty Dumpty land.

It is the ultimate control, watching air hunger rise, then calming it down, but it insists, but there are moments when the massive energy of thought and feeling fall away. — Constance

A.k.a. hypoxia.

All this to say that one must convince oneself of one's religion; kid yourself into it, so to speak. — Banno

Only desperate prospective adult converts do so.

I'll just say if you're honestly aiming at a deeper understanding of religious notions and practices, anxiety is the key. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No, but commitment to a particular religion.

The way you're framing your "honest aiming at a deeper understanding of religious notions and practices" is already done with the assumption that religions are human constructs with which humans try to overcome existential problems, while you automatically exclude all possibility of divine revelation, quite ignoring that divine revelation is key to many religions, esp. some major ones, like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.

Is it the mistake of confusing the body of knowledge science produces with the process of uncovering that knowledge? — Banno

And with the processes of teaching and learning that knowledge.

..and then I read this:
But as you know with all serious thinkers, all ideas are presented in context.
— Constance
:wink: — Banno

Why the wink?

But religions have that dimension of the radical unknown, the metaphysics. I can think of many ways cultures take of the world and systems of thought as a utility, true, but religion is a "utility" or perhaps a complex heuristic (a provisional dealing with) that has as its object no object at all, and the constructed object, its rites and symbols, are these weird, threshold institutions that deal with this foundational position of our indeterminacy in all things. — Constance

It's not clear that actual religious people think that way about religion. They are not relativists and doubters like that.

It's Easter time. The local Catholic parish sends out a monthly newsletter to everyone living here, including the non-Catholics. "This is the time of celebration, of the victory of life over death", "Christ has risen", and so on reads the newsletter.

To suggest that the people who wrote this newsletter believe that they are dealing with something merely constructed about the radical unknown???

So the candidates for an anchor that seem most promising are ritual, transcendent hierarchies and longing.

The question which for me is central to the thread is now why science does not count as a religion, given these anchors. — Banno

Scientism does.
What usually passes for/as science is actually scientism anyway.

Does it make sense to say one knows how things seem? Isn't it just that they seem? Any ratiocination is excessive. — Banno

Not if by "seem" one means 'pretend'.

Some people don't doubt their perceptual processes, but they doubt that other people and things are honest; they assume that they pretend, are treacherous, that they make themselves seem one thing, when they are actually something else.

So to "know what something seems" is to see through its pretense, its treachery.

Ok, so we have ritual, transcendent hierarchies and longing. — Banno

The notion of ritual is much criticized in some religions.

For example, in Buddhism, there is the cocept of silabbata-paramasa, usually translated as 'attachment to (grasping at) rites and rituals'. It is considered a fetter, an obstacle to spiritual advancement.

Rites don't purify the heart; skillful actions do: AN 10.176
Rituals alone can't take one beyond aging and death: Sn 5.3
Rites and protective charms should be avoided by lay followers: AN 5.175
The best protection comes not from rituals but from generous, moral, and wise actions: Khp 5
Water ablutions cannot wash away one's past bad kamma: Thig 12.1

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/index-subject.html#r

So either ritual cannot be part of what makes something a religion, or Buddhism isn't a religion.

Listening to the Smiths a lot ...

But don't let the real world hinder your argumentation. — ssu

And contempt wins the day once more.

You really think it's "distance" and not "skin colour" determining the wildly different reactions to war, or which presumably there's always one side in the wrong and at least somebody is a victim, in different continents? — boethius

Not skin color per se, but the specific assumption about the level of civilization of a certain people. The general trend of this assumption being that the darker the skin color of a people, the less civilized they are. And the less civilized someone is assumed to be, the more the people who deem themselves more civilized are justified to patronize or despise them.


Although for some people, it is about distance. Of all the posters here, it seems that I am still the one who is closest to the battlefield. If they use mass nuclear weapons, the radioactive particles will reach where I live.

To me, this is the reason not to indulge in passion and feelings of hatred and contempt toward Russia. To me, the relatively short distance has a sobering psychological effect.

innocent bystanders — Olivier5

Someone who hates and despises isn't an "innocent bystander".

We'd all like to see Russia and Ukraine and everywhere less corrupt and more democratic ... so, how? — boethius

It takes two parties for there to be corruption: One who wants to get ahead without doing the work or waiting his turn, and another who is willing to help him with that, in exchange for money or favors.
You can fire all the corrupt government officials, but as long as there are people who want to get ahead without doing the work or waiting their turn, there will be potential for corruption.

In short, corruption is possible when people don't value honest work and don't respect the order of things.
It then stands to reason that in order to minimize corruption, people need to value honest work and respect the order of things.

There is nothing we can really do about that except return to good faith dialogue and deescalate demonising both Putin and the Russians.

We cannot "win" with sticks and stones, and therefore can only "win" with words.

Which words exactly is the question.

That's not rocket science. Plain old common decency will do.

I don't see how debating just war from moral first principles would help arrive at a diplomatic resolution — boethius

It is my assumption that a diplomatic resolution cannot be arrived at as long as the matter of first principles hasn't been resolved.

First principles provide the bigger picture, the context for all practical interventions.

As things stand, we're trying to figure out what each party's first principles are, by making inferences from what they say about particular events and persons.

Because I am aware of the ignorance and bringing it to light? — schopenhauer1

You seem unsure of your purpose.

These are core to my philosophical viewpoints, so why wouldn't I discuss them at length with those willing to engage in dialogue? — schopenhauer1

But there is noone willing to engage in dialogue. Exactly like Ligotti says above. Seems ironic then to pursue the matter.

Anyway, I sometimes have the impression (but it could be just me) that you're still trying to find an alternative to existential pessimism. That perhaps you're looking for the folks who comply with the Agenda to convince you that it's worth it after all. I mean, I have my doubts about existential pessimism, and I couldn't profess it with the certainty you do.

I live in arguably one of the best establishments of this kind of system and it ranks us very high on indexes of life quality and freedom. — Christoffer

And other countries in other parts of the world have to pay the price for your life quality and freedom.

Like those poor South American countries that produce the lithium for your precious electric cars. Those countries are destroying their own land and their own people with dirty industry so that you can be "high on indexes of life quality and freedom".

I'll be impressed with Sweden once it's self-sufficient and once its happiness and wellbeing don't depend on the misery of others.

one that that never turns the spotlight of interrogation and rigorous judgement on themselves is at risk of attributing too great a benevolence to their own decisions. — Benj96

Why should this be a problem?

We have democracy.

The standards have been set by celebrity culture. — Hanover

The question is how come those standards caught on. There must be something in people that makes them think such standards are not only acceptable, but worth aspiring to.

Your question is what has been done to counterbalance it. — Hanover

Democracy makes such counterbalancing impossible.

When did spitting in somebody's mouth become a thing? It's started appearing in gay porn fairly recently? Saliva -- whether traded in kissing or spitting -- is the same, but how do people interpret the act? intimacy? Love? Contempt? What? — Bitter Crank

People have been used as toilets for a long time. It's perfectly normal. When a man ejaculates into a woman he's basically using her as a sex toilet. In order to relieve himself of urine and feces, he uses a toilet, and in order to relieve himself of semen, he uses a vagina. The mentality is the same. So why not spit into people.



Humans are the pinnacle of evolution, they are the best. They don't need to try harder.

Individuals act independently of society, to be sure, but show me what social mechanisms have been employed to address the issue. Show me the systems that have been collectively employed/directed that are meant to help provide standards. — Ennui Elucidator

We have democracy! We must be tolerant! We must respect those different than ourselves!!!

Besides, there is no society and everyone is reponsible solely for themselves!!!

On the contrary.
I think you vastly underestimate just how alien your -- and Schopenhauer's -- ideas are to most people.
— baker

No I’m aware on a daily basis. — schopenhauer1

Then why this thread?

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is already within yourself, your way of thinking. — Marcus Aurelius

Yes! But not being bombed by Russians helps. — Banno

Nah. Today, it's Russian bombs, tomorrow it's tapeworms (talk about needing very little to make a happy life and said thing being already within yourself!).

There's always something. The problem is that one is living in a body that is subject to aging, illness, and death, and yet is fully relying on this body for happiness.