I think simplyG is referring to aesthetics, and not subjectiveness. — javi2541997

Yes, but I think the point being made in response is that aesthetic appreciation is subjective. We don't all appreciate or like the same things and notions of the beautiful seem to vary across time and culture.

That would defeat the purpose of diversity and life itself, I think he just wanted to create knowing perfection would be boring so he chose imperfection instead, I don't really know. — simplyG

I generally hold the view that if there is a god they are either somewhat powerless or a cunt. But who are we to use puny human logic on such complex matters? :wink: The idea that god would be happy to factor in intense suffering as an inherent attribute of their creation (in order to prevent boredom) sounds sociopathic.

The real question should be not “is there a god” but do I have faith that there is no god. T — simplyG

Most atheists I have known would not say there is no god. They are more likely to say that they are unconvinced that there is. As an atheist, I am unconvinced that there are gods. I have yet to hear an account of theism that I find convincing. It may be as Calvin says that some people don't have a sensus divinitatis. Perhaps it is like sexual preferences, some people are attracted to the god narrative and others are not.

I think there is a bigger problem than this. If creation is the product of good god, then why did this god conceive of and build a system wherein bloody and abject suffering of innocent living things was written into the very act of survival? To a great extent, insects and animals torment, hunt and eat other insects and animals in order to stay alive. What kind of a cruel deity (when presumably anything might have been possible) would conceive of a vicious reality wherein predation of this kind is a foundational attribute?

I imagine I could believe in something I knew to be true. But I don't think I would be worshipping anything.

Good question. I should have said 'I don't know if there are no gods.'

Agree. I never really know what people mean when they refer to god/s - the idea seems incoherent and convoluted. And you're right, a significant problem is that god has no explanatory power. It's just a place where some people imagine the buck stops. I generally consider myself an agnostic atheist. We can't know there are no gods, but I find myself unable to believe in them.

:fire: :wink:

Father RIchard Rohr is interesting. Of course much of the church finds him boarding on the heretical.

My question would then become, does it, in your experienced opinion, remain at least possible, that anyone, can be turned, away from complete surrender to utter despair? — universeness

I don't know. I'd like to think so, but I imagine it's a combination of (not always available) protective factors that impacts upon a person's recovery - biological, situational, relational, etc, etc. I spoke to a guy who was about to kill himself and the thing that stopped him, he said, was seeing a happy Labrador running in the park as he was about to prepare the noose. It took him back to his own dog when he was a boy and the pleasant memory jolted him. Talk about timing and luck. I think there are a lot of people who never encounter that transformative moment.

Thanks for both responses. Will check out the podcast. The Black Notebooks were probably a game changer.

I guess there's a scientific counterpart to alternative facts going on.

Maybe a diversion, but do you have a strong sense why Nazism appealed to H? What do you think was in H's process that allowed Nazism to fit comfortably alongside his more complex thinking?

Perhaps that in addition to his rampant Germanophilia accounts for his reference to the "inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism, even in the 1953 publication of An Introduction to Metaphysics. — Ciceronianus

Is this an answer to my question above? A form of elevated Volksgesinnung?

The Bible is not a 100% faithful recording of what really happened, what people really said and thought. — Angelo Cannata

What percentage is faithful then? 60%, 40%, 2%? And the percentage that is not faithful - how does this reinterpret or efface the percentage which is? What is a Christian to do?

I'd also agree about Jesus and the Bible. A literal reading kills the message and makes a mockery of it. — FrancisRay

Amen to that.

One of my favourite Christian writers, Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong (deseased) puts it like this:

“Unless biblical literalism is challenged overtly in the Christian church itself, it will, in my opinion, kill the Christian faith. It is not just a benign nuisance that afflicts Christianity at its edges; it is a mentality that renders the Christian faith unbelievable to an increasing number of the citizens of our world.

- John Shelby Spong Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy:

But let it be clearly stated, the Gospels are not in any literal sense holy, they are not accurate, and they are not to be confused with reality. They are rather beautiful portraits painted by first-century Jewish artists, designed to point the reader toward that which is in fact holy, accurate, and real. The Gospels represent that stage in the development of the faith story in which ecstatic exclamation begins to be placed into narrative form.”

― John Shelby Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile

I think part of the problem is that people sometimes write putative soul-searching OP's along these lines without us having the benefit of knowing whether they write in good faith or merely for effect. So, I am not sure whether a response is just going to fuel the fires of depression or narcissism. Or indeed both.

I have never really understood questions about the meaning of life. There's a more pertinent question. Is life worth living? To a significant extent, as you say, this is up to us and what we make of it. But some people do live a hellish life for any number of reasons - chemical or situational. It may make sense to hate every moment and not see a way out.

I suspect that those of us who 'make choices' to find our own meaning through work and social connection have the inner resources, in short the wherewithal, to take charge of things. I think it's the case that not everyone can do this.

Ironcially @niki wonoto has written an OP drenched in meaning and strong principles. I just think they are the wrong principles.

Here is an article about "depressive realism" -- a term I just found out about: — L'éléphant

Interesting. In my experience people with depression are just as likely to get things wrong but the tendency is towards catastrophic underestimation and negative inferences rather than Panglossian overestimation.

Sounds right. I was involved with various groups affiliated with the Theosophical Society for about ten years. Pretty much what I saw. Interesting too how the farmer in Sicily never has a vision of Krishna, nor does the shepherd in the Punjab ever see the Virgin Mary...

What do you make of the syllogistic proof above?

Here is my briefest proof I can manage. .

1. It is demonstrable that all positive metaphysical theories are logically indefensible/ .
2. It is demonstrable that a neutral theory is logically defensible
3. The nondual doctrine of the Perennial philosophy translates into metaphysics as a neutral metaphysical theory.
4. Ergo. the Perennial philosophy is the only fundamental theory that survives analysis. — FrancisRay

I don't see how these premises stack up and besides I would need more than an eccentric syllogism to establish non-dualism as a fact. I suspect we're not going to get anywhere but I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks.

Interesting 180. I've never fully appreciated Spinoza's natura naturans but I am assuming (and forgive the crude summary) this monist view is an account of a kind of boundless, dynamic 'substance' from which all expressions of life/physicalism originate. I'm also assuming this notion does away with the age old debate 'why something rather than nothing'? The natura naturans being eternal. Is this a solution to the old theist argument from contingency?

Hmm, is it the Blessed Virgin, or a shepherdess playing the panpipes?

I am just pointing out that concepts like certainty and knowledge, as products of discursively formed social practices, differ in their meaning from era to era and culture to culture. Foucault performed an archeological analysis of such notions over the past millennium in the West to demonstrate that the very sense , value and use of terms like certainty and knowledge changed significantly from the Classical to the Modern period, across all modes of culture. So claiming that the desire for certainty is ancient is like saying that the desire for Romantic love is ancient, which is to confuse what is universal and transparent with what is culturally and historically contingent.

If there is any motive which transcends the locality of cultural eras, I suggest it is the need for intelligibility. We have always striven to make sense of each other and our world, and we do this by constructing through joint action shared systems of intelligibility. At a number of points in the course of cultural history, certain senses of the concept ( or family of concepts) of certainty were co-constructed. It was a means to an end; the means was the use of the term certainty and the end was the aim of making the world intelligible.

I think Wittgenstein’s focus on the desire for certainty resonates best in the context of the still-dominant influence of Enlightenment tropes of Truth. In poststructuralist and other postmodern forms of discourse, the idea of certainty is no longer considered useful. This is not due to a repression of the desire for it, but because the concept has lost its intelligibility. — Joshs

That's beautifully expressed. Probably belongs in the Certainty thread too.

The basic point is that mysticism is not about believing but about knowing. Hence no knowledge claim made by mysticism has ever been refuted or falsified. These claims are made with 100% certainty. . — FrancisRay

Lots of people make claims with 100% certainty - like many ordinary Christians or Muslims - they may also be 100% wrong. How would we know? There are many fundamentalists out there who also say things like, "I know that I know that I know that Jesus is Lord.' They 'feel' this as truth and certain knowledge. I wonder if mysticism isn't just a more sophisticated version of this very human desire to encounter certainty. I have no doubt that many mystics are certain about their experiences, what I do doubt is any need to accept their subjective experience of certainty.

This is true for untestable and unfalsifiable claims, but I did not say the nondual doctrine is untestable or unfalsifiable. It is testable and falsifiable but as yet unfalsified because it passes the tests. It is really quite easy to test a neutral or nondual metaphysical theory. . . . . . — FrancisRay

I think there may be a Noble Prize waiting for the person who can demonstrate nondulaism. Can you tell us how this can be done? You can't just say it is 'easy' and breezily move on. While it might be child's play to point to omissions and flaws in scientific knowledge, this doesn't give us license to fill the gaps with what some might call 'woo'.

Then there is the empirical fact that nobody is able to falsify or refute the nondual doctrine which, after two millennia of trying, might be counted as suggestive.empirical evidence. — FrancisRay

If you are referring to unfalsifiable propositions then we can include all manner of claims: ghosts, alien abduction stories, and most variations of conspiracy theories. None of which are falsifiable. The fact that a claim is unfalsifiable is problematic, not a strength. If we can't test a proposition then I don't see how we can assume that it must be true. How would we determine nondualism is an accurate account?

No mystic who ever lived claimed that they rely on beliefs rather than knowledge. To do so would make them a laughing stock. In one of his German sermons Meister Eckhart openly and explicitly pledges his soul on the truth of his teachings, and nobody would do this on the basis of beliefs that might be mistaken. , . — FrancisRay

Not sure what you are thinking of here. The fact that a person believes something deeply and sincerely does not make it any more true. How do we know when a mystic holds a true belief?

here is the fact that on television the creatures appear to be made of clay. — jgill

Perhaps they are golems and someone has removed their 'shem'. :wink:

Nice. Agree about this being a fixed thread or sticky.

So let's say that for many god is experience and metaphysical speculation, what of it?

Is it this?

God is an expression of what we think is most important. What we believe is important drives how we feel about things, and how we feel about things drives what we think about, and what we think about drives what we do. Finding God, in a sense, is the same thing as finding yourself. If you can decide for yourself what is most important to you, and get a good-enough working theory of how the world works, then everything else will sort itself out. God is an expression of what we think is most-important, and nothing is more important than that. — Brendan Golledge

This seems to come direct from Peterson country. I'm not trying to be rude but this paragraph seems to be a bundle of not very illuminating Californian style pop-psychology statements. 'Finding god is finding yourself' is a bit of a 1970's cliché. But what does it actually mean? What are you finding when you are finding self/god and what is the significance?

So are you an atheist in the slightly slippery Peterson mode, and have you also felt the need to redefine god in order make the idea more palatable to a modern sensibility and make god a psychological journey rather than a set of facts?

By contrast, according to the tradition of radical social constructionism, what you assume as universal, objective or common knowledge belongs to a multiplicity of competing traditions. So it is not a question of bad intent , but a different system of intelligible within which the other believes themselves to be as justified from a moral perspective as you feel. — Joshs

I think this formulation works for me reasonably well. Over the years, in jail and outside, I have met a lot of people conveniently called 'bad'. This to me seems a metaphysical or theological statement. What I generally see is people behaving in a way which makes sense to them, given experiences and the way the world seems to work to them.

I'm not sure what it is that moves a person to share observations and speculations regarding God, but I doubt that doing so has ever succeeded in accomplishing anything except, in some cases, convincing someone to accept a belief in a particular kind God or fostering disagreement over whether God exists or if God does exist, what God is in that case. — conceive

Sounds about right.

As an example of phenomenological truth, Genesis says that humans don’t live in paradise, that we don’t live in paradise due to our own actions, that men have to eat by working, that women have pains in childbirth, and they have to look to their husbands. Those things are obviously true to anyone who has lived as a human. The stories used to explain how that came about are not literally true, but the end result does not differ at all from the common human experience, or else it would not have been considered such a meaningful story for so long.

I would highly recommend looking at Jordan Peterson’s Biblical lectures to see a modern take on Biblical wisdom. — Brendan Golledge

I can make little substantive sense out of anything much Peterson says - he frequently seems incoherent. But perhaps it's because I'm not really looking for a replacement Joseph Campbell figure.

Looking at your take on Genesis - I don't see what has been accomplished. Stories used to 'explain' things, whether they are Aesop or Ezra, are still just stories used to explain things. So? Most people today, particularly Christians, seem to be pretty ignorant of the Bible and the stories. Do these tales really make up the fabric of our shared culture, or is this just the prattling of certain writers and academics?

One reading of Genesis (and what follows) might be less charitable. God is petulant, ego maniacal goon. He seems incapable of getting anything right, his creation continually fucks up and breaks things and God's limited solution seems to be retribution and murder. Perhaps this tells us that our ability to conceptualise deities often reflects humanity's worst characteristics. I wonder how we can know when it is good?

You don't seem to be particularly convinced there is a god. That's probably a healthy thing. Are you, as they say, wrestling with faith?

There's a great 2010 book on the question of culture's obsession with authenticity called The Authenticity Hoax by Andrew Potter. By elevate I simply mean to privilege - people venerate and privilege the things they consider to be authentic and eschew that which they consider to be mass-marketed pap.

Then why can't we express it in the quality of art and literature those other Romantics? — Vera Mont

I don't see why we would. Every era has its own spin on things.

This is an era which elevates the subjective and the 'authentic' and feelings and nature in quite similar ways. It don't matter that Game of Thrones, Marvel or Star Wars now stand in for great poetry or novels.

I call it maudlin commercial sentimentality. — Vera Mont

Yep - I think this is what romanticism looks like when it has collided with marketing and post-modernism. :wink:

People seem to have rejected reason, perspective, any sense of proportion in favour of raw, undisciplined emotionalism. — Vera Mont

Agree, and this is one of the key characteristics of Romanticism.

Why do you think this happens? Is it confined to a related group of cultures or is it world-wide?
Do you do this yourself - follow the procession on screen, or leave flowers and messages at the site?
What do you think about the practice?
How do you feel about it? — Vera Mont

I found the public grief over the empty Princess Diana absurd. This was the first time I was aware of this kind of OTT phenomenon. I would probably pop it under the category of public hysteria or a type of social virus. And unsurprisingly there was only a modest reaction to her death after the first anniversary.

From a more banal perspective, I tend to think that we've been living in a new age of romanticism, with cults of personality and public displays of success/celebration/grief/loss/rage a tawdry aspect of a particular urgency to share personal stories and feelings with the rest of the world. The talk show (Donahue, Oprah, Dr Phil, et al) probably helped to establish the model. The internet, of course, allows us all to wallow in bubbles of orgiastic, self-regarding paroxysms of anger or grief.

Good points. There seems to be a hierarchy of duty. How does one determine which one should override the other?

Some say that the people might need to rise up in the United States because we are increasingly having to choose between fascism and neoliberalism - all the while the oligarchs line their pockets. — ToothyMaw

I don't think neo-liberalism is incompatible with fascism. Not enough of a choice there for me.

I will define duty as: a feeling of obligation brought about by expectation that is irreducible; it exists only as a meta-construction - as recursive and a sum of its parts - and yet it is a very basic concept understood by pretty much everybody. — ToothyMaw

I can't make much sense out of your definition of duty. The 'intuition that we ought to do a particular thing' perhaps? Of course duty is value free and it can be attached to any kind of person or action.

everyone craves duty — ToothyMaw

How can you demonstrate that everyone craves duty? Is duty not just a sublimation for purpose? Everyone, perhaps, craves purpose?

The best leaders know that duty begets duty. — ToothyMaw

Not sure what that means. Can you provide an example of a leader doing such?

I'm referring to the only experience we can talk about with some authority - the mortal life.

I don't think anyone knows what the allegory of heaven means exactly. Hence my latter point.

If God is indeed a king with legions at his command why would he allow his son to mistreated? Why would christ allow himself and his devoted followers to be tortured and murdered? it is a strange salvation that involves the obliteration of the flesh for the sake of the something sacred like the soul. — Average

Suffering is kind of the point of most forms of Christianity, isn't it?

1 Peter 4:12-13 (NIV):

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

The Bible is an anthology, a series of allegories, dozens of separate books, written across a period of well over 1000 years, it is interpreted in multiple ways and there are thousands of Christian sects and denominations today, with their own preferred understanding of scripture. How could we narrow it down to something like the plot of a movie?

For Americans, I don't think Biden will do much for Americans who are not wealthy because he himself belongs to the elite group. For Trump, he at least cares for the numbers and statistics such as inflation and unemployment rate and want them to look good. Isn't this the reason why Trump has so many supporters? — Hailey

No, I think most of us know this is wrong. Trump doesn't appear to give a shit about anything but getting elected and he knows his base is comprised of many working people, so he needs to say things that seem pro worker. But can you name substantive initiatives that he delivered?

Biden, may have failed in many respects, but has actually been seen by many as pro-worker, despite being an elderly, privileged white guy.

I noticed this from a well known American Labor newspaper.

https://labortribune.com/30-things-biden-has-done-to-help-workers/

:up:
:up:
:up:
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I certainly agree that deep down Biden is a more formidable foe to oppsing countries to the US. — Hailey

I don't see that. I am referring to his work as a politician, doing the work of a politician - infrastructure, clean energy, mental health, healthcare - being able to talk about policy and implementation of programs, not just lame point scoring. But this is getting dull, I'm not an American, so it's not my world. :wink:

Guess what's happening here? :cool: — jgill

Surely not...