Nothing to support your view that hierarchies are necessary, let alone that they are a genetic result of masculinity. But keep digging, you may find something. — Banno

Hierarchies are necessary because Jordan Peterson has said so. :wink:

Ha! Nice try. I’m not buying into your shtick. This thread’s about science and religion. Cheers.

So you are agnostic, more or less. — ButyDude

No. These days many atheists would spell it out as follows. Gnosticism goes to knowledge, atheism goes to belief. I (like many contemporary atheists) am an agnostic atheist. In other words, I don't know whether or not there are gods, however I see no good reason to believe. It's pretty straight forward. But in the end labels don't really matter all that much.

I know that your simple refutation is not enough, as well as my simple explanation is not nearly enough. — ButyDude

I haven't refuted an argument since an argument has not been made. But I hear you. It can get complicated. Most theistic arguments I have heard (and I have been reading and listening to them for 35 years, along with extensive history in the Theosophical Society and growing up in the Baptist tradition) are (as I see it) basic fallacies - appeals to ignorance or fallacies from incredulity. But in the end, where you sit on this matter is based on how you interpret the inferences. Everyone is different. Argument is fairly pointless.

I think that the arguments in support of gods are just like belief in gods itself. You either believe or you don't. I don't. But as I have said a couple of times, this fits better with a range of other threads already commenced on the site.

I do not argue that it is irrational to believe in god. I do not argue that believers are mentally ill. Some atheists like some believers are shrill and fanatical.

Fine Tuning argument - the constants of physics, such as g, k, G, and many more, are so precise that if they were any different the universe would not be physically possible. There is simply no explanation for this. Infinite universes and bounce-back universe are disproven. — ButyDude

I don't think those are scientific arguments as such. They are god of the gaps arguments. The argument is essentially - "How else can we explain x...?" It's also a fallacy from incredulity.

I'm not sure this is the place for atheism /theism arguments 101. They seem to crop up all over this site.

My position on any of this stuff - cosmological, ontological, Aquinas's five proofs, whatever it is is this: we don't have to know why the universe is what it is or what it is. I generally like, "I don't know," as my go to answer. But posing gods provides no explanation either because gods have no explanatory power, it is no different than saying 'the magic man did it, how else can you explain it." Problem with magic men is we still don't know how or why or what the situation was. So no explanation at all, just 'magic'.

Do you have an argument for religion and science being incompatible? What is your stance? — ButyDude

I don't think the question is clear. It's so broad as to be virtually meaningless. Which science versus which religion?

I believe that this bishop’s literal interpretation of the “fall from perfection” is inappropriate and theologically inaccurate. My personal understanding (I didn’t think of this myself, just what I believe) of the “fall from perfection” is more like an awakening from unconscious to conscious. — ButyDude

So you have an interpretation (or one seemingly borrowed form Jordan Peterson). How do you measure the validity of one interpretation against that of another?

However, even with most scientists being atheists, believing in God is rational and there are scientific arguments for God. I wish for you to respond. — ButyDude

I don't care what most scientists believe - atheist or Hindu. There are threads about whether gods are 'true' or not all over this site. I have participated in many. Not sure this is the place for arguments about the validity of gods. I am not aware of scientific arguments for gods. But I am aware of people using gaps in science to assert gods.

Welcome.

It would help if you used more paragraphs to separate your ideas for clarity.

This argument you put is a standard argument, frequently put by conservatives like Stephen Hicks and Jordan Peterson. Nothing new is arguing that the power trope (which seems to originate with Foucault) is incomplete.

But above and beyond the conservative professors mentioned above, this kind of argument was commonly being put by detractors of feminism decades ago. Especially these kinds of points -

Women are much better at taking care of children, and at being the one to teach, be patient with, and see to the development of the child into a grown adult. Most women are simply not capable, by biology, to be the providers, builders, and organizers of society at large, because they do not fit cleanly into hierarchical structures. — ButyDude

What you have done here is not provide an argument. You have simply made a claim. Can you demonstrate these claims?

To do justice to these kinds of arguments one needs to have expertise in anthropology and history. Personally, I eschew these kinds of arguments, as they often end up being about as useful as debates over the meaning of Bible verses.

He's a little like a cross between a carny barker and Schopenhauer's account of will - blind, striving, instinctive and a teller of whoppers.

Trump recognizes how easily large groups of disaffected people can be galvanized by insinuating paranoiac conspiracies - so he uses it. It's a fairly straight forward transaction. I'm not convinced Trump believes anything at all, except that he should be in charge.

I used to know a girl, a flatmate of a friend, who firmly believed 'the news is all made up'. I wondered what she thought was really going on, if the news is all, as DJT insists, fake, but I didn't want to open that can of worms. — Wayfarer

I think we've all known people like that. Unfortunately that group seems to have swollen to significant proportions. I recently saw a podcast wherein Rosanne Barr (yeah, I know) argued that the UN runs a project to kill as many civilians around the world as it can in order to make the planet more habitable for a chosen minority. Covid vax and all manner of nasties are a conspiracy to reduce the population.

Deliverance from sin and its consequences. I think the consequences of sin is basically suffering and that’s not unique to any tradition. — praxis

I think the question is vague. For whom are these consequences felt? The sinner or the sinned against? Or does it depend? There are many sinners who benefit enormously from sinning. But again, what counts as sinning? Blasphemy, homosexuality, adultery, using curse words, killing?

And sin is not an idea I have encountered outside of Abrahamic traditions. Are you using the term loosely? Or are you referring to wrongdoing in general?

'Religion" is not a strictly definitive term, but an "umbrella" term under which what are generally soteriological practices and / or beliefs can be understood to be ranged. — Janus

Indeed. I personally don't find the term all that useful but you have to start somewhere. Karen Armstrong, a mainstream scholar of religion, famously said religion may not be definable.

Do you know of anyone who religion has provided deliverance from sin and its consequences? — praxis

I'm assuming this only applies to Christian traditions. I don't know what 'deliverance from sin' means except as a tentative goal of the pious, subject to certain traditions and certain definitions of sin. The only person who knows if this is successful is the individual believer, I guess.

That notion of self-knowledge is unproblematic—it is a matter of developing awareness of what is being felt, thought and done and how those feelings, thoughts and doings are affecting personal happiness and health, one's own and others'. — Janus

That's a pretty good definition. It does (to me) slot into a psychological zone as much as, if not more than, a philosophical one.

I can also see how an enhanced awareness of epistemology might lead one away from, let's say, Islamic fundamentalism and into a more nuanced, allegorical read of the Koran. This could make you a better person - more aware of and accepting of other ways of living and the benefits of diversity and non-dogmatic, less judgmental modes of living. Or something like this.

:up:

I always thought the maxim 'know thyself' was simply about seeing through your own delusions and false hopes. — Wayfarer

Cool. Nice to see a definition. I also think that this self-knowledge is being aware of and being able to manage flaws or patterns in one's thinking and behavior. It seems to be a synonym for a type of self-improvement. This does not necessarily track back to philosophy from what I can see. Although @Joshs made an interesting point about the arrogance of not seeing one's own unexamined and unprovable presuppositions. We are often keen to share our values with others without the benefit of having scrupulously examined those values.

Thank you. Yes, Carroll seems fairly smug at times.

Phenomenology gives us a way to identity and protect the unique perspectives of all participants in a community even when their views deviate from the dominant scientific conventions. — Joshs

Maybe not for this thread, but what would a culture look like which did this well - I am assuming the notion of a mainstream or dominant culture would dissolve or go. I can't imagine how humans would organize themselves according to this and I wonder what protection of unique perspectives would look like. Do you think we will get there?

When Husserl says that through empirical knowledge we come to see our perception of a thing as only our subjective perspective on the ‘same’ thing that others see, he means that it is the peculiar function of empirical objectivity to give the impression , through apperceptive idealization, of a unity where there is only similarity. — Joshs

Sounds like an important point. I can guess at the answer, but for you, as a long time student of phenomenology, what is the significance of this point for how humans live with each other? Can it be applied in a practical way?

Hello, Tom Storm, can you render an opinion on the link below? — ucarr

No. Physics or logic (or speculative fiction) are not my expertise - hence why I don't usually participate in speculative discussions.

Cuz I can’t make heads or tails out of self-knowledge. — Mww

It's not just me then... :wink:

I lean towards the idea that intuition might sometimes give us insight into the nature of reality — Janus

And I often wonder how having an insight into the nature of reality matters? What happens then... chop wood, carry water?

Sometimes it seems to me that the quest to gain glimpses of transcendence is more about self-aggrandizement or a kind of metaphysical tourism.

It is really difficult to tell if I'm actually learning something or progressing or whether I'm chasing rainbows (hence the icon.) — Wayfarer

:up: It's a very interesting question for us all here. I think terms like 'self-knowledge' are used imprecisely by many of us and self-knowledge is automatically assumed to be a virtue we don't really question. I think what we do here mainly is engage in disputes over contesting epistemologies, often slogged out through metaphysical presuppositions. I don't see where self-knowledge comes into it much except perhaps in understanding the limitations of our own positions and knowledge.

the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. — Wayfarer

Agree. And it's a point well made. I think this kind of thread is rich in potential triggers for all sorts of other related discussions.

one of the over-arching themes of philosophy since ancient times has been the possibility of self-knowledge. — Wayfarer

I'm aware of this view (Know Thyself, Delphic maxims, etc) but I've not seen philosophy as playing an extensive role in self-knowledge. The self-knowledge (insight) I am aware of (and I doubt people much acquire it except through experience) is generally acquired through the process of living or through therapy/counselling/meaningful interventions/dialogue from/with others.

Can you give me a couple of examples of self-knowledge arrived at through philosophy?

Well, we do live in an era where expertise has been diminished and is often looked upon with scorn. Everyone believes that can say something profound, whether it is about socialism or the role of quantum entanglement in proving spiritual truths.

I am in agreement. Seems this kind of leaves us with the phenomenal world as our only domain for fruitful exploration. Which for me, as someone who probably qualifies as scientist in orientation, leaves us with science as the primary (but not sole) source of reliable information about the world we inhabit. I remain however, somewhat fascinated with phenomenology and process of human interaction with the world and co-creation (if that is the right word) of our reality.

Is such work 'physics without maths', or is it speculative fiction based on Dunning-Kruger level physics?

I'm not thinking of anyone in particular, but I am often astonished by people's assumptions of competence or mastery of subjects they have no expertise in.

Would physics be just one aspect of how things appear to or are understood by us?

I guess the only place to look for reality independent of human experience might be in the putative claims of mysticism or higher awareness? I guess inevitably this is the elephant in the room for threads like this and most discussions of idealism.

I'm guessing not. I don't think there is a way to understand your question, Janus. — Banno

Is this the same as saying - if there is a reality outside of physics and how we understand our world, we are unable to access this and therefore can say nothing meaningful about it? (I wasn't thinking of Kant's noumena but I guess it amounts to the same point)

:up:

I think I understand their thinking and for me it holds up ok as these things go. I'm an atheist in as much as I have no belief in gods and find the idea incoherent. To me, it's like hearing about the powers of superheroes, subject to a fantasy universe.

I wonder how they would explain the emotions that motivate killers when they commit murder. Surely that doesn't emanate from God's nature. — praxis

That would be the other guy...

As an aside - I don't know if I've mentioned that the article that lead me to forums was Terry Eagleton's review of The God Delusion — Wayfarer

Yes, I read that too. I've intermittently followed Eagleton's work in the area of literary theory and cultural criticism for some time.

I think it's easy be ambivalent or hostile towards Dawkins and like many atheists, he is often a polemicist. Many in the secular humanist community are now hostile to him owing to his perceived anti-trans comments.

I think it's an interesting point. Can religion explain the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet? — praxis

Depends on the religion. Many apologists would argue that love emanates from God's nature and our ability to feel it is evidence of God in action in our lives.

I guess by this my own position is close to the dreaded scientism in as much as -

Scientism is, according to Wikipedia, 'the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.' — Wayfarer

I do think science is the most reliable way (but not the only way) to acquire tentative knowledge about the world. I would not use the word truth.

The Dawkins quote above I would agree with for the most part, but I would not state my position with the same level of militancy.

I would think that Dawkins would say that science renders God superfluous. Disproving theism is a different, more technical exercise which I don't think can be done.

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms? — baker

I doubt it. I have yet to see how philosophy of this kind is of use in my daily life - except as a general belief that I might have larger models of speculative reality to play with when I have spare time. And I suspect that one of the consolations of philosophy is that it's often the conceptual version of getting a new toy. Does this suggest decadence or futility? I'm not one to say. I think others take the pursuit more seriously.

As I have said elsewhere - if we are living in a simulation, or if idealism (however this is understood) is true, I don't think it makes any difference to how I go about my business in life.

At a deeper more optimistic level, I think it is quite enough to arrive at a point where you are aware that potentially all of your assumptions and values, your world are constructed and not an immutable, transcendent reality. It might well help us to be less dogmatic in our thinking and actions.

‘Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.’

- Dan Zahavi

This quote does resonate. And it leaves me with the helpful perspective that I am not going to solve any of the big questions of philosophy - the nature of reality, what is consciousness, is moral realism true, etc. These questions are too difficult to unpack (certainly for the non-specialist) and there's reason to think that we are all caught up in traps of language, perception and cognition which may well be difficult or impossible to escape from. But I am happy to hear the arguments against this.

What makes anyone think that there is a system that works? What even is the measure or criterion of 'working'? What constitutes failure? Are you and yours the measure of success? — unenlightened

Good point. I'm not sure that I would argue that capitalism is working, but as you say, what constitutes failure or success? No doubt anything can be spun in any direction.

The fact that democracy hasn't yet worked doesn't mean that it couldn't..... — Pantagruel

Reminds me of that G.K. Chesterton quote:

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

we need to keep in mind that the very concept of perspective is completely unreliable, because, after all, it remains a hidden way of saying that there is an objective reality, from which perspective tries to be different. — Angelo Cannata

Interesting. Are you saying that you can't have perspectives without an objective reality from which perspectives are derived? I've never given it much thought, but I am unsure if this is necessarily the case. I will need to think it over. Can I get back to you in 20 years? Perhaps the word perspective is inadequate and just the best we can do to try and convey a set of relationships.

I even think that Socrate’s knowing that he didn’t know nothing is already knowing too much, it is actually a claim of knowing really a lot. — Angelo Cannata

Yes, the comments sometimes sounds like false modesty.

I think the best we can do is to go to our humanity, psichology, emotions, literature, myths. Not in an obscurantist mentality, but exactly after being enriched by the research we have made about metaphysics, perspectives, criticism and self-criticism. — Angelo Cannata

Perhaps. My answer to this has often been that these sorts of questions are probably unsolvable by me and in the end will do nothing to help other people, so best I just get on with my day job...

I think @Wayfarer's idea of extended naturalism does offer potential insights into how we co-create the reality we experience and how it might benefit us to realise the tentative nature of many of our positions.

If you truly want to take perspectives into account, you should consider that the whole idea of reality imagined by perspectives is itself a perspective. Talking about perspectives is itself a perspective. — Angelo Cannata

I can see your point here but then we would also probably need to say that your perspective that it's a perspective is itself a perspective... and I fear we can keep doing this until we become a spinning top of infinite recursion.

Nicely done. A lucid articulation and a useful, accessible summary. I read your full piece.

What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. This oversight imbues the phenomenal world — the world as it appears to us — with a kind of inherent reality that it doesn’t possess — Wayfarer

This is the key for me. You said something similar here some months back and it helped me to understand your perspective on idealism - a much more straight forward and, dare I say it, naturalistic account. I can certainly see an argument for the world arising or co-arising as a dynamic interplay of subject and object.

If AI can produce a believable Picasso, isn't it worth the same as a genuine one? — Tim3003

No. That is no different to an art forgery by a person and those works are not worth the same as a Picasso. What we are paying for in a Picasso is not the art, so much, but the provenance and the fact Picasso did it. Can a fake sell for the same price as the real thing? Yes, if the right academics vouch for its authenticity. But the price is only high if it is believed Picasso made it.

If AI can produce a concerto indistinguishable from one by Mozart can you call it inferior? — Tim3003

It will definitely be an inferior Mozart because it won't be Mozart. I think there have been humans who have copied works in Mozart's style before and those works are generally experienced as derivative. I suspect that a musicologist will always be able to tell a Mozart from an ersatz Mozart, no matter how good the latter. The rest of us may not pick it up. But let's say no one can tell them apart. In this case what we have is a work people would say has many of the attributes of a real Mozart and it may well be enjoyed by many as such. I guess we could still say it is inferior in as much as no human made it. So the extraordinary effort of a single person's compressed creativity and innovation is not on show.

Where this relationship obtains, you have meaning. And you can ask of anything, what is a/the Y to this X? — hypericin

I have some sympathy for post-structuralist notions of meaning in as much as this approach seems to contend that signs and signifiers are arbitrary, and meaning is not fixed but constructed within specific cultural and historical contexts.

I am not a Platonist, or a believer in any grand narratives which transcend contingent human meaning.

What is the meaning of the usages of "meaning" that unites them? Is there a unitary concept they share? — hypericin

Like the notion of truth, meaning is an abstract with a range of usages. The 'meaning' of a road sign is not the same usage as the 'meaning' of life. Meaning is not a property that operates identically wherever it is found. Although some might take the view that every variation of meaning is merely the interplay of signs and signifiers.

What unites them? When anyone asks; what does X mean/what does life mean/what does Hamlet mean? we are essentially asking what sense did you make out of this artifact, behavior or phenomena, which is an open question. Even identifying an object as a particular thing, a screwdriver, say, is a form of sense making. This is a cardinal activity of humans as meaning making creatures.

I think it’s the nature of public service workers to be somewhat complacent or lazy when it comes to work ethic, not bound for any need for profit this phenomena is widespread in the west too. — simplyG

I don't think that is always true across the board these days. Many public service workers I know have to meet strict KPI's and productivity outcomes. And a worker's time and use of breaks are monitored and contracts are revoked it workers step out of strict program guidelines. The fact is that many public service roles these days are overseen by neo-liberal mechanisms which are generated by the same rapacious cocksuckers who dominate corporations - Deloitte, KPMG, McKinsey &Co, Nous Group etc.

science and spirituality cannot be separate and only through Jesus can man be saved. — Isaiasb

This is a philosophy site not a site for proselytizing.

All you've done here again is provide a series of claims - this time in the form of cherry picked, disembodied quotes. There needs to be demonstration that any of the claims are true.

Here's a cherry picked quote response for you from Christian author and cleric Bishop Spong:-

Atonement theology assumes that we were created in some kind of original perfection. We now know that life has emerged from a single cell that evolved into self-conscious complexity over billions of years. There was no original perfection. If there was no original perfection, then there could never have been a fall from perfection. If there was no fall, then there is no such thing as “original sin” and thus no need for the waters of baptism to wash our sins away. If there was no fall into sin, then there is also no need to be rescued. How can one be rescued from a fall that never happened? How can one be restored to a status of perfection that he or she never possessed? So most of our Christology today is bankrupt. Many popular titles that we have applied to Jesus, such as “savior,” “redeemer,” and “rescuer,” no longer make sense...”
― John Shelby Spong, Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy: A Journey into a New Christianity Through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel

Science is just a tool, an approach for acquiring reliable knowledge and getting things done. It doesn't really share space with religion, which serves other functions.