If you have in mind people like us and people adjacent to us, then we are what, 5% of the population at very best? — Manuel

Never thought about it. I’m not sure if I should be concerned or amused by this figure,

Most people - even in optimal conditions - don't care enough about these issues. Heck even interest in science is low for what I would like it to be, but philosophy today? That's tough. — Manuel

I wonder if there are some good stats on this. I mentioned philosophy at work a couple of times and people made it clear they thought it was bullshit. Mind you this is a crowd interested in critical theory so go figure.

Another thing is being a follower of Derrida or Lacan, that exists, is relatively small, but probably not good for thinking, imo. — Manuel

Yes, all the smart young kids of my era were cheerfully fixated with deconstruction in the 1980’s. I never had the temperament to make it through the texts. They were so turgid and took time from women and booze.

I forget exactly where, I think it's in a few places, Plato describes being educated as primarily "desiring what is truly worthy/good and despising what is truly unworthy/bad." He says that a formally educated, wealthy person might be able to give more sophisticated answers as to why something is desirable or undesirable, but that this is ancillary to being truly "educated." If the more sophisticated person is nonetheless not properly oriented/cultivated such as to desire the good and abhor evil, then they are in an important sense uneducated (unformed); whereas the unsophisticated person is educated, although lacking in sophistication. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which is a reasonable point.

But education wouldn't quite be the same thing as wisdom. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Intuitively that seems right too.

Certain understandings of wisdom, then, rest on the ability to know or intuit the Good, or on union with God, with the source of this wisdom rooted in a transcendent origin.

Not that it's impossible to have someone change the way you view things, it just looks to be very rare. — Manuel

Which is curious, if true.

I'm pretty sure people can be 'radicalised' by philosophy. I’ve certainly met those who 'converted' to idealism or became obsessed with Heidegger’s model of time, to the point where perpetually excited and they would talk about nothing else. And then there are those who abandoned their Islamic or Christian faith and became bores about secular philosophy instead.

You would think that if philosophy truly had the power to lift us beyond convention and common sense, it would amount to a profoundly mind-bending and transformative experience for many people.

That’s very true. :grin:

Isn’t it all just stories and myths, with some proving more useful than others depending on the circumstances? I don’t begin with the idea that we ever stumble onto some final truth, only that we keep finding frames or descriptions that serve us better for the purposes at hand. Or something like this.

:up:

I think life difficulties are much more defined or informed by one's temperament more than what some intelligent person said back in the day. — Manuel

Well said. A perspective people tend not to consider as they seem to attribute everything to learning and discernment.

You can gain perspective and even insight in philosophy, but I don't think it will change the way you face problems, not unlike thinking that studying psychology will let you read other people's minds (it won't). — Manuel

That's worth thinking about.

I briefly studied philosophy at university. My tutor once said something like, no one he had ever met was truly changed by philosophy; it only served to elaborate their preconceptions and biases.

I keep wondering if there are transformational understandings about time and self and being and truth and reality that would open up and utterly change one. Surely that's the promise of thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger...

But this is invariably met with the objection, what do you mean by 'higher'? Higher, according to whom? (Just wait!) This is because any such values are generally expected to be matters of individual conscience - the individual being the arbiter of value on modern culture. — Wayfarer

Perhaps. But value is also construed in postmodern theory through intersubjective agreement, which seems to be as close to objectivity as we can get. But agreement remains contingent and subject to linguistic and cultural practices.

Yeah, I suppose the way we think these days may indeed create problems, but maybe that’s the price of debunking myths and sacred cows. It could be that a more pragmatic and justifiable orientation naturally brings instability, especially during transitional periods, which might last for centuries. How would we know?

Because, in most situations, even a fool can see when something is a failure. You don’t even need to know what success is. But as I already said, very few people are 100% foolish.
— Tom Storm
This answer is neither here nor there. Fools by definition is someone who acts unwisely and gets unwise results. — L'éléphant

I shouldn't have written fool. My mistake. We aren't actually talking about fools as such. I've been careless in language. We are talking about recognising our foolishness and developing wisdom. As I said before no one (or very few) is a complete fool. Most of us have enough nous to tell the differnce between what works and what doesn't. If you disagree with that then we hold different views about people. Which means we can move on.

From my own experience, sometimes my intuition was right and sometimes wrong, so to me, this definition of intuition is problematic. I have no idea what wisdom may refer to at all. — MoK

I was wondering if anyone would bring some wisdom skepticism to the table. Is wisdom merely difficult to define, or does it, perhaps, not exist?

In terms of contemporary usage, I don't see appeals to wisdom (as a specific concept) in general that often. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's an interesting point and I would agree.

A key idea is that wisdom (and thus virtue) is sought for its own sake, being not mainly about making "good choices" in a pragmatic sense (as the goal of wisdom anyhow), but about an intellectual joy that is achieved through contemplation that itself makes one a "good (just) person," but which also leads to a good (happy) life, to joyous action (as opposed to the suffering brought on by vice). Whereas if wisdom is primarily about making good pragmatic choices, then it really is more of a means than an end. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's an element no one seems to have drawn out so far. Thanks.

How important do we think wisdom is in our lives, and do we agree with contemporary thinkers like John Vervaeke that we “suffer a wisdom famine in the West”?

I would imagine this is a quite common sentiment amongst perennialists or fans of particular Eastern or historic Western wisdom traditions. And this makes a certain sort of sense since, if one considers them important (or the sort of classical liberal arts education) then the fact that they are not generally taught will be something in need of change. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up: :up:

The drive for diversity has not tended to mean teaching other historical traditions either (e.g., the big Islamic philosophers). For philosophy and broader social theory, the post-moderns, liberals, and to lesser extent the Marxists, really dominate. But, for most perrenialists (and I do think they are right here), these are in key respects much more similar to each other than they are to any of the older traditions. So, even for people not committed to any particular tradition, there appears to be a missing diversity element that allows for unchallenged assumptions or a sort of conceptual blindness. This need not even be in alarmist terms. It's simply "hard to get" without any sort of grounding, and that grounding is missing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's an entire thread in this, isn't there?

That’s a very nicely written perspective.

You've got a fine house and you've completely forgotten what the point of a house is. — Srap Tasmaner

I particularly like this insight.

My two bits from a 2021 thread ...
https — 180 Proof

I forgot about that great response. Thanks!

Okay so you're just supporting what I said earlier. How do you know what mistakes are if not by knowing what success is. — L'éléphant

Because, in most situations, even a fool can see when something is a failure. You don’t even need to know what success is. But as I already said, very few people are 100% foolish.

One can recognize that events aren't meeting expectations and recognize that beliefs leading to those expectations were somehow mistaken. It's not obvious to me how "knowing what success is" is necessary to knowing what mistakes are. — wonderer1

Agree.

You could only learn from the foolish if you know the difference. — L'éléphant

Not always. If you watch someone follow a course of action and see the consequences, you also learn what works and what does not. In some cases you will gradually build up wisdom around conduct, goal setting and approaches. In fact, I have learned more from watching mistakes and making them than I ever have from success. And no one is tabula rasa. Most of us have a smattering of wisdom alongside our foolishness. The trick, perhaps is to fan it carefully, the way a spark can be nurtured into a roaring fire.

- the conviction that one is choosing the best answer when in truth one is imposing one solution amongst many. That imposition is the ethical aspect. — Banno

Got ya. Government in a nutshell.

No, I'm seeing education as not just schooling and formal instruction. — L'éléphant

:up:

to me means no formal schooling and/or no instruction from the wise people. — L'éléphant

I wonder if it is possible to become wise by learning from the foolish? After all, with discernment, watching a fool and what happens to them can be very instructive in learning what not to do.

My Masters thesis was on organisations making decisions despite their being undecidable. But only the good undecidable decisions are wise... — Banno

Oh, say some more about that - context perhaps. Are you saying that operational pragmatism means having to make decisions whether the matter is decidable or not? I've certainly been there.

Indeed. When I was young, in the 1980's, there was a sequel to this via the New Age movement which had good and bad aspects to it. It's where I first read Alan Watts. I was very interested in the theosophical movement and history and spent a lot of time around devotees of Gurdjieff, Joseph Campbell, Krishnamurti, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, and others. If you find a clique, there's no shortage of conversation and information swapping. I think counterculture or working to get 'behind appearances' is a very seductive area of interest.

At the time, the nearest thing I could find in Western culture to the enlightenment I was seeking was via the Gnostics. — Wayfarer

Did you pursue this line very much? There was a significant Gnostic/Jung/Campbell nexus in the 1980's.

It would be difficult for me to assess in your place what exactly is minimizing suffering: letting someone commit suicide or letting someone live :grin: — Astorre

The default position is that it is better to live. But there are situations where death might be preferable; terminal illness being an obvious example. Generally, people are quite relieved not to have completed their self-harm. They often recognize that their desperation was situational and could be overcome. People who are extremely serious about suicide don't generally tell others and just go do it.

Thought experiment: You walk into a room where a stranger is about to commit suicide. What do you do? — Astorre

It happens a lot. Or did. I work in psychosocial services which assists people who are experiencing mental ill health and addiction (amongst other things). I have provided suicide interventions many times.

Why do I work in this area? I tend to value approaches which minimise suffering and promote flourishing. Part of me is a simple-minded utilitarian.

Have you ever felt the urge to take stock of your own paradigm? — Astorre

I don’t have a deliberate paradigm; I have more of a disposition. I’m unsure what I think about many issues and tend to just intuit my way through them. I’m open to many alternative approaches. I'm quite happy with 'I don't know' as an answer. I'd like to know more about phenomenology - but I lack time and find it hard to get a useful reading from complicated texts.

Does philosophical thinking change your approach to relationships, friendships, and love? If so, how? — Astorre

I’ve never paid much attention to philosophy, but I do find it interesting. I navigate most of life by intuition, rarely reflecting or theorizing and this works pretty well. I’m at ease with being, to a significant degree, an expression of the values of my time.

​Ethics in Action: How do you personally resolve ethical contradictions that arise in your everyday life? — Astorre

I lean toward relativism. I see morality as contingent, a code of conduct shaped by history and culture that pragmatically helps organize people and power relations. I can't think of a time I faced an ethical contradiction. I mostly just act. No doubt I sometimes make mistakes and poor choices, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

​Coping with Life's Challenges: Does your knowledge of philosophy help you deal with life's difficulties, losses, or existential anxiety? — Astorre

I take things as they come and expect nothing. I've generally found negotiating life and other people to be fairly pleasant and straight forward. But I recognize that I have been lucky. If existential anxiety is understood as a fear of death or a festering over meaning in the face of life’s absurdity, I am largely untouched by this. I am at peace with the possibility of dying tomorrow, should it occur.

​Balancing Depth and Superficiality: How do you find a balance between your philosophical mindset and the superficiality you encounter in others? — Astorre

It’s often me who’s the superficial one. I do tend to avoid theorists and people who insist on turning every conversation into a showcase of their reading. They are often dull and tend to narcissism. That said I find most people interesting and enjoy almost any kind of free flowing conversation. I don't divide the world of other people into the superficial and the profound, I'm more concerned with people who treat others respectfully.

There's an issue I don't think has been raised yet: "system" often carries a connotation of rigidity, though we can certainly point to systems that are flexible and adaptive. My point is, it's always a question with systems.

In your semantic terms, I was thinking about the use of the phrase "the System" (capital S) in the 60s and 70s counterculture. The imputation was of a particular kind of rigidity, a rigidity that extended to this semantic level. Thus the System was thought to see everything in terms of wealth and power and status, and to be blind to, say, art and feeling, on the one hand, or injustice and suffering, on the other. There were categories of no use to the System, and so it did not recognize them at all. You get the idea. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, in some ways a system might also be seen as a heuristic, a simplifying device that helps us navigate complexity, but it can just as readily function as a framework, or even as a symbolic stand-in for realities that remain intricate and puzzling.

Many systems seem designed to make complex things easier to organize and understand, to bring coherence to chaos, but in doing so they may leave out important elements or even distort the picture. As a general rule I avoid people who believe they have created system for understanding reality - it's usually the hallmark of a crank and monomaniac.

Do you agree? — Banno

Well, here's the thing. Aren't there folk who are wise in some areas and dunces in others? Or does 'proper' wisdom need to be all encompassing?

I spent yesterday at a Voluntary Assisted Dying conference, and came away with an overwhelming belief that VAD is a moral good; one that was have been impossible to implement until recently. — Banno

Agree. I recently had an acquaintance put this into practice. It was a good thing.

There may be some benefit in further considering why wisdom fails intensification. Dose this show that it is valuable for its own sake? — Banno

I'm not sure what you mean by 'fails intensification'.

Sure. The Enlightement casts a shadow. I'm overall in agreement with Vervaeke's diagnosis, although bearing in mind it is presented via a series of 52 hour-long lectures, staring with the neolithic, so it's very hard to summarise. — Wayfarer

His initial interview with Alex O'Connor seems to be a good way to cut through to his primary focus.

I personally struggle to accept that today’s people are intrinsically unhappier and/or more foolish than previous generations or eras, despite the popularity of this trope with everyone from New Age folk to MAGA supporters.

What about spiritual wisdom? A separate category?

They’ve seen everything before. I was thinking for a minute that maybe wisdom and maturity are the same thing, but that’s not right. I guess it’s more that maturity is a prerequisite for wisdom. Wisdom stands back and sees everything at once, how everything fits together, what’s going to come next. — T Clark

I think that's a nice formulation. I work with a lot of people just out of university, in their mid-20s. Every so often I meet someone who is simply wise, who shows a capacity for moral discernment and prudent decision making more typical of someone mature with a lot of experience. My suspicion is that some wisdom is innate, or at least can be cultivated early.

— Tom Storm
No.
— L'éléphant

That’s ridiculous. I think it shows, perhaps, a lack of wisdom. — T Clark

My initial reaction was similar, but I think he needs to explain this further. He is construing a wider understanding of education, which would include people without degrees and fancy paperwork.

I asked Claude to have a go at this for me, and it produced the following groups:

Judgment/decision/conclusion/opinion (evaluative processes)
Experience/knowledge/facts/information/understanding (epistemic foundation)
Ability/skill (capacity)
Good/sound/valid/reason/sense (normative approval)
Quality/standard (measurement/evaluation)

It then suggested on this basis that wisdom sits at the intersection of out epistemic and normative judgements. This last corresponds to my own intuition. To be wise is to achieve a good outcome. — Banno

Yes, this corresponds to my intuition on the subject. My initial thinking about wisdom led me to words like skill, common sense, judgment, measured.

Is wisdom, when demonstrated, appreciated by others? Does it cut through? Is it truly valued? I imagine the answer is: it depends…

Is there a known individual or individuals today whom we might call wise? Or is wisdom entirely in the eye of the beholder and shaped by their values?

But in general, wisdom and cleverness are a natural dichotomy that organises the brain. And so also organise society as our collective brain. We have something of major metaphysical importance that goes beyond personal neurology and speaks to our societies as the combinations of its institutions and its innovations. — apokrisis

Interesting observations, thanks.

How do the two sides of this equation play into each other, and is something new indeed occurring as a next phase of its evolution? — apokrisis

That seems like a pertinent question.

Can an uneducated person be wise?
— Tom Storm
No. That said, there are many ways to educate ourselves. I don't mean academically. Reading, listening to other reputable people, and watching the actions of those you respect. — L'éléphant

You’re seeing education as something quite different from traditional book-smart or university-style learning. I imagine it is possible to be wise in some areas and foolish in others.

Wisdom has a moral implication, — Banno

Nice point. Hadn't thought about that but you're onto something,

You can be too clever by half but never too wise. You can be very smart, but can you be very wise? You can be quite wise. The fragility of intensifies indicates that wisdom is an absolute quantity.

We have folk wisdom, Divine Wisdom (complete with capitals), ancient wisdom, and conventional wisdom. Wisdom can be possessed, accumulated and passed down. And even occasionally applied.

Better to be wise than knowledgeable or intelligent, and we have artificial intelligence, not artificial wisdom. Wisdom is earned by suffering and experience, not so knowledge or intelligence. We say someone is intelligent when they demonstrate analytic capacity but wise when they show good judgement.

Is it more serious if I question your wisdom than if I question your judgement? — Banno

A lot to ponder here. I like it. The notion of judgement is clearly important.

Oddly, "wise" and "video" are cognates. Having seen YouTube, I find that ironic. — Banno

Quote of the day right there.

Are you a 'meaning seeking' type of person such as you have described? Where do you sit on this?

On this point, I also ask you to consider the role that religion has played in each of these different aspects of human life. My initial point with the post was to ask readers to consider the basis for most of the contention and separation that we see globally as being religious ideology. I — Paula Tozer

Yeah well this is a subject so familiar and well covered by atheists that it's close to being a banal observation. I've made the point innumerable times in my atheist proselytising days and on this site we sometimes get members who are active for a while, who hate religion and have little else to offer the God debate than Dawkins or Hitchens style polemics. Not saying you're one of those, just that this style of argument appears here often enough.

Personally I think humans fuck everything up, whether it’s secular or religious. Our drive for control and conformity perhaps. Amongst my friends I count a number of Christians, a priest and a sister too, who are extraordinarily tough on religion and believers and no fans of the oppressive history of the church. There are Christians and Sikhs whose company I prefer over many doctrinaire atheists I've known.

Everyone I know has been altered by religious ideology - that includes Catholic, Baptist, as well as other Protestant religions. — Paula Tozer

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by ‘altered' could you give an example? But isn’t it fair to say that most beliefs alter us in some way? Politics, culture, and art all leave their mark on us. Some radically so.

Any views on Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Parsi, or Jain faiths?

To compare it to a deviance..I don't know if I'd go that far. — Paula Tozer

I don't see homosexuality as a deviance. If you do then you're missing my point.

In my view, it's absolutely unnecessary to follow a deity. — Paula Tozer

My point is not connected to whether it is necessary to follow a deity. My point is that some people are drawn to this form of meaning making and some are not. I see much of this as an innate disposition, an orientation or preference. Are contingent factors like culture, linguistic practices, and upbringing involved? Of course.

:up: :up:

I disagree here. I would call it need rather than preference. Some people seem to need religion or god or mystery or whatever and some people do not, some people are comfortable with no greater meaning and some are not. Preference implies an array of different paths on a journey but actually its a matter of being on a journey or not in a journey at all. — DingoJones

I don’t disagree with this. All I mean is that some people are 'turned on' by theism and some are not, just as some are attracted to boys and not girls. I meant preference in that sense, that it is essentially an orientation rather than a reasoned choice. But I think “need” works fine too in a broader sense. And I would include the need 'not to believe' in God along with the 'need to believe'. Both atheism and theism could be understood as sources of affective satisfaction.

I think even when a meaning seeker rejects religion they will find another path to it by another name. The ones who aren’t searching for meaning (or at least meaning beyond the physical world), aren’t selecting any preferences because they aren’t looking for anything (beyond the physical world) — DingoJones

It has sometimes interested me how many atheists actually believe in supernatural claims. It’s only God they don’t accept. Some atheists I’ve known believe in astrology, ghosts, clairvoyance, and other occult phenomena. So I’m not sure what the connection between God, religion, and the occult actually is for some folk. It’s more the Dawkins-style atheists who are galvanised by empiricism who seem to find any supernatural thesis anathema.

but it sounds like you believe no one has any knowledge about god, from the bible or otherwise. Is that correct, and if so why do you suppose that is? — DingoJones

Even many theists, especially the apophatics, argue that nothing sensible can really be said about God. It’s all mystery. I just take their move one step further: if that’s the case, why not forget about it and piss the God idea off altogether?

In the end, I think theism (as I’ve often said) is a matter of preference, much like sexual orientation: you can’t help what you’re attracted to. It’s shaped by culture, upbringing, aesthetics, and a person’s preferences for how they construe meaning.

Thanks. Not sure I can make much sense of the quotes but I appreciate the context above. Cheers.

Unless the god in question could/would/should stop or curb that evil. — DingoJones

Sure, but for me the problem no one can demonstrate what God believes or what God’s properties are, so any claims about god's relationship to evil or to good are moot and at best, tradition. So for someone to say God is good or that God responds to prayer is on them. But these models of God have no bearing on whether there is a God or not, only on what people claim about God. What difference does it make what the claims are, or what an old book might say about God? God may well be a cunt. Is there any way we can demonstrate either way for certain?

For the record I’m not a schizophrenic and the scenario I’ve just described has only happened once but that’s all it took to convince me. — kindred

I work in the area of mental health. Plenty of people have one off experinces of voices, noises and other odd symptoms and do not have a diagnosis. So there's that.

Obviously the shocking thing was to hear something in my head in the first place almost like a loud voice and not the usual internal monologue, to have this exact phrase repeated by a family member truly shocked me which is why I believe that there’s a higher power, for what else could explain it — kindred

Lots of people hear voices, their names being called, or other meaningful things via voices in their heads. Not everyone turns to God to make sense of it. If you do, that’s fine—but for me, this isn’t a reason I would see as justification for a God.

I believe that there’s a higher power, for what else could explain it. — kindred

No offence intended, but that's a classic 'argument from ignorance fallacy' - "I don't know how else to explain X, therefore God."

It is to avoid repeating the usual cliches about Nietzschean power, strength and egoism recycled from Marxist and Christian thought, so that another Nietzsche can be made to appear. This would not simply be a ‘kinder, gentler’ Nietzsche, as though we could use the same cliches and position him on the ‘right’ side of them. I dont know ether he is kind and gentle. Whether he is or not, I want to show to what extent this other Nietzsche has been obscured by the preconceptions imported from traditional philosophical thinking about the self, the community, power and ethics. — Joshs

For a non-philosopher, this is interesting to read. I find Nietzsche difficult to understand, not because the words are hard, but because the meanings have multiple possibilities. I don’t have the time or inclination to unpack and study this material. That said, I’m somewhat tired of young men using Nietzsche as a justification for bumptious narcissism.

But Nietzsche's "individual" is not the liberal subject. It is a transindividual site of forces. The "Will to Power" is not what an individual *has*; the individual is what the will to power becomes in a specific configuration. The Overman is not a super-powered individual. The Overman names a process, a going-across, a transformation of the human into something else. It is about the creation of new possibilities, new ways of being, new values. It is not about the triumph of one individual over others but about the emergence of a new form of life that transcends the current human economy of ressentiment and bad conscience. His purpose is not to glorify any specific crime or social order but to provide the tools for a ruthless critique of all values, especially the moral ones we hold most dear. He doesn't offer a new system to believe in but a method for questioning, — Joshs

This is a particularly illuminating and helpful perspective.

I used to be an atheist up to my early twenties but as a grew older I had some personal experiences which swayed me rather than scripture which I never found convincing to begin with. — kindred

Fair enough. The issue with personal revelation and experience is that, for others, it’s just hearsay. (Is that Hume?) Whoever it is, it sounds fair. I’ve heard many first-hand accounts of experiences: Indian girls who say they encountered Krishna, Muslim cab drivers who report seeing Muhammad and the angel Gabriel, Christians who say they saw Mary or ‘felt’ the Holy Spirit. I’d be more convinced if the Hindu girl encountered Jesus and the Muslim cab driver saw Krishna. It seems to me these experiences are primed by culture and expectation.

I’m inclined to think that people’s behavior has little bearing on the truth of their beliefs. We can do good things for bad reasons, and we can follow the moral code of fictional characters from novels, yet still perform righteous acts.

The fact that so much evil has been done in the name of Christianity has no bearing on whether there's a god or not.

Are the philosophical arguments much better? Are any of those cartoonish in your view? — DingoJones

I’ve never heard any that are convincing to me personally, but there’s nothing cartoonish about Leibniz’s argument from contingency or Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism.

Wouldn't the behaviour of believers reflect whether god exists depend on how one is defining god and specifically some of the wisdom or rules he lays down? — DingoJones

I wouldn’t think so. If you believe in divine command then killing apostates is good.

What if there is a god and he’s a thug? Like the one described in the Old Testament. We can perhaps disprove that god is good as humans understand him, but perhaps he’s more Trump than Lincoln…

I’m not sure the behaviour of believers has much bearing upon the existence of a god. Can you say more?

Well there ARE bible literalists, so some people do believe a cartoonish thing. Of course it is also low hanging fruit as you say, the easiest attack vector against religion. — DingoJones

I think that’s right. And given this is a philosophy site I’d expect less focus on this type of god and more on philosophical arguments.

:up:

I tend to view Biblical literalism as a cartoonish account of God. I started a thread on this. If atheists confine themselves to attacking literalists, they’re just going after low-hanging fruit. So it’s a general point, and it’s also clear that the behavior of Christians, or Muslims, for that matter, has no bearing on whether a God exists. Plenty of theists, like Spong, think religions are often primitive and terrible.

I wonder if Nietzsche is the most misread of popular philosophers.