Nice. I like that.

Beyond that though, my general statement in recent posts was along the lines of what works for you in this moment may not work for you in the next. — Outlander

Agree. I do know that people tend to focus on destinations or results at the expense of how they got there. Sometimes the journey is where the truth is found - the destination is merely the excuse to travel. This hit me for the first time in 1983 when I encountered this quote by Robert Louis Stevenson- ".. to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour." At first I was irritated by this and gradually I came to agree. I understand there is a Taoist saying 'the journey is the reward.'

:ok:

I have no talent for metaphysics, I'll take what you say as a comment.

Ah, here we go. The classic statement. What I do works for the moment for me and me alone. If only you knew how many men greater than you chose these last words in their pursuits here in this life.. though, perhaps your right, in a sense. What doesn't serve you well? Why not? Why doesn't it? Perhaps because it serves another just a little bit better? Does this advance the human condition or merely the human tolerance of life? These are the questions one may only hope to live long enough to ponder. — Outlander

Ok - so I am not saying it works for me alone. I have no idea who it works for. I tend to hold a soft-deflationary theory of truth. I need an example of something to investigate before I can provide a response. I don't think it is possible to talk about 'truth' in general terms, as it means a range of things. I need details.

No need to overcomplicate. People have different views. Mine has served me well.

Jesus could only have been evil, insane, or God. Let's see how this works out. — Gregory

Part of the problem with CS Lewis is he only gave us three options. A fourth one would be that Jesus was a character in some apocalyptical religious traditions. We know there were many gospels and only 4 were chosen during a charged political process. We do not know who wrote the gospels and we know they were written many years after the events they supposedly describe. Mark being the oldest at around 65CE. The gospels are claims made - fan fiction if you like. We can't make any conclusions about an actual person.

I hear you but the truth of those statements requires more reason than this for me to accept it. Not keen on journey metaphors. You see, for some people (I'm one) the journey is way more important and interesting than the destination.

It depends on the purpose of Truth. Why you are pursuing it. — SteveMinjares

What about the notion that truth is worth pursuing for its own sake? If you are not a philosophical pragmatist does truth have to have a function?

ltimately Nietszche is impelled to not only deny God, but also science, because science originates with the acceptance an order, and Nietsczhe is compelled to deny that also. — Wayfarer

I think this is critical. The post-Enlightenment's zest for and confidence in proofs and reasoning comes right out of Christianity. Much nihilism these days seems less ambitious :razz:.

My take is that the modern world has lost all sense of the dimension against which the sense of a 'higher intelligence' can be calibrated because the metaphors by which it is presented are no longer intelligible to us. — Wayfarer

Nice work, W. That is a succinct and juicy way of putting it. This could be a thread of its own.

By the way, when I said DBH 'likes' Nietzsche, I didn't mean it to sound like a high school relationship - I guess I meant he 'respects' FN.

Zizek and Peterson. This is what we spend our time reading? Good heavens. — Xtrix

No and it's interesting that you jump to conclusions like this. Is your high horse conveniently tethered nearby?

They were mentioned because they happened to be apropos. Why not add someone better? Christ knows I am sick of both those.

As I said - it is easy to see why Bentley Hart likes FN. But the question remains for all of DBH's amplifications of FN's basic premise. Is it accurate?

Yes, what I sometimes hear from JP and even Jung is that God is not real but s/he may as well be (and this is a crude summary) because humans have been hardwired for worship/devotion/contemplation and our entire cultural meaning is constructed around the theistic proposition. It's FN again.

Remember the meme circulating some time ago about what all the person saw who was born in 1900? — James Riley

My Dad was born in 1923. What he saw is bad enough. Still living - no thanks to 2 years in a German (WW2) camp.

Thanks. I am well aware of Peterson's work and I always find it fascinating how just about the only atheist embraced by believers is Nietzsche. Generally it is because he supports the view that the death of God leads to catastrophe. Orthodox theologian and social critic David Bentley Hart is very eloquent on this.

Yes I know - which is why I mentioned the 20th Century.

By the way, just splurged seventy five bucks on this. — Wayfarer

Cool. Let us know if it's clear and accessible.

I’d rather be part of a plan, than part of an accident. — Wayfarer

Be careful what you wish for...

Yes, I brushed up on Dennett and got the main gist of his thesis via qualia and other tit bits. Fascinating. I guess his view doesn't strike me as odd or horrible because my own introspective sense of self seems so random and incomplete - my awareness always struck me as being constructed from a mosaic (fragments heard, seen, felt, thought) creating an illusion of a coherent whole - which surprisingly are words very similar to those used by Dennett in describing consciousness.

Then there's David Bentley Hart's suggestion that most humans experience a sense of surprise or joy in the experience of Being - I have never felt that. Maybe it's those who don't that gravitate towards atheism. In other words, humans as a random, profane explosion of chemistry doesn't sound to me as the worst fate we could befall. The self-refutingness notwithstanding.

I think it would be very interesting to examine and take on this expression of the argument from reason as it has excited me a great deal in recent times. I think I came to it (and Plantinga) via Kant's transcendental argument. No problem if all this makes you a theist. But it would be quite a big leap to get from that to Jesus as your own personal saviour. Would that take you full circle? :razz:

:up: Maybe we can discuss this at another time in the right place.

I have no way of knowing if DD is right or wrong. I am assuming he knows more about this stuff than most people alive. The only thing I know about Dennett is Bentley Hart's great polemical essays on DD's last two books. Anyway that's for somewhere else.

There it was hiding in plain sight. Sorry.

In the long run, however, adaptivity, not only usefulness, is what matters – whether or not taking this useful path or that one engenders truth-seeking habits with positive feedbacks (i.e. intellectual virtues). — 180 Proof

Is this similar to a neo-pragmatism? I'm unclear what you mean by adaptivity - do you mean where it has usefulness in a range of situations?

. But Darwin himself was no philosopher, so much as a product of the Scottish Enlightenment (along with David Hume, Adam Smith, and others) and the only principle it entails is that of reproductive sucess and adaption to the environment. Yet now all philosophy is subordinated to it, as if it is the supreme explanatory principle. — Wayfarer

I hear you but surely Darwinism has also 'evolved' and the understandings that come out of it are much more complex and nuanced than some critics may allow.

I am not qualified to say where Darwinism might lead us. But I do know that people like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins probably trigger more fear and contempt than any other thinkers around. That on itself is worth an essay similar to Nagel's. David Bentley Hart on Dennett's 'rather silly' theories of consciousness are a vituperative treat to read. And yet it is also argued by Dennett and some of his defenders that people like Bentley Hart misinterpret and provide reductive accounts of Dennett's ideas. Everyone seems to have decided that the other party is reductive and holds inconsistent beliefs.

With Nagel you get the sense he's poised just short of a religious conversion. Having a brief look at his work from an ignorant layman's perspective, there seems to touch of Alvin Plantinga in his oeuvre. E.g., How do we explain the emergence of the logical absolutes in a naturalistic world? Presuppositionalist apologetics uses this, with the additional idea that atheism is self refuting. Do you think Nagel's understanding of science is sufficiently robust to justify the critique he is using? He talks about the fear of religion and the idea of God, ok, but it is also certainly the case that people palpably fear science and Darwinism too and not just those folks in small Southern towns who like juggling snakes.

Ta. I'm not keen on the overuse of evolutionary biology to explain all things either.

Because we evolved to the point where we could reason, think, and understand logical and mathematical principles. At the point where those abilities become manifest, sometime in the last 100k years, then new horizons become perceptible that were not available to our simian forbears. That doesn't require doubting the narrative history of evolution, but it might require re-thinking the conclusions that are often made on that basis. — Wayfarer

Nicely phrased. Are you able to provide an example of such a re-thought conclusion?

One makes bread by sifting flour and mixing it with yeast and heating the result. A cook who doubts the existence of flour and yeast will get nowhere.

But ontology encourages just such doubt. Hence, ontology is antithetical to cooking. — Banno

Quite. One wonders where ontology is useful, apart from in philosophy circles.

That's a helpful nugget of info, thanks.

I think real life is strange and always have. Strange/absurd. Philosophy sometimes seems to me to be the quest to make it seem less so.

Sometimes we may intend for our responses to be philosophical, but they end-up as being more psychological. Which then brings up the question: is philosophy based more on how our minds work than it does on traditional philosophical concepts? — Don Wade

What we choose is more likely a reflection of the time we live in.

It is a rare person outside of academe who has a coherent framework based on philosophy or psychology. But like magpies we do tend to cherry pick ideas (sometimes out of context) and use them to illustrate or 'settle' examples, much in the way that 200 years ago someone might have used the Greek myths as metaphors to illustrate or enliven a conversation. In our current time people tend to choose examples derived from scientific sources over the philosophic. My own gripe is people who use quantum mechanics or neuroscience to 'settle' arguments when at best the ideas are speculative and inadequately understood.

The God of the Bible is a Mafia thug.

Yes. I guess this probably comes with the cultural turf if he is a Bible believing Christian.

There is no physical proof that she will stay faithful to him. Just her love which is the testimony of her fidelity. Will she every be with another man? The only thing that is certain is that love is sustaining the faith in there marriage. Is the love for one another that cause them to believe in each other without proof. — SteveMinjares

Again that's not faith as the term is applied to God. Again you are talking about a reasonable expectation based on evidence - you can identify a marriage and a couple and see them together. We even have ways to measure the strength of a marriage. We don't have any evidence like this for God.

:up:

My personal definition of faith is having a loving and trusting relationship.

That is why many loose faith because they assume faith is following laws and technicality. Than you have atheist doing rituals who go to Church (but that’s a subject for another time) — SteveMinjares

That's a mighty idiosyncratic definition of faith. If you are a Bible believer then (amongst other definitions) it is:

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1

Generally faith is how people explain holding a belief when they don't have good reason for it. In the context of theology it isn't the same thing as love and it needs to be said that you can introduce me to the people you listed above. God, it could be said, remains undetectable, absent - at best the subject of cryptic signs or speculations. Or, in the absence of evidence... faith.

Or maybe stop using the word altogether. I think that may be the correct solution. — T Clark

I'm wary of not using particular words just because of the tensions. But I hear you.

As you may recall, I am not a practitioner of any contemplative traditions or follower of any spiritual practices (for want of a better term). I want to understand better what people are getting out of things like Tao, and if I should care. In the 1980's and 1990's, I spent most of my time in the company of Buddhists, theosophists, mystics, cranks, Gnostics, Jungians and various devotees of I Ching, seances and Gurdjieff movements. Weak and anecdotal, but I never saw anyone benefit from these interests. Since then, while I value the numinous and the ineffable to some extent, I have been unable to shake of a simple minded empiricism and reason based world-view. I am not required or driven to speculative pursuits or to 'go deeper' than the quotidian. But I am usually interested to hear from others, unless the voice is strident and unpleasantly dogmatic.

Thank you for that very nuanced and insightful response. I struggle with the harsher forms of Zen (and I think I do understand the basis for the approach) and wonder about this notion of having a calling - I think that is a good term. It seems somehow more apropos than to call it a predisposition.

Do you think that a Westerner holding an Eastern contemplative approach comes with additional cultural challenges to overcome or, in fact, are there some advantages? I used to think that spiritual truth is not restricted or contained by culture - if that makes sense.

Would there be uncontroversial views on a successful way to make a deeper pathway more 'Western friendly' without diluting or distorting?

Do you have a view as to why this facility is (for want of a better term) hard to reach? There's a sense from some commentators that there is a hierarchy of sorts at play too, isn't there? Some people being not ready yet? Or perhaps never ready?

Every time. S/he is always a beginner it seems. — 180 Proof

I wonder if there is a price to pay for all that suddenness.

Yes, I suppose I took sudden to be predicated on a lack of preparation rather than the awareness/experience. Is sudden for the first time, or for the seasoned mystic?