Tradition betrayed

[Josquin des Prez]

Dawkins is afraid to argue with Graig since the latter demolished the almighty Hitchens (at least on intellectual grounds. He faltered once he put his religion to the table). Which shows those so called "new atheists" have no actual intellectual foundation of any kind, just a lot of puerile vitriol.

[71 dB]

Dawkins is afraid to argue with Graig since the latter demolished the almighty Hitchens (at least on intellectual grounds. He faltered once he put his religion to the table). Which shows those so called "new atheists" have no actual intellectual foundation of any kind, just a lot of puerile vitriol.

I don't know about this. Maybe this Graig is very intelligent but a lunatic nevertheless.

[kishnevi]

Spiritual experiences are very complex electro-chemical reactions in our heads. I don't experience God because all the knowledge and understanding of the world I have has given me tools to analyze my experiences and name them more correctly. That is, I experience human experiences because I am alive. The air you breath can be observed by others and manifests itself in millions of ways all the time (eg. drag). No wonder everyone agrees about the existence of air. God does not enjoys such consensus.

There is a level of existence and experience which can not be analyzed or described in terms the human mind can comprehend.  People have been trying and failing to do so from the Upanishads on.  They can't be analyzed and correctly named because we simply don't have the tools. What preceded thought can not be described by thought. The best name for this level of existence anyone has provided in European tradition is "God", although there are others.  Call it the Absolutely Real, if you want to avoid the term "God".  But the fact that you have never (knowingly) experienced it does not mean it does not exist.  When I compared it to the experience of the air around us, I was trying to illustrate how vivid and continual that experience is.  And in a way, I was inaccurate--because I experience God at a more intimate, deeper and tangible way than I do the air around us.  So God is more real to me than the air, as real as air may be.

I could never believe in (any) God, not in million years with the understanding I have of the world. Maybe 200 years ago I would have been religious but today religion seems ridiculous. You said it yourself. You are a Jew because you were born a Jew. That's also why you find the traditional view of the "Old Testament" as representing what happened to fit best with the historical/archeological evidence (what the heck that even means? What evidence?). You have been indoctrinated succesfully into Judaism. Sorry, but there is little hope for you to get rid of your beliefs and be able to think freely. 

You are demonstrating your own limitations admirably.  May I suggest your way of thinking is as conditioned towards atheism as mine might be by Judaism?     
And let me repeat the point I was making, which seems to have escaped you:  I don't believe in God because I am a Jew;  I believe in God because I experience God.  (There is more than enough evidence in favor of the traditional view, btw.  As I said before, the argument against it, when examined impartially, reveals itself to be built on unproved assumptions, circular logic, and a tendency for the proponent to substitute his or her own fantasies and speculations for evidence.)

The real point is this: you mistake religion for something that is irrational and without a rational basis in human experience.  It isn't.  All those billions of people believe in God because they find it the reasonable thing to do.

Also two other points you raised in other posts:
1) Secular ideologies are not free from the tendency to kill en masse and otherwise ruin human civilization.  Communism and Nazism were the main offenders, but not the only ones.
2) Dawkins should be completely ignored on the subject of religion.  He is as ignorant on the subject as the average layman is ignorant of genetics.  All of his arguments and objections against religion were answered by the medieval scholastics.  The same applies to Hitchens, but at least he has the merit of being an excellent prose stylists.  You won't learn much of value from Hitchens regarding religion, but you will learn much of value from him on how to write well.
There are philosophically sophisticated arguments against religion, developed under the rubric of the philosophy of religion, during the 20th century, but Dawkins seems to be totally ignorant of them. (Obviously I think those arguments fail, but at least they're more advanced than the ones Dawkins makes.)

[kishnevi]

See, this is a typical sentimental expression of religiosity which lacks a fundamental intellectual underpinning, and is thus not "traditional".

On the contrary, it is quite traditional:  because the intellect can only carry you so far.  To succeed at being human you have develop all your capacities, of which the intellect is only one.  And to fully realize the fundamental unity of your self with God, you have to unknow everything else.

[Herman]

No, its a metaphysical statement (it is true that it is not an argument, you can't argue metaphysics, which deals with eternal principles which are fixed and immutable), its just that people like you don't know what the science of metaphysics actually entails (pure intellect as opposed to a simple branch of philosophy).

well, as long as it keeps you off the streets, I guess no harm's done.

You're using the term 'science' because of it the status it's supposed to provide, but really it's an aesthetic world view you're talking about. The world is much prettier if everything fits in a 'metaphysical' system. But that doesn't mean the system exists.

I'm reading Guénon as we speak, and it seems i may have finally found a metaphysical doctrine which actually runs in tandem with my own understanding of the world. It explains why i could never accept the Catholicism i grew up with and could never take on any other religion, including Buddhism, which is also a decadent religion (or a religion of decadence, as Christianity is today). Very few of the religions of the world actual deal with the principles which Guénon refer to as "traditional", but which are really intended to be nothing more then the underlying metaphysical truths which radiate from the absolute principle, which is the only true reality of the universe (call it God if you will), from which everything else comes forth, the material world being in the lowest echelon of this universal order. Those principles are no longer present in most of the major religions, particularly those of the west, and even in the east they are also difficult to find (there is an esoteric Islam which apparently still retains an understanding of those principles, which however remains hidden from the largest body of the religion). And then of course there is ancient India, which apparently developed an understanding of those principles better then any other civilization.

[Josquin des Prez]

You're using the term 'science' because of it the status it's supposed to provide, but really it's an aesthetic world view you're talking about. The world is much prettier if everything fits in a 'metaphysical' system. But that doesn't mean the system exists.

Its obvious you don't seem to understand what pure intellect actual is, and pretend that only reason has a place to explain the world.

[Josquin des Prez]

On the contrary, it is quite traditional:  because the intellect can only carry you so far.

According to Guénon, pure intellect is the very base for all traditional thought. So it seems that you are in disagreement with the perennial traditional school on this point.

[Grazioso]

Because of all the knowledge and understanding of the world we have today.

How does that obviate the need or desire among people for religions or spiritual experience?

Human nature hardly has altered at all but we have knowledge far superior to religions.

What knowledge, what religions, and how is the former superior to the latter?

Because secular culture can base itself to scientific proven facts and in case of non-proven things the most plausible theories available. Theories get corrected/defined in time. Religions tend to hold to erroneous conceptions delaying development of society (eg. the rights of sexual minorities).

Do secular cultural or secularists never fall prey to dogma, never work on unproven assumptions, never hold erroneous conceptions? Does science never get politicized or perverted by extra-scientific concerns, be it personal greed or state doctrine? You speak of the rights of sexual minorities: look at the history of science in support of racism. Look at the history of the Third Reich, which was one of the most scientifically advanced states at the time, but which politicized the sciences to horrible effect.

Also, secular culture doesn't have arbitrary holy things driving mentally unbalanced individuals to violent fanatic actions for the sake of religion. Without religions these mental individuals have a lot less reason for any kind of fanatism meaning less terrorism.

Not at all: secular culture has all kinds of sacred cows, such as "individual liberty" or "class warfare" or the flags you see flying above school yards. Going back to the Third Reich: there was a fundamentally anti-religious regime that was nothing if not violent and fanatical: fanatical about the state, the supposed superiority of the Volk, and militarism.

Religious people are unable to think clearly because religion has infected their minds. I am sorry to say this but this is how it seems to be based on all the debates online I have had with religious people. So, secular culture seems to "protect" people's ability to think (freely).

You're doing a disservice to people (and yourself) to compare religion to an infection, certainly if you are only basing your assertion on some debates you've had online. Again, I ask: are non- or anti-religious above dogma, above assumptions, above prejudices, above stupidity, above arrogance?

The church as an institution is an obsolete one holding on it's status in society. Just look Vatican and Pope with all the scandals. It's lunacy!

Just look at secular governments and all their scandals Recall, too, that Catholicism is but one branch of Christianity, and that many religious systems across time and geography lack their sort of state-like organization, money, and power. Major religions today like Sunni Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shinto--never mind many Christian sects--lack that sort of centralized, totalizing power structure.

Do you need more arguments for secular culture?

Yes because I don't see it as an unalloyed good by any stretch, any more than I would consider a theocracy the answer to all society's problems.

Because that's how it is. That's why children of parents of certain religion tend to assume the same religion. Even if people might consciously adopt or affirm religious views without external manipulation or pressure doesn't mean it's a good thing.

I don't know what you mean by this but gathering data and making predictions based on that data IS science.

I know, and that's precisely what you fail to do here: where is the scientific data delineating the hows and whys of people's adoption of religion? You are making assumptions and asking us to take them on faith.

Religions don't gather data nor do they make predictions. Why bother? All the answers are available in holy books! Who care

I'd recommend studying Buddhism, particularly the Theravada texts, for one example which utterly contradicts that statement. Early Buddhism in fact explicitly recommends empiricism and skepticism.

if these answers are sometimes ridiculous, are often mutually inconsistent and in the end don't really tell us anything?

Has science never run into disagreements or overturned fundamental "truths" we were once assured to be the case?

This a common fallacy religious people have about science. There is no realm beyond science. Everything can be

That makes no sense: science is a methodology, a body of knowledge, a set of philosophical assumptions, and a culture. It is a way to describe things but not the things themselves, and it by nature can't address certain issues. Major scientists like Einstein addressed that in their writings. You might want to read Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists ed. Ken Wilber, wherein Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck et al. tackle these issues.

examined scientifically, it's only a question of having scientific tools available. Sooner or later science will understand things that seem a monopoly of religion today. Religion will be killed by science and it is only a good thing. We are behind the schedule at the moment which is a bit frustrating.

You seem to have a lot of faith in science 

It's frightening how much people allow few books influence their conceptions but if you want thought-provoking read, I can mention Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I prefer "gathering data" from all kind of sources and coming to my own conclusions after hard and long free-thinking. Reading The God Delusion was merely a verification process for me. In genetics Dawkins' knowledge is far superior to mine but otherwise our conclusions are similar.

I'm not sure you mean I base my ideas and questions on only a few books? Either way, I haven't read Dawkins' book, but from what I know of it, he seeks to counter only one particular conception of God and to focus largely on arguments of design. If that is correct, it's a convenient straw man, since there are numerous ideas of God or gods, religious traditions that do not invoke any sort of god, and personal spiritual experience that is likewise not couched in such conceptions.

I think you might find the Kuhn book illuminating because it calls into question the faith many implicitly put in science without first understanding how scientific methods and knowledge have shifted over time and the beliefs that animate them. It's had a major impact in the philosophy of science.

[Grazioso]

Spiritual experiences are very complex electro-chemical reactions in our heads.

Perhaps very complex electro-chemical reactions in our heads are spiritual experiences? I.e., they're two ways to describe the same thing.

You could say

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill

or you could describe the rotation of the earth, atmospheric diffraction, and condensation.

Sorry, but there is little hope for you to get rid of your beliefs and be able to think freely. 

How sure are you that you're mentally free? Perhaps the ideas or memes you've been exposed to have subtly shaped your thoughts and actions, outside your conscious recognition. Perhaps you are mechanistic and lack any true free will to decide?

[Grazioso]

There is a level of existence and experience which can not be analyzed or described in terms the human mind can comprehend.  People have been trying and failing to do so from the Upanishads on.  They can't be analyzed and correctly named because we simply don't have the tools. What preceded thought can not be described by thought. The best name for this level of existence anyone has provided in European tradition is "God", although there are others.  Call it the Absolutely Real, if you want to avoid the term "God".  But the fact that you have never (knowingly) experienced it does not mean it does not exist.  When I compared it to the experience of the air around us, I was trying to illustrate how vivid and continual that experience is.  And in a way, I was inaccurate--because I experience God at a more intimate, deeper and tangible way than I do the air around us.  So God is more real to me than the air, as real as air may be.

It's akin to trying to explain color--or more exactly, the experience of color--to a man born blind. This is why mystical traditions across cultures resort to poetry and paradox (and why, to my mind, literal interpretation of sacred scriptures is frequently wrong-headed). It is why these traditions insist on the danger of naming things, of confusing the finger with the moon being pointed at, of conflating the menu and the meal, of mixing up the map and the territory.

To introduce one name or concept is to implicitly introduce its opposite or antithesis, creating one binarism that leads to ever more, when what you're dealing with is something that is whole, unified, and greater than any concept or symbol by which it can be represented. And words/symbols are necessarily poor abstractions: tree is wholly inadequate to describe any one tree, let alone all of them. Get together a dendrologist, ecologist, arborist, landscape architect, poet, artist, and composer, and they would never be finished trying to represent, delineate, and describe just one single elm

Like the Zen masters ask: what are you before you think? What are you before you are born?

[chasmaniac]

I must say, I don't understand all this weepy hand waving. Why not just say, "I don't know everything," and leave it at that?

[Florestan]

I had understood the plausibility of evolution theory and the naivety of religious faith before I was 10 years old.

The ardour with which you cling to these convictions only proves that intelectually speaking you are still 10 years old. 

[Josquin des Prez]

I must say, I don't understand all this weepy hand waving. Why not just say, "I don't know everything," and leave it at that?

Because maybe it is possible to know, its just that western civilization has made a turn away from knowing, ever since it turned its gaze exclusively on material matters since the Renaissance.

[71 dB]

I'd love to argue all the responses but I simply don't have time and I want to do other things in life too. I answer shortly to some arguments:

What knowledge, what religions, and how is the former superior to the latter?

Scientific knowledge. The theories of Big Bang for example are much more intellectually interesting and plausible than the childish notation of God creating the world in 7 days* or whatever. Scientists work hard to find out what caused the big bang while the guestion of who created God is answered with banal remarks like "that's irrelevant since God is beyond human reasoning." For me religion = "don't think! Just believe!" I WANT to think. That's why science is my choice.

*7 Earth days? For some reason God created billions and billions of stars with even more planets circulating them. Every planet has it's own day length. For a thinking person religion causes millions of questions like this demonstrating how utterly childish the whole belief system is. Like Dawkins wrote, 4 years old children can create more reasonable stories than those of religion.

I'd recommend studying Buddhism, particularly the Theravada texts, for one example which utterly contradicts that statement. Early Buddhism in fact explicitly recommends empiricism and skepticism.

For me Buddhism isn't really a religion. It's a construction of philosophy just labeled as religion. I am not against it at all. I am against Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam). I believe that Abrahamic religions were created to control and oppress people (especially women) while Buddhism is about searching for wisdom. Big difference!

Has science never run into disagreements or overturned fundamental "truths" we were once assured to be the case?

In fact this is normal for science. Every scientific theory must survive the critic of scientific community. The "best" theory wins and is alive as long as a better one is presented. That's why science gets better and better and gives as the best knowledge available.

You seem to have a lot of faith in science 

For a good reason. At least sciencist are working hard to find cure for cancel because God is too lazy to cure everyone or better yet, give us 100 % protection against cancel with his almighty powers. Science gave us electricity, computers and internet so we can have these arguments but what's most important is that science gives real understanding of the world.

I'm not sure you mean I base my ideas and questions on only a few books? Either way, I haven't read Dawkins' book, but from what I know of it, he seeks to counter only one particular conception of God and to focus largely on arguments of design. If that is correct, it's a convenient straw man, since there are numerous ideas of God or gods, religious traditions that do not invoke any sort of god, and personal spiritual experience that is likewise not couched in such conceptions.

Dawkins presents many arguments given for God and explains why they are wrong/implausible. He also writes a lot about why God almost certainly does not exist. He also addresses on why people are religious in nature and why religion is a negative thing. I don't think Dawkins is a brilliant writer (sometimes almost clumsy) but he has done a lot of thinking about these things and knows the stuff. That's why I can recommend "The God Delusion" to everyone.

I think you might find the Kuhn book illuminating because it calls into question the faith many implicitly put in science without first understanding how scientific methods and knowledge have shifted over time and the beliefs that animate them. It's had a major impact in the philosophy of science.

Sure. I Believe you.

[Karl Henning]

For me religion = "don't think! Just believe!"

Then you're not thinking, and that's just what you believe.

[Brahmsian]

My problem is not with a belief in God, but religion.  How can one say that one type of religion knows better than another type?

[71 dB]

Perhaps very complex electro-chemical reactions in our heads are spiritual experiences? I.e., they're two ways to describe the same thing.

You could say

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill

or you could describe the rotation of the earth, atmospheric diffraction, and condensation.

How sure are you that you're mentally free? Perhaps the ideas or memes you've been exposed to have subtly shaped your thoughts and actions, outside your conscious recognition. Perhaps you are mechanistic and lack any true free will to decide?

Science is much much more than E=mc². Your poems can be addressed by semantic linguistics. Learning machines (Self Organizing Maps) have been around already couple of decades and in 50-60 years we should have computers smarter than us. By then human spirituality is peanuts for science because the understanding of mental processes is so high.

[Karl Henning]

My problem is not with a belief in God, but religion.  How can one say that one type of religion knows better than another type?

That is an excellent quarrel!

[Karl Henning]

Science is much much more than E=mc².

Yet you so happily put a strawman of Religion into a tidy bin. You are a funny fellow!

Religion is superior to science in music production, BTW. But then, you knew that.

[Grazioso]

I'd love to argue all the responses but I simply don't have time and I want to do other things in life too. I answer shortly to some arguments:

Too bad It was getting interesting.

Scientific knowledge. The theories of Big Bang for example are much more intellectually interesting and plausible than the childish notation of God creating the world in 7 days* or whatever. Scientists work hard to find out what caused the big bang while the guestion of who created God is answered with banal remarks like "that's irrelevant since God is beyond human reasoning." For me religion = "don't think! Just believe!" I WANT to think. That's why science is my choice.

Interesting that you couch it in terms not of truth or wisdom or usefulness, but of personal preference and choice. (Iirc, you were taking another poster to task for doing something similar with religion.) Is that a rational, scientific way to adopt a worldview?

*7 Earth days? For some reason God created billions and billions of stars with even more planets circulating them. Every planet has it's own day length. For a thinking person religion causes millions of questions like this demonstrating how utterly childish the whole belief system is. Like Dawkins wrote, 4 years old children can create more reasonable stories than those of religion.

I am in no position to speak for Creationists who take such things literally, but please see my above post about sacred texts resorting to poetry and paradox.

For me Buddhism isn't really a religion. It's a construction of philosophy just labeled as religion. I am not against it at all. I am against Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam). I believe that Abrahamic religions were created to control and oppress people (especially women) while Buddhism is about searching for wisdom. Big difference!

I think you could safely argue that elements of the Abrahamic religions have been misused to control or oppress (just as secular ideologies have: racism, sexism, Fascism, Communism, consumerism, etc.), but what evidence is there that they were created to do that?

Buddhism is a slippery issue in that a) it, like many modes of Eastern religion, does not fit neatly into standard Western conceptual categories and b) while it does, in certain ways, take a very pragmatic, empirical approach, it has also accreted rituals, priesthoods, saints, deities, etc. Those details are really getting beyond the scope of this thread, but it's vital to distinguish just what you mean when you talk about religion and its supposed failings since "religion" covers a huge amount of ground.

In fact this is normal for science. Every scientific theory must survive the critic of scientific community. The "best" theory wins and is alive as long as a better one is presented. That's why science gets better and better and gives as the best knowledge available.

And yet science, construed as a body of facts instead of a method of inquiry, thereby undoes itself as some sort of intellectual bedrock: what is knowledge or "truth" one day is not the next.

For a good reason. At least sciencist are working hard to find cure for cancel because God is too lazy to cure everyone or better yet, give us 100 % protection against cancel with his almighty powers. Science gave us electricity, computers and internet so we can have these arguments but what's most important is that science gives real understanding of the world.

A few points:

--One could argue God gave us electricity, man used science to figure out how to apply it to practical ends.
--If, as you say, science is about competing theories selected by peer evaluation, then are facts being uncovered, or are communal choices being made about the utility and likelihood of conceptual frameworks?
--Science might give us a "real understanding of the world." That does not imply that religions cannot or do not. And of course many religions seek to give us understanding or guidance about otherworldly things, about things which cannot be measured or fully addressed scientifically: metaphysics, ethics, teleology etc. Science doesn't suggest how to live or why.

Then you're not thinking, and that's just what you believe.