Religion, Philosophy, The divine and The Self Thread

[nodogen]

Do they apply to politics as well? 

I'm hoping especially the second one 😏

[Florestan]

I'm hoping especially the second one 😏

The second one applies auotmatically to anything human. I'm thinking rather about these two:

The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.

Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again.

.

Looks like Trump or the Brexiters are Stoics without ever knowing it.. 

[nodogen]

The second one applies auotmatically to anything human. I'm thinking rather about these two:
.

Looks like Trump or the Brexiters are Stoics without ever knowing it.. 

Yes, ignorance really can be bliss 😁


(I saw what you did there 😉 )

[zamyrabyrd]

Who do you believe greated the divine entity that created everything? If you say divine entities don't need greators then how come everything needs a creator? If you say everything needs a creator then the creator need too, because such a creator must be more complex than the creation. If there is a supercreator that created the creator, that supercreator must have a hypercreator because it is even more complex. The line of creators must be infinite. Doesn't sound like a rational assumption. However, if you believe that everything does not need a creator, you have much simpler and logically sound construction. Everything just is and there are no divine creators outside our vivid imagination. That's what I believe. Why everything just is? I believe it's because "nothingness" is impossible. "Nothing" is a human concept that doesn't exist in real world. Even empty space contains bubbling quantum energy. Something must exist and it doesn't need divine creators.

Your point of view seems to be closer to Buddhism. The fact we are here means that there is something more than nothing, a helluva lot more. I am willing to accept however, that there are different organizations of existence and matter more complex than we can perceive at this stage of our collective development, although some mystics claim to be in touch with them.

Buddhists count 32 levels of existence, I believe, and we are supposed to be on the 5th level which is quite low. Judging by our primitive modes of behavior such as humans killing one another and despoiling the environment while there is rampant poverty, indeed, we are not very advanced.

ZB

[71 dB]

Your point of view seems to be closer to Buddhism. The fact we are here means that there is something more than nothing, a helluva lot more. I am willing to accept however, that there are different organizations of existence and matter more complex than we can perceive at this stage of our collective development, although some mystics claim to be in touch with them.

Buddhists count 32 levels of existence, I believe, and we are supposed to be on the 5th level which is quite low. Judging by our primitive modes of behavior such as humans killing one another and despoiling the environment while there is rampant poverty, indeed, we are not very advanced.

ZB

I have hard time understanding just "our" level of existence and while we can say we are not very advanced, it has taken almost 14 billion years to get to this point.

I don't take claims made by mystics seriously. That would be silly just as believing the patients in a funny farm without prove would be.

[nodogen]

I have hard time understanding just "our" level of existence and while we can say we are not very advanced, it has taken almost 14 billion years to get to this point.

I don't take claims made by mystics seriously. That would be silly just as believing the patients in a funny farm without prove would be.

31 planes, but there's no dogma to buy into. And Siddhārtha Gautama was no mystic. 😉

I see your point, but the phrase "patients in a funny farm" I think is rather offensive. 😟

[drogulus]

It's turtles all the way down!

     Now we're getting nowhere!

     

     

[drogulus]

Why everything just is? I believe it's because "nothingness" is impossible. "Nothing" is a human concept that doesn't exist in real world. Even empty space contains bubbling quantum energy. Something must exist and it doesn't need divine creators.

     Indeed, I'd go the next step and say a "divine creator" needs it. If it's the "bottom turtle" we're looking for, the one that doesn't need justification in terms of the other ones, we must take a system mode view. I apply the same whole/parts view to universes as I do to money systems and users. Errors are created when observations of the behavior of parts or participants are misapplied to systems. I can go bankrupt, I can run out of money, a money system can't do either. I can exist or not, while the whole system can't. It would need to be a part, not a whole, for the question to arise, kind of like "turtles all the way up".

     Philosophers have points of view, though it's their business to arrive at not having one. The business is the most ruthless critique of belief they can muster. Philosophers correctly identify beliefs held immune to scrutiny as the enemy.

[Karl Henning]

I see your point, but the phrase "patients in a funny farm" I think is rather offensive. 😟

+ 1

[Karl Henning]

Philosophers correctly identify beliefs held immune to scrutiny as the enemy.

I like that.

[Florestan]

Philosophers correctly identify beliefs held immune to scrutiny as the enemy.

There is only one single religion that holds such beliefs, but I'll refrain from naming it because I don't want to be called Islamophobic... 

[Karl Henning]

There is only one single religion that holds such beliefs, but I'll refrain from naming it because I don't want to be called an Islamophobe... 

But, look, you named it.

When your chuckling has subsided, own the truth that there have been adherents of almost any religion you can name who shy from asking questions.  Of itself, one might argue, it is only a kind of sensible mental laziness—it is exhausting to question everything all the time—but if you imagine that Islam is a haven of blind obedience, where Christianity never, never, never suffered that mental and spiritual vice . . . well, I know better than to credit the condition, and needn't spell out the consequent.

[Florestan]

if you imagine that Islam is a haven of blind obedience, where Christianity never, never, never suffered that mental and spiritual vice . . .

Islam as embodied by its founder is indeed predicated on blind obedience; Christianity as embodied by its founder is indeed predicated on free will.

[drogulus]

     The scrutiny is not only for the purpose of falsification but also to identify the grounds on which beliefs are held. If a belief is held for reasons unconnected to stable truth criteria it may express an affinity rather than a proposition to which criteria must be applied.

Buddhists count 32 levels of existence, I believe, and we are supposed to be on the 5th level which is quite low. Judging by our primitive modes of behavior such as humans killing one another and despoiling the environment while there is rampant poverty, indeed, we are not very advanced.

ZB

     I trust that it's clear that there is no state of affairs by which this statement can be said to be true or false. Falsifiability is not in the cards any more than verifiability is. What I take to be the task of philosophers is to distinguish beliefs held because they satisfy public truth criteria from those that don't, that is views that are "not even false".

[Karl Henning]

Islam as embodied by its founder is indeed predicated on blind obedience.

Well, there's an idea you need never scrutinize.

[Florestan]

Well, there's an idea you need never scrutinize.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

[71 dB]

There is only one single religion that holds such beliefs, but...

I believe there are many such religions. A religion is by definition a belief system where beliefs are held immune to scrutiny.

[Florestan]

A religion is by definition a belief system where beliefs are held immune to scrutiny.

By your definition, most definitely.

Quick: who said Test all things; hold fast that which is good? (No Google, please!)

[71 dB]

Islam as embodied by its founder is indeed predicated on blind obedience; Christianity as embodied by its founder is indeed predicated on free will.

Are you serious? Obedience and free will have next to nothing to do with the religion. It's about how a religion is practiced. At the moment Christian countries in the world have been much more democratic than Islamic countries, but how was it 1000 years ago for example? How would the Islamic countries be today if western Christian countries wouldn't have messed up in the middle east for the last 40 or so years? Is Islamic terror a product of Islam or Christianity? Both? It's not so black and white.

[drogulus]

Islam as embodied by its founder is indeed predicated on blind obedience; Christianity as embodied by its founder is indeed predicated on free will.

     These statements about the supposed predication of religious movements may have some truth value about how they have operated historically, but I would suggest that social movements evolve over time so that they acquire a variety of meanings well beyond what founders may have thought. We have to get past understanding self authenticating beliefs from the standpoint of a self authenticating belief about them. I call that "second order subjectivity", which I just made up.

A religion is by definition a belief system where beliefs are held immune to scrutiny.

     I disagree that this is how religion is defined, but it's true about how religion is practiced, when it is practiced.

     I hold the difference between "believe" and "believe in" to be meaningful. I believe Saturn has rings, it would never occur to me to "believe in" their existence. In the first case I state that Saturn has rings, in the second case I point to a belief that I might hold on grounds other than the visual evidence of their existence. But I don't "believe in" the rings, I only believe they are there.