The Mythographer

The Myth of Postmodernism

2010-05-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

I glanced an old book (from my first year back in Regina) which peaked my interest called "Thou Art That" by Joseph Campbell. After finishing the terrible Robin Hood movie and loving it, I decided to re-read a bit of it and was instantly blown away.

Campbell states that mythologies serve to reconcile "consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence -- that is, of aligning waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum of this universe, as it is" (2). The first thing that got me interested was this simple idea of "as it is" (the universe). Regarding my post on taking things serious, I think most of us (if not all) take the question 'what is the universe really?' quite serious; even if we do not want to take it serious, this in itself is an answer. I also really like that Campbell uses the term 'mysterium tremendum' as a noun for the universe. The biggest and largest mystery of all is reality itself, the way we feel a need to participate or not participate in it, in various ways, define it and so forth.

Campbell continues to describe that the foundation of reality is that we live in a universe of "life eating life" (3). The moment of myth occurred in human history when "consciousness refused to accept this interpretation and there arose a system of mythologies concerned with helping people to remove themselves, to place themselves at a distance from this conception of basic experience" (3). Whether we believe that Campbell has the correct starting point here or not is unimportant, his approach to explain the process of reacting to the 'mysterium tremendum' is far more interesting. I know that many Christians would suggest that, although this 'life eating life' is the case as we encounter it today, the pre-sin reality was a kind of reality very different from this. In fact, many mythologies tell of this kind of lost golden age or age of innocence. Yet focusing upon this process of engaging, reacting and taking myths seriously is more interesting to me.

So what exactly do myths do? According to Campbell, they do four things: 1) "the first function of mythology is to arouse in the mind a sense of awe before this situation through one of three ways of participating in it: by moving out, moving in, or effecting a correction. This I would regard as the essential religious function of mythology -- that is, the mystical function, which represents the discovery and recognition of the dimension of the mystery of being" (3). I take him to mean 'moving out, moving in or effecting a correction' as the process of taking serious a myth. To be less controversial, let us take the simple myth of war: life is war. We can 'move in' to this myth by taking it as serious as we can: by stating it is a fact. We can 'move out' by taking it as serious by rejecting it as fact. Finally (although I do not think these three options are exhaustive), we take effect a correction and make an addition: we can add to the previous myth and say life is war and love.

I can see why Campbell would then suggest, as he does, that this is seen most clearly in religions. What he fails to say (or admit), which I would also argue, is that although religion is the clearest example of this, nothing else falls short of doing the same thing. Science is a similar myth, with stories and precepts that are worked upon and 'refined'. We like to think there is something more 'objective' about Science, especially in comparison with religion, but really all we find is that Science simply wants to be taken more serious (or wants to be taken serious in a special sense of serious, like a capitol 'S' serious).

I think this is what was always driving Jon to state that Science still functions on a faith. But to state that would be the same to state that Religion functions on reason. To state it is all faith-based is to have the myth-system of religion to be the foundation whereas to state it is all reason-based is to have the myth-stem of science to be the foundation. When we look closer we find that both of us are merely trying to fully account for what the other is doing, using our frame work as the foundation for the other. Who cares why we wanted it that way, but we certainly did. Earlier in this work Campbell states something very interesting on this topic, he suggests that "half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, ... are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies" (2).

I think at the heart of our previous debates, Jon, was this attempt to show the validity of our worldview over the others. You can see it in debates on reason, evidence, truth, morality and so forth. But this is only addressing the first of four things that myths do.

The second "function of a traditional mythology is interpretive, to present a consistent image of the order of the cosmos" (3). Again, we can expand Campbell here bring into question the idea of order itself. To take serious the question of order regarding the mysterium tremendum is to conjure up a Kosmos for our Cosmos (the original meaning of the Greek work Kosmos, was an idea of order before it became our makeshift term for the celestial heavens). So we engage with myth all around us based on this idea we modify regarding order and kosmos. We can reject order altogether, we can reaffirm it, or we can effect a correction (just as Campbell's three options already suggest for myth in general).

The third "function of a traditional mythology is to validate and support a specific moral order, the order of the society out of which that mythology arose" (5). Suddenly the curtain can go up on democracy and American world domination; it is merely revealed to be a larger myth of order in political terms. It seems that Chomsky was correct, but more than he even realized it; for all his critiques of Americanism in the globe are also revealed to be myths, rival myths. Even those newish philosophers who like to jive against the idea of morality (Existentialism, Nihilism and Anarchism) are still performing this third function of myth; by stating there is no moral order, one is still defining a moral order in the lacking. This is one thing Heidegger has really shown me.

The fourth "function of traditional mythology is to carry the individual through the various stages and crises of life -- that is, to help persons grasp the unfolding of life with integrity" (5). I think this is occurs most frequently when we do comparative analysis. In comedy movies a la Woody Allen, we hear people say things like 'tell me one thing your analyst cured your of' and frequently we forsake myths because they are unable to 'answer' our questions. We like to think that we are where we are because we are the most correct and right in our path, but usually if we are bold enough to inquire into ourselves, we find that we are where we are because our experiences have 'driven' us (like storms in the sea) towards certain waters. We have control, we are at the helm trying desperately to navigate as best we can (thus I am not denying free will here) but we cannot ignore that life's experience greatly colour our mythic-understanding of life. I have heard it frequently from the pulpit, that it is harder to follow God in 'good times' just as it is harder to be 'morally good' when you have a impoverish life.

This is a characterization of how we take Being serious. We hold it has systems or does not, we hold that you have to care about it or you do not have to, we hold that others to be this way and others should be another way or that nothing matters. I have noticed that most of these quotes say 'traditional mythology' instead of 'mythology' alone. I think, even more so since Campbell, we have lost even more 'tradition' and most of us seem to be the better for it. What is one to do with all this mythography going on around us? We wake up with preconditioned ideas, we wake up with language, we hit the road running. Even the very power of sense in our minds has been given to us by others. What is worse, is that Postmodernism has threatened us that everything is mailable, even the hardest stone pillars are susceptible to scrutiny. But that previous sentence is a myth as well isn't it, just as this entire post is too? We can read it and it can make sense to us, but that is part of the game and so are we. Do you want this myth to sound 'reasonable', do you want to put your 'faith' in a description/story like this?

This is a messy game, isn't it?

What is Postmodernism?

2010-05-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

I am honestly looking for input here. I think I have finally found a way to explore this continent I have been trying to reach. So, I want some answers to this question (the title). I know what it is I want to uncover and I know it will not be found on any wikipedia page or dictionary definition.

So please, Jon, Leif, Matt, Trev and any other readers, give me your shot from the hip answer; give me your likes and dislikes; give me your complex answers, your simple answers, and any and all other possible answers.

Terribly Vexed

2010-05-15T09:20:00.001-07:00

It seems I have come to a kind of philosophical crossroads regarding conceptual language. I feel as though I have uncovered a crucial aspect of how truth, art, and conversation work/function, but this ‘discovery’ also throws everything into a flux. For me, it is as if I have finally found ground again in the sea of meaning and worldview; only, my boat and sailing-craft (now perfected from years of navigation) prove useless. They are for the sea and now I need a new medium. I keep thinking about this new discovery but I can only see it from the sea and my ship. I want to continue to explore and learn, but I feel I need a new conceptual language to make sense of things. Things can still make sense, but in order for me to cash out this ‘new sense’ I need a ‘new language.’

I cannot even learn another natural language, how am I supposed to learn a new conceptual one? Forget learning it, where am I to find it? I do not want to talk in the sea-language anymore, but everyone around me speaks it and I need to speak it in order to really communicate with them. I have no agenda of evangelism here, but I really do not want to stay put. I keep sailing up and down the coast of this place and I want to stretch my legs.

This philosophical crossroads has me spinning. I have tried a few times to bring others into my realm and I have tried to further situate myself in theirs, but I am continually haunted by a feeling of stagnation. I feel I lack a project. Now I feel as though I have a challenge, but no means to start my work. I am like a craftsman who has a vision but no tools or materials. Dreaming is fun, but I want to work, to keep working in this direction.

What to do?

The Answer: An Analogy of Sport

2010-05-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

Intro

The other day I was working at the back of my bookstore with a bunch of hardcore Habs fans. One of them had the talk radio playing all day. A constant stream of 'yeah he is good, but put him in the third line and will he be able to perform?' kept me in rageful shackles. I kept trying to think about other things, but they like to talk really loud in the back, and they continued to debate despite my growing frustration. Then it hit me: they are taking it really seriously and I do not care at all. It seemed a really good analogy fell into my lap. I would never consider the Habs to be an object to be taken as seriously as the guys in the back do and want to. In fact, they would likely get quite personal (as I have seen them do unto each other) if I objected to their consideration of importance for the Habs.

I think objects of seriousness are only objective to the point that they are capable of being taken serious. Anything beyond that will be a desire to have 'you' take them serious.

Construing Meaning

Artistic value, although not purely subjective nor arriving out of the observer, is nonetheless conditioned by the process of 'taking-it-serious'. Meaning is the word we use when we think we really have something- it is the penultimate of seriousness itself. In science we try to solidify this serious-meaning to the point that it is only objective (now beyond opinion or modification).

Art is special because it is here that we find this objectifying process most difficult; thus it is the best place to examine the phenomenon of seriousness.

The Path out of Art

If I am correct here (about the ground of art being a process of seriousness-construing) then we find that this power of the individual is not merely confined to art, but is the ground of seriousness itself: encompassing being-in-the-world entirely.

This is also why a conversation about truth and objective standard in art will always come second. To argue for / against an idea is to have it already in mind prior to the discussion. This will even be true of dialogues about what truth is or what is objective. We do not uncover truth so much as we uncover an individual who is projecting their idea of truth.

Is this not why artistic conversations rarely leave the personal?

Is this not also why faith-based / scientific / and philosophic conversations have to spend more time insulating against the personal?

Perhaps our efforts to isolate apart from the personal, objects we take serous, is impossible?

Conclusion: What does Good Art mean now?

I think we have a possible descriptive way as to how we can proceed and designate 'good' 'art' now. The significant point is: that we will have to do it. It is only done fur us to the extent that we wake up already thrown into this seriousness at work. We listen and learn and if we are bold enough (or foolish) we participate.

The Seriousness of Art

2010-04-21T08:40:00.001-07:00

Now that we have established our starting point (anything possible) where do we go to? We want to say something about ‘art’, ‘good’, and ‘good art’, yet these things seem to be some of the hardest to get a grip upon. The initial common aspect of all these three is that they always involve a person. In fact, it seems to be impossible to have any of them without an active person.

Could there be something like mind-independent art? If we say no, then we are left struggling to account for natural beauty. If we say yes, then the follow up question ‘for who or what is mind-independent art for?’ Must art always be for something or something else?

Why do people take art seriously? And why to what extent do they do so? I think we take these things very seriously. We seek after definitions of ‘goodness’ very often in many different ways. Although perhaps unaware to most, many continually seek after definitions of ‘art’ and especially ‘good art’. It has already been said that ‘good art’ is simply art which one likes or thinks other’s should like.

So, although we have started with ‘anything possible’ we seem to have a way to shape it down, to start a working definition of ‘art’, ‘good’ and ‘good art’ even before we know what we mean when we say these words: we can say that these are things we take seriously.

In a sense, then already, we have our definition; for what argument about ‘art’, ‘goodness’, and ‘good art’ is not also an argument about ‘what to take serious’ and to ‘what extent you ought or ought not to take it serious.’ This seems to be a driving aspect behind defining these words. In the court of law we send ‘bad’ people to jail because they took serious certain aspects that society does not want people to take serious. The art museum curator, rejects a certain piece of art because they think it is not going to do well, it is not worth showing, it is not the kind of presentation they are looking for.

All these ways of defining these words seem to deal with seriousness.

The fiscal aspect of art is also revealed to be a working out of seriousness. What does it mean to put a price upon a work of art, than to put a monetary value upon how serious you think it is? This is further exemplified by the term ‘priceless’ as a statement ‘such a work is so serious, it cannot be bought or sold.’ Going back to the criminal example, when we are faced with people who have put a price upon priceless things (murder for money) we are appalled because they have ‘failed to take life as seriously as society wants them too.’

So if we grant that seriousness is at least an important factor in defining ‘art’, ‘good’, and ‘good art’ then what does that give us? I think it gives us the following questions:

What do people get out of taking ‘art’, ‘good’, and ‘good art’ serious?

Why is it done?

Why do we want to take serious things like ‘art’ and ‘good art’?

I leave these open for any honest response. Or if you want to be critical or disagree by all means.

The Myth of Good Art

2010-04-09T15:56:00.001-07:00

Is there something like ‘good’ art and if so then what exactly makes it good? Can there be good art without people? Is there something like ‘mind independent’ good art?

The craft of art seems to apply a kind of standard based on imitation / successful re-creation. If I paint a picture-perfect landscape (which I find beautiful), then the painting can be judged based on how well it ‘captures’ the landscape. As a craft, art can be judged, but this says little to why the landscape initially was beautiful to me. It is also important to note that no one created the landscape either; yet it still evokes a response. Furthermore, artists frequently create art which ‘captures’ nothing familiar and yet can be considered beautiful.

What exactly are we looking for when we set out in search for good art? Can there really be a set of standards which all individuals ‘ought’ to hold too? If you want to do ‘math’ you do not have to apply math-rules if you do not want too; but by forfeiting math-rules you simultaneously forfeit doing any math. Yet regarding art, this ‘appreciation’ seems to be a kind of rule-making rather than rule-following. Perhaps the elite Mathematicians participate in math-rule-making but the common observer needs little to no specialization in art to make art rules.

Might this be because all art needs is a self? Whereas math needs a math-know-how?

Given that there is not good art structure which one ‘ought’ to possess, why do we have something like ‘good art’? What might an idea like this provide for people (disregarding if it is real or not)? Or might we still argue for / against the structure of good art? How might it be defended? Or is it something we ‘ought’ not to care about anymore?

Is ‘good art’ something the individual recognizes in what is being observed, or is good art something the individual observes in what she is willing to recognize?

Meaning and Religion

2010-03-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Based on worldviews, what can meaning mean? Without a subjective/objective divide, what about Truth? Leif wrote:

“That realization has led me to wonder, even if we DO "make" God from our desire for him to be real, should that be the focus, or should it be our resultant joys and life-purposes which arise from that collective belief?”

Religion is an interesting case for meaning regarding faith. Some view faith as belief without knowing for sure if you are right (trusting in God etc). Others view faith as a knowledge itself, claiming their faith-items to be as real as facts (a how-much approach to faith). Still others view faith as reality-inconsequential. There are more ways to characterize faith than these three.

What is interesting about reality-inconsequential faith is that nothing is lost when/if it were proven that their faith-items were for sure false. I think this is a newer Post-Modern kind of faith. I think many religious people straddle this kind of Post-Modern faith with the Modern value added: that deep down they still think their faith-items are true as true.

Taking someone who would be comfortable being a reality-inconsequentialist, such an approach to religion would be a good example of worldview philosophy if the content were left out and only the general structure preserved. They have a ‘world’ in which they ‘view’ in a certain degree.

This would also be analogous to the so-called ‘good art’ problem.

In art they would take up the ‘art-world’ and define good-art by associating certain art from other art. A standard would emerge. In the case of art, the faith-items would be that which supported the definition of good being sought. In this ‘seeking’ the definition of good would become a project, and working on such a project would be self-defining for the individual and therefore ‘personal’.

The person’s identity would be what it was due to the participation of working on the project; the project would reflect this and the person would reflect the project.

This is why we get personal regarding things like religion, art, and culture. Even things like our job can become personal if we let them.

Thus standing behind the most ‘objective’ thing out there also stands a person who took it seriously (once in the past), people who are taking it seriously now, and in the form of goals, people taking it seriously into the future.

It seems unlikely to me that anyone in any group could make any statement and not have to take into account this threefold (temporal) seriousness.

Are Questions More Important Than Answers?

2010-03-09T11:28:00.001-08:00

I think another way to characterize what Martin Heidegger gave to the philosophical community is the realization that we value answers too much. This relates with the continual outworking of the Scientific Age and how Continental philosophy was generally pushing against techanization. The main thing most people think of when they think of Heidegger is his authenticity vs. inauthenticity; a possible analog for this distinction is question (authenticity) vs. answer (inauthenticity).

First, it is important to note that these are not exclusive nor are they value-based (or moral-based). We are not suppose to avoid inauthenticity and there is nothing special about authenticity; rather, both are needed and important. They are not states. They are structures which allow for individuals to be individuals. Question and answer are good renditions of authenticity and inauthenticity.

So what is potentially wrong with answers?

Nothing is intrinsically wrong with answers; they are important. But what happens when our answers become so important that they begin to eclipse the original questions which give rise to them? What happens when we think our answers are so correct, so right, and so objective that we no longer think of them as answers at all?

Think about how we view truth these days. Truth is usually considered to be proven belief or knowledge (usually in the universal sense). It is something we can rely upon and it is something which, in a way, no longer needs to be worked upon. Think about physics and math and how the search of ‘constants’ are a primary concern. Have we always considered truth in this way? What about the Postmodern definition of truth: ‘truth is truth for you or truth for me,’ is this a problem?

Heidegger takes his definition of truth from the Greek word ‘aletheia’ which means ‘to be uncovered.’ You can see how the traditional definition of truth fits: if you uncover the constants of the universe, you have eternal knowledge, etc. This is not how Heidegger takes the term however.

In the myths of Plato, after the soul is displaced from the body (after death) it goes to the river Lethe, where it drinks and forgets its past (lethe means ‘to forget’). Then the soul is given a new body and returns to the earth to live again. A nice illustration.

Heidegger takes truth as aletheia to be a kind of recollecting, or remembering (as a way of uncovering what has been forgotten or hidden). Truth is then a-lethe-ia or ‘to-no-longer-forget.’ Thus the process of gathering truth is a process of remembering, or overcoming forgetfulness.

What does this have to do with questions? Heidegger thinks that questions are more important than answers. You can take the Communist and the Democrat and they can argue for eons about their answers, but if you take them a step back you can discover that ‘Communism’ and ‘Democracy’ are actually different answers to a similar question! This realization of the importance of questions is a way of showing a larger picture which can unite more individuals.

Consider the concept of essence: what is the essence of the human being? For most worldviews and individuals this is an important question, but most of the time only our answers are discussed. It is our answers that we teach, it is our answers that we quibble about and it is our answers that we argue for or against. Heidegger wants to show us that this is inauthentic. It is still just as important as what is authentic, but without the realization that we all have problematic questions behind our ever so important answers, we will fail to fully participate as human individuals.

Although it is fashionable to avoid defining Postmodernism, I think this is a good definition: Postmodernism is the realization that questions lie behind answers, and that questions are more important than the answers we give. This is likely why it is fashionable not to define Postmodernism, because giving your personal or cultural definition of Postmodernism is a way to actively participate in what it suggests.

The implications to art, religion, science and philosophy are staggering.

What do you guys think?

Worldviews and Problematics

2010-03-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

A problematic, for Heidegger, is a question which individuals find important to answer but is a question which must be preserved as a question. Answers are not a bad thing, but they can cover up the original question or cause one to forget about the original question and take only the answer as important. An example of a problematic is ‘how to be good’ and / or ‘what is moral?’

These are important questions, and the answers which people have for them are just as important. However, if we take one answer or set of answers and forget entirely the original question (the original problematic) then we lose the more important aspect of the answer: that which allowed for the possibility to answer (the question).

Thus in my quest to understand worldviews better in general, I aim to continue to try and uncover the problematics which drive various worldviews. This is not done to have something objective to appeal to concerning worldviews nor is it done to create the best and most comprehensive worldview; but rather, it is simply a stepping stone on the path to understanding as many other worldviews as I can and understanding them (obviously) from my own (which in this case values questions over answers).

I aim to find the important questions which seem central to worldview construction and more importantly find concealed aspects of my own worldview. In communicating this, I hope to bring challenge, awareness and unconcealment to others with their own worldviews.

Here is my response to your comment Jon.

Jon said:
“But is it fair to say that this "stopping" at communicating is not, for you, considered a shortfall, but is actually considered preferable or better than prescribing for others?”

And;
“Doesn't it make a prescription nonetheless? To enter into communication with another worldview, it asks that worldview to communicate, and stop at communication along with you. To not prescribe anything of you. Doesn't it?”

I think you perhaps conflating two different kinds of ‘prescription’ here: internal vs. external. A worldview prescribes ‘x’ of itself by self-defining so my worldview will ‘prescribe’ to me a way ‘I ought’ to be in order to be one with my own worldview (i.e. not be hypocritical). This must be divided from a kind of external prescription which demands something of the other or furthermore, enforces it on the other.

So you could say that a worldview is ‘internally prescriptive’ and be right, but I think a better word is simply ‘descriptive.’ ‘I speak English’ is a descriptive statement even though you could argue that it is ‘internally prescriptive.’ ‘You have to speak English’ is prescriptive in the external sense or ‘You ought to speak English’ is even more so. ‘You have to speak English because I can only understand English’ is also merely descriptive, in this case as a limitation where as ‘I will only listen to you if you speak English’ is the externally prescriptive.

So to say does it ‘not prescribe anything of you’ is a bit confusing and I hope this clears that up. My worldview describes of me many things, and it might prescribe something of others; but the kind of divide which we are concerned about here: description vs. prescription, should, for the sake of clarity, be clear now.

Jon said:
“I mean, you quoted me saying that "at some point in life it is going to have to decide either to [assert itself], or to retreat." and you replied: "Who says so?"”

This was not me being prescriptive of you but rather me asking you a question. It is a question which illuminates a significant difference of your worldview with mine but it only describes the difference. What I do with the difference is up to me and what you do with it is up to you. No prescription here. No ought you… etc.

Therefore the goal is not to find some big worldview or one which encompasses all or most of the others; rather, we seek to understand them all, or at least it is my aim to do so (and that is not incompatible with someone else who does not care because I am only stating my own ideas, not saying these are idea that everyone has to have or believe in).

So I think behind some of your statements Jon, lie questions already answered concerning your own worldview. Perhaps finding and preserving them as questions ‘worldviews take seriously’ will tell us something about our own worldviews, other worldviews and something about the structures of worldviews.

Jon said:
“I would observe that this is usually if not inevitably the case when worldviews collide. Does this "have to be the case"? I don't know. It is entirely possible that my worldview imposes upon your idea of communication an idea of a stalemate that inevitably forces a decision to retreat or assert self. I am having trouble imagining a real world where this does not happen. I can imagine a world where it doesn't always happen, but not a world where it never happens. And the one where it doesn't often happen to me sounds like one where real communication isn't really happening.”

What are some possible questions concerning worldviews which this statement above might give answers to?

Must worldviews collide negatively?

Do all worldviews have to compete?

Is it possible to communicate worldview to worldview without a stalemate forcing retreat or self-assertion (i.e. prescription)?

How does my worldview limit / provide the possibility to imagine other worldviews, imagine their possibility, validity or worth?

Is a world where no worldviews collide or self-assert still a place where real communication is possible / still happening?

I think what is significant about your statement is how it answers these questions, and yet in their answering, it opens a path leading back to the questions from which they sprung-forth. These questions may be questions asked and answered by other worldviews or may have already asked and answered unaware.

To be clear, I do not think there is anything wrong with your answers here, nor would I try to change your mind / worldview to be more like my own. All I would desire is to perhaps open some possibility or awareness to the situation.

Jon said:
“I agree with Matthew that often the more we understand someone's worldview the more we disagree. This can be all well and good until our various ways of seeing the world conflict in real space and time situations.”

Yes, its true; but this does not count into effect who knows why we disagree. All too often we are happy enough to merely disagree without understanding why; or furthermore, disagree because we do not understand / do not want to understand.

I think there is much to be gaining by overcoming the natural problem that one need not understand something to disagree with it.

Jon said:
“Thus, I don't see how "only communicating", even if it is just your own worldview, and not your prescription, will avoid going beyond "only communicating". If it can, I'd like to understand how. If it can't, I'd like to understand how it proceeds.”

I think I have shown how it is possible but even here in this statement might there be another question already answered? For instance: If worldviews cannot merely communicate without prescription what happens next? What happens to those who try? Are they doomed to failure?

These are questions however, to say ‘yes it is doomed to fail’, to say ‘no real communication is possible and therefore we should avoid such worldviews’ would only be the construction of another worldview. So there still is no objective standard to appeal to.

Jon said:
“Yeah, I'm pondering the ramifications of your worldview, based on what I view in the world. Yes. But communication must do this. If I am to understand your worldview from mine, I must speak from mine until I have the concepts from yours to utilize, and perhaps then to reinterpret my own.”

Again, that’s fine if this is how you choose to proceed but must it be the only way? Perhaps there are answered questions here. It seems you are quite aware of this already by admitting “I’m projecting aware.”

Jon said:
“Thus, I wonder how your view handles things that I perceive as inevitable in world history, which are conflicts of understanding that have direct situational ramifications. Thus I wonder how you get away without prescribing, even if what you are prescribing is ceaseless communication.”

Again, I think I have been showing how a worldview can get away without prescribing but to be further clear, I think the question:

Question A: Can a worldview get away without prescribing?

Is an important question for your own worldview and specifically the answer of ‘unlikely.’ Perhaps you think it so unlikely that one would have to step further back and ask you:

Question B: Is it even worth asking such a question? (referring to question A)

Perhaps starting with question B, you could later move towards question A.

Many times the most important questions of our worldview remain concealed from us exactly because we have become so sure of our answers, furthermore that our particular answers are so correct that we deny it even worth asking the original question.

A good example of this in today’s politics is the question of torture. Many people think it so wrong it is not even worth asking about it; but others like Ignatieff ask it anew and find themselves giving more complex answers.

But the goal is not to just give more complex answers but to understand how our worldviews effect us and others when we think and communicate.

As for your closing comment:
“I do wonder another thing still: The desire to communicate assumes a middle ground, doesn't it? Or does it assume I can actually understand your worldview from outside my own? Or does it assume a unified worldview that will emerge if we pursue our worldviews to their common grounds? Or would you like to say it assumes nothing, just aims to communicate. To that I would raise all of the above questions.”

I would say that answering these questions to my own satisfaction is important to me and if someone else had interest and wanted me to try and answer them to their satisfaction I would.

However, since this is already a longer entry, how about I just leave them for now as important questions to answer and thus validate you asking them of me. If you want to raise them again later we can.

Otherwise you can respond as you see fit.

Manifest Worldview

2010-02-22T11:55:00.000-08:00

Matthew said:
“How do you deal with an obviously and dangerously flawed worldview, (like fascism, or people who use cell-phones)?”

Simple, you try to understand them as best as you can on their own terms and grounds. This for the sake of understanding why someone may think them ‘flawed’ and why another may think them ‘ingenious.’ Finding out what exactly it is about them that makes them thought-to-be ‘flawed’ or ‘ingenious’. All the time remembering what ‘makes’ them what they are is tied directly to your own worldview.

Jon said:
“Thing is, however much interpretation goes into our tellings of history, there still IS a history of the world. Stuff has happened.”

If you are not trying to signify an ‘objective history’ what do you mean by this above quotation Jon? Stating ‘stuff has happened’ still sounds like an appeal to something objective. Can you clarify what you mean?

Jon said:
“These [history and worldview] are intertwined, but I have begun to see my faith as something which confronts my worldview from and within history. What I mean by history, while it involves the actual stuff of historical study and interpretation of it, has more to do with the ongoing stuff of world thought and reflection.”

I still don’t understand what you mean by history here because your definition of history as having ‘more to do with the ongoing stuff of world thought and reflection’ sounds like culture; i.e., worldview.

Am I getting your right here? It sounds confusing to me because although you are claiming not to be appealing to objective history, you still seem to have something like that being appealed to. Are you suggesting there is something outside of worldview-governed history which can function as a kind of history that is not governed by worldview? Or are you saying there are parts of history which cannot be governed by worldview?

If so then, how much of history do you think escapes worldview?

The part that escapes, what is its value? Is it more objective than worldview? (‘stuff that has happened?)

For me, history is just the means by which a worldview construes meaning; it is not objective nor subjective, just a means. Thus I don’t see how any of it can escape worldview without itself becoming or coming from another worldview; if it means something, then it means something to someone. Are you saying there are things that can mean something but mean something to no person? What would that look like, what would it be called and how would it not be still found in a worldview?

Jon said:
“I can't take it seriously when Christians do it to other religions, nor can I take it seriously when it is coming back on theism (what a straw man that is) from atheism, especially when it is assuming some sort of supposedly universal Reason as the grounds for its dismissals.”

Have you considered that ‘not wanting to take it seriously’ might be an aspect in need for critique in your own worldview? If you are not interested in a belief system, then I see no problems; however, if you want to say something negative or positive, I think you forego the ability to ‘take it seriously’ or not. That is to say, I think you have to already take something serious in order to say anything meaningful about anything else (positive or negative).

If you have something positive or negative to say about something; you have already taken it seriously.

I think a problem emerges if one thinks something is negative about something they also do not want to take seriously. Perhaps I am reading too far into this statement but I think it suspect.

Jon said:
“And if one wanted to say that it is the multiplicity or the plurality of worldviews which was the overarching theory that governed how they all ought to intermingle, well, that itself would be claiming to be the meta-narrative, the ONE worldview that contained all others.”

Not if such a statement aims to merely be descriptive rather than prescriptive (as in a judging that implements an ‘ought’; i.e., it ought to be this way because this way is BEST).

Not if the description aims to facilitate understanding and communication among worldviews and not a domination of all worldviews as subservient (either in truth-definition nor importance definition).

And, finally, not if such a statement comes from a self-expressed singular worldview willing and open to change given its encounter with a new thought, idea, argument or other worldview.

These three things spring-forth from a singular worldview as a kind of worldview-standard, it sees, as something valuable to communicate: and only to communicate. Any other person or worldview need not adhere nor care about this, particular worldview’s view of worldview-standard. Although, as being a person from it, if I meet someone who thought negatively about it, I would aim to try and understand (from their stance) why they thought what they thought.

The goal of this conversation is not pluralism or atheism but an inquiry into the structures of dialogue across worldviews, how worldviews constitute meaning and what possibly can be done to facilitate clarity.

The realization that even worldview standards are going to come from a particular worldview is troubling and difficult to overcome (overcome into what exactly?), but not impossible. If it is impossible, then perhaps it still might be attempted.

I hope that sheds some light. To be further clear: I am still just as strong in my atheism as I was before. These ‘talks’ on worldview are aimed at honing my thought, understanding and philosophical skills. My new problem is that I do not want to be just a person who fully understanding my own worldview but an individual who fully understands many worldviews: and ‘fully’ here means understanding another worldview from its own language, terms and concerns in addition to the understanding of it I already have from my own worldview’s view of it.

Leif
Your comment is intriguing. I am very interested in talking more about the sadness of atheism and you final point some more:

“That realization has led me to wonder, even if we DO "make" God from our desire for him to be real, should that be the focus, or should it be our resultant joys and life-purposes which arise from that collective belief?”

I agree with this assessment of religion and this is why I am an atheist. However, in the past I spent too much time stating this as being grounded in the objective-power of reason. Now I want to investigate further into what-possibly-happens in religion and away from what-actually-happens in religion (actuality as a prescriptive) and how this relates to worldview vs. worldview conversation.

I think in the past I was being just as ethnocentric as I was claiming religion to be. I no longer feel the need to convert or fortify my own system, I simply want to understand and perhaps challenge others toward something I think is good. In my case I think understanding others authentically is good. Understanding others inauthentically is not bad nor should it be avoided for inauthentic understanding allows for authentic understanding to blossom later on. By ‘authentic understanding’ I mean ‘see it from their view’ as much as possible.

I think atheism is true and religion is false, but only I have to care about that; thus I want to care about more, to keep learning and never think I have gotten behind anything. There is always the possibility I am wrong, even on atheism, just as there is always a possibility to encounter something new.

Languages and Worldviews (100th Post!)

2010-02-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been interested in trying to reach a descriptive level in my philosophical analysis of whatever I happen to be interested in. This approach, which is the primary difference in phenomenology, aims to try and just say what is going on as it appears instead of recommending a preconceived notion and then forcing it to apply to everything. The alternative would sound like this:

Thesis: Everything is rational; therefore no matter what is said, thought or spoken must also be rational,

Or

Thesis: Everything is religious; therefore you will always end up having some kind of ‘faith’ in something else.

(the combination of one’s Thesis and their conceptual language = their worldview)

Each of these theses can be adopted initially and then filter a conversation entirely. As the dialogue unfolds, instead of hearing what each of the parties is saying, you can accurately describe it as two languages trying to communicate. When one person says ‘this or that’ the other person tries to understand them by synthesizing what they have heard into their own language. A very simple and crude example is the child’s game ‘I win’ (played with cards). No matter what happens in the cards, the child simply says ‘I win’ every time. Thus their thesis for the game is ‘I win’ and no matter what the other plays says, the same result occurs.

A more complex example might be the strict and stanch Logician who holds a formal logic view of thought. Their thesis might be something like: the only thing that makes sense is logical sense, all other sense is nonsense. Therefore, if you try to talk to them about something like love (or something illogical), they will only allow themselves to hear what their thesis filters for them. Usually and especially when two contrary thesis are being used, the parties will respectfully hear ‘you-are-wrong’.

Yet it is significant that they will not simply say ‘you-are-wrong’ but will attempt to further their thesis’s cause by trying to translate their opponents view into their own language and then try to say the only way to say it is the way they have now translated it.

Illustration:
I want to talk about love.
Love means (A+B=C) and thus ‘you-are-wrong’
But I think love is more than that.
It is not, ‘you-are-wrong’.

The conclusion is that in many cases the ‘you-are-wrong’ is not necessarily true on any sense which reaches out and beyond one’s own thesis and language but rather relies necessarily upon one of the persons to leave their own language and adopt the other's; and this rarely happens.

Epic debates can thus be reduced to simple terms of both parties repeating:
“No, you have to say this way and if you do then I am right”.

I think you and I, Jon, were in such a debate amongst the topic ‘is atheism a religion?’ Instead of trying to convince the other to say and see the world as we see it, to put forth that the way we see it is better or the best, we ought to try and see why each member thinks what each thinks. I think we did get to that level from time to time and most people can (perhaps they usually do) but so much aching and conversational pain can be avoided if each group forsakes the desire for objective high ground and simply tries to communicate. The same disagreement is possible (and necessary) to occur, but it can be observational rather than merely confrontational.

Instead of really getting into each other’s head and finding why ‘Jon thinks atheism is a religion’ and why ‘Joel thinks all things are rational’ each fall into saying the other must say things their way; and or end up saying ‘I guess I will have to disagree because it does not make sense to me.’

But why does it not make sense? Is this the case because you cannot make sense of it, or because you cannot make sense of it in your own language? Too often these two answers are conflated into the former and the latter is lost. At the end of many conversations, everyone just stays in their own world-view refusing to learn a new conceptual language and this refusal they count as good! Such an action is an act of ignorance and the primary reason why I think it is wrong.

It is interesting that we think of Post-modernism and terms like ‘worldview’ to be a current, unfolding happening. Yet I came across this excerpt the other day from The Basic Problems of Phenomenology:

“Philosophy is wisdom of the world and of life, or, to use an expression current nowadays, philosophy is supposed to provide a Weltanschauung, a world-view” (§1).

I find it interesting that this work was originally published in 1927, and Heidegger says it is a current and ‘nowadays’ expression.

Conclusion:
I would like to name the conversational process of ‘refusing to learn another’s language’ and make it distinguished from the similar response ‘I am not refusing to learn your language but I still think you are wrong, in a genuine and authentic way’. The difficulty is that no one will admit they are in the first category because regardless of age, wisdom, stature, education or desires, because no one wants to be immature and the mark of immaturity is found in those who staunchly act in the first category but outwardly claim to be in the second.

Obviously from the worldview of religion, all other worldviews will look like other faiths; but I submit to you that this has more to do with your own worldview than it does with theirs.

Therefore, you are correct that atheism is a religion; of course it is from your perspective- let us no longer debate/discuss whether this is ultimately true, true for you or if it ought to be true for me; instead, let us just agree that you think it and that you think it for certain reasons. Let us explore those reasons rather than stay on the surface. In addition to this, later, let us agree that religion must be rational and also forego debating whether it is ultimately true, true for me or if it ought to be true for you; instead, let us just agree that I think it and that I think it for certain reasons. Let us explore those reasons rather than stay on the surface.

But we have already had that conversation didn’t we? I think we did quite well, but I think I was guilty of refusing to learn your language, even though I presented my refusal in the guise of ‘I already know your language and I reject it, from my side and yours; thus you have to learn mine’. No matter how ‘noble’ I made it sound, I was simply pushing a ‘you-are-wrong’. Nevertheless, not everything I said was trite (as I am sure you would easily agree).

So, Jon, take this as my formal and philosophical apology for immaturity regarding that conversation we already had. I have nothing else to argue for, this has been more for me than anyone else (in fact, this entire blog is such).

So in closing, I think I would like to say first, I am grateful that we were both intelligent enough to get over that difficulty and second, that I look forward to having more conversations with you in the future. Hopefully in the future it will be with a greater maturity and therefore ease of conversation.

Joel

Objectivity Never Escapes Subjectivity

2009-12-16T09:40:00.000-08:00

This problem of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ is at the heart of Phenomenology; it tries to find a way to properly speak about both through refusing to entirely separating them from one another.An easy but unfair way to compare Modernity with Post Modernity is that in Modernity one can separate object from subject and in Post Modernity you cannot.

There are always things which we encounter (phenomena) but without us as observers, these things never can break beyond a mere stuff-ness. They are just stuff until we begin to name them, categorize them and define them.

Leif said:
“We have defined the definition of a triangle (insert one of several good definitions here), but if we changed the name of it to a Mokblot, or said that the definition of a triangle was something else (for example, the interior degrees could add up to 540 or something instead of 180), then there would still "Exist" something which would follow the previous description of a triangle.”

The key aspect here is where you say “something … would follow the … description of a triangle” but would it? The question is: how much of our description per se is actually a triangle per se, if we were to totally separate our ‘subjective’ essence from the ‘objective’ essence of a triangle? The modernist view is that we can make ourselves a mere observer, who sees triangles as objects entirely separated from us viewing them: however, in culture and anthropology we find this passive observer is not possible; phenomenology suggests it is never possible to be a passive observer.

To totally separate our ‘subjective’ viewing of objects we would have to also take the ‘objective’ qualities of things like triangle. When we merely point to one and say ‘triangle’ we are still pushing a description upon the signified thing.

To fully pull away all subjective essence, we would have to merely point and say ‘that’ or ‘over there’. Such a move would be a full pulling away but would render all things into the same description ‘there-ness’ or ‘over there-ness’. Take away the subject speaking and the ‘there-ness’ itself is also lost.

So to answer your question, there would be a thing which matched our description of triangle, even if we started talking about Mokblot’s but the description of a triangle would ALWAYS be OURS and never a real quality of the thing signified. In this sense, we are always crafting a narrative which fits the world we encounter, only it is not really possible to speak about a ‘narrative which fits’ and a ‘world’ without a ‘subject’ in-between doing the mediating. The act and the object are intrinsically connected and can never be separated. This is an aspect of phenomenology and a relevant point of Post Modernity.

If can guess where you might go from here is to stipulate a difference in thing-hood regarding the triangle when compared to a culture. You might say, surely there is something different in comparison, where one object seems to be much more permanent than anther, or changeless etc.

I agree with you, that something like what we have always taken for granted as ‘objectivity’ seems to be encounterable. Things like Math, Logic and Science are aimed at finding this elusive permanent quality called ‘truth’ or something like that. I think they can still have it, they can still have their aims; only they must realize that what makes their work, study and arguments permanent is not the objects that they find, but the seriousness they, themselves, put upon the objects being discovered.

They are making the language, they are making these things important, and finally, they themselves are always dealing with descriptions which better fit the thing-hood of the world.

I think whatever exists can exist without us saying it exists, but to begin to deal with things like ‘science’, ‘logic’ and ‘math’ there has to be a ‘subject’ who is interested in such things for any importance or seriousness to be possible.

Leif said:
“It is not (or seems not) that we have created the triangle by defining it, rather that we have established our discovery of it. Changing the term does not seem to alter the reality of the thing being defined, AT LEAST IN THE CASE OF HARD SCIENCES”

I agree that we cannot change the thing by changing our definitions, but in our establishing it or defining it or discovering it, we have ‘encountered’ a thing and described what we have found, but we can never do this without also engaging in a subjective definitions of what is objective (as opposed to the other way around which suggests there are objects which are real and then we define them).

Triangles are what they are but so long as we use the word ‘triangle’ and not ‘that’ we are dealing within the scope of a description and not an object alone; and therefore we are forced to always deal with subjectivity to some degree. We cannot change the thing we signify but we can change the way we take it serious.

For example, this has happened with a triangle: it used to be a rule that the interior angles of a triangle MUST add up to 180 degrees, but in dealing with global geometry, where triangles are grafted upon a curved surface, we have triangles which interior angles do not add up to 180 degrees, yet they are STILL triangles. How is this possible? Has the concept of triangle been perverted in this action? No, the original description of a triangle is still taught in schools and is the basis of this newer version; what has changed is us, our approach to triangles and so forth. It hasn’t changed the ‘thing’ triangle but it doesn’t have to.

A more extreme example of this can be as follows: suppose that no one ever cared about triangles every again for some sci-fi reason. What happens to the object of the triangle? The thing may still ‘exist’ but it would not exist in that it would not be taken serious anymore. The description may fall away into obscurity, entirely forgotten. When it was discovered again later, it would not be a real discovery, but merely a sign that the culture who found it is now again (or for the first time) interested in things like triangles.

Science, Logic and Math are things which our culture is interested in; they are not ‘objects’ which transcend subjectivity.

Meaning, Misanthropy, and Mysology

2009-12-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds;and the pessimist fears this is true."

-- James Branch Cabell
from The Silver Stallion, 1926.

I finished a paper comparing Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and Jan Patocka about meaning the other day and now I feel like I have a doorway into the whole Post Modern thing-a-magigy. Could I be so bold as to think that I now understand the elusive Post-Modernism? Perhaps, but at least I think I can finally talk about it. It has been a long past I have shared with this concept. My initial encounter was the idea that it meant ‘all truth is relative’ which I really hated, and being a zealous Christian, decided was quite impossible. How could people not see how it undermined its own claim? If all truth is relative, then the statement ‘all truth is relative’ itself would also be relative and would only apply some of the time: thus there were times still when ‘all truth is relative’ would cease to be relative…. I really needed a good logic class.

My second encounter with it was in a Philosophy Class at CBC with good old Matt who loved it because it opened things up. As I began to see the problems with objectivity in art and as I grew farther and farther away from my friends in artistic opinion, I started getting ready for something like Post-Modernism. Finally, in these twilight years at McGill, I find myself actually learning something from my philosophy classes and low and behold it happens to be Heidegger!

I now think Post Modernism means ‘there is a person behind everything’ thus redefining objectivity as ‘obje(subjectivity)ctivity’ or to be even more technical: ‘obje(subjedaseinctivity)ctivity’

How very fitting that it would be so opaque. I think initially I saw the negative connotations of having a Post-Modern outlook on life, what would this mean for law, morality, rules, religion and most importantly for God. It is interesting that meaning can be more adequately defined descriptively as ‘that which is important for some person’ and cultures as the same programming for groups of people.

The best example of this is found in the art world- where opinions of art transcend being merely subjective. It is not just what you like or what you don’t like, it is what school you put yourself in, what aim you take, what kind of things you like and so forth. We have great individuals (like Roger Ebert) and institutions (Cannes) which we group around like establishments of meaning.

The rest of meaning in our world today is exactly the same, only we all don’t know it so much.

Get a bunch of really serious ‘artists’ together who share almost all of the same opinions and ask them to talk about something they hate: you will be listening to the same way in which our opinions can cause us to kill people (artistics become politics). The most amazing thing we react to when we hear about bombings, suicide bombing, dropping the nuke or murder is that there is a person willing to act like that behind actions. We are not horrified by materialism, nor are we horrified by consumerism or Americanism: we are horrified by the people who are willing to live and act in this way. A path of meaning is not scary, we can joke about fascism, but when we talk about Gobles or Hitler we stop laughing (unless we are watching the Daily Show).

Behind our arguments for and against meaning there is a war of people: we don’t hate political views, we hate the people who believe in them: our misology is really misanthropy.

It is interesting that we think of ourselves as being really polite with our ability to discuss things. We think we can distance ourselves from talking about personal things cf objective things. We can talk about what we think and what you think and not talk personally; we hope to god we can do criticism which is not personal criticism, but can we? What are the two blaring areas where this seems impossible no matter how hard we try? Religion and Politics. The art world is just a more distant place.

So in the world where we have grown to champion ourselves against the convoluted existence of wars, taking everything person and being able to be ‘civil’ we find ourselves right back where we started; or maybe not, I guess you can just define it another way, can’t you?

Prevalent Problem of Today’s Artists: Initial Specialization

2009-11-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I am not qualified to have an opinion in this area- thus I will let that statement be my credentials. There is a short story I read recently called ‘The Circle of Elite Wizards’ which accounts for a young and learning youth who tries to master the higher and complex spells prior to the more easy and mundane magic. He is repeatedly told by his master that he must first learn ‘red’ and ‘blue’ magic before he can even start to work on ‘purple’ magic. Although he is taught there to be a hierarchy to magic, he nevertheless goes for his own desire first and right away without caring to look into the others. When he comes across ‘black’ magic, he is enthralled and makes it his soul focus. In four years he manages to craft a kind of ‘black’ magic which is entirely creative; is it solely his own and strange to the others. He manages to use this to save the village from a peculiar villain, almost as strange as himself (who is seemingly invulnerable to all magic). The youth perishes in the battle and takes the villain with him and so the story is left with an open end, ripe for various interpretations.

The interpretation I want to suggest is one concerning art: that although there is a primacy for creativity in the initial (if not fascist) specialization to one aspect of art over all others, I think in the end is proves to be a weak creativity. In other words, it is truly and honestly creative, but it is a kind of creativity which would have likely been able to be possessed later, within the proper channels. What am I talking about here? It is like the young painter who shuns learning painting in the ‘proper’ way so they can devote more time to their specialization. What is specialization to mean here? For the artist themselves, they will dub it ‘good art’ or that small branch or branches of art which they resonate with the most. This is the greatest danger for the artist, for although it is proven to be a sound method to value and cherish what we love best through imitation and that imitating the greats is a path in itself to greatness; such a path can be just as damaging in its limitations.

Heidegger speaks of the openness of possibility containing restrictions underneath. What kind of restrictions? The kind which occur when we choose left, that we can then no longer choose right (and vice versa if we walk back and change our minds). If we specialize too soon or remain too focused, we can fail to pick up the general skills which lie outside our field of vision. As the young mage is unable to partake in red or blue but remains wanting purple; and furthermore with black (as the mixture of all colors) so too specialization can prove to be the most fatal choice to an artist if it is chosen too soon.

Is this all too abstract? Then let me throw off the curtain: my charge is to one Matthew Wilkinson in his endeavors for artistry. By holding opinions of art-connoisseury and mixing them with art-creation, you are in danger of limiting your artistry. What we hold ‘below’ us is similar to what we ‘dislike’ and what we hold ‘apex’ is similar to what we ‘want to be like’. This is all good and well within and alone to the realm of being a connoisseur, but it MUST be separated from the much different realm of art-creation! Just like having contempt for a shit book can sometimes keep us from understanding something ‘shitty’ and perhaps important about the world; so to our art must be eclectic. But ecleticity in art-connoisseury is much different than ecleticity in art-creation.

We do not mean you have to read shit books in order to write good ones; but you should be able to craft the forms of the ‘below’ books in order to reach the heights of the ‘apex’ kinds. What am I talking about? Clearly: we can like and dislike action movies, that’s one thing, but to actively decide that they are ‘below’ our movie exploits and thus are not worth our-making-them (as a path to keep us from making lousy movies) is a fallacy. You must separate your opinions of art from your skills of art-creation. In other words, if making action movies IS really ‘below’ the focus you desire to have, then I think you must (or should/ought) PROVE it to be so by MASTERING the lower craft to ensure more skill in the higher. This is not a quibble about art opinions, but about art-creation.

Question: is it possible to craft and perfect action movie (in art-creation) and still hold a distain opinion for action movies themselves (in art-connoisseury)? I think this question is actively and successfully avoided by most artists. Only the more complex artist could accomplish this ‘paradox’ (even though it is not really a paradox at all but a kind of wisdom) by holding both these opposing ideas simultaneously.

Objection: would not the work on an action movie prove to soil the effort and skill of someone who wants to work on something else? Are there not enough people already doing this sort of easy stuff? Is it really hierarchical at all, are not all artists simply choosing to do what they want, outside and beyond any intellectual rules or systems of sense? Should we not simply do what we feel invigorated to do, instead of adhering to someone else’s commands for artistry and excellence artful mind?

Response: the simple and distain-worthy art is there to be conquered not avoided. What do you gain from fleeing form it? You DO gain much within the realm of art-connoisseury, this is obvious, but are you merely an art connoisseur? Are you not more than this, but a fellow creator? What respect would you have if a youngster who wanted to imitated you said ‘I only do, read and work on your style and no one else’s.’ Would that not be horrible? When it comes to opinion it is a complement (art-connoisseury) but when it came to skills would it not be suicide (art-creation)?

Artists shoot themselves in the foot by initially specializing in their higher art-forms and fail to see how this keeps them forever-young, forever unable to do anything with power. They will remain weak in their creativity, even if their creativity is something interesting. This time of learning we all find ourselves in, in our current and young age, should not be used for specialization and personal exploration; rather, it should be used for mastering up the ‘lower’ and easier forms of art so as to benefit the great and higher aims we go for.

Milton gave himself the challenge to work with and master all the other forms of poetry before Epic. Why? Because this was his way of showing the epic poem to be the greatest of all poems. Is it? It does not have to be, perhaps someone else might master all other forms of poetry and then finish with the sonnet. This is not an objective system, but a kind of wise exploration of one’s field of study. Let the connoisseurs shun what they shun, they have only their opinions; the artist needs to be rise above such stuff if they are to truly break out of the art-conniosseury realm and break into the art-creation realm.

What do you think Matt, this charge is aimed at you?

Quantum Imagination

2009-09-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

Small intro and caveat: There are not enough good blog entries as of late and thus I feel the need to resurface and attempt to provide something fascinating (if you become a fascist after reading this, then you have gone too far).

I am no physicist (although I am quite confident in my own physicality) and thus I might get some things wrong here; all the more for a reader to respond, than to actually have something to say! But when we talk about electrons and atoms we find a curious little thing occurring, this ‘occurrence’ has caused an entire new school of thought called Quantum Mechanics, which surprisingly works dynamically different than classical or macro physical mechanics (such as gravity, plants and mass etc). The way to successfully systematize this ‘occurrence’ is to postulate that when a choice for an electron is presented, instead of the classical way of seeing things as either/or, we find the quantum idea to go both. Thus it is only when we ‘look’ that we find only one way has been taken, prior to looking both were taken.

This kind of thought in the firm solid structure of respectable science, has allowed their kid-brothers to dazzle us with interesting stories, mixing truth with fiction in a various amount of ways. We now think of multiple dimensions, possible universes, and the ‘space-time’ continuum. The idea is that whenever there is a choice given in our actual world, both are taken, the one you pick and the one picked by our counterpart. To paraphrase a great book “it is that when a coin lands heads here on our world, it most definitely lands tails in theirs!” From here, a great inquiry can be ‘imagined’ as to how many different versions of events can take place, but let me take it a bit farther.

Suppose that this might apply to all and any imaginative means; specifically not that they are imaginable but that another actual-possible world has it. Thus, there is a world where I am still Christian and one where Nixon did not get water-gated. Take it a bit farther, suppose there are different histories, and further yet, different universal evolution! Different rules for matter and on and on into the most possible possibilities our imagination can unveil. Ignoring the philosophical side of this, it goes without saying that there is such a world out there which has various events taking place, those events being the ones you think up. Now think of television!

We have all watched and loved to see our favourite actors or movie stars shoot laser weapons or kill dragons; but in some kind of quantum-imaginative way, those events are taking place in a distant and other possible world. It is not that events like Star Trek are taking place, but the real and exact events like Star Trek are taking place. There is a world where Captain Picard really does command the Enterprise and so forth.

From our quantum imagination we can find and imagine all sorts of things, and now add a perhaps meaningless but dare I say interesting possible-quality of being pseudo-real. So let that be a lesson to those who ponder terrible things or wondrous things, for your thoughts although not really creating these events is in fact, on a sense of possibility, are taking you to ‘real’ places. That magical island of Lost is real and John Locke is really dead, what a pity; for I find a possible-Lost where John Locke is actually alive much more entertaining.

What might this mean for our daily choices? I think we are not so situated within our bodies and minds and this actual world as much as we might think. In a sense each choice we face is a question “which possible world do you exist in?” and at each of these moments we craft our existence into one of these worlds. See this not as you making out of yourselves a kind of person with character as a sculptor makes a statue out of clay, this would merely be a regular existential approach. Instead think of a vast plurality of circuits, where your soul or mind is the only thing you really are. At each crossroad you make a choice onto which path you take, and your soul ‘rides’ it out. You are riding your personal existence and flowing into and out-of everyone else’s existence as a plethora of possibilities dies and are reborn in each second in each space. I am not being poetic or romantic here.

Think about this the next time you drive or walk to work, the next time you choose to eat this or that; or, God-fearing, the next time you change the channel! That’s a real world you are watching there...

The Serpent’s Egg

2009-07-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Good thoughts Jon.

Only I never said Logic could sum of everything, only that everything was based on fundamental reasoning. The point is in the difference and the latter makes the former possible (plus the realization of knowing the limits of Logic).

In your comment on the limits of reason, you said “we can … be aware … that our reasoning is flawed and also we can discern and suspect ourselves” of this.

How are we able to be aware that our reasoning is flawed if not through a more general application of reasoning?

How are we able to discern and suspect our reasoning abilities if not upon some larger context of knowing?

I agree with you that our reasoning is flawed in the sense that Logic and Empiricism are flawed but not fundamental reasoning. I also agree that we need to discern it is flawed and suspect other people’s (including our own) systems of reasoning for problems; but how can this happen? If all we have is one level of reasoning and it is flawed, then how can something which cannot be trusted convince us that we should not trust it?

If our most basis of reasoning is flawed then we have a non-starter, we cannot even know that the starting ground is flawed unless we can state so from a larger context.

In order for us to find out our reasoning is flawed, we must be moving from one thing to another, ALL along over top of some other larger meta-thing which allows for the movement to take place.

Thus what we find out is NOT that reasoning is flawed, but CERTAIN KINDS of reasoning is flawed, like Logic. It is flawed because it cannot yet account for all possible thought- but here is the key- to know this about Logic MEANS we did not first start with Logic but something else, something else upon which Logic itself is based.

My thesis in this conversation was that the greater/larger meta-thing Logic and company were founded upon was Fundamental Reasoning.

It seems to me like you agree with me (that reasoning has problems) and I agree with you (that Logic and other forms of rationality do not fully account for reality or the human person) BUT here is the clincher: if we can know that reasoning has problems, how is it are we found with that knowledge?

If you say its because reason itself tells us that reason has problems, then you are still putting all your trust in reason- you also have hopeful outlook on reason, for if it can tell you of its own problems, some aspect of it is still perfectly trust-worthy.

If you say you know it in some other way, then you have to show first, what that other thing is and second, how that other thing is not reason.

Can you see how being SURE reason has problems is in ITSELF a proclamation of just how TRUSTWORTHY reason is?
So you can see, even the ends of things are contained within reason and if we can know that our Logic cannot fully account for something, then we are using something else which his more fundamental than Logic to know this- this thing is, I suggest to you, a fundamental reasoning. And it tells us of our problems, it shows them to us as we try to make it more powerful (ie, when we reason about reasoning and create Logic, Empiricism and so on).

In this sense, and in a very powerful sense ALL things are rational things, in that they are always based upon fundamental reasoning, NOT LOGIC or EMPRICISM, but a fundamental way of thinking.

Therefore pointing out the limitations of Logic reaffirms the desire to point out other problems in other forms of reasoning. And this is why we should point them out in Religious Reasoning. Prior to that we must show that what Religious people do is in fact Religious Reasoning because right now they think they are doing something wholly different from reasoning. It is my claim that they are doing something different from Logic but not from fundamental reasoning.

Finally, this is why we can reason about God, this is why we must avoid using contradictions in Theology, because although God might be able to go beyond contradictions, we cannot and when we are using a contradiction we are not accounting for God in a powerful way but merely making mistakes (mistakes we know are mistakes).

But what happens when the mistake is no longer called a mistake? When the mistake is called a mystery and that mystery is denied a true definition of mistake because humans are not allowed to reason about God?

When this happens, we have what we have today. We have inconsistent hermeneutics, we have contradictions in mystery’s clothing and we have a lot of people doing a lot of reasoning but refusing to call it reasoning.

The Serpents Tail and Competitors

2009-07-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

Hey Jon,

I went through about seven different posts but this is a really hard topic to explain really clearly. I think instead of making a case-study in inconsistent reasoning I am simply going to ask you where you stand on this point of mine.

I think it will prove to be much more effective if we focus upon what you still need to be convinced of instead of simply falling into the same old posts we have already written, read and posted.

So:

What is not convincing so far?

What do you need to be convinced of still, in order for you to agree with me?

The Golden Calf of Religion: rational adherence to irrationality idolatry

2009-07-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

Jon said:
“I agree. But something could come from beyond our reason and disclose itself not as irrational or rationally contained but as a revealed mystery.”

Here, once you have said ‘come from beyond’ you have already postulated a space called ‘inside reason’ and a space called ‘beyond reason’. You have designated that we could speak and think about something ‘inside reason’ but know that it came from ‘beyond reason.’

But fundamental reasoning is at the foundation of both these places! The fact that you can speak about ‘beyond’ anything means you have it on a rational basis.

Parmenides said there are only two areas of thought: that which is and that which is not; furthermore nothing can be said about that which is not. (you might want to exclude the last sentence there, for even saying we cannot speak about what is not might be crossing the line).

This is what it means to say that, that which is outside of reason is beyond us entirely- not that it exists outside of our reasoning but rather that if it exists to us in any way then it is already inside reasoning.

When I say it is unimportant, I mean it is NOT. To say it in positive terms, anything we can think, talk about, imagine and discuss is already within reason.

Jon said:
“a mystery revealed can be reasonable without being yet fully understood.”

I agree, but that would make it based on the foundation of reason. To say that we do not fully understand something already assumes we have it in our minds; it is to say we do not yet have a sufficient pattern connected to this sense-object. (but even when we think we do have a sufficient pattern, we already know that patterns must always be scrutinized again and again.

Jon said:
“then are we rejecting all "memory", as you called it a few posts back? Is it just about each individual interpreting sense and pattern for oneself? How does one weed through the politics and sociology one holds in oneself without holding it up to history and larger discussion?”

That was just to say that it is difficult to parse when there are no political and sociological ramifications, even more so when there are extras on the line. That was all I was saying.

Jon said quoting me:
"It is not until we can look at the competing patterns with sobriety that we can actually decide with clarity." Yeah. That's right. So how do we do that?

I think the first step is to realize that nothing should be considered immune to rational inquiry. All too often people say ‘it doesn’t matter that this doesn’t make sense, it is not supposed to make sense’ (thus saying this is an irrational object and needs not to make sense).

Jon said:
“But to say that the step from recognizing the Given to accepting the idea of a Giver is irrational is to refuse a priori, as a choice, the possibility of anything transcending us altogether.”

To say something is given just means it is necessary, that is what a priori means as well. There is no giver, unless you wanted to account for reality as a giver of some sort. This also does not mean nothing transcends us, something can or might, but what it means to say ‘such and such’ about that which transcends us will still be based on the foundation of reason.

Jon said:
“unless you make the presuppositional (and by definition absurd) decision before hand that it is impossible before proven, you then have not only the same Given from which to use reason but you have even more solid grounds to hope in the usefulness of reason”

Again, no one is to deem anything impossible before being proven, it is simply a postulation of how reasoning likely works. The field of reason is also and open concept, as we found in quantum mechanics first thought to be beyond the ability of reason to account for, but now is accountable.

Here is the biggest application of what I am saying:

To ignore the potential problems of something utilizing bad reasoning is regress not progress. Quantum mechanics needed lots of study and work until they were able to really think and speak about it with clarity and now reason seems to have a broader application (now that it can account for quantum physics).

What about religion?

Take the idea of the Trinity. The application of reason upon it is questioned by believers and frequently thought dubious. The Trinity is classified as a mystery and thus ‘beyond’ the grasp of human minds (noetic aspect of the fall). When I was a believer I wanted to re-examine this, try to unite reason with the Trinity (as I believe many theologians desire). But the response to such an action is met with rejection because the human mind is not allowed to critique God or more so, reason is not allowed to critique God because then reason would be ‘higher’ than God.

That sentence already shows that reason is ‘higher’ than God in that reason is used to insulate God from further criticism. God is shown to be in a system in which God is above (or ought to be above) all other things, but what about the system itself, what about the system God is found to be placed within? The theologian might respond, ‘okay, but God is also above the system itself, into areas which transcend reasoning and our minds entirely.’

That is a good answer, one which I used to give in past days, but the implication is that, that which is beyond our reasoning cannot matter to us, perhaps only in some kind of pointer which says ‘it goes further into the unattainable.’ That is what it means to say that God transcends reason. Yet theologians who say this will not be consistent with this idea, instead the ‘usage’ of what is irrational is mostly used to insulate religion instead of clarifying it.

When a mystery is no longer being clarified then it is not really a mystery at all. I imagine you might want to object to this but suppose I put something of mine into a mystery form?

Suppose we were arguing abortion and you said ‘but it is killing potential life, and you already said you did not want to kill potential life ever!’ Instead of really thinking about this I simply responded: ‘I know it does not make sense, these two ideas that I do not want to ever kill potential life and I still support abortion which I agree is killing potential life; BUT this is a mystery about me.’

Is it really a mystery? Or is it just a problem I am not honestly dealing with? Suppose you asked me about it later and I said: ‘my views on abortion and killing are no longer rational and thus I do not have to deal with the fact that they are inconsistent; they lie beyond the realms of reason.’

Now I am not equating this ‘argumentative move’ with religion, nor am I saying that Theologians are not rational reject reason or cheat in their god-thought. All I am saying is this was one of the things which gave me my current skepticism.

It came from the idea that all truth is gods truth, and that if god made the world the way it is (including reason) then why would so much of his religion not follow through on it? I know you could argue that and suggest that many religions do follow through on reason, or that many religions are trying to work their religions.

I am not trying to be unfair, but simply explain exactly what I mean when I say religions use irrationality as idolatry.

So yeah, that is pretty much my whole thesis on this subject. This is why I think reason applies to everything (at least this general and fundamental concept of reasoning which I have been explaining).

A personal reflection:

This is also one of my major reasoning why I hold to a soft-atheism. I honestly believe that if one considered the god-question with sobriety, I personally believe they have to say god is possible but less than likely thus far.

Bad Reasoning and No Reasoning

2009-07-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

So an obvious question which follows this entire conversation is: what do we do with reason, what is it for? The answer is truth. What exactly is truth in the first place? Why are we concerned with it?

At the bottom of the idea of truth is the concept of the world. Just like we had to take as given that we have sensibility and that we sense objects, we find that this entails the world. Is there a world, is answered in the affirmative but what kind of world is left open.

This is the difference in-between having given sensibility and given objects vs. patterns. As we have already discussed, patterns are what really matters; equivalent to saying ‘the world is this way’ is a definition of truth.

As the concept of truth if further fleshed out, reasoning about reasoning becomes more significant: we create a system called Logic, which has the primary function of truth-preservation (meaning, when one starts with something true and uses the system of Logic, one should find truth is preserved). But as we have found out in utilizing this system, to make it efficient we are forced to limit its application. Hence Logic works well for science but not well for social-sciences and so forth.

To say something is true, or to define Truth, is to suggest that a certain construed meaning (pattern) “the world is not flat” has the property of being more or most likely to connect with a given object (our experience of the world).

The other important aspect of reason is bad reasoning. As signified in close examination of Logic, formal constraints can be used in reasoning to move the likelihood of a pattern (ie effect its truth-value). It is not to say that using bad reasoning always makes something NOT true or least likely but rather it simply becomes a red-flag worth noting when attempting to construe meaning upon the world. As anyone who has studied Logic formally knows, there are many fallacious, invalid and bad rational arguments which still can be true. But knowing what is bad and why is important.

Obviously since I am speaking about a grand and fundamental reasoning here, there can be nothing which lies outside of reason; or rather, that which does lie outside of reason is unimportant since it has not and cannot make its way into our minds. If it were to at any moment, it would cease to be irrational and thus become rational (in the general sense I am speaking about here).

The last sort of point I want to make is the value we place in ‘bad’ reasoning. If we had two descriptions/arguments for different conclusions but were so close that they seemed to be equal (more or less) we might be stuck with a problem. However, if it were discovered that one of the two arguments was using ‘bad or poor’ reasoning, then it is my suggestion that this would be the thing which might unbalance the equilibrium.

The problem is however, that if the battle between two said points of view is old and carries all kinds of extra-argumentative implications, then the small difference signifying the use of poor reasoning will likely go undetected; or when detected with be passed off as just another ‘propaganda attack’ or what have you.

This is why the real answers to the hard questions of reality are usually not fully answerable until after the political, sociological and personal fallout has all but gone (such as the world being flat vs round for example). It is not until we can look at the competing patterns with sobriety that we can actually decide with clarity.

I think the same thing about the God-question.

My Second Response

2009-06-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

I agree with you that the atom was imagined before it was sensed directly; however, the imagination which conjured up the atom was, itself, working from sensible object-pattern ideas which had high probability of being accurate. The work of the mind is to fit thought to the phenomenon which it senses, not the other way around.

We can use our imagination to make discoveries, but the discoveries are never called discoveries until they are sensed. Therefore, without the sensible object-patterns we have now for the atom (the evidence), we would have to conclude that the idea of the atom was only an idea based in other sense-object probabilities and did not become a sense-object itself until humans were able to construct tools which allowed for it to be sensed.

There are many other examples of imaginative answers which got rejected (many pre-Socratic philosophers believed all of reality was made up of one element like fire or water). What does it mean to reject it? Simply that such answers have low probability of being accurate whereas the atom idea has higher probability. So our imagination can lead us into error as much as it can lead us into new discoveries!

Jon said:
“Can there be no meaning in a (at least seemingly at first) one-time event? What is the place of reason as it relates to what seem to be creative acts? Would you say that one of the patterns we can reason about is the pattern of creativity and new events within history? Do we not have a human "memory" of such things and can we not reason about the pattern of previously unpatterned things?”

I think meaning signifies consistency. Consistency can be in many places and thus many different ‘takes’ on a sensible object can bring about various patterns which are all applicable or seem so initially. Sometimes we can eliminate lesser options but other times we can only rely upon likelihood.

Creativity is a function of our ability to abstractly take apart patterns and put them back together again in ways which are not originally sensed. This is the example of the unicorn: the joining of a horse-pattern with a horn-pattern to make a horse-horn-pattern. Our imagination creates space in-which we can then error. Once we create “2” and “+” and use them together we can get “2+2” which equals “4”. Now that we have all these things we can do extra stuff, move them around to create “2+2=2, 4+4=4, 2+4+=2+” and so forth. What can we do about this? We call them contradiction, or functions of imagination: patterns which do not have their own sense object. They might in the future, but for now the honest phenomenologist has to say they currently do not have a sense-object.

We can have patterns which do not connect with sensible objects and this is the strength and danger of thought. Sometimes our creativity can lead us to find new info (such as the atom) and other times it only takes us to the fantastical (novels, stories and other forms of art).

You could have meaning in a one-time event if the consistency being signified were found in other object-patterns. Language works like this: you can hear and understand sentences which you have never heard before and this is because you understand a sentence by the pieces not the whole-ness of it. Think of meeting a new person and hearing their name for the first time. It is a new experience (one-time-event initially) but is still based in sound-making. You might be confused at first because you have never heard it before, but this does not make it impossible to make sense of it (because it is still grounded in reality as it were).

This is why I think there is nothing to be properly considered ‘out side’ of reason: if you can talk it, think it or argue it is ‘out side’ of reason, then you are already working within reason. I usually find this idea of ‘out side reason’ being used as a tactic rather than a path to furthering ideas. ‘4+5=10’ is incorrect and if you said this one particular equation lies ‘out side of reason’ and thus IS correct even though it ‘looks’ wrong, then I am overtly suspicious.

Jon said:
“Can we reason about an Idea which encompasses and makes sense of the patterns themselves?”

Yes, creating an Idea which further scrutinizes patterns themselves would be further scrutinizing reason itself. This is done when we think up Empiricism or Literature. They are Categories which organize patterns themselves.

Jon said:
“Certainly it is testable by its alignment with sensed objects and patterns, but if it holds enough reasonable force, couldn't such an Idea be allowed to test our very sensing response in return, in sort of a cycle of reasoning, from Ideas to Objects and Patterns and from Objects and Patterns to Ideas?”

Yes it could and this is why most scientists only work within the Empirical (sensing object) reality; they know they are limiting themselves, but they find such a limitation acute for their findings. Prior to this, before science was science and was only philosophy, the Findings as well as the initial Propositions had to be scrutinized. This is why people would take the question of “how many angles can dance on the head of a pin?” seriously; they wondered and wanted to know. Empirical science raises it’s efficiency by narrowing the initial parameters for questions to be considered (but they have their eyes open in this).

Jon said:
“Obviously I want to agree with that, while also pushing for something more complex, a cycle of reasoning that can be allowed to spiral back and forth rather than completely allowing either the Sensed Pattern or the Idea, the Description or the Phenomenon, to trump, or totally eclipse, the other, in our reasoning.”

I think I understand what you are saying here and I would agree, we should always allow our sensed patterns to be scrutinized. However, I am a bit skeptical that we might sense a pattern which could change our sensibility entirely- that seems dubious to me. What seems totally given is that we have sensibility and sense something (objects). We can take ourselves to places where we find new objects to sense (like atoms) but they are not ‘new’ in a totally-additional-sense, but only ‘new’ in an already-there-but-not-found-yet sense. When people first broke a jar into pieces, they were looking at ‘atoms’ of the jar and thus the progression towards quantum mechanics was always ‘ongoing’ as it were right from the beginning.

So our patterns always need to be reassessed, always! But I think we can still stand on sensibility and object no matter what occurs (only because to go against it would simultaneously undermine the attempt to go against it).

Jon said:
“Isn't that exactly why we need to go forward with a reasonable faith in the (potential, at least) marriage of Ideas and Forms?”

No, the marriage is not as important as being descriptively accurate is. The phenomenologist is okay with ideas which do not connect to sensed or sensible objects; the imagination is quite capable of creating such things: contradictions, purely imaginative objects and so forth.

There is no ‘faith’ in the potential connection of Ideas and sensed objects, only the categorization of what does fit (meaning high probability or reoccurring consistency) and what does not fit (meaning low probability or does not reoccur).

The reason why we think about consistency and reoccurrence is because we can be mistaken: we can take the wind causing a branch to rap against our door for a person knocking, a shadow for a ghost or whatnot. It is not that we did not sense an object in these moments, only that we placed the wrong pattern for what was sensed. BUT, if the error is never discovered or discovered quite late in the game, there will always be people who remain convinced that they did see a ghost.

That is fine as well, for we must always be open to new possibilities but even those individuals must be honest with themselves and accurate (meaning, if they never again sense the object in that particular way, they should say so). That is to say that IF ghosts are real, they are real in a very peculiar kind of ‘way’ and that the ‘way they are real’ is clearly less consistent then other ‘real’ things like trees, persons, dogs and rocks. The phenomenologist WOULD get upset if you wanted to classify ghosts as fitting the same description of trees and rocks; for this seems clearly a misapplication of consistency.

This is why consistency is important, because where it is lacking, we should be suspicious. And we are, predominantly in Medicine, where a new drug might do all kinds of desirable things, but if it does them randomly and without guarantee, then it is ruled as a bad drug.

So to re-state my answer: I think reasoning SHOULD cycle back upon previous patterns and scrutinize them; BUT, scrutinizing sensibility itself is not really possible. We can always be sure we are sensing and that we sense something (objects). All the scrutiny, skepticism and debate about patterns come after this because it is a function of reasoning itself. To say we can scrutinize sensibility itself is to say I can think and in thinking I prove that I cannot think.

Sorry if I jumped the gun on you but I think most of my thoughts are out there now, we only need to discuss the application and implication of them now.

My Response

2009-06-03T18:56:00.001-07:00

Jon said:
“This is fair. But would you agree that reason is not confined to Time and consistency? In other words, we can think and talk about what stands behind Time. Maybe that's a bad way to put it. I don't mean to get "theist" on you here. What I mean is that reason can be employed to ask not just What questions but Why and What For questions too?”

Here is a good place to talk about what might be beyond reason. I wouldn’t say that reason is ‘confined to time and consistency’ but I do believe it is the attempt to derive patterns from time and consistence (furthermore from objects we encounter).

I am saying that we can only really think about things we can think about- and these things are things we encounter in the world.

Our imagination is able to work further on these things, even when they are independent; but the pure power of the imagination only works on the basis of things we have already encountered.

So to answer your question, what might stand behind Time, I would have to say that if ‘something thinkable’ stood behind time, that ‘thinkable thing’ would be an object detectable by sensibility. If you wanted to say it was not an object detectable by sensibility, then how exactly did it find its way into your thought?

Jon said:
“In other words, we don't just reason from patterns to probabilities, we can speculate about the grander scheme, and try to come to hypotheses about what holds it all together, and then we can test those hypotheses against sciences, worldviews, human emotional and social experiences, and so on. Reason is what you are describing, but it is more than that too, right? We can reason about reason itself. We can build schemes of thought. THink about ontology, teleology, all that sort of stuff.”

Reasoning about reasoning is the basis of thought, it is construing the initially possibility into actuality. You said above that everything is ‘interpretation’ and with this I agree. The basis of human thought is hermeneutics. The possibility to do this is given along with the ‘stuff’ we are construing into meaning.

Constructing a spectrum of trust (what we should take seriously vs. what we should not take seriously) is reasoning about reasoning. And with new discoveries we can always go back to the basis and test it all over again. We can do this, but we are still always doing the same thing: looking for consistency. Without consistency, we have nothing, but would reason as in a dream, where nothing can hold consistency. You might call dreaming ‘thinking’ but it would be another kind of thinking, and it would be contrasted with the kind of thinking I am describing. How could such a comparison be made, if it were not for the consistency of objects in the first place? No, it seems to hold that without consistency there is little chance for real meaning.

Jon said:
“And I'm not sure we can put "probability" on a simple sliding scale from "object" (more reliable) to "pattern" (next most reliable) and so on, because it begins with the assumption that our "sensibility" is reliable to begin with.”

Just to be clear, remember that our assumption of reliable sensibility does not guarantee any reliability in the patterns we find, only that we MUST be sensing something. It is a subtle but significant point.

If we scrutinize our ability to sense, then we lose our ability to scrutinize in the first place. But this does not mean we cannot scrutinize the patterns we find; in fact, scrutinizing the patterns is hermeneutics at the most primordial level. Take your inlander example:

She is able to construe many patterns, but with her questioning she finds some patterns hold to more scrutiny than others. It does not mean one patterns is right, but on a descriptive sense, one or a few descriptions seem to be more reliable than other descriptions. This is the phenomenological approach to truth: the attempt to describe with accuracy what a phenomenon is, as opposed to making the phenomenon fit the description.

Jon said:
“What I'm trying to say is that, given what you are accurately describing as a key function and focus of reason, we can't necessarily equate probability with our pattern assessment since the very premises of the pattern assesser have to be reasoned about as well.”

I agree. But this is what is taking place as we try to find answers. We are doing this at every step, and it is because of this that we can never feel fully comfortable with what we are doing. Finding a possible pattern and suggesting it fits to a given phenomenon, is an attempt to prove the validity of reason itself as well as making the suggestion that the pattern fits to the phenomenon. Those who doubt the validity of reasoning will not take the conversation seriously and walk away; whereas those who do, will argue for or against it. They are, with this action, doing the very same action, and (hopefully) they are arguing because they think they have a superior pattern to fit the phenomenon.

Perhaps I might anticipate a thought you will have: who gets to decide what it means that one pattern is superior to another? Might we have different ideas of that very thing? Yes we do and yes we will have to talk about that as well, but here is potentially the most important point I want to make in this entire series of blog entries:

To argue about what makes a superior pattern is ALSO a function of reasoning and is based in sensibility, object and pattern finding. It is the same thing going on at a more fundamental level. It presupposes the same things and so it too is a function of reasoning (as I am describing it here).

Does this mean it can always be reconcilable, that there is an answer to be found? No. We must be uncomfortable with these assessments on the fundamental level, just as we are on the higher levels! But it does not mean anything can go, for we are still (and always forced) to be trying to fit patterns to objects.

Let us talk about your response to the triangle example. Jon said:
“Who is to say that the gap tells us to look for another peice, to consider that the whole (once assembled) might be another shape, and to try on different pieces? These are all a function of reason, and to conclude that we have all the right peices and that we know the final peice needs to be a gapless triangle, seems to limit reason too much.”

From a phenomenological sense, we will not want to conclude that we have the ‘right pieces’ or that we have a final object fitted to a pattern when we have a gapless triangle. What the phenomenologist DOES want to do is say ‘we have a triangle when...’ and ‘we have something else when...’ Let me further illustrate my other points in this example.

If someone wanted to doubt that we could ever know triangles in the first place (and thus doubt the givenness of sensibility and objects) what could he say exactly? “You never know a triangle when you see it.” Okay, I reply, what is going on here? If he answers, then he is doing hermeneutics; and if he thinks he can answer, then he is not really saying I cannot sense a triangle when I see it, but rather I am sensing something else. His answer is the same function as my description of the triangle. If he has no answer, then I will wonder why he is talking to me in the first place.

So you see, he is either bringing up a new system of patterns matching to objects sensed or he is not. Even if he wants to do this at the primordial level and argue for what a superior pattern is; he is still reasoning. Always reasoning. Take the following examples as a possible spectrum of consistency to inconsistency.

The idea of a triangle (in the phenomenological sense that a certain description of objects [a pattern] fits sensible objects) is something we have come to rely upon. We might even call this logical truth, but that is just a phrase which signifies ‘that which is most unlikely to change.’ But as we have been finding out in quantum mechanics, even the most fundamental ‘logical truth’ can be brought back into scrutiny. BUT (and here is the clincher) it is not because we simply wanted to put in back into scrutiny, but rather because we began to find objects we could sense which threw us back into a questioning state: electrons and atoms, which we previously could not really sense.

The idea of emotions are also ‘something’ which fits a description. They are present with consistency; perhaps to the point that we do not doubt a person has them. Yet with our imagination we might think of computers as persons without emotions. Yet we find this description of pattern-finding (emotions) more in flux than a triangle: meaning we have to do more work to make sense of them. This does not mean emotions are not rational objects, but simply that they are more complicated than descriptions of triangles. Complexity itself seems to be a measurement of size in some abstract sense.

The idea of a unicorn is also ‘something’ which fits a description. It is easily something we can imagine, but it is something we do not find objects of. It is, in our imagination, two objects cut up and mixed, but this does not mean it is not rational. It IS rational and perhaps even physically possible, but it is not sensed directly (as an object like a triangle or emotions). To say that unicorns are not real, is to say the idea of a unicorn is less consistent (or reliable) than the idea of an emotion or triangle. This does not keep us from thinking or talking about it though, and that is important to note. However, on the other side, just because we can think about it does not make it real (meaning the same thing as above).

Finally, take as it were the idea of a squircle (circle-square). Such an idea perhaps can be abstractly considered, but not really imagined. It certainly has no object and has never been sensed. But it can be thought- in some way at least, although some of my friends might say it cannot be thought, but is only a mish-mash of word garbage. This might be something which should be described as ‘irrational’ but something which can still be thought about. That would suggest a contradiction in this description, so I would rather call it something which we can barely imagine and which stands entirely outside of sensible objects.

How do such ideas come into the mind? Is it an opening of something which might stand behind or beyond the rational? I think not because it is not something coming from beyond, it is coming from the object of a square and the object of a circle. There is no ‘additional’ element here, only a collapse of other objects. That would be fine (in the case of the unicorn) only that this mixing of ideas is not really picture-able and falls outside of the realm of possibility (but again, just like quantum mechanics showed, it might become a possibility with the advancement of our sensibility).

How is all that?

Consistency and Patterns

2009-05-30T22:27:00.001-07:00

Okay, so we are so far okay with the idea of possibility: we posses some kind of sensibility which senses objects.

I think we can simply assume Time exists, but perhaps Jon might want to debate that as well? With the addition of Time, we can talk about consistency.

By consistency, I mean repetition of some kind; a reoccurrence which is present and sensible. It by itself is not so much reliable, in that we can know it like we know the other three structures; but it seems to be the difference of living and non-living things. It also seems to be strewn across the spectrum of what we designate reaction to instinct, eventually ending in predictability.

This consistency is recorded somehow in us (we call it memory) and after ‘enough’ of it (relying upon Time), our passive and receptive quality eventually can be changed into active. We sense in objects consistency which eventually allows us to change in our reaction.

Allow me to illustrate:
We first sense an object, and then we sense an object, and then we sense another object and so on. After some time we sense an object and connect it with a previous sensed object. This continues and although we (in this initial state) might not know to call the object the colour yellow, we do recognize it as a reoccurring object that we sense. We might be colour-blind, but we still recognize the consistency of one sensed object from others.

This is all assuming we are in a world of some kind. Now we might be real agents in a real world or we might be brains in vat, hooked up to wires. We might be figments of a Dragon’s dream; or martinet puppets dancing fatalistically due to the will of a all-powerful creature of control. None of these things really change the fact that we are sensing objects and discovering consistency. Even if we are fooled into thinking the illusion we sense is real; it still goes without saying that we are being consistently fooled.

This consistency does not have to be ‘logical’ or ‘mathematic’ consistency; only (as an object in itself) the sensible reoccurrence which allows for recognition. Notice this is NOT an argument from innateness. I actually agree with Kant and Chomsky that much of what we possess in the mind/brain is already there before we are aware of it (meaning it is not learned but activated); however for the time being we will confine ourselves to a very simple description of reason which is (for the most part) learned. We can get into the other stuff later on.

Now consistency gives rise to patterns and patterns are everything. A square is a pattern and a colour is a pattern. I see you and you tell me your name is Jon; sensing the object which is designated ‘Jon’ is a pattern. Why are these things not objects exactly? Well because objects seem to be more solid, whereas patterns seem to be more flexible.

The idea of colour itself might be an object, but colours (the bleeding of one into another) are patterns. We can recognize this painting is yellow fading into blue; although we cannot be so precise as to know exactly where the yellow stops and the blue begins, we can describe what patterns we are observing. Also, Jon may change from day to day. His manners could change, his clothes could change, his name might change and so forth; but Jon as a pattern would still be sensible to me.

Perhaps you might say that objects make up patterns; and this why we talk about how we can be more sure about sensibility and that we sense objects then of the consistency of consistency itself and of patterns themselves. In this you can pre-emptively see the division of ‘logic’ from ‘reasoning’ and the beginnings of empiricism.

Empirical reasoning, is simply reasoning with an active scrutiny. It is a response to the above problem: how to deal with why sensibility and objects to be sensed are given, but consistency and patterns are shakier. Empirical reasoning is a division of or laying down of a spectrum from one extreme: what we find most consistent toward the other extreme: what we find most inconsistent. It is a working of probability, but one so narrow that it was initially mistaken for either/or context (but we now know it is nearly mostly probability) most likely/lest likely.

Because we have been identified as beings of possibility, we must always keep to this possibility (this human-nature) and resist closing our minds.

So based on what has been said, something which does not pass the scrutiny of empirical reasoning, would still pass general reasoning. Even the most unlikely- lowest probability (let us say it only occurs once and only to one person in one time moment) will still be rational. This is what it means to say it can occur. What about things occurring outside our definitions of rationality? Might they be occurring? Well yes, but would they be sensible, would they be objects, or patterns, could they hold some kind of consistency? No to everything. Sound too bold? It is not, for if anything reached the human mind, it would fall under one of these descriptions, and that would make it rational.

This is why I think ‘everything’ is rational; if it occurs in the mind, then it is rational. Consider emotion: it is certainly not Logical or empirical, but it is still quite rational.

That is a lot; let’s chew on this for a bit.

First, we must accept the possibility of possibility

2009-05-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is how I would like to proceed. I will write a post and you Jon can tell me what you are okay with. I hope we do not have to debate every point in detail (just the essentials) but that is up to you. As for any others, feel free to express your ideas, opinions and agreement, but this is all for Jon so his comments will be treated as most important. Also, if you feel you have something really important to say but neither Jon nor I address it, take it in stride. I really want this to be a focus upon Jon.

We will progress when Jon either says he agrees with what is written (to whatever degree he sees fit) or after we have addressed any problems raised by Jon or if he ‘accepts for the sake of the argument’ to move onto the more important stuff. Saying he agrees to a point does not move it out of debate; all things can come back onto the table (this is essential because I think many things will be quickly accepted but not their implications). In this way Jon, feel free to be flexible with your agreement, do not think that saying ‘yes’ to something puts it in my pocket; you can bring up past things whenever. If he feels he cannot agree to a point, or feels his raised problem has not been dealt with to his satisfaction then the conversation will be over.

So let us begin!

Let’s talk about reason on an abstract level. I believe ‘reason’ to be the essential human quality, tied up therein are the other important concepts (politics, freedom, self-awareness, language, identity and even emotions). That might sound strange but follow me for as long as you can.

Reason is that ability to pattern-find.

A) Sensibility
How this exactly looks, how it is initially possible and what exactly it finds are what is at stake in this debate. The most important part seems to be an ability to ‘see’ or ‘recognize’, take-in or perhaps be sensible towards something. Without this fundamental ‘opening’ of a person, there can be nothing to follow. This part seems to be a major distinction of our own species as compared to other things (living and non-living). A rock has no sensibility and yet exists, whereas a tree has some kind of sensibility and lives and more towards our end, a dog has great sensibility, lives and thinks.

B) Objects to be sensed
The next most important thing is the assumption of objects (or later I will call them patterns to find). To what extent that we do grasp objects, there goes without saying that we can grasp them. Even under the critique that objects are not there at all (it is all illusion), it goes without saying that ‘something’ is grasped, or more fundamentally a ‘process of grasping’ is utilized. If something independent were to inform us that objects were not real, or grasped at all; what is going on then (besides the realty of objects) would simply become the fundamental reality. Something is happening independent of what exactly, and the critique that nothing can happen negates the critique as well as what is being critiqued.

Without something, there cannot be ‘without something’.

This is what makes the first two points fundamental; not because they cannot be questioned or even refuted, only that with their refutation (as a process of critique) the very process of critique is also lost. This makes it a standing point from which all must begin from. Even if our doubts are greatest upon our ability to possess ‘sensibility’ and our reliance upon ‘objects’ to be sensed, without the assumption that these occur, negates all other avenues of processing (most importantly including the criticism which causes their demise).

This is all so far only at an abstract level. This means it matters not to what kind of quality our sensibility is or to what extent we might grasp ‘objects’ or what exactly those ‘objects’ are, if they are really ‘outside’ of us or simple figments of our imagination, illusion of lies.

If one were to deny that we posses sensibility and/or objects to sense, on what basis could they say such things? How is it possible to deny something has occurred, when there is no basis on which to stand? In other words, what exactly could it ‘mean’ to say we have no sensibility and objects are not sensible? Yet people do say these things: my suggestion is that they only can say such things because they are already working over and above these very fundamentals. In philosophy we call this a condition of possibility, and without it nothing can occur.

Even if one were to doubt the process of thought which allows for the above argument to be constructed would have to assume some other ‘view’ or ‘idea’ could be constructed. So one can doubt how likely to unlikely what I am saying is the case, but it seems closed for such a person to deny it altogether. If they did deny sensibility and objects to be sensed, they would most likely simply be saying they were not interested in the topic at hand.

So I will end this one here, and test the water.

This is all ‘taking-place’ at the abstract level so I will understand how strange it all might sound. Also, it should be noted that the very things I am trying to prove are obviously assumed in the construction of this argument, even though I have not been able to go over them all. So please do not confuse giving your agreement to this first intro as an agreement of my unwritten conclusions. I am going to argue them all the way through and never say ‘you already said yes to such and such’.

So just take it for what it says and nothing more and raise your problems.

En Guard?

2009-05-23T14:12:00.001-07:00

Hey Jon,

Okay so I see how this conversation can get forced into a loop. I certainly feel like you keep saying similar things and I bet I am doing the same thing. And yet I am reluctant to have the conversation end. I think I would like to change things up a bit. I found that my thinking changed the most when I began to really see how reason worked and how it was already working in life. I remember thinking ‘wow, this reason stuff is really good- I should use it to fix some theological stuff that bothers me.’

I would like to bring about a greater appreciation of reason in the world around me; specifically the real difference in-between reason and Logic. I think few people make that distinction enough of the time.

I am taking a logic class this summer, and I have been reading over the introduction. I would like to have a conversation about reason with you Jon. I will site exactly what I want to prove by it, and I want you to be the person I have to prove it too.

You get to say if you are convinced or unconvinced; you get to decide in the end and I will not quibble with your response simply: if you are convinced I will feel good and if you are unconvinced I will feel like I have failed. I don’t care about the ego thing, and so you if you want you can simply listen and disagree for an easy win.

I think a well defined ‘match’ will prove more interesting than the regular I say what I say vs. you say what you say. This way we can have a real outcome, either way. Of course you can fall in the middle if you want, mostly convinced or nearly or however you want.

The main thing I want you to understand is that you will be my guess and I will host the conversation. I want you to bring all your questions of reason, scepticisms of atheists and so forth. You can open any topic you wish blah, blah, blah.

I also want you to feel welcome and safe. If you agree and are interested; I want this to be a conversation about you as well. I want to convince you, not just anyone who is listening.

Most importantly, I want this to be a side-issue from the atheist vs. Christian conversation. That way everything is not hanging in the balance, just one little issue: how rational are we?

So that is my challenge!

Here is my thesis: that individuals are rational to their very core, so much so that to understand, experience, talk or know anything, is to say that such events are possible only because of reason, are done through reason and are products of reason.

That is what I want to prove. The implications of this point (if true) is that when we have irrational or non-rational objects, although they can and do exist, they cannot properly be used in rational endeavours and at the same time maintain a consistency of application (of reason as a whole).

How I want to do this is as follows:

First I want to go into explicit detail as to what I exactly mean by the words reason, understanding, consistency, experience, talk and knowledge. I want it to be clear what is at stake.

Secondly, I will argue why this is the case. Go through alternatives, modifications and hopefully show how no matter what one ‘does’ one is always ‘doing’ what I am describing one to be doing while thinking, talking, arguing and so forth.

Finally, I will draw possible conclusions of this point (just possible ones, not guarantees): particularly what we should (not what we usually do, or want to do, but what we ought to) do with the various irrational and non-rational things we have access to. This, and show how and why this important fact of reality can lead to other questions, problems and so forth.

So there you have it. It’s all there.

In addition to this I will give you a ‘get-out-of-conversation-do-to-value-difference’ card which allows you to abort the conversation at any time due to a reconcilable difference in values. This will end the conversation and deem it a stale-mate, without winners. You can use this if you think I am being unfair and cannot prove it. I will not take this move as being anything but an honest refusal to go on. No strings attached.

What do you think Jon? I will be trying to convince you, and no one else. You can bring what you want to the table and tell me what it will take for you to believe my side.

En guard?

A Much Too Long Response

2009-05-20T08:49:00.001-07:00

I am never doubting the existence of self-criticism within the Church; I am more specifically analyzing how said criticism is performed, what mini-values are found therein and if it holds an honest possibility of going all the way. Of course it always should in principle, but what if the system itself is designed to resist this possibility? Isn’t that a potential problem of a rather large magnitude? Added to this, if true, how are things made further problematized by the fact that most religious people DO think their system is openly self-critical?

Just questions, not necessarily claims (although I apologize how I like to be polemical by putting my questions in rhetorical claims).

I am talking about the same thing as you Jon; what one does with the unprovable axioms or assumptions.

My issue is NOT that initial axioms and assumptions are MADE, but rather in which WAYS these initial steps are taken.

I am dancing around the concept of the Holy Spirit and Theological development only ‘properly’ being modified by those who already want to modify it for its benefit.

Of course there is criticism; I am not questioning this so much as I am questioning the kind of criticism being implemented.

My question is this: if the criticism is always coming from, being used by and for the benefit of the object, then ought it to count as real criticism? (full scrutiny).

This comes from my experience of criticizing Christianity by pointing out problems only to be told those problems do not actually exist; they are ‘there’ but only as failures (caused by humans). God is perfect and humans are fallible, so any ‘potential problem’ found in religion can (just as an option here) be thrown onto the human-problem-side of things and allow the perfect-God-side of things untouched. It is in this hypo-static union in which Christianity has the option to ignore certain criticism; it is like another form of Idealism (in the philosophical sense).

Problems which are found by looking are only found to be fixed which can be contrasted with finding problems which might end up causing the rejection of the entire object/system itself. Such a philosophical process is in great danger of immunity if it were to ignore or fail to take serious ‘good criticism’ on the basis that it has been deemed ‘bad criticism’ (the watershed distinction being for/against the system itself). I hear the religious refusing to read Dawkins because he is arrogant or mean here (just as an example).

Illustration: when criticism is being used for the sake of the system, it is taken seriously; but when it is being used against the sake of the system, it is rejected entirely as something which is not to be taken serious.

Certain Christian phrases jump off the page as dangerous examples of this: for example, when you talk about how atheists create an idea of God and then find it in error. You think this is unfair to God, whom you feel has revealed the Godself in Jesus Christ and should be taken for what it is, not the preconception of atheists.

It’s a valid position to have, but it is equally dangerous.

Suppose there was one axiom I had to take without criticism which gave me system entirely immune (in its real superiority) to any and all other possible scrutiny. It can answer all questions, so long as the initial axiom is held. Such a system is valuable, it resembles Kantian Deontological Ethics; but can it grow? I can say yes, but it will only grow, again, based on the first axiom. Now suppose this system is not really superior, not really immune, but the adherents of the system want it to be; even better, suppose they simply have faith that although it appears not to be superior, it will be in the end. Can you see the building dangerous of such a philosophical approach?

This is a stock-analogy and holds little water and no critical application to Christianity itself; I state it only to clearly illustrate where I am coming from.

Suppose the Liberal Political party was holding a conference, and you found some interesting critical studies you wanted to share with them. Your request is turned down, however, on the basis that the Liberal Party only will listen to Liberals or criticism given from a Liberal point of view. Suppose you went anyway and said what you said and it sounded convincing; wouldn’t you feel ripped off if they looked into your studies and rejected them because they came from Republican funded sources? Would that really deflate the studies conclusions?

It would if you had no common ground (what I call reason) to work from. If it was a case of Liberal vs. Republican, you would do well to simply ignore them. It would likely be the case that they were just trying to be polemical or simply attack you and so forth.

But what about Reason and other worldviews?

Didn’t Toni Tanty say:
“For me though reason always brings me back to God, maybe not religion, but certainly God.”

And Jon said:
“the question is what stands up to reason and if you ask me what worldview gives the most reasonable assessment of existence as we know it (as well as the most promising and life-producing) it is Christianity”

Clearly reason is being used here, but is it being used only after the initial axiom of Christianity has been taken? If it works after the claim, cannot it be used against the claim itself? And yet when I do this, I am told I am preconceiving God and not taking the Godself for what is revealed. I am told that I cannot (or who am I) put God in a box, I cannot use reason to critique God, God made reason show why should reason hold God accountable, if reason could modify God then would not reason be greater than God and thus become God?

I think this last sentence is what most religious people think of me, that I am in the religion of reason and it is a simple Christianity Religion vs. Rationality as a Religion. I take my axioms and you take yours and we fight it out without any progress, right?

But what if you (the religious) cannot get out of reason? What if we are all forced to reason even when we are trying to avoid reasoning? What if you reasoning is poor in my opinion? Is it simply an ontology rift? Your axioms vs. mine, with nothing in-between to provide a guide?

I do not think so, and my challenge is that you might- and that this position might be used more because it works as a defensive tactic than because it seems true (likely, or was told you so by Revelation).

All this to say that I think my reasoning is more testable than yours, can hold up to more scrutiny than yours, yet when I explain it so- I am told I am merely being materialistic, and that perhaps there are things which the material world cannot account for. I agree about materialism, but not about reason- I think it is more fundamental and I think I can prove that it is.

If it is more fundamental, then when Jon says the “atheist is simply not finding God because they do not want to” this will also mean the Christian is finding God because they want to.

I am willing to go here and do some exploration, but are you? And I ask that honestly- because if that is the case (above) then this is quite far from what Christianity says of itself, what common and serious theologians think, teach and believe and what description best fits Christianity as a whole.

You can see how this very small thing can balloon into an all encompassing issue for religion. If you (Jon and Tony) think Christianity so reasonable, do not you want to question why you think this way? Question why your reason tell you what it tells you?

Here is my final problem: that I have a hunch that if I took away your ability to believe that Christianity is the most reasonable answer to life’s questions (in some honest and non-manipulative way) you would not really lose your faith.

Why is that exactly?

Misplaced Idealism

2009-05-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

I have been bumping into some obstacles lately and becoming frustrated. I have been coming across a conversation within Academia which I thought only existed in Religion: specifically the political pollution of core ideals. I can see all my Christian rivals smiling. Yes, yes; of course- I have heard it all before ‘there is just as much problems in other faiths and systems of politics as there is in Christianity, so stop getting so hung up on the problems and get focused upon making it better not worse.”

Blah, blah, blah.

I even had a friend of mine say “when you become a professor you can make the changes you want to see occur” and she also said “you need to play the game, your idealism has no place in the real world.” I thought it haunting that I had heard the first sentence many times before, only in place of ‘professor’ was the word ‘pastor.’ Big sigh!

Before you all get wondering if this might cause me to doubt my criticism of Christianity keep holding your breath. It is this kind of hard reality which makes me sure all religions exist on the same level as all other worldviews; people are problematic- yes, but importing magic elements, infallible gods and inerrancy only makes things worse. But believe what you want to believe.

It has prompted me to be interested in idealism. For I am quite critical of the religious idealism, it seems quite dangerous. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer’s much less famous poem, idealism is also on trial. And like all great art, the answers need to be decoded and grasped with struggle. Troilus is rewarded for his idealism, but only after death (in a pagan sense although Chaucer was an advent Christian).

Life is a forge where we all show up with idealism; the test is survival: both physical and spiritual. Not spiritual in a religious sense, that is just boring adherence to objects well beyond our reach (which is where they take their power from). No, spiritual in a real dirty secular sense; the kind of soul you make for yourself. The world is too big to think that you are so important as to have arrived in it with some kind of special status (in fact, that is the exact opposite of what is real and what one should think).

Religions are conclaves of hurt people who make the world a safer place; if they only knew how this damages themselves, society and the world at large. The harsh realities of life do more teaching than harm, but this is missed entirely by those who seek happiness over truth. I understand why they seek this and it is a good option; only they should realize how they amputate themselves from truth in doing so. (By truth I mean the phenomenological and descriptive sense).

But we all come with idealism, and we are all disappointed by the incongruity of our idealism with the world around us. This frustration is what leads many into the folds of religion; for there you can hold onto your idealism till the very end. The world really is fallen (thus your idealism is correct), people are sinners (your idealism is correct) and in the end all will be fixed, judged and made perfect (your idealism is correct). Who is doing the work, certainly not the believer- they are the most selfish of all, those who refuse to give up their valuables because it hurts too much (sounds almost child-like to me). And that is why I think the only way people can remain religious or become religions is to obtain, retain or create a very acute form of immaturity; and Jesus agrees, even commands such a goal.

The point of life is to be disappointed; here is the touch-stone. You are disappointed, not because you are from God but because you want the world to be different. The Christian will say ‘why do we want it to be different; surely this desire comes from somewhere else.’ I think it comes from our imagination, it is like invention. We do not ‘invent’ things because our ideas come from God, but rather and quite contrastingly they come from our understanding of mundane things. You study a circle long enough you begin to find Math. Our inventions come from mixing things we run into in the world (clearly I am not an innatist). Look at rows of trees long enough and you will begin to see and find numbers; why should morality and progress be any different?

We are disappointed because we can imagine utopia. When we create our idea we watch it fail and learn more (that’s actually science at work). But for the religious, the pain of reality, the loss of idealism, are painful and unnecessary: come to our church! Let the needy come to me, says Jesus, says his decrepit, ugly and inconsistent body. See we are broken and join us. Who can refuse such an appealing offer? The church is a fortress of stone but inside there are only pillows, nothing more.

Life is a struggle to keep ones ideals and remain standing with sobriety all at once. This is a feat! You must learn how your ideas need to change but not fail to let go of them: this is what Troilus is rewarded for. But he is not resurrected, that is lame cheating. Work is work, not building up treasure in Heaven- that is an opium if I ever heard one. In the end your life is your own and it is all you have.

Institutions are not full of problems, they are large systems; they cannot fail only be destroyed. This is where Christians have the exact right idea: their main goal is to keep the church alive, all the rest will come after. And the church works, it works for what it tries to accomplish.

My mistake was a Christian mistake: to think that I could leave the world and find another. You cannot ever do this; you are stuck here like you are stuck with your last name, family and genetic disposition. It is a sin to rile against these things; or rather it is a foolish child-like response to be upset with that which is beyond your power to control. If you can do anything, then do these things says the Stoic, and be released from the disturbance of that which hurts (notice it is an appeal of growth and development which can save you from harsh reality, not an avoidance, retreat or escape from it).

My solution comes from reason not a god; it is open to all commentary, it is a human speaking so no gods, kings or emperors allowed! I must let the fat be burned; it can be a sweet smell to humans- our fat burning. Character cannot be given by a holy spirit, not real character anyway. That would be a spiritual steroid and I am quite sick of those.

The goal is weightlessness, not righteousness.

So Far Away it is Happening Today

2009-04-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

Observing something which occurred 13 billion years ago is amazing! Just think, that something which occurred so long ago but far enough away that it is ‘visible’ to watch it in real-time. It’s events like this which help open the mind to how really big the universe is. This event is now recorded as the furthest object we have recorded. Although it is quite far enough, the mind quickens to questions of ‘what lies beyond that?’ and ‘What is happening right now, in real-time, but isn’t visible because it is so far away?’

Check it out the BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8022917.stm

Religious people fight against certain carbon-dating techniques and various interpretations of fossils, but I wonder how they respond to Astronomical data? I actually did the Astronomy Experiment which suggests the Universe is 13-15 billion years old, based on expansion and mathematics. I think I personally got 18, which I am sure lost me marks.

I guess the theologian can always say that the universe is old and yet hold that the earth is young; or furthermore that the earth was here but we were not and so forth.

There is no such thing as Religion

2009-02-21T12:02:00.000-08:00

I have been watching many religious vs non-religious debates lately and something strange seemed to be oozing through each conversation. The idea of a ‘solution’ for our current raging debate (on this topic) seems impossible to find; yet perhaps there is a wizard cure after all- one which both sides might be able to agree upon.

If you look up the definition of religion it will not take you very long to discover that it is difficult to nail down. In fact, in my religious studies class, we spent and entire section on this very fact. What is even more interesting is that we have another concept or term which is equally ambiguous and vague in many of the same ways: culture.

My proposal is simple: we need to stop thinking about religion as a thing- it is not, it is just another special word for culture (or perhaps sub-culture).

Let me open with, what I hope will be, a very enlightening (though quite stupid) question.

Is it true or false to be Canadian?

Let us assume there are two main groups who try to answer this question: those who think it is true and those who think it is false. Those who say it is false to be Canadian site all those bad things about Canadian history, philosophy and values: the Beothuk Massacre, the oppression of French Canadian citizens by Anglophones, etcetera. Those who say it is true to be Canadian site all those good things about Canadian history, philosophy and values: multiculturalism, freedom to be individualistic, liberal art programs etcetera. So how can we pick a side?

Let us assume that there is a right answer: it actually IS the case that it is false to be Canadian, what is going to happen to Canadians who actually realize this? They will have violent and painful falling outs with it or they will take the criticism as good medicine and re-create and reform what it means to be Canadian until it again surfaces out of ill waters.

The real problem is actually the question itself, not the answers. It is NOT the case that the question ‘is it true or false to be Canadian’ is a good question to ask in anthropology. Can someone see where I am going with this?

When the intellectual critique of religion (or in particular Christianity) is laid, Christians will go one of three ways: accept that they are wrong and become atheist, accept that the criticism is good and change Christianity accordingly or they will take their faith into a place beyond the reach of rational / intellectual critique: religion is about faith not proof. Isn’t it interesting just how similar religion works as a culture?

Who, after a lifetime of being a Canadian could, after realizing just how unreasonable and irrational you have to be in order to remain Canadian, would change from being Canadian into something else? Unlikely most would, more likely most would simply change their religion to fit the criticism. I think this is what has been going on for generations with religion: they just keep changing it to fit the standard.

Can we really blame them?

What does it mean for Christianity to be taught and performed correctly? Well, the answer is righteousness; and they will either defend their actions to the last breath and / or only then change, with the added assumption that ‘now’ we have gotten it right, change what they mean when they say ‘righteousness.’ The slow feminist development within Evangelical Christianity is a good example of this in action, right now. It was fought against as ‘bad’ and only now is finally getting adopted in, now that enough Christians are thinking it is ‘good.’ In a few generations, this idea will fully adopted and will be indistinguishably a part of Christianity, a full intellectual migration will be complete. If you do not believe this example, just research slavery.

I used to think this was a good reason against Christianity’s claim to intellectual truth (and I still think it is) but that critique only has water in an intellectual sphere, and not really a drop in the cultural sphere. Suppose we see Christianity as a culture (only as a culture) what then of my critique? Well, it is simply a sophisticated system of prevalence which is at work, and that seems like quite a good thing doesn’t it? In other words, what seems like a bad thing from the intellectual sphere turns out to be a good thing in the cultural sphere; so which is it?

Suppose we could separate the intellectual aspect of religion from its cultural content, what would we get? That ‘intellectual’ aspect would no longer even be ‘Christian’ would it? Many religions hold to the same philosophical ideals (there is a God, that God informs our morality, ontology, philosophy, we should be good, etc). This is why those debates can seem so amazing one second and then so confusing the next. The question of God’s existence (Metaphysically) is quite independent than a particular religion’s answer or way to answer that question.

Think of how personal experience gets thrown around so much and so often? It is mere cultural content standing in for absent intellectual argument. How often has the entire debate simply been the religious person trying to validate and utilize the personal with the non-religious person trying to validate and utilize the intellectual? And we just keep listening to them each say ‘do it our way’ and ‘you keep breaking the rules!’ If we divide them, I think more clarity and happiness will prevail.

Don’t worry religious; there is good news for you here, though it might not seem like it. If you have a culture as opposed to a religion, think of the kind of freedom that this could allow for. We are not allowed to really critique other cultures as ‘whole-basis’; in other words, we think it is silly to try and argue that being Canadian is wrong or false. Instead, we would rather talk about WHAT is wrong about being Canadian, and what could we CHANGE to make it better. Wouldn’t this be all that much the better for this debate?

What is it that the religious person really is worried about losing in this debate? I honestly do not think it is their faith, but rather it is their way of life, their culture. Their culture is not really informed by their faith (if you honestly think about it and even though ALL religions would greatly object to such an idea). This is how it has been possible for so many religions to exist independent of each other and even in direct conflict with each other. Because their faith statement really means nothing; it is their practices, their ideas, their customs, and their approaches- all of these things are much more significant than their intellectual stance of the existence of God, Jesus or who else they deify. Think about it, it’s brilliant!

What is the number one thing EVERY religious person cites in defense of their religion? Is it their faith or the faith of others like them? NO, it is their cultural values! It is WHAT Christianity has done which gives it credit, the fact that Christianity has been around for so long and has such a rich tradition- these are cultural things, not intellectual things.

When the atheist attacks the intellectual gaps of their religion, religious people respond by saying it is not about the intellectual stuff as it is the relational stuff. Even a personal relationship with God is not really an intellectual ‘thing’ so much as a custom, or way to live: that’s all cultural.

If religious people admitted to this division we could get to what really matters to most people (which surprisingly is NOT cultural nor intellectual, but social issues). We watch non-religious politicians make it legal for homosexuals to get married in Canada, and then the religious want to push it back down. This is a real moment of touch, where arguments, good thought and proper conclusions need to be made. We NEED to live together, that is quite important. Just think about that issue and realize just how little it has to do with anything religious. That initially sounds crazy and totally backwards, but hear me out.

Where does the desire to push this down (in the religious groups) really come from? It comes from religious ontology which wants to make other people like them: this is ethnocentrism, and we now think this bad. But when it is in religion, we have a weird problem. I used to want to call it Theo-centrism, as a good contrast- but it is not this at all. It is a masked ethnocentrism, hidden in this non-real idea we call ‘religion.’

No one cares how other people ‘think’ about God, they care about how other people ‘act’ out their thought upon God. Then they condense this distinction into one thing: religion. It is not religion, but a way of life. They are concerned with ways of life, rather than so called ‘religious’ issues.

Where does the desire to push this up (in non-religious groups) really come from? It comes from non-religious values that people should be free and cultural / religious standards should not be held upon non-religious people: this IS the separation of Church and State! They are arguing intellectually. High liner atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, are guilty of this in the reverse: they want to eradicate culture by intellectual means. Why are they not successful? Because they have the problems all wrong. This is also why the new religious response to atheism is to claim it is another religion, to say that atheist have faith, only instead of God they place it in themselves or in reason and so forth.

As the religious people see and feel themselves being totally pulled into the intellectual arena, they have begun to respond by trying to do the same thing in reverse: trying to pull the atheists into the cultural arena.

If atheists could see religions as not religions but rather as other cultures (or sub-cultures) then they would find a clear line of respect they would not want to cross. They would HAVE to respect the fact that Christianity is another culture (and now gets all those values which other cultures get to have) but they would be able to ATTACK the intellectual aspects of Christianity just as fervently as they already do and want to do. Their attack would be welcomed by the Christian community, for it would have to be seen as curing rather than destruction (for destroying another culture entirely is ethnocentrism, even for the atheist in this case).

Christians could see the attack of atheists as sobering, because they would always know that their culture is not up for grabs. Think about this analogously compared to how the world thinks about America. We like to critique it, but few of us think it should be totally obliterated. In fact that is a mark of intelligence or lack of intelligence: when someone says ‘the world would be a better place if America was totally destroyed’ we know they are stupid, and simply not taking the problem seriously. It is an easy, pat- answer which would just bring about more issues than it solves. When someone says ‘I love America, and I want to see it restored to its original glory’ we know they are intelligent, because they recognize the value of progress, and the acknowledgement that violence and destruction are means and never ends. (Of course there are many positions in-between, these are just examples for clarity of my point, intentionally so).

When we critique America, and its culture we never want it destroyed; rather we want them to see what they are doing from the outside and change accordingly. We want to live together, and our criticisms are based on this desire, not a desire for destruction.

This is what is lacking in the raging debate of our day: the separation of religion into two categories: the intellectual stuff and the cultural stuff. The intellectual stuff (since it deals with ideas) is totally up for destruction and pure (if not even hostile) criticism. This is for its own sake! This is because proper ideas are held without or beyond emotional content. We are just thinking and we want to explore, criticisms (minus the emotional aspect) will, then, always be properly seen as more or a kind of exploration. The cultural aspect of religion will be seen for what it is also, as the personal realm, where one must respect the other in conversation and when critical of that way of life, we do it with kindness because we are talking to people about people, not ideas alone but ways of life (ideas + people). Overt criticism of this is rude. We are still allowed to critique American culture, we just acknowledge we are doing something different than when we critique something philosophical.

Think of the idea of religious personal faith, and how these areas have been confused for convenience: The religious can say ‘you must respect my religion, and that means respecting ALL of my ideas, even the outright crazy ones’ and the non-religious say ‘I do not have to respect ANYTHING in your religion because it is all INTELLECTUAL, and this is my license to be rude.’ The religious confuse this to keep their ideas from sober criticism, and the non-religious confuse this to avoid the cultural good things religion is capable of providing to humanity.

They both totally miss each other, and I think this is what we feel when we observe debates on the subject. Evolution vs. Religion is a false comparison. That would be like saying Particle Physics vs. Swedish way of life; what could be more ridiculous?

But we ARE ridiculous, because we DO think about religion in this strange quasi-way has being both intellectual and cultural but at the same time neither. I don’t think people really care about God’s existence anymore, what they care about is their way of life. The fact that this notion is compacted and hard-pressed into the idea of God’s existence is a cheated roll for validation. If everything religious stands or falls on God’s existence then this is good, because it is something which cannot be conclusively proved true or false. The atheists of our day are just as delusional in that they ALSO think by attacking the idea of God they then therefore attack the culture of God (but these are not really connected and as we can see can easily exist independent).

When we talk about making laws (think abortion) or how we run our schools (prayer for instance); we both cheat it right up. Imagine how stupid it would be if, when debating in courts on abortion laws, someone were to start trying to prove or disprove God’s existence? God’s existence is not why religious people are afraid of prayer being taken out of schools (though they would claim as much); it is rather a loss of their culture. This is why they go out and make schools for their own communities: because they want to preserve their culture.

Now the question to ‘can we live together’ is a cultural one, but it is also an intellectual one. When we have more than one culture (and therefore more than one take on intellectualism) we must come to some agreement which provides peace and tranquility or some kind of cohesion. To do this we MUST try to separate the two. If you murder someone, but do to some cultural rules, we take that into account but you certainly do not get off free (or ought not too) right?

I think we do injustice to the religious vs. non-religious debate by simplifying it into religion. Think of how much harder it would be if we recognized that there was a cultural element involved fellow atheists? Think about how much harder it would be to defend one’s intellectual life if you were not allowed to hide behind tradition (as Revelation) concerning ideas, religious readers? Most of all, think about the kind of clarity we could procure if we stopped talking about religion and instead talked about philosophy and culture?

Religion is just a masked word for culture; it is confusing and getting in the way of solution. We have philosophy (ideas) and culture (ways of life)- and the sooner we acknowledge that we are dealing with something more complicated than the existence of God, the sooner we can stop the divide of so-called ‘religious’ vs. ‘non-religious’ and bring some solidarity. More importantly, we can bring to the surface the real issues which concern us, which have always concerned us: good-life, ethics and prosperity. Once we clear up the confusion, we can talk about these things properly, and with respect where it is due and without respect where it is not due.

Therefore, I submit to you that such a thing as ‘religion’ does not exist.

The Fragile Atheist

2009-02-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Jon said:
“If we engage in community for "health and complete human experience," are we doing so for ours or everyone elses? What happens when my experience is diminished or detracted from by others? Do I choose my own health and experience or theirs?”

Aristotle suggests that everything comes back to the pursuit of happiness, because only happiness is an end in and of it self. So when I start asking you ‘why did you…’ questions, he thinks that eventually you will always come back to happiness as an ultimate end. You will also find, he suggests, that you will not feel a need to explain further than happiness; the answer: because it made me happy, seems to be sufficient.

How happiness is worked out is quite interesting. It is a way of being properly selfish, and it works together with other people being selfish in the same way to promote a cohesive community. Think about two businessmen who will both profit from a transaction which happens not to be hurting anyone in any way. Aristotle suggests we have to act for ourselves first because that is just the kind of creature we are, but that this does not mean we have to be vicious.

We also have the case where we choose to intentionally diminish ourselves for others; and there is no theological element present at all. We have a mother who sacrifices for her child, her life and retains nothing. Why? Perhaps because she feels the survival of the younger trumps her own existence? Perhaps because she feels her existence is made complete after she has created life and cares more about that life existing if it ever is forced into a contrast with her own? There are many ways to answer such a question.

Jon said:
“So how does the atheist negotiate this tension, and what principles or foundational tenets (I'm avoiding the word 'beliefs' for your sake) guide them?”

I think this issue is as unresolved in atheism as it is in any religion. The tension of individuals and the group is a fundamental problem of existence; it is talked about in almost all accounts of history, philosophy and in most religions. The problems are core related: what does it mean to be an individual, how do we define freedom? We have the American perspective, the freedom in the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech etc.

Atheist’s value existence the most, perhaps because it is finite, fragile and fleeting. This informs us to value the kind of existence people have. Empathy plays a large role, because people who do not think everyone ought to be held equally and fairly (I am thinking evil or questionable people here) will still more than likely respond with empathy to those they are oppressing. The principle would be avoidance of death, avoidance of pain- because these things are self-evidently hostile to human flourishing.
Atheists argue these very things today in courts, and in legislation.

I think all religions do is take these human fundamentals and adopt them. Christians hold that people are important because they are made in the image of God. Hindus think that people are important because they are born again and again and one’s actions effect the kind of rebirth one is given. Now which is true, which is better? What is interesting is that the ontological qualifier actually effects little the kind of good action they will purport. This is why philosophy is so important, because they try to ditch the story and take the idea.

What does it mean to be good? What is the good life? Answering these questions and/or exploring possible answers to these questions are the aims of philosophy. Religion purports to do the same, but they are stricter in their exploration, manner and acknowledgement of other options when they answer them. This is why I objected when you said Theology is similar to Philosophy; sure they are similar but any philosopher who holds one text is more important in some way (on a religious ideal) is no longer a philosopher. They no longer ‘love wisdom’ but only love their religion.

Philosophy is more about questions than it is about answers, and in my assessment, religion is the exact opposite: it is more about answers then it is about questions. Religion professes the good things about itself as an end, not a path to further contemplation or further exploration. The common Christian ideal is that we are all searching for Jesus, to fill that God-spot in our hearts, and once we have Jesus, we are deficient if we still feel a yearning.

Jon said:
“I would be interested to know if a comparable "rallying cry" exists in atheism or other religions as exists in Christianity. what mystifies me is what one does when self-giving COSTS someone. Why give for the other at great cost to self? Is the atheist's optimism for and belief in humanity THAT strong?”

I think the rallying cry would be a valuing of existence; it is valued because at all our best attempts to understand it, its limits and its ontology, it seems to end at death and that makes it valuable for its brief nature.

I think self-giving is easily explained in parenting on it is based on the principle of existence. We encounter situations were we give up our existence to provide for a better existence for others, where they be our family, or parents, our loved ones and even our countrymen. The fragility of existence demands our attention and informs our desire to take life serious: we call that ‘seriousness’ morality and we promote it, enforce it and purport it because of its nature.

What could be stronger? Is telling an ontological religious story make it more important? How about extending existence into pure bliss for the righteous and pure pain for the evil? Does that really add anything? I do not think so, I think it oversimplifies it. It is just like the idea of origin, a religious person is worse off thinking that an Agent created existence (why is that better that not knowing or saying a non-agent started existence?) the Agent is then in need of explanation, its origin simply becomes a larger problem. The same is true in morality; suggesting there is some kind of larger religious story to inform and explain why we take human fragility serious, is only adding confusion, extra unnecessary factors and usually has to simplify or over complicated matters in order to accomplish its worldview focus.

Now that said, religious stories are still very prevalent and important today. They are beautiful and they are powerful because they illustrate the human condition into particulars. They inform these ideas by limiting them into one particular point of view. This is one of the best aspect of the post-modern way of thinking: realizing that we do not have to diminish other religious stories to enforce the validity of our own, we can simply read and read and think and think. Serious religious people are against such a goal, they think pluralism and universalism is dangerous (and they are right to some extent) for when people start to read and explore they realize that religious ideas are not sacred or particular to that religion; they realize that everyone thinks in similar ways and there is a plethora of good answers to life’s questions all across the board. That can take the shine and special status off a particular religion, and this is why I think religions hold to their types of ‘holiness’ and discourage mental exploration.

Also to be fair there are many religious people who accept this critique and embrace the de-valuing of particular religions (as something which one needs to pick individually and then feel superior to all others). What is interesting is that we seem to not want to call these people religious, we want to call them something else and so we call them spiritual. They are religious but they DO see themselves in a greater context; they see the dangerous of theo-centrism and avoid it. They hold that their religious perspective is interesting, is informative, powerful and significant, but they do not think that these things show how their religion is better than others, they simply prefer it. They would never think themselves as being ‘right’ and other religions as being less compared to them.

Jon said:
“Can real community really happen without a conviction in the equal value of each individual? Christianity has a belief in our creation in the image of God. I'd like to know what equal human rights are built on otherwise. Maybe I look ignorant asking the questions, but seriously: In a system founded upon evolution and so on, where does this foundational belief in equality of all humans come from?”

I think one of the things you are reaching here is a difference which is hard to describe in the religious / non-religious comparison. Let me try. I think most non-religious people do not feel the need to have the same kind of ontological foundation as religious people do. So, what I hear you saying is something like ‘I can see how the Christian ontology informs my moral stance but when I look at an atheist, I cannot see how his atheism gives him legs to stand on pertaining to moral questions?’ If you are not saying this then sorry, but I am going to try and answer THIS question, and perhaps some of the fallout will answer your particular question.

In philosophy we do not connect our knowledge in a large system. Meaning, Plato, Aristotle and other moral guys do not feel the need to make an ontological foundation before they begin to analyze the question of the good and moral life. Now, one’s ontology can and usually will inform their contemplation of what is good but for the most part they seem to be quite separate (at least they are for the non-religious person).

Take, as an example, the Hindu, the Christian and the atheist. All three walk into a bar and begin to discuss what it means to be good. Let us say they are talking about the right to self defense when threatened with death. What is remarkable is that all three might actually agree with the same permissible action and this is in spite of their different ontological worldviews. How is this possible? I think it is possible because their ontology is informed by their existence and not the other way around (as they would WANT to suggest it is). That is another debate altogether, but I think you can understand my point of view here.

I think, even with the many differences with all sorts of worldviews and worldview approaches to reality, we all actually find ourselves in the same reality. We all have access to the same phenomenon and how we organize it, talk about it, take parts of it serious and parts flippantly is greatly informed by our worldview. But notice that I am putting the phenomenon first and not secondly: that is the major difference in religious / non-religious comparison. That is also the main point of my imagination critique of religion. So long as the religious person keeps to their idea that THEIR ontology is right, they are paralyzed from really understanding or exploring others; they can only ‘make sense’ of them in their own limited language. That is true for everyone across the board, but religious people might not even acknowledge that this is an issue. I find they usually stand behind their inability to understand and that is valued whereas the non-religious will always see ignorance as a bad thing. That’s debatable of course, but that is what I think.

Jon said:
“I'd say that real community needs people to be committed to give for the sake of the other, not out of compulsion, but of love. I know that in Christianity one finds this compulsion from a belief in the human story as part of a larger Christ-event. I'm not sure where the self-giving impetus would come from or be sustained otherwise.”

I think the story Christians put forth as to how and why love plays such an important role is quite beautiful and it is a wonderful way to make particular the ideas of love, cohesion and survival. Just think about the anthropomorphic aspects of such a story: it is my parenting example deified. God is the parent who makes creation and is willing to give up everything to rescue it. Now think about which comes first ontology or phenomenon?

A Christian will say that parents ARE what they are because they are made in God’s image; they have their ontology set up first. This also happens when they honestly examine other religions: they see how someone else has gotten THEIR ontology in a different way.

Why should it be my way or the Christian way? Why should phenomena inform ontology and not the other way around?

That is a hard question to answer; mine is based on reason and the value that knowing more and experiencing more is ‘better’ than the alternative. My parents are not interested in how other religions are similar to theirs; they do not like it when I say I think I can be a happy and good person outside of religion. In some way I can never really explain it to them and so perhaps I cannot actually convince you. It is a question of values and since these are the most informative and most powerful aspects of our individual existence, they are the last to change and the hardest to form after they are set.

I have suggested my view and tried to make it reasonable, but what I hope I have accomplished is shown how it is possible (if not quite easy) to show how individuals can hold morals, be good and life happy fulfilling lives without any theology involved. I think that is possible and my belief that it is so greatly informed my path of atheism; so I can understand how it would seem difficult to accept.

So how does that story compare with Christianity? I think it is attractive because it does not hold to any religious constructs: there is nothing you have to take on faith or trust me on. It is all there for the taking and the leaving. It is also not diminished when it is rejected; it is not failing because it does not profess to be the only answer but just a particular taking of the subject. It is not rigid and can be changed when new information is presented (which keeps happening). The best part of it, in this comparison, is that it is an open view seeking other takes. It is not a profession, it based on a value that additional information is good. Like the scientific goal to disprove the predecessor because in disproving them, they might find a superior take on an old subject.

I know I usually seem quite hostile to religion, as someone who wants to get rid of it but I honestly do not want that. What I do want to critique is this idea that religious people take their weakness as strength. Religious people think they are honestly reasonable and good people; I am glad for those values. But I think they need to realize just how vicious their ideas are, their presentation and their ontological strictness.

I do not think they are being reasonable, and this is why I object to them declaring so. I also do not think they are consistent with their ideas; rather intentionally inconsistent to hold a type of non-vicious convenience.

To end boldly, I think many religious people fail to see themselves in a larger context. Instead they think they ARE the larger context and thus shrink the world greatly, pushing everyone else outside of their horizon into the un-understandable. What I think they fail to realize (perhaps to their convenience) is that their inability to think outside of their religion is self inflicted and due to their lack of mental exploration (ignorance).

There is nothing wrong with ignorance it self, but when we have someone who honestly wants to talk about the world, but only has explored a very small aspect of it and yet they think they are allowed to talk about ALL of it with an informed opinion, then I think they have a problem.

Who’s That Little Vagabond Who Stole the Secular Bible?

2008-11-25T21:12:00.001-08:00

Though I can admire your desire to search for an authentic ground and we enjoy rejecting boxes and pigeon holes; you can come across as simply rejecting labels for their own sake. Again, that’s fine, but these labels (atheist, agnostic, theist, etc) are descriptions, not permanent states; or to compare to Christianease, they are directions and not denominations. It seems to me you are too focused upon not being under a direction rather than simply being self aware and/or honest (though you certainly are not being dishonest). I entertain the post-modern approach as much as the next guy- but, to me, you sincerely seem agnostic. You are not agnostic in the sense that you purport the definite inability to know; but you are agnostic in the sense that you do not really know which direction to take or rather you are simply still making up your mind. Perhaps a more palpable term, which you may accept, is ‘seeker’- yet it is still quite agnostic (to me at least).

In your rejection of soft atheism you say you “cannot know the probabilities” and you say this alluding to some kind of objective, scientific or philosophical standard, which you do not want to ‘eisegete’ towards. To me, this sounds like you are applying a biblical approach to your personal philosophy; in that you reject taking an ‘authoratively’ driven position and hold out for what you call ‘truth.’ These are noble pursuits, but getting a grasp on some kind of deductive objective crust of truth by which to self define sounds suspiciously religious and less philosophic to me (though it is not as if these two fields are mutually exclusive- they obviously are not). However, there is no secular Bible.

Let me put it another way: I care less about objective pursuits and more about your personal outlook. We use reason in philosophy for sure, but it seems objectively true that the world of facts (science) gives us less than enough data to make a scientific claim about metaphysical questions. This is why it seems silly if not laughable to use when either field attempts to consume the other. Though the world of facts ought to apply limits to our reasoning, it simply gives less than enough evidence to provide us with definite scientific answers , at least for religious ideas. This is why the argument for religion a la revelation is also an overreach; for the same reason as why science cannot prove there is no God. It is a two-way street of inconclusive evidence, one you seem to be waiting upon. You are right that no revelation-bus will come to pick you up- sadly the deductive objective bus is also running late- unlikely it will come either.

What is one to do? Perhaps let go of those deductive pursuits and consider probability? But how can one trust probability; if you can trust it at all, to what extent? Not to an objective level, that would be making a similar previous (and religious) mistake. What is one left with? Reasonability. To who’s standards? Well, initially your own and later the combination of yours and mine; then the addition of others etc. This is the origins of science and philosophy; only in the latter we are allow ourselves to move beyond empirical objects; Theology incorporates Holy Books, tradition and ecclesiastical vested interest- but all of it resting (secretly at times) on reasonability. Sometimes, if need be, we will reason our way out of reason.

To whom this sounds ‘weak’ I say it only does in relation to foolish pursuits of empty content. In the same way my life story sounds ‘weak’ when compared to that of Achilles, the weakness in mine caused by the mythical strength in his. Reason enlightens us to what is really going on here, and the probabilities therein are, in my opinion, all we’ve got. It is so much more appealing and comfortable to buy into revelation, as it stands it is just as convenient as believing the responsibility on life, morality and meaning all rest on a powerful god who cares for us like a father, a perfect father etc. Our gods are always perfect versions of us or things we see; even a perfect version of perfection itself. Where is that perfection found, where do we glimpse it during everyday life? It is only found, I suggest, within ourselves, and there we find not but a desire for it (perfection).

All a priori arguments for God’s existence aside, I do not think we are looking for God so much as we are looking for ourselves. We look for meaning, for something -anything- outside ourselves, which can tell us who and what we are. Tell us how to act, how to be happy, how to stop fearing and how to live well. We want answers to these questions and we find them all over the place: religion, political states, communities, disciplines, science but ultimately and most fundamentally we find them in ourselves.

You are no longer pleased with Christianity, perhaps religion in general. You seem disinclined to align yourself with any party, group or philosophy- good. What do you want to do, where do you want to go, what kind of person do you want to be, what kind of life do you want to live? Good ridden to pre-packaged systems and ready-made instant pat-answers, welcome to the world of self-definition and personal exploration. You’re late, but you made it and who has ever made it on time? Not me, not even Immanuel Kant. Welcome to reality- I think I just saw the last scale fall from your eyes. Contemplate, my brother, contemplate!

In a nice and proper (post-modern) way I wish you (a la Nietzsche) pain and suffering sufficient to bring a new sobriety and close with a William Blake poem:

The Little Vagabond

Dear mother, dear mother, the church is cold;
But the ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm.
Besides I can tell where I am used well;
Such usage in Heaven will never do well.

But if at the church they would give us some ale,
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale,
We’d sing and we’d pray, all the livelong day,
Nor ever once wish from the church to stray.

Then the parson might preach and drink and sing,
And we’d be as happy as birds in the spring;
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at church,
Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.

And God, like a father rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as he,
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the barrel,
But kiss him and give him both drink and apparel.

All the best to you who made this site as enjoyable as it has been for me. You are all welcome to tear me apart, like wild animals for that would be a nice way to perish, woudn't it?

Conclusio Provisio

2008-11-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

Provisional Response – As If There Is Any Other Type…

Throughout the debate we have been engaging in, there have been many good points brought forth. Per se, a lot of which has been mere opinion; and this is what I am not going to comment on.

Personal experience is not mere opinion. Personal experience is warranted opinion (to an extent), and we often call this either (too strongly) proof or evidence, or (to avoid confrontation) merely subjective reason-to-believe. Subjective reason-to-believe is opinion without explanation. The terms “proof” and “evidence” do not give justice to what we can actually grasp or explain from our experiences. What I am writing is obviously not circumstantially universal, rather, situational. The reason I am stating the above is because the situational, or for our context religious matters, are not concrete, and are often presented as proof, evidence, or mere subjective experience.

To clarify, I do not have any interest in discussing with any person, whatsoever, mere opinion – unwarranted belief – unexplainable irrationality – when it comes to Jesus Christ and God-experiences.

Biblically, experience with God was/is concrete. Conventionally, it is the opposite. And this is praised. I do give my intellectual 10% to this religio-cultural conventionality any longer.
I have stated clearly that I have desire for relationship with God, if he exists. I have been given “a + b = c” answers, most of which state that I am doing something wrong. I have been asked whether I am giving up on Jesus after all he has done for me. I have been told to wait for the voice of God until I hear it. But a very important question that I am left with, a question which is religiously rhetorical, is this: “How long am I to wait?” The most concrete answer is “Until he speaks.” These multiple “a + b = c” answers are not logical, and do not mirror a relationship I want to be a part of any longer. Reader, you can hold to all your opinions concerning why I can’t “hear” God.

I will no longer hold on to what is not mine. I am pursuing truth, and I have heard from numerous people that “As long as I am genuinely seeking, I Will find the truth.” So let it be.
I have not a speck of proof, evidence, subjective warrant, for the existence of God -- nothing that is a posteriori. I do not wish to seek a prior religiosity…that is not relational. And, in addition to the fact that it is not relational, every single theistic concept that I have studied which is termed a priori, every single one has left me grasping air rather than God.**

**(But God Is like the air…even though one cannot see him, one can feel him). I desire more than a feeling.

I also have not a speck of proof, evidence, subjective experience, specifically denying the existence of God.

Conclusio Provisio:

I do not have a need to make a definitive choice for or against God at this moment. I am however led to clarify my current stance.

1. I am not a “sold out believer” in Jesus Christ because I have not encountered him, nor have I received spiritual revelation concerning the truth of the witness of the Bible, or The Book of Mormon for that matter.

2. I am also not a absolute believer in God, because to my knowledge I have not experienced him.
3. I am seeking truth.
4. I am attempting to be non-eisegetical in my approach to life, and in my sifting through my daily experiences and my memories of the past. Because of this, I will no longer claim to have encountered God. For if I were to claim this, as I have until this point, I would be dishonest, and I would be basing this proclamation on stale, half-memories, to which I have no current grasp, understanding, or connexion.

5. I am not an atheist.
a. I cannot claim, or rather, do not wish to be called a soft atheist, mainly because I do not currently have the confidence to call myself this; I do not have the sufficient experience / evidence to call myself this. However, I am leaning towards the conclusion that because I have not experienced him (god), I do indeed have more atheistic evidence than theistic evidence – based on experience, and therefore warranted belief (If anyone has read A. Plantinga, and his theory of epistemic religio-warrant, I am against his position, and do not use the term warrant here as he does). As for the idea that God probably does not exist, I cannot confidently claim this. I do not know the probabilities, and I am not willing to eisegete the probabilities in order to escape religion. I have escaped it without this. I am not looking for the title soft atheist for two main reasons: 1) It would be the death of my primary relationships (even though my primary relationships are apparently based in more than religious titles), and 2) I belief that if I were to call mysef this, I would be doing so for mere authoritative reasons. I would want to have a grasp on what I believe - on where I am at right now.

6. I am not an agnostic.
a. I am not saying that there is no way to know, or grasp, one way or another whether God exists or not. I will come to a more concrete conclusion…when the time is right, and when I can confidently say that he does or does not exist, whether by weighing concrete probabilities, or by arrogantly claiming to have proof that God does or does not exist (heaven or hell forbid – whichever suits the reader)
7. I am biased against Christianity.
a. I have not once, since my struggle began, heard a good, strong, logical argument for the most essential theistic ideas. This is unacceptable.
b. The most compelling Christian arguments for certain doctrines, etc., always rely on a certain epistemic paradigm (usually modern). I have not read a theologian who’s ideas can survive multi-generationally. Why does theology constantly change? Not because it is being revealed more and more as the years go on, but rather because theology seems to be defined and reliant upon the cultural context. Most Christian doctrines can only survive in a Modern Epistemic Paradigm. This is unacceptable.
i. Semi-Conclusion from this frustration: Humbly hold/ditch your doctrines.

c. Not one Christian has given me sufficient reason to believe in A) personal experiences with God, or B) that their own claimed personal experiences with him are even understandable. For Such An Intimate Relationship With The Divine, The Lacking Relational Lucidity Is Absolutely Revolting.

Thank you for the debate opportunity per se. It was worth the sweat, and tears. But it is not over. I want you all to know that I am not impressed with any argument brought forth. One is weak, the other is existentially detrimental to me personally in a myriad of ways. And, to be fair, I think both theism and atheism have a tinge of both…

This is not to say the presentations were horrible…just unappealing. But what can one expect…after being brainwashed into believing in such pretentious transcendental mythos (heaven, hell, etc.), how can any other realistic worldview seem as close to euphoria?

I encourage everyone to continue searching.

When we stop searching, we become the ones we hate.

If you have already stopped searching, and believe you have arrived…well, then you probably are so far stuck in self-deception that what I write (or what anyone writes contrary to your current belief) won’t make any difference.

Final Words:
What has been written here may seem contradictory at points. I am willing to engage in some dialogue concerning those points. I would however like to restrict this dialogue, with Joel’s permission, to three online entries at the most. Let us not beat a dead horse for too long, lest we start to enjoy it. (I look forward to a future debate on another topic.)

It may seem disheartening to some that I have not stated a concrete decision above. Please understand that from my vantage point I do not own the choice. In other words, I am lead to not (vocally) choose at this point. Maybe in a month I will choose. Maybe in two… Nevertheless, the point isn’t that I am or am not an Atheist. The point is that I have better ground to stand on today because of what has been discussed. I am closer to a choice today than I was yesterday. Again, in short and with more clarity, if I were single, my choice would be made. Do not criticize me too harshly for this…

And finally, for those of you who are in connexion with God, tell him that I am still waiting, but that I won’t wait forever

(In case he hasn’t heard my blasts of relational want).

Sincerely,
-Benjamin Ryan St. Pierre
(First Draft) The Twenty-seventh Evening of September, 2008
(Final Draft) The Seventeenth Evening of November, 2008
Strathmore, AB

Long time in the Ending

2008-09-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

So our conversation regarding Ben has been finished for a while now, but Ben himself as been brooding and pondering a kind of epilogue- one which he feels merits this much time of consideration and contemplation (that and he has a new born life to take care off so cut him a little slack okay?).

Thus I wanted to incite some excitement and anticipation as to what he may say or think or feel? Get ready, though there will likely be some final thoughts from everyone else, the conversation is still done and finished.

I have thought about opening up another conversation but schooling is quite demanding. Jon has been working steady on an essay about women in ministry and I suggest you read it; it is quite good by Christian standards (click on the Jon link to the right).

So start your anticipation! And get your epilogues ready!

I Raise A Glass!

2008-08-21T22:21:00.001-07:00

Donkey said:
“What I'm trying to say is that two people can use good reasoning and if they value different things, come to different conclusions. For argument: abortion. Some people value human life and therefore fight for the rights of unborn babies to live. Others value personal rights and fight for people being able to have abortions. Both use reasoning and both believe very strongly that they are right. How does an atheist navigate this tricky situation?”

I agree. The problem is present in our daily masses. However I think we can argue for which and what values one should hold and which one should not hold. On a topic like Abortion we find impasses, but this is because the topics are difficult to navigate and people do not always hold their specific values because they have good reasons too but rather because they were raised to or other authorities said they ought too.

I can imagine that when slavery was being discussed legally there were all kinds of people who found it near impossible to let go of slavery due to their upbringing. This is why it takes time. I can think of a good Christian example.

Canadian Bible College was under fire for not allowing women to take theology degrees; they were allowed to take everything else except this leading pastoral role (also reflective in the church context). When the school finally allowed it there were many people who had trouble with this new idea. They found it unsettling. Young people also did, since what was being presented to them was not the same thing as what hey had grew up with. With respect and emotional understanding, these people found it simply difficult to cope with the change.

Thus I think the difference of values we find in reality, though seeming like a true impasse, is really a symbol of how dearly we hold to our ways. It is not the end but the beginning of a journey, and when it comes to the evolution of morality it is just part of the development. For today we mostly regard slavery as being immoral and it is not legally tolerated in any Western community. Though racism still plays a real dampening role, I optimistically think it too will follow.

We will always have the dangers of these vices, but when they are ejected from the legal sphere a real victory is made (even though that victory is always fragile and in danger of being lost).

I’m not going to say anything more on evolution.

Donkey said:
“I guess I just see morality as being bigger than people.”

I agree that morality seems to be a concept which is bigger than people. I think as an idea it should be treated as such. However, I do not think that any of these facts also demands morality is not still made by humans. Think of a beautiful city which is created by a society (like Rome or Oxford). These buildings, castles, city walls and places of contemplation are no longer just things built by humans but seem to transcend the original humans who made them. Other humans come along and add and take away from them and though new people ‘live’ there, the place has come into an existence all unto itself. I think the same is true of morality.

It is easy to look at morality for the first time and see all kinds of special, divine and holy aspects of it. But the same is true of beholding a truly wonderful work of art or listening to a symphony composed by a genius. This is why we use divine modifiers when talking about people. They are ‘god sends’ geniuses (which means watched over by a sprit); we have Muses and gifts from God. But really, it is just people excelling the expectations of other people and the status quo. It is beautiful and wonderful but it is only human.

Perhaps importing a God figure to make sense of it all makes us feel better about it all? I do not really know.

Otherwise thank you for all your points and questions. Do not worry about the banter and ‘fun’ comments- I can take it and I know you and I enjoy a little scuffle now and then. It is appreciated and I enjoy a good opponent who can take a little abuse and give some back in return.

All that said, I think I have given a good defence as to the philosophies and reasoning behind how an Atheist goes about living morally. I renew my suggestion that God is not needed when it comes to being moral. Nor is God needed when explaining the origins of the universe.

Again though it seems we have exhausted this conversation and the dwindling calls me into action to say perhaps we need a new thing to talk about. I think we can close the talk about Atheism, but to close it I shall try to win the hearts of the reader as to fulfill my attempt to be honestly self critical.

So here is what is really lame about being an Atheist:

All the responsibility is my own:
As an atheist, I have to make up everything I am, encounter and deal with every problem as an initial solo existing being. This is the most undesirable aspect and hardest part to swallow. For who wants to hold all the keys and be responsible for everything themselves? We all want our friends to come and help us out, we want our parents to tell us how to live, we want our loved ones to tell us we are worthy of their love, and of course we want a God to tell us that we are loved and destined for good things.

We want to know that something really good is ultimately in charge and will make all the wrongs right, wipe away every tear and hold the wicked accountable for their wrong doings. Letting go of this is likely the hardest part of becoming an atheist and I think it is the hardest part to live with.

‘I could not live and be happy knowing there was not a God out there’ is what I hear all the time as to why a particular religious person cannot honestly consider the possibility to losing their faith.

I understand and I empathize. I get it and I feel it, constantly. There are still many days when I wake up and think, ‘oh man, life would be much better if there was a God out there.’

I also used to think that I was happier when I was religious- but this last year has finally proven that false. It takes a while to shed all that guilt and grow out of always feeling like there is a God watching you; that you are born into a sinful and fallen existence; and you are incapable of doing anything good and that the only way to find anything good, meaningful and worthy of any positive description is found in God. Perhaps that sounds good in a sermon about the gospel, but for me it is now much more depressing than holding all the responsibility.

But that is just how I feel and nothing more.

Atheism is hard because there is no guarantee for a happy ending. I am honestly afraid of humanity losing it all; in one nuclear flash we might lose all the progress the last twenty thousand years have provided. That is something which keeps me up at night.

Atheism is hard because there is nothing after death. After I become a closet atheist I went through a terrible time of being very afraid of dying. I was afraid of finding out Christianity was right, of facing God and God sending me to hell. Worse, I was afraid of it being the whole end and nothing but the end. You just vanish and cease to exist! It can still scare me a bit, but then I remember that I did not exist for thousands and thousands of years beforehand and that didn’t seem so bad so perhaps it can’t be so bad.

Mostly, I just got tired of being afraid all the time, feeling guilty. When I became an atheist I got to shed that religious guilt and fear but then found other fear and guilt took its place. Finally, as the cliché says, I had get rid of being afraid- the only thing I fear now is fear itself (sorry, it’s lame but clear).

Atheism is hard because there are not guarantees, no promises to trust in, no special status for me and nothing to ‘hope’ for. What one quickly finds on the other side of this madness, however, is that one is free to think, free to hope and free to construct a life which they think is fit for themselves.

This is why I always talk about maturity, for I think it involves becoming a true individual- as defined when a person begins defining themselves and no longer listens to their parents, their government, their friends or even their God. They become what they want to become and that is that. Perhaps this what Jesus was talking about when he said he came to turn mother against son etc? Donkey once said he found God spoke to him mostly through the kind of person he was becoming / become. I think that is the right path and I think that path is made open the most by atheism.

But do not fret my religious friends, for all we have been doing here is talking about ideas. We have talked about the ideas of faith, the ideas of religion, the ideas of Christianity and the ideas of atheism. I truly believe everyone here on this site takes living seriously and is always working hard to becoming the best damn men we can be and for that I am honoured to be in discussion with you all.

In the end we will both be trying to live as well as we can. If I am right we will cease to exist after death and your life will still be a good legacy for the world, religious or not. If you are right and Jesus stands there, he can convince me I am wrong where I am wrong and then I can feel good about how just he is, and how just the world has been created to be.

What I care about is how we live our lives and from what Leif, Matthew, Jon, Ben and Gordon has said here, I can conclude that we are all men. We all want the truth and we are all willing to make ourselves uncomfortable to find it perhaps take any and all measures to find the most of it.

I know I have been curt, arrogant, egotistical and condemning of religion- but please know that I have deep respect for you all as individuals even if I love to attack your faith and beliefs. Remember, as a philosopher I only attack your ideas and allow for your actions to defend themselves in your own lives, in your own communities. As an atheist the only critic who matters is myself and thus I respect you are nearly the same, as your own opinion of yourself is very important and I respect you all for it.

Please know that though I might come across as being disrespectful I am only being provocative and contentious, and perhaps even humorous at times. I have greatly enjoyed these conversations and I hope we will have many more in the future.

Though it might not seem true or make sense to you and your values, please know that I would never insult someone I did not respect. I think it is Billy The Kid who said ‘I never stole a horse from someone I didn’t like,’ and I hope that has been the esthetic everyone has felt on this site.

Thus on this last note I raise my glass and toast to you all, may you be well and live long and endeavour to reason well as I hope this sight has caused you perhaps perturbed to do so. I hope you all find success in your ways and raise your children well. You should have all the best! I drink to you all!

Be merry!

Oh yeah, and don’t be so afraid of losing your faith, it’s really not so bad- in fact it somewhat tingles….

Atheist’s Ethic

2008-08-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

I think Gordon’s question is, if morality is wholly based on reason and reason is a human construct, why then do we feel moral precepts before conjuring them out of reason? The flip problem of this assertion is that it may imply a moral relativism which seems easily dismissed by common sense.

Where does our natural moral compass come from? Most scientists think that it has evolved over time through the ability to empathize. Our ability to see the world as another person allows us to understand our actions affect other people in profound ways. As such, over time we have developed an inbuilt reaction to the suffering of others. Thus when we hear ‘sad’ sounds, we react in a likeminded way.

One does not have to examine the human conscience for very long to see how it can become very problematic. To say it in one word: adolescence is a good counterexample for those who believe the conscience is a perfect tool for deriving morality. In contrast, Parents will find themselves ‘feeling bad’ when administrating appropriate discipline. Though they might feel like their acts of punishment are ‘wrong’ they KNOW that they are important and necessary for building character.

So, although conscience is a good place to begin searching for a moral code, one is quickly faced with situations which demand exterior supply. To answer the harder moral questions religious people turn to the Bible, and rightly so, for most religious texts are good sources for tracking various laws, customs and social mores. However, just because our ancestors did it actually can work out very poorly in new and different cultures. Thus we discover that morality is not written in stone but is also an evolving object.

We naturally think that the changes our body undergoes through adolescence are ‘bad,’ we need to be told that the changes are not bad but good and natural.

We naturally think that what is unfamiliar to us is dangerous and scary. This leads to racism, ethnocentrism (theocentrism) and other various ‘us vs. them’ philosophies. This is why we need to educate people toward acceptance.

We naturally react to violence and threats with further violence and further threatening. This is why we need to educate ourselves away from these ‘natural’ feelings and desires.

I understand the religious person will place most of these ‘natural undesirables’ in the fallen nature category.

If one takes all the moral content of the Bible and all the moral content which holds water when rationally tested, one will find more overlap than difference. Rational morality is flexible and capable of growth, whereas Religious morality is stagnant and incapable of change for the most part. Silly verses like Lev 19:19 would be found in the yellow zone (which have been abandoned by most but not all). Various religious views of women would also be found in the yellow zone.

Do not murder would be found in the dark red zone, whereas the contemporary view of Homosexuality would be found in the outer lighter red zone.

The problem for the religious person is that reason can lead one to the proper moral conclusions without the aid of religious texts. The dark red square within the light red square is overlap because reason already covers these areas (like murder). The only areas reason does not cover is the yellow space. There, religions purport irrational moral ideas, like condemning homosexuality.

Figuring out what ought to be moral is not an easy process, and perhaps this is what can lead to people wanting to find a God or specific religion which simply tells one how things should be; rather than trying to figure it out themselves. Putting the moral responsibility upon God is also an easier task than fighting for what is right. Believing that one day, beyond death, a supreme power which is supremely just and good will hold all the bad guys accountable and reward all the good guys, is also attractive but sadly pacifying.

I think at the end of the day the simple fact remains that one does not need religion to be moral; nor does one need a person at the top in order to define moral standards. Religious people will obviously disagree, stating that so called rational morality is in fact false- claiming that only God can decide what is moral and what is not. To these people I simply ask how are you able to communicate with another religious person from another religion?

The answer? Because of reason. And in that answer one can find the key to all moral spheres. It is all reasoning, all of the religious morality and all of the non-religious morality. The problem is that the religious have a yellow zone which they refuse to let go of (at least some refuse, certain groups of religions are beginning to move forward like the United Church).

Atheism on Trial?

2008-08-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

We have used and abused, attacked and prodded various religious stances so I was thinking that we might give our religious survivors a chance to beat up the atheists for a while; any takers?

We can even play by the same rules. So give your frustrations, your problems with atheism; attack with all the force you wish and show us the weaknesses you see in atheism. It will be a nice side bar for Ben and we can have the tables turned against the atheist for a change.

So if you wish, Gordon and Jon, please give us a nice full charge against atheism, either in philosophical means, or personal. Unless you are uninterested in putting atheism on trial, otherwise let’s kick some Atheist butt!

Oh, that goes out to the atheists to express their own frustrations with the said stance as well, so happy hunting.

Chimera! (or the pursuit of)

2008-07-25T10:54:00.000-07:00

Jon said:

“And so I listen very closely to the things that God reportedly HAS said to people. Often I have found those very words speaking to me in ways that not only move me (in a "religious experience" kind of way) but also ring true to me as making good sense of life.”

And Gordon said:

“Recently, however, I have been seeing things in a different light. I think God may operate differently with others, but with me, and perhaps others like me, he speaks to me through me. I believe that God made me the way I am on purpose. Who I am is a part of my relationships with others and it is a part of my relationship with God. I have a conscience, a rational mind, a desire to love others, and a hunger for truth. It is through these things that God speaks to me.”

To boot C.S Lewis (from Shadowlands) said:
“I do not pray to change God but to change myself.”

Here is a good crossroads for reason and the religious-reasoning.

It seems strange that God wants so badly to reach with people (the Bible) but does not speak quite so openly with people except when The Bible was being written. The religious person looks at the situation and says ‘yeah, we have an issue here.’ Also, like Jon suggested, the point might be that God has already spoken to his followers through the Bible. Gordon has found that when God speaks to him it is through other people (perhaps unknowingly) and more especially through his conscience, mind and desires to seek truth.

Now the rationalist person looks at the same situation and applies a kind of probability to help the possible answers come clearly. Sure, it is possible that God is real and chooses to speak to people in this interesting and specific way (through the Bible, through art, through he community, through our desires to seek good things and truth). These things are good attempts to account for what is ‘wrong’ with how we see the situation. However, if the rational person is not troubled by the vested interest having faith causes, they can realize that it is also possible that the reality of God is not necessary for the Christian to function.

The question is then, is it more likely that God wants to speak to everyone but only chooses to do in this these subtle and special ways; or is it more likely that God is not speaking at all, and that the believers themselves are simply filling the empty God shaped vacuum themselves?

As Lewis said, if God was not real then praying would remain a worthwhile practice, since it would still be edifying (even outside of ignorance). One would still be able to draw all kinds of good things from the Bible, from other people, from art, from good thinking, from their own conscience. These are good things but they are all available for a person even if God is not real. Put a bit more frankly, even if God were not real and this was obvious; the good Christian life can still be lived by Christian standards.

Therefore, if these reasons are possible in a universe where God does not exist, then they cease to be good reasons to suggest we live in a universe where God exists. Since the onus is on the religious person to show how God is likely, we can then tentatively conclude that thus far they have little to no reasons supporting their position. This does not prove atheism, but it strengthens the default position, indirectly by throwing weighted scepticism upon religious positions.

Now, from being inside the religious-rationalist camp and now in the rationalist camp, I do think that it is more reasonable that God is not real; specifically because all these good things occur in every religion and even outside of religion. If they are good evidences and reasons to believe in Christianity, then they are also good evidences and reasons to believe in every other religion in which they occur (which they obviously do in most).

So that is my suggested contrast between the religious-rationalist answer and the rationalist answer; Ben you can choose whichever you see as a lesser shade of grey. To be fair I do think the religious person’s position is possible to hold and not be crazy.

And to be fair Gordon said:
“Granted, these things are hardly miraculous and could easily be explained as my personal characteristics, but I do not think this is so.”

Jon also said:
“But I don't want to downplay the agony of that longing for more direct communication.”

So I am not trying to be unfair with this contrast, but I think it illustrates what I was trying to get at when I said the difference is landing in a shade of grey. I think most religious answers fall into this contrast.

Religion has been around for a long time and they have worked out all kinds of interesting and complex ways of answering the hard questions the Bible leaves out; but for me I just slowly became aware of this problem: that the religious person seems to be content with life without God, and makes a value out of pursuing.

Without the ill placed value on ‘pursuing’ I think the subtle problems of religion become clear and apparent. But, to the same extent that religion is a personal quest, so too must its apparent deconstruction be a personal realization and person choice. You have to want to open your eyes to see it. He who has an ear, let him hear. This is why one cannot be convinced into or out off religion, one must come to the sober realization of what is really going on in religion (even better, what is not going on in religion).

Jon said:
“Of course it is possible that one can choose, as you say, "to attribute the name of God to natural things, things which could very well happen without the knowledge of a deity at all. Can't argue with you there. But one can also be right to attribute very "natural" things to God, if God does exist. So again, for me it is the content of those "things" and what they point to and line up with and whether they ring true or not that makes the difference to me.”

I agree with you here Jon, the content and direction these things point to does matter greatly and if God does exist then it is okay to attribute these things to God. However you are trying to suggest that these things make belief in God reasonably possible and probable; if you entertain the possibility that these objects can exist outside of God’s existence then you lose the weight that they possibly bring to the question of God’s existence initially. (A note: these objects are not only possible in a world where God does not exist but also in all the other worlds where other Gods exist i.e. other religions. Both of these facts provide all kinds of proper doubt and significant scepticism. Unless one devalues reasoning [noetic aspect of the fall], the problem seems unsolvable from any one particular religious worldview methinks.)

Gordon said:
“Second, I share these attributes with many other humans who come from completely different social, geographical, and cultural backgrounds.”

I think this works in defence of these experiences being wholly a part of humanity and not specific to a particular religion… but I can see what you are aiming at. Perhaps it is one of those objects which swings both ways (for the humanist and for the religious) depending upon one’s starting point. If so then it might as well be left out.

Jon said:
“back a ways I think you asked what was the fundamentalist jargon in joel's post that i referred to? I just thought the whole thing reminded me of a really manipulative altar call. there was plenty in there that was exaggerated, caricatured, or downright misleading. but the point was to push you to make a courageous decision. I get that. it just sounded vaguely and unsettlingly”

I once was arrogant but now I am an atheist.

Opps, I mean, I guess I still have a lot of hidden Christianity left in me. Again, sorry if that post was offensive but it was me on a drunken angry rant. Though it was fraught with problems, I think it allowed us to have this good conversation and it was intended to be for Ben mostly, for his edification and even for his entertainment…

Jon asked:
“does an atheist believe that thought is connected to reality? what reason would they have to believe that?”

I think the view of thought is that it is connected to reality and the reason for this is that one is unable to think away certain things one encounters (like other people and concrete objects). But I think you are asking a more specific question of reasoning and why or how one might be able to trust reasoning if there is no higher standard or bigger being who made it a certain way? (if you didn’t mean this question or anything like it then just ignore my response).

I think our reasoning is a direct example of the consistency we find in reality. If reality is not consistent then its representation in our minds are not consistent: this is where we get our freedom and our ability to be creative. However we do find a lot of order and consistency in other parts of reality, and we have represented that consistency in our minds in ways like math and reasoning. There is lots to be explained and explored but according to Chomsky (and I agree) the key seems to be found in Language; more specifically our ability to have an active and useful language also allows us to think and reason (and posses a kind of freedom). Now which came first Language or these other things has yet to be explored at least by me, so I don’t know.

We approach reality with a system of reasoning and at first it works nicely, but soon enough (as the track record of science tells us) we find something which our reasoning does not account properly for yet it seems to exist because it is staring us in the face. Thus we are forced to either change our reasoning or figure out why our reasoning does not account for our new object. In all this our reasoning is growing and advancing. Reasoning is flexible whereas Holy Books are not.

It is not that our previous ways of reasoning were improper, they were simply too simple.

In case this is too airy fairy here is a Christianease version: When we read the Bible for the first time it seems to be easy and true but this is only because we are reading it with a small mind and applying easy answers to easy questions. As we grow old and grow in complexity we find it more and more difficult to answer our questions with the Bible, and so we begin to re-read the Bible in more creative ways. As theology progresses we find more and more complexities in reality and try to account for them through our theology.

This is the reasonability of science / philosophy and the reasonability of theology / religion. The real difference (for me) is that religion will always have to use a Holy Book where as the philosopher only uses them self. What is more, at the end of the day the people using the Holy Book are in fact using them self too and reasoning, they just do not admit it. But this works for their cause, for they are rarely wrong when proven wrong.

This is why we always hear the answer ‘you are criticizing those other religious people and I agree with you, but you are not criticizing me.’ And my favourite ‘that is not a problem with our Holy Book but a bad interpretation’ even though it was a ‘bad interpretation’ for generations. The rationalist person holds to the limitations of reason, this is why we have epistemology (that is: the study of how we can know what we know, how it is even possible to know anything at all).

So at the end of the day I agree with Gordon when he says:
“There is evidence for the possibility of a God figure, but nothing concrete.”

Why is that so? Why would God make his own reality such an important aspect and intentionally leave out everything concrete? First religious people say God did (notice the past tense usage here) concrete stuff in the past but chooses not to do barely anything concrete today for what ever reason. Secondly, the religious person will say that God has already done enough, and that the onus is upon humans to do the rest. We need to conform to God and expecting God to fit into our reasoning capacities is bad, since after all we are God’s creations. But why would God give us rational capacities and then not allow them to lead to God? Why would God do all these things? The answer is something to do with the noetic aspect of the fall (our ability to reason has been flawed). So we are left with the best religious answer ever:

Don’t trust your own ability to REASON for we have found REASONS (the Bible) which suggest our ability to REASONING is flawed. In fact these REASONS which suggest our ability to REASON is flawed are so COMPELLING and CONVINCING we (the religious) suggest you trust in our God to help. So look at the situation and see how CONVINCING our ARGUMENT is; our ARGUEMNT that since REASONING is intrinsically flawed you should be CONVINCED to trust us (our God, our scripture, our church and our religion our REASONING). Don’t trust other religions for they are false as well, trust us.

Can you see my secret message in the bold words?

Everyone knows and can see that reasoning is not perfect, but again for the thousandth time, the atheist does not suggest reasoning is perfect; but the Christian does suggest that God is perfect.

hmmmmmm…

Working for the Devil

2008-07-20T22:13:00.001-07:00

Okay so what is really going on here? We have Ben asking with desperation: ‘are there any good reasons left for me to hold on to my faith.’ We all know the answer to this question: no, there are none. I am not pulling any punches so let me punch you. The only way to remain religious is by allowing religion to delude your reasoning capacities into some kind of noetic fallacy. Every religious person feels this fact; this is why they are constantly ‘struggling’ with their faith. Everyone knows there is a huge elephant in the room, they just try to invent all kinds of ways to fool each other into thinking that elephant is good. It makes sense too, because religious people can see the danger in allowing reason to go unchecked, they can see its dangerous effect.

We value our faith, we value our struggles, and we value anything and everything, just as long as it keeps us in the sanctuary a just a bit longer. The religious experience is similar to any and all other kinds of experience; it is what one makes it to be. Were you touched by the heavenly divine, or were you simply trying to find a safe place? Was it a miracle? Of course not, and even so, if miracles are not defying nature (but working through it another special way) then why the hell do we use them to prove God’s existence in the first place? The simple fact remains that we just don’t need God. Perhaps it is terrible for me to say, but the bottom line is that very fact; Ben, you just no longer need God, and that is that.

We can quibble about reason, we can quibble about religious experience, but at the end of the day the truly sobering fact is that God is a myth and that people believe in religion because they want too. They want too for all kinds of reasons, they are used to it (done it for so long why cop out now?), they find comfort in it, they feel like they would be losing everything if they lost it (and how the church sets things up, this might not be quite a coincidence) and finally perhaps they really still feel like the question of God’s existence remains to be proven one way or the other. But really, it somewhat doesn’t matter, the fact remains, that they are still religious because they want to be not because they have been convinced. This is the suicidal fact that religious people refuse to sober up too, or if they do they make it into a value (i.e. faith).

You can take your ‘religious experience’ and watch it fade or shine in which ever direction you walk. If you walk toward religion you will hear about how flipping a coin can become a miracle (though not a miracle the pastor would want you to seek or reproduce, let’s face it, that would sound a bit more like science if you did that) or if you walk away from religion you will find all those ‘experiences’ are rampant with acceptance-seeking and crowd theory.

Ben, you want to be convinced that there is a God, but you forget your own training. What would pastor Ben to say to another seeker asking the same question? You would tell them to pray, tell them to ask God if God was real and await God’s reply; yet you and I both know you are well beyond such a prayer, you have walked long enough to feel the silence which all religious people feel and struggle against. They feel that meaninglessness and try with all their being to fight it, and in doing so make a value out of that struggle.

Outside of your own loss of the religious experience, you wish with all you heart for another person to come and share with you some of their own experiences, perhaps large and powerful enough to drive you back into some kind of safe zone of belief. I think the religious are trapped in a child like state (which they will actually gloat as being valuable) in which they dine and live under the protection of the Holy Sprit; they are champions as children of God. They are greatly deluded, for they are forcing themselves into glue, which though warm, is actually costing them MUCH more than it is worth.

The harshness of life which religion proclaims to protect us from is not the kind of harness you should want to be protected from. It is a sobering and maturing wind which causes the skin to grow into its proper state, a state of individual strength and a will to live, which comes not from a mystical source.

The only thing stopping you from walking forward into this new world is a religious fear. And without that fear there would be no religion, for fearing the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but it is the beginning of a tainted path which once traveled, becomes a hard path to quit. It is the pejorative effect / addiction of the religious drug. Though it is terrible to be in constant guilt we strangely discover we find some kind of comfort there, for though the Christian lifestyle if impossible to live up too, it provides us with a kind of safety not unlike the nursery does. Lewis suggested pain was God’s megaphone to call us out of the nursery, but he really didn’t realize just how right he was. The empty space of reality is the megaphone which calls us to become what we wish, what we are willing to strive for; whereas religion has a ready-made answer for every question, most of them being ‘noetic this’ or ‘noetic that.’

How long will we stand by and watch ourselves reason ourselves out of reasoning? How long will be wait as we teach our kids to feel bad about themselves, just so we can procure a means to control their undesirable behaviors? Will you continue to stand in the dark and watch all your good suspicious fly out the window simply because you have been taught to relinquish the natural path of reason (which leads one out of religion)? Is it really that we are sinful, fallen and so terrible that everything about humanity leads us away from God; or is it (quite more likely and simply) that God doesn’t really exist, and that those who suggest God’s reality really have the problem not the rest of us…

Your doubts are not Satanically induced, and your life is not feeling empty as a test for your faith. Your faith has always cost you this much, you have simply developed a resistance from the drug (that is community) which was, till now, keeping your distracted from the truth, the real and difficult truth that there is something REALLY fishy going on in religion. Church stinks, not because it needs repairing, but because it is a stinky thing. I think you have chased the carrot ‘attack the church but only to build it up’ long enough. As your vision has grown larger and more encompassing, you can see more and more clearly that its all in disarray, and its aim as, so far successfully, been to keep you from opening your eyes large enough; large enough to see that it is all just bollocks. Yeah I said just bollocks.

There were times on this site when I thought we needed this said in nicer and more palatable ways but I think Ben is quite ready (and has secretly wanted) to hear it put this clearly.

Shades of Grey

2008-07-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

Reason is experiential. Every religions have religious experience.

Reason is not some kind of mental object which exists independent of experience. When I think of reason I basically think of order or consistency. As we begin to exist in our world we find a varying kind of consistency outside of ourselves, and it gets imprinted (from the outside to the inside) on our mind: this is reason. Here is a nice metaphor.

I know that when I push against a wall that wall will push back, every time. Quantum mechanics suggests that if I push long enough my hand may go through, but it also says that I will not live long enough to push that much. Once I have done this I can then conclude (rationally) that every time I go and push that same wall I will get the same result. As I think about this I conclude that there is a kind of order (perhaps in the entire universe) and that order is outside of me, concrete and dependable.

What I am trying to explain here is that our reason is rooted in our universe, found in the order and consistency we encounter. The rationality we cultivate in our minds is an attempt to figure out that order. Thus the standards of that reason may be consistency. For example, we love math because math works every time (when it does not work it usually just means we need a more complex math-wand).

Okay, here are my responses to what people have said (I’m trying to keep these entries shorter and more to the point so sorry if I did not respond to something or everything you all said).

Leif said:
"If I give up my religion, and accept atheism (or agnosticism at least), then am I not shutting out the possibility of God in the first place? At least religion means I am trying to seek him out."

Atheism is not the rejection of God wholly, as it is usually misunderstood to be. Atheism (or what is now being called soft atheism) suggests that God may or may not exist only that if God does exist, God has made no proof of its own existence. As a soft atheist I am still very open to God’s existence, I only conclude that so far as the world is today it is more likely God is not real.

Thus I suggest to you that becoming an atheist will actually allow you to better explore the question of God rather than hinder it. For religious people this is wrong, simply because letting oneself think this far out of the box destroys the box. For me this clearly shows how religious people are acting out the ‘halt’ I was talking about. They can value reason and doubt to a point, but when (and it will) threaten their faith they back away intentionally.

The question of atheism being more rational than religion came up. The quick answer to this is simply that by being an atheist one loses the idea of the sacred (meaning there is no forbidden knowledge, nor is there a special kind like the Bible). This allows the atheist to go into any area of thought and examine all other possibilities; whereas the religious person may do the same, they must hold to their religion’s bias’s and use them as compasses (which ultimately screws them up).

I think I can see Donkey’s mouth drooling so let me add that yes atheism has its own set of biases just like religions do. So how can we figure out which shade of grey is darker? That is the hardest question to answer and I think that is where only the individual can really do the figuring. But my answer is this, simply that being an atheist will be liberating in such a way that it becomes superior to being religious vs. how religions will always be limiting, with forbidden knowledge, forbidden actions and forbidden paths (other religions for a start). The basic flaw being that those ‘forbidden areas’ do not always have good reasons behind them whereas they do in atheism.

In response to the card metaphor I would agree it describes religion’s plan to deal with problems. At the end of the day it may even come down to what is easier. It is just easier to just ignore a problem than to be bothered by it and as humans we all seem to act and react in this way; but only in religion will one actually prescribe it (such as Christian ‘a’).

As for Jon’s entry I think Ben responded very well and I will leave the rest of that talk up to the two of you. But one thing I noticed is that Jon said:

“I am uncomfortable putting myself at centre like that”

I think this is interesting because it is exactly what atheism prescribes. The most dangerous thing religion can do to a person is keep them in fear, and I wonder if the previous comment is a borderline example of a kind of quiet intellectual fear? This is where religious talk of ‘sin’ and ‘sinner’ and most dangerous for hidden inside the attempt to make people into proper moral agents lays a subterfuge of intentional weakening. Weak people are easiest to heard are the not? (like children or sheep:

“And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

The question is then is the act of faith (in any and all religions) interwoven with a kind of naivety? Is it a bad thing being valued as good? Why do religious people want so badly to have someone to trust in (like a god or special person)? Is safety an issue?

I think everyone knows my answers to these questions already.

Donkey said:
“People will generally believe what makes the most sense to them.”
I agree here and think this is why we should put ourselves at the centre. We need to realize that we are alive and that living takes place in this world (not a heaven for joy or a hell for sorrow). We need to make sure we are thinking clear and this means hard work; the questions we are trying to answer are very difficult, and adhering to a group simply displays a kind of un-interest and or perhaps laziness (minus the pejorative connotation)
Donkey said:
“Until then, I suppose, people like us will seek to uncover as much truth as we can manage, developing several accurate and inaccurate hypothesis along the way.”

I could not agree more! This is exactly what I think must be done, so I guess another question might be, what is helping us and or hindering us to do this action? Again my answers are clear methinks.

For easy reference here is a list of the questions I want this conversation to go toward now:

1. Is the act of faith (in any and all religions) interwoven with a kind of naivety?

2. Is it a bad thing being valued as good?

3. Why do religious people want so badly to have someone to trust in (like a god or special person)?

4. Is safety an issue?

5. What is helping us and or hindering us to do this action?

6. Should we put ourselves at the centre?

Closing note: I think it may be helpful if instead of asking ourselves which is better (religion or atheism) we might instead say each of these options are imperfect and shades of grey; thus we ask ourselves instead, which shade is darker (meaning the same thing as which is better but on a wider field of possibility)?

Listening and Speaking for Big Kids Only

2008-07-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

“The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them- She was the universe.”
-Lord Byron

It has come again for us to speak for a time and I am very grateful; for we are going to speak about my favorite topic: the existence (or lack) of God. This conversation is going to center around one Benjamin R. St. Pierre. So in the usual familiar format, I’m going to say some long winded stuff and everyone else can say something back and I will respond with Ben’s questions favored.

So where to begin? I think a good place to start is with the statement: even if Christianity is problematic (perhaps even fatal), why then would anyone want to choose anything else? Surely, given the potential problem that there is no true religion, one ought to just stay with what they already know so well? Or in the proper Kierkegaardian way, with no possibility of real religion isn’t a nice story better than nothing?

First let us settle the issue of truth and reason, so I can be nice and clear on these things from the get go. I do believe in some kind of truth and I think if it is out there it will be very difficult to find and sort out. I think the path to said truth is found in reason and essentially reason alone. I think even when we wade out of reason (emotional and experiential ‘thingies’) we are still using reason to guide us; even though we might be using non-rational objects.

Even in the sea of the non-rational, we are still afloat in a boat built out of reason.

We have had all kinds of long talks about this position of mine and it is not perfect; but let me be clear what this positions purpose is: it is to clarify that when we find a rational problem with religion we ought NOT to overlook its discombobulating effect, simply because we feel something else within that same religion. A problem is a problem and the religious action to overlook, to seek not forbid not is actually a move of convenient ignorance and it ought not to be tolerated.

So to find any grasp (but at least a grasping) of truth, even muddled and marred by imperfection, I suggest we should use reason. At the end of the day I believe it is all we have and without it we drown in pure opinion (which is nice and interesting but weightless).

Thus the path which leads us out of religion is the same path which leads us toward something true, but like Socrates said, we will follow that path wherever it leads and try to avoid the bias of desire for the sake of satisfying that very best and most precious desire of truth seeking.

Question One:
Even if Christianity is problematic (perhaps even fatal), why then would anyone want to choose anything else?

They would want to choose something else because they would find something less problematic and more beneficial. For me it is atheism, the weight being found more in its capability of truth more so than in its benefits. If one were to argue that Christianity (for them) was more beneficial to them than anything else I would say ‘okay’ however, this can be true for any person who is simply not bothered by irrationality. Thus I intend to show how atheism (or in the least the weakest kind of atheism: agnosticism) is more reasonable than any religion.

Question Two:
Surely, given the potential problem that there is no true religion, surely one ought to just stay with what they already know so well?

I say no, simply because it is favoring stagnation over growth. At the heart of such a move is really a kind of fear, that kind of fear which keeps a person from danger (when they are young) but which should be shed at the age of maturity. One should never do many actions out of fear, but with good reason (back to reason again). Life is a continual path of enlightenment, growth and self discovery. For most religions it seems that they encourage this path but only to reach their own summit and then they prescribe a halt.

Question Three:
In the proper Kierkegaardian way, with no possibility of real religion isn’t a nice story better than nothing?

I do not really think so. To be fair I don’t really know if that move is a move Kierkegaard would be okay with. I think if you are one of those religious people who do not really care of the rational validity of religion then that is alright with me. However, if you hold to religion as a story (and less or more) then I would say fine, but you are more or less acting as an atheist already. And to boot, if you were enjoying one religion as a story then you would be freed to enjoy all other religions and non-religions.

At the end of day I reject religion for its hindering properties, both intellectual and spiritual. Living as a proper religious person means limitation, not as Jesus suggested: life in abundance. The fallacy ‘seek ye these things and all the rest shall be given unto thee’ is a mere manipulation upon the weak. Religion’s ‘things’ are petty and less than life can give and the turn around on investment is a no sum gain.

So that’s my opening. Please feel free to ask or comment in any way. As for Ben, please take me on as you see fit and or take us in any direction you would like to go.

“What did it avail to pray when he knew that his soul lusted after its own destruction?”
- James Joyce

The Long and Winding Post

2008-04-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

I read your entry and thought about it for a while. I think I am going to forgo a reply. I have been thinking about this site and what we do here and I believe I am ready for a break. I think this site has been for me a place to wrestle with myself, my past religious self. Philosophically I have been dealing with my past religious life for a year now and I think I am guilty of pendulum swinging too far into a hostile atheism. Nevertheless I have been true to my desire to only speak about ideas, but for the most part, my religious attacks have not actually been toward Donkey, Leif nor John’s version of religious/Christianity, but of my own; they were merely the avatars of those ideas. Perhaps I cross that hostile line a bit too often, especially toward Donkey (sniker snkier).

Reading Leif’s ideas here has caused me to think that I am in need of a new approach to this issue in my life. Thus I have decided to try and make peace with my past religious side rather than destroy it. I think we have had some really good talks here and I hope I have been a good challenger in these religious areas.

All that to say though that I am going to take an extended break and no longer ‘do’ this website, at least for the time being. I hope I am not leaving some people hanging, but there is always the chance that we will get back into the battle again, perhaps in a few months or if something interesting and important comes up.

All that to say, here are some formal thanks:

For Matthew, for being a good negotiator and helping me clairify my ideas into less than hostile ways prior to publishing posts. (If you thought I was being hostile online you should have overheard some of my conversations with Matthew before posting). Your constant desire to side with people I was ‘mean’ too was quite annoying but hey, we all got our values right? All in all he was my wing man so that was nice.

For Leif, for being most open to change and willing to entertain ideas honestly. Everyone was open and polite for the most part but you really took it to heart and gave some really great posts. Good luck in your personal endeavors with religion.

For John, for taking the time to post even though I am sure you were swamped with work. It was nice to talk to another Bible Schooler who was still there and taking Masters levels. I thought you had really good points.

Finally for Gordon, for being my all time nemesis. I think we both got nice and carried away most of the time, but I also think we both loved the debating part of this site perhaps more than the information side. I think you and I have had some really good points and I hope my hostility has never been too much, though if it ever was it was because you had said something really good, perhaps too good. I hope I never offended you too much and if I ever did please accept my apology. I think we had a good time here.

Thanks to others who posted from time to time and any silent readers. This site was formally for my personal ranting and so it was nice everyone who did show up to say something interesting. See you all later

70th Post

2008-03-31T09:57:00.001-07:00

Late response to Leif:

Leif said:
“Times when one sets out with the purpose of encountering nature, exploring or climbing trees, walking near a lake, enjoying a sunset, running in the rain or embracing a strong wind, etcetera. In those times, for myself, I feel as though there is something to nature which is connecting with me. I feel a deep connection to a life force within the world that revitalizes me. I love it, and when I think back upon my past, I always have.”

I don’t think any non-religious person would suggest to you that you are mistaken in feeling this way about the world. The simple fact however is that one does not need to be religious to ‘feel a deep connection’ to the world or to the existence of life. If you want to characterize such common feelings are being godlike you may, but the rational problem remains: that one does not find any aspect of this special feeling necessarily divine. In other words, you do not need to use the idea of God to explain such feelings; in fact one would likely find the idea of God more confusing than alternative answers.

The divine or god aspect of your description is simply unnecessary. If two people had similar feelings about life; one said it was religious the other said it was non-religious, there would be no real way of suggesting one over the other. This is the case because they are simply trying to describe something difficult to describe. In the application of trying to explain these feelings however, one can more adequately accomplish this task by avoiding the religious domain; for like most religious description, though providing a (on the surface) possible good answer to one question, in doing so, it raises all kinds of other more difficult ones.

So religious description is good for the sake of poetical re-representational of special feelings, but in the domain of explanation, religious concepts are more pitfalls than good ways to account for reality.

Gut feelings are real and provide for interesting and sometimes problematic problems to account for in reality, but usually fall into an area outside of meaning (as far as explanation is concerned). For example, we may know how to account for how the language system in our brain works but this will never allow us to predict exactly what someone will say at any given moment. The same is true for Behavioral Social Science.

In this regard we can use various ways to describe our special feelings for the sake of communication but it doesn’t follow that we should let this follow through into our ability to account for reality, rationally speaking. The religious story of where the rainbow came from is a nice poetical way to describe how we might feel when we see the rainbow, but it is far from a comparable description vs the scientific account of what is going on within the rainbow. I hope that makes sense.

Response to Gordon:
Gordon said:
“We've given evidence that is valid, but the fact is, you don't seem to value our system of reasoning. If you can't do that then we will always be wrong in your eyes and this discussion will go nowhere.”

You are right to think that I do not agree with the religious approach to reasoning, but this is not the impasse you seem to think it is. The whole idea of reasoning has been the main focus of this entire webpage. The contrasts have been the very point of conversation. It goes without saying that I have been trying to convince you that religious reasoning is flawed or in need of repair, but this does not mean the ‘discussion will go nowhere.’

All too often religious people hide behind being offended and claim that non-religious people are unfair and arrogant. This is simply not the case, and it saddens me to see you state various personal problems you have with my approach. To be honest, I think that such tactics is caused from religious worldviews. I think religious people have been beaten out of the academic sphere long ago and now only have deep conviction and personal frustration to trade with.

The religious people, now aware that they cannot contend with ‘cold hard facts’ and proper philosophical debate turn to emotional and social banter but even these rivers are dying up. Thus they present ultimatum after ultimatum adding clauses like:

“unless you can thoughtfully consider ideas like Leif's last point so that we can have something to talk about I don't really see this going anywhere further” (Gordon).

It is only at the end of conversations do they bring up such pressing dichotomies, which are so important (suddenly) that they now stand as the rise or fall of the entire conversation. To me they simply sound like ‘you have to play by my rules now or I will go home with my ball.’ That’s a fair statement, for the entire debate I have been saying the same thing, only I have been trying to convince you of my way, not giving ultimatums. I have been assuming I must prove this not believing it is already true unless proven wrong. I have been asking questions and giving suggestions, not calling ‘foul’ or giving petty personal accusations.

Nevertheless, you have always had the value difference eject button to press. I do believe I can and have ‘thoughtfully considered’ Leif’s ideas and all ideas presented on this site. But as we have seen, these emotions do not leave the realm of reason entirely. Thus I reject your suggested dichotomy of cold hard facts vs (whatever it is you are suggesting).

The simple conclusion is that when it comes to answering questions, religion falls short on every panel. This is as clear to the religious person as it is to the non-religious person; what is interesting is how they deal with it. All in all, I think the only way religious people have been able to survive is in accidentally creating a kind of immaturity which allows for religious people to escape the critique science and philosophy place upon them. Hiding behind impoliteness perhaps gives you a moral high ground but it does not answer any questions; you can feel better about yourself in comparison but you are simply ignoring the issues, and thus we are back to ignorance mistaken for innocence.

If there is an impasse it is being cause by the ignorance of one group of the other. And on that point I think I am confident to say that the ignorance is not mine.

We all have our own goals and choices in life and perhaps we even have our own values. If it isn’t one religious ultimatum it is another and thus I submit to you that there is little more I can say to convince you of my aims. Disregarding how convincing I have been I believe I have given many good critiques at various stages of this debate, asking questions which the religious person cannot (or hasn’t been able to) answer either, as well as alterative or at all.

However if in the end you think I have been more or less unsuccessful then that is okay. I do want to convince you but it is the hardest thing to do to a person. Socrates said ‘I do not change people’s minds, I only make them think.’ In this regard I hope I have been more or less successful, even over my own shortcomings and personal flaws, or so-called ‘antagonistic presentation.’ In the end the reader can take what I say or leave it, it’s entirely your choice as it always has been to come here on this site and speak with me.

I don’t think there as been any illusions about what was going on here, what position I had all along or what kind of debate it would be. I hope I have been clear. All that to say it seems that this conversation is waning to and end and perhaps we might take a break; I will continue to respond to the Deism talk, and I look forward to see what Leif’s response will be.

Response to Leif

2008-03-12T09:43:00.001-07:00

Leif said:
“which covers the entire world of the "miraculous" healings that occur in society, religious or otherwise. This explains the yogis who can stop their hearts, people who can jump stories high, etc.”

Remember that though we have miracles as a viable topic to discuss it is not an empirical fact that they exist. In fact the very definition of a miracle is something which ought not to happen yet occurs anyway in very small instances. If you are incorporating a philosophy which accounts for miracles, then you are not explaining miracles but deriving a science which is excluding miracles (in that you are making space for them within what is expected; even if that expectation is of a low frequency).

If you are doing this then you are not doing religion but taking a new approach to science.

Leif said:
“There has to be some set of "rules" to the universe which tells energy how it can change from one thing to another, what properties everything has, etc. this set of rules I would call the "STANDARD" for the universe.”

Be careful not to see the order we find in the universe as ‘rules’ for they are more like consistencies and the difference is great. Take quantum mechanics for example, it is not something easily understood yet all of the ‘rules’ one finds there all go against the ‘rules’ we find outside of it. In this regard it is better to say we are not finding rules so much as seeing consistencies; the larger we open our minds the more we find our ‘rules’ to be circumstantial.

However, there are constants and or standards to the order we find, one interesting point is that these do not seem to be placed or set in a place but rather just happen to fit together in the way we find them. Thus we can conceive of other universes with different sets of constants even though we have never found them nor found proof for them.

The idea is that what is possible is not always what we find; and things we like to lean upon as foundation usually end up being fluid and changing when we take closer looks.

Leif said:
“Rational thought can never penetrate to the final ultimate truth.” and “If you want to argue, read that and then talk to me. He proves this point, so let's continue.”

I will give you this for the sake of the argument but you only get to do this so many times. If you cannot put an idea into your own words or argue for it then try another path. It is too close to the argument: ‘if you were just like me you would see.’ For this is what you are trying to do, argue us to see it your way; thus you cannot simply argue for the sake of the argument all the way down to the conclusion.

Leif said:
“This point suggests that there is something about the universe which is beyond reason and logic. We need outside help to gain insight beyond certain points with our minds. I believe that we can use our intuition and "gut" feelings to help. Intuition in this way is what just "feels" right with us, and our "gut" feelings in this way are our more instinctive reactions based upon experiences and "social instinct."

If you can talk about it you are using reason. If you are suggesting that we find our reasoning limited but then find more with intuition then that is a bit off. You are using your intuition with your reason. Though intuition is something prior to reasoning, in that it seems to give us things we do not get through reason, this does not mean we do not use our reason to make it make sense or nonsense. Otherwise one would not be able to navigate their intuition.

Thus your suggestion that intuition is something outside reason or a tool which allows us to go beyond our reason is less than convincing since we need our reason to make sense of our intuition. If that is the case then reason is still holding the trump card at the end of the day, even when considering ‘gut’ feelings and intuitions.

Leif said:
“Any way, there is this connection between life, all of life, in the universe which suggests a tie that binds us. Spinoza claimed that this sense of the eternal connection of life and nature IS God, just the principle of bond between life, and nothing more. I think he was just trying to include the word God into his lifestyle to avoid getting burned at the bloody stake. I believe that this bond reveals an active, feeling sentience in nature and life.”

Even if I agree with you and Spinoza you are simply equating the idea of energy with God; or using God as a synonym for energy. You can do this if you want but it is unnecessary. It is likely that Spinoza used the word ‘God’ only for protection or because it was the conducive philosophical idea to account for what we now can scientifically understand as ‘energy.’

Leif said:
3) Beauty suggests the point 1 "STANDARD" for the universe.

Though beauty might be some kind of standard the fact that it is impossible to nail down leaves it less than convincing as a ‘standard’ to which you may point to as some foundation.

Your argument is interesting but for the most part I see you re-describing energy with other words and then intermixing it with your emotional response. If you do want to lean heavily upon intuition (which is an interesting path) you have the problem of why all people do not respond to this same thing as you yourself have. Simply put, there is no possibility of consistency within intuition without the use of reason; and even with reason (though it makes consistency possible) it must be worked out with difficulty. In this regard your dependency upon intuition becomes more problematic than beneficial.

Take your example of beauty: if it is a standard to which one might be able to point towards, then there should be a consistency of how most people react to beauty. Let’s assume there is in the world, and that (for you) leads to and idea of God. This works, but now you have to account for why all or most people can see your ‘standard’ of beauty yet do not share in your idea of God. Why is this? Why does the number of people who reflect the standard of beauty not correlate with the number of people who reflect the standard of God? It is unlikely (though not impossible) for you to give an answer which supports your theory.

My answer is this: because religion has more in common with culture than it does with science/philosophy. Its choice and preference based. Though we may find extremes which we agree upon (a baby dying is never beautiful) this does not mean we find correlation in the middle; and religion is no different. Its transient and fluid to the same extent as people are in their personal views and values: i.e. it’s cultural and thus ought not to be talked about as science.

Leif said:
“You can call my arguments lacking in scientific proofs, and relying heavily on emotional arguments and the desire to have more meaning in life, but this is what I feel and believe is a good and rational argument for a plausible God.”

Your argument is reasonable but only for a defense of why it is okay for you to choose to be the way you are. If you are a deist because it brings more meaning to your life then this is fine, but it still falls prey to the critique of the choice toward religion (which I addressed in other entries).

You feel your argument is good and rational and makes for a plausible God, and I agree it makes for a possible God but not a plausible one. Your argument is rational but not convincing. Simply re-describing energy from a religious approach and then adding emotional gut feeling is not enough (or ought not to be enough) to convince someone.

Your reason is still giving or taking credit away from your emotions and intuitions; and for the most part I would suggest that you are taking more of a defensive approach to God’s existence rather than a positive sense (meaning that your argument is more a ‘holding on’ to the idea of God rather than a powerful set of good reasons why someone ought to believe).

There is nothing intrinsically bad about this, only that in such a state your argument will likely be more of an explanation of who you are rather than an account of the universe which must be responded too, at least thus far.

Why God Does Not Exist (five general conclusions)

2008-03-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

1. Occam’s Razor

Defined on Wikipedia: The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon could make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

When explaining the world one is left with many answers. Science systematizes and explains reality in ways more concise and more specific than any religious theology. The simple fact is that that any and all theological stipulations are unnecessary given science pertaining to explaining reality. Given this, which I think is true, the only vestibule for the religious is found via choice.

2. There is/are no evidence of what religious people claim

Why would God make salvation so serious (cf. concept of Hell) and then make the process of obtaining it so difficult and even impossible for the majority of the world’s known population? Why would God be considered personal and not meet the needs of today’s science and rational minds? Why is it rather the case that it is the religious people who say skeptics need to change their values and not the other way around? If God was so infinite and incredible God wouldn’t allow for people to go to hell simply because they were raised in particular time, place or with particular values (skepticism for the scientists)?

Any attempt to answer these questions will begin to fall prey to my #1 reason why God does not exist. Such answers are noetic aspect of the fall and or divine preference for this way or that; but in the end they all display a scrambling to keep theology from looking ridiculous in the face of any alternative. If God is really what religious people say God is, then it just seems that God is the most inconsistent being (if nothing less than this: God gives humans a way to understand the world and then asks them to ignore it: reason).

Religions depend upon anti-values WAY more than they do on good reasoning, why? Because they know reason will lead them away from theology and thus they create theocratic-reasoning or in other words what I call ‘reasoning when reasoning helps and mystery when reasoning will hurt.’

3. God gives humanity a concept of reason and then refuses to follow it

A personal God who is infinite in all ways would find it easy to simply ‘visit’ people individually or give them what they need to see the truth depending upon person. Yet every religion demands ‘faith’ and other somewhat anti-rational feats in order to bring about someone into God’s family. Why is it this way? The so called theology of God (in any religion it seems) never can follow reason long enough and ultimately always ends up depending upon so called limits of human reason. All of which is more likely the result of old stories held by people who refuse to see how they are problematic. Thus the religious communities suggest the problems with their stories (Holy Books) are actually lofty ideas which are beyond human understanding and that’s why they don’t make sense. Again this is simply too convenient. Not that all meaningful things MUST be able to be understood by human reason; for quantum mechanics and deep universal objects seem to be gaining more and more complexity (likely beyond human understanding) yet the difference is that said scientists will admit their loss when they lose and will not draw a line, they will run into a wall.

The religious agenda is full of lines and religious made walls which all seems to imply more a defensive position rather than a comprehensive and honest approach to truth.

4. Religion, or brand of gas station?

There are enough religions in the world to suggest to one that it is quite unlikely that any one is very more special than any other. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses but when viewed together there is a surprising lack of difference among religions. It just becomes more or less silly to suggest that one religion could be ‘right’ or even better than another one, since most of them come from ancient cultures or even more current situations; comparing religions becomes more like comparing cultures or ways of life.

One can make comparisons but it becomes quite silly to suggest that living like an American in the late 18th century is ‘right’ whereas living like a Swede in the mid 20th century is ‘wrong’ etc. The very desire to make comparisons and ‘figure’ out how one’s religion is superior to another’s is a direct result of modern thinking (something I think we would be better off without these days).

If anything, religion is causing more division than anything else in our world. In our more recent history the differences of our cultures were leading us to conflict (nationalism) and it still is occurring today. Religion is even less important than culture (if it isn’t just a smaller and weaker brand of it) and the less ‘us vs. them’ philosophies we take serious the better methinks.

5. Religion is simply unnecessary

It is unnecessary for explaining where the universe came from
It is unnecessary for living a life of happiness and quality
It is unnecessary for living a moral life
It is unnecessary for living a life of meaning

All of these categories were the very strong reasons for having a faith in the past, for it was believed that without some kind of faith one would have access to none of these things. Thanks to science and philosophy we no longer need religions to do these things for us (for they were fairly unsuccessful in there own right).

The progress has not made religion meaningless but when one compares with science and philosophies, most religions come across as being stagnant, rigid, exclusive and problematic, where as most sciences and philosophies come across as being flexible and open to change and progressive. The agenda of theology is more so self survival than it is informative. Without the concept of the sacred there is much more usefulness and development within philosophy and science.

In all this religion seems like a constraint on life more than an aide (only when viewed from a more objective stance) for none of these problems make religion terrible or undesirable, and so it is not surprising to see that many people still hold to these traditional values. Religious people make sense; they simply grow up in a way of life and choose to propagate that way of life.

To me, their religious endeavor is based solely upon choice, and it is this approach which allows them to survive any and all attacks on their religion. In the end it is not something one is arguing rationally but via choice. Can you make someone change their choice? Perhaps, but all the convincing, evidence and good reasoning in the world might not make them budge at all. I only seem to find this in religion.

Religion is a complex system of self preservation which aims at taking the strengths of all cognitive, scientific and rational areas while at the same time applying a double standard which the key is found in the interrelation between these four things:

a. the choice (the heart and soul and power of religion is always a choice)
b. the noetic fall (the ability for religious people to use reason conveniently)
c. the Holy Book (the ability to say all meaningful truth is limited or contained)
d. the religious experience (the ability to lean upon specific emotional object as justification for all things outside the rational)

Using these four things the religious person is able to account for all problems and answer to all hard questions (whether they be good answers or not). Religious communities are perpetually dependant upon communal fear and a desire to obtain emotional sustenance.

The religious lifestyle is so intertwined into social and political and perhaps even moral spheres that when one comes to the brink of making a choice against that religion they are left with everything on the line. As a child the choice is made for them and when they reach an appropriate age and let’s say choose to go against that religion they will be giving up their entire existence: their social life, their emotional life, their job in some cases and all of their past experiences. In light of this it is not surprising to see that the idea of excommunication was a major tool for the church to keep order in the recent past. Even church darlings such as Descartes were afraid to share their work due to the danger it may put them in (even given that their work is now considered old pillars in the church philosophy).

In all this I see the religion similar to what Hitchens’ and Dawkins’ call a ‘mental virus’ though I would choose not to be so pejorative as them. I think there is little malicious intend within religion or from religious people and I think they are honestly fooled and make their mistakes unintentionally. Predominantly I see religion as a kind of immaturity, one which will not be cured by intention and even less by open conflict (just try to take on a child who suggests their dad can beat up your dad by directly showing them how they are wrong. How might they react? I think you can guess by now).

I think if religion is going to pass on (as many people seem to feel these days as desire) it will go quietly, not with an army of religious vs. non-religious or angels and demons flying in the sky and rapturous events. I don’t agree with Nietzsche that God is dead, but I sure hope he has been fatally wounded.

I also know that this does not give an account for the meaning in the universe; rather I have tried to show how the religious’ view is fatally flawed. But where does the meaning come from? It’s a simple answer for me: there is no intrinsic meaning in the universe. Anything above zero is simply self created by people. I won’t get into it since this entry is already so long, but at the end of the day the religious person only has two things:

1. unanswered (or unanswerable) questions which they believe their religions answer better (even though they do not), and:
2. no better alternative or in other words ‘nothing they see as better than their so called fatally flawed religion. However this is simply the case because they are lazy, but being lazy (or convenient) in religion is essential to its survival so they call it being holy or my favorite they call it being innocent. Its none of these things, its simply ignorance and it serves them well.

So that’s why I do not think God exists.

The Religious Experience

2008-02-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

We have at last reached the bread and butter of all religion: that is the religious experience. Without it, religion would more likely remain particular philosophies for obtaining meaning and happiness with no actual mystical ramifications. One would be able to debate this idea to that, compare approaches and what have you. However, things change when there is an actual God of some kind. This God can be offended, it has desires and supposedly speaks to people directly and indirectly. All in all, this is the quintessential aspect which allows for religious people to ‘get out’ of reasoning or rational scrutiny if or when they need to.

Take the story of Abraham for example. It is prized and condemned for the very same reason: Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son simply because God asked him too. Crazy atheist people go nuts over this, feeling that it is an easy fatal blow to religion; simply because it is a sanctioning of pure cold blooded murder. The crazy religious people will feel pride, since Abraham was only being tested and succeeded with flying colours; adding that God would never actually go through with it anyway.

Another good example is the story of the Moth; I have heard this example on both sides as well. A moth returns home looking near death and singed and says to his wife ‘you will never believe what I encountered today, it was amazing and powerful and tomorrow we will go together.’ The fire is a picture of God whom the moth loses itself within, dies for its glory or finds salvation. The atheist proclaims ‘good example why religion is dangerous, it causes people to act like a moth to a flame.’ The religious person proclaims ‘good example for how religion brings about a reunification of the soul with its creator, even if it means diminishing the soul’s relevance, pride or significance.’

The religious experience is described as some kind of encounter, perhaps with transcendence or ‘the other’ or some kind of unexplainable beyond ‘thing.’ This encounter is describable but not explainable; meaningful but not necessarily rational (or only rational). Emotional words are usually used and analogies to love, meaning and purpose are commonly made. So what is wrong with it?

Objection One: ‘Just because you feel it, doesn’t mean its there’ Thom Yorke

The first major problem is that the religious experience is more a feeling based mental process than anything else. This is where a major value difference is proclaimed, for the mystic will appreciate and value the non-rational aspect of the experience and the scientist or atheist will nearly do the exact opposite. Many religious people will work hard trying to show and suggest that the religious experience is not merely a feeling, but something much more. My suggestion is that it should not even be considered a true feeling.

Take the example of love. Nearly all people have experienced the harsh problem of being in love with someone who does not love you back. This illustrated the simple side of this objection; just how easy one can be fooled by intensity and act irresponsibly for those feelings. The problem is, our definition of romance is usually this very description, and many people will praise the power of love for doing this very action (causing a kind of temporal insanity). However, the examples of stalkers and fanatics easily dispel the concern. Let’s not throw the entire baby out with the bath water here, but let’s admit we do not want to be sanctioning people’s actions simply because they have incredible intensity about them; that’s simply not good enough. In this regard religious experience is still falling into some kind of set of rules or box as it were.

Furthermore, love (when acting properly or in a good example) is reciprocal. There is another person really there, loving you back in various mental, physical and social ways. The religious person simply does not have this- though they will argue the certainly do: though the Bible, personal prayer life and of course the church. What I think they fail to see is that these are self created. Church is a social system, a club of caring individuals who love you back (not God) though you might argue their reason is God, it ought not to count as evidence for God’s direct love.

The Bible does not love back either. Some religious people describe scripture as being alive or an interpersonal relationship with God via love letters or instructions. This is simply not the case. Imagine any lover, who in dire love with her lover only reads and re-reads love letters he sent her from tens years ago; such an example would not meet our standards for a reciprocal relationships, even if the letters were incredible.

Prayer is a one way conversation. It is personal therapy, though it is VERY effective. It is interesting that the more social and psychological study has been showing various religious practices to me naturally healthy (though the religious person will likely wish to proclaim they are not necessarily healthy actions but healthy because they interconnect one with God). Let’s take a great line from ‘Shadowlands’ which I haven’t verified if C.S. Lewis actually said it exactly or at all.

“One does not pray to change God, but to change oneself”

If such a claim were remotely true it would easily give alternative answers as to why prayer is healthy (apart from evidence for an active God). It would not matter who or what I pray to, simply because prayer is actually an act of soul searching, or contemplation; working out one’s emotional, mental and social issues. Much of counseling and therapy is based on ‘getting things off one’s chest’ which is an old true path towards health. The idea that God talks back (not through the Bible but in the mind or as a feeling) can be seen akin to having an imaginary friend, even if this imaginary friend says very good things (which is not even the case with God but can be the opposite)

Objection Two: the religious experience can be duplicated

This is a major tension for religious people and especially theologians; for it takes a lot of the shine and significance away. Drugs can be used to recreate the religious experience. Ask yourself why people can become so dependant upon various powerful drugs, even though they can be so detrimental to their life? (It is the same question I now have for religious people). Why do they do it? Sacrifice their jobs, friends, money and lives just to feel something powerful (transcendence)? Perhaps they might even be willing to sacrifice their only son to get more heroin? One asks them why they are so willing and they respond ‘it is better than anything else, and it is the only way to give my life meaning.’

Now we (the healthy) regard the drug addict to be unhealthy and ‘know’ they ought to get healthy; but are we not taking away something meaningful and powerful? Imagine if there as a drug which had little to no bad physical negative side effects; was free and was available for the taking? The only potential problem was that it would shift the consciousness, would that drug still be bad? Because, essentially that is a good description of religion: a free kind of drug which has no negative physical side effects which is available inside religious institutes/communities.

Back to the perfect drug example: I think it still would be bad, simply because it is a dependence upon a substance where one ought to be a free individual and create that kind of meaning for them self. This is the same problem I have with Christianity, for the simple fact that it teaches one ought to love God above and before all the rest of humanity, even their lovers and even their own children (to the extent that they are willing to consider sacrificing them to show this devotion).

Objection Three: the validity of the religious experience cannot be taken into account via only one religion and therefore ignoring others, but is simply valid or invalid

This has come up a few times already, and there has still to be a good answer. If we ignore the other problems listed above and say even though we cannot understand or fully explain the religious experience, we can still act upon it or in reaction to it (similar to how we can love and be loved without fully explaining love); the problem still remains in how we take and use this evidence in comparison to other examples of religious experience (from other religions).

The individual believer has taken from the religious experience some kind of power to believe. However, when one describes this experience or what it entails, the truth is that it provides some kind of power to hold great faith. One looks at the faith of Abraham, and other stories and the faiths of hero’s Lewis, Aquinas or even the pastor, father friend; they look at the results of other’s religious experience and hold them as evidence for their own faith as well as the communities claim to faith. Your religious experience will not convince me to change my faith, but it may convince me to seek a religious experience of my own or a kind/type of religious experience which is akin to yours.

But by what right are we allowed to draw such a double standard when we reach the edge of the church parking lot? Why and how do we know our religious experience is so superior to that of the drug fiend? How do we know (how can we proclaim) that other religions accounts of religious experience are being caused by the bad guy of our own religion? Its sandbox talk, my dad can beat up your dad mumbo jumbo.

If religious experience is important, say enough to bring about such a change in a person: if it is the essential reason which purports them into a faith, willing to change their mind even when all reason tells them not too; then how can they simply ignore all other kinds of religious experience (i.e. from EVERY OTHER RELIGION?)

Religious experience is both valid and warranted or it is not (akin to the Holy Book critique). The religious person does not get to only count their own kinds of religious experience as tantamount proof and then reject the other 98% that is out there to be considered on arbitrary reasoning. If one’s encounter with Jesus is powerful enough to bring one in to faith, to live one’s life as a Christian; to raise one’s children as Christians, then one must allow for that same amount of weight to be attributed to Vishnu, Moroni and Allah or any other purported religious experience.

Remember that the fact that you are unable to hammer down exactly what is going on rationally as a description within what a religious experience is; actually works towards other religious claims being more valid and comparable to your own. Unless you can stipulate some kind irrational religious experience which would set yours apart from others, we are left with a bunch of people saying very similar things only they all want us to only listen to them and ignore everyone else (sounds like a classroom to me).

Here is where about half of religious people conveniently use their lack of reasoning as an advantage (many oriental religions are not strictly exclusive and thus this critique does not apply to them necessarily). Particular religious people will have the audacity to ask the question:

‘Do other religions have authentic religious experience?’

That is so outrageous to me. It is so full of problems; and it is just a religious version of ethnocentrism. Do you really think any rational person would ask this question:

‘Do other people from other countries experience authentic happiness?’

Or

‘Do you really think we ought to take other cultures seriously when comparing them to our own?’

I submit to you then that if the religious person wants the world to take their religious experience seriously (as a good reason for their own faith or as a good reason to seek a religious experience out for oneself) then they have a major problem: taking into account the rest of the worlds religions, their religious experiences and etc. These do not stand as a critique against any particular religion itself, but it does throw skepticism and scrutiny upon people who take their own religions experience so seriously while wholly ignoring all the rest (perhaps they do it as an act of defense?). Also the onus is upon the religious to make sense of this mess, not the non-religious.

But I want the religious people to respond. Do not partake in any more misology, remember we are talking about my ideas here not the real ideals. Give my views charity and give me the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of the argument respond. I am interested in how a religious person might respond for there are few things left to talk about. This is how I left my faith, and this was a big slice of the cake.

I imagine we will be talking for a long time on this topic for it seems to be almost a final battle ground (for me at any rate) so don’t post super long comments; just get specific and we can go over everything as long as it takes or till we are sick of talking.

For now, no conclusions yet to make.

Choice

2008-02-19T11:22:00.001-08:00

When conversing with religious people a common thread of reasoning is usually put forth. It perhaps has this formula:

I had a religious experience

That experience convinces me to believe (as a choice)

Donkey said:“So it does come down to a choice, but every belief does.”

The first thing I want to point out is that we are not entirely outside of reasoning here (though we seem to be somewhat further away than usual). Take the idea of one’s favorite colour, what is it? Blue, okay why? Because I choose that colour. It is a simple choice and seems to deal little with reasoning; as seen by the crazy idea that one might try to argue someone out of their favorite colour of Blue into let’s say Yellow.

This is a common defense for religious people, since they analogize the absurdity of trying to argue someone out of their favorite colour with trying to argue someone inside or out of a religion. It has to do more with experience and who someone is; with a choice too and that is not reasoning its something else, or so they suggest.

The first objection I would have is this: does the religious person really believe their entire religious encounter/relationship with God stands upon nothing but a choice, a more complex version of having a favorite colour? Because if they are, I think they need to think about how weak such an idea is. I mean, is your religion simply a preference? Religious people base so much on their religion, their political views, moral views, their personal philosophy and how they live from day to day. Do they really feel comfortable saying that all of these things are simply based on a complex preference? I doubt it; it seems to be more of a defensive move than a good description of what is going on.

The second objection is that when dealing with preferences, we are not entirely outside of reason. Though it is true, that someone simply chose their favorite colour, in a purely arbitrary way; it is more usually the case that something informed or influenced that choice. Perhaps another person or perhaps an event of some kind. I choose Blue as my favorite colour because I love the sky, it’s not a convincing reason but it still has some rational content.

Here is the clincher, if it is the case that someone’s religious choice was entirely arbitrary (coming wholly from choice alone), my question is this: does that really work for its merit? To me it seems more of a weakness. I ask the Christian ‘why do you believe what you believe?’ and they respond ‘just because I chose too…’ Is this really a good thing (if or when it is true)? Unlikely.

I think the defense of ‘choice’ is much more being used as a defense of convenience than it is a good description of what is going on in religious people. Take a political example:
Let’s say we are arguing political and legal ramifications about Euthanasia. The discussion opens and we talk and talk, you give your reasons and I give mine and then, just when it seems you are gaining some ground I suddenly say ‘well it is just wrong because I have chosen for it to be wrong.’ What I have really said? There is very little content in such a claim. It has been obvious from the beginning of the dialogue that it was also my preference that it was wrong, otherwise why would I be working for my position (assuming we are having a genuine talk and not a performance).

Our preferences are there from day one, but we are not defended nor convincing others with them. This is why we have fallacies such as ‘bandwagon’ because just because there are many people with the same preferences; it does not mean we have good reasons to change our own.

So what does this mean? That our preferences are unimportant? By no means, they are the most important and powerful things we hold, this is why it takes massive amounts of time, effort and good reasoning to change someone’s mind. They are part of our identity and when we change them we are changing ourselves.

The point is simply: we are not allowed to hide behind them, or if we are then we must admit that that is the case (and that it is a weak position).You can say ‘I believe simply because I want to believe’ and I will not get on your case. However I will, if you think that a preference is a good reason to believe in and of itself, for it simply is not. It is not, to the same extent that I ought to choose your favorite colour simply because it is your favorite colour and nor vice versa.

Now the religious person is likely thinking ‘hey, I don’t do that, my reason is religious experience; that is why I choose to believe what I believe!’ This is a good objection to this essay, but I will be dealing with the idea of religious experience after this post. First I want to establish the clarity of weakness when a person is leaning not but upon preference as good reasons for that preference.

I say this because I plan on taking away the validity of the religious experience, but I do not want to have to come back to this point, at a later date.

In conclusion:A preference is not a good reason for itself or another preference. It is a weak position, though stating its weakness is also not a good reason for someone to change their preference. Preferences are not what drive us, reasons do; this is why we talk, because we do not share the same preferences but it seems we ought to share some of them, and when we are convinced to change and share them it is due to reason (particularly good reasoning).

Finally, for things as complex as religion, politics and philosophy; having them stand upon a preference or choice, is unacceptable; for these things are too complex and too important to simply be picked or rejected arbitrarily.

Thus I submit to you that though “every belief comes down to a choice” a choice without good reasoning is a weak position to have (and if one is hiding behind this weakness, they have a problem).

Again, pointing out this weakness is not a good reason to change that preference, but it ought to open the mind of the person being accused (if the accusation are true) to hear more reasoning and be open to changing their mind; if it turns out they have little to no good reason to hold their position and the alternative position has lots of good reasoning against theirs (if that is the case); then the ought to take seriously the notion of changing their mind respectively (or admit they are holding to beliefs irrationally, at the very least weak).

The Big Essential Difference

2008-02-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Is it really beyond my reasoning, or perhaps just a rational observation of bad reasoning?

Donkey said: “If my reason conflicts with a holy book on some point I will conclude that I do not fully understand the meaning, I am tainted and cannot appreciate truth, or that the book is wrong.”

Think about how powerful such a move might be. What kind of specific criteria would bad Holy Book reasoning have to be in order for it to be considered ‘wrong?’ Is this what happened to Lev. 19:19?

Think about it like this: one is concluding that even though ‘x’ (insert lofty theological idea) is beyond one’s reasoning, it does not become wrong (or irrational); usually called non-rational (simply meaning: outside of reason).

Thus one reasons, even though ‘x’ does not make sense and nor can one understand it; it is nevertheless true.

Now this move will be characterized as an act of faith (and thus presumably not an act of reason). But if one implements this move, are they not actually reasoning all along? In other words, what is really playing the last card: Holy Book or reason?

A) You believe in God, because you have had an experience of God

B) That God is a God of a particular Holy Book

C) You read about ‘x’ and ‘y’ and find them hard to get/understand

D) You also read about how human reasoning is limited or tainted (noetic aspect of the fall)

E) You conclude that ‘x’ is true even though it is not rational or in spite of the fact that you cannot understand it (perhaps someone else might)

F) You conclude that ‘y’ is wrong due to the extreme bad reasoning it posses and make the appropriate ‘reinterpretation’ (Lev. 19:19) and claim that they now have a ‘better’ reading of the Holy Book.

So my question are two:

1. What is the real difference between ‘x’ and ‘y’?

2. Where in this story are you NOT reasoning?

My answers:

1) One of the more important differences will be essentiality of the theological idea to that religion and or Holy Book; meaning, if ‘x’ is necessary for the religion, one will always have to side with E). However when one encounters ‘y’ which is not necessary, nor essential to the religion; one is able to side with F).

Illustration: a good example of ‘x’ is the Christian idea of the Trinity and a good example of ‘y’ is the Christian idea of Women in Ministry. The Christian is free to reinterpret scripture on the topic of women but not on the topic of the Trinity.

2) You are always using reason, even using reason to limit reason based on good reasoning; furthermore you are reasoning your self away from bad reasoning by appealing to better reasoning based on better reasons.

Illustration: God likely does not want us to think women are less than men even though the Bible seems to hold this position since those ideas are more likely a reflection of the culture of their day and though we ought to be like Jesus and follow his teachings, this does not include adopting his culture (similar to slavery).

Please feel free to answer the questions yourself.

I submit to you that such a faith is not non-rational but quite rational; from the beginning to the end. The aspects of your faith which are irrational- you explain with more reasoning. In other words, you MAKE IT MAKE SENSE WHY YOU HAVE NONSENSICAL ideas and thus preserve the rationality of your whole by making a rational space for irrational ideas.

The aspects of your faith which are non-rational (if true) are furthermore explained, talked about or at least described and thought about in a rational means. Your Holy Book is a rational object, as is your adherence to it and your non-adherence to other Holy Books.

Conclusion: Here is the problem: I think that when a religious person begins to talk about something being outside or beyond reasoning they are not simply describing how the world is, how their religion is or how they are; but rather; they are setting up (perhaps unintentionally) a convenience of defense.

They set up a dynamic reasoning system (a religious reasoning) with its own rules only they have a really large special button to push: when something does not make good sense instead of the usual dual option for the rest of philosophy (likely wrong or likely in need of adjustment), the religious person has a third option: it does not make sense but it remains true.

How do they do that? How do they build up a system of thinking like that, which incorporates the Holy Book, religious experience and account for internal problems?

They do it all with reason………………………………………

So if reason is powerful enough to take us into religion, explain religion and give us a way to account and make space for us to hold irrational ideas- then surely it can led us out of our faith too.

I imagine we will want to talk about this state for a while but just for the interested my plan is as follows:

I hope to show that we are always reasoning (last post: we nearly agree)
I hope to show that any and all Holy Books can at least be wrong on something (we already agree)
I hope to show that if a Holy Book is wrong on something, we should stop believing that wrong idea
I hope to show that based on particular theology, due to the lack of sense it can sustain, we are only left with religious experience as a good reason to hold any particular faith
I hope to show that religious experience is not as significant an unique as most want it to be

Finally concluding (as I did personally) that though there are lots of possibility for God's existence, there is not enough good conclusive probability to God's existence. And thus if we consider ourselves to be rational individuals (which is a must), then we ought to admit that our belief in God is more weighted in choice, than it is in good reasoning.

The ABC’s of Religion

2008-02-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

For the rest of this discussion I will be assuming that everyone agrees with me on these two premises.

1. That all meaningful human thought, action and argument are acts of reasoning (ranging on a spectrum of crazy to sane with sensible in the middle)

2. That when we find a problem in our reasoning we should take it serious, as a potential to show we are wrong on something (ranging on a similar spectrum)

If you are not yet convinced of these two things then please just assume them for the argument, for I feel I have said all I can to suggest their truth, perhaps once we start using them effectively those still unconvinced will begin to see their weight and worth. Those who are still very unconvinced can take solace that this provides another ‘eject button’ which gets you out of this argument if you feel the need too.

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The first topic is going to be Holy Books

The religious person has for themselves a nice foundation, that being the Holy Book. But what is a Holy Book? It seems to be a communication from God to us people. This communication takes many forms: direct commands, stories, histories, philosophies and testimony. Here is the key idea:

(A). The things found in Holy Books do not get their meaning and value based on what they say but rather based on where they are coming from.

(I am interested to hear who will agree with that idea and who will not). This idea, that the stuff of a Holy Book comes from God is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In effect it is a claim: ‘that the material of this Book shall only be thought of in such and such a way’ I’m leaving it ambiguous on purpose.

The various religions have different ‘ways’ by which to take their scripture. Some feel their scriptures are simply fallible human accounts of what the religion was like when or where; others it is a supreme quality of information which is perfect or was perfect when given. For the most part the general consensus is thus:

(B). One may only critique a Holy Book by the criteria prescribed in that Holy Book.

This is the path of reasoning many religious people take in order to protect themselves from the critique of many and varying Holy Books. The similarities or differences between are safely ignored (or can be if one chooses) based on (B).

Thus it matters not that a certain Holy Book will prescribe x is wrong while another will say it right; they are islands to each other and only addressed by (B) are they allowed to be fairly taken or properly taken.

The problem I have with this is simple: isn’t it clearly a tactic to avoid good criticism?

The mere fact that there are so many religions and Holy Books to boot seems like a good reason to be skeptical from the beginning. I think this is as obvious to the religious person as it is to the non-religious person; and thus they have reasoned the idea (B).

Thus (B) becomes the perfect safety system; for some religious people will take this idea to such an extreme that they will reject everything else, just to preserve their Holy Book’s idea. A good illustration of this are religious people who still think Evolution is an attack on their faith and or that Evolution is a faith of its own.

A good question to ask such a person is this: how can you wholly reject an idea with such weight to it simply based on your religious foundation (i.e. that it runs conflict with your faith)? I think the answer is simple as well, because they have too/ want too. This is where the religious person goes on a postmodern joy ride and begins to talk about faith as simply a choice or as lying outside the realm of reasoning.

To me it seems quite obvious that this is a good way to avoid the critique that your religion is simply wrong on certain things.

I think that is the first step of religious people coming into a better understanding of what is going on in their religion (and a sign of rationality); when they admit their Holy Book is or can be wrong on at least one insignificant point.

Any religious people who honestly think their Holy Books are inerrant are quite simply mind boggling. The Evangelical theology even goes to pain staking ways to get around this by suggesting, though the Bible is not inerrant today in its current condition, it was originally given as inerrant. I think the bad reasoning is quite clear so I will leave that one alone.

Ultimately the biggest problem with Holy Books is its desire for it to be placed in a different level than the rest of knowledge and thought. The problems are clear in the following argument:

(C)
The Holy Book comes from God
God is trustworthy because the Holy Book says so
We can trust the Holy Book because the Holy Book comes from God

The simple problem being that the reasoning is circular.

Thus I submit to you that due to the ideas A,B and C; religion is already (before it even gets off the ground) falling into rational trouble.

I dare anyone to try and prove me wrong (but you can’t use reason)

Circles of Reason

2008-01-24T12:50:00.000-08:00

The religious idea of reason is that of a tool by which humans can make sense of the world. Most religions place strict limits upon reason which I will not contest here. It seems quite obvious that reason is not anything divine, but the question is: what is it good for, what does it permeate and what is there for use to use beside it?

Christian’s (and other religious people) use the idea of the Kalam argument that the universe is illogical without a personal cause starter; Aristotle’s ‘Unmoved Mover.’ The crux of the issue lands in how far we can use reason to limit God, for if God is divine surely that Divinity will go outside and beyond reason or all understanding for that matter.

We draw a circle and call it all things in the universe. We solve our illogical problem (Kalam argument) by saying ‘surely the Universe has a beginning, that beginning is caused and it was caused by a personal agent (God).' If one asks the next obvious question ‘where does God come from?’ the religious person simply responds, something to the effect of ‘it’s a mystery, God always has been or simply the answer is beyond all possible human understanding.’ All of these responses seem very clear and convincing.

But why is the religious person unsatisfied with allowing the universe’s beginnings to be a mystery, always was (there never was) and or it is simply beyond all understanding (thus the need for a God); yet they are satisfied with these problems going unanswered in God? What the religious person has really done by suggesting God exists is draw another circle and thus have not answered the problem raised by the Kalam argument. They have only broaded the circle and then decided not to care about what is outside it:

The initial problem with having a mechanical universe (started without an initial agent cause) is that one will be left with an infinite regress. Hitchens calls this ‘the ultimate Boeing 747.’ The problem is found in that when we put God into the picture as a birth spot for the universe, we are actually drawing our circle a bit larger (including God) and thus we are not answering anything only deciding not to want to answer the question of God's origins for the sake of having an answer for the Universe's origins.

My point is that the answer to the Kalam argument is not really an answer; it is only the answer if we decide not to draw the larger circle (but this act is necessary in order to have God outside of our circle as a cause for the circle).

The Christian says 'without a personal cause at the birth of the universe the atheist is just as illogical as the Christian believing in the Trinity.' But this is not the case, for where the atheist will simply say 'I cannot answer that question, I do not know' the Christain says 'I can answer that question and the answer is God,' however both satements hold the same ammount of meaning.

atheist: I don't know = religious: God (they don't actually know either)

It is like asking where did Eric come from? Answer: Eric's father; and then igorning the question where did Eric's father come from: God. Using God at the birth of the universe is only a infinite regress option which adds (we won't ask after God because God is God) but why not ask to begin with?

A good possible rebuttal to this problem is to say ‘God is outside the circle and it doesn’t make sense to have him within the circle because God functions on a higher kind of reason or something beyond reason; and this is why it cannot make sense to us within the circle.' This is a good response but the problem with it can be seen in this diagram:

This picture shows how God, as defined as being permanently beyond whichever is predicated, would fit (at the same time) inside and outside our world (be both a part of the rational world and be beyond the rational world, or just be beyond it). Thus an idea like The Trinity is something which would exist above the rational line: as something we can point to (as a witness) and yet understand that we cannot ever fully understand it. Thus the Christian idea that reason is important but it does not get to override God itself is perserved; since if that were possible then reason would be something beyond God, and would become God.

Thus the idea of a witness is what seems to become some kind of a bridge in-between the human rational capacity and the divine rationale. This is the same kind of stipulation religious people will say about their scripture: it came from God and thus it is immune to human reason or in other words: of course human reason find (God, scripture, religion) irrational, it is from divine reason (or beyond reason) and thus it necessitates the human mind will finding it un-understandable. Since, do to the sin in the world, we are unable to trust our own reason and we can only trust in God’s wisdom, like a child who is unable to understand why the parent does x, never the less benefits from being pulled out of the way of a car… etc.

Here is the problem of all three diagrams: reason is not something which is contained in or outside of the circles but rather it is represented by the white space of the entire picture.

All religion is based on this axiom:

-that what would come from God would be good and perfect-

But where does this axiom come from? From within the circle, in other words the fundamental basis of all religion is based upon an axiom which is based in reason; from it they can create a system which rationally reasons itself out of reason...

Take the idea of a witness, why should I agree with God about x? Because God has said x, or because x makes sense? Take the first diagram, where does the sense come from that God as a personal agent birth the universe? It comes from within the circle; or rather it comes from the picture itself.

To put it another way, all these diagrams (which were originally intended to make sense of how and where reason is limited) actually rather show that reason is only limited by reason (Kant)(which is quite different from it just being limited by something else) or perhaps limited by choice of an individual.

These are examples of reason reasoning itself out of reason.

Here is an easy example (though unfair) for what I am trying to say:

Descartes says: since I, the human, am finite and prone to error, then God must be infinite and incapable of error.

But where does that statement take its clout from? From the coupling of two other axioms:

nothing can come from nothing
the law of non-contradiction (A = ~A)

But where do these ideas come from? They come from within the circle! (reason)

When the religious person shows you how they can believe x is outside of reason or believe it inspite of it's irrational nature; it is actually reason which allows them to do this, not God or scripture or a witness for that matter.

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All this to say that when we reason ourselves out of reason we are not actually getting anywhere, and thus I submit to you that God is not something which exists outside of reason; or if part of God does exists outside of reason it is therefore inaccessible to the extent that it cannot be important to us, for to be so it would become rational and understandable.

Chomsky defines reason as being that ability to act outside the mechanical system of a given sphere of existence. Thus as animals do not posses a high power to reason, they cannot make a choice to do this or that, since they are running on a program as it were. A human can, and we call this freedom or the ability to will something.

I traditionally we like to call reason something much more specific, and furthermore we call logic something else; so take this post as an explanation as to what I mean when I say reason etc.

Just remember that if you have reasoned your religion to be outside reason, then you have still placed your religion upon a rational foundation; one which makes sense of when logic is in order: IF you have faith in God THEN you will receive salvation; and when not: The Trinity is OUTSIDE reason THEREFORE it is a mystery and need not make sense.

With this foundation of what I think and what I mean when I say the word 'reason' I feel we are ready to begin a good conversation about the beliefs and faith statements already spoken. I understand few of you will wholly agree with me on many points, but I think we have already established that we don’t agree so:

I challenge Gordon, Ben and Jon to try and see if you can fully understand where I am coming from, what I think and feel is going on in religion. It will be in this way that we can talk about faith but keep it impersonal. You still always get that ‘value discrepancy eject button’ to push when you want; but see how far you can follow me into my mind.

One last note: if you want me to respond to something you have said before we go on please say so and I will. This entry has been more of a general provocation to the ideas mixed (though I have paid more personal time to Jon’s idea of a witness than others). If you think I have overlooked something important you said please say so. It’s a lot of reading and forgive me if I miss your good points now and then. I am willing, just let me know.

From the Ground Up

2008-01-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

Questions of God are tantalizing to the mind-

Religion is certainly a personal object, and this is its great strength. Why do I wrestle with the existence of the Christian God and not Zeus? There are many answers but only one really clearly draws the proper distinction: I take the Christian religion personally and I (nearly) take all other religions only intellectually. I imagine the Christian mindset is similar; to paraphrase Hitchens ‘everyone knows what it is like to be an atheist to every other religion save their own.’ Why? Because they choose to.

Kierkegaard talks about the heart of religion being not but a choice. Lewis follows this frame as does the protestant claim of faith: as an action of trust forthwith from the will. Who can argue with another’s choice?

Yet when we speak of God are we not conversing about an active, living and dynamic person? Why are our standards so low for belief (even faith) in something no one sees, hears, feels, smells or touches? Why is God the strong silent type but not Baal or Allah? Why are our standards so high for belief in weather, science, economy, medicine, love, law and social organization; yet we are fine with an ethereal God who does not even show up as a blur or fly through the congregation like a gentle breeze when present? Why do religions create new sense organs (spiritual eyes to see Jesus; spiritual emotions to feel the Holy Spirit and or a deep untouchable knowledge that God IS; regardless)? Why are these sense organs championed over empirical ones?

We proclaim so much on witness, but if you cannot ever nail down in a few sentences or more what you really believe, is it not quite possible that you yourself do not really know what you believe, perhaps only that whatever you believe in is also true?

‘Other religions do not bother me’ and ‘my faith might not be rational’ and yet you sometimes proceed to argue rationally (even logically at times) as to how these paradoxes fit together, how one can hold them in a ‘creative tension.’ Can you really claim any dimension of consistency or accountability, when at the heart of it all there is only a choice and coupled with that choice there is a value statement for that kind of a choice?

If you think (or admit) your faith has irrational aspects but then add the caveat that you do not feel this is a problem; if you say beforehand that you do not nor can not ever understand God nor your faith in God, what can I say? What can I say to something you yourself do not even understand? What can I say to a choice, to a person who says ‘even if you showed me my faith was based in lies (if even that were possible) I would go on believing anyway? I cannot reason with someone who does not value reason, nor can I witness (the absence of God) if you would only reply with an opposite witness.

Who is this kind of reasoning benefiting? Who benefits with the coupling of irrational faiths and the intrinsic value that there is nothing wrong with holding an irrational belief (even though theology is one of the few areas where this kind of non rational stuff is tolerated, even called a virtue for its difficulty)? And it is difficult to hold non rational ideas in the face of their problematic nature; its where we get words and concepts like noetic aspect of the fall; hypostatic-union and the Trinity. What can I say to this conglomerate of rationality mixed with non-rationality mixed with irrationality mixed with existentialities mixed with personal trust mixed with personal choice? What can be said?

If one is unwilling to approach a discussion open to the possibility that they may be proven wrong, that they are willing to change their mind given x or y; how can one converse at all? Are there other examples of individuals who are willing to be a witness to something yet closed to the possibility to change their own minds? People who want other people to change like them but are unwilling to honestly entertain the chance they might have to change?

All I can speak for is myself. I am willing to be wrong, to change my mind, to see something I have missed, to find out I may be viewing the world improperly. I am willing to be critiqued to listen to an opposing view and give it charity and honest reflection. I am willing to spend long hours contemplating ideas, trying to see them from all possible sides and in all possible contexts.

So I ask; what will we talk about? It has been said that we ought not speak about immature, stupid religious beliefs; it has been said that we ought not to speak about ideas or faiths which no one holds; it has been said that we should speak about what is really worth speaking about; so, what is it? Answer my three questions:

1. What is your value statement upon reason in relation to truth? What else do you use for truth? When figuring out what IS and what ISNOT, what do you use?

2. What is your faith? (Can you tell me in a few ideas, propositions, and foundational aspects and not in a long personal statement?) What does your faith find its foundation upon?

3. What would it take to change your mind? Is it even possible, are you willing to entertain the possibility that your God is not real?

Lastly, if you cannot ‘buy’ into my world here, if you cannot consider yourself thinking and valuing in the same way as I will be, then can you do it (for me) with pretension? Give yourself a 'get out of jail free card': a personal eject button you will get to push when you feel the difference in one of us being right or wrong is landing on values and not in truth. Talk to me for the sake of the argument; create a fictions person in your mind and speak for that guy, anything to trim down the emotional interference which always seems to plague conversations like this.

In other words do not take me personal. I will be talking about ideas, not people; beliefs not individuals. I am not talking about your God but the idea of God; I am not talking about your faith but the idea of faith; I am not talking about your religion but the idea of your religion which you are putting forth. There is enough space for this conversation to end in my favor and for you to walk away unscathed remaining religious.

To the extent that you allow any critique of mine to reach you is your own personal prerogative; but let’s do some philosophy and really get somewhere.

Any takers, responses or comments?

Clarity for Foundation Sake

2008-01-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

When it comes to religion the hardest part is the vastness that is the field of religion. It is an open wide range. It also happens to be a very personal sphere of identity, existence and meaning for most people. Even now as an Atheist I find my own identity still wrapped up in how I think and feel about religion. Therefore in order to make for a good conversation for lets say Christianity I think we all need to be open to the many ways people talk, argue and consider themselves Christian (or religious in a general sense). I think this is possible, we need only be intentional.

I have heard these following arguments for God, religion or spirituality from a Christian point of view. They are intentionally general for encompassing sake, please feel free to edit them.

1. The Bible is most Important

This argument goes somewhat along the lines as taking the Bible’s account of humanity as humans being fallen in need of something; and the savior story which is the solution to this problem. Human’s are sinful and have lost their ability to be good, reach God and reason well (noetic aspect). Thus, unable to save themselves God saves them through the acts of Jesus (I think we all know the story). This account of reality is taken as being valuable since the Bible is considered to have come from God directly either in its original giving, or through inspiration. If there are errors or problems these are overcome by the work of the Holy Spirit.

The basic idea of this approach is ‘read the Bible, see its truth for yourself and ask God to reveal Himself to you and you will find God.’ I think this argument is Bible focused since at the end of every conversation a believer will appeal to the special status of the Bible for ratification of any and all Christian religious points of view and or Doctrines. This entire argument is based on the Bible being a real inspired work from God.

This is a version of an argument from evidence, the evidence being the stories, miracles, wisdom and powerful history of the Bible (how it has effected so many for so many years).

2. The First Cause is Unexplainable

This argument is used by many religious people for it does not actually validate any one religion but point out a heavy inconsistency with people who do not prescribe to any kind of religion. Other names of it are the Kalam argument, the Cosmological argument and various other versions. The Wikipedia article is not good but here is a good version of it:

Premise One: the Universe either had (a) a beginning or (b) no beginning at all
Premise Two: if it had a beginning it was either (a) caused or (b) uncaused
Premise Three: if it had a cause that cause was either (a) by agency or (b) not agency

In the world of science and reason it is hard (if not impossible) to show how things can have no beginnings and are not caused. Also, the problem of infinite regress is an issue unless one puts a personal agency at the start.

Do to the unreasonably of trying to explain the universe any other way other than a God being of some kind started it all, religious people appeal to the Unexplainable First Cause as a way to show nonreligious people as being unreasonable.

3a. Forget the Arguments, I have Touched God (experience version)

This line of arguments is quite popular in our shift toward Postmodern values. This line of reasoning tries to rid itself of the sphere of reasoning altogether. It says that arguments, apologetics, reasoning, facts, science, hermeneutics (ad nausum) all are good in their own right and useful; but what really counts is authentic religious experience. In the Christian line it takes the form of this common phrase: I don’t have a religion, I have a relationship.

For these people, though they usually do percribe to a church of some kind and or holy book; the real ‘thing’ which brought them to their understanding of God and knowledge of the Divine all came from encountering God; not unlike Saul on the road to Damascus. Encountering God in real time, in the real world is what for many religious people the heart and soul of their religious conviction.

For these people, you could (if it were possible) show them how their religion is false, their holy book false and how their church is false and yet they would still hold very calmly to their beliefs

3b. Forget the Arguments, I have Touched God (choice version)

This one is very much like 3a, but I have encountered both enough now I think I ought to separate them, however for brevity sake I wont repeat myself. This is the same kind of approach to religion, not rejecting rationality but suggesting it is not as good as most people want it to be. It says that arguments, apologetics, reasoning, facts, science, hermeneutics (ad nauseam) all are good in their own right and useful; but what really counts is authentic religious choice.

In this case an individual simply chooses to become part of a religion and finds this willful act to be the most valuable kind of foundation. You can, like above, prove them wrong on all accounts (if possible) and yet they will simply say something like: at the end of the day I just want there to be a God, and thus I believe in a God; or a more pessimistic version: I can’t life without the idea of a God.

Forget the Argument’s line of reasoning is not unlike religious people who feel they cannot be moral without the idea of Eschatological accountability and or a God who will set all things justly at some moment in time.

These have been the main approaches to religion (generally speaking) which I have encountered. I am willing to entertain more options and of course we will leave the door open for new possibilities or new creations.

If you can think of another way people talk about religion say so, but try to make sure it is not already near or along the lines of one of these options. I have only brought them in to give us some clarity and it goes without saying that there are many variable versions of each of these; each significant in their specific settings. It also goes without saying that many religious people will hold more than one of these approaches, or different approaches over different times for different aspects of their religion.

Again this is just a shot for clarity so in the middle of a crazy debate we wont get too fuddled up. I am interested in hearing some feedback.

Are these arguments you find yourself holding for your religion? Are they fair in their representation? Have I overlooked something, belittled something or left out an important point?

This blog is going to be all about me trying to show how and why I think religion is unreasonable, so I want to be clear on what I am trying to dismiss. If these specific examples of argument are not what you (the religious person) hold, then tell me and explain it, anything to avoid that terrible conversation ender ‘oh I see, well in that case it seems we have been arguing for the same thing all along…’

A Call to Conversation

2008-01-08T11:13:00.001-08:00

Oh boy here we go again. I don’t know if I will be able to recruit my old pals back into verbal and rational combat but if I can I want to make this old blog something interesting again. I was looking over it the other day and I thought it was serving a good purpose back then. The best thing I think which we could do is perhaps go over a few issues we once talked about and see where we stand now that time has gone by. That is not necessary, I would just like to see if the same ends would be made or if perhaps the issues have developed.

There are some new things to note as well. For one, I am no longer a believing Christian. It has been a long journey out of religion but I find myself being okay admitting out loud to people now that I am an Atheist.

I am what people call a soft Atheist; which means I am still interested and open minded about God, and would like to believe in God only that I feel when one (me) looks at the world, the evidence, argument and stories about God; I feel there is insufficiency to actively believe in God. In other words I do not feel there are good or adequate reasons to believe in God any further. The conversation is always open and thus I wish to start talking again here.

I believe in truth and I believe in good conversations; thus I would like to restart a conversation on God with people who believe in God. I also no longer feel the need or find useful, my synonym. That was always silly and fun.
So I hope a few of my old friends and new ones may choose to join me again for some good talks. I will try to think up a few soon.

More Ideas

2008-01-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

One thing I have found while talking to Christians about the religious expereice is the rebuttal ‘just because you found it bad, doesn’t mean it is bad for all [people in said religion].” It usually comes up after I have told them something bad about their religion.

It is always frustrating and difficult to actually convince a religious person that their religion has problems, mainly because religions teach problems only can exist within the failure of individuals and not God. It’s quite clever if you think about it. The perfect immunity; god is perfect and thus any problems with god will have to be with people [who are not perfect]. Thus whenever I get into a good faith talk and say something incriminating about Christianity to a Christian, the Christian will respond “of course those people over there have it wrong, they are not part of us; and besides, just because you had a bad experience, it doesn’t mean all experiences are therefore bad.’

Usually I get excited to see and hear a Christian using reason, but this too I find too convenient (my favorite word in this topic). When a Christian is evangelizing someone into the faith they will use their personal experience as a good proof for this or that. You want to be happy like me? You see how much better I live? You see how much joy I have? You want to be able to talk to the creator of the universe like me? Ad nausum.

So my question is this: if a religious person’s personal experience is good enough to talk someone into a religion, why is an atheist’s negative experience of that religion not allowed to be used to talk someone out of the religion?

Blessed By God

2007-03-16T23:29:00.000-07:00

Over the years one of the more interesting aspects of my life, in my opinion, is that I have been found to be blessed. All proof aside and with the doubt on full, I was born miraculously, healed as a baby by a prayer from my father to the Christian God. How could I not feel a kinship with that God, after hearing a story like that all my life? I saw Jesus floating in the sky when I was three, I was working on my tricycle with a screwdriver and I looked up and saw his face, his face was sad. I ran inside to tell my mother and she said ‘that’s wonderful dear’ but when I came back out to double check, the wind had blown his face away.

Suppose that the Christian God is not real, how then do I account for my life’s many miracles? They are not the proof many people are looking for when they want to know God. Just give me a sign, they say, answer this prayer, they want; but if God came down and ripped off the roof of the church, it is likely that nothing would really change. That is why I worry when I hear people who say their faith is largely dependant upon miracles. Though since I have seen, done and experienced many, and lost my faith, and my friends have not, whom still hold to a faith, I wonder if miracles are really so valuable as most Christians place them to be.

Suppose God is not real, yet I find my life stroked with goodness, is it luck? What is a prayer to a silent God worth? Lewis said that people do not pray to change God but to change themselves, but really, if that is true, then God might as well not exist, my prayer is going to change me no matter what. That is scarier than it sounds.

I was thinking about God late last night, and it occurred to me that the idea of God is really quite individual if you think about it. There is a transcendence to the idea of God, but what, who and why God is, is quite individual. It is like the colour blue, we all see it and usually can point to the same thing, but it could be so different to each of us within. God is the same. The idea of God transcends all, but the real God, the personal God, that God is individual, as individual as every person is.

Sure we get together and celebrate our commonalities, we write books, we read books, we make sure each other has proper theology, proper views; but really, all we are doing is examining each other’s God in comparison toward perfection. We hear the pastor’s God, and we think, that is good, my God needs to be that way, and change accordingly; but we say ‘ah!’ instead of ‘hmmm…’

I once was talking with some Bible school friends in Sweden about whether or not God sent aborted babies to hell. I was kinda leaning toward hell when a friend came over, hearing our conversation, and said ‘I could not believe in a God who did that.’ It struck me funny, because I always thought God was either so or not, what the hell did it matter what that one other guy thought? What is interesting is, however, that what that other guy thought is really more important. I think I just wanted my God to be immune to his ramblings. And of course, making our God immune to someone else’s ramblings is what every human is best at.

Isn’t it kinda interesting that God is always the super person of any given culture or individual? God is a person, God is the best person possible, the person who loves more than any normal person can, the person who gives more than any normal person can, the God who does actions which defy the normal person’s understanding. But when we talk about a God like that, aren’t we just talking about how much better we can see a human becoming? Sure it is impossible; sure it is not ever going to happen, but sometimes God looks a lot more like a super human, than God looks like a God.

So what does it mean to be blessed by God? Is it just a secret optimism? Is it just a complex well wishing system? I mean we talk about humans being made in God’s image, but our Christianity foretells that God choose to become that creation in Jesus. God becoming human, it sounds almost as interesting as human’s becoming God. Good thing it only goes one way though. In one of Lewis’s books, some characters talk about how amazing that is, that God choose to become human. It does seem amazing.

But why did God not just make it right, with a zip of the finger? Surely a God could, that is the definition of God after all, doing anything, all possibilities. I guess what it comes down to is that, that is not really interesting, a God who makes it right with a zip of the finger. That is really boring, what is not, is the gospel.

I watched that new movie 300 the other day and I was struck by the perfection of the Spartans. Why is their perfection so much more interesting than God’s perfection? Seeing them on the battle field, killing with ease, it was interesting. But if you imagine God coming down and killing everyone, that is boring. We say ‘oh yeah, God can do that, so what? God is God after all.’ But when we see a human doing it, it is amazing, why so?

Perhaps the pursuit of perfection is much more interesting than perfection itself, its only cool when it has been earned, when it has been created, rather than when it is given or intrinsic. God’s perfection is really quite boring, of course God is perfect, what else could God be?

So it seems that God is the artisan after all, when the world could have been saved by one thought, or word, like light was created, instead the world is saved by the gospel. It’s interesting, it’s beautiful, it’s supposedly beyond rational understanding, but what it is, more than anything else, is really rather human. It is a perfect human like God, who saves humans through a human like way.

But maybe I am cheapening the gospel, after all, if it is really by God, and if God is beyond human understanding, then trying to understand it, we humans would cheapen it, and that can’t be right, can it?

Homosexuality Finished

2007-03-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

Alright, well I think we gave a real honest and deep exploration of the topic and I would like to have us stop here. Here is where we will show some real maturity, or at least I hope I will by doing this.

The subject of homosexuality is not an easy one. If there were other people having this talk with us, the conversation could have gone in many other directions. Donkey was right when he said that if we get enough of the same kind of people together, they can all pat each other on the back and support each other’s views. However, this is not something I want.

Therefore, I do not want any conclusions.

I think I have given a reasonable defence that homosexuality is not a sin.
And I think, Donkey, Nowaware and Reece have given us a reasonable defence that homosexuality is a sin.

So I think we can, rather than fight and push till one gives in, but instead just be joyful that we had a good conversation.

Though we each certainly think our side is right (why else would we debate), I do want to clearly show that I respect the opposite side, too often in a situation like this people can turn sour and start demanding conclusion, but not us, not here. I also want to uphold that this topic is a difficult one, one so complex that surely we have yet to examine enough of all the sides to come to any real conclusions. Instead we have taken a good step in that direction.

We politely opened this topic, with the goal to honestly explore the issue and we have done just that. Many of us, though hearing good arguments for the opposite side, will remain where we began, with the same view. That is not a sign of failure, it is a sign of respect.

If reason, God, faith or a conversation ought to lead anyone to anything, I believe that must be done solo. You can always find a better argument from someone else, and so no one should change their opinion on the spot, in light of someone else’s work.

Therefore the conclusion of the matter will be left for every individual to decide for themselves. The topic was open when we started it and it will remain open as we finish it.

I think we are all willing to talk further, but I think I want to officially end this thread. I mean, I honestly feel like we have really accomplished something here. Many people told me that such a conversation could not be done kindly and effectively, but we did it, not without much work, but we did do it. We tried to respect the other side, we tried to see it a new way, we tried to argue our side, and for the most part we acknowledged our mistakes; we had a good, mature, honest and open conversation about something really difficult and controversial. <- that is no easy feat.

I’m being a nerd here, but having the conversation is really what I set out to do, and I am rather happy we did it.

Like I said long ago, perhaps it is not reaching and finding the right answer that is so important, perhaps the conversation, the journey is really what life is all about. It is what I wish this site could be.