The belief that one can be wrong (or right) about a religious belief is itself a belief. You believe it can be wrong, I don't (which is to say I don't believe a religious belief can be wrong as an absolute). I believe that a religious belief can be believed or not believed.
Well, no. There must, logically, be a single set of religious beliefs that are actually, objectively, TRUE
This matter of holding beliefs for reasons other than thinking that they're true makes me think of Harry Frankfurt's distinction between lying and bullshit: one is lying when one knows what one's saying is wrong and wishes to implant wrong beliefs in one's audience; one is bullshitting when one doesn't care whether what one's saying is true or false.
This looks like a set-up for a binary choice.
Recommending beliefs on grounds other than thinking them true looks a lot like deliberately endorsing bullshit.
And this looks like a binary choice. I'm not sure what you mean by "recommending beliefs", but I can think of other reasons for discussing beliefs. Not every fruit that isn't an orange is a lemon.
This is defining atheism as a religious belief so that it can then be said that religious belief encompasses all possibilities. But this seems to be stretching the definition more than a little.
Unless you're going to resort to unwieldly clauses such as 'religious and other beliefs that comprise worldviews' I think 'religious beliefs including atheism' seems the most convenient way of speaking. 0 is just as much a number as 47.53 .
Not that 'atheism' is a belief as such - rather it's a set of worldviews designated by features they don't share with another better defined set. It's rather like talking about invertebrates.
Recommending beliefs on grounds other than thinking them true looks a lot like deliberately endorsing bullshit.
And this looks like a binary choice. I'm not sure what you mean by "recommending beliefs", but I can think of other reasons for discussing beliefs. Not every fruit that isn't an orange is a lemon.
Not sure what Dafyd was referring to, but my mind went to the various times such-and-such a belief is endorsed because it is seen as useful if a significant portion of society believed in such things, rather than because it is necessarily true (the most recent examples being various alt right figures endorsing Christianity).
No. This is defining atheism as a religious belief so that it can then be said that religious belief encompasses all possibilities. But this seems to be stretching the definition more than a little. I would say that atheism is the rejection of religious beliefs about God. And if "atheism" as a term didn't exist, I don't find it difficult to imagine a cosmos in which no religious beliefs are true.
And again there exist a large number of atheists who are potentially persuadable that there is some kind of deity if there was good evidence of it. The thing they're largely not believing is the version of a personal deity that religion typically insists is the only possible option. Because for many people for many reasons that makes absolutely no sense.
That may be the case, but I don't think it can be said that someone who doesn't yet believe in God has a religious belief.
Maybe there's something else out there that's far beyond our ken. That's a whole other thing, which by definition we can't comprehend.
In an echo of discussions gone by, until someone (or something) comes to believe it, it's not a belief.
Intriguingly apposite. Some searching suggests that the history of zero goes back around 5000 years, to the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, who used it to indicate the absence of a number. Our rather more modern usage doesn't appear to have made it to Europe until the 1st millennium. The decimal point appears to be more recent still. And zero has a number of unique properties, which make it a number unlike any other number.
Not that 'atheism' is a belief as such - rather it's a set of worldviews designated by features they don't share with another better defined set. It's rather like talking about invertebrates.
I'm unsure how to interpret "better defined" in the above. What it suggests to me is that a worldview that includes religious belief is in some way "better" or more defined than a worldview that doesn't include religious belief, which would be an intriguing claim.
Not that 'atheism' is a belief as such - rather it's a set of worldviews designated by features they don't share with another better defined set. It's rather like talking about invertebrates.
I'm unsure how to interpret "better defined" in the above. What it suggests to me is that a worldview that includes religious belief is in some way "better" or more defined than a worldview that doesn't include religious belief, which would be an intriguing claim.
Defined as in a dictionary.
Birds and vertebrates are well-defined groups because they respective lly consist of all the descendants of a common ancestor. Reptiles and invertebrates are not because they do not so consist.
This certainly does not imply that a sparrow is better defined or in any way better than a grass snake or a cuttlefish.
The belief that one can be wrong (or right) about a religious belief is itself a belief. You believe it can be wrong, I don't (which is to say I don't believe a religious belief can be wrong as an absolute). I believe that a religious belief can be believed or not believed.
Well, no. There must, logically, be a single set of religious beliefs that are actually, objectively, TRUE (which could, of course, be atheism - or even something no human has yet believed).
It follows that all other beliefs must be wrong. We just don’t know which ones they are. Yet. When we make it to the afterlife, we’ll know for sure - and if the truth isn’t some form of universalism*, a lot of people are going to be very unhappy for a very long time.
.
*= or atheism, but in a weird way that is itself a form of universalism, given that if it turns out to be true then nobody will suffer eternal torment.
I reckon that all religions contain some truth. I don't think that truth is a binary thing when it comes to complex religious systems.
The belief that one can be wrong (or right) about a religious belief is itself a belief. You believe it can be wrong, I don't (which is to say I don't believe a religious belief can be wrong as an absolute). I believe that a religious belief can be believed or not believed.
Well, no. There must, logically, be a single set of religious beliefs that are actually, objectively, TRUE (which could, of course, be atheism - or even something no human has yet believed).
No. This is defining atheism as a religious belief so that it can then be said that religious belief encompasses all possibilities. But this seems to be stretching the definition more than a little. I would say that atheism is the rejection of religious beliefs about God. And if "atheism" as a term didn't exist, I don't find it difficult to imagine a cosmos in which no religious beliefs are true.
That’s just semantic nitpicking. My point that there is a single objective Truth stands.
I specifically said that the actual objective truth could be something no human has ever believed. You’re not disagreeing with me.
I think I'll be the judge of that. A potential religious belief that nobody believes is, in my opinion, not within the set of human beliefs.
I think you are confusing objective “religious reality” with religious belief, I think what what Marvin is saying is that there could exist an objective reality no one has ever imagined (and therefore never believed). And this matters, be cause what is objectively true matters - especially if the consequence of that reality is that because you never imagined and therefore never believed in and worshipped the 19 headed sun god manifested in the souls of photons you are going to burn in hell for the rest of time.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
The belief that one can be wrong (or right) about a religious belief is itself a belief. You believe it can be wrong, I don't (which is to say I don't believe a religious belief can be wrong as an absolute). I believe that a religious belief can be believed or not believed.
Well, no. There must, logically, be a single set of religious beliefs that are actually, objectively, TRUE
Why?
Because reality is real. Even if our entire universe is just a forgotten simulation being run in the background of a bored teenager’s computer, that is nevertheless the Truth of it.
I specifically said that the actual objective truth could be something no human has ever believed. You’re not disagreeing with me.
I think I'll be the judge of that. A potential religious belief that nobody believes is, in my opinion, not within the set of human beliefs.
I think you are confusing objective “religious reality” with religious belief, I think what what Marvin is saying is that there could exist an objective reality no one has ever imagined (and therefore never believed). And this matters, be cause what is objectively true matters - especially if the consequence of that reality is that because you never imagined and therefore never believed in and worshipped the 19 headed sun god manifested in the souls of photons you are going to burn in hell for the rest of time.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
This is one possible ontological position - not everyone shares it, but I think without clarifying it people will end up talking past each other.
Your argument makes sense only if you accept that premise.
I specifically said that the actual objective truth could be something no human has ever believed. You’re not disagreeing with me.
I think I'll be the judge of that. A potential religious belief that nobody believes is, in my opinion, not within the set of human beliefs.
I think you are confusing objective “religious reality” with religious belief, I think what what Marvin is saying is that there could exist an objective reality no one has ever imagined (and therefore never believed). And this matters, be cause what is objectively true matters - especially if the consequence of that reality is that because you never imagined and therefore never believed in and worshipped the 19 headed sun god manifested in the souls of photons you are going to burn in hell for the rest of time.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
This is one possible ontological position - not everyone shares it, but I think without clarifying it people will end up talking past each other.
Your argument makes sense only if you accept that premise.
I have tried many times over the years to get my head around other "ontological positions" but they make no sense. If God is a reality, then all his attributes are what they are, totally unaffected by out beliefs about them.
The belief that one can be wrong (or right) about a religious belief is itself a belief. You believe it can be wrong, I don't (which is to say I don't believe a religious belief can be wrong as an absolute). I believe that a religious belief can be believed or not believed.
Well, no. There must, logically, be a single set of religious beliefs that are actually, objectively, TRUE (which could, of course, be atheism - or even something no human has yet believed).
No. This is defining atheism as a religious belief so that it can then be said that religious belief encompasses all possibilities. But this seems to be stretching the definition more than a little. I would say that atheism is the rejection of religious beliefs about God. And if "atheism" as a term didn't exist, I don't find it difficult to imagine a cosmos in which no religious beliefs are true.
That’s just semantic nitpicking. My point that there is a single objective Truth stands.
In the context of religious beliefs, this sounds like religious exclusivism - the idea that only one religious belief is true. This is itself a religious belief and is, unsurprisingly, a characteristic belief of Christianity.
The Romans were more tolerant and pluralistic, in general supporting the religious heritage of the various people groups incorporated into the empire, apparently in the belief that it promoted stability. Monotheistic religions like Judaism and then Christianity presented a problem.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself.
Because we "see through a glass darkly" our religious beliefs are just that .... beliefs. Some parts of them might in some way point in the direction of the Truth, but without having the omniscience of God, thats about the best we can hope for.
As the magnificent Aquinas said at the end of his life about his theology "It is all as grass." @Marvin the Martian "Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep" Liberation theologians would disagree vehemently.
The problem for @KarlLB and @Marvin the Martian is that Pascal’s wager only works if you have only one religious belief system with significant downsides to non-adherence. Unfortunately, there are many such belief systems and they are mutually incompatible.
Essentially, faith is taking the risk of belief in the absence of definitive evidence.
Karl & Marvin are saying they can’t pick the belief they find most psychologically comfortable, they have to pick the one they find most likely to be true.
What I don’t know, is what indicators they take to mean a religious belief is more likely to be true - in the sense of being closest to an objective reality.
I get the impression that the answer may be - internal logically consistency paired with lifetime exposure to the cultural ideas and practices of that religion, and not directly contradicted by scientific enquiry.
In theory, one could imagine an objective reality in which more than one religious belief system is true - in the same way a glass can be both half empty and half full - the same phenomenon described in different ways.
One could also posit that religious belief systems exhibit some properties of Skinner’s superstitious pigeons - in that there maybe accreted practices, beliefs and liturgies that have developed via conditioning that are not essential to the core truth of the religion. It might be that if you stripped these away you would be left with some core truth present in multiple or all religious systems that correlates to an objective reality. Whilst this is theoretically possible - there is no way of knowing that with certainty, so it doesn’t solve the problem.
OK. Some people believe that angels exist. Some don't. So from the angels' point of view, do they exist or not? Do they suddenly cease to exist if no-one believes in them?
It's not so much that "only one religious belief can be true" but that mutually contradictory truth claims cannot all be true. If Jesus was the Incarnation of God, he cannot also be just a prophet. If he physically rose from the dead he cannot also have stayed dead. If the sun is pushed across the sky by a beetle it cannot also be our local star 93 million miles away. If thunder is shock waves from electrical discharges it is not also Thor banging his hammer.
The problem for @KarlLB and @Marvin the Martian is that Pascal’s wager only works if you have only one religious belief system with significant downsides to non-adherence. Unfortunately, there are many such belief systems and they are mutually incompatible.
Essentially, faith is taking the risk of belief in the absence of definitive evidence.
Karl & Marvin are saying they can’t pick the belief they find most psychologically comfortable, they have to pick the one they find most likely to be true.
What I don’t know, is what indicators they take to mean a religious belief is more likely to be true - in the sense of being closest to an objective reality.
I get the impression that the answer maybe - internal logically consistency paired with lifetime exposure to the cultural ideas and practices of that religion, and not directly contradicted by scientific enquiry.
I find the atheists' challenge - "out of the 4000 odd (insert number here, no-one really knows) gods people have believed in over their history, what makes you think yours is the real one" quite unsettlingly compelling.
This is why I am an Agnostic Christian. I have sufficient sunk cost in Christianity to not fully reject it, but I don't believe it the way some people on the Ship seem able to.
In theory, one could imagine an objective reality in which more than one religious belief system is true - in the same way a glass can be both half empty and half full - the same phenomenon described in different ways.
One could also posit that religious belief systems exhibit some properties of Skinner’s superstitious pigeons - in that there maybe accreted practices, beliefs and liturgies that have developed via conditioning that are not essential to the core truth of the religion. It might be that if you stripped these away you would be left with some core truth present in multiple or all religious systems that correlates to an objective reality. Whilst this is theoretically possible - there is no way of knowing that with certainty, so it doesn’t solve the problem.
I guess this could be my answer to the atheists ‘ challenge.
I specifically said that the actual objective truth could be something no human has ever believed. You’re not disagreeing with me.
I think I'll be the judge of that. A potential religious belief that nobody believes is, in my opinion, not within the set of human beliefs.
I think you are confusing objective “religious reality” with religious belief, I think what what Marvin is saying is that there could exist an objective reality no one has ever imagined (and therefore never believed). And this matters, be cause what is objectively true matters - especially if the consequence of that reality is that because you never imagined and therefore never believed in and worshipped the 19 headed sun god manifested in the souls of photons you are going to burn in hell for the rest of time.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
This is one possible ontological position - not everyone shares it, but I think without clarifying it people will end up talking past each other.
Your argument makes sense only if you accept that premise.
I have tried many times over the years to get my head around other "ontological positions" but they make no sense. If God is a reality, then all his attributes are what they are, totally unaffected by out beliefs about them.
Quite so. I don’t understand how anyone could think otherwise, to be honest.
The belief that one can be wrong (or right) about a religious belief is itself a belief. You believe it can be wrong, I don't (which is to say I don't believe a religious belief can be wrong as an absolute). I believe that a religious belief can be believed or not believed.
Well, no. There must, logically, be a single set of religious beliefs that are actually, objectively, TRUE (which could, of course, be atheism - or even something no human has yet believed).
No. This is defining atheism as a religious belief so that it can then be said that religious belief encompasses all possibilities. But this seems to be stretching the definition more than a little. I would say that atheism is the rejection of religious beliefs about God. And if "atheism" as a term didn't exist, I don't find it difficult to imagine a cosmos in which no religious beliefs are true.
That’s just semantic nitpicking. My point that there is a single objective Truth stands.
In the context of religious beliefs, this sounds like religious exclusivism - the idea that only one religious belief is true. This is itself a religious belief and is, unsurprisingly, a characteristic belief of Christianity.
It’s the idea that there is only one actual, objective, Truth. I cannot confidently claim that I know what that Truth actually is.
The Romans were more tolerant and pluralistic, in general supporting the religious heritage of the various people groups incorporated into the empire, apparently in the belief that it promoted stability. Monotheistic religions like Judaism and then Christianity presented a problem.
That may have been the best solution for social stability in the Roman Empire, but it doesn’t mean every single belief incorporated into the empire was actually True.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself.
I specifically said that the actual objective truth could be something no human has ever believed. You’re not disagreeing with me.
I think I'll be the judge of that. A potential religious belief that nobody believes is, in my opinion, not within the set of human beliefs.
I think you are confusing objective “religious reality” with religious belief, I think what what Marvin is saying is that there could exist an objective reality no one has ever imagined (and therefore never believed). And this matters, be cause what is objectively true matters - especially if the consequence of that reality is that because you never imagined and therefore never believed in and worshipped the 19 headed sun god manifested in the souls of photons you are going to burn in hell for the rest of time.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
This is one possible ontological position - not everyone shares it, but I think without clarifying it people will end up talking past each other.
Your argument makes sense only if you accept that premise.
I have tried many times over the years to get my head around other "ontological positions" but they make no sense. If God is a reality, then all his attributes are what they are, totally unaffected by out beliefs about them.
Quite so. I don’t understand how anyone could think otherwise, to be honest.
One could, I suppose, take a Pratchettian view that gods are given power by belief and thus they are given reality by belief.
It seems to me "obvious" (*) that Christianity and other post-axial religions e.g. Advaita Vedanta Hinduism (**) are all trying to describe the same reality in general. Pre-axial polytheistic religions are in a different business altogether. See this .series of blog posts. While Christianity (well, Judaism) and Hinduism developed from polytheistic roots they're quite different enterprises. You'll see that the blog posts above frequently set out to dispel assumptions that are based on thinking that worshipping Zeus or Apollo is like worshipping Jesus.
Point is: atheists who ask why we think our God is the real one are mashing up polytheistic religion with monotheistic religions. Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
(*) for a value of obvious that seemingly doesn't apply to other people.
(**) assuming I understand enough about the varieties of Hinduism that I'm thinking of the right thing. I may not know as much as I think I do.
I specifically said that the actual objective truth could be something no human has ever believed. You’re not disagreeing with me.
I think I'll be the judge of that. A potential religious belief that nobody believes is, in my opinion, not within the set of human beliefs.
I think you are confusing objective “religious reality” with religious belief, I think what what Marvin is saying is that there could exist an objective reality no one has ever imagined (and therefore never believed). And this matters, be cause what is objectively true matters - especially if the consequence of that reality is that because you never imagined and therefore never believed in and worshipped the 19 headed sun god manifested in the souls of photons you are going to burn in hell for the rest of time.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
This is one possible ontological position - not everyone shares it, but I think without clarifying it people will end up talking past each other.
Your argument makes sense only if you accept that premise.
I have tried many times over the years to get my head around other "ontological positions" but they make no sense. If God is a reality, then all his attributes are what they are, totally unaffected by out beliefs about them.
Quite so. I don’t understand how anyone could think otherwise, to be honest.
One could, I suppose, take a Pratchettian view that gods are given power by belief and thus they are given reality by belief.
In which case that would be the Truth/ontological reality, and all claims to the contrary would be false.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
Axial Age (also Axis Age, from the German Achsenzeit) is a term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. It refers to broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred in a variety of locations from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE.
According to Jaspers, during this period, universalizing modes of thought appeared in Persia, India, China, the Levant, and the Greco-Roman world, in a striking parallel development, without any obvious admixture between these disparate cultures. Jaspers identified key thinkers from this age who had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions and pinpointed characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged.
The historical validity of the Axial Age is disputed. … Despite these criticisms, the Axial Age continues to be an influential idea, with many scholars accepting that profound changes in religious and philosophical discourse did indeed take place but disagreeing as to the underlying reasons.
…
Jaspers argued that during the Axial Age, "the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today."
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
Even that has its limitations. If two of the blind men find the points of the elephant's tusks, they will both agree that they're hard and tapered.
… the Golden Rule suffers from four faults, the first two related to the ethics of justice and the second two related to the ethics of benevolence. One, it fails to explain how to deal with non-reciprocation. Two, it fails to make clear that my obligations are obligations regardless of how I would wish to be treated by others. Three, it lacks any special value in explaining the right occasions for benevolence. And, four, it has no power to motivate benevolence.
Looking at the above, I'm intrigued by the way in which Christianity addresses these issues.
With reference to the question of justice, I try to keep in mind that the focus of Jesus' ministry was to an oppressed people under occupation. Furthermore, in relation to the question of punishment, how many generations of persecution do you need to have experienced before the idea of eternal punishment of oppressors starts to sound eminently reasonable? Beyond Judea and Samaria, it seems likely to me that a message of hope for oppressed and occupied peoples would have been appealingly relevant across much of the Roman empire.
So far, so good, for the spread of Christianity. Unless you're one of the oppressors, who have a number of options. Skip forward a few hundred years, and Christianity gets adopted as the state religion by the oppressors, which is the point at which things start to get complicated regarding certain aspects of the message.
[quoting:] "Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep" Liberation theologians would disagree vehemently.
Indeed they would. Liberation theology is a deliberate and sustained attempt to re-engage with the message of the Gospel for those suffering from oppression. It directly confronts the issue of injustice, although it rejects the idea of punitive justice.
Please, what do post axial and pre axial mean with regards to religion? I've googled and read your links but am none the wiser.
The rough idea is that the Greek philosophers, Jewish prophets, Indian offshoots of Hinduism, and Chinese philosophers, roughly around the same time, started coming up with general theories that tried to talk about reality as a whole. Whereas previously people didn't generalise from one area of life to another.
(Clifford Geertz has an example of witchcraft beliefs, where being a witch is inherited father to son - if A is a witch then his sons are witches and vice versa, but you can't deduce from A is a witch that his brothers are witches.)
I suppose the phrase "axial" isn't perfect since it carries baggage about it all happening at a particular time (the early Asian empires and the trade routes that went with them), which is true only with a lot of handwaving.
… the Golden Rule suffers from four faults, the first two related to the ethics of justice and the second two related to the ethics of benevolence. One, it fails to explain how to deal with non-reciprocation. Two, it fails to make clear that my obligations are obligations regardless of how I would wish to be treated by others. Three, it lacks any special value in explaining the right occasions for benevolence. And, four, it has no power to motivate benevolence.
That strikes me as total poo-poo. 1. non-reciprocation is irrelevant. 2. also not relevant. 3. not necessary. 4. it never claims to.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
A different mode of thought about Truth:
God's gift was that man should conceive of truth
And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,
As midway help till he reach fact indeed.
The Inclosure Act 1773 … is an act of the Parliament of Great Britain, passed during the reign of George III. The act is still in force in the United Kingdom. It created a law that enabled enclosure of land, at the same time removing the right of commoners' access.
After land was enclosed, commoners who had lived off the land were no longer able to do so. To survive, they had to become workers for hire, to sell their labour. Which was handy, because the development of industrialisation required a lot of labour. This labour force also provided the hired hands needed to look after all the sheep that were introduced to the newly enclosed land.
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hired hand, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hired hand flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep.
It isn't generally recorded what the sheep thought about the enclosures, although the significant increase in the human population meant that sheep were increasingly farmed for their meat, rather than just for their wool.
In his Meditations, Roger Baxter writes:
This divine shepherd will visit you to-day, to feed you, and to defend you from the wolves of hell. There is no part of a shepherd's duty which He does not perform most willingly.
I don't know how appropriate the metaphor of the good shepherd is to the afterlife, but a good shepherd keeps his sheep apart from those who seek to harm them. If a good shepherd does that in this life, would the Good Shepherd not also do this in the life to come? (Echoing the point that Lamb Chopped previously made about hell being a containment zone.)
It strikes me how much the ethos of the enclosures turns upside down the idea of the good shepherd. Instead of the sheep being kept apart from the wolves, those that would harm them, the sheep are penned in by those who are exploiting them for their own profit. Not that the wolves have to do any of the dirty work. Instead of the shepherds being those whose willingly give everything to care for their sheep, the sheep are herded by hired labourers, who are themselves being exploited for profit just as much as the sheep under their management.
Amongst other things, this illustrates for me how capitalism's imperative to continually increase productivity invariably expands to encompass all aspects of our lives.
Re Pease's musings on enclosure--I like the fact that God is creating a new heavens and new earth for us all to live in. His people and creatures get the room, while those who refuse him get a containment zone.
Re Pease's musings on enclosure--I like the fact that God is creating a new heavens and new earth for us all to live in. His people and creatures get the room, while those who refuse him get a containment zone.
As long as we stop breeding after the parousia, or the containment zone enlarges endlessly.
Wikipedia describes the modern-day economics of keeping sheep thus:
Sheep are especially beneficial for independent producers, including family farms with limited resources, as the sheep industry is one of the few types of animal agriculture that has not been vertically integrated by agribusiness. However, small flocks, from 10 to 50 ewes, often are not profitable because they tend to be poorly managed. The primary reason is that mechanization is not feasible, so return per hour of labor is not maximized. Small farm flocks generally are used simply to control weeds on irrigation ditches or maintained as a hobby.
I doubt the word "agribusiness" had been coined when John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, but in chapter 25 he tells of a bounteous harvest:
THE SPRING IS BEAUTIFUL in California. … All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight.
And first the cherries ripen. Cent and a half a pound. Hell, we can't pick 'em for that. … The purple prunes soften and sweeten. My God, we can't pick them and dry and sulphur them. We can't pay wages, no matter what wages. And the purple prunes carpet the ground.
The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. … This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. … Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.
In our capitalist age, food is not produced primarily to feed people, it is produced to be bought and sold, to repay debt and the interest on debt.
About a third of all food produced globally is thrown away. In the UK, approximately 9.52 million tonnes of food are wasted annually. This total is enough to feed over 30 million people a year, yet 8.4 million live in food poverty.
As Steinbeck wrote, “Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.”
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
In this life, maybe.
But in the next life? Ah, there’s the rub.
Not really. If going to hell is as arbitrary and stupid as you are all discussing here then it seems like you are chasing your tails trying to understand what you need to do to avoid it.
The simplest explanation is that it's a stupid idea created and expanded to keep believers in line.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
In this life, maybe.
But in the next life? Ah, there’s the rub.
Not really. If going to hell is as arbitrary and stupid as you are all discussing here then it seems like you are chasing your tails trying to understand what you need to do to avoid it.
The simplest explanation is that it's a stupid idea created and expanded to keep believers in line.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
In this life, maybe.
But in the next life? Ah, there’s the rub.
Not really. If going to hell is as arbitrary and stupid as you are all discussing here then it seems like you are chasing your tails trying to understand what you need to do to avoid it.
The simplest explanation is that it's a stupid idea created and expanded to keep believers in line.
Simplest ≠ Truest
If something is complex and incomprehensible that is not really much different to being impossible to understand. At some point a thing that is too complicated to understand is a pointless waste of thinking space even if it is true, one is better focussing on something else.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
In this life, maybe.
But in the next life? Ah, there’s the rub.
Not really. If going to hell is as arbitrary and stupid as you are all discussing here then it seems like you are chasing your tails trying to understand what you need to do to avoid it.
The simplest explanation is that it's a stupid idea created and expanded to keep believers in line.
Simplest ≠ Truest
If something is complex and incomprehensible that is not really much different to being impossible to understand. At some point a thing that is too complicated to understand is a pointless waste of thinking space even if it is true, one is better focussing on something else.
Comments
Why?
Sounds more like mathematics talking about numbers existing that we haven't "found" or imagined yet.
And this looks like a binary choice. I'm not sure what you mean by "recommending beliefs", but I can think of other reasons for discussing beliefs. Not every fruit that isn't an orange is a lemon.
Not that 'atheism' is a belief as such - rather it's a set of worldviews designated by features they don't share with another better defined set. It's rather like talking about invertebrates.
Not sure what Dafyd was referring to, but my mind went to the various times such-and-such a belief is endorsed because it is seen as useful if a significant portion of society believed in such things, rather than because it is necessarily true (the most recent examples being various alt right figures endorsing Christianity).
In an echo of discussions gone by, until someone (or something) comes to believe it, it's not a belief.
Intriguingly apposite. Some searching suggests that the history of zero goes back around 5000 years, to the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, who used it to indicate the absence of a number. Our rather more modern usage doesn't appear to have made it to Europe until the 1st millennium. The decimal point appears to be more recent still. And zero has a number of unique properties, which make it a number unlike any other number. I'm unsure how to interpret "better defined" in the above. What it suggests to me is that a worldview that includes religious belief is in some way "better" or more defined than a worldview that doesn't include religious belief, which would be an intriguing claim.
Birds and vertebrates are well-defined groups because they respective lly consist of all the descendants of a common ancestor. Reptiles and invertebrates are not because they do not so consist.
This certainly does not imply that a sparrow is better defined or in any way better than a grass snake or a cuttlefish.
I reckon that all religions contain some truth. I don't think that truth is a binary thing when it comes to complex religious systems.
That’s just semantic nitpicking. My point that there is a single objective Truth stands.
Precisely. Especially “what is objectively true matters”. Religious beliefs are not like philosophical or political beliefs where no objective reality exists and everything is a matter of subjective opinion and preference, they concern the very nature of reality itself. And when it comes to the nature of reality itself, there is indeed an objective truth that can (at least in theory) be known, and that is ultimately true for every single person regardless of what they happen to believe.
Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep. It is about seeking Truth. And if it turns out that Truth is undesirable, unpalatable, or offensive to modern sensibilities then so be it.
Because reality is real. Even if our entire universe is just a forgotten simulation being run in the background of a bored teenager’s computer, that is nevertheless the Truth of it.
This is one possible ontological position - not everyone shares it, but I think without clarifying it people will end up talking past each other.
Your argument makes sense only if you accept that premise.
I have tried many times over the years to get my head around other "ontological positions" but they make no sense. If God is a reality, then all his attributes are what they are, totally unaffected by out beliefs about them.
The Romans were more tolerant and pluralistic, in general supporting the religious heritage of the various people groups incorporated into the empire, apparently in the belief that it promoted stability. Monotheistic religions like Judaism and then Christianity presented a problem.
This sounds to me more like metaphysics.
As the magnificent Aquinas said at the end of his life about his theology "It is all as grass."
@Marvin the Martian "Theology is not about seeking the best outcome for society, the most profound way to motivate good deeds, or the most comfort for those who weep" Liberation theologians would disagree vehemently.
Essentially, faith is taking the risk of belief in the absence of definitive evidence.
Karl & Marvin are saying they can’t pick the belief they find most psychologically comfortable, they have to pick the one they find most likely to be true.
What I don’t know, is what indicators they take to mean a religious belief is more likely to be true - in the sense of being closest to an objective reality.
I get the impression that the answer may be - internal logically consistency paired with lifetime exposure to the cultural ideas and practices of that religion, and not directly contradicted by scientific enquiry.
In theory, one could imagine an objective reality in which more than one religious belief system is true - in the same way a glass can be both half empty and half full - the same phenomenon described in different ways.
One could also posit that religious belief systems exhibit some properties of Skinner’s superstitious pigeons - in that there maybe accreted practices, beliefs and liturgies that have developed via conditioning that are not essential to the core truth of the religion. It might be that if you stripped these away you would be left with some core truth present in multiple or all religious systems that correlates to an objective reality. Whilst this is theoretically possible - there is no way of knowing that with certainty, so it doesn’t solve the problem.
It's not so much that "only one religious belief can be true" but that mutually contradictory truth claims cannot all be true. If Jesus was the Incarnation of God, he cannot also be just a prophet. If he physically rose from the dead he cannot also have stayed dead. If the sun is pushed across the sky by a beetle it cannot also be our local star 93 million miles away. If thunder is shock waves from electrical discharges it is not also Thor banging his hammer.
I find the atheists' challenge - "out of the 4000 odd (insert number here, no-one really knows) gods people have believed in over their history, what makes you think yours is the real one" quite unsettlingly compelling.
This is why I am an Agnostic Christian. I have sufficient sunk cost in Christianity to not fully reject it, but I don't believe it the way some people on the Ship seem able to.
I guess this could be my answer to the atheists ‘ challenge.
Quite so. I don’t understand how anyone could think otherwise, to be honest.
It’s the idea that there is only one actual, objective, Truth. I cannot confidently claim that I know what that Truth actually is.
That may have been the best solution for social stability in the Roman Empire, but it doesn’t mean every single belief incorporated into the empire was actually True.
If you like. The point still stands.
One could, I suppose, take a Pratchettian view that gods are given power by belief and thus they are given reality by belief.
Point is: atheists who ask why we think our God is the real one are mashing up polytheistic religion with monotheistic religions. Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
(*) for a value of obvious that seemingly doesn't apply to other people.
(**) assuming I understand enough about the varieties of Hinduism that I'm thinking of the right thing. I may not know as much as I think I do.
In which case that would be the Truth/ontological reality, and all claims to the contrary would be false.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
Even that has its limitations. If two of the blind men find the points of the elephant's tusks, they will both agree that they're hard and tapered.
Looking at the above, I'm intrigued by the way in which Christianity addresses these issues.
With reference to the question of justice, I try to keep in mind that the focus of Jesus' ministry was to an oppressed people under occupation. Furthermore, in relation to the question of punishment, how many generations of persecution do you need to have experienced before the idea of eternal punishment of oppressors starts to sound eminently reasonable? Beyond Judea and Samaria, it seems likely to me that a message of hope for oppressed and occupied peoples would have been appealingly relevant across much of the Roman empire.
So far, so good, for the spread of Christianity. Unless you're one of the oppressors, who have a number of options. Skip forward a few hundred years, and Christianity gets adopted as the state religion by the oppressors, which is the point at which things start to get complicated regarding certain aspects of the message.
Indeed they would. Liberation theology is a deliberate and sustained attempt to re-engage with the message of the Gospel for those suffering from oppression. It directly confronts the issue of injustice, although it rejects the idea of punitive justice.
(Clifford Geertz has an example of witchcraft beliefs, where being a witch is inherited father to son - if A is a witch then his sons are witches and vice versa, but you can't deduce from A is a witch that his brothers are witches.)
I suppose the phrase "axial" isn't perfect since it carries baggage about it all happening at a particular time (the early Asian empires and the trade routes that went with them), which is true only with a lot of handwaving.
That strikes me as total poo-poo. 1. non-reciprocation is irrelevant. 2. also not relevant. 3. not necessary. 4. it never claims to.
I went past a Catholic school the other day whose motto printed on the gate was "others first."
I just don't understand really what that could possibly mean on a lived level.
When in doubt, hold the door for strangers.
Presumably the school will present material in a way it hopes will encourage students to live out that particular ethos.
I don't have any issue with it as an aspiration. All it really means in practice is being considerate of other people rather than being a selfish git.
From wikipedia: After land was enclosed, commoners who had lived off the land were no longer able to do so. To survive, they had to become workers for hire, to sell their labour. Which was handy, because the development of industrialisation required a lot of labour. This labour force also provided the hired hands needed to look after all the sheep that were introduced to the newly enclosed land.
It isn't generally recorded what the sheep thought about the enclosures, although the significant increase in the human population meant that sheep were increasingly farmed for their meat, rather than just for their wool.
In his Meditations, Roger Baxter writes: I don't know how appropriate the metaphor of the good shepherd is to the afterlife, but a good shepherd keeps his sheep apart from those who seek to harm them. If a good shepherd does that in this life, would the Good Shepherd not also do this in the life to come? (Echoing the point that Lamb Chopped previously made about hell being a containment zone.)
It strikes me how much the ethos of the enclosures turns upside down the idea of the good shepherd. Instead of the sheep being kept apart from the wolves, those that would harm them, the sheep are penned in by those who are exploiting them for their own profit. Not that the wolves have to do any of the dirty work. Instead of the shepherds being those whose willingly give everything to care for their sheep, the sheep are herded by hired labourers, who are themselves being exploited for profit just as much as the sheep under their management.
Amongst other things, this illustrates for me how capitalism's imperative to continually increase productivity invariably expands to encompass all aspects of our lives.
As long as we stop breeding after the parousia, or the containment zone enlarges endlessly.
I doubt the word "agribusiness" had been coined when John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, but in chapter 25 he tells of a bounteous harvest: In our capitalist age, food is not produced primarily to feed people, it is produced to be bought and sold, to repay debt and the interest on debt.
About a third of all food produced globally is thrown away. In the UK, approximately 9.52 million tonnes of food are wasted annually. This total is enough to feed over 30 million people a year, yet 8.4 million live in food poverty.
As Steinbeck wrote, “Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.”
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
In this life, maybe.
But in the next life? Ah, there’s the rub.
Not really. If going to hell is as arbitrary and stupid as you are all discussing here then it seems like you are chasing your tails trying to understand what you need to do to avoid it.
The simplest explanation is that it's a stupid idea created and expanded to keep believers in line.
Simplest ≠ Truest
If something is complex and incomprehensible that is not really much different to being impossible to understand. At some point a thing that is too complicated to understand is a pointless waste of thinking space even if it is true, one is better focussing on something else.
That's quantum physics out then.