religion and morality

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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“God is dead”: What Nietzsche really meant
The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy.
Scotty Hendricks at Big Think website
Nietzsche would not have been surprised by the events that plagued Europe in the 20th century. Communism, Nazism, nationalism, and the other ideologies that spread across the continent in the wake of World War I sought to provide man with meaning and value, as a worker, as an Aryan, or some other greater deed...
Confirming of course that genetically, biologically, we seem clearly hard-wired to seek out something -- anything -- that we can ascribe one or another essential meaning to. Something -- anything -- that will allow us to think ourselves into believing that our individual life is a part of something that encompasses a crucial teleological purpose. It's not just the brute facticity of birth --> school --> work --> death. Instead, we "take our place on the Great Mandella" and become at one with whatever the universe is finally all about.

So, sure, what's your rendition of it?

With Nietzsche and the death of God, however, other fonts had to be invented to anchor the Self [if not the Soul] in.

Indeed, here's a list of just the political ideologies alone out there to choose from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies

Which one are you more or less convinced comes closest to the One True Path?
...in a similar way as to how Christianity could provide meaning as a child of God, and give life on Earth value by its relation to heaven. Although he may have rejected those ideologies, he no doubt would have acknowledged the need for the meaning they provided.
And, again, he even made the attempt to provide us with one of his own. Only, as with all other secular fonts, morality on this side of the grave can fall anywhere at all along this ideological spectrum. And, as for immortality and salvation?

Just ask Woody Allen: https://youtu.be/90Z98ZlvpPU
popeye1945
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Re: religion and morality

Post by popeye1945 »

Albert Einstein one religion, "It is time humanity grew up!"
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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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From ILP:

'God and the World stand over against each other, expressing the final metaphysical truth that appetitive vision and physical enjoyment have equal claim to priority in creation. But no two actualities can be torn apart: each is all in all. Thus each temporal occasion embodies God, and is embodied in God. In God's nature, permanence is primordial and flux is derivative from the World: in the World's nature, flux is primordial and permanence is derivative from God. Also the World's nature is a primordial datum for God; and God's nature is a primordial datum for the World. Creation achieves the reconciliation of permanence and flux when it has reached its final term which is everlastingness— the Apotheosis of the World.'

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality

This was noted on another thread.

To me it is just another "general description spiritual contraption". He asserts this as though, in believing it, that in and of itself makes it true. And [of course] there are no references made to the world of actual human interactions.

Here at ILP, endless exchanges of these truly ponderous intellectual assertions often becomes the whole point of the exchanges.

The part where attempts are to made to demonstrate its applicability to human interactions? Right. And the part where attempts are made to provide substantive evidence to back up the conclusions being made? Right.

Instead, from my frame of mind, the motivation here is to pile up these beliefs "in your head". String them together into a narrative that comforts and consoles you.

On the other hand, I flat out admit that, at times, my derisive reaction to them revolves as often as not around the fact that I am no longer able to do it myself!
promethean75
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Re: religion and morality

Post by promethean75 »

If you wanna see some good general description spiritual contraptions, read some of Charles Hartshorne.
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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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“God is dead”: What Nietzsche really meant
The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy.
Scotty Hendricks at Big Think website
The Übermensch

Of course, as Nietzsche saw this coming, he offered us a way out: The creation of our own values as individuals; the creation of a meaning of life by those who live it. The archetype of the individual who can do this has a name that has also reached our popular consciousness: the Übermensch.
Truly, what I wouldn't give to have Nietzsche around today, able to respond to the arguments I make here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

In particular, how would he differentiate his Übermensch narrative from objectivism?

Okay, we create our own values rather than sheepishly following the flock to one or another Scripture. We choose so-called superior values that transcend the celestial plots of the meek...the sheep in their herds. But with nothing more than our own existential assumptions regarding which values are in fact superior, we just become our own herd.

Think Satyr and his clique/claque over at KT.
Nietzsche however, saw this as a distant goal for man and one that most would not be able to reach.
We come upon this all the time. A new superior man is "thought up" but the time isn't quite right to see him flourish. So he is brought into existence in philosophy tomes [the philosopher-king in Plato's Republic] or in literature [the philosopher-king Galt in Rand's novel]. In a world of words.
The Übermensch, which he felt had yet to exist on Earth, would create meaning in life by their will alone, while understanding that they are, in the end, responsible for their selection. As he put it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred yes is needed: the spirit now wills his own will.” Such a bold individual will not be able to point to dogma or popular opinion as to why they value what they do.
The will. In fact, the sacred will. Sound familiar?

Anyway, for those here who consider themselves to be among the Übermensch, by all means, beyond "dogma and popular opinion" explain to us why you value what you do.

Given a particular context of course.





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promethean75
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Re: religion and morality

Post by promethean75 »

"Truly, what I wouldn't give to have Nietzsche around today, able to respond to the arguments I make"

You'd never beat Fritz in an argument, Biggs. He's too goddamn smaht and linguistically dexterous... but there has been no disagreement between you two as of yet, anyway. Y'all got the same atheism/agnosticism, perspectivism, nihilism and ethical relativism.
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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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“God is dead”: What Nietzsche really meant
The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy.
Scotty Hendricks at Big Think website
Having suggested the rarity and difficulty in creating the Übermensch, Nietzsche suggested an alternative response to Nihilism, and one that he saw as the more likely to be selected: The Last Man. This kind of person is a “most contemptible thing” who lives a quiet life of comfort, without thought for individuality or personal growth because: “‘We have discovered happiness,'” say the Last Men, and they blink.” Much to the disappointment of Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s mouthpiece, the people whom he preaches to beg him for the lifestyle of The Last Man, suggesting his pessimism on our ability to handle God’s death.
Yet another philosophical contraption hell-bent on turning the sheer complexity of our human-all-too-human world into one of competing archetypes. The Last Man eschewing every risk in order to sustain "comfort and security" all the way to the grave.

Any contemptible Last Men here? Last Women?

On the other hand, isn't the world we live in today, a world that increasingly revolves around a social media pop culture, mindless consumption and the worship of all things celebrity at least in the genral vicinity of this Godless dystopia?

Too close to call?
But you might ask, if God has been dead for so long and we are supposed to be suffering for knowing it, where are all the atheists? Nietzsche himself provided an answer: “God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.” Perhaps we are only now seeing the effects of Nietzsche’s declaration.
Atheists? Here's their problem: where's the beef?

With God you get a Scripture. What should I do? Well, what would Jesus do? With God you get immortality and salvation. With God you get that crucial ontological and teleological foundation. That's the beef.

Next to this, what on Earth do atheists provide in the way of an alternative? Of course: One of endlessly competing secular fonts...ideology, deontology, objectivism.

What do you believe in religiously?

In Trump?

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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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“God is dead”: What Nietzsche really meant
The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy.
Scotty Hendricks at Big Think website
...atheism is on the march, with near majorities in many European countries and newfound growth across the United States heralding a cultural shift. But unlike when atheism was enforced by the communist nations, there isn’t necessarily a worldview backing this new lack of God, it is only the lack.
And that makes all the difference in the world. It's one thing to champion atheism but then demanding allegiance to something analogous to a secular religion. You don't believe in God but you damn well better believe in the ideology of the state. Only the ideology of the state has nothing to offer you in the way of immortality or salvation. It's the worst of both worlds for some. Blind obedience to one or another Ism. But nothing in the way of an eternal reward. Instead, you take comfort in the fact that at least on this side of the grave you're one of the good guys.

Thus...
Indeed, British philosopher Bertrand Russell saw Bolshevism as nearly a religion unto itself; it was fully capable and willing to provide meaning and value to a population by itself. That source of meaning without belief is gone.
Well, there are still many, many men and women able to embrace then sustain a belief in one or another secular Ism. It's just that of late there has been nothing quite the equal of things like Communism or Fascism. Nothing on a truly global scale to take the place of God. Unless, perhaps, one counts the lowest common denominator "mindless consumption" mentality that sustains the global economy. That and pop culture. The "social media" phenomena.
As many atheists know, to not have a god without an additional philosophical structure providing meaning can be a cause of existential dread.
To, among other things, become "fractured and fragmented" in regard to moral and political value judgments. How feeling "drawn and quartered" when confronting those turbulent newspaper headlines can become particularly perturbing.
Are we at risk of becoming a society struggling with our own meaninglessness? Are we as a society at risk for nihilism? Are we more vulnerable now to ideologies and con-men who promise to do what God used to do for us and society? While Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the future, the non-religious are less so than the religious. It seems Nietzsche may have been wrong in the long run about our ability to deal with the idea that God is dead.
Here of course each of us one by one has our own "existential narrative". I merely suggest a division between those able to acquire and those unable to acquire what I call the "psychology of objectivism". It is no less applicable, in my view, to No God agendas.

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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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“God is dead”: What Nietzsche really meant
The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy.
Scotty Hendricks at Big Think website
As philosopher Alain de Botton suggests about our values, it seems that we have managed to deal with the death of God better than Nietzsche had thought we would; we are not all the Last Men, nor have we descended into a situation where all morality is seen as utterly relative and meaningless. It seems that we have managed to create a world where the need for God is reduced for some people without falling into collective despair or chaos.
Sure, that's always been one possibility. Not everyone is going to connect the dots [philosophically or otherwise] between No God and a "fractured and fragmented" morality. And, indeed, here I am in search of an argument that might allow me to rethink my own conclusions.

In any event, one way or another, existential leaps will be made -- must be made -- to particular sets of political prejudices. My point here being that, "for all practical purposes", democracy and the rule of law seems by far to reflect the "best of all possible worlds".
Are we as individuals up to the task of creating our own values?
More to point, what's the alternative? Might makes right? Right makes might?
Creating meaning in life by ourselves without aid from God, dogma, or popular choice? Perhaps some of us are, and if we understand the implications of the death of God we stand a better chance of doing so. The despair of the death of God may give way to new meaning in our lives; for as Jean-Paul Sartre suggested “life begins on the other side of despair.”
There are clearly those who can eschew God and religion, secular dogmas and just going along with the crowd. And from time to time I wish "I" was one of them. But my own take on the "death of God" has taken me here...

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

...instead.

And, for the life of me, I am now unable to imagine an antidote to the "other side of despair". Other than God Himself.

Which, these days, I am simply not able to "think myself" into believing in.

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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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Religion on the Brain
Researchers in a small but growing field search for neural correlates of religiosity and spirituality.
Emma Yasinski at TheScientist website
Michael Ferguson, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, grew up Mormon and “quite religious.” Although his beliefs have changed over the years, he “couldn’t deny that there was something happening with those [religious] experiences that was and continues to be extraordinarily meaningful to me,” he says. “As a scientist, I can’t help but wonder what it is about these types of experiences that made them feel so rich and so profound.”
And this separates many of us here. Those who have had these profound personal experiences of a spiritual nature and those who have not. Me? Well, I once thought of myself as a "devout Christian". But that was when I was still a teenager and looked upon religion as just something to provide my shitty life then with meaning and purpose. That and a very charismatic Reverend Deerdorf [sp?] who took me out of my chaotic "gang" mentality and introduced me to Jesus Christ.

So, what can I really know of those who claim to have had these epiphanic revelations? Instead, I find myself going back to the part where, in fact, it is only a very "personal experience". And thus something they are not able either to replicate or to demonstrate to me. To provide me with an understanding of God and religion that might allow me to have a similar experience.

Then, ultimately, the part where given what is at stake on both sides of the grave these personal experiences might at least bring me in closer to believing that a God, the God, their God is something to take more seriously than I am able to now.

So, sure, if anyone here has had such an experience, by all means, tell me about it.
When Brigham and Women’s Hospital first made plans to open the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics a few years ago, Ferguson was on board to join as a junior faculty member and announced he wanted to study the neuroscience of religion. But the soon-to-be center director told him that first, he’d need to help develop and validate a new strategy for understanding cognitive networks, called lesion network mapping. The technique pinpoints how different brain regions work together to produce complex behaviors by looking at how lesions caused by injuries or surgeries in one area disrupt function in other areas.
That would be interesting of course. God and "lesion network mapping". God and cognition itself. Someone has a belief about God then as a result of an injury or a surgery that belief is either gone or changed in some significant manner.

On the other hand, this can be taken all the way back to determinism itself. The brain creates and then sustains a belief in God...but only as a manifestation of the only possible world itself.

And how spooky is that?

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promethean75
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Re: religion and morality

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"... but only as a manifestation of the only possible world itself."

"We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody now could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error." - F.N.
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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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Religion on the Brain
Researchers in a small but growing field search for neural correlates of religiosity and spirituality.
Emma Yasinski at The Scientist website
In some ways, lesion network mapping is a lot like one of the oldest techniques in neuroscience, in which researchers identify the functions of different brain regions based on what behaviors are disrupted when those regions are injured. For decades, researchers have observed that some patients with temporal lobe epilepsy experienced hyper-religiosity—religious beliefs so intense that they can interrupt daily functioning.
What to make of this, right? That there may actually be a component of the human brain such that, depending on things like brain stimulation, brain disruption, medical afflictions, etc., it can bring God surging forth or withering away?

And, for all we know, given God's mysterious ways, He created the human brain to make it all possible.

That part is always spooky. We think we are in control of what we think and feel [in a free will world] but any number of brain afflictions can reconfigure us into but a pale imitation of who we once were.

For example:

* Alzheimer’s Disease
* Dementias
* Brain Cancer
* Epilepsy and Other Seizure Disorders
* Mental Disorders
* Parkinson’s and Other Movement Disorders
* Stroke and Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA)

God's will?

Just Google "Charles Whitman Brain Tumor": https://www.google.com/search?q=charles ... nt=gws-wiz

Technically...
Lesion network mapping takes the technique further. It relies on the connectome, a wiring diagram of neural connectivity throughout the brain, to help researchers better understand how disruption in one region may affect an entire circuit of connections. “One of the things that’s really novel about lesion network mapping is that we’re not only looking at the focused spot that was removed or that was damaged, but we’re looking at the entire circuit that that spot is attached to,” says Ferguson. It’s a bit like loosening a bulb on a string of Christmas lights and seeing that not only that light, but many other lights, go out.
Think about it...

God -- say the Christian God -- creates man and woman. They both have brains. So, do the afflictions above occur as a result of Original Sin? Did Adam and Eve bring this all upon us right from the start? And did God create the brain as He did because even He is obligated to obey the laws of matter? Is human biology God's design or is God's design necessarily in sync with nature?

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popeye1945
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Re: religion and morality

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All meaningful things all human constructions and inventions are biological extensions of humanity, this includes religions that were not handed down from the magic man in the sky but are expressions of human nature. Biology is the measure of all things and it is the body that gives humanity its apparent reality in that reality is the changes affected by the energies of an ultimate reality of which we have no access only biological interpretations thereof. The wisdom and ignorance of our ancestors created these archaic religions out of their knowledge at the time and their human natures conditioned thereof by the context of their times. We are reactionary creatures and apparent reality is a reactionary manifestation created by the body/by biology. We can do better than our ancestors in creating morality based upon the very nature of it only interest, human biology or the well being of biology in general.
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iambiguous
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Re: religion and morality

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Religion on the Brain
Researchers in a small but growing field search for neural correlates of religiosity and spirituality.
Emma Yasinski at The Scientist website
Sparse evidence

Studies on religion and the brain, a field dubbed neurotheology or neurospirituality, are sparse. The research is “difficult to get funded, and also difficult to get published in high-level journals because it’s not considered legitimate,” says Myrna Weissman, an epidemiologist and psychiatrist at Columbia University.
Clearly, we don't need a plethora of scholarly studies to confirm what is obvious: that human brains and religion are very, very snugly intertwined. The human brain is equipped to ask "why?". In fact, to the best of our knowledge, it is the only brain on this planet able to. At least in regard to such things as teleology and spirituality. And once you can ask "why this and not nothing?" or "why this and not something else?" it's only a hop, step and a jump to God. In other words, something to explain everything.

Well, once we assume that in asking these things we were able to freely opt not to ask them at all.
There’s also a misconception that scientists are trying to disprove religious beliefs. Ferguson emphasizes that none of these studies will confirm or refute the validity of specific religious beliefs. Instead, the research is “helping us to understand how religion and spirituality interact with brain systems,” he says.
Religion in its broadest sense, obviously. It's not for nothing that those like Einstein, in grappling with the sheer magnitude of the universe, can't help but to ponder things in the genral vicinity of a "spiritual" sense of reality.

And, of course, religion in it's narrowest sense -- denominational religion -- can always use the staggering mystery embedded in the existence of existence itself to their advantage. After all, science is clearly unable to demonstrate that their own God or their own spiritual path is not the One True Path. Leaps of faith [all of them] are never not an option for millions and millions around the globe. And, for mere mortals, with oblivion ever and always in the forecast don't expect that to change anytime soon.

This [so far] seems about as far as science can go...
Last year, one group used MRI to measure anatomical differences among individuals at three different regions of the brain—including areas in the temporal lobe implicated in hyper-religiosity after epilepsy surgeries—that they thought might process religious experiences. After questioning 211 individuals about their religiosity and spirituality and scanning their brains, the researchers found no differences in gray matter volume between those who said they were religious and those who said they weren’t. That team did not specifically look at the periaqueductal gray.

The study didn’t show that religiosity isn’t reflected somewhere in the brain, just that it isn’t associated with these specific anatomic changes, argues Ferguson, adding that it underscored the need for more complex approaches that can identify disruptions in functioning that might not be associated with an anatomical difference.
My guess: we will make of that what best serves to sustain our own God or No God, spiritual or nonspiritual prejudices.

Or maybe the answer will be found in that periaqueductal gray area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periaqueductal_gray

In other words, in the gap between what we know about the human brain now, what we will know in a hundred years, in a thousand years, in ten thousand years.

Not to mention the gap between what we will know even then and all that there is to be known.

Which, of course, for many brings us right back around to God.

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popeye1945
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Re: religion and morality

Post by popeye1945 »

The totality is intelligent in its own time and as aspects of said totality, we are a measure of it, we worship the totality of which we are a part and mistakenly think it other, and call it god. As aspects of the totality, we are fully emersed in not only its intelligence but all aspects of its finite qualities, this is assuming it is a closed system. As horrific and sublimely beautiful as our apparent reality is, it speaks to our own natures and that of the cosmos. There are no directions and no limits of time as all energies are eternally changing in forms and as aspects, we are limited to the knowledge of our neighbourhood context, and context defines in its holistic nature. Irony in nature, where life lives upon life for here is where morality arises. We recognize the self in the suffering of other creatures and so, it is an expanded concept of the self, if indeed one can call it a concept and not a metaphysical realization. However, even this must say something of the nature of the totality. Religion, biological extension and a manifestation of humanities own nature as a confused mix of the totality of aspects.
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