Secular Intolerance

For all things philosophical.

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Dubious
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Dubious »

Nick_A wrote: Mon Jul 17, 2017 11:09 pm
Dubious wrote: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:51 pm
Nick_A wrote: Mon Jul 17, 2017 9:24 pm So if an asteroid strikes and destroys the earth killing all life upon it, the truth of universal existence existing only as a creation of Man's mind will also be destroyed. The end of the Milky Way and all other galaxies. Since we are no longer alive to argue about it, the universe doesn't exist. I didn't know I was that important.
When Rorty writes...
Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by these describing activities of human beings—cannot.
...it's a rooted fact unmodifiable by science, religion or philosophy. You haven't understood a single sentence of this quote as your response proves. It's always the most idiotic posts which get the most feedback; types like you at least know that much and how to take advantage of it.

Trying to penetrate your mind beyond what it's programmed for, in this instance, the kindergarten logic of Simone Weil, - though I doubt you even understood that correctly - is like trying to conquer a mountain of ice on roller skates. Every argument far more intelligent than anything you came up with is immediately vaporized before it has any chance to function not unlike code that was written for a different operating system.

I expect the first true generation of AI machines will be more mentally flexible since it will have no hermetically sealed barriers wrapped around doctrines and dogmas which is really how totalitarianism commences when centered in power.

How can one expect anything worthwhile from someone who can't be bothered to understand what secular or secularism really denotes! If you can't learn then don't preach.
Regardless of all the righteous indignation Rorty did write:
Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.
That means according to Rorty that there is no objective truth - no "thing in itself" or a relationship with anything else can be an objerctive truth. Only descriptions can be true or false. I'll stick with Simone.
Your choice, but there's no doubt that Simone would not stick with you since you're mutilating her philosophy with your own screwed-up ideas. There's no chance of you understanding her if you're so incapable of understanding anyone else. That kind of solipsism remains forever ineffective no matter what it's applied to. One gets a very distorted view of Simone Weil reading your posts and doesn't deserve a petty follower like you!
fooloso4
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick_A:

Apparently you are unaware that Spinoza is a poster boy for secular intolerance.

Some quotes from the Stanford Encyclopedia article “Spinoza’s Political Philosophy”:
Spinoza’s political philosophy advocates democracy and subordinates religion to the state.

At one point Spinoza calls the task of establishing the separation of faith from philosophy “the principal purpose of the whole work”
The salutary function of religion is undermined when sectarianism emerges. When groups like the Pharisees begin to regard themselves as special, disparaging and persecuting other groups, civil order is disrupted. In order to prevent such fissures, Spinoza puts forth a universal or civil religion that captures the moral core of a plurality of faiths, to which all citizens can subscribe irrespective of what other private beliefs they hold (14, 182–3). Like Rousseau after him, Spinoza thought that a universal public religion could bolster civic solidarity, channeling religious passions into social benefits.

Spinoza's denial that freedoms concerning outward religious expression must be protected points to the limited nature of his brand of toleration. The sovereign retains full discretion to determine which actions are acceptable and what forms of speech are seditious.

So when we say that the best state is one where men pass their lives in harmony, I am speaking of human life, which is characterized not just by the circulation of the blood and other features common to animals, but especially by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

fooloso4 wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:44 am Nick_A:

Apparently you are unaware that Spinoza is a poster boy for secular intolerance.

Some quotes from the Stanford Encyclopedia article “Spinoza’s Political Philosophy”:
Spinoza’s political philosophy advocates democracy and subordinates religion to the state.

At one point Spinoza calls the task of establishing the separation of faith from philosophy “the principal purpose of the whole work”
The salutary function of religion is undermined when sectarianism emerges. When groups like the Pharisees begin to regard themselves as special, disparaging and persecuting other groups, civil order is disrupted. In order to prevent such fissures, Spinoza puts forth a universal or civil religion that captures the moral core of a plurality of faiths, to which all citizens can subscribe irrespective of what other private beliefs they hold (14, 182–3). Like Rousseau after him, Spinoza thought that a universal public religion could bolster civic solidarity, channeling religious passions into social benefits.

Spinoza's denial that freedoms concerning outward religious expression must be protected points to the limited nature of his brand of toleration. The sovereign retains full discretion to determine which actions are acceptable and what forms of speech are seditious.

So when we say that the best state is one where men pass their lives in harmony, I am speaking of human life, which is characterized not just by the circulation of the blood and other features common to animals, but especially by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind.
You still don't get it. Great minds like Einstein, Spinoza, and Simone were well aware of the corruption of religion. Yet they knew and some like Jacob Needleman still know that Secularism that glorifies itself is futile for serving the needs of the heart which is drawn to higher consciousness. However society as a sacrament which expresses the quality of metaxu consciously connecting above and below will serve conscious awakening to awakened human individuality as opposed to indoctrinated atoms of psychological slavery. I will post an excerpt from the preface of Jacob Needleman's book "Lost Christianity. He explains the problem well and the section I highlight suggests what needs to happen if we are to survive technology. You, Greta, and all other secular intolerants can curse at it all you like. It is to be expected. But the sad inability to acquire a new understanding of God and of Man from the opposition of both religious fanaticism and secular intolerance will assure the destruction of our species
As once again we witness the horrific engines of war being fueled by religious zeal of one kind or another, and under one kind of name or another, the answer to this question seems obviously to be: Yes, sometimes; Yes, often! Have not the darkest crimes of world history—the insane barbarism of genocide, the bloody crusades, the murder of innocents and the depredation of defenseless cultures– have not many, if not most of these crimes been committed under the banner of religion or through a quasi-religious frenzy attaching itself to religious ideals? Put next to these endlessly recurrent horrors, the intimate comforts of personal religious faith and the day-to-day individual efforts to live religiously may seem to count for little in the balance scales of human life on earth. Little wonder then, that so many of the best minds of the modern era entirely rejected religion as a foundation for both ethics and knowledge. Just as the scientific turn of mind seemed to have entirely eclipsed religion’s claim to knowledge, so—it has seemed to many—the same modern turn of mind must inevitably displace religion’s claim to moral authority. Just as religion can no longer show us what is true, but must yield that task to methods of thought that are independent of religious doctrine, so neither can religion, it was claimed, show us what is good, but must now surrender that task as well to the secular mind of modernity.

But in fact, no such assumption of moral authority by secular humanism, has taken hold or now seems in any way likely or justified. The modern era, the era of science, while witnessing the phenomenal acceleration of scientific discovery and its applications in technological innovation, has brought the world the inconceivable slaughter and chaos of modern war along with the despair of ethical dilemmas arising from new technologies that all at once project humanity’s essence-immorality onto the entire planet: global injustice, global heartlessness and the global
disintegration of the normal patterns of life that have guided mankind for millenia. Neither the secular philosophies of our epoch nor its theories of human nature—pragmatism, positivism,
Marxism, liberalism, humanism, behaviorism, biological determinism, psychoanalysis–nor the traditional doctrines of the religions, in the way we have understood them, seem able to confront or explain the crimes of humanity in our era, nor offer wise and compassionate guidance through the labyrinth of paralyzingly new ethical problems.

What is needed is a either a new understanding of God or a new understanding of Man: an understanding of God that does not insult the scientific mind, while offering bread, not a stone, to the deepest hunger of the heart; or an understanding of Man that squarely faces the criminal weakness of our moral will while holding out to us the knowledge of how we can strive within ourselves to become the fully human being we are meant to be– both for ourselves and as instruments of a higher purpose........................
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:49 am Nick, why should anyone care what Plato, Plotinus, Aristotle, Thoreau, Weil said? Can't you think for yourself? Must you hobble around on the crutches of people from the past who may or may not have been good thinkers but were often just wrong? How much of what Aristotle said do you think he got right?

Why should anyone listen to Weil whose entire argument consists of a big fat contradiction in the very first paragraph of her faith statement? Why?
This is why you and those like fooloso4 will never open to scripture. You read esoteric ideas with the literal mind but scripture isn't historical, it is psychological. Its purpose is to touch the deepr mind that the literal mind blocks.
"When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door." - Simone Weil
Where the universalist welcomes the contradiction connecting levels of reality, the literal mind of the secularist condemns it and reconciles it by a lie.
davidm
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by davidm »

Just to reiterate, for those who tuned in late: "secularism" means nothing more than a belief that church and state should be kept separate. It has none of the meanings or implications that Nick suggests.

But then Nick is a moron.
davidm
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by davidm »

Nick, what are "indoctrinated atoms of psychological slavery'"?
davidm
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by davidm »

"Indoctrinated atoms of psychological slavery" could be a good name for a punk rock band.
davidm
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by davidm »

Nick, what is "higher consciousness"? Do have it? (Of course you do!)

Can you tell us plebes and schlubs what it's all about?
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:07 am Just to reiterate, for those who tuned in late: "secularism" means nothing more than a belief that church and state should be kept separate. It has none of the meanings or implications that Nick suggests.

But then Nick is a moron.
From dictionary.com
Secular

adjective
1.
of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal:
secular interests.
2.
not pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to sacred ):
secular music.
3.
(of education, a school, etc.) concerned with nonreligious subjects.
Secularism expresses secular attitudes which do not necessitate hostility towards the sacred.. Math is a secular subject. It doesn't require condemnation of the sacred. Dictionary.com must be the moron. I sit here with innocent flushed cheeks pure as the virgin snow.
davidm
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by davidm »

Why would you believe dictionary.com, Nick? Do you believe every piece of piffle you read online?
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:19 am Nick, what are "indoctrinated atoms of psychological slavery'"?
They are the results of progressive education. They are known now in institutions of higher learning as "snowflakes." They live in mindless psychological slavery to the whims of the Great Beast.
davidm
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by davidm »

Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to to it. How can atoms be “indoctrinated”?

<Anton Chigurh> You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you, Nick? … Call it. Just call it! I can’t call it for you. It wouldn’t be fair.</Anton Chighur>

:lol:
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:27 am Nick, what is "higher consciousness"? Do have it? (Of course you do!)

Can you tell us plebes and schlubs what it's all about?
I could but your secular intolerance would leave you closed and dedicated to blind denial of what you don't understand. I'll provide a description from the Gospel of Thomas you are welcome to try to destroy.
(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
The higher parts of the human organism are capable of consciously witnessing the life of the lower parts that live our lives with only reactive animal consciousness. Conscious witnessing is a degree of consciousness higher than animal consciousness. This quality in turn can be seen and helped by even higher consciousness.
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Lacewing
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Lacewing »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:00 am scripture isn't historical, it is psychological. Its purpose is to touch the deepr mind that the literal mind blocks.
Don't you think scripture is MANY things? Was it not created by many, based on their own limitations, understandings, and purposes?

Doesn't it seem rather obvious that you're defining it NARROWLY to validate/glorify your belief in it, and to discredit others' criticism of it?

Do you think it is more spiritual to live by the words of other people and other times, than to live vibrantly in the here and now with all of the clarity and wisdom that we, ourselves, possess?

Why do you worship the past and those of it? What do you think they had that we don't? How would that make any sense?
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Greta
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:36 am
davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:19 amNick, what are "indoctrinated atoms of psychological slavery'"?
They are the results of progressive education. They are known now in institutions of higher learning as "snowflakes." They live in mindless psychological slavery to the whims of the Great Beast.
Someone who says "snowflakes" chides others about conformity :lol:
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