As Above, So Below - the religion thread (formerly: People of California, beware)

I think those type of questions trying to find purpose or meaning to existence are a natural outcome of our evolved intelligence and our skill to observe and make connections and make sense. It is part of our quest for knowledge, in the knowledge a huge chunk of that knowledge is unattainable. It's a game. We are detectives, wikipedia is never finished.

That to me doesn't make the mystery nor the quest to solve it 'religious' in nature. I'd also go as far as say that religion is not the promoter of such questions as the answers it provides are based on blind 'faith' and have little basis in science. religion abhors critical thinking because that will ultimately discredit it. I don't buy into the 'religious until proven scientific' notion, it's the other way around for me.

Sure, you can argue that this 'talent', 'skill' to ask questions and be aware of our state of being so far makes us unique in this world and therefore sets us apart from other species; but would you still call it 'religious'/a gift only possible from God if we ourself created artificial intelligence that asks those same questions and means it? In other words create a 'soul'? Would that thinking still be considered religious or would you lean more towards scientific? Or would it simply be another chapter/specification in the manual of the cosmos?

"intelligent AI" -- er -- right.

I'm afraid I have very little time, because I have piles of tests to correct and the end of semester is advancing. I'll come back to that next week, OK?

Edit:

Let me say so much: The tradition of European philosophy distinguishes between pantheism (Spinoza, Bruno, Goethe) and atheism (Feuerbach, Marx, Sartre).

Well, philosophy doesn't fare much better with Dawkins then religion, does it?

Kant sais, that statements like the claim of materialism are impossible by way of logic because in the end they are dogmatic, run into a circulus vitiosus or a regressus ad infinitum (Wittgenstein-Trilemma).

So the claim of materialism might work as a (necessary) working hypothesis for emprical science. But claiming materialism as a onthological fact is to be rejected.

Another traditional probelm with strict materialism is that it's at odds with the concept of free will. I don't wanna delve into the discussion of free will in current neural sciences, here. Fact is that materialism leads to a world that is governed entirely by the law of cause and effect. The idea of free will requires it to be independent of the bounds of matter.

So much for now.
Cheers!
Volker

Thanks for your interesting post, Captain (I just cut out the edit for purposes of readability).
You've got me re-reading Kant now!

Anyway, happy to leave the discussion for another ten days or so as my access to internet is erratic at best these days. But revisit it I certainly will as you bring up a few points that certainly warrant delving into a bit deeper!

Good luck with grading all the term papers in the meantime!






Mark, with the greatest respect: what do you mean by that statement, which I find deeply unsettling (and vehemently, nay, militantly would take great issue with taken at face value)?

Just a question. Do you think that religious belief in general, or maybe I should say as a rule, prevents people from thinking for themselves?

Mark, interesting thoughts.



Concerning this point (and a point that was made earlier about science only answering the hows, and not the whys) I wrote down a little rant:

I do think that science answers questions about human purpose and the reasons for our existance, but people frequently don't find the answers very satisfying. Essentially we exist because our ancestors procreated, and most everything in our nature revolves around this end goal, to spread our genes; so if we want to pry a purpose to our existence from this it's: Procreate and tend to your children. Additionally, science can address the question of why we exist in more detail, by examining the historical events, selection pressures and molecular events during the course of evolution that led to humans and help to explain why we exist and why we are the way we are. Science can try to explain the emergence of life, the formation of our solar system and the Universe, and every day we get a more and more detailed picture of why we exist.

The answers don't tend to satisfy most people asking about our purpose though, because these people generally don't look for "mundane" explanations; they want a greater plan and a point to all of this existence. The thing is though, there's such a thing as asking the wrong question. If I ask "what's the purpose of this hammer?", there's an obvious answer, because a hammer is fashioned with a purpose in mind. But asking "what's the purpose of this atom?" is a loaded question as it presumes that there is some externally imposed purpose and plan for the atom. When people ask "Why are we here?", "What is our purpose?" they usually don't have the "mundane" in mind, but have loaded the questions with unjustified, religiously-based assumptions.

I think that a big part of the reason for why people, even the non-religious, ask the "wrong questions" has to do with the influence that religion has on our societies and the way we think. I think that a few centuries down the road, the questions people ask about the cosmos will be rather different and a lot more meaningful and relevant.




I don't agree. Religion is just a drop in the ocean compared to the myriad ways people find their purposes and meaning in life. A universal, externally imposed purpose might not exist, but we are experts at giving our lifes individual meaning and purpose, applying philosophies, morals, opinions, needs, desires etc.

Peter

Those questions are justified because they root within the very nature of man and they will be asked as long as man may be.

You are not beyond these questions, because docmatic materialism and docmatic atheism is just as rediculous as any religious catechism. What makes you think your assumptions to be justified? Because science is working? Oh yeah, it's working real nice until it boils down to one point and one point only:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Don't hope to get any answers from that imbecile Lauwrence Krauss. Go try Heidegger ("Being and Time") for he coined that question. The point isn't origin but existence itself.

There is no realness without an observer. Reality itself is a mere hypothesis. A mathematical world formula that descibes even the ovserver remains the product of a thinking mind that observes the observer. (Gadamer)

Dogmatic ontologist are walking over thin ice indeed.

That's why Dawkins-inspired know-it-alls are driving me mad. It's their unbased aloofness, their conviction that religious people are a lesser kind of being. They make science their ersatz-religion until they realize that scince means knowledge, but knowledge does not give you a purpose.

Without purpose there are no absolute values. Everything is up to passing agreements. Without purpose there is only the abyss of nihilism, the survial of the fittest and nothing else.

I don't believe in a personal God. Yet I do believe that there is a Truth that calls this universe into existence and that all that is true and fair is rooted in that Truth, whatever it is. Without this believe, everything is void.

Volker

Look, since this thread is as much about philosophy as it is about spirituality, can anyone recommend a good survey text on philosophical traditions? I must confess it's a subject that I'm an infant in, despite knowing bits and pieces about most of the names.

double post

Hi Peter,

thanks a lot for your long and interesting post! Well, I got carried away a bit with my rhethorics. I t happens when it comes to metaphysics.
As you, I have very little time now but I hope to return to our little discussion in the course of the next weekend.
And you are quite right: While I deny the validity of any codified faith I am close to religious concepts. I don't believe in God but I do believe in the devine. I realise that the idealistic philosophie in Germany was part of the romantic movement. The yearning for something bigger than life is a romantic notion. I always thought that religion as well as metaphysics is basically a question of one's personal predisposition.

Cheers!
Volker

Hehe, I understand completely, as I can be guilty of that as well.




Don't worry, there's no pressure at all. In fact I'd probably flunk my next exam if you were to reply quickly, as I'm too busy to reply, and yet too interested to not participate in the discussion.




That is interesting, thanks.

Peter

Hermeneutics would be easier to explain for me in succinct words than rather finding a good English-language (I haven't found one myself!) .

Hermeneutics directly come from Bible interpretation from even philosophers like St. Augustine and the first text called Hermeneutics (Peri hermeneias) was written by Aristotle. Flash forward to the turn between 18th and 19th centuries. A German philologist and pastor, Schleiermacher, has created his theory which he orients around the sense of circle of interpretation, coming from explanation (Verklären) to understanding (Verstehen). The text which was notes prepared for his lectures was discovered late into 19th century.

By the end of 19th century two philosophers set up what prepared modern hermeneutics. They were Friedrich Nietzsche (stemming from his concept of the Death of God), who said that our condition is trying to understand reality around us, relevant when you lose the point of reference that was God in the pre-Nietzschean word (that doesn't say there weren't atheists before Nietzsche, Schopenhauer was one for example), but the value system and sense of being the subject (as opposed to everything else being the object, something that has prevailed since Descartes and his famous je pense, donc je suis, the concept of the "thinking I" - ego cogitans or even the thinking thing, res cogitans as opposed to non-human objects which are defined as res extensa, things that are extensive; note that I don't use the Latin formula of cogito ergo sum, which contrary to popular belief was never stated by Descartes himself).

The other philosopher, Wilhelm Dilthey, stemmed from the differentiation that Wilhelm Windelband made between natural and human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), now notice the term Geist, it's often translated as human sciences, but there is a huge reference to the system of G. W. F. Hegel, which had a huge influence on 19th Century philosophy and he is someone I haven't yet explored systematically. Dilthey has taken Schleiermacher's lectures and made it a general (rather than reading texts) approach to history and to literature, though saying that Dilthey is merely a methodologist is a huge understatement, his point is that understanding literature and history helps us understand the world and deal with reality, which leads us to the next point in our journey.

Coming from phenomenological thought of his teacher Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger redefined both phenomenology (to slight chagrin from Husserl) and hermeneutics in Being and Time, his big project, made before he would become a hugely controversial figure (Heidegger openly supported Nazis, to the point that when Husserl, who was Jewish, died in 1939, for political reason Heidegger did NOT attend his funeral). At this point hermeneutics become a staple of existence of the Dasein, "the Being-here", which while being an ontological construct rather than an anthropological one, is "me and nothing else", as Heidegger states repeatedly in this work), our existence is defined by our attempts (Heidegger doesn't ponder whether they are ever successful) of the world "that is always ours", but exists before we start to exist. That development, like the care (Sorge) and Zeitlichkeit (I would translate it as Temporality if Temporalität wasn't suggested by Heidegger in another work), which also defines us through Being-till (to?)-death, the famous Sein-zum-Tode. Our time is limited and our existence is defined by trying to understand what is around us. As a German, Captain could expand hugely on those concepts, which I surely provide only in simplification and possibly missing out on relevant contexts or concepts that go beyond Being and Time and beyond other things, that I haven't caught yet.

A major student of Martin Heidegger was the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose concepts were defined in the huge work called Truth and Method. While it seems to be a work about aesthetics (critique of Kant's Critique of Judgment), it goes beyond that and linguistically expands Being and Time. The general thought of understanding reality around us is expanded on quite heavily and he also talks about how history affects us, how tradition affects us and even, how we communicate with other people through their works (The contact between a literary work or more general work of art, and the perceiver is defined by what is called a Conversation, also the fusion of horizons, which is the agreement of my perspective and the work's perspective). Now, this all seems to be methodology, but because Gadamer comes directly from his work with Martin Heidegger, Gadamer's philosophy is also a philosophy of life. What is called philosophical hermeneutics, is describing the way we exist in the world (and those concepts, to get back to Heidegger for a while, were also taken up by existentialists like especially Jean-Paul Sartre). It is still very strongly a philosophy of *life* rather than just ways to read something.

The second major hermeneutics author is the Frenchman Paul Ricoeur, who while sharing a lot of concepts with Gadamer (he is quoting Truth and Method a lot in his works and through him I understood the above-described sense of historical effect on ourselves). Rather than the contact with the work being a conversation between Me and the Other, Ricoeur states that it leads us to auto-reflection. And also another relevant point of Ricoeur's work, or rather his evolution as a philosopher: Ricoeur goes from hermeneutics of symbols (largely influenced by Freud at that point), to hermeneutics of texts (he was a big reader of language theory), to the hermeneutics of *action*. This is the final point that I think summarizes what hermeneutics is: Our understanding of the works of art (in Ricoeur's case our understanding of literary works) and history leads us to action in the world we live in. We draw conclusions from what we know of history and of works we have read in life (that includes The Bible! Ricoeur was a very strongly religious person!) influences the way we live our lives.

Two things to wrap this long (and yet, trust me Michael, succinct for the subject and that at expense of simplifications) post. I haven't really finished the point about subject and object. Since Schleiermacher, the understanding cycle is in fact, a circle. From pre-understanding to explanation, to understanding. What does that lead us to? Especially in the Heideggerian and Gadamerian sense, that means that the roles of subject and object is interchangeable, we are *both* at the same time. By understanding the world, we better understand ourselves, which leads us to a better understanding of the world and so on. It is not a vicious circle, as Heidegger states, it is the mode of existence which defies formal logic (a very brave point to make when analytical philosophy started to be heavily influential, thanks to guys like A. N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell) as it is. Also, one of the basic logical methods used by hermeneutists is dialectics (Ricoeur makes a very strong point here), which as I described above, is the opposite way of dealing with opposites than seeing things as dichotomies - dialectics mean that you build a full thought (synthesis) from two opposites (thesis and antithesis). What was just a rhetorical/logical move for the ancient philosophers, Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Captain?) made a staple of our existence and history and even aesthetics. It is also a huge influence on what we have today even if Hegel was very quickly rejected afterwards or heavily reworked by the likes of Engels and Marx.

Last thing. Of the philosophers I mentioned, as far as I am aware, only Schleiermacher and Ricoeur were religious and both were Protestant. This led to go from Bible to life so easily in their thought. They didn't have to deal with the Catholic Tradition, which sometimes trumps the meaning of the Biblical text itself.

My PhD is in literature and I am using a hermeneutic method in it.

Dammit Peter! Stop posting what I want to write! Although far more eloquent than I could hope to.

I really do hate this often touted assumption that there must be some external purpose to reality, as though the universe couldn't possibly exist without some divine purpose and without it we are living meaninglessness lives (and by extension, the assumption that the assumption is a valid assumption simply because we can dream it up).
That line of reasoning irks me to the very core. It belittles our ability to have and create our own meaning.

I suppose this is a problem in the language rather than the intent, but I feels it's still worth addressing. Belief isn't something we can choose, beliefs are the inescapable conclusions our brains arrive at given specific information and experiences. Belief is like pouring honey into a maze; the shape of the maze tells the honey where to go, but the honey can't go where it wants. In much the same way the brain cannot ignore the prior input to a belief and then simply "choose" to believe something else.

As well as this, in terms of logic, a disbelief in God is not on an equal-but-opposite footing to a belief in God, which is what you seem to suggest. I suppose it is a tempting comparison to make since they do at least appear to be opposites on the face of it. But a lack of belief is simply the position taken when the evidence doesn't overwhelm with a positive answer. It's logic we all use in daily life, and serves us well in order to lead healthy, structured lives.

A disbelief in God is quite different to the assumption, which in my case is based on solid reasoning and skepticism, that God doesn't exist (although one does follow from the other). And probabilities matter. They matter greatly! They matter because it's seemingly impossible to assert anything with 100% certainty, except in the abstract world of mathematics (although I'm no expert in the field of epistemology, so I could be wrong?).

But most of us don't tend to go around thinking "It's impossible to prove that I'm not in The Matrix, so I will live my life as though I were", simply because it's impractical to do so. Beliefs clearly have utility. But that doesn't mean usefulness is proportional to the belief's validity. Beliefs should, ideally, be formed only when the evidence is overwhelming. The evidence for God, divinity or some universal purpose is -arguably- not particularly overwhelming, especially when painfully simple reasoning is applied. In that sense, that is why I "believe" there is no God or "believe" there is no greater, external purpose, in exactly the same way I "believe" there isn't a planet made entirely from cheese somewhere out there in the universe. Show me a good reason to change my "beliefs", and I will. Happily so! (I hope at this point it's clear why I put beliefs in quotation marks.)




I share the feeling of grandeur you describe here, but mine is satisfied in quite a different way. I only need look to science (our best method from sorting fact from fiction and asking the right questions*) to see just how mindboggingly stupendous the reality we live in is. To understand that stars, planets and life itself arrived from such simple beginnings is an astounding thing we can ponder and question thanks to the many brilliant endeavours of those men and women of science. Science is not some cold, harsh method of obtaining statistics; it's a living, breathing endeavour of human imagination! (In fact, I always think it's a shame when religious people are content with their answers.)


I also think you're unfairly describing (or perhaps even confusing) skepticism with too narrow a label. I do not dogmatically hold to the assertion that there isn't something beyond what we know as matter (and its equivalent energy), but I don't see any reason to assume that there is (or even imagine what that could be?). Given what matter and energy are capable of, I always find it a little surprising that this isn't enough for some people?

*I don't think this is a point that can be emphasised enough