Philosophy: books and discussion

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by TGS

Another problem is that, on any remotely rationalist sense of the word "knowledge", knowledge of the transcendent it is no sort of knowledge at all - it's "truth" cannot be verified, and it's belief cannot be justified.

Exactly.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

One of the problems with intuitive knowledge of transcendent reality is inconsistency. I may intuitively know that the Almightly Creator is male. Another may know intuitively that the Almighty is female. I may intuitive know that reality is one, another may know intuitively that reality has a dualistic or even pluralisic nature. But even if all humanity were intuitively in agreement on the nature of the transcendent, what would this prove? It would only prove that humans were hardwired by nature to conceive the nature of things beyond their ken in a similar manner. It would in no wise be a proof as to the validity of their intuitive "knowledge".

Reality is under no obligation to conform to human needs, desires, abstractions, or intuitions.

I wish I'd said that! Thank you Tom

I wish I knew how we came to be hard-wired for religion, because there has to be some hard-wiring involved, otherwise religious or magical beliefs wouldn't be so universal.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I wish I'd said that! Thank you Tom

I wish I knew how we came to be hard-wired for religion, because there has to be some hard-wiring involved, otherwise religious or magical beliefs wouldn't be so universal.

Thank you. I believe that it was Carl Sagan who first said, "Nature is under no obligation to conform to our expectations," but I can find no source for that quotation. It may have come from his TV series, Cosmos. Since many have played upon those words, I felt no compunction about adding my own twist.

[WT Sharpe]

If anyone's interested, on his website of collected quotations (Volume 2), Fred O'Bryant sources a variant.

.....There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions.
..........— Carl Edward Sagan (1934 – 1996), American astronomer, astrophysicist, author, cosmologist. Broca's Brain (1979).

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I wish I'd said that! Thank you Tom

I wish I knew how we came to be hard-wired for religion, because there has to be some hard-wiring involved, otherwise religious or magical beliefs wouldn't be so universal.

Didn't Voltaire say "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"? I've always took this to be a statement that supports what you are saying; man is hard-wired to have a belief system, regardless of whether or not that is justified.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Didn't Voltaire say "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"? ...

Yes, in a letter he wrote in 1768. ("Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.")

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Yes, in a letter he wrote in 1768. ("Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.")

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire

Thanks Tom.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I wish I'd said that! Thank you Tom

I wish I knew how we came to be hard-wired for religion, because there has to be some hard-wiring involved, otherwise religious or magical beliefs wouldn't be so universal.

You could try this or this as a step towards understanding.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Thanks Tom.

You're welcome!

[beppe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Reality is under no obligation to conform to human needs, desires, abstractions, or intuitions.

That is so

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Didn't Voltaire say "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"? I've always took this to be a statement that supports what you are saying; man is hard-wired to have a belief system, regardless of whether or not that is justified.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Yes, in a letter he wrote in 1768. ("Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.")

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire

It has become a standard phrase in French ("Si xxx n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer") and I had no idea that Voltaire was the original author, and the original quote was about God. Thank you

Of course, it's ironic because we did invent him, didn't we. Maybe Voltaire thought so already but didn't dare say it.

[TimMason]

While reality may be under no obligation to conform to our desires, our desires are under an obligation to conform to reality, at the very least to the extent that we do not win a Darwin Award.

Beliefs in the kinds of entities and ways of being that we lump together under the term 'transcendental', and the rituals and other behaviours that accompany those beliefs (or even, according to some accounts, precede them) are quite efficacious - particularly in building up group togetherness necessary for collective action of any kind. (If we are 'hard-wired' for anything, it is probably for the kinds of ritual complexes that involve song, dance and foot-stomping).

And while the form of knowledge which you subscribe to will not allow for evidence of what you might wish to term collective fantasies, other systems of thought will produce hard and fast evidence of their truth. The Zande, as Evans-Pritchard described them, were very matter of fact about witchcraft, and could show you evidence of its existence which, to their way of thinking, was irrefutable. Europeans just didn't know how to look properly.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

It has become a standard phrase in French ("Si xxx n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer") and I had no idea that Voltaire was the original author, and the original quote was about God. Thank you

Of course, it's ironic because we did invent him, didn't we. Maybe Voltaire thought so already but didn't dare say it.

Voltaire was a deist. He believed in a Creator, but not in the Biblical god. In The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant wrote that some of the Encyclopedists turned against Voltaire, saying, "Voltaire is a bigot; he believes in God."

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Beliefs in the kinds of entities and ways of being that we lump together under the term 'transcendental', and the rituals and other behaviours that accompany those beliefs (or even, according to some accounts, precede them) are quite efficacious - particularly in building up group togetherness necessary for collective action of any kind. (If we are 'hard-wired' for anything, it is probably for the kinds of ritual complexes that involve song, dance and foot-stomping).

Another thing we are hard-wired for is art. And that is another thing that has been intertwined with religion from the very beginning.

I'm interested in the possibility you mention, that rituals started before religion. Do you know what would support this hypothesis?

[beppe]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I wish I knew how we came to be hard-wired for religion, because there has to be some hard-wiring involved, otherwise religious or magical beliefs wouldn't be so universal.

Trascendency, religion, magical beliefs are certainly linked but are quite different things.

Formal religions, with priests, temples, liturgies and the like often resulted in structures of power. The God of the Bible warns about this: "the altar will not be morally ruined by tools". Meaning, keep it as simple as possible. The citation is sloppy on purpose. Christ says to Peter You are stone and on this stone you will build my Church, both a quote of the ancient word of God and and exortation to keep it simple. The results were and are under the eyes of everyone.

Other forms are different. I have a personal experience that might be of interest. Since more than 40 years I am friend with a certified and full fledged American Indian shaman. He is a renown sculptor, and for a while was Minister of Culture of his Mexican Republic. He knows a number of things. He told me that the shaman function within the tribe was, is, to keep everybody sane of mind, with the highly stressful life they had to live, nature, enemies, an incredible amount of physical , emotional and spiritual violence in their ways.

These arguments are very well described in any handbook of Antropology.

For the "official" religions I use what is recognized as a standard introductory text. Huston Smith The World's Religions.1958. I have a pocket book by HarperCollins that I paid $16.95

For trascendency and magic beliefs and other similar subjects it is too complex a subject to synthesize it in few words in a post. Be enough to consider that of the earliest forms of civilizations (paeleolithic), what we know we learned from burials.