I shouldn't have said "engineer", should I?Happy engineering, egg.
What I basically meant was - if Abraham knew what I know, he would have spared Isaac a pretty traumatic afternoon
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I shouldn't have said "engineer", should I?Happy engineering, egg.
Absolutely not.
The sociological view of religion is that one can effectively ignore the supernatural / invisible elements and concentrate on the concrete; this is logical-positivism in action.
I suggest that the underlying structure of religious thinking is intrinsically bound up with but not identical to wisdom, beauty, morality, love and the idea of meaning that these things embody. Wisdom as the small-scale pattern of greater wisdom, beauty of beauty, love of love. If you conceive of these things at all then there's no limit to how far they can go, they belong to the infinite, or more particularly, the sublime and timeless.
I believe that it is a continuum and that to arbitrarily select a part of that continuum and declare it bogus is a fallacy if the rest of it is going to remain unquestioned. I'm not saying that it's not questioned but you seem to imply that there might be a clear line that can be drawn.
There is a modern mode of thinking that will not deal with unquantifiables like emotions, concepts, aesthetics etc. I'm arguing that this kind of thinking is moving toward autism, not in the clinical sense but in the way that it necessarily seems to lead toward a total lack of affect.
I'm an atheist. When I say that, what I mean is there is nothing but the natural universe. Here's some corollaries of that:
- there is no absolute morality
Not exactly sure what you imply here by "sociological view", but I think it's a mistake to equate atheism with logical positivism which entails a rejection of metaphysical concepts.
Logical-Positivism would declare statements like 'God exists' or 'God does not exist' as meaningless. However most atheists would say these statements have huge meaning and based on the evidence will have an opinion about what type of God is a likely proposition or not.
I can see how that mode of thinking could be described as autistic, but if you are ascribing it to dawkins and athesim in general then I think you are conflating lack of belief in God with lack of emotion etc.
so basically ... because I don;t believe in God, I believe in God.
Is there some way to get around this?
How about not believing in not God? Say we square our answers to get rid of the negatives.
I suggest that the underlying structure of religious thinking is intrinsically bound up with but not identical to wisdom, beauty, morality, love and the idea of meaning that these things embody. Wisdom as the small-scale pattern of greater wisdom, beauty of beauty, love of love. If you conceive of these things at all then there's no limit to how far they can go, they belong to the infinite, or more particularly, the sublime and timeless.
I believe that it is a continuum and that to arbitrarily select a part of that continuum and declare it bogus is a fallacy if the rest of it is going to remain unquestioned. I'm not saying that it's not questioned but you seem to imply that there might be a clear line that can be drawn.
The ground on which atheists criticize religious thinking, however, is founded on logical-positivist methods;
there’s an inbuilt problem in the model because the average atheist is not going to let go of the question of meaning too easily nor many of the other intangibles I mentioned. To my mind atheists are far closer in fact to religious types than they are to what I imagine as genuine post-religious thinking.
Does my dead grandmother's love for her grandson still exist? No - it dies with her.
Really? Prove this please.
I would dispute this. Accepting LP methods may be a sufficient argument for being an atheist but it is not a necessary one.
What do you imagine as genuine post-religious thinking if it's not atheism or logical-positivism?
In practice all of the arguments I hear fit the bill. It's not a question of necessity. Its the grass roots of the ideology.
I suggest that your grandmother's love came from love and returned to love.. a crytallisation of possibility followed by reintegration.. The idea that it was somehow fabricated and then ceased to exist is just as strange a notion.
In response to Mr Pants: Either love is a real thing or it is a bunch of hormones, sentimentality and loyalty etc that our DNA needs to survive and thrive.
Either beauty is real or it is a fringe benefit of our brain activity. Similarly with other immaterial 'things'; either they have a greater reality or are a mere function of the organism. A greater reality suggests the absolute. I personally believe in the perfection of wisdom and the meaning of meaning.
I suggest that your grandmother's love came from love and returned to love.. a crytallisation of possibility followed by reintegration.. The idea that it was somehow fabricated and then ceased to exist is just as strange a notion.
Not "proof" but;
Her perception and expression of "love" were a function of her body / mind. Her body and mind cease to be, therefore so does her perception and expression of "love".
Can this pass through a generation? Two generations? Three?
Why does it even matter? Because understanding ourselves in terms of what we really are is how we engineer more fulfilling lives for ourselves.
As you say. Not proof. I'd be interested in some empirical evidence at the very least (I'm being facetious, just in case you want to do the "rolleyes" smiley again). The question is (and I'm presuming you're the grandson here), do you still know the love your grandmother left you? I would say that love is not the expression of one body and mind but of a collective of minds. Two minds in this case. Can this pass through a generation? Two generations? Three? If you can say that your grandmother's love for you is now dead, years after her death, that you don't experience it in any way, then I suppose you could only consider yourself to be correct. Can you?
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