It needs to be clearly stated here before we start that a 'philosophy of religion' section is not at all the same as section on 'religion'. What do I mean?
What I mean is that a 'philosophy' section has one clear mission in mind: to get to the bottom of the subject it is studying -- in this case 'religion' -- in order to examine the nature and rationality of the underlying assumptions that are at work and play in the study of the subject under investigation. This is true of any subject area -- not just religion. It is true of the philosophy of science, the philosophy of economics, the philosophy of business, the philosophy of law, the philosophy of politics, the philosophy of sports, the philosophy of art, epistemology, ethics, and so on...Philosophers tread -- or at least they should tread if they have sufficient courage -- where other people may fear to go, feel uncomfortable going, feel threatened to go, etc.
For example, one often hears an expression today that goes something like this; 'Don't go there. Its politically incorrect.' Well, that is exactly where a philosopher has to go to find out why it is politically incorrect -- and who's 'gaining' by this political correctness as well as who's 'losing'. In other words, what are the 'narcissistic', 'power', and 'manipulative' dynamics that are work. Who's being 'played'? What's being 'suppressed' and who's being 'oppressed'?
Well, religion works sometimes the same as politics, and sometimes a little differently. But one things is common. Strong emotional biases are often at work -- and some of these biases are beyond reason. In the case of politics, there may be 'money' matters at work. This may be the same with religion. Or with religion, there may be other strong types of emotional biases at work -- issues of 'faith', strong beliefs that have been taught in childhood, or from childhood on, beliefs that often defy 'reason', 'rationality', and 'empiricism'. These are the only legitimate tools that a philosopher has to work with. Without these tools, a philosopher has nothing. He is going into a potential dialogue -- a debate, a dialectic -- with no rhetorical weapons. He or she is like an unarmed soldier going into war.
Now, one might argue that a philosopher should stay out of religion altogether. However, I would counter-argue that when there are hundreds, thousands, millions of people over the course of human history that are being adversely affected by religion -- suppressed, oppressed, ex-communicated, tortured, killed -- somebody has to go into the philosophy of religion, into the potential 'pathology' of religion, to fully analyse the nature, causes, and symptoms of this type of pathology.
This is not to say that there are not many potential 'healthy' components and benefits of religion. Certainly, there are -- or at least they can be. Altruism, love, caring, empathy, generosity, community help, a sense of belonging, a sense of self-security and self-groundedness, help against poverty, alienation, loneliness, addiction, selfishness, self-destruction, serious illness, fear of death...to name a number of potential benefits. I'm sure there are more that I have missed.
A distintion can be made between the 'epistemology' (knowledge) of religion vs. the 'ethics' (values and anti-values) of religion. This is an important distinction because each breeds a different type of potential argument.
The question: 'Does God exist or not exist?' is an epistemological question. It is a question about our state of knowledge in this regard which from a 'rational-empirical' point of view -- is 'insufficient'. (This is the 'agnostic's' position -- that we do not, and cannot, know whether God exists or not because such speculation is beyond the realm of the 'physical evidence' of our 'senses'.) However, if you are a philosopher and start to get into an argument with a 'religious person' on this question, you are probably best to back off and abstain from this type of argument. It could take you into a heated argument with little to no potential gain. Strong emotional bias based on elements of 'faith' usually supersede any type of appeal to reason, logic, and empiricism (knowledge based on our senses).
This is not to say that an argument in favor of the existence of God can't be based on decent to strong reason, logic, and empiricism. The theory of 'intelligent design' is very popular today and with good reason. (I may or may not be right in suggesting that the 'intelligent design' theory arose out of 'deism' -- the belief in God for reasons of logic and rational-empiricism; not for reasons of 'authority' and 'blind faith'.)
The argument for 'intelligent design' theory is very simple; the world is obviously very intelligently designed -- amazingly complicated and sophisticated in its design -- many 'part-functions' coming together in 'differential unity' to serve the goals of the whole organism, the species, and the balance of nature, the world, and the universe. An 'intelligent design' theory implies an 'intelligent designer' the 'Prime Mover', 'the cause behind all causes'. To this some people, many people, are willing to apply the name 'God'.
However, this is more than a bit of an 'epistemolgical, if not mythological leap'. I feed my Beta fish each day. I am much bigger than my Beta fish. Whose to say that if my Beta fish had enough intelligence to 'think like a person' (and whose to say that they don't), then they might be viewing me as 'The Prime Mover', 'the cause behind all causes' -- in short, their 'God'. A Greek God. A Roman God. A Canadian God. Any kind of God. (It sounds pretty good, actually. I like it.) The point here is that perhaps it was simply a 'superior race or species' that created Man; this doesn't necessarily have to entail all of the 'idealistic features' that many people bestow on the (mythological?) figure or figures of 'God' (like 'all knowing' and 'all powerful' and 'never dying'. Maybe my fish think that I am all knowing, all powerfull, and will never die. As Einstein said, 'Everything is relative'.).
Who's to say that some superior race of people are not having a highly sophisticated 'chess game' or 'video game' on their particular planet -- and that game is 'Earth'?
I said I wouldn't get into an epistemological debate about God -- and I still did. This may not have been a well-received argument for the 'strong-willed, religously inclined'.
Religiously inclined politicians should not bring their religous epistemology into their political work, plain and simple. Locke knew that. Jefferson knew that. Any Enlightenment philosopher and/or politician knew that. It's too 'faith-based', 'authority-based', and epistemologically weak, unstable and contentious in this regard. Something is generally (but not always) epistemologically strong if many people can and did see it with their 'eyes'. That is what we call an 'eye-witness'. There is no 'eyewitness to God'. Nor is there any 'ear-witness' to anything God may or may not have said. Preachers keep saying, 'God said this', and 'God says this'. Balderdash. The preacher said or says that -- no more, no less.
Let's get our facts straight and our head on straight.
People love to project -- and in particular, to project all of their self-fantasized ideals onto God. Oftentimes, we do this to new girlfriends or new boyfriends, to new politicians, new sports heros, new music or movie heros...We turn them all into 'fantasy heros' -- until they disappoint us and/or betray us. Then we turn on them like Lady Macbeth turned on her husband. Reality meets idealism. Sometimes but rarely do we confront God with realism -- our family member dying in a tragic accident -- usually we label 'all bad' on the deeds of men; 'all good' on the deeds of God. But not always. Extreme politicians and religous leaders often justify and ratioalize their bad acts, indeed their evil acts, 'in the name of God'...Here 'bad acts' are whitewashed into 'good acts'...
What is important here relative to the health and/or pathology of religion, is 'human rights and values'. As long as these rights and values are not violated, not trangressed, then, hey, believe what you want to believe. Tolerance and flexibility of religion are good things -- not righteously trying to 'kill' your next door neighbor -- or next door religion, or next door ethnic race, or next door country -- because he or she or they does/do not share the same religious beliefs as you.
The rest is perhaps just philosophy being philosophy -- trying to bring reason and empiricism to a ballpark where there often is none.
But finding the 'pathology' in religion and distinguishing this from the 'ethical, humanistic values' in religion -- this analysis and summary report is important. That is the main goal of this section...along with some of the other less important philosophical stuff...philosophy being philosophy for the sake of philosophy.
dgb, Oct. 25th, 2007.
With God On Our Side -- By Bob Dylan
Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.
Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.
I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.
In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.
Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music
.....................................................................................
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Authoritarian Religion vs. Humanistic-Existential Religion
Religion can be the life-blood for many; the death-blood for many others. It all depends on individual and group context. When I think of the 'lifeblood' of religion, I think of Mother Teresa and the incredible humanistic work she did under the umbrella of 'God and religion' in the poorest regions of India. I think of anyone and everyone who has taken a similar path -- even in a much lesser role because who else can live up to Mother Teresa's 'one of a kind' standards of human love and compassion. In this sense, I think of all the wonderful things that religion has accomplished, and can accomplish, through particular individuals and groups of people, in the name of humanity, peace, compassion, caring, altruism, and love.
However, at the same time, one also has to look at both sides of the equation. Religion has also been responsible for some of the greatest atrocities and numbers of tortures and deaths in the history of mankind. Almost all groups of religions have been affected at some point in human history: the Christians (being thrown to the lions, the Armenian Holocaust); the Jews (victims of the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi Holocaust to name only two of the worst).
Religion is literally a life and death matter when it comes to talking about all of human history and evolution, including the present and the future. How do we sort out this crazy mixture of human religion, altruism, love, ethics, narcissism, righteous extremism, violence, torture, and religously/racially motivated murder, even genocide?
When trying to sort out the relative 'health' or 'pathology' of a religion, many questions need to be asked such as: What religion? What are the ethics of the particular religion? Who's teaching it? Who's learning it? How is it being interpreted? How is it being practised? How balanced is it? Is the leader compassionate towards people? Is he or she congruent in his or her teachings? Or ideologically hypocritical? Is the leader's lifestlye congruent with his or her teachings? Or is it all a fascade? A sham? A smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show?
Religion can help to make us happy, healthy, and balanced in our approach to life -- relative to both our philosophy and our lifestyle. Or it can have the opposite effect. Everything depends on individual and group context -- and in particular, the ethics of the religion, how this ethics is being taught, how it is being interpreted, and how it is being practised.
Just because you are a very religious person does not mean that you are necessarily happy and healthy. And similarly, neither does being an atheist (a person who doesn't believe in God) necessarily guarantee good health either. Nor being a pantheist (believes in the equivalence of God and Nature). Nor being a deist (believes in God but for more secular and empirical reasons than 'scripture', 'revelation', 'miracles' and 'authoritarianism'). Nor being an agnostic (proclaims -- with sound logic in my opinion -- not to have enough verifiable knowledge to believe in either the existence or non-existence of God).
The key to understanding a person's relative health or pathology, which includes integrity vs. non-integrity -- all else being equal (economics, freedom, and other external factors not withstanding) -- is his or her ethical system and the degree to which he or she is actually practising it as opposed to making a mockery out of it.
A case also can be made for the content of a person's 'epistemology' (knowledge). Good epistemology is also imperative to a person's good health.
Thus, we can isolate three factors that are all imperative to a person's good health: 1. good epistemology; 2. good ethics; and 3. good executive and congruent action based on good epistemology and good ethics.
If these three factors are present in a person's life -- good epistemology, good ethics, and good action -- then it fundamentally is irrelevant whether the person is religious or non-religious, or what type of God or Gods they worship or don't worship -- whether they be a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Judist, or a Hinduist, or a Budhist, or a pantheist, or a deist, or an agnostic, or an atheist...
Let's summarize what we've learned so far.
1. Context (both group and individual) is imperative for understanding the relative health and/or pathology of any religion -- regardless of what it calls itself and how much credibility and/or non-credibility it may have. There can be no proper understanding of meaning without a proper understanding of context. (I learned that from General Semantics -- Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa).
2. All else being equal, good mental health equals good epistemology, good ethics, and good (congruent) action, regardless of a person's religious or non-religous status.
Unfortunately, this does not allow for environmental-social-economic-political factors and what Erich Fromm called a 'pathology of normalcy'. The issue here becomes 'How much does a person perceive that he or she needs to bend and/or break his or her good epistemology, good ethics, and/or good action in order to 'fit into' the context of a pathological society and/or subset of society (for example, a righteously extremist religion, a narcissisticaly corrupt government and/or business corporation, and/or any narcissistically unethical sub-group of society such as a 'street gang')?
Thus, the same three factors that can be used to judge whether an individual person is healthy or not can and should be used to determine the relative health of any social/cultural institution: religious, political, legal, economic, business, etc.
Now I have put together a list of 6 factors that are totally relevant to 'ethical health'. Epistemological factors will have to be discussed at a later date.
These six factors make up the core essence of DGB Philosophy -- particularly, its ethical component. They are:
1, Congruence: What you say is what you mean, and what you mean is what you say.
2. Dialectical Negotiation and Integration: You work with people in areas of conflict to either accept each other's differences and/or to work to resolve the conflict in a way that is democratically fair to both.
3. Democracy: Based on principles of ethical and legal fairness, reciprocal relations, equal rights, congruence, homeostatic balance, a mixture of narcissism and altruism, self-assertiveness and social sensitivity, freedom of speech and belief, and humanistic-existential values.
4. Homeostatic Balance: This is the key to understanding all health and all ethics in Nature -- whether it be philosophical, biological, psychological, cultural, social, legal, economic, political...The fleeting homeostatic goal is to find a healthy, happy 'medium' or 'middle ground' between 'not enough' and 'too much'...
5. Humanistic: Compassionate, socially sensitive, caring, loving, generous, kind...
6. Existential: Pertaining to freedom, self-assertiveness, 'freedom of philosophy and lifestyle within a parameter of social senstivity, responsibility, and accountability...
These are the core ethical factors that make up DGB Philosophy -- with or without religion.
Now, as pertains to religion, and the application and priority of these ethical values -- some critical choices and decisions need to be made that separate the healthy religion from the unhealthy religion, and the healthy religious person from the unhealthy one.
Spefically, the choice needs to be made: Which is of higher priority -- 'scripture', 'revelation' and 'miracles'? Or the ethical values listed above?
I say the ethical values listed above. That is what makes me a humanistic-existentialist first and foremost. Religion has the choice of either making its values consistent and congruent with humanistic-existential values. Or not.
Thus, an important distinction needs to be made here. We need to judge the qualtiy of a religion by the qualtiy of the ethical values it subscribes too; not the other way around. In other words, an ethical value should be judged by its relevance to 'harmonious human relations' or 'homeostatic humanistic-existentialism'; not by its etiology in the religion it comes from, including any type of 'scripture' and/or alleged 'revelation' that it is purported to come from without any type of skepticism pertaining to the legitimacy of this so called 'revelation'. Revelation and humanistic-existentialism epistemologically do not get along. Humanistic-existentialism is highly suspect of any type of so-called 'revelation'.
Let us say that again. The strength of a religion is the ethical system it teaches -- and practices; not the reverse -- that the strength of an ethical system should be based on the religion, the scripture, and the alleged revelation that it comes from.
This then, is where religion and humanistic-existentialism can part company. They don't have to but they can and often do part company on the double issue of: 1. authoritarian epistemology vs. rational-empirical epistemology; and 2. authoritarian ethics vs. rational-empirical ethics. Thus, at this point, a critical distinction needs to be made 'authoriatarian' religion and 'humanistic-existential' religion.
The first can take us into serious human pathology -- issues of 'dominance/submission' and 'sado-masochism'; whereas the second can lead us to, and/or keep us in, good health. The first demands that we give up our mind in order to practise our faith; the second demands that we keep our mind, our independence, our freedom, our skepticism, our rational empiricism -- in short, our humanistic-existentialism -- and that this is our faith, nothing more, nothing less. The first can be the death-blood of both religion and man; the second is the life-blood of both religion and man.
In the remainder of this section, we will examine: 1. the 'epistemology' of religion; 2. the 'ethics' of religion; 3. the 'mythology' of religion; 4. the 'pragmatism' of religion; 5. the 'humanistic-existentialism' and particularly the 'altruism' in religion; and 6. the potential for pathology in religion.
An example is needed right now for some of the ideas I have written about.
In the next two essays, I will 'deconstruct' and 'reconstruct' the 'God, Abraham, and The Binding of Isaac' parable in the Bible in order to illustrate the difference between an authoritarian perspective in religion and my DGB humanistic-existential perspective.
Please join me there.
dgb, October 21st-22nd, 2007.
However, at the same time, one also has to look at both sides of the equation. Religion has also been responsible for some of the greatest atrocities and numbers of tortures and deaths in the history of mankind. Almost all groups of religions have been affected at some point in human history: the Christians (being thrown to the lions, the Armenian Holocaust); the Jews (victims of the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi Holocaust to name only two of the worst).
Religion is literally a life and death matter when it comes to talking about all of human history and evolution, including the present and the future. How do we sort out this crazy mixture of human religion, altruism, love, ethics, narcissism, righteous extremism, violence, torture, and religously/racially motivated murder, even genocide?
When trying to sort out the relative 'health' or 'pathology' of a religion, many questions need to be asked such as: What religion? What are the ethics of the particular religion? Who's teaching it? Who's learning it? How is it being interpreted? How is it being practised? How balanced is it? Is the leader compassionate towards people? Is he or she congruent in his or her teachings? Or ideologically hypocritical? Is the leader's lifestlye congruent with his or her teachings? Or is it all a fascade? A sham? A smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show?
Religion can help to make us happy, healthy, and balanced in our approach to life -- relative to both our philosophy and our lifestyle. Or it can have the opposite effect. Everything depends on individual and group context -- and in particular, the ethics of the religion, how this ethics is being taught, how it is being interpreted, and how it is being practised.
Just because you are a very religious person does not mean that you are necessarily happy and healthy. And similarly, neither does being an atheist (a person who doesn't believe in God) necessarily guarantee good health either. Nor being a pantheist (believes in the equivalence of God and Nature). Nor being a deist (believes in God but for more secular and empirical reasons than 'scripture', 'revelation', 'miracles' and 'authoritarianism'). Nor being an agnostic (proclaims -- with sound logic in my opinion -- not to have enough verifiable knowledge to believe in either the existence or non-existence of God).
The key to understanding a person's relative health or pathology, which includes integrity vs. non-integrity -- all else being equal (economics, freedom, and other external factors not withstanding) -- is his or her ethical system and the degree to which he or she is actually practising it as opposed to making a mockery out of it.
A case also can be made for the content of a person's 'epistemology' (knowledge). Good epistemology is also imperative to a person's good health.
Thus, we can isolate three factors that are all imperative to a person's good health: 1. good epistemology; 2. good ethics; and 3. good executive and congruent action based on good epistemology and good ethics.
If these three factors are present in a person's life -- good epistemology, good ethics, and good action -- then it fundamentally is irrelevant whether the person is religious or non-religious, or what type of God or Gods they worship or don't worship -- whether they be a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Judist, or a Hinduist, or a Budhist, or a pantheist, or a deist, or an agnostic, or an atheist...
Let's summarize what we've learned so far.
1. Context (both group and individual) is imperative for understanding the relative health and/or pathology of any religion -- regardless of what it calls itself and how much credibility and/or non-credibility it may have. There can be no proper understanding of meaning without a proper understanding of context. (I learned that from General Semantics -- Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa).
2. All else being equal, good mental health equals good epistemology, good ethics, and good (congruent) action, regardless of a person's religious or non-religous status.
Unfortunately, this does not allow for environmental-social-economic-political factors and what Erich Fromm called a 'pathology of normalcy'. The issue here becomes 'How much does a person perceive that he or she needs to bend and/or break his or her good epistemology, good ethics, and/or good action in order to 'fit into' the context of a pathological society and/or subset of society (for example, a righteously extremist religion, a narcissisticaly corrupt government and/or business corporation, and/or any narcissistically unethical sub-group of society such as a 'street gang')?
Thus, the same three factors that can be used to judge whether an individual person is healthy or not can and should be used to determine the relative health of any social/cultural institution: religious, political, legal, economic, business, etc.
Now I have put together a list of 6 factors that are totally relevant to 'ethical health'. Epistemological factors will have to be discussed at a later date.
These six factors make up the core essence of DGB Philosophy -- particularly, its ethical component. They are:
1, Congruence: What you say is what you mean, and what you mean is what you say.
2. Dialectical Negotiation and Integration: You work with people in areas of conflict to either accept each other's differences and/or to work to resolve the conflict in a way that is democratically fair to both.
3. Democracy: Based on principles of ethical and legal fairness, reciprocal relations, equal rights, congruence, homeostatic balance, a mixture of narcissism and altruism, self-assertiveness and social sensitivity, freedom of speech and belief, and humanistic-existential values.
4. Homeostatic Balance: This is the key to understanding all health and all ethics in Nature -- whether it be philosophical, biological, psychological, cultural, social, legal, economic, political...The fleeting homeostatic goal is to find a healthy, happy 'medium' or 'middle ground' between 'not enough' and 'too much'...
5. Humanistic: Compassionate, socially sensitive, caring, loving, generous, kind...
6. Existential: Pertaining to freedom, self-assertiveness, 'freedom of philosophy and lifestyle within a parameter of social senstivity, responsibility, and accountability...
These are the core ethical factors that make up DGB Philosophy -- with or without religion.
Now, as pertains to religion, and the application and priority of these ethical values -- some critical choices and decisions need to be made that separate the healthy religion from the unhealthy religion, and the healthy religious person from the unhealthy one.
Spefically, the choice needs to be made: Which is of higher priority -- 'scripture', 'revelation' and 'miracles'? Or the ethical values listed above?
I say the ethical values listed above. That is what makes me a humanistic-existentialist first and foremost. Religion has the choice of either making its values consistent and congruent with humanistic-existential values. Or not.
Thus, an important distinction needs to be made here. We need to judge the qualtiy of a religion by the qualtiy of the ethical values it subscribes too; not the other way around. In other words, an ethical value should be judged by its relevance to 'harmonious human relations' or 'homeostatic humanistic-existentialism'; not by its etiology in the religion it comes from, including any type of 'scripture' and/or alleged 'revelation' that it is purported to come from without any type of skepticism pertaining to the legitimacy of this so called 'revelation'. Revelation and humanistic-existentialism epistemologically do not get along. Humanistic-existentialism is highly suspect of any type of so-called 'revelation'.
Let us say that again. The strength of a religion is the ethical system it teaches -- and practices; not the reverse -- that the strength of an ethical system should be based on the religion, the scripture, and the alleged revelation that it comes from.
This then, is where religion and humanistic-existentialism can part company. They don't have to but they can and often do part company on the double issue of: 1. authoritarian epistemology vs. rational-empirical epistemology; and 2. authoritarian ethics vs. rational-empirical ethics. Thus, at this point, a critical distinction needs to be made 'authoriatarian' religion and 'humanistic-existential' religion.
The first can take us into serious human pathology -- issues of 'dominance/submission' and 'sado-masochism'; whereas the second can lead us to, and/or keep us in, good health. The first demands that we give up our mind in order to practise our faith; the second demands that we keep our mind, our independence, our freedom, our skepticism, our rational empiricism -- in short, our humanistic-existentialism -- and that this is our faith, nothing more, nothing less. The first can be the death-blood of both religion and man; the second is the life-blood of both religion and man.
In the remainder of this section, we will examine: 1. the 'epistemology' of religion; 2. the 'ethics' of religion; 3. the 'mythology' of religion; 4. the 'pragmatism' of religion; 5. the 'humanistic-existentialism' and particularly the 'altruism' in religion; and 6. the potential for pathology in religion.
An example is needed right now for some of the ideas I have written about.
In the next two essays, I will 'deconstruct' and 'reconstruct' the 'God, Abraham, and The Binding of Isaac' parable in the Bible in order to illustrate the difference between an authoritarian perspective in religion and my DGB humanistic-existential perspective.
Please join me there.
dgb, October 21st-22nd, 2007.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Email Exchange Between David Neil Bain (California, no relation) and David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario): On Various Religious Perspectives
Hi. My name is David Bain too. I just submitted an article on the
subject: Do we have a soul? under religion & spirituality>spritual theories
(not sure of the linkage.) I come from the USA, originally Nashville,
now California. I've read some of your articles and your ideas seem
similar to mine (though much deeper). To minimize confusion I think I'll
use my full name here: David Neil Bain.
I wonder if we are related? I am a descendant of William Bean who was
in this country about 1600.
.....................................................................................
First Email Response from David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario) to David Neil Bain (California, USA)
Hi David,
I do not think we are related. It sound like your
ancestors arrived in America much before mine arrived
in Canada from Aberdeen, Scotland. I have no knowledge
of a William Bean in our lineage. Interesting, though.
I have no problem with both of us using our middle
names and/or initials. I will use either David Gordon
Bain or dgb. That should provide enough
differentation.
I haven't written an essay on the topic of 'Do We Have
A Soul?' yet. It is within the reach of my subject
matter to one day try it -- maybe sooner rather than
later. I am doing a lot of papers on religion these
days so it wouldn't be much of a reach. Next time I go
into Helium I will see if I can find some of your
essays including this one.
Cheers, dave
.....................................................................................
Second Email From David Neil Bain to David Gordon Bain,
I really wanted to comment on your article about
Rational Thought and Proofs of God (or words to that effect). You seemed to
hold that the idea that we were created by intelligent design, in the
person of space aliens, was tenable, though the speculation that that
creator was God was not.
I got the idea that you were not seriously speculating, as some have
done, that we were created by space aliens because that would lead to an
infinite regression (who created the space aliens?). I think you are
too smart not to admit that at some point life would have to have evolved
without help and if on the aliens' planet, why not our own?
Of course using God as the creative designer leads to the same infinite
regression plus additional baggage. It can only be exited by drawing
the precise conclusion religious people do not want to make.
I openly refer to myself as an atheist, knowing that in some
intellectual circles it is fashionable to dismiss atheism as naive; agnosticims
being the favored alternative. I'll probably take up my atheism, along
with my seemingly contradictory agosticism, in another article.
Of course I am on this blog not only to satisfy my own vast vanity but
to try to make a little money. My article reaching first place in its
category has only netted me one cent so far. What do I have to do to get
to $25 so I can get an actual check? Or am I just going to have to
think of this as another excercise in vanity publishing?
...................................................................................
Second Email Response From David Gordon Bain to David Neil Bain,
Hi David,
I have thrown around a lot of different ideas about religion over the last couple of months. Some -- if not all -- of these ideas are very unorthodox. I was raised Protestant but that does not have too much to say about where I stand now religiously except that I respect my parents values in this regard and it has given me a partial underlying religious background that can be viewed as a starting-point for these other ideas. At this point in time, it is philosophers like Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel, Jung, Einstein, and Fromm that are having a lot stronger influence on where I stand religiously. Let me not forget the influence of empiricists like John Locke and David Hume.
As far as epistemology goes, I would have to say -- at least technically -- I am an agnostic. Information that I cannot verify with my senses is exactly that -- unverifiable. Unknown. So it is with God. One very big unknown.
In some respects, I could say I am an atheist in that basically I believe that God is a 'projective myth' -- created at least partly by man to ease his anxiety, loneliness, fear of death, etc. Which is not to say that religion cannot and has not had some very benefical (as well as toxic) influences on the evolution of man. One cannot look at the wonders of the world without speculating how it was created and who created it.
But that does not suffice with me. In my opinion, a person can believe that God is a projective myth -- and still say that that is 'not a bad thing', that it can be a good thing.
If you hold this position, then you are not going to be duped by people who try to tell you crazy epistemological things that defy good, sound reason and common sense. But you can still pursue God as a mythological, spiritual entity that may help to bring a greater sense of depth, wonder, appreciation, and urgency to your life. This is the direction I am going.
I find myself linked to the pantheists and deists in Western history and philosophy -- from Heraclitus to Spinoza to many of the Enlightenment philosophers to Albert Einstein...This is the spiritual place where I find myself most comfortable with the addition of a 'dialectical' presence -- Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, and the like. I even like working with ancient Greek and Roman mythology in the spirit of psychologists like Carl Jung and Erich Fromm... This is a path that I still need to develop more fully.
The essay that best exemplifies my present position on things is the one that follows this email. I just finished it. It is called: DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Deism and Pantheism. A wordy, technical name but one that I am happy with at this point in time as respresenting where I stand religiously.
Cheers,
Talk to you soon, I hope, and thank your for your feedback and comments.
david gordon bain
dgb, Nov. 19th, 2007.
...............................................................................
Third Email From David Neil Bain to David Gordon Bain,
Reading your multiple references to great philosophers leaves we with the same feeling I used to have playing chess against players who knew the classic moves. I am intelligent but ignorant. Nevertheless my fundamental ideas about religion come from great philosophers. Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian gave me permission to embrace atheism. Descartes's proof of the existence of God made an agnostic of me without dislodging my atheism. I am an atheist with regard to belief. I believe that God does not exist just as I believe I exist. But Descartes's introduced the question "What if a demon is making me believe that I am here writing this essay?" That I don't believe in demons is irrelevant since if demons existed they could deceive me into believing that they did not. Also I could be immersed in a virtual reality; I could be a sophisticated artificial intelligence in a false world, or I could simply be insane. I can't prove any of those things is not true. I believe that Descartes was very intelligent but there were fallacies in his "proof" of the existence of God. I could be mistaken even if I am not insane because of unrecognized fallacies in my own thinking.
Now to the deeper question. Is there really any money to be made on helium? I'm up to one cent and counting.
.............................................................................
Third Email Response From David Gordon Bain to David Neil Bain
Hi again David,
Firstly, you are one up on me relative to the Bertrand
Russell book. I've heard about it but not read it. I
expect that it is a good read and that there would be
lots of ideas in there that I would embrace.
Regarding all the philosophers that I cite, 5 to 10
years ago I didn't know most of them either. I am
almost 100 per cent self-taught in philosophy.
Academically, my background is in psychology which is
what led me eventually to philosophy. I worked
backwards from Freud, Jung, and Perls (Gestalt
Therapy) to Hegel because I eventually realized that
Hegel was the main root philosophical influence of all
of them. Hegel and Nietzsche.
So when i cite off all those philosophers, my intent
is not to 'name drop' or to go over anyone's head but
rather to simply point out my line of influence. I
would wish nothing better than to introduce all of my
'lay' readers to all of the philosophers that I cite.
But I can't do it in every essay. So yes, I tend to
forget that not all of my readers are academic and/or
heavily taught/learned philosophical readers. Sometime
I have problems connecting the 'gaps' between 'lay' or
introductory philosophical reader and heavily educated
philosophical reader.
Secondly, interestingly enough, Descartes has always
been a philosopher who I have mainly avoided. I seem
to avoid most of the 'heavy rationalists' including
for most of Plato and Kant. The lone
exception would be Spinoza who's wholism and pantheism
I have embraced in my work -- integrated with Hegel's 'dialectic' influence -- which turns Spinoza's ideas into my own (DGB) ideas of 'multi-dialectic wholism', 'multi-dialectic evolution', and 'multi-dialectic pantheism'. Please don't get intimidated by these ideas because they have not been properly introduced yet. I will introduce them -- hopefully with simplicity and clarity -- shortly. I can't even take full credit for these ideas because Heraclitus, probably many ancient Chinese philosophers -- most specifically the 'Han Philosophers', also the German Romantic Idealist -- Schelling, and indeed, Hegel himself all have developed the idea of 'dialectic wholism' even if they didn't use the same term that I have to label it. In Chinese philosophy the idea of 'dialectic wholism' is expressed by the idea of 'integrating and balancing yin and yang'.
For me, there has to be a 'multi-dialectical'
connection in philosophy between thought, emotion, and action, and
any philosopher who tends to go too heavy into the
'thought' or 'rationalism' -- devoid of emotion and
action -- I tend to turn away from. I am not the type
of philosopher who likes to engage in what might be
called 'mind games' -- like, as you cited, Descartes
'demon specualtion'. To me, if one goes too deeply
into 'massive abstractions' and the 'heaviest of
rationalist philosophizing' -- in effect, to leave
earth and travel into philosophical 'outer space' --
one might never come back. And what will one have
gained from all this philosophical 'space travel'
except perhaps a massive headache? I have neither the
motivation nor likely the necessary intellect to
follow Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Descartes
or others along this outer space path.
I prefer to stay grounded on earth, even as I
sometimes fly fairly high myself in some of my
abstractions, and get told this by some of my readers
who can't be expected to have read the same books that
i have, and/or be expected to understand all of my
terminology until they get properly introduced to it.
The issues of 'groundedness', 'application',
'pragmatism', 'passion', 'impulse', 'conflict',
'opposition', 'synthesis' or 'integration' and 'action' are why I favor Hegel and
Nietzsche over any two other philosophers. These are my main philosophical mentors (aside from the 'psychological' ones who introduced me to Hegel and Nietzsche: specifically, Freud, Adler, Jung, and Perls).
Even Bertrand Russell -- as much as I enjoy his 'common
sense' approach to philosophy, to the extent that I
have read small snippets of his work -- at times
becomes too much of a rationalist for me, and I start
to turn away. Wittgenstein is ten times worse and if
you read the 'Introducing Bertrand Russell' book, you
might become amused like I did, that Wittgenstein
almost literally drove Russell into insanity trying to
follow Wittgenstein's wicked logic and abstractions. I
would prefer not to become insane going the 'mind
games' route. Applied practicality is important to me.
Which brings me to your last point. Money. If you have
made 1 cent at Helium, then that is 1 cent more than I
have made.
First and foremost, you have to write because it is in
your blood -- because that is what you need to do in
order to creatively express yourself.
There may be many 'money pragmatists' out there -- and
certainly, I would love to be one of them -- who are
making a decent or even a good amount of money on the
internet. Maybe even at Helium. But I am not one of
them.
So the long and the short of the answer to your
question is -- 'I don't know.' If there is, then you
need to follow someone who can show you that route.
And that person, at this point in time, is not me.
For me right now, the motivation for writing is in the
writing itself. I would like to lay out the full range
and depth of my philosophy before I die. That might
take one year. It might take five years. Hopefully, it
won't take more than five years, assuming I live that
long. The older you get, the shorter life gets. I am
52 right now and the husband of a friend of mine very
abruptly died of a heart attack last January at 49. The sister of another friend of mine died of drug complications around the age of 30. So
-- life is fleeting; you never know when your time is
going to expire. You can never say that 'I have all
the time in the world' because anything and everything
can change at a moment's notice. I was lucky I didn't
get killed in a car crash last winter. And I had some
liver problems this summer. So -- you never know.
I've become rather long-winded and 'preachy'. Follow
your heart. Or follow the money. As Kierkegaard would
say in the title of one of his books -- 'Either/Or'.
Or you can take a 'Hegelian' or a 'Post-Hegelian'
(DGB) approach and 'work the dialectic'. Passion vs.
money. How can I integrate them into the same package?
This, of course, would be the ideal Hegelian
synthesis. If you can put together that integrative
package to your ideal satisfaction, then you are much
more than one cent ahead of me.
Right now, I'm just in it for the passion and the
creativity. Maybe tomorrow there will be money. But I
am not counting on it.
Cheers again,
dave (david gordon bain)
From David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario) to David Neil Bain (California, USA)
Hi David,
I have thrown around a lot of different ideas about religion over the last couple of months. Some -- if not all -- of these ideas are very unorthodox. I was raised Protestant but that does not have too much to say about where I stand now religiously except that I respect my parents values in this regard and it has given me a partial underlying religious background that can be viewed as a starting-point for these other ideas. At this point in time, it is philosophers like Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel, Jung, Einstein, and Fromm that are having a lot stronger influence on where I stand religiously. Let me not forget the indluence of empiricists like John Locke and David Hume.
As far as epistemology goes, I would have to say -- at least technically -- I am an agnostic. Information that I cannot verify with my senses is exactly that -- unverifiable. Unknown. So it is with God. One very big unknown.
In some respects, I could say I am an atheist in that basically I believe that God is a 'projective myth' -- created at least partly by man to ease his anxiety, loneliness, fear of death, etc. Which is not to say that religion cannot and has not had some very benefical (as well as toxic) influences on the evolution of man. One cannot look at the wonders of the world without speculating how it was created and who created it.
But that does not suffice with me. In my opinion, a person can believe that God is a projective myth -- and still say that that is 'not a bad thing', that it can be a good thing.
If you hold this position, then you are not going to be duped by people who try to tell you crazy epistemological things that defy good, sound reason and common sense. But you can still pursue God as a mythological, spiritual entity that may help to bring a greater sense of depth, wonder, appreciation, and urgency to your life. This is the direction I am going.
I find myself linked to the pantheists and deists in Western history and philosophy -- from Heraclitus to Spinoza to many of the Enlightenment philosophers to Albert Einstein...This is the spiritual place where I find myself most comfortable with the addition of a 'dialectical' presence -- Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, and the like. I even like working with ancient Greek and Roman mythology in the spirit of psychologists like Carl Jung and Erich Fromm... This is a path that I still need to develop more fully.
The essay that best exemplifies my present position on things is the one that follows this email. I just finished it. It is called: DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Deism and Pantheism. A wordy, technical name but one that I am happy with at this point in time as respresenting where I stand religiously.
Cheers,
Talk to you soon, I hope, and thank your for your feedback and comments.
david gordon bain
dgb, Nov. 19th, 2007.
subject: Do we have a soul? under religion & spirituality>spritual theories
(not sure of the linkage.) I come from the USA, originally Nashville,
now California. I've read some of your articles and your ideas seem
similar to mine (though much deeper). To minimize confusion I think I'll
use my full name here: David Neil Bain.
I wonder if we are related? I am a descendant of William Bean who was
in this country about 1600.
.....................................................................................
First Email Response from David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario) to David Neil Bain (California, USA)
Hi David,
I do not think we are related. It sound like your
ancestors arrived in America much before mine arrived
in Canada from Aberdeen, Scotland. I have no knowledge
of a William Bean in our lineage. Interesting, though.
I have no problem with both of us using our middle
names and/or initials. I will use either David Gordon
Bain or dgb. That should provide enough
differentation.
I haven't written an essay on the topic of 'Do We Have
A Soul?' yet. It is within the reach of my subject
matter to one day try it -- maybe sooner rather than
later. I am doing a lot of papers on religion these
days so it wouldn't be much of a reach. Next time I go
into Helium I will see if I can find some of your
essays including this one.
Cheers, dave
.....................................................................................
Second Email From David Neil Bain to David Gordon Bain,
I really wanted to comment on your article about
Rational Thought and Proofs of God (or words to that effect). You seemed to
hold that the idea that we were created by intelligent design, in the
person of space aliens, was tenable, though the speculation that that
creator was God was not.
I got the idea that you were not seriously speculating, as some have
done, that we were created by space aliens because that would lead to an
infinite regression (who created the space aliens?). I think you are
too smart not to admit that at some point life would have to have evolved
without help and if on the aliens' planet, why not our own?
Of course using God as the creative designer leads to the same infinite
regression plus additional baggage. It can only be exited by drawing
the precise conclusion religious people do not want to make.
I openly refer to myself as an atheist, knowing that in some
intellectual circles it is fashionable to dismiss atheism as naive; agnosticims
being the favored alternative. I'll probably take up my atheism, along
with my seemingly contradictory agosticism, in another article.
Of course I am on this blog not only to satisfy my own vast vanity but
to try to make a little money. My article reaching first place in its
category has only netted me one cent so far. What do I have to do to get
to $25 so I can get an actual check? Or am I just going to have to
think of this as another excercise in vanity publishing?
...................................................................................
Second Email Response From David Gordon Bain to David Neil Bain,
Hi David,
I have thrown around a lot of different ideas about religion over the last couple of months. Some -- if not all -- of these ideas are very unorthodox. I was raised Protestant but that does not have too much to say about where I stand now religiously except that I respect my parents values in this regard and it has given me a partial underlying religious background that can be viewed as a starting-point for these other ideas. At this point in time, it is philosophers like Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel, Jung, Einstein, and Fromm that are having a lot stronger influence on where I stand religiously. Let me not forget the influence of empiricists like John Locke and David Hume.
As far as epistemology goes, I would have to say -- at least technically -- I am an agnostic. Information that I cannot verify with my senses is exactly that -- unverifiable. Unknown. So it is with God. One very big unknown.
In some respects, I could say I am an atheist in that basically I believe that God is a 'projective myth' -- created at least partly by man to ease his anxiety, loneliness, fear of death, etc. Which is not to say that religion cannot and has not had some very benefical (as well as toxic) influences on the evolution of man. One cannot look at the wonders of the world without speculating how it was created and who created it.
But that does not suffice with me. In my opinion, a person can believe that God is a projective myth -- and still say that that is 'not a bad thing', that it can be a good thing.
If you hold this position, then you are not going to be duped by people who try to tell you crazy epistemological things that defy good, sound reason and common sense. But you can still pursue God as a mythological, spiritual entity that may help to bring a greater sense of depth, wonder, appreciation, and urgency to your life. This is the direction I am going.
I find myself linked to the pantheists and deists in Western history and philosophy -- from Heraclitus to Spinoza to many of the Enlightenment philosophers to Albert Einstein...This is the spiritual place where I find myself most comfortable with the addition of a 'dialectical' presence -- Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, and the like. I even like working with ancient Greek and Roman mythology in the spirit of psychologists like Carl Jung and Erich Fromm... This is a path that I still need to develop more fully.
The essay that best exemplifies my present position on things is the one that follows this email. I just finished it. It is called: DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Deism and Pantheism. A wordy, technical name but one that I am happy with at this point in time as respresenting where I stand religiously.
Cheers,
Talk to you soon, I hope, and thank your for your feedback and comments.
david gordon bain
dgb, Nov. 19th, 2007.
...............................................................................
Third Email From David Neil Bain to David Gordon Bain,
Reading your multiple references to great philosophers leaves we with the same feeling I used to have playing chess against players who knew the classic moves. I am intelligent but ignorant. Nevertheless my fundamental ideas about religion come from great philosophers. Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian gave me permission to embrace atheism. Descartes's proof of the existence of God made an agnostic of me without dislodging my atheism. I am an atheist with regard to belief. I believe that God does not exist just as I believe I exist. But Descartes's introduced the question "What if a demon is making me believe that I am here writing this essay?" That I don't believe in demons is irrelevant since if demons existed they could deceive me into believing that they did not. Also I could be immersed in a virtual reality; I could be a sophisticated artificial intelligence in a false world, or I could simply be insane. I can't prove any of those things is not true. I believe that Descartes was very intelligent but there were fallacies in his "proof" of the existence of God. I could be mistaken even if I am not insane because of unrecognized fallacies in my own thinking.
Now to the deeper question. Is there really any money to be made on helium? I'm up to one cent and counting.
.............................................................................
Third Email Response From David Gordon Bain to David Neil Bain
Hi again David,
Firstly, you are one up on me relative to the Bertrand
Russell book. I've heard about it but not read it. I
expect that it is a good read and that there would be
lots of ideas in there that I would embrace.
Regarding all the philosophers that I cite, 5 to 10
years ago I didn't know most of them either. I am
almost 100 per cent self-taught in philosophy.
Academically, my background is in psychology which is
what led me eventually to philosophy. I worked
backwards from Freud, Jung, and Perls (Gestalt
Therapy) to Hegel because I eventually realized that
Hegel was the main root philosophical influence of all
of them. Hegel and Nietzsche.
So when i cite off all those philosophers, my intent
is not to 'name drop' or to go over anyone's head but
rather to simply point out my line of influence. I
would wish nothing better than to introduce all of my
'lay' readers to all of the philosophers that I cite.
But I can't do it in every essay. So yes, I tend to
forget that not all of my readers are academic and/or
heavily taught/learned philosophical readers. Sometime
I have problems connecting the 'gaps' between 'lay' or
introductory philosophical reader and heavily educated
philosophical reader.
Secondly, interestingly enough, Descartes has always
been a philosopher who I have mainly avoided. I seem
to avoid most of the 'heavy rationalists' including
for most of Plato and Kant. The lone
exception would be Spinoza who's wholism and pantheism
I have embraced in my work -- integrated with Hegel's 'dialectic' influence -- which turns Spinoza's ideas into my own (DGB) ideas of 'multi-dialectic wholism', 'multi-dialectic evolution', and 'multi-dialectic pantheism'. Please don't get intimidated by these ideas because they have not been properly introduced yet. I will introduce them -- hopefully with simplicity and clarity -- shortly. I can't even take full credit for these ideas because Heraclitus, probably many ancient Chinese philosophers -- most specifically the 'Han Philosophers', also the German Romantic Idealist -- Schelling, and indeed, Hegel himself all have developed the idea of 'dialectic wholism' even if they didn't use the same term that I have to label it. In Chinese philosophy the idea of 'dialectic wholism' is expressed by the idea of 'integrating and balancing yin and yang'.
For me, there has to be a 'multi-dialectical'
connection in philosophy between thought, emotion, and action, and
any philosopher who tends to go too heavy into the
'thought' or 'rationalism' -- devoid of emotion and
action -- I tend to turn away from. I am not the type
of philosopher who likes to engage in what might be
called 'mind games' -- like, as you cited, Descartes
'demon specualtion'. To me, if one goes too deeply
into 'massive abstractions' and the 'heaviest of
rationalist philosophizing' -- in effect, to leave
earth and travel into philosophical 'outer space' --
one might never come back. And what will one have
gained from all this philosophical 'space travel'
except perhaps a massive headache? I have neither the
motivation nor likely the necessary intellect to
follow Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Descartes
or others along this outer space path.
I prefer to stay grounded on earth, even as I
sometimes fly fairly high myself in some of my
abstractions, and get told this by some of my readers
who can't be expected to have read the same books that
i have, and/or be expected to understand all of my
terminology until they get properly introduced to it.
The issues of 'groundedness', 'application',
'pragmatism', 'passion', 'impulse', 'conflict',
'opposition', 'synthesis' or 'integration' and 'action' are why I favor Hegel and
Nietzsche over any two other philosophers. These are my main philosophical mentors (aside from the 'psychological' ones who introduced me to Hegel and Nietzsche: specifically, Freud, Adler, Jung, and Perls).
Even Bertrand Russell -- as much as I enjoy his 'common
sense' approach to philosophy, to the extent that I
have read small snippets of his work -- at times
becomes too much of a rationalist for me, and I start
to turn away. Wittgenstein is ten times worse and if
you read the 'Introducing Bertrand Russell' book, you
might become amused like I did, that Wittgenstein
almost literally drove Russell into insanity trying to
follow Wittgenstein's wicked logic and abstractions. I
would prefer not to become insane going the 'mind
games' route. Applied practicality is important to me.
Which brings me to your last point. Money. If you have
made 1 cent at Helium, then that is 1 cent more than I
have made.
First and foremost, you have to write because it is in
your blood -- because that is what you need to do in
order to creatively express yourself.
There may be many 'money pragmatists' out there -- and
certainly, I would love to be one of them -- who are
making a decent or even a good amount of money on the
internet. Maybe even at Helium. But I am not one of
them.
So the long and the short of the answer to your
question is -- 'I don't know.' If there is, then you
need to follow someone who can show you that route.
And that person, at this point in time, is not me.
For me right now, the motivation for writing is in the
writing itself. I would like to lay out the full range
and depth of my philosophy before I die. That might
take one year. It might take five years. Hopefully, it
won't take more than five years, assuming I live that
long. The older you get, the shorter life gets. I am
52 right now and the husband of a friend of mine very
abruptly died of a heart attack last January at 49. The sister of another friend of mine died of drug complications around the age of 30. So
-- life is fleeting; you never know when your time is
going to expire. You can never say that 'I have all
the time in the world' because anything and everything
can change at a moment's notice. I was lucky I didn't
get killed in a car crash last winter. And I had some
liver problems this summer. So -- you never know.
I've become rather long-winded and 'preachy'. Follow
your heart. Or follow the money. As Kierkegaard would
say in the title of one of his books -- 'Either/Or'.
Or you can take a 'Hegelian' or a 'Post-Hegelian'
(DGB) approach and 'work the dialectic'. Passion vs.
money. How can I integrate them into the same package?
This, of course, would be the ideal Hegelian
synthesis. If you can put together that integrative
package to your ideal satisfaction, then you are much
more than one cent ahead of me.
Right now, I'm just in it for the passion and the
creativity. Maybe tomorrow there will be money. But I
am not counting on it.
Cheers again,
dave (david gordon bain)
From David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario) to David Neil Bain (California, USA)
Hi David,
I have thrown around a lot of different ideas about religion over the last couple of months. Some -- if not all -- of these ideas are very unorthodox. I was raised Protestant but that does not have too much to say about where I stand now religiously except that I respect my parents values in this regard and it has given me a partial underlying religious background that can be viewed as a starting-point for these other ideas. At this point in time, it is philosophers like Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel, Jung, Einstein, and Fromm that are having a lot stronger influence on where I stand religiously. Let me not forget the indluence of empiricists like John Locke and David Hume.
As far as epistemology goes, I would have to say -- at least technically -- I am an agnostic. Information that I cannot verify with my senses is exactly that -- unverifiable. Unknown. So it is with God. One very big unknown.
In some respects, I could say I am an atheist in that basically I believe that God is a 'projective myth' -- created at least partly by man to ease his anxiety, loneliness, fear of death, etc. Which is not to say that religion cannot and has not had some very benefical (as well as toxic) influences on the evolution of man. One cannot look at the wonders of the world without speculating how it was created and who created it.
But that does not suffice with me. In my opinion, a person can believe that God is a projective myth -- and still say that that is 'not a bad thing', that it can be a good thing.
If you hold this position, then you are not going to be duped by people who try to tell you crazy epistemological things that defy good, sound reason and common sense. But you can still pursue God as a mythological, spiritual entity that may help to bring a greater sense of depth, wonder, appreciation, and urgency to your life. This is the direction I am going.
I find myself linked to the pantheists and deists in Western history and philosophy -- from Heraclitus to Spinoza to many of the Enlightenment philosophers to Albert Einstein...This is the spiritual place where I find myself most comfortable with the addition of a 'dialectical' presence -- Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, and the like. I even like working with ancient Greek and Roman mythology in the spirit of psychologists like Carl Jung and Erich Fromm... This is a path that I still need to develop more fully.
The essay that best exemplifies my present position on things is the one that follows this email. I just finished it. It is called: DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Deism and Pantheism. A wordy, technical name but one that I am happy with at this point in time as respresenting where I stand religiously.
Cheers,
Talk to you soon, I hope, and thank your for your feedback and comments.
david gordon bain
dgb, Nov. 19th, 2007.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
God, Religion, Faith, Epistemology, and Ethics
God, religion, faith, and epistemology -- which one does not fit? The answer is epistemology -- the study and analysis of 'knowledge', and particularly 'good knowledge'.
Since the beginning of science, and then the Enlightenment period of philosophy, epistemology -- and the quest for good, solid, credible, reliable knowledge -- has generally been equated with what we will call here 'rational-empiricism', or alternatively, 'empirical-rationalism'.
What is rational-empiricism? Rational-empiricism, or alternatively, empirical-rationalism is not a term that you are likely to find in the philosophical literature. At least I have not bumped into it and I have been studying philosophy for a while now. ...
I just made a major rational-empiricist blunder and at the risk of looking foolish hee, I am willing to confess up to it in the name of teaching, and what I am attempting to accomplish here. I didn't check and verify my assumption regarding the non-existence of the term rational empricism -- or rather I did -- but after I had already started to write this essay and committed myself to a particular line of thought. (Always check and verify before you declare something to be true or not true and then look silly for not have checked.) Now my previous line of thought will have to be modified to take into account already existing philosophy -- which is no big deal. Modification is a critically important part of evolution. We do not need to re-invent the wheel here; just perhaps build a better one through modification. This is '(multi-)dialectical evolution' in process.
The term 'rational empiricism' (without the hyphen) does indeed exist in the philosophy literature, and furthermore, it has exactly the meaning -- at least on the internet where I found it -- that I wanted it to have. So rather than create the definition and description myself, I will defer to an already existing definition and description that I found very easily on the internet and will repeat right here:
.....................................................................................
Rational Empiricism
and the Scientific Method
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rational Empiricism
Even though historically it appears to have other meanings, I (Paul Antonik Wakfer) will use the term rational empiricism for the name of the epistemological method which is the foundation of all current knowledge and continuing knowledge advances in science, technology and philosophy. The methods of rational empiricism have been honed over millenia to their current state of refinement, yet these methods are not a finished product; they continue to evolve, and to be further refined in order to achieve greater efficacy as an aid to human understanding of reality and to the security that such understanding is really valid. However in spite of millenia of refinement, the methods of rational empiricism are still not too complex for most humans to understand, for they are, in fact, nothing more than the rational processing by the human brain of the data of experience (the sensory input to the body) for the purpose of understanding the organization, order and predictability of reality. Both the sensory input and the rational processing have been aided increasingly by the machines which have been created for that purpose. Formally, rational empiricism is a subset of rational thought (the logical integration of the evidence of one's senses into the mind's model of reality and the resulting evaluations, conclusions and decisions) of which the ultimate purpose is to maximize one's lifetime happiness.
.....................................................................................
Thus, the three main ideas connected with rational empiricism here are: 1. reason supported by; 2. our senses with the purpose of; 3. maximizing our personal lifetime happiness. Point 3. technically does not, or should not, belong to the definition of rational empiricism because it brings in an assumption that arguably lies outside of the strict realm of rational empiricism -- and that is the realm of ethics and the 'is-ought' gap. However, I have no problem connecting rational empiricism to humanism - 'the pursuit of happiness' -- and our founding Enlightenment fathers (Jefferson, Tom Paine, et al...) because I have found no better ethical alternative.
You will see a lot of hyphenated words in the type of philosophy that I am trumpeting here -- 'rational-empiricism', 'humanistic-existentialism', 'humanistic-capitalism', 'liberal-conservatism' or 'conservative-liberalism' -- becaue these are all outcomes of 'dialectical integration process'.
Two polar concepts, perspectives, philosophies, lifestyles...facing off against each other, assertively and competively, then empathetically and compatibly, resulting in mutual harmony rather than mutual rejection, a place reached integratively through creative imagination and negotiation, a place of better 'homeostatic balance' than either of the two polar concepts, perspectives, philosophies and/or lifestyles could achieve in and by themselves. This is dialectical negotiation, integration, evolution, and harmony or homeostatic balance. The more hyphenated words that you have, the more you are delving into 'multi-dialectics.
Who integrated God and Nature? Spinoza. However, Spinoza's religion, which we now call 'pantheism', is no more 'rationally empirical' than any form of orthodox religion. Why? Because an epistemological belief in God and religion require 'faith' and faith -- at least in any extended degree -- is not compatible with rational-empiricism.
Science is built on rational-empiricism. Our police enforcement and courts are built on rational empiricism -- at least when they are working well. Same with politics when it is working well. There is no room for extended amounts of faith in rational empiricism (except perhaps for faith in rational empiricism). Religion requires extended amounts of faith -- 'epistemological faith' relative to things that most people would not normally believe, or believe strongly without questioning. Thus, religion and rational empirical epistemology, are for the most part, incompatible, and at odds with each other. This is why I view all relgions and all views of God -- as 'myths'. Not necessarily bad because some myths can have good consequences on people's lives. But epistemologically bad because too much (religious) epistemological faith generally results in bad -- or wrong -- epistemology. Thus, all religions and all views of God should be viewed as myths and not as 'epistemological truths'. Treating religions as epistemological truths, and then worse, bringing these alleged religious epistemological truths into politics or a court of law is downright dangerous.
Politics and law should be run by 'good rational-empirical epistemology' and 'humanistic(compassionate)-existential(accountable) ethics'. A religion should be judged by its ethics; not the reverse. To bring unscrutinized religious epistemology and/or ethics into a court of law or into politics is a disaster waiting to happen. This is why our founding Enlightenment fathers clearly separated these totally different realms of human activity. American politics -- particularly among Republican factions -- seems intent of re-uniting what shouldn't be re-united. Religious epistemology (and for that matter, ethics too) -- based on a high degree of faith, trust, authority, and 'suspension of disbelief' -- is prone to pathology because it is not sufficiently scrutinzed on rational-empirical and humanistic-existential grounds. Keep religion out of politics and see all religions for what they are -- different breands of 'better' and 'worse' myths.
db, Sept. 2nd, 2007.
Since the beginning of science, and then the Enlightenment period of philosophy, epistemology -- and the quest for good, solid, credible, reliable knowledge -- has generally been equated with what we will call here 'rational-empiricism', or alternatively, 'empirical-rationalism'.
What is rational-empiricism? Rational-empiricism, or alternatively, empirical-rationalism is not a term that you are likely to find in the philosophical literature. At least I have not bumped into it and I have been studying philosophy for a while now. ...
I just made a major rational-empiricist blunder and at the risk of looking foolish hee, I am willing to confess up to it in the name of teaching, and what I am attempting to accomplish here. I didn't check and verify my assumption regarding the non-existence of the term rational empricism -- or rather I did -- but after I had already started to write this essay and committed myself to a particular line of thought. (Always check and verify before you declare something to be true or not true and then look silly for not have checked.) Now my previous line of thought will have to be modified to take into account already existing philosophy -- which is no big deal. Modification is a critically important part of evolution. We do not need to re-invent the wheel here; just perhaps build a better one through modification. This is '(multi-)dialectical evolution' in process.
The term 'rational empiricism' (without the hyphen) does indeed exist in the philosophy literature, and furthermore, it has exactly the meaning -- at least on the internet where I found it -- that I wanted it to have. So rather than create the definition and description myself, I will defer to an already existing definition and description that I found very easily on the internet and will repeat right here:
.....................................................................................
Rational Empiricism
and the Scientific Method
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rational Empiricism
Even though historically it appears to have other meanings, I (Paul Antonik Wakfer) will use the term rational empiricism for the name of the epistemological method which is the foundation of all current knowledge and continuing knowledge advances in science, technology and philosophy. The methods of rational empiricism have been honed over millenia to their current state of refinement, yet these methods are not a finished product; they continue to evolve, and to be further refined in order to achieve greater efficacy as an aid to human understanding of reality and to the security that such understanding is really valid. However in spite of millenia of refinement, the methods of rational empiricism are still not too complex for most humans to understand, for they are, in fact, nothing more than the rational processing by the human brain of the data of experience (the sensory input to the body) for the purpose of understanding the organization, order and predictability of reality. Both the sensory input and the rational processing have been aided increasingly by the machines which have been created for that purpose. Formally, rational empiricism is a subset of rational thought (the logical integration of the evidence of one's senses into the mind's model of reality and the resulting evaluations, conclusions and decisions) of which the ultimate purpose is to maximize one's lifetime happiness.
.....................................................................................
Thus, the three main ideas connected with rational empiricism here are: 1. reason supported by; 2. our senses with the purpose of; 3. maximizing our personal lifetime happiness. Point 3. technically does not, or should not, belong to the definition of rational empiricism because it brings in an assumption that arguably lies outside of the strict realm of rational empiricism -- and that is the realm of ethics and the 'is-ought' gap. However, I have no problem connecting rational empiricism to humanism - 'the pursuit of happiness' -- and our founding Enlightenment fathers (Jefferson, Tom Paine, et al...) because I have found no better ethical alternative.
You will see a lot of hyphenated words in the type of philosophy that I am trumpeting here -- 'rational-empiricism', 'humanistic-existentialism', 'humanistic-capitalism', 'liberal-conservatism' or 'conservative-liberalism' -- becaue these are all outcomes of 'dialectical integration process'.
Two polar concepts, perspectives, philosophies, lifestyles...facing off against each other, assertively and competively, then empathetically and compatibly, resulting in mutual harmony rather than mutual rejection, a place reached integratively through creative imagination and negotiation, a place of better 'homeostatic balance' than either of the two polar concepts, perspectives, philosophies and/or lifestyles could achieve in and by themselves. This is dialectical negotiation, integration, evolution, and harmony or homeostatic balance. The more hyphenated words that you have, the more you are delving into 'multi-dialectics.
Who integrated God and Nature? Spinoza. However, Spinoza's religion, which we now call 'pantheism', is no more 'rationally empirical' than any form of orthodox religion. Why? Because an epistemological belief in God and religion require 'faith' and faith -- at least in any extended degree -- is not compatible with rational-empiricism.
Science is built on rational-empiricism. Our police enforcement and courts are built on rational empiricism -- at least when they are working well. Same with politics when it is working well. There is no room for extended amounts of faith in rational empiricism (except perhaps for faith in rational empiricism). Religion requires extended amounts of faith -- 'epistemological faith' relative to things that most people would not normally believe, or believe strongly without questioning. Thus, religion and rational empirical epistemology, are for the most part, incompatible, and at odds with each other. This is why I view all relgions and all views of God -- as 'myths'. Not necessarily bad because some myths can have good consequences on people's lives. But epistemologically bad because too much (religious) epistemological faith generally results in bad -- or wrong -- epistemology. Thus, all religions and all views of God should be viewed as myths and not as 'epistemological truths'. Treating religions as epistemological truths, and then worse, bringing these alleged religious epistemological truths into politics or a court of law is downright dangerous.
Politics and law should be run by 'good rational-empirical epistemology' and 'humanistic(compassionate)-existential(accountable) ethics'. A religion should be judged by its ethics; not the reverse. To bring unscrutinized religious epistemology and/or ethics into a court of law or into politics is a disaster waiting to happen. This is why our founding Enlightenment fathers clearly separated these totally different realms of human activity. American politics -- particularly among Republican factions -- seems intent of re-uniting what shouldn't be re-united. Religious epistemology (and for that matter, ethics too) -- based on a high degree of faith, trust, authority, and 'suspension of disbelief' -- is prone to pathology because it is not sufficiently scrutinzed on rational-empirical and humanistic-existential grounds. Keep religion out of politics and see all religions for what they are -- different breands of 'better' and 'worse' myths.
db, Sept. 2nd, 2007.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
God, Man, and Fraud
Any man or woman who professes to speak on God's behalf -- is a fraud. It is an act of rhetorical manipulation -- somebody trying to get you to do do something, or not do something, based on 'Divine Heresay'. God doesn't make ethics. Men and women make ethics -- and then sometimes, oftentimes, attach God's name to the result -- fraudulantly -- in order to give the ethics more 'rhetorical power'. The power of 'Divine Authority'. The power of fraudulant Divine Authority.
A religion needs to be judged by its system of ethics; not the reverse. Not by the professed Authority of God. That is an act of righteous fraud. If you want to judge a religion as being 'healthy' and/or 'pathological', then you have to judge it by ist system of ethics. This system of ethics is made by men in positions of religious power; not by the power and the word of God.
God is a myth -- sometimes a good myth, sometimes a bad myth, depending on whether people are helping each other, caring for each other, in God's name -- or killing each other.
God's name has been used just as often to promote violence as it has been to stop it. God's name has been used endlessly to support and give rhetorical power and manipulation to man's narcissitic and righteous -- ethical or unethical -- intentions. That is why a religion needs to be judged by its system of ethics -- just as a political party does, just as a business does, and just as the men and women operating behind the scenes -- making and breaking the 'professed' ethics -- do. That is why 'idealism' in the philosophy of Marx becomes turned on its head and called 'ideology' which in Marx's system is not a good thing. Ideology in Marx's system of philosophy essentially means 'fake idealism and realism'. Ideology to Marx means 'a smoke and mirrors' cover up for man's real behavior -- his 'narcissistic materialism'. That rule of thumb generally applies for 21st century politics: idealism equals fake ideology equals hypocrisy. The same equation has been just as rampant in religion over man's history as it has in politics. rigtheous idealistic and ideological intentions disguise and cover up man's real intentions: narcissism and materialism. Schopenhauer and Marx are smiling at me in their respective graves.
Religion -- without humanistic-existential ethics and values, meaning a balance of compassion and accountability, self-assertiveness and social sensitivity - generally degenerates into righteous intolerance based on 'either/or' ethics. Good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the Devil...Excommunicate those who are bad, associated with Hell and the Devil...Curse them...This is the religion of promoting hatred and violence. It is not the religion of tolerance, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.
They -- meaning the Amsterdam Jews, those who had understandably fled the righteous intolerance, the hate, the persecution and the torture of the Spanish and Portugese Inquisition -- turned around and betrayed the finest and most ethical among them -- Baroch Spinoza. The man who dared to integrate Science and Religion -- God and Nature in Spinoza's eyes were One. Not God ruling over Nature. But God in Nature. God and Nature being synonymous. God being the Spirit of Nature. This is a myth too -- just like God the Creator and Ruler over Man and Nature -- without the negative side effects. Without the righteous intolerance based on 'Either/Or' Ethics. God and Nature as being one and the same -- is a good myth. Because now when I look at Nature, I look at Nature with new meaning and substance. I look at Nature and feel a part of Nature -- with a sense of awe and splendor. Enjoying the most of it because it may not last. (Or I may not last.) Not something to be tossed away like a rag doll. Polluted until you are afraid of the dangers of its toxicity. I saw Daytona Beech in the 1960s. I would probably cry if I saw it now. I once jumped into Lake Ontario at Ontario Place when I was drunk (in the 1980s). I had to throw out my clothes when I got home. I smelled like a sewer rat. You were once able to swim at Woodbine Beech in Toronto. I wouldn't want to swime there now. People have to go further and furhter north to find safe swimming. 'You pay paradise and you put up a parking lot.' -- Joni Mitchell.
When I use the word 'God', I do not use it righteously unless it is to protect Nature and Reglious Tolerance in the name of Spinoza, and after him, in the name of Albert Einstein. I don't say that my ethics comes from God. It comes from pre-Enlightenment philosophers like Spinoza, Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Adam Smith and Diderot and Voltaire and Paine and Jefferson. It comes from Romantic philosophers like Rousseau and Schelling. It comes from Dialectic philosophers like Hegel and early humanistic Marx. It comes from Humanistic-Existentialists like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre. It comes from political humanists like Erich Fromm. And it comes from General Semantics empiricists like Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa. To repeat, it doesn't come from God. It comes from me. I will take full responsibility and accountability for my philosophical ethics. And I will use God's name symbolically, metaphorically and mythologically -- not epistemolotically.
Epistemologically (or ontologically), if you ask me if God exists, I will say, 'I don't know. I think that makes me an 'Epistemological Agnostic'. Spiritually, I will call myself a pantheist -- or some derrivative of a Spinozian-Einsteinian Pantheist.
That is where I stand today.
dgb, Aug. 30th, 2007.
A religion needs to be judged by its system of ethics; not the reverse. Not by the professed Authority of God. That is an act of righteous fraud. If you want to judge a religion as being 'healthy' and/or 'pathological', then you have to judge it by ist system of ethics. This system of ethics is made by men in positions of religious power; not by the power and the word of God.
God is a myth -- sometimes a good myth, sometimes a bad myth, depending on whether people are helping each other, caring for each other, in God's name -- or killing each other.
God's name has been used just as often to promote violence as it has been to stop it. God's name has been used endlessly to support and give rhetorical power and manipulation to man's narcissitic and righteous -- ethical or unethical -- intentions. That is why a religion needs to be judged by its system of ethics -- just as a political party does, just as a business does, and just as the men and women operating behind the scenes -- making and breaking the 'professed' ethics -- do. That is why 'idealism' in the philosophy of Marx becomes turned on its head and called 'ideology' which in Marx's system is not a good thing. Ideology in Marx's system of philosophy essentially means 'fake idealism and realism'. Ideology to Marx means 'a smoke and mirrors' cover up for man's real behavior -- his 'narcissistic materialism'. That rule of thumb generally applies for 21st century politics: idealism equals fake ideology equals hypocrisy. The same equation has been just as rampant in religion over man's history as it has in politics. rigtheous idealistic and ideological intentions disguise and cover up man's real intentions: narcissism and materialism. Schopenhauer and Marx are smiling at me in their respective graves.
Religion -- without humanistic-existential ethics and values, meaning a balance of compassion and accountability, self-assertiveness and social sensitivity - generally degenerates into righteous intolerance based on 'either/or' ethics. Good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the Devil...Excommunicate those who are bad, associated with Hell and the Devil...Curse them...This is the religion of promoting hatred and violence. It is not the religion of tolerance, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.
They -- meaning the Amsterdam Jews, those who had understandably fled the righteous intolerance, the hate, the persecution and the torture of the Spanish and Portugese Inquisition -- turned around and betrayed the finest and most ethical among them -- Baroch Spinoza. The man who dared to integrate Science and Religion -- God and Nature in Spinoza's eyes were One. Not God ruling over Nature. But God in Nature. God and Nature being synonymous. God being the Spirit of Nature. This is a myth too -- just like God the Creator and Ruler over Man and Nature -- without the negative side effects. Without the righteous intolerance based on 'Either/Or' Ethics. God and Nature as being one and the same -- is a good myth. Because now when I look at Nature, I look at Nature with new meaning and substance. I look at Nature and feel a part of Nature -- with a sense of awe and splendor. Enjoying the most of it because it may not last. (Or I may not last.) Not something to be tossed away like a rag doll. Polluted until you are afraid of the dangers of its toxicity. I saw Daytona Beech in the 1960s. I would probably cry if I saw it now. I once jumped into Lake Ontario at Ontario Place when I was drunk (in the 1980s). I had to throw out my clothes when I got home. I smelled like a sewer rat. You were once able to swim at Woodbine Beech in Toronto. I wouldn't want to swime there now. People have to go further and furhter north to find safe swimming. 'You pay paradise and you put up a parking lot.' -- Joni Mitchell.
When I use the word 'God', I do not use it righteously unless it is to protect Nature and Reglious Tolerance in the name of Spinoza, and after him, in the name of Albert Einstein. I don't say that my ethics comes from God. It comes from pre-Enlightenment philosophers like Spinoza, Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Adam Smith and Diderot and Voltaire and Paine and Jefferson. It comes from Romantic philosophers like Rousseau and Schelling. It comes from Dialectic philosophers like Hegel and early humanistic Marx. It comes from Humanistic-Existentialists like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre. It comes from political humanists like Erich Fromm. And it comes from General Semantics empiricists like Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa. To repeat, it doesn't come from God. It comes from me. I will take full responsibility and accountability for my philosophical ethics. And I will use God's name symbolically, metaphorically and mythologically -- not epistemolotically.
Epistemologically (or ontologically), if you ask me if God exists, I will say, 'I don't know. I think that makes me an 'Epistemological Agnostic'. Spiritually, I will call myself a pantheist -- or some derrivative of a Spinozian-Einsteinian Pantheist.
That is where I stand today.
dgb, Aug. 30th, 2007.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Spinoza's Room
I view this essay as a first draft. I expect that I will write a variety of updated modifications of this essay at a later date. You see, this is my first real attempt to grapple with the fascinating ideas of a perplexing philosopher -- Baruch (Hebrew for 'blessed') or Benedictus (Latin for 'blessed) Spinoza (1632-1677). The name 'Spinoza' derives from the word 'thorn' in Portugese (Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza, 2006, Random House of Canada Ltd., Toronto.) Together, Baruch Spinoza's name seems fitting appropriate -- 'blessed thorn'. In my opinion, and the opinion of many, all of mankind is 'blessed' for having been exposed to Spinoza's extraordinary ideas -- he holds the 'dual and paradoxical distinction' that he can be viewed as both a precursor of 'Enlightenment Philosophy' and 'Romantic Philosophy' at the same time. There is perhaps, to my knowledge, only one other Western philosopher before the 1700s who can arguably hold such a dual distinction --and that is the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (535BC-475BC). There are other 14th to 17th century precursors to Enlightenment (Scientific-Humanistic) Philosophy -- William of Occam (1290-1349), Montaigne (1533-1592), Galileo (1564-1642), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Isaac Newton (1643-1728), and John Locke (1632-1704) to name some of the more important ones. Rousseau can be viewed as the 'father' of Romantic Philosophy -- the point at which Romantic Philosophy grew out as a rebellion against 'unadulterated' Enlightenment Philosophy (reason, reason, and more reason -- did we forget 'passion' and even 'unreasonable passion'?), rather than being on the integrative 'Pantheistic' (scientific-spiritual) path of both Heraclitus and Spinoza.
There is at least one more very famous member of this 'triadic' scientific-spiritual-pantheistic' movment that Heraclitus started and Spinoza embellished -- and that is one of the most famous intellects in the history of mankind -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
Einstein's conception of God can be found at the end of this essay and is very important because it is very 'Spinozian based' and a flagship of a very well developed pantheistic position. At the end of the paper, we will also look at a quick definition of pantheism along with some of its derivatives and distinctions vs. other forms of spiritualism and/or religion.
Spinoza has been labelled the 'renegade Jew' and a 'sneaky atheist' (Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza) and a 'Bu-Jew' (not sure what Goldstein meant by that but I will do my own interpretation here). I see Spinoza as being a 'Budhist-like renegade Jew' who both stimulated the Romantic Movement of the late 1700s and yet at the same time, except for his pantheistic vision of God, was very 'unromantic' in personality. He didn't marry or father a child. He didn't like or support 'high emotion, passion, appetite, and drama' either in his philosophy or in his life (even though he spent his whole life provoking it in the responses of others to his rebellion against orthodox Judaism, and for that matter, any type of orthodox religion. When you start saying that 'God' and 'Nature' are the same thing -- synonyms for each other, no more, no less -- especially back in the 1600s, you are asking for trouble.)
The only type of person that this pantheistic vision, at least at first blush, might be attractive to is a philosopher or a scientist who would like to add some 'spiritual depth' to his work and thus, in some form or another, integrate religion and science, creation and evolution. This, at least partly if not mainly, seems to be the type of persons who were most attracted to his work, or at least, his pantheistic work. Schelling integrated Hegel and Spinoza to create a more 'dualistic and dialectic romanticism and spiritualism. I follow Schelling in this dialectical spiritualistic direction due also in main part to my post-Spinozian in combination with post-Hegelian vision. In this respect, a distinction can be made between a 'unilateral or unconditional wholist' (Spinoza, Alfed Adler) vs. a 'dialectical integrationist and wholist' (Schelling, early Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, Freud, Jung, Perls, me...) Anyway, I would call Einstein the most honorary member to Spinoza's vision, which in my opinion, his much more 'spiritual depth' than any flat out atheistic position. Spinoza was not a sneaky atheist but rather a profoundly religious, ethical, and deep spiritual person in a way that most people during his time could not, and would not accept. Even today, this is significantly still the case. Spinoza was thinking 'outside the normal religious box'. There are many more sides to Spinoza's thinking that I have not described here -- his rationalism (which I will challenge in my epistemology section), his trumpeting of the pre-Enlightenment ideas of 'freedom of speech' and 'religious tolerance' which would become central to the Scottish Enlightenment, The British Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment, and the American Enlightenment in the middle 1700s. (I will visit Spinoza here again in my Enlightenment section.)
The Spinozian vision that I have focused on here in this section is his pantheistic vision which I will spend numerous essays to follow exploring different possible avenues relative to the potential further evolution of this pantheistic vision.
dgb, Aug. 27th, 2007.
.....................................................................................
Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................Pantheism (Greek: πάν ( 'pan' ) = all and θεός ( 'theos' ) = God) literally means "God is All" and "All is God". It is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent abstract God; or that the Universe, or nature, and God are equivalent. More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence, and the Universe (the sum total of all that is, was, and shall be) is represented or personified in the theological principle of an abstract 'god'. However, it is important to understand that Pantheists do not believe in a personal, creative deity or deities of any kind, the key feature which distinguishes them from panentheists and pandeists. As such, although many religions may claim to hold pantheistic elements, they are more commonly panentheistic or pandeistic in nature.
Reference: Wikipedia
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Panentheism
Pantheism has features in common with panentheism, such as the idea that the Universe is part of God. Technically, the two are separate. Whereas pantheism finds God to be synonymous with nature, panentheism finds God to be greater than nature alone. Some find this distinction unhelpful, while others see it as a significant point of division. Many of the major faiths described as pantheistic could also be described as panentheistic, whereas naturalistic pantheism cannot (not seeing God as more than nature alone). For example, elements of both panentheism and pantheism are found in Hinduism. Certain interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and Shri Rudram support this view. Reference: Wikipedia
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Pandeism
Pandeism is a kind of Pantheism which incorporates a form of Deism, holding that the Universe is identical to God, but also that God was previously a conscious and sentient force or entity that designed and created the Universe. God only became an unconscious and nonsentient God by becoming the Universe. Other than this distinction (and the possibility that the Universe will one day return to the state of being God), Pandeistic beliefs are identical to Pantheism.
Reference: Wikipedia
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Pantheistic concepts in religion
Hinduism
It is generally asserted that Hindu religious texts are the oldest known literature that contains the ideas of Pantheistic doctrine[1]. In Hindu theology, Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all things in this Universe, and is also the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. This pantheistic doctrine is traceable from some of the more ancient Upanishads to later Advaita philosophy. All Mahāvākyas(Great Sayings) of the Upanishads, in one way or another, seem to indicate the unity of the world with the Brahman. Chāndogya Upanishad says "All this Universe indeed is Brahma; from him does it proceed; into him it is dissolved; in him it breathes, so let every one adore him calmly". Reference: Wikipedia
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Judaism
The radically immanent sense of the divine in Jewish mystical Kabbalah is said to have inspired Spinoza's formulation of pantheism. However, Spinoza's views have not been accepted in Orthodox Judaism.
Additionally, the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, had a mystical sense of the divine that could be described as panentheism.
Biblical Judaism asserts the origin of the Universe was brought forth by the Torah [law] of nature. Thus the original Torah is found not within the writing of Moshe, but within nature itself. "Reading" the Torah of nature is seen as equivalent to "reading" the Torah of revelation and theoretically will agree with one another in the end [as illustrated for example in the discovery of the Big Bang in 1965]. Rabbinical Orthodoxy viewing this as a discrepancy, in order to maintain the written Torah above that given first in nature, has argued that written Torah preceded creation, and it was from the written Torah that God "spoke" creation. A view rejected by Biblical pantheists.
Maimonides, though Orthodox, reflected the sentiment that the Torah of nature and the Torah of scripture were equivalent and found its logic inescapable, in his comments on the reconciliation of science with scripture. These instructions no doubt served as background for the development of Baruch Spinoza's later views.
Reference: Wikipedia
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Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
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There is at least one more very famous member of this 'triadic' scientific-spiritual-pantheistic' movment that Heraclitus started and Spinoza embellished -- and that is one of the most famous intellects in the history of mankind -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
Einstein's conception of God can be found at the end of this essay and is very important because it is very 'Spinozian based' and a flagship of a very well developed pantheistic position. At the end of the paper, we will also look at a quick definition of pantheism along with some of its derivatives and distinctions vs. other forms of spiritualism and/or religion.
Spinoza has been labelled the 'renegade Jew' and a 'sneaky atheist' (Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza) and a 'Bu-Jew' (not sure what Goldstein meant by that but I will do my own interpretation here). I see Spinoza as being a 'Budhist-like renegade Jew' who both stimulated the Romantic Movement of the late 1700s and yet at the same time, except for his pantheistic vision of God, was very 'unromantic' in personality. He didn't marry or father a child. He didn't like or support 'high emotion, passion, appetite, and drama' either in his philosophy or in his life (even though he spent his whole life provoking it in the responses of others to his rebellion against orthodox Judaism, and for that matter, any type of orthodox religion. When you start saying that 'God' and 'Nature' are the same thing -- synonyms for each other, no more, no less -- especially back in the 1600s, you are asking for trouble.)
The only type of person that this pantheistic vision, at least at first blush, might be attractive to is a philosopher or a scientist who would like to add some 'spiritual depth' to his work and thus, in some form or another, integrate religion and science, creation and evolution. This, at least partly if not mainly, seems to be the type of persons who were most attracted to his work, or at least, his pantheistic work. Schelling integrated Hegel and Spinoza to create a more 'dualistic and dialectic romanticism and spiritualism. I follow Schelling in this dialectical spiritualistic direction due also in main part to my post-Spinozian in combination with post-Hegelian vision. In this respect, a distinction can be made between a 'unilateral or unconditional wholist' (Spinoza, Alfed Adler) vs. a 'dialectical integrationist and wholist' (Schelling, early Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, Freud, Jung, Perls, me...) Anyway, I would call Einstein the most honorary member to Spinoza's vision, which in my opinion, his much more 'spiritual depth' than any flat out atheistic position. Spinoza was not a sneaky atheist but rather a profoundly religious, ethical, and deep spiritual person in a way that most people during his time could not, and would not accept. Even today, this is significantly still the case. Spinoza was thinking 'outside the normal religious box'. There are many more sides to Spinoza's thinking that I have not described here -- his rationalism (which I will challenge in my epistemology section), his trumpeting of the pre-Enlightenment ideas of 'freedom of speech' and 'religious tolerance' which would become central to the Scottish Enlightenment, The British Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment, and the American Enlightenment in the middle 1700s. (I will visit Spinoza here again in my Enlightenment section.)
The Spinozian vision that I have focused on here in this section is his pantheistic vision which I will spend numerous essays to follow exploring different possible avenues relative to the potential further evolution of this pantheistic vision.
dgb, Aug. 27th, 2007.
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Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................Pantheism (Greek: πάν ( 'pan' ) = all and θεός ( 'theos' ) = God) literally means "God is All" and "All is God". It is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent abstract God; or that the Universe, or nature, and God are equivalent. More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence, and the Universe (the sum total of all that is, was, and shall be) is represented or personified in the theological principle of an abstract 'god'. However, it is important to understand that Pantheists do not believe in a personal, creative deity or deities of any kind, the key feature which distinguishes them from panentheists and pandeists. As such, although many religions may claim to hold pantheistic elements, they are more commonly panentheistic or pandeistic in nature.
Reference: Wikipedia
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Panentheism
Pantheism has features in common with panentheism, such as the idea that the Universe is part of God. Technically, the two are separate. Whereas pantheism finds God to be synonymous with nature, panentheism finds God to be greater than nature alone. Some find this distinction unhelpful, while others see it as a significant point of division. Many of the major faiths described as pantheistic could also be described as panentheistic, whereas naturalistic pantheism cannot (not seeing God as more than nature alone). For example, elements of both panentheism and pantheism are found in Hinduism. Certain interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and Shri Rudram support this view. Reference: Wikipedia
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Pandeism
Pandeism is a kind of Pantheism which incorporates a form of Deism, holding that the Universe is identical to God, but also that God was previously a conscious and sentient force or entity that designed and created the Universe. God only became an unconscious and nonsentient God by becoming the Universe. Other than this distinction (and the possibility that the Universe will one day return to the state of being God), Pandeistic beliefs are identical to Pantheism.
Reference: Wikipedia
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Pantheistic concepts in religion
Hinduism
It is generally asserted that Hindu religious texts are the oldest known literature that contains the ideas of Pantheistic doctrine[1]. In Hindu theology, Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all things in this Universe, and is also the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. This pantheistic doctrine is traceable from some of the more ancient Upanishads to later Advaita philosophy. All Mahāvākyas(Great Sayings) of the Upanishads, in one way or another, seem to indicate the unity of the world with the Brahman. Chāndogya Upanishad says "All this Universe indeed is Brahma; from him does it proceed; into him it is dissolved; in him it breathes, so let every one adore him calmly". Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Judaism
The radically immanent sense of the divine in Jewish mystical Kabbalah is said to have inspired Spinoza's formulation of pantheism. However, Spinoza's views have not been accepted in Orthodox Judaism.
Additionally, the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, had a mystical sense of the divine that could be described as panentheism.
Biblical Judaism asserts the origin of the Universe was brought forth by the Torah [law] of nature. Thus the original Torah is found not within the writing of Moshe, but within nature itself. "Reading" the Torah of nature is seen as equivalent to "reading" the Torah of revelation and theoretically will agree with one another in the end [as illustrated for example in the discovery of the Big Bang in 1965]. Rabbinical Orthodoxy viewing this as a discrepancy, in order to maintain the written Torah above that given first in nature, has argued that written Torah preceded creation, and it was from the written Torah that God "spoke" creation. A view rejected by Biblical pantheists.
Maimonides, though Orthodox, reflected the sentiment that the Torah of nature and the Torah of scripture were equivalent and found its logic inescapable, in his comments on the reconciliation of science with scripture. These instructions no doubt served as background for the development of Baruch Spinoza's later views.
Reference: Wikipedia
.....................................................................................
Einstein's Position On God
The question of scientific determinism gave rise to questions about Einstein's position on theological determinism, and even whether or not he believed in God. In 1929, Einstein told Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Brian 1996, p. 127) In 1950, in a letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[37]
Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[38][39]
By his own definition, Einstein was a deeply religious person (Pais 1982, p. 319).[40] He published a paper in Nature in 1940 entitled Science and Religion which gave his views on the subject.[41] In this he says that: "a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavour of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals, and constantly to strengthen their effects." He argues that conflicts between science and religion "have all sprung from fatal errors." However "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" ... "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist." However he makes it clear that he does not believe in a personal God, and suggests that "neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science, for [it] can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot." (Einstein 1940, pp. 605–607)
Einstein championed the work of psychologist Paul Diel,[42] which posited a biological and psychological, rather than theological or sociological, basis for morality.[43]
The most thorough exploration of Einstein's views on religion was made by his friend Max Jammer in the 1999 book Einstein and Religion (Jammer 1999).
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture (Ericson 2006). He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York (See Stringer-Hye 1999 and Wilson 1995). Reference: Wikipedia
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Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The Epistemology, Mythology, and Ethics of 'God' and Religion
This essay may not be something that the 'religiously devout' person wants to hear. It is an 'rational-empirical' philosopher's perspective on the 'epistemology' vs. the 'mythology' of 'God' and 'religion'. My thesis is basically that the 'epistemology' of 'God' -- meaning the 'realness of His or Her existence' is highly suspect and questionable based on 21st century rational-empirical knowledge or epistemology. There are too many 'leaps of faith' and 'suspensions of disbelief' of normal, every-day, common-sense knowledge necessary to turn the possibility of 'God's existence' into a probability, let alone a 'fact'. Does God have a 'physical presence' and 'physical boundaries'? What does 'He or She or It look like? Are we really to believe that 'God has an ever-lasting life-span, unlike anything else on earth that we have ever seen or heard of? Are we really to believe that 'God is all-powerful'? And that 'God is inherently good when there is so much destructive and selfish evil in this world?'
From an 'epistemological' point of view, the existence of 'God' is highly improbable. 'God' is more rationally seen as a 'mythological construct' -- a projection of many of man's wishful and/or fearful needs -- that has been used for thousands of years by man to 'ward off a fear of death' and to 'help him ethically behave better on earth' (and some might cynically say allow people in power to better control the behavior of the masses and to get them to do things that they would not normally do because these behaviors would violate the 'pleasure and happiness' principle.) The ethical and moral virtue of God and religion can be better supported 'mythologically' than 'epistemologically' but even this comes with a serious 'caveat emptor'. Mythologically-speaking, religion is neither 'good' or 'bad' but the type of man-made ethics, attitude, and behavior that support the religion all make it so -- or not so. You have to 'dig into the contents' of the religion in order to determine whether it is 'good' or 'bad' for man. And you have to 'dig into the particulars' of how each and every person is using his or her religion for the good or bad of him or herself -- and others around him or her -- to determine its relative 'personal health content' or 'personal pathology content'.
Returning to an epistemological point of view, the closest I can come to connecting 'rationality' or 'reason' with 'God' is through 'Intelligent Design Theory'. In other words, it is easy to argue that the world -- and everything in it -- is so amazingly well-designed, so 'intelligently' well-designed, that it is very hard not to, indeed, almost impossible not to, believe that there must have been some intelligent designER behind the incredible complexity of this design. It is very hard to believe the opposite point of view -- that the world, and everything in it, with all of its individual and collective complexities of functional design, was created simply by 'accident'. Even evolution theory -- is a little stale and 'parameter restricted' if by evolution theory we want to restrict ourselves only to the Darwinian perspective of 'genetic evolution over numerous generations'. This cannot account for much faster forms of evolution such as human evolution through individual and/or social learning. Hegelian social evolution or dialectic (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis) theory is a much stronger way of accounting for faster forms of evolution than classic Darwinian Theory, particularly if it too is broadened to account for 'individual and social, biological intelligence' -- i.e., the power to compensate, modify, mutate, adjust, change -- in even the smallest of animals and plants like 'ants' and 'viruses' and 'bacteria' that are not generally regarded as having 'intelligence'. Even plants can be said to have 'intelligence' in that, for example, they will bend towards the sun, and certain plants -- like say the 'pau d arco' plant -- have 'learned' to fight off and become 'immune' to, its arch enemy -- fungi -- in ways that can only be described as 'learned over time' and 'immune function based on plant intelligence'.
All of this brings us back to the question of, 'Where did this intelligence come from?', and was/is there something 'more all-encompassing, and/or more all-overseeing' that put this type of 'evolutionary intelligence' into every animal, mineral, and plant on earth.
Now it is a major leap of 'faith', 'trust', 'assumption', 'presumption', or a 'suspension of disbelief' as they say in the entertainment business, to jump from 'intellignet design' theory and even the idea of an 'intelligent designer' -- which could be a more intelligent race of people from a different world who may be playing with this world as their 'hobby' or 'university course' -- to the idea of 'God' which include many, many more assumptions -- and probably man-made 'idealistic projections' -- than an 'intelligent designer' theory.
Thus, as an empirically and rationally based philosopher (or at least that is what I would like to think that I am), I can state with conviction that the idea of an 'intelligent designer' theory can be rationally and empirically supported; however, the 'leap of faith' if you will, or 'leap into metaphysics', or 'suspension of disbelief' that takes us from intelligent designer theory to 'God' -- cannot be rationally, empirically, and/or epistemologically supported in the same way.
We look back now at the many 'Gods' of the ancient Greeks -- a 'God of War', a 'God of Love', etc. -- and we partly smile and call them 'myths'.
What would cause us to believe that the 'one God' that many people believe in today, and that most religions righteously trumpet, would be any less of a 'myth' than the 20 Gods that are now being called a myth, some 2700 years ago.
There is only one possible reason: many people NEED to believe in God (for example, fear of death) -- even if this means 'suspending their epistemological sense of disbelief' in order to sustain their belief in God's existence -- and an 'afterlife'.
This is not to say that all myths are bad; there are plenty of myths, fairy tales -- and Gods -- that may, indeed do, play a useful and functional role in man's life (eg. Santa Clause, Peter Pan, the tooth fairy, and so on...)
However, from an empirical philosopher's point of view, the existence of God cannot be rationally supported -- are we really to believe that 'God' has no 'lifespan' and no 'physical presence or boundaries'. (If we believe that God has no boundaries, then we are, in effect, getting close to Spinoza's idea of spiritual pantheism -- 'God is Nature' or 'God is everywhere and in everything'.
Any orthodox or unorhodox form of religion or belief in God is simply a different form of myth. If you want to -- or need to -- choose a 'God' myth; just make sure that it is beneficial to both you and the people around you, and be tolerant of other people's 'myths' as long as they do not violate any human rights laws as put forth by the United Nations, and/or any and every humanistic country that does not tolerate religious suppression and violence.
Whether you are a Muslim, a Catholic, a Protestant, an Anglican, a Mormon, a Jew, or a Spinozian Pantheist, the question of importance is not whether your God 'exists' or not; but rather, whether you are a 'better' or 'worse' person for your belief in the 'myth' of 'God'.
Mythologically and functionally, 'God' -- in any form -- can be supported, if it makes you a better person to yourself and others. Epistemologically, the existence of God can't -- at least not based on any kind of rational philosophical empiricism that I can come up with.
I do not have any problem with the president of The United States being a mormon -- or any other 'humanistic' religion.
However, I have a big problem with politics, the State, and religion being epistemologically and ethically connected.
You do not bring a myth to epistemology, law, science, or politics any more than you would a fairy tale; and you do not lead a country based on either a myth or a fairy tale in situations where good, sound, credible, reliable, empirical epistemology is what is needed.
Thus, when and where I use the term and concept 'God', I am using it symbolically, mythologically, and spiritually -- but not epistemoligically. This is a very, very important distinction, not only for me, but for anyone who is seriously interested in digging into the ethical merit of their religion, and the relative health or pathology of the particular religious ideas that they are being asked or told to 'buy into'.
Ask not first what you can do for your religion, but rather what your religion can do for you, the people who are practising the religion, and the people outside of the religion. Is it helping people to live happier lives? Or is it making people miserable? Is it making the people within the religion more tolerant, caring, and peaceful towards other people? Or is it making people righteously intolerant, unaccepting, even aggressive and violent towards other people of differing religious or unreligous ideas? Is it making people submissive and masochistic? Or is it making people assertive and independent in balance with compassionate, caring, and socially sensitive and giving? I am looking for a new evolution and breed of religions -- of any name or faith be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any other form of religion -- that is based on 'humanistic-existential values and ethics'; not squashing the same.
db
From an 'epistemological' point of view, the existence of 'God' is highly improbable. 'God' is more rationally seen as a 'mythological construct' -- a projection of many of man's wishful and/or fearful needs -- that has been used for thousands of years by man to 'ward off a fear of death' and to 'help him ethically behave better on earth' (and some might cynically say allow people in power to better control the behavior of the masses and to get them to do things that they would not normally do because these behaviors would violate the 'pleasure and happiness' principle.) The ethical and moral virtue of God and religion can be better supported 'mythologically' than 'epistemologically' but even this comes with a serious 'caveat emptor'. Mythologically-speaking, religion is neither 'good' or 'bad' but the type of man-made ethics, attitude, and behavior that support the religion all make it so -- or not so. You have to 'dig into the contents' of the religion in order to determine whether it is 'good' or 'bad' for man. And you have to 'dig into the particulars' of how each and every person is using his or her religion for the good or bad of him or herself -- and others around him or her -- to determine its relative 'personal health content' or 'personal pathology content'.
Returning to an epistemological point of view, the closest I can come to connecting 'rationality' or 'reason' with 'God' is through 'Intelligent Design Theory'. In other words, it is easy to argue that the world -- and everything in it -- is so amazingly well-designed, so 'intelligently' well-designed, that it is very hard not to, indeed, almost impossible not to, believe that there must have been some intelligent designER behind the incredible complexity of this design. It is very hard to believe the opposite point of view -- that the world, and everything in it, with all of its individual and collective complexities of functional design, was created simply by 'accident'. Even evolution theory -- is a little stale and 'parameter restricted' if by evolution theory we want to restrict ourselves only to the Darwinian perspective of 'genetic evolution over numerous generations'. This cannot account for much faster forms of evolution such as human evolution through individual and/or social learning. Hegelian social evolution or dialectic (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis) theory is a much stronger way of accounting for faster forms of evolution than classic Darwinian Theory, particularly if it too is broadened to account for 'individual and social, biological intelligence' -- i.e., the power to compensate, modify, mutate, adjust, change -- in even the smallest of animals and plants like 'ants' and 'viruses' and 'bacteria' that are not generally regarded as having 'intelligence'. Even plants can be said to have 'intelligence' in that, for example, they will bend towards the sun, and certain plants -- like say the 'pau d arco' plant -- have 'learned' to fight off and become 'immune' to, its arch enemy -- fungi -- in ways that can only be described as 'learned over time' and 'immune function based on plant intelligence'.
All of this brings us back to the question of, 'Where did this intelligence come from?', and was/is there something 'more all-encompassing, and/or more all-overseeing' that put this type of 'evolutionary intelligence' into every animal, mineral, and plant on earth.
Now it is a major leap of 'faith', 'trust', 'assumption', 'presumption', or a 'suspension of disbelief' as they say in the entertainment business, to jump from 'intellignet design' theory and even the idea of an 'intelligent designer' -- which could be a more intelligent race of people from a different world who may be playing with this world as their 'hobby' or 'university course' -- to the idea of 'God' which include many, many more assumptions -- and probably man-made 'idealistic projections' -- than an 'intelligent designer' theory.
Thus, as an empirically and rationally based philosopher (or at least that is what I would like to think that I am), I can state with conviction that the idea of an 'intelligent designer' theory can be rationally and empirically supported; however, the 'leap of faith' if you will, or 'leap into metaphysics', or 'suspension of disbelief' that takes us from intelligent designer theory to 'God' -- cannot be rationally, empirically, and/or epistemologically supported in the same way.
We look back now at the many 'Gods' of the ancient Greeks -- a 'God of War', a 'God of Love', etc. -- and we partly smile and call them 'myths'.
What would cause us to believe that the 'one God' that many people believe in today, and that most religions righteously trumpet, would be any less of a 'myth' than the 20 Gods that are now being called a myth, some 2700 years ago.
There is only one possible reason: many people NEED to believe in God (for example, fear of death) -- even if this means 'suspending their epistemological sense of disbelief' in order to sustain their belief in God's existence -- and an 'afterlife'.
This is not to say that all myths are bad; there are plenty of myths, fairy tales -- and Gods -- that may, indeed do, play a useful and functional role in man's life (eg. Santa Clause, Peter Pan, the tooth fairy, and so on...)
However, from an empirical philosopher's point of view, the existence of God cannot be rationally supported -- are we really to believe that 'God' has no 'lifespan' and no 'physical presence or boundaries'. (If we believe that God has no boundaries, then we are, in effect, getting close to Spinoza's idea of spiritual pantheism -- 'God is Nature' or 'God is everywhere and in everything'.
Any orthodox or unorhodox form of religion or belief in God is simply a different form of myth. If you want to -- or need to -- choose a 'God' myth; just make sure that it is beneficial to both you and the people around you, and be tolerant of other people's 'myths' as long as they do not violate any human rights laws as put forth by the United Nations, and/or any and every humanistic country that does not tolerate religious suppression and violence.
Whether you are a Muslim, a Catholic, a Protestant, an Anglican, a Mormon, a Jew, or a Spinozian Pantheist, the question of importance is not whether your God 'exists' or not; but rather, whether you are a 'better' or 'worse' person for your belief in the 'myth' of 'God'.
Mythologically and functionally, 'God' -- in any form -- can be supported, if it makes you a better person to yourself and others. Epistemologically, the existence of God can't -- at least not based on any kind of rational philosophical empiricism that I can come up with.
I do not have any problem with the president of The United States being a mormon -- or any other 'humanistic' religion.
However, I have a big problem with politics, the State, and religion being epistemologically and ethically connected.
You do not bring a myth to epistemology, law, science, or politics any more than you would a fairy tale; and you do not lead a country based on either a myth or a fairy tale in situations where good, sound, credible, reliable, empirical epistemology is what is needed.
Thus, when and where I use the term and concept 'God', I am using it symbolically, mythologically, and spiritually -- but not epistemoligically. This is a very, very important distinction, not only for me, but for anyone who is seriously interested in digging into the ethical merit of their religion, and the relative health or pathology of the particular religious ideas that they are being asked or told to 'buy into'.
Ask not first what you can do for your religion, but rather what your religion can do for you, the people who are practising the religion, and the people outside of the religion. Is it helping people to live happier lives? Or is it making people miserable? Is it making the people within the religion more tolerant, caring, and peaceful towards other people? Or is it making people righteously intolerant, unaccepting, even aggressive and violent towards other people of differing religious or unreligous ideas? Is it making people submissive and masochistic? Or is it making people assertive and independent in balance with compassionate, caring, and socially sensitive and giving? I am looking for a new evolution and breed of religions -- of any name or faith be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any other form of religion -- that is based on 'humanistic-existential values and ethics'; not squashing the same.
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