From: No name given (vampier@mac.com)
Date: Thu Feb 28 2002 - 07:00:45 MST
On Thursday, February 28, 2002, at 06:21 AM, Richard Ridge wrote:
>> I do not see the "dangerous" aspect of the above.
>
> The danger Johnson was referring to was simply that when social
> constraint
> ceases to mandate organised religion, it dries up and withers. A danger
> from
> his point of view of course, progress and freedom from mine. However, it
> does seem to me that, oppressive and archaic as it is, the Catholic
> Church
> has some advantages over other christian variants - if only because its
> insistence on defining doctrine places it in a position to moderate the
> views of believers (and admittedly to exacerbate them). By contrast,
> individuals of faith are free to invent god in their own image and to
> seek
> transcendental justification for their poisonous views - and hence
> evangelical sects that are far more militant that any mainstream
> church. One
> of the great problems with moribund faith without doctrine is that it
> rarely
> stays that way, and an even more extremist form of doctrine often ends
> up
> being reasserted.
I concur with the above if by "faith" you mean "religion". But if by
"faith" you mean "belief in that which cannot presently be proved" then
I think you overgeneralize.
>> Religion is a coping strategy - most people need something like it -
>> some do not.
>
> I would contend that emotional dependency of that kind cannot possibly
> be
> considered healthy.
Read
"To Thine Own Self Be True: The Relationship Between Spiritual Values
and Emotional Health" by Lewis M. Andrews, Ph. D.
and then tell me what you think.
>> I have yet to see well-reasoned, consistent, well-supported secular
>> ethics. They all wind up appealing to something unprovable.
>
> Not so long ago you were citing Godel's theorem as grounds for asserting
> that faith is a required component in areas where rationality does not
> reach
> (Which sounds like having found a flaw in your calculations, you invent
> an
> unprovable quantity (god) to fill the hole. Which must make for a
> somewhat
> unstable edifice - and certainly makes for hypocrisy on your part) . On
> that
> occasion you appeared to be rather more enamoured of uncertainty :-)
You are equating faith with unprovability and uncertainty in the above
in order to deduce hypocrisy and my alleged enamorement with uncertainly.
I am merely postulating the existence of a provability beyond that of
rationality that can lead to a certainty beyond that of the "provisional
truth" that rationality leaves us with.
> On the whole, I am far from persuaded that a consistent set of ethics
> grounded in transcendental sanction is a good thing.
I am willing to concede that it may not be - a grounding in something
other than transcendental sanction might very well be better. But I have
found nothing else that works nearly as well.
> Such certainty is
> precisely what accounts for the manifest evils of religion.
I hypothesize (as do others) that there exists a central core of good
teachings in each religion, around which tradition (of mediocre value)
and nonsense (of detrimental value) have accumulated over the ages
(where sometimes an "age" is a very short period of time). I suggest
that all the "manifest evils of religion" are a consequence of the
accumulated nonsense.
To get to what is worthwhile you must, to borrow the Buddhist phrase,
"peel the onion".
> I would suggest
> that a great many of our ethical notions today have much more to do
> with JS
> Mill than the Bible (which can only be good - were it otherwise we would
> still be incarcerating homosexuals or stoning adulterers), namely that
> individuals should have the liberty to behave as they wish as long as
> that
> behaviour does not adversely impact on others. What was particularly
> noteworthy about Mill was that he did not consider a lack of
> consistency of
> application a problem - it is far more sensible to judge each case on
> its
> individual merits than shoehorning them into a set of moral absolutes.
Legal law, by definition, is written down. Judging each case, on it's
own merits, while simultaneously allowing for an appeals process that
may, at any point it time, reach the highest court in the land, winds up
with people appealing, not on any sound reason, but merely because they
didn't like how that court chose to judge that case. Without guiding
"moral absolutes", the legal profession will continue to grow well
beyond what I think it should.
>> Aristotle and various others in the religious and philosophical arenas
>
> I hardly think the Nicomachean ethics is something we would wish to rely
> on - the idea of a unity of virtues is not one of Aristotle's happier
> conceits. Aside from anything else, the Aristotelian list of virtues is
> far
> from being identical to a christian list and does not count 'faith' in
> that
> particular calendar.
There may be some slight twisting of words necessary here.
>> I've give the sources he mentions above. Feel free to discredit or
>> follow up on them as you see fit.
>
> Discrediting it is not difficult.
Then go for it.
> If a search for faith were universal,
> Europe would not be becoming increasingly atheistic, while most
> Europeans
> now appear to be happily devoid of any faith (contradicting your
> assertion
> that most people do need faith).
Please provide me a link to a survey result of Europeans that indicates
that they consider themselves devoid of faith.
I have heard that in America, there definitely has been an outcry
against the crimes of organized religion (and, through association,
against organized religion), but a great majority continues to believe
in some form of "spirituality" - which gets defined in different terms
based on the individuals' background.
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