SolitaryWalker
Tenured roisterer
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2007
- Messages
- 3,504
- MBTI Type
- INTP
- Enneagram
- 5w6
- Instinctual Variant
- so/sx
"Philosophize among yourselves as much as you please. I fancy I hear the dilettanti giving for their own pleasure a refined music taste; but take good care not to perform the concert before the ignorant, the brutal, and the vulgar; they might break your instruments over your heads. Let a philosopher be a disciple of Spinoza if he likes, but let the statesman be a theist."
de Voltaire
So what, I ask is the problem here?
Do we really want for our religion to send us back to the middle ages? Philosophers, after all, were pioneers of new thought in society and the driving force in the progress of civilization.
Religion was supposed to give meaning to our lives, yet how could it if it prevents us from exploring life for our own tastes. Forcing us to live a lie almost..how could the religious teachings have meaning to you if you havent had a chance to go out in the real world to experience them?
My solution to this problem is that religions at best should suggest what the world to come may be like, or suggest (not impose) an ethical attitude to the end of perfection of human nature and what not..but the politicians ought to keep their paws off that enterprise and understanding how the world works should be the business of science and philosophy and religion shall have no voice in that enterprise.
I highly recommend to you all, a reading of Medieval philosophy---The Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides. His intellectual influence represented the zenith of Jewish religious rationalism and he's got a compelling argument for why reason must be deemed superior to revelation and how it is possible to be deeply religious without comprimising your intellectual integrity.
He had an interesting theory concerning prophecy, that they are merely Intuitions and visionaries translated them into parables and concrete symbols so they can pass their massage onto the masses. As to know the truth about divine revelation you'd need a profound understanding of metaphysics, yet most people are neither able to acquire this nor appreciate abstractions. They can only handle the concrete and hence the prophets had to give it to them in the guise they demanded.
Or in other words, hell was supposed to be a profoundly negative vision and heaven a profoundly positive, no lake of fire for the infidels. The real story was that there was a Mr. John, an ESTJ who was absolutely certain of his own moral rectitude because he licked the right boots and followed all the rules--yet going to heaven wasnt enough for him, to be satisfied he insisted on eternal punishment for Mr.Brown, an ESTP. Who was a terribly wicked man because he spent his sunday mornings outdoors instead of the church, he didnt wash his hands before dining, he didnt attend John's Wedding ceremony, and he never really cared to tell people how evil they were because they didnt wear their sandals the right way--of course, the way that was prescribed by those John worshipped.
The real case scenario here is that people had more faith in their RELIGIOUS METHOD of finding meaning in life than in the quest itself of finding meaning in life. Their loyalties lied to their political authorities who instituted the philosophy they are adhering to rather than to the task of finding a congneial worldview. They were not concerned with the perfection of their nature or making their life more fulfilling, they just wanted to be content with themselves and they rested as soon as they found someone who'd give them a simplistic worldview to be satisfied with.
de Voltaire
So what, I ask is the problem here?
Do we really want for our religion to send us back to the middle ages? Philosophers, after all, were pioneers of new thought in society and the driving force in the progress of civilization.
Religion was supposed to give meaning to our lives, yet how could it if it prevents us from exploring life for our own tastes. Forcing us to live a lie almost..how could the religious teachings have meaning to you if you havent had a chance to go out in the real world to experience them?
My solution to this problem is that religions at best should suggest what the world to come may be like, or suggest (not impose) an ethical attitude to the end of perfection of human nature and what not..but the politicians ought to keep their paws off that enterprise and understanding how the world works should be the business of science and philosophy and religion shall have no voice in that enterprise.
I highly recommend to you all, a reading of Medieval philosophy---The Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides. His intellectual influence represented the zenith of Jewish religious rationalism and he's got a compelling argument for why reason must be deemed superior to revelation and how it is possible to be deeply religious without comprimising your intellectual integrity.
He had an interesting theory concerning prophecy, that they are merely Intuitions and visionaries translated them into parables and concrete symbols so they can pass their massage onto the masses. As to know the truth about divine revelation you'd need a profound understanding of metaphysics, yet most people are neither able to acquire this nor appreciate abstractions. They can only handle the concrete and hence the prophets had to give it to them in the guise they demanded.
Or in other words, hell was supposed to be a profoundly negative vision and heaven a profoundly positive, no lake of fire for the infidels. The real story was that there was a Mr. John, an ESTJ who was absolutely certain of his own moral rectitude because he licked the right boots and followed all the rules--yet going to heaven wasnt enough for him, to be satisfied he insisted on eternal punishment for Mr.Brown, an ESTP. Who was a terribly wicked man because he spent his sunday mornings outdoors instead of the church, he didnt wash his hands before dining, he didnt attend John's Wedding ceremony, and he never really cared to tell people how evil they were because they didnt wear their sandals the right way--of course, the way that was prescribed by those John worshipped.
The real case scenario here is that people had more faith in their RELIGIOUS METHOD of finding meaning in life than in the quest itself of finding meaning in life. Their loyalties lied to their political authorities who instituted the philosophy they are adhering to rather than to the task of finding a congneial worldview. They were not concerned with the perfection of their nature or making their life more fulfilling, they just wanted to be content with themselves and they rested as soon as they found someone who'd give them a simplistic worldview to be satisfied with.