Thoughts on faith

[creekster]

I have said that religion is art, all great "secular" art has been inspired by religion or is consciously or unconsciously inspired by religion's preoccupations and in fact consciously or unconcsiously uses religion as a frame of reference. I love physical manifestations of metaphysical points (for example, that the NT was written in Greek). With respect to the point I'm making here: the traditional architecture of our universities is Christian medieval architecture. I have said that we owe all to religion, our history is relgious history, and excoriated the nonsense propagated by Chris Hitchins that religion poisons all. I definitely agree that an existence becomes one of dry, yeastless factuality absent art, i.e., religion.

One of my biggest objectoins to Mormonism is the limited imaginative horizon resulting from "one true church" mentality. Ironically, I think of anyone here I'm religion's biggest cheerleader. But in radical Islam and facscism and even communism we see what happens when imagination runs wild unchecked by reason and empricism. The secret of America is the tension and fusion of Moses vs. Plato.

So, I don't necessarily disagree with your author. Who is he?

The shouldnt you agree wiht the cited quotations? After all, isn't the author really saying that the agnostic refuses to join a tribe and is, therefore, suspect and an outcast? Isn't that the essence fo religion from a secular point of view?

[SeattleUte]

The shouldnt you agree wiht the cited quotations? After all, isn't the author really saying that the agnostic refuses to join a tribe and is, therefore, suspect and an outcast? Isn't that the essence fo religion from a secular point of view?

I think that is the essence of religion from a religious point of view. I refuse to join a tribe, opting for the Greek multicultural model, an infinite capacity to absorbe extra-tribal cultural elements and ideas, and in turn am outcast by the tribe.

[creekster]

I think that is the essence of religion from a religious point of view. I refuse to join a tribe, opting for the Greek multicultural model, an infinite capacity to absorbe extra-tribal cultural elements and ideas, and in turn am outcast by the tribe.

From a religious POV the point of religion is truth and/or whatever reward the religions promises. It takes the non-shitting agnostics to analyze it as tribal, i think. Moreover, didnt you just define your tribe?

[Jarid in Cedar]

To take the tribal analogy, the agnostic is the tribe hermit. He lives by the tribe but not in it, but when the tribe picks up and moves to another area, the hermit follows.

[SeattleUte]

From a religious POV the point of religion is truth and/or whatever reward the religions promises. It takes the non-shitting agnostics to analyze it as tribal, i think. Moreover, didnt you just define your tribe?

That is the essential problem--religion defining humanity in terms of tribes.

[creekster]

That is the essential problem--religion defining humanity in terms of tribes.

I disagree. I think that is the essence of hunamnity. That is what drives us and why we have religions and religious impulses, the very thing that lies at the base of that which you so admire.


Now ERC wil be mad at me from straying so far from the topic.

[ERCougar]

(I have noticed some of your unprovoked barbs at "SU" in the football forum, and probably there are many more I haven't noticed because you can't search for "SU").

Fair enough--I deserve some of it. But FTR, when you claim that you don't troll, you're full of crap.

[SeattleUte]

I disagree. I think that is the essence of hunamnity. That is what drives us and why we have religions and religious impulses, the very thing that lies at the base of that which you so admire.


Now ERC wil be mad at me from straying so far from the topic.

Hence you must agree with me that learning tolerance and even love for other tribes is the reason we're here. This does not preclude the possibility of a just war, of course (I'm not convinced either of our current wars are just).

[UtahDan]

I think that is the essence of religion from a religious point of view. I refuse to join a tribe, opting for the Greek multicultural model, an infinite capacity to absorbe extra-tribal cultural elements and ideas, and in turn am outcast by the tribe.

What a cute self delusion. Outcast is a role within the tribe SU. Mormonism defines you through and through.

[creekster]

Hence you must agree with me that learning tolerance and even love for other tribes is the reason we're here. This does not preclude the possibility of a just war, of course (I'm not convinced either of our current wars are just).

I love the tribe member, not the tribal practice.

[woot]

There's much I could say here but I'll just limit it to this. Contrary to the idea of dry yeastless factuality, rationality provides a much richer and more vibrant view of life than religious belief ever could. The grandeur of the universe is far greater than our prophets ever imagined, and the gods of our religions seem small and petty compared to the expanse of reality. So, the author's views seem quite nonsensical and entirely reliant on religious indocination in order to seem even superficially meaningful.

[SeattleUte]

There's much I could say here but I'll just limit it to this. Contrary to the idea of dry yeastless factuality, rationality provides a much richer and more vibrant view of life than religious belief ever could. The grandeur of the universe is far greater than our prophets ever imagined, and the gods of our religions seem small and petty compared to the expanse of reality. So, the author's views seem quite nonsensical and entirely reliant on religious indocination in order to seem even superficially meaningful.

There you go, using religion as your reference point. You speak of gradeur and the very idea has a kind of poetic and artistic imagination and judgment.

[PaloAltoCougar]

There's much I could say here but I'll just limit it to this. Contrary to the idea of dry yeastless factuality, rationality provides a much richer and more vibrant view of life than religious belief ever could. The grandeur of the universe is far greater than our prophets ever imagined, and the gods of our religions seem small and petty compared to the expanse of reality. So, the author's views seem quite nonsensical and entirely reliant on religious indocination in order to seem even superficially meaningful.

While lacking the length, detail and complexity of Hawking's A Brief History of Time, or even Sagan's Cosmos, I think Moses 1 (coming either from God or from the mind of an unschooled 19th Century farmboy) is still pretty good on this count.

No longer responding directly to woot... I don't like weighing in on these discussions because in debates of reason vs. faith, I think reason pretty much always wins out, in part because the process of debate is necesarily based on reason. There are a great many elements of my faith that cannot be reconciled with, and in some cases are flatly contradicted by, reason. But I've been uplifted more often by faith than by reason, so I cling to the hope that such things are true.

I'm unwilling to accept that the rare spiritual insight I may be given, the love of my wife and children, Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the cathedral at Chartres, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or, what the hell, Hall to Collie, are simply the effects of biochemical reactions.

[woot]

There you go, using religion as your reference point. You speak of gradeur and the very idea has a kind of poetic and artistic imagination and judgment.

Come again? This doesn't seem to make any sense. I typed that on my mobile so perhaps it wasn't clear that I was responding to the quote in the OP, so of course I used religion as my reference.

[woot]

While lacking the length, detail and complexity of Hawking's A Brief History of Time, or even Sagan's Cosmos, I think Moses 1 (coming either from God or from the mind of an unschooled 19th Century farmboy) is still pretty good on this count.

No longer responding directly to woot... I don't like weighing in on these discussions because in debates of reason vs. faith, I think reason pretty much always wins out, in part because the process of debate is necesarily based on reason. There are a great many elements of my faith that cannot be reconciled with, and in some cases are flatly contradicted by, reason. But I've been uplifted more often by faith than by reason, so I cling to the hope that such things are true.

I'm unwilling to accept that the rare spiritual insight I may be given, the love of my wife and children, Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the cathedral at Chartres, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or, what the hell, Hall to Collie, are simply the effects of biochemical reactions.

Is there a representative passage from Moses I you could cite? For my money, Sagan's Pale Blue Dot is tough to beat, but there are many authors that have provided numinous moments for me. Sagan just did it for me with a consistency that no other author has approached.

I imagine SU would have thoughts concerning your use of "unschooled 19th century farmboy".