The inevitable march of secularism? Not so fast

[SeattleUte]

This was sort of my point. So, as SU, and the author he was quoting, see it, we all need something of a religious nature in our lives. Some might use organized traditional religions, others might hug trees on the weekends. Whatever it is, though, we all need it and our societies need it. But reaching this conclusion sheds no light on whether any of the religions are correct or mistaken, true or false. Indeed, even if one of them was correct, the fact tat some or almost all people had gone in a different direction wouldn't prove or disprove that fact. There are also other inferences one might draw from this apparent condition of humanity.

I think you and Wap are misunderstanding the point because you’re defining religion too narrowly. Religion, according to Harari, is the secret sauce that makes any civilization possible. It’s the fictional stuff that resides in our imagination, and is real only because we all agree it’s real. So, it includes legal codes, money, humanism, campitalism, as well as religions that decide ethical issues by resort to scripture. In modernism, humanism is the yang to science’s yin (Harari says that). Religion is just a tool humans have used in order to build the pyramids, etc. “Religion is a tool for preserving social order and for organising large-scale cooperation.”

Spirituality is different from religion, because spirituality means finding your own way based on your inner voice and feelings, apart from social order. Jesus and Buddha started out on spiritual paths, rebelling against the prevailing religions, and ironically they became the source of “more laws, more rituals and more structures were created in their names than in the name of any other person in history.”

I’m summarizing what’s in the book. These are not my own original sayings.

[Topper]

I think you and Wap are misunderstanding the point because you’re defining religion too narrowly. Religion, according to Harari, is the secret sauce that makes any civilization possible. It’s the fictional stuff that resides in our imagination, and is real only because we all agree it’s real. So, it includes legal codes, money, humanism, campitalism, as well as religions that decide ethical issues by resort to scripture. In modernism, humanism is the yang to science’s yin (Harari says that). Religion is just a tool humans have used in order to build the pyramids, etc. “Religion is a tool for preserving social order and for organising large-scale cooperation.”

Spirituality is different from religion, because spirituality means finding your own way based on your inner voice and feelings, apart from social order. Jesus and Buddha started out on spiritual paths, rebelling against the prevailing religions, and ironically they became the source of “more laws, more rituals and more structures were created in their names than in the name of any other person in history.”

I’m summarizing what’s in the book. These are not my own original sayings.

This makes sense.

[SeattleUte]

Ha. Gotta love those cherry-picked comparisons:



I wonder why the author didn't pick Stalinist Russia vs. the U.S.

It is exactly this kind of hubris I was referencing in the OP.

In fact, humanism shared the fate of every successful religion, such as Christianity and Buddhism. As it spread and evolved, it fragmented into several conflicting sects. All humanist sects believe that human experience is the supreme source of authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways. Humanism split into three main branches. The orthodox branch holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated repeated series of experiences. . . .The more liberty individuals enjoy, the more beautiful, rich and meaningful is the world. Due to this emphasis on liberty, the orthodox branch of humanism is known as ‘liberal humanism’ or simply as ‘liberalism’.* It is liberal politics that believes the voter knows best. Liberal art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal economics maintains that the customer is always right. Liberal ethics advises us that if it feels good, we should go ahead and do it. Liberal education teaches us to think for ourselves, because we will find all the answers within.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as humanism gained increasing social credibility and political power, it sprouted two very different offshoots: socialist humanism, which encompassed a plethora of socialist and communist movements, and evolutionary humanism,whose most famous advocates were the Nazis. Both offshoots agreed with liberalism that human experience is the ultimate source of meaning and authority. Neither believed in any transcendental power or divine law book.

So, apparently wars among the splinters of humanism have killed more people by far than the combined religious wars among monotheists combined. Maybe that makes you feel better about this.

[creekster]

I think you and Wap are misunderstanding the point because you’re defining religion too narrowly. Religion, according to Harari, is the secret sauce that makes any civilization possible. It’s the fictional stuff that resides in our imagination, and is real only because we all agree it’s real. So, it includes legal codes, money, humanism, campitalism, as well as religions that decide ethical issues by resort to scripture. In modernism, humanism is the yang to science’s yin (Harari says that). Religion is just a tool humans have used in order to build the pyramids, etc. “Religion is a tool for preserving social order and for organising large-scale cooperation.”

Spirituality is different from religion, because spirituality means finding your own way based on your inner voice and feelings, apart from social order. Jesus and Buddha started out on spiritual paths, rebelling against the prevailing religions, and ironically they became the source of “more laws, more rituals and more structures were created in their names than in the name of any other person in history.”

I’m summarizing what’s in the book. These are not my own original sayings.

I can't speak for Wuap, but I think I get the point. I am struggling to understand what he is presenting here that is different or new. Why, IOW, is this book and its conclusions important? Religion, as you are suggesting he describes it, is the tribal influence that we have talked about here many, many times over the years.

I am sure it is a good book. And I am glad you enjoyed it.

[wuapinmon]

I think you and Wap are misunderstanding the point because you’re defining religion too narrowly. Religion, according to Harari, is the secret sauce that makes any civilization possible. It’s the fictional stuff that resides in our imagination, and is real only because we all agree it’s real. So, it includes legal codes, money, humanism, campitalism, as well as religions that decide ethical issues by resort to scripture. In modernism, humanism is the yang to science’s yin (Harari says that). Religion is just a tool humans have used in order to build the pyramids, etc. “Religion is a tool for preserving social order and for organising large-scale cooperation.”

Spirituality is different from religion, because spirituality means finding your own way based on your inner voice and feelings, apart from social order. Jesus and Buddha started out on spiritual paths, rebelling against the prevailing religions, and ironically they became the source of “more laws, more rituals and more structures were created in their names than in the name of any other person in history.”

I’m summarizing what’s in the book. These are not my own original sayings.

I'm not defining religion at all. There's no point to anything. Period. The meaning of life could be 42 for all I care. The only meaning you can imbue your life with is the one you seek out for yourself; if we only find meaning in our own self-endowed perceptions, how can we ever trust our unmediated reality? We can't, which is why Hume, king of empiricists, hit the nail on the head. There is no point to life, even if you try and find a point to life, there can't be one unless there is a God just like we were taught in our youth, in which case you're fucked (me too, probably).

The sooner we accept that life is meaningless, the happier we'll be with the utter meaninglessness of it all. If we're constantly searching for meaning in life, we'll never be happy. For, if there can be said to be any meaning at all to life, it's to try and be happy as often as you can, and to make others happy. Humanism and the teachings of Jesus are a great way to live, probably the best way, but there's not any "meaning" to them. They are just a code, devoid of any meaning beyond trying to keep us from killing each other, itself pretty much meaningless.

[tooblue]

I'm not defining religion at all. There's no point to anything. Period. The meaning of life could be 42 for all I care. The only meaning you can imbue your life with is the one you seek out for yourself; if we only find meaning in our own self-endowed perceptions, how can we ever trust our unmediated reality? We can't, which is why Hume, king of empiricists, hit the nail on the head. There is no point to life, even if you try and find a point to life, there can't be one unless there is a God just like we were taught in our youth, in which case you're fucked (me too, probably).

The sooner we accept that life is meaningless, the happier we'll be with the utter meaninglessness of it all. If we're constantly searching for meaning in life, we'll never be happy. For, if there can be said to be any meaning at all to life, it's to try and be happy as often as you can, and to make others happy. Humanism and the teachings of Jesus are a great way to live, probably the best way, but there's not any "meaning" to them. They are just a code, devoid of any meaning beyond trying to keep us from killing each other, itself pretty much meaningless.

And enters in the postmodernist nihilist.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I'm not defining religion at all. There's no point to anything. Period. The meaning of life could be 42 for all I care. The only meaning you can imbue your life with is the one you seek out for yourself; if we only find meaning in our own self-endowed perceptions, how can we ever trust our unmediated reality? We can't, which is why Hume, king of empiricists, hit the nail on the head. There is no point to life, even if you try and find a point to life, there can't be one unless there is a God just like we were taught in our youth, in which case you're fucked (me too, probably).

The sooner we accept that life is meaningless, the happier we'll be with the utter meaninglessness of it all. If we're constantly searching for meaning in life, we'll never be happy. For, if there can be said to be any meaning at all to life, it's to try and be happy as often as you can, and to make others happy. Humanism and the teachings of Jesus are a great way to live, probably the best way, but there's not any "meaning" to them. They are just a code, devoid of any meaning beyond trying to keep us from killing each other, itself pretty much meaningless.

Wow.

[wuapinmon]

“Now he understood that a man never knows for whom he suffers and hopes. He suffers and hopes and toils for people he will never know, and who, in turn, will suffer and hope and toil for others who will not be happy either, for man always seeks a happiness far beyond that which is meted out to him. But man's greatness consists in the very fact of wanting to be better than he is. In laying duties upon himself. In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, all is rest and joy. For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties, beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness, his fullest measure, only in the Kingdom of this World.”
― Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World

[wuapinmon]

And enters in the postmodernist nihilist.

No way, man. Nihilism espouses metaphysical rejection of the concrete world. I accept Johnson's kicking of the stone. I also accept morality while also accepting that that situational ethics can be tortured to make almost anything seem moral. You're trying to put meaning onto meaninglessness. Mormonism is an attempt to do just that. Joseph Smith got it. He perceived the void (which church) and named it Moroni, trusting that his perceptions had meaning, and others found meaning in them too, and a morality sprang from them, and a good one, because he tied it into Jesus's teachings. When he started chasing fanny is when he began perceiving things which weren't epistemologically confirmable (as if anything could be).

SIEQ told us that we exist in narratives, and by god, the man's a genius.

[tooblue]

No way, man. Nihilism espouses metaphysical rejection of the concrete world. I accept Johnson's kicking of the stone. I also accept morality while also accepting that that situational ethics can be tortured to make almost anything seem moral. You're trying to put meaning onto meaninglessness. Mormonism is an attempt to do just that. Joseph Smith got it. He perceived the void (which church) and named it Moroni, trusting that his perceptions had meaning, and others found meaning in them too, and a morality sprang from them, and a good one, because he tied it into Jesus's teachings. When he started chasing fanny is when he began perceiving things which weren't epistemologically confirmable (as if anything could be).

SIEQ told us that we exist in narratives, and by god, the man's a genius.

Every system is trying to do just that—even yours.

"Am I an act of creation that has been added to a grand narrative with a perpetual archive, and is my purpose to extricate myself from that narrative, write my own text, and create a new archive as infinite as my own existence?"

[wuapinmon]

Every system is trying to do just that—even yours.

"Am I an act of creation that has been added to a grand narrative with a perpetual archive, and is my purpose to extricate myself from that narrative, write my own text, and create a new archive as infinite as my own existence?"

We won't even be remembered 300 years from now. Joseph Smith tried to fight this void with the Malachi/Elijah "hearts of the fathers" burn the earth commandment thing, but there is nothing new under the sun. Sure, we might leave a trace, a huella, a thumb/finger/imprint of some kind, but making our mark on the world is not the same thing as being remembered. You and I will suffer the second death, which isn't the dreaded spiritual death that Joseph, et al, warned us of, it's the last day that someone remembers who you were and cared enough to feel a little twinge of longing for your presence.

There is no perpetual archive. There might be words preserved, but just like those voices hailed from the hardened dust of cuneiform, they might have "meaning" but they are faceless and lack any kind of significance for their authors. If you want infinite existence, better get working on Jane and the singularity, otherwise, Game over, man. GAME OVER!

[Topper]

No way, man. Nihilism espouses metaphysical rejection of the concrete world. I accept Johnson's kicking of the stone. I also accept morality while also accepting that that situational ethics can be tortured to make almost anything seem moral. You're trying to put meaning onto meaninglessness. Mormonism is an attempt to do just that. Joseph Smith got it. He perceived the void (which church) and named it Moroni, trusting that his perceptions had meaning, and others found meaning in them too, and a morality sprang from them, and a good one, because he tied it into Jesus's teachings. When he started chasing fanny is when he began perceiving things which weren't epistemologically confirmable (as if anything could be).

SIEQ told us that we exist in narratives, and by god, the man's a genius.

What do you mean by this, because I am not certain I agree that is what nihilism espouses.

[Jeff Lebowski]

We won't even be remembered 300 years from now. Joseph Smith tried to fight this void with the Malachi/Elijah "hearts of the fathers" burn the earth commandment thing, but there is nothing new under the sun. Sure, we might leave a trace, a huella, a thumb/finger/imprint of some kind, but making our mark on the world is not the same thing as being remembered. You and I will suffer the second death, which isn't the dreaded spiritual death that Joseph, et al, warned us of, it's the last day that someone remembers who you were and cared enough to feel a little twinge of longing for your presence.

There is no perpetual archive. There might be words preserved, but just like those voices hailed from the hardened dust of cuneiform, they might have "meaning" but they are faceless and lack any kind of significance for their authors. If you want infinite existence, better get working on Jane and the singularity, otherwise, Game over, man. GAME OVER!

Haha. Wuap owning this thread.

Dang it, we already have a wuap smiley: () or I would rename this one in his honor:

[old_gregg]

Haha. Wuap owning this thread.

Dang it, we already have a wuap smiley: () or I would rename this one in his honor:

yeah right this is the most freeing realization of all

[Jeff Lebowski]

So, apparently wars among the splinters of humanism have killed more people by far than the combined religious wars among monotheists combined. Maybe that makes you feel better about this.

I am happy. My existence now has some meaning!