The Religion and Philosophy Thread
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Comments
If you start from the presumption that any writings will reflect the cultural context of the times they were written in then your argument makes sense @LadyRhian. However, if you start from the presumption that the writings were divinely inspired, then there's no need to require any links with existing religions - apparent links can then just be random or the result of people making interpretations based on their own preconceptions rather than actual causal links. Similarly any apparent inconsistencies in texts can be explained by translation errors or the fallibility of the humans doing the writing.
As I suggested previously when talking about faith, you can't demonstrate the existence of God using logic - and you can't disprove that either. Personally I don't have faith in God and do base my world view on logic, but not everyone does the same. I was just watching this evening "The man who knew infinity", about an untrained mathematical genius - he felt equations were only meaningful to the extent they reflected his god and that helped inspire him to do work which he probably couldn't have done using a more formal approach.
That doesn't mean there's no point to these debates, of course. It's possible for assumptions to be true, and if they are, any conclusions that logically follow from those assumptions should also be true.
https://www.lwf.org/discover-jesus/names-of-god?mwm_id=295209945839&gclid=CjwKCAiA9efgBRAYEiwAUT-jtGxmGnGPAYxcnA9nDa073J0zPUiXL0Ex9KACSnDIBR0PYi6v78Gw5BoC6MsQAvD_BwE
And since El had a wife. Then, the God of the Bible had a wife. I know Christians don't believe it, but the evidence is there.
Consciousness is so malleable and the mind is so slippery!
It is so much easier to observe another's assumptions than one's own.
Regarding the "divinely inspired" phrase, a Christian I debated with many years ago described the transmission of God's word in the bible as a miracle. It is therefore actually impossible to distort the message through all the translations, councils, etc. Despite sources that predate the bible and their similarities, he would not accept them as having any bearing on the matter and would find them entirely fictitious, or outright lies.
Anyway, that is how I remember the conversation.
If this kind of distinction is accepted then all kinds of statements about rights & morals can't be justified by notions of human dignity etc. either. Bentham was scornful of the whole idea of natural rights (as expressed in many constitutions)
What do we use as a basis for our social and ethical decisions then... common agreement about ethics? Conservatives have often expressed the fear that as religious faith declines social problems will increase. Regardless of whether there is any correlation or causition between the two, part of the present political instability in many countries seems to be connected to the political divisions which are slowly developing along various fault lines- generational, geographical (urban / rural), educational etc. Some of these shifts are long overdue, but it is noticeable that social norms seem to buckle when the value systems of competing groups contain fewer overlapping assumptions about acceptable ends as well as means.
Being logical and rational can tend to limit your horizons. If you know that the chance of succeeding at something is almost nil, then the logical thing for an individual is to not try but instead put your efforts into something more achievable. However, if you take a wider view based on a species as a whole then something that is highly unlikely to benefit an individual becomes worthwhile for the potential wider benefits - that provides an evolutionary basis for the fact that decision making is not entirely rational.
Logic and reason are so internally consistent that I can completely understand approaching the world that way. For me it took a relatively awful event to expose the cracks in that approach. Logic and reason are tools, but are no substitute for experiencing reality as directly as possible.
1) You consider whether to gamble $1 a week on a lottery over a 20 year period. Your stakes are roughly $1,000 in total and your expected return is, say, $400. Despite the expected loss there is an arguable logical case for making the gamble based on the possibility that a big win could transform your life, i.e. you actually attach a higher value to money in big chunks than small chunks. A lot of people do in fact take this kind of gamble, though the extent to which that's the result of logical thinking may of course be questionable.
2) You consider whether to take a one-off gamble - let's say for instance to attempt to smuggle some high value drugs into a country. If you succeed you gain, say, 10 million dollars. If you fail you will go to prison for life. Many people do of course take this kind of gamble, but their willingness to do so is very dependent on the perceived chances of being caught (more so than the size of the prize on offer). If you know for instance that you will be caught 999 times out of 1,000 I think you will get few takers - even by those who don't value their lives highly.
Words and symbols are the tools of logic. The trick of language is that it is easy to confuse symbols for reality. This translation occurs with no effort on our part. The words become what they are pointing to.
"Once you teach a child the word 'bird', they will never see a bird again."
Have you read Sartre's Nausea? There is a scene when he is sitting in front of a tree and he is confronted with reality:
It took my breath away. Never, up until these last few days, had I suspected the meaning of "existence." I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, wearing their spring clothes. I said, like them, "The sea is green; that white speck up there is a seagull," but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an "existing seagull"; usually existence conceals itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word "being." Or else I was thinking — how can I put it? I was thinking of properties. I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that green was one of the qualities of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, I foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form added to things from the outside, without changing any thing in their nature. And then all at once, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost harmless look of an abstract category: it was the dough out of which things were made, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the patches of grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous lumps, in disorder — naked, with a frightful and obscene nakedness.
Once this veneer is seen it is difficult to unsee. I find it interesting that Sartre has such a negative experience of this realization. I find it exhilarating and liberating. I do not mean to imply I am enlightened or anything, but simply had a similar realization.
Consciousness is a mirror and words are dust. There is an expression, polishing the mirror. Huxley described it, "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."
I sure hope I was on the right track with your request! lmk, and I will readdress.
First off, logic is wholly appropriate for practical considerations and need not be discarded at all. You don't have to choose to be rational or irrational, just understand it. My point was that apart from those situations, logic can distort reality just as much as any belief.
Another example is being vs thinking. You can either think or you can be. There are times when thinking is necessary, but existing without thoughts or words is so pure and simple.
The advantage, plain and simple, of setting aside the logical thought process when it is not useful is freedom, clarity, love, bliss, and all those other words people use to describe the transcendent.
I didn't attribute horrific acts solely to religion, though.