Religion's Future or Lack of it

[RestlessSoul]

Thinking something through isn’t a trap. Putting it that way implies you have already decided your conclusion is true before you have understood the premises.

The opposite, in fact.

 

[RestlessSoul]

The problem is, that it is not a fact that something, which is unknown, is not the same, as it doesn't exist,
In effect it is not as such true that unknown is to not exist.

Can there be things that do not exist?

 

[Tomef]

Yeah, as far as I can tell we are doing in effect cogntive relativism as for different cogntive schemata.

Yes, in which case the notion of ultimate truth is meaningless. The closest you could get is what one person subjectively considers to be ultimate truth, about something they think is all-encompassing enough to deserve being called that.

 

[Tomef]

The opposite, in fact.

What do you mean? If you mean you can understand the premises, then what are they?

Premise one - there is such thing as ultimate truth; if you can justify that, then you have a point.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Can there be things that do not exist?

Well, I don't know. I mean I could point of that existence as a property has no objective referent, but seems to be speculative philosophy. But that doesn't tell us the ultimate truth of where there are things that don't exist, yet are real, true and so on?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes, in which case the notion of ultimate truth is meaningless. The closest you could get is what one person subjectively considers to be ultimate truth, about something they think is all-encompassing enough to deserve being called that.

Well, the problem is that your meaningless is also subjective. You in effect seem to hold a subjective idea, that the objective is more real or what not, but that is meaningless as it is subjective and not objective.

Again you have yuor understanding and I have another.
And what is meaningless is always as far as I can tell meaningless to somebody in a subjective sense.

 

[Estro Felino]

Religion will turn into something more human and more humane.
But it will not disappear.

 

[Tomef]

And what is meaningless is always as far as I can tell meaningless to somebody in a subjective sense.

Well, if that is the case then it renders the idea of ultimate truth impossible. If meaningless is a subjective idea, then so are questions that cannot otherwise be shown to be objective in relation to something else. If the ultimate nature of reality were known, it would be true in relation to that reality. But, if ideas such as meaningful/meaningless are always subjective, nothing can be said to be ultimately true in the same objective sense, but only subjectively, in which case it has no meaning beyond the subjective, and so is meaningless in anything but those terms. And that still doesn’t resolve the question of how it might be defined.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Well, if that is the case then it renders the idea of ultimate truth impossible. If meaningless is a subjective idea, then so are questions that cannot otherwise be shown to be objective in relation to something else. If the ultimate nature of reality were known, it would be true in relation to that reality. But, if ideas such as meaningful/meaningless are always subjective, nothing can be said to be ultimately true in the same objective sense, but only subjectively, in which case it has no meaning beyond the subjective, and so is meaningless in anything but those terms. And that still doesn’t resolve the question of how it might be defined.

Yeah and again we are back to the induction problem of whether your understanding in time and space is all understanding for all time and space.

Let me try to explain how I understand what you are doing. Let us take A is B. Now let us accept that it is a minimum true for one case of a given time and space that A is B. But for that doesn't follow that it is so for all time and space.

In effect this one "Well, if that is the case then it renders the idea of ultimate truth impossible." is a part of ultimate truth for all time and space if you are correct for impossible for all time and space.

So my postion is that I can't rule out anything for all time and space or even something that doesn't rely on that, because I know nothing of it in any way. So to me it is unknown.

 

[RestlessSoul]

What do you mean? If you mean you can understand the premises, then what are they?

Premise one - there is such thing as ultimate truth; if you can justify that, then you have a point.

You’re putting the cart before the horse here imo. Clearly defined parameters are fine when you have a precise idea of exactly what you’re looking for - the Higgs Bosun, for example, or Dark Matter particles.

Even then, one should be careful of what one dismisses prior to discovery; Penzias and Wilson were looking for radio waves bouncing off satellites, when they discovered Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. The story goes that they initially thought the strange signals might be caused by bird**** in their antennae. So they happened on what we might call a truth about the cosmos, with no intention of justifying that there was such a thing as CMBR - though other scientists did believe that the Big Bang model predicted it.

The point is, always to keep an open mind in the search for knowledge, truth, and understanding.

 

[Augustus]

I feel that as long as people only use science to eradicate demonstrably harmful differences and not to eliminate mere diversity humans will be much better of and feel that C. S Lewis's antiscientific polemics are to a degree unfounded.

The problem is that if we looked back in history at what people considered to be “demonstrably harmful” we see things like homosexuality, racial impurity, Jewishness, etc that people wanted to eradicate.

We then assume we are much more enlightened now and will only use it for good.

The reason why is because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there is no one beholder. So some people will modify themselves to be taller while other people modify themselves to be shorter, still others will be content with the way they are. But the main thing is that malignant personalities may someday be curable through science, and as far as I can tell - the latter is as it should be.

Throughout history, how many personality types do you think have been considered “malignant” at one time or another?

How many of these do you personally consider malignant today?

What makes you assume that the powers that be will roughly agree with your view on what is undesirable and to be purged from society?

How likely do you think it is that we try to scientifically eradicate undesirable personality types without significant unintended consequences emerging?

What from human history fills you with confidence that good faith people won’t mess it up by mistake and bad actors won’t exploit it for negative ends?

Bonus: How many MAGAs in America do you think view “wokeness” as malignant (and vice versa)?

 

[Tomef]

You’re putting the cart before the horse here imo. Clearly defined parameters are fine when you have a precise idea of exactly what you’re looking for - the Higgs Bosun, for example, or Dark Matter particles.

Even then, one should be careful of what one dismisses prior to discovery; Penzias and Wilson were looking for radio waves bouncing off satellites, when they discovered Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. The story goes that they initially thought the strange signals might be caused by bird**** in their antennae. So they happened on what we might call a truth about the cosmos, with no intention of justifying that there was such a thing as CMBR - though other scientists did believe that the Big Bang model predicted it.

The point is, always to keep an open mind in the search for knowledge, truth, and understanding.

Sure, but those are concepts that have some shape to them. Why talk about an ‘ultimate truth’ when you can’t offer some sort of meaning for the term? An ultimate truth about what? Everything?

 

[Tomef]

Yeah and again we are back to the induction problem of whether your understanding in time and space is all understanding for all time and space.

Let me try to explain how I understand what you are doing. Let us take A is B. Now let us accept that it is a minimum true for one case of a given time and space that A is B. But for that doesn't follow that it is so for all time and space.

In effect this one "Well, if that is the case then it renders the idea of ultimate truth impossible." is a part of ultimate truth for all time and space if you are correct for impossible for all time and space.

So my postion is that I can't rule out anything for all time and space or even something that doesn't rely on that, because I know nothing of it in any way. So to me it is unknown.

Ok, but in this instance A might as well be sdlfkjasdfliajs as ‘ultimate truth’. It’s a totally nebulous concept, without some idea of what it is supposed to mean you might as well ask ‘what is sdlfkjasdfliajs’.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Ok, but in this instance A might as well be sdlfkjasdfliajs as ‘ultimate truth’. It’s a totally nebulous concept, without some idea of what it is supposed to mean you might as well ask ‘what is sdlfkjasdfliajs’.

Well, knowledge as a concept is connected to truth, so ultimate truth could be defined as - the idea of a piece of knowledge, general knowledge or universal knowledge that is so, that it can't be false.
Notice I didn't say it is real, I stated it as an idea.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Good article.

And hopefully, because of our shrinking world, other parts of the world will come to the same realisations, sooner rather than later

As the article shows religion is still a part of culture in secular countries. After significant secularisation many people still retain some aspects of religion - some customs, rites, ceremonies... This remain is called folklore/traditional/cultural religion...

Some minor groups think they have to fight against this process with increasing fundamentalism and some (also some atheists) fear multiculturalism (some immigrants don't adapt so well...) and that's why nationalism gains popularity.

Secularisation/modernisation is a little slow in other parts of the world but it's already happening.

After religion is deprived of it's function something still has to fill the existential void.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Sure, but those are concepts that have some shape to them. Why talk about an ‘ultimate truth’ when you can’t offer some sort of meaning for the term? An ultimate truth about what? Everything?

Well it’s not the case that the concept of truth is so nebulous as to have no recognisable form or significance. And it’s not the case that thinking about what truth is and what it means, has never born fruit.

Many readers can get a sense of what John Keats was experiencing in his soul, when he wrote the lines, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Or what Rumi meant by the lines, “A truth can walk naked,
But a lie always needs
To be dressed.”

There are things of which we can safely say, We may not be able to define it, but know it when we see it. Truth is like that, I think.

 

[Tomef]

Well it’s not the case that the concept of truth is so nebulous as to have no recognisable form or significance. And it’s not the case that thinking about what truth is and what it means, has never born fruit.

Many readers can get a sense of what John Keats was experiencing in his soul, when he wrote the lines, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Or what Rumi meant by the lines, “A truth can walk naked,
But a lie always needs
To be dressed.”

There are things of which we can safely say, We may not be able to define it, but know it when we see it. Truth is like that, I think.

yes, as per the whole discussion until now, it’s the ‘ultimate’ appendage that makes no sense.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

So my postion is that I can't rule out anything for all time and space or even something that doesn't rely on that, because I know nothing of it in any way.

Not to minimize this presumed insight, but so what? That you "can't rule out anything for all time and space or even something that doesn't rely on that" strikes me as effective worthless.

You walk over to your favorite chair, turn to face your TV, and sit down -- neither (a) knowing if the chair is still there, or (b) caring whether or not it is, in that instance, knowable.

 

[osgart]

Truth just means in accordance with good virtues in one sense. So for me when I think of ultimate truth I think about how well I lived according to those virtues I know to be true to the best of my knowledge.

Just because some people think ultimate truth is meaningless words does not make it so. The main religions have failed miserably to define, and justify their ultimate truths. Now we have so many competing perceptions of reality and what constitutes true knowledge about truth.

It's all about defining words accurately, and truthfully so as not to render words meaningless or severely limited in importance. Truth can be a completely important term, and for many people it is. The fact that words get watered down to irrelevance, and expressions of highly important words get reduced to meaningless jargon only handicaps people in how they express themselves.

As for the future of religion it could drag on being a monolithic disaster, or as humanity fares and adapts religion could turn into a genuine pursuit of ultimate truth.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Not to minimize this presumed insight, but so what? That you "can't rule out anything for all time and space or even something that doesn't rely on that" strikes me as effective worthless.

You walk over to your favorite chair, turn to face your TV, and sit down -- neither (a) knowing if the chair is still there, or (b) caring whether or not it is, in that instance, knowable.

Well, yes, as long is objective reality is real, fair, orderly and knowable.
But I am weird since I am a strong skeptic and cognitive relativist.