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As you self-identify your religion as Perennial Philosophy you (more than most perhaps) may well embrace the distinctions between fact and truth (as a philosophical concept) that may rely a great deal, a bit, or not at all upon any accepted veritable facts/conclusions derived from empirical evidences.
They might, but they are also wrong.
]No such institutions have been around for centuries now yet isolation and willful ignorance rarely enhance a narrowed perspective any more than the same views tend to promote investigation, experimentation, or innovation beyond rote adherence to ritual observances and enforced dogma.
Well, thats an interesting and utterly inaccurate characterization of what I submitted earlier. You may have missed my previously lent support of teaching Comparative religion studies in public education. Additionally, I did not suggest that critical thinking and evaluation of available accepted fact is some nascent faith-based replicant of religious beliefs. Its as simple a distinction as when a lamp goes dark in the living room
Well, only if you perceive as religion as the primary target, and view a skeptical eye as the same as a cynical view.
Well, lets note that many (if not most) religions espouse their own creation myths, legends, and/or witnessed accounts as truth.
Yes, Santa is a symbol of a concept in which we seek to reflect upon our potential/hopeful better selves. Perhaps why I too today celebrate the observance of Christmas as a joyous secular holiday and hopeful wish for an evolving species
Of course it's not my religion, but a reflection of my perspective of religions. I don't have lineage I call a home. I suppose I should change it to what it more accurate which is "I am all religions; I am none", but I don't think that's allowed as far as length.
Not period at all. Yes, on the surface what you say is true and I acknowledge as much. But I cannot begin to tell you how repeatedly, and in a marching parade of so-called freethinkers and skeptics, do in fact use it to supposedly debunk religion. In practical, popular usage it is the hammer of religious iconoclasts. There is a marked difference between actual science and Scientism, which is a religious view that science is the greater giver of Truth with a capital T to humanity, once known as Positivism.
Nothing could be less reflective of how I think. I clearly recognize the nonsense in some beliefs that science and reason needs to expose to higher understanding away from primitive superstitions and mythic frameworks. What I am doing is taking critical thinking and applying to those who think they have arrive at the truth using critical thinking. In the voice of Yoda, "So certain are you?"
Of course it's not. But then why do so damned many make it one? Most scientists don't, but with the fall of institutional religion, I certainly see people quoting it as thought it were the new authority of Truth, just like the Church used to be. There is a difference between it as a tool, and a symbol of an authority supporting philosophical world-view called materialism. Science is not materialism, but it is materialism's Holy See.[just for the record: science is not a religion. It’s not
Do you believe religion is really nothing more that an explanation for cause and effect relationships, using myth to explain what science wasn't around for, and that now science is here we can be done with religion?
I do not view a skeptical eye the same as a cynical view. I raised that because I have heard more than a lion's share of those who wave a flag of atheism around with the word "Skeptic!" emblazoned upon it, when in reality it isn't critical thinking at all, but equally as full of closed-minded rhetoric as the fundamentalists they think they have triumphed over. As an example, someone actually proudly referred to himself as a "hard-core skeptic". That, is an oxymoron.
And this to me is the same approach to religion as the mythic believers use. The look at the evidence and come to a conclusion. "Groundless" claims do not negate "God", they only invalidate those notions. To me, that's child's play. Of course the world in old, there was no magic ark and world-wide flood, etc. Debunking that is like arguing with kids in a Sunday School class.
Which is why I said the misuse of them is. What started this discussion between us is you saying we should promote it in school to in effect combat the magical thoughts and superstitions of religion. The problem I have is that in recognizing that Noah's ark wasn't a real event in history therefore means religion equals "magical thought and superstition". That's just plain ignorant. That's what I mean when I say reason and rationality are really misused to promote a new sort of religion of reason. "That's no longer the truth, this is!". It's the same thing. It doesn't matter what you source of authority is. It's still true/false binary thinking.
Personally, I think the use of the word myth in this context sucks. Myth in religious contexts functions in vastly deeper ways than just popular misconceptions about the world. To view religion as nothing more than a collection of these is far from knowledgeable.
I hope my point is becoming clearer.
Yes I do, and the answer is no. Our entire reality is pretty much nothing but a series of mental images, signs and symbols. We do not interface with reality directly, but it is entirely mediated through these mental objects which represent the world outside us. We live inside our heads, interacting withing a world of symbols. They pretty much constitute our main experience of "reality", with certain rare exceptions.
Of course it's not a good thing, but don't kid yourself there is a religious war, at least now in the more popular imagination, between religion and science. And it too is over symbols. The Holy Bible vs. Science. They are both functioning, in this context of cultural perception, as symbols of Truth.
No. They think the Bible is the story of their faith, and they approach it as such.
Well, if testable, measurable, and repeatedly verifiable observations are to be distilled as little more than illusions of some alternate reality that offers none of the same than Ill choose curtain #1 for now .
So beyond empirical facts, what other evidences should these nefarious naysayers employ?
Ok how might we identify such zealots? Do they wear hoods, or special broaches/necklaces?
Um, yes
Can I say "period" again?Ill share this
I would consider that an accurate and pointed consummate compilation of humanistic historical summation, yes.
Ok. Some atheists are just as ill-equipped and inarticulate to espouse their views as most adherents of faith-based beliefs. Less so at times but still resident and obvious to identify.
Perhaps but it doesnt mean they are factually wrong, or wrong-headed.
Indeed, and agreed.
Not exactly, no.
Well, if Noahs Ark is exempt from any critical examinations available to scientific inquiry, then I fail to accept it as any sort of valid or worthy concept of evidential fact which pretty much relegates the claim to myth, superstition, and magical thought. Ignorance is the absence of information, and if absence of information serves to validate or confirm a claim as truth, then only the veritably faithful with a capacity possessed of a willing suspension of disbelief or overwhelming evidence will ever continue to maintain or espouse that global climate change is a hoax, or The Holocaust never happened.
No, reason, logic, and especially critically evaluative thinking eschews fallacious either/or argumentation. Binary thinking is the very foundation of religious rationalizations
myth
It was always clear.
I retain no prejudices favoring one ancient myth as superior or more "believable" than any popular religion/superstition with billions of adherents found today... Id accept that rather simplistic summary if it were not for one singular counter
Well, if there is warfare, only one side is declaring it to be so . and that side has lost every battle over time, and the outcome of the war is but a matter of patience and evolution of our species
You did not follow when I said it is not allowed. In the space where I can type letters under the profile where is says "religion", I tried typing "I am all religions; I am none", and it would not allow that many characters. So no, it's not allowed. Perennial Philosophy fits, and does reflect a good aspect of how I think about religions. You may assume all sorts of things about me, but be assured they are coming from your imagination of who I am, and that can pretty much summarize most of your points that followed this.
And here you betray your view of postmodernity through the eyes of modernity. What I am saying about mental models of reality does not translate into Solipsism. Yet, that seems the knee-jerk reaction of those who assume their eyes, or even "repeatable, testable, blah blah," allows us to bypass that! All that does is continue to validate the myth of a pregiven world. It's like looking at one of those illusions on a piece of paper, that no matter how you try, your brain keeps translating it to look like an object you are familiar with, which you can then hand to a hundred other people to look at and they all say the same thing.
Experience. Then once they have experience, then they can dialog with others who have similar experience, compare, analyze, and come to some sort of 'model' or framework of understanding. These however should not be called "empirical facts", anymore really that any scientific theory should be called facts. They are models of reality, not reality itself. They are maps of the terrain, not the terrain itself. And maps need revisions. They are useful and valid tools, but not "Truth Almighty, Damn it!"
"Facts" is one of those words that scream "Truth Almighty!", but it's far less "fact" than we would hope for, sorry to say. By their blind spots and their dogmatic ideologies.
You're certainty confirms my assessment, so far. There's a saying I used to use so many years ago when I was first growing past such certainties in my youth. "The more you know, the more you know you don't know". Again, "So certain are you?"Um, yes
I'll share this with you. I'm 53 years old, and the core focus of the last 30 years of my life has been in the exploration of these areas, from religious fundamentalist dogma, to traditionalism, to agnosticism, to atheism, to modernity, to postmodernism, to post-postmodernism, to existentialism, to mysticism, to... and so forth. I moderated an online forum for former fundamentalist Christians, saw thousands, literally thousands of atheists working out their stuff there, including myself, etc. So, I am speaking not merely from some isolated thoughts about some world beyond my experience. I've been in the thick of it for many years, and when I say I see some, not all of course, but many do exactly what I am saying here, there is some substantial background and understanding supporting that. It's not just some glib comment on my part. I understand it as simply switching religions. It's not a radical overhaul in ones entire framework of thinking. That takes far, far more than simple "empical facts". That cry is really little more than "I have a new Bible!!".
Who's talking about an organized religion here? I'm talking religious thinking, just like a spelled out above at my friend's expense here.
Actually psychology and philosophy deal more with these. Or you could take the reductionist approach and tackle these as B.F. Skinner in the research Behaviorism (valid to a point, but insufficient beyond that point).
Well, in the West anyway. But see what I just said about the context of religion post-Enlightenment.
Not always obvious. There is the same thing quite often, but in a more subtle form. It's still reductionist, flatland mentality that operates off that same mentality. It's like the Buddhist concepts of the near enemy and the far enemy. For instance the far enemy of the quality of compassion is callousness. But the near enemy of compassion is pity. The near enemy is far more insidious because it masks itself as enlightened. To be right on a point and exclaim, "I've got the truth!" is to be wrong.
You're last sentence was a little confusing how it was worded, but if I get the gist of it that would describe me. Yes, science has no agenda. I'm clearly not that naive or paranoid to imagine a room full of cigar-smoking atheist scientists set to dethrone God by suggest Evolution happens. The value of it to me was to do just this, to disoldge mythic thinking, tying God to mythic-literal teachings. For instance, you 'need a God to explain how the universe works because of such arguments like the watchmaker analogy. To me, the tool of science allow me personally to 'free God' from religion, ultimately anyway.
That's sounds reasonable, and I agree critical thinking should be taught. No kidding. But again, what started this discussion between us was your comment,
Noah's ark being claimed to be an actual historical and scientific event is not exempt from critical examination. It should be examined if it is claiming itself as historical fact. No disagreement.
I agree. That sword cuts both ways.Plain denial IS plain ignorance. Period. Again.
Yes, which is why precisely arguing that the so-called "skeptics and freethinkers" who in fact think and speak in binary terms are not in fact using reason and logic, and are not in fact skeptics and freethinkers, but rather anti-religious cynics. The arguments are against straw man effigies taken from the extremes, not actually academic understanding.
Oh, how I love quoting dictionaries!
As though these are the final word on meaning. Hardly. When discussed in achedmic circles it goes go more into much deeper and more subtle meaning that this. If you've ever read anything from authority in myth-studies like Joseph Campbell, it's a whole lot more informative, and consistent with what I'll echo, than what you cite quoting a dictionary.